Posts by Craig Ranapia
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OnPoint: Set it on fire, then, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Given that the public owns these universities, why shouldn’t it be able to make these conditions?
Well, Keith, perhaps you can explain to the group why "the public" was completely justified in passing legislation in 1915 to remove Professor George William von Zedlitz from his teaching post at Victoria?
Universities were historically religious institutions. You had to be Christian, or you couldn’t study/work there. Could the public legitimately decide: VUW is going to be an Anglican institution, and if you want to go there, you have to agree to abide by Anglican orthodoxy?
I say no it couldn’t.
No, and while Keith is right that I don't have to attend Oral Roberts U. (and I don't think they want my racially impure Papist Sodomite ass anyway), I don't really have any choice about subsidising New Zealand's universities through my taxes. I'm pretty happy about subsidising universities where women are allowed to receive degrees and not required to attend segragated lectures and tutorials; and folks like Keith can't be denied entry on the basis of their race, religious beliefs or political/ethical views.
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Hard News: Who owns the news?, in reply to 3410,
Oh, I give up.
Please do – and don’t misrepresent my comment. Frankly, if I had issues with Myllylahti there’s bugger all evidence around these parts that I wouldn’t say so up front. But equally frankly, I don’t find Red Alert (for the most part) an excessively useful source of value adding commentary on any subject and I do put that squarely on Curran’s shoulders.
And, yes, Red, I don't like politicians attacking the independence of academics without just cause. (And for that matter, I'm reason confident the PSA weren't expecting a parenthetical sneer from Mallard. Poor duck's been spending too much time with Cameron Slater?)
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Paul Williams,
Shaun Robinson, EO of the NZ Aids Council, is a friend and told me of his frustration when the winner of Mr Gay NZ, in his acceptance speech, told the audience he was off to do bareback work in the US porn industry. Personal choice is one thing, entering a competion with an organisation that preaches safe sex is another.
Grrr... In Robinson's position, I'd have discretely given the little skank a Tonya Harding. Not merely bad faith but bad taste.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to BenWilson,
It wasn’t a justification for porn, it was an explanation of the low rate of non-bareback porn.
Oh, no I got that - but it's a rather interesting conundrum. I guess my hackles go up around this issue because I not only know HIV-positive folks (and how bloody awful their lives get) but straight women who've suffered severe long-term health issues from undiagnosed STIs.
With the porn industry, you're always going to have scary monsters and supercreeps around the place. But I also think "the market" is a too convenient a scapegoat for a lot of douche baggery. I don't know, perhaps it's going to take a shit load of lawsuits and OSH/public health prosecutions (and large settlements and fines) for the industry to clean up its act but my inner market purist would rather see more producers deciding that a healthy workforce, positive messages and a healthy profit don't need to be mutually exclusive.
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Hard News: Who owns the news?, in reply to Andre,
Andre: It would be easier to have a sensible argument about the merits (or otherwise) of said editorial if you'd bother representing it accurately. Is this Kiwibog or something?
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Russell Brown,
It’s a much bigger issue in the gay community.
It’s also a rather fascinating legal issue in California where the porn industry isn’t exempt from the California Occupational Safety and Health Act.
ETA: Ben - well, when it comes to topping the bottom line (so to speak) I guess you have a point that nobody would make bareback porn if people weren't consuming it. But, to take it to the reductio ad absurdum, there are paedophiles; and it's rather easy to forget that there are actual human beings in the porn industry. I'm not so sure my wank is really worth someone else's misery.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to James Butler,
Yeah, but what I found rather grimly amusing about that app is that the supposed markers of teh gayness were pretty demeaning to straight guy - many of whom I know do shower, change their shirts and run a comb through their hair before going out of an evening. Hell, they may even go out to partake of musical theatre or a singing "diva".
But I digress... as I said up thread, a sober, fact-based sex education course wouldn't have turned me into a raving heterosexualist at the sight of a cutaway diagram of lady parts. But who the hell knows, it might have contained some useful non gender- or orientation-specific information. As far as I'm aware, there's no STI that GLBT people are magically immune to.
And tonally, do you think it's possible that an environment where sex and sexuality isn't treated like a dirty joke (or some horrifying secret) might contribute to adolescence being a safer place for non-straight youth? You can't write a curriculum that will make adolescence an angst-free place for anyone, but perhaps you can make things a little better.
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Myllylahti hinted at an agenda in this comment on Clare Curran’s blog.
This would be the same blog where Trevor Mallard did whatever the hell he does - not really holding my breath waiting for value adding media commentary from that quarter.
ETA: And should someone make the Herald print a disclosure along these lines atop every column Drinnan writes: "Don't hold your breath waiting for any reportage of the proprietors of this newspaper, while running egregiously inaccurate trash-talk about its competitors"?
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Russell Brown,
But, to pick a number, I’d say it diminished sexual pleasure by about 50%, and that’s not insignificant.
OK, but as a gay man of a certain age I can quite happily introduce you to HIV-positive chaps whose sexual pleasure is significantly more diminished by passion killers like rolling mauls of opportunistic infections, chronic diarrhoea, pneumocystis pneumonia and severe side effects from drug cocktails (which, despite dangerously magical thinking from some quarters, is no kind of cure).
You know something else: I can't make up my mind whether stories like this still appearing in 2011 make me more angry or sad.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
(the chance of pregnancy is probably already zero since women are fertile less than half the time).
Speaking of unhelpful things to tell kids? Yeeeeeeeeeeah. That.
Yeah, because an inexplicable design flaw in the human female is their utter failure to bioluminesce when their love ovens are hot and ready to start baking that baby batter. I assume the manufacturer will correct this defect in the next firmware patch.
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