Posts by Jackie Clark
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Rape is sexual congress without implicit or explicit consent. This woman alleged she was raped by six men, but the case did not go ahead because she had previously been online talking of fantasies of group sex. Is that a reasonable summation of the facts? I do not understand why this case was not prosecuted. It seems to me that prejudicial assumptions were made about this woman by the people who were supposed to be acting for her, or against the men, in any case. I'm stumped.
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Tnank you for the Dave Dobbyn, Russell. Cos you know how I do love him so. What a lovely man. What a lovely voice. <sigh>
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I have to disagree with you on the Hucknall thing, Danielle. I love Simply Red et al. Anyway, just wanted to say Happy BDO peoples. Don't get too sunburned/wasted/lost. And enjoy milling in a sea of teenagers.
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Funnily enough, I'm in Christchurch at the moment. I would love to see this exhibition but I don't think that's going to happen, so thanks for the preview, Emma. I think that portrait of Mika is a particularly lovely one, flaccidity and all. I think the lack of turgidness adds to the faux innocence of the picture. As for painters of the female form,, my favourites have to be some Rembrandt, some Renoir. Some Lautrec, some Courbet. Old skool? Most assuredly, but they were shocking in their day. Scandalous, one might say.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Toulouse-lautrec_two_half-naked_women.jpg
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/gustave_courbet/images/courbet_10.L.jpg
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I too love the Auckland Zoo - I could, and frequently do, sit for hours watching the sea lions as they pretend to be missiles en route for places unknown. I would say that at her next birthday in a few months, your niece will be at just the right age for appropriate animal appreciation, Damian. Although never underestimate the ability of a child to be seeming to ignore their surroundings whilst secretly they are taking in all the details. Well, the ones that interest them, anyway.
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I have a question. It's something I have always wondered about. Why do people focus so much on the birth experience? I know birth - when it turns out OK - is a miracle. I know that for 9 months, the parents are beyond anticipatory - in most cases. I know that for many women it represents the apex of womanhood. I know that the day of birth is a day when expectations are exceeded, and hopes and dreams are allowed to be finally put into being. Tell me why it means so much. I'm interested. Or maybe I answered my own question. I hate that so many of my friends, so many women I know, have allowed the first day of their child's life in the world outside their wombs to colour the rest of their lives. Makes me crazy that there are such high expectations of the whole experience that anything that deviates from perfect is seen as a "bad" birth experience. And what about women for whom that birth experience doesn't happen? Ever? Who can't have babies from their own bodies? And then there's the breast is best thing. At the end of the day, does any of it matter except that the child is ok and she/he is fed, and loved? We all have views on the subject - even those of us who choose not to have children. We are all, to a degree, judgeypants about it. The wording around birth? Natural? That isn't judgey, pressuring women by suggesting that anything other that vaginal birth is not natural?
And this is just the start of a child's life. -
Of course their motivations were emotional, Sacha. There's nothing logical about any of this - gender politics is highly personal and emotional. Any politics is, really.
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Lucy, I don't know her work intimately. And I'm not saying I find all of her views nonoffensive. Her opinions on transgendered people are not mine, nor are her views on those people widely held by feminists of my acquaintance, no matter how radical (the feminists) they may be. I'm simply speaking of her views on men and gender disparity - a disparity that some women of her time tackled by refusing to engage with men. It's not offensive to me because I was around it for a long time, and so it's not rhetoric that is unfamiliar to me.
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I don't know that I am with you on any of this, really. There were feminists like this in the early 80's in NZ. I was friends with some of them. Her views, I seem to recall, were widely held by a number of my acquaintances. It may seem shocking to younger feminists but there were alot of wimmin, and I use that term nonironically, who were so burned out by men in general, and the patriarchy specifically, who just threw up their hands in despair and reviled all things male. Being a lesbian was a political statement for some women. As I remember it, Unifems was a place where eschewing sex with men was a means of releasing us from under the thumb of patriarchy. I understood that viewpoint. I still do, really. Either way, I don't find her views offensive, just very familiar, and somewhat necessary in a world where people seem to be believe that there are no gender wars left to fight. That we are all equal. Yeah, right.
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Can I just say that if the Copyright thread was 50 pages (give or take 10 or so) long, then a thread about love should be five times that long?