Posts by Jackie Clark
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So much to say. @Megan: I doff my cap to you. I think stilettos are thrillingly exotic, but I just can't wear them. Fallen arches and all that. I also think that they're slightly stupid, and very uncomfortable, but they are beautiful and I know that they are bad for us, but they do make your calves look fantastic. Comfort or pain? It was ever so.
@Angus et al: Look, I think you may be getting two things a bit mixed up here. When one is faced with a male person intent on causing one harm, as one has been a few times in the murky past, it really doesn't matter a fuck what one is wearing. Also, many of these people with ill intent are not mentally unstable, they are just pricky fucking bastards who are on power trips. As for young women walking down dark streets who are drunk and scantily dressed, they are not asking to be harrassed. When they put on their finery, intially, they are asking to be admired. If invitations are forthcoming to do more than admire, all well and good. If it is made clear, or if the young lady in question is not capable of being clear, then any advances are to be seen as unwelcome, and inappropriate. If, as is often the case, there is a person who does not understand these rules, and continues to harrass the young lady, then they are in the category of the aforementioned pricky fucking bastard on a power trip. They are not mentally ill, they are not to be excused. It may well be the way of the world that these people exist. This very fact does not mean that it is okay. It does not mean that young women who are in a bit of a state are to be judged as slutty or any other derogatory term. If they are engaging in risky behaviour - being drunk, walking alone - we should only worry that they are risking their selfesteem or their feet. We should not be telling them that they deserve everything that may happen to them. I say this as a woman, in her forties, who has had a number of very close calls when I was walking home alone. I was not drunk. I was not scantily attired. I was simply alone. I do not accept that I was enticing young men to lure me into their cars, or to push me on the ground, or to lock me in their bedroom. I did not ever, in any way, encourage the men who followed me, who threatened me, who felt me up. I was simply there. So excuse me, Angus, if I do not agree with you. -
Like most of us, they construct social identity more actively than you seem to believe.
I'm not a great believer, Sacha, that little girls, in particular, are any smarter than they were when I was preadolescent. They are the ones that worry me.
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I am rather disturbed at the way feminism has been turned into girl powa. Somehow it is supposed to be liberating for girls (according to music videos and advertising) to wear underwear with porn-related images on them, undies made to look like boys undies, bras designed to thrust more than you have up and out, and to dance as if you had an pole (to slide on or up your ...). And that is the pre-teens.
I'm all for looking gorgeous when I go out and never one to hide behind baggy clothes but wtf with everyone trying to look like one of heffs wannabees?
Wordy mcword word. And thankyou Emma for writing this post - I had the same exact reaction to you.
I think I have said it before here, but it bears repeating, I think. Sometimes I wonder what century we are living in. What were all our Marches for the Night for? And ads these days - don't get me started. It just makes me bloody weep. -
I thought 7 days was fantastic - all the comedians were very funny. I was a little disappointed that Irene Pink was a bit quiet - I l love her to bits - but otherwise thumbs up. I think Penny Ashton's on it this week? Can't beat juicy, luscious Pink Bits.
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I remember as a young lad (can't have been older than 11 or so) when I saw Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee... at the Thyssen-Bornemisza exhibition which toured NZ in 1980. I think was one of the first times (the first?) that such a collection of modern masters had ever come to NZ. Picasso's, Pollock's, Jasper John's - you name it...they were there.
Oh, raptures. I was 16, at Marsden in Wellington, and I went with my Art History class. I almost self combusted.
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My class I was teaching in 2007, who had received and were getting 'the bash' said "It's not going to stop kids getting smacked - but it's a good thing to say it's not OK to hit them."
Quick edit - I'm not saying all of my students were coming to school black and blue - just that I taught in an environment where that was a part of the culture. Where discipline was hard.
I hope that makes sense.
Absolutely, Tim. I completely agree. Some of my 3 and 4 year olds find it confusing. We advise them to tell other kids when something is not okay, and more than once when a kid has told me about getting the "bash" and I knew it wasn't just a wee smack, I've told them that they are allowed to tell Mum or Dad that it's not okay. But most of them aren't old enough, or confident enough, to do that yet. Most of them aren't articulate enough yet to tell their peers off - but we practice assertion every day. Hopefully, some of the techniques we model stick. I am confident that with some of our families, they do. It's an ongoing process, as you well know.
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Oh, now I feel guilty for not voting at all. I just thought it was an insidiously worded thing, and that's why I didn't bother. If it had asked us all about "light smacking", it would have been a different thing. As for smacking, at all, in any guise, in general? Well, I have to say that it's all very well to tell people not to, but unless you have the skills - which first time parents' often don't, practice makes perfect and all that - and you can remember those skills in the heat of anger at your child, a lot of people just find the alternatives too hard, I guess. I mean, as an educator in an area where smacking is something most of our kids experience - I would say, a good thwack or open handed smack, as opposed to the prolonged beatings and child abuse normally associated with South Auckland - you just have to try and emphasise the whole reward/consistency thing. Easier said than done for people who were raised with the belt/hand. We have parents who do NOT hit their child at all, and they talk about how difficult that is when their whole cultural concept of discipline is "the bash". Indeed, some of our kids, who I know get a normal sort of middleclass version of a light smack from time to time, talk about getting "the bash". I agree we need to remove smacking from our lexicon, but we need to replace it with good skills. And I don't know that you can legislate that into existence. I think it requires very long term education, starting from very early on. Anger/temper management needs to be part of the curriculum at schools. We already do it at kindergarten.
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I'm sort of a po-faced proponent of the "If you've had a drink, don't drive at all" lobby, and I guess that extends to drugs too.
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thanks for the BIGGIE link, Russell - I like a good head nodder.
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What a terrible thing to happen, David, and whilst I would have preferred a few less "fat" aspersions being cast in the old ladies' direction (in your mind, only, I know), because, let's face it, you are way better than to fall back on fat cracks, I can't help but feel enraged for you. I can't abide littering, and I work in an area where people think nothing of dropping their shit. I am forever walking around the kindergarten fence, on the roadside, picking up empty bottles, and cookie wrappers, and takeaway paper.For anybody, let alone old biddies who should know better, to do it so flagrantly, unless they are kids for whom it is somewhat of a learned behaviour, suggests somewhat sociopathic tendencies, I would have thought. I don't really think there is much else you could have done, to be honest.