Gender Bender 
This article first appeared in Fairfax's Sunday Life magazine on 2 June 2014 

The day started like every other: the obligatory argument with our four-year old daughter as I try to drag a brush through her hair and convince her to change out of a too-small, stained t-shirt featuring a hastily scribbled self-portrait.

‘This is my absolute favourite top,’ she whinged. ‘Why can’t I wear it?’

We were running late. (These arguments can ever take place when you’re already running late.) ‘Look, you can’t wear them – you’re not wearing them – because they’re old and they’re dirty. For once, can’t you just look nice?’ I spit out.

Before the words have even left my mouth, I want to suck them back out of the air. All those years of shielding her from the truth, all the carefully constructed lies, come undone with a single, angry remark.

You see, we had tried – so earnestly – to sell our daughters the line that girls can do anything boys can do, that girls and boys are equal, that the world they were growing up in was more-or-less gender blind. We liked to think that we giving them the same opportunities as their male friends, but the truth is that we (like most other families) don’t really allow them the same freedoms: the freedom to take risks; the freedom to be rough and physical rather than nice and neat; god, even the freedom to leave the house without insisting they do their hair first.

While today’s ‘gently, gently’ parents might think they’re doing the right thing in shielding children from harsh reality, giving them a candy-coated version of the world where pets don’t die, they just go on extended stays at rural B&Bs, and where poverty, inequality and discrimination don’t exist, it may be that we’re actually doing more harm than good. Of course, it would be lovely if our kids grew up in a world free from gender bias, but the reality is that discrimination affects us all. A report recently commissioned from the Girl Guides confirms this point, with over three-quarters of girls saying that sexism affected ‘most areas of their lives’.

As the American congresswoman Shirley Chisholm succinctly put it, ‘The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, "It's a girl.”’ From the second they are born, little girls are wrapped up in a pink blanket of constraint and assumption, becoming fodder for a corporate machine that only wants them to be pretty, pastel-coloured cardboard cut-outs (Disney Princess nappies anybody?) Wouldn’t it be better that we teach them to understand – and begin to question – the gender norms in our society where their lives are going to be shaped, and to some degree curtailed, by the fact that they are female?

That same night, our six-year old was watching the news. ‘Why are they only allowed to show men and boys’ sport on TV?’ she queried.

‘Because someone, somewhere, has decided that women’s sport isn’t as interesting or as skillful,’ I told her bluntly.

‘But that’s stupid and unfair,’ she blurted. ‘Maybe if they bothered to show it more often, then people would get interested and realise that it is just as good.’

Her exasperation, together with a practical approach to redressing the imbalance, made me realise that we can and should alert young girls to inequality from a very early age. Gender analysis and critical thinking are skills that we should teach and practise with girls and boys alike, particularly if we consider the following, probable future for our daughters.

In their tween years, young girls can expect to really catch the attention of the cashed-up marketing machines of big business. The aim? To sexualise young women and link their self-worth to their appearance. Who can forget the Abercrombie and Fitch padded bra tops for the seven year-old market? Social media and the online world might seem to open up avenues for friendship and extended support, but they’ll also expose young girls and boys to significantly more opportunity to experience bullying and anxieties about body image. In their teenage years, our girls will be dared to walk an impossibly thin line: to be seen as attractive they must be sexy, funny and smart – but go too far and they’ll be called a slut, a pig or a nerd.

From a safety point of view, the statistics are positively alarming. The most recent research puts your daughter’s chance of being sexually assaulted in her life at one-in-five. And the likelihood that that she’ll experience domestic violence? A frightening one-in-three.

In their working lives, today’s girls can grow up to expect to earn less than their similarly qualified and experienced male colleagues. It is likely our daughters will spend almost twice as much time on housework and childcare than their male partners, even if they spend the same amount of time in paid employment. And because all their unpaid work has no monetary value attached, there’s every chance they won’t have enough money in retirement.

With a future like that, what good does it do to bring up our girls to uncritically accept the current status quo? Do we really want to send them a message that what they’ve got is good enough? Wouldn’t it better that they learned to identify and call-out sexism and discrimination when they see it?

This morning, when we were running late (again) and my four-year daughter (again) refused to brush her hair or change out of a ripped-leggings-socks-and-thongs ensemble, I looked into that upturned, expectant face and decided that she was just fine like that. We grabbed our things and walked out the door – a small victory for small girls everywhere.

And with tiny steps like that, together with frank discussions about narrow social ideals for women, I hope that as my daughters grow up they’ll learn to see through sexualised media and marketing bullshit that tries to pressure them into looking and acting in a certain way. I hope that they’ll be given the opportunity to become whatever they want in life – whether that’s a politician, a lawyer, a mother or a plumber. But perhaps more than anything, I hope that they will proudly call themselves feminists and fight for a world where every child is given the chance to fulfil their potential.

