Posted: May 28, 2012 at 11:18 pm | Tags: Ean Higgins, marriage equality, media, politics, The Australian
Hi Ean,
I’m 100% certain you’re reading this post because you’re looking for more salacious (or what you think is salacious and I actually think is my own private life and opinions) commentary on how my husband and I are agitating for something we’re not.
Let’s get a few things REALLY clear. We’re not “the power couple” of Australia’s polyamorous community – we’ve never made any claim to that title and we specifically told you when you interviewed us that we hold no positions and are currently not on the committee of Poly Vic. You are the one who has identified us as leaders in the poly community despite that not being the case. Today (28 May) you called my husband “one of the polyamorous community leaders” which he also has made no claim to be. I last held a role with the Poly Vic Committee (President) in 2010, and my husband left the committee some years before that.
It may really disappoint you to learn, but we are not special, we are not powerful, we are ordinary people living fairly ordinary lives. We do not speak for the poly community either here in Victoria, or in Australia, and your repeated suggestions that we do are getting a bit old.
The other thing that is getting a bit old is what I perceive to be your willingness to distort facts and even quotes from the two of us. First you misquote my blog by removing a plural – necessitating additional text from you to explain what I meant. My original quote:
I’ve built a house with my husbands and my husband’s boyfriend so there are 4 of us living together in nice harmony.
Your take on my quote (added text in parenthesis):
I’ve built a house with my husband and my husband’s boyfriend so there are four of us living together in nice harmony. (The fourth household member is Rebecca’s boyfriend.)
What you clearly didn’t understand when you first found my quote, was that I refer to my other male partner as my de facto husband. See, now it’s not too hard to parse my original writing. Last time I checked a direct quote was actually supposed to be the text that you’re quoting, not something that approximates said text.
Secondly, your article today suggests that my husband wrote a blog post about The Greens and their position on polyamory. You don’t detail the fact that my husband is not a spokesperson for Greens. You don’t detail the fact that the text you lifted was as a comment on someone else’s blog post.
You’ve misrepresented us and our submissions to the Senate Committee on Marriage Equality. I no longer have any respect for you and in fact am very disappointed in the way you have conducted yourself and this non-story. Not that that will bother you of course.
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Posted: May 22, 2012 at 7:15 am | Tags: equal marriage, lgbtiq, media
I am very disappointed and upset that I was so badly misrepresented in the article written by Ean Higgins and published in The Australian 21 May 2012. There are factual inaccuracies and inferences in the article which I would like corrected.
The headline was a deliberate attempt to mislead readers into thinking my submission to the senate supported polyamorous marriage when in fact it did no such thing. My submission, which has been publicly viewable on my personal blog since 12 March 2012, was in favour of equal marriage for same sex attracted couples, similar to many other submissions in favour. There was no mention of polyamory, and in my discussions with Ean Higgins I believed that I was clear that my submission was not in favour of introducing polyamory, but in favour of marriage equality for same sex attracted couples. I am not championing polyamorous marriage.
Furthermore, I do not speak for the poly community in Australia and any suggestion that I do so is a complete fabrication.
I would like these corrections to be noted by The Australia as the inference that I am lobbying for polyamory to the current Senate Committee on Marriage Equality is both factually incorrect and not representative of my submission.
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Posted: May 15, 2012 at 10:03 pm | Tags: ALC, Christianity, equal marriage, identity, lgbtiq, parents, Religion
So the ACL put out a press release today claiming that the “gay activists” (yes I know, I’m one too, I want to know who isn’t apart from the ACL), was claiming victory over the (voluntary as far as we know) resignation of Professor Kuruvilla George from the Victorian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission. For those who haven’t been following Australian Politics (and I completely get that), Professor Kuruvilla George co-signed a submission to the Australian Senate Enquiry into equal marriage suggesting that children should be brought up in a heterosexual unit as that was the most appropriate family unit and that no studies have ever found that having same sex parents is good for children. Yes, I know.
The submission was listed as “Doctors for the Family” and is available here.