Domestic violence reality check for the 'manosphere'

This article was first published at http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=38186#.Uje62MZkOSo

A podcast can also be accessed at   http://eurekastreet.com.au/uploads/media/audio/13/38186.mp3

Domestic violence is a crime in which – overwhelmingly – the victims are women and the perpetrators are men. A recent 11-year summary of domestic violence trends in Victoria by the Department of Justice found that nearly 80 per cent of victims were female and over 90 per cent of perpetrators were male (http://www.justice.vic.gov.au/resources/cc44d0bd-cd54-42e1-a471-dfa54a9b8988/fvdb_1999_2000.pdf).

Yet lately it seems that there has been a subtle shift in community perception. Whenever the topic of domestic violence is raised in the media, talkback radio, online comments and letters to the editor are suddenly flooded with demands that we acknowledge that men, too, are victims. According to a VicHealth report, one-fifth of the community now believes that men and women are equal perpetrators of violence in the home (http://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/Publications/Freedom-from-violence/Violence-against-women-in-Australia-research-summary.aspx).

The “battered husband” claim has flourished within the online space known as the “manosphere” where aggressive men’s rights groups blame women, and more specifically feminism, for everything gone wrong with the world – from high unemployment rates and shorter male lifespans, to false rape allegations and poor family court outcomes. The time has come, they say, to knock women off their pedestal.

Groups such as One in Three claim that as many as 50 per cent of domestic violence victims are male, and that women are as physically aggressive – if not more so – than men. According to one men’s rights group website, feminists (or femo-nazis, to use the term preferred by many) “invent fake domestic violence” so that they can continue to control, dominate, destroy and extort from men. Males, says another site, are facing increased hostility and being portrayed as the perpetrators of “evil”.

There is no doubt, of course, that some victims of domestic violence are men. No one disagrees that this abuse is unacceptable and unforgiveable, and that these men are equally deserving of resources and support. But to suggest that domestic violence is a gender-equal crime is a plainly incorrect and dangerous argument that benefits neither men nor women.

Just as climate change denialists cherry pick studies with dubious methodology, so too do these men’s rights groups. The studies they cite have been repeatedly refuted for their highly controversial approach that does not differentiate between the type and context of violent acts (for example, between a push in self-defence and a push down the stairs, or between a single act of retaliation and years of ongoing abuse). This research has also been criticised for interviewing only one partner in the relationship and for ignoring post-separation abuse, which accounts for a very large percentage of intimate partner violence. And of course it blatantly contradicts the vast majority of studies on the topic, such as the ABS report (http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/056A404DAA576AE6CA2571D00080E985/$File/49060_2005%20(reissue).pdf) that showed that less than five per cent of men who experienced violence in a 12-month period were assaulted by a female partner or ex-partner.

Men’s rights groups claim, however, that such statistics are meaningless because males are less likely to report domestic violence. A study by the Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse (http://www.adfvc.unsw.edu.au/PDF%20files/Men_as_Victims.pdf) directly addressed this concern, stating that “the evidence is that men tend to over-estimate their partner’s violence while women under-estimate their partner’s violence by normalising or excusing it … men upgraded women’s violent behaviour while women discounted or downplayed their male partner’s violence”. Furthermore, research (http://www.justice.vic.gov.au/resources/cc44d0bd-cd54-42e1-a471-dfa54a9b8988/fvdb_1999_2000.pdf) consistently shows that “men’s violence is six times more likely to inflict severe injury and is more humiliating, coercive and controlling. Women’s violence is more likely to be expressive in response to frustration and stress rather than purposeful with the intention to control and dominate.”  

Danny Blay, Executive Director of No to Violence, explains that the arguments used by men’s rights groups “seem appealing and credible because they simplify something that is actually quite complex. But they’ve fudged the numbers dramatically. The thing about this issue is that it is quite personally affecting. When you hear figures like one in three women will experience family violence at some in their lives, you immediately start reflecting on your mother, your sister, your relationships and it’s a hard place to be. It’s much easier to say, ‘it’s not men’s responsibility, it’s equally women’s fault’.”

The misrepresentation of domestic violence as gender-neutral is dangerous for a number of reasons. Firstly, this “what about men?” campaign wastes precious air time and column space that Blay believes would be better spent “having real conversations about family violence – examining the figures, exposing the myths and getting the stories out from behind closed doors”.

Secondly, it raises suspicion about all domestic violence claims by suggesting that women routinely exaggerate or invent abuse.