The big problem for Professor Kuruvilla George, being his role as a board member for an organisation that promotes equality and acts in cases of discrimination against protected attributes, one of which is sexual orientation. He is also the Deputy Chief Psychiatrist for Victoria. According to The Age today, his resignation was voluntary and had nothing to do with his submission to the Senate Enquiry which was done in as a private individual (though signed with: MBBS MPhil FRCPsych FRANZCP after his name – which means he was signing it in a medical capacity at least – as far as I read it).
I was going to talk about the ACL’s press release and their suggestion that all research on queer families was bunk, but the delightful Chrys beat me too it, so I’ll point you at her work here, and another article which debunks the authors that the ACL are relying on here.
Continue Reading
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Posted: May 15, 2012 at 8:56 pm | Tags: abuse, Feminism, growing up, privilege, racism, sexism, violence
These pieces are all from April, but April was a month that hit me between the eyes and was very unkind to me – though I had heaps of fun for the comedy festival. The fact that it is actually mid May is an indication of how stunned I was by the whole April experience.
For a piece I haven’t gotten around to writing yet, “Feminist porn aims to mix pleasure with principle” from The Age and by Michael Lallo.
Melbourne, she adds, has a reputation among her peers as ”a hotbed of radical sexuality”. Thanks to the efforts of local women such as Gala Vanting, Anna Brownfield and Liandra Dahl, it’s also considered a leader in ”feminist porn”.
Yet this term confuses many. Some wrongly assume that ”feminist” means an absence of male performers; others imagine that films made by women involve endless dialogue and soft-core sex scenes.
At Aces Too High News, “Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, tries new approach to school discipline — suspensions drop 85%“, a piece which has some parallels to some of the experiences of some people I love dearly *trigger warning for discussion of child neglect and abuse*:
A student blows up at a teacher, drops the F-bomb. The usual approach at Lincoln – and, safe to say, at most high schools in this country – is automatic suspension. Instead, Sporleder sits the kid down and says quietly:
“Wow. Are you OK? This doesn’t sound like you. What’s going on?” He gets even more specific: “You really looked stressed. On a scale of 1-10, where are you with your anger?”
The kid was ready. Ready, man! For an anger blast to his face….”How could you do that?” “What’s wrong with you?”…and for the big boot out of school. But he was NOT ready for kindness. The armor-plated defenses melt like ice under a blowtorch and the words pour out: “My dad’s an alcoholic. He’s promised me things my whole life and never keeps those promises.” The waterfall of words that go deep into his home life, which is no piece of breeze, end with this sentence: “I shouldn’t have blown up at the teacher.”
From Geek Feminism, ““Oh, You Sexy Geek!”: “Geek Girls” and the Problem of Self-Objectification“:
The sexism that persists in geek communities is not special. It is not separable and inherently different than sexist institutions and behaviors in the “real world.” This means that the sexualization and objectification of women is not unique to geek cultures, though it is particularly severe in geek media. Video games, comics, science fiction, fantasy—these media forms are often at fault for promoting unrealistic (and, pretty regularly, physically impossible) standards of beauty for women. They fashion their female heroines and villains as sexy objects to be consumed, unlike male counterparts. Further, geek industries bring the objectification of women into the real world, hiring, for example, booth babes for conventions. Booth babes are conventionally attractive models hired by media companies to wear skimpy clothing and entice convention-goers to their respective booths. Geek women exist within this culture, which devalues their contributions as producers of media and meaning, but values their contributions as adornment.
From Addicting Info by Pat Tiffin, “Marissa Alexander: Shoot to Kill Or You Must Not Be Scared Enough“, a story that makes me go GRRR *trigger warning for racism and domestic violence*:
Marissa Alexander is another victim of Florida’s infamous Stand Your Ground law, proving that Florida statute 776.013 is not for battered women or people who won’t shoot to kill. When attacked by her husband in her home, with an order of protection in place, Marissa Alexander shot into the ceiling, instead of into his body, to scare him away. She is now sitting in a jail cell, awaiting sentencing for assault with a deadly weapon.
Ms. Alexander is black and a mother of three. She had given birth nine days earlier to a premature infant, allegedly as a result of battering during her pregnancy. She is a licensed gun owner, with concealed carry permit. She was in her own home. Her husband had a documented history of domestic violence. She reasonably believed that her life was in danger and her husband was violating an order of protection.
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