But finally, and perhaps most dangerously of all, the claims of men’s rights groups downplay the amount and impact of domestic violence on women. By characterising violence as mutual or a two-way street, they trivialise the ongoing, severe and sometimes fatal nature of domestic violence. A compelling reminder of its devastating effects can be seen in the recent report of the Victorian Systemic Review of Family Violence Deaths (http://www.coronerscourt.vic.gov.au/resources/54bbc2f9-bb23-45c0-9672-16c6bd1a0e0f/vsrfvd+first+report+-+final+version.pdf).  It found that over half of all homicides in the state occurred within the context of family violence. Of intimate partner homicides, females accounted for more than three-quarters of the fatalities; in just under half of the cases where the deceased was male, a history of family violence was established which identified the deceased as the perpetrator of that violence.

Men’s rights groups are using domestic violence victims as pawns in a larger game that seems to be less about protecting males (and females) from abuse, and more about discrediting women and promoting other ideological ideas.

Crime statistics show that men are at most risk of serious injury and violence not from women, but at the hands of other men (http://www.xyonline.net/sites/default/files/Flood,%20Husband%20Battering_0.pdf). If men’s rights groups cared about male victims, they’d also be addressing male-male violence. If they cared about all men, they’d be advocating for the most marginalised in our society, including gay men, Indigenous men and refugees. And if they really cared about putting an end to domestic violence, they'd advocate for egalitarian relationships and examine concepts of manhood in which violence is seen as acceptable and seeking help is shameful.  

According to Blay, to truly address domestic violence it’s time for “the much bigger and more difficult conversation about what modern masculinity means. We need to look at how we socialise young men and look at how violence is not just sanctioned in our society, but is celebrated. It’s time to examine the narrative that says that being bloke means you can be violent.”

Wasting public money on educational hocus-pocus

This article first appeared in the Independent Australia journal (http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/life/education/wasting-public-money-on-the-steiner-system/) and was re-published in The Australian Atheist in March 2013.

Like thousands of parents across the country, we sent our firstborn off to prep this week. Nervous and excited, she is most looking forward to learning how to read. Lucky then that we haven’t sent her to one of the increasing number of public schools that offer dual streams: one of ‘conventional’ teaching and learning, and one based on the philosophies of early-twentieth century Austrian guru Rudolf Steiner. You see among other non-evidence based practices, the Steiner system specifies that children should not be taught to read until they have cut their first adult tooth. 

At first glance, the Steiner philosophy sounds attractive and innocuous enough. Play, art and creative activities designed to “nurture the senses” attempt to develop the hidden potential in a child. Anxious parents are told that in these “challenging times” of global warfare and violent crime, the mechanised mainstream education system lacks compassion and imagination, while the application of Steiner philosophies will create well-rounded, deep-thinking individuals. 

All well and good, you might say. Who doesn’t want their kids to “savour their childhood”? However, digging a little deeper into the Steiner system reveals a hodge-podge of new age and religious ideas masquerading as education – ideas that clearly do not belong within a secular public education system. 

There are currently six public schools in Victoria that offer a Steiner stream and no one will deny that many students who come out of the Steiner system are intelligent, decent people. Indeed, some of Steiner’s increased focus on movement, art and music may even be beneficial in a mainstream system. 

However, it should immediately ring alarm bells when the Association representing more than half of the Steiner schools in Australia describes its main aim as the advancement of “knowledge of the spiritual worlds underlying outer existence”. 

Among his many theories, Steiner’s educational philosophy is based on the idea that child development can be divided into three essential phases. Up until the age of seven, children are said to have an intuitive sense of goodness and reverence. Activities such as beeswax modelling, mending, sweeping and baking are said to harmonise with the child’s natural rhythms. According to the website steiner-australia.org, too early an intellectual awakening will weaken “the child’s vital forces, manifesting in frequent colds or other illnesses”. 

Instead, teaching about letters, numbers, reading and writing is held off until the child’s “inherited physical body” has been remoulded into a new, self-created body and the child has been “reborn”, a time symbolised by the emergence of adult teeth. 

From this time, children must write their own words and read their own writing before being allowed to work with printed literature. Never mind that evidence-based research shows that a rich literacy environment where children touch, hold and read from books are essential elements in developing literacy skills, a capacity for learning later in life and in shaping brain development. 

 It probably goes without saying that Steiner educators do not believe that children need to learn how to “push buttons on a computer” until the next stage of development (14 years+) because technology is believed to inhibit creative thinking. On the other hand, the study of the violin, viola or cello is compulsory from year 3. 

Steiner school days begin and end with a verse in which students may thank God for various things, including planting the strength of human kind in their soul. Supporters, however, claim that the unspecified God mentioned is non-denominational and Steiner education is free from indoctrination. 

According to Steiner’s writings, “The Steiner educator sees the child as consisting of body, soul and spirit”. Steiner believed that humans had three bodies: the physical, the astral and the etheric (a bit like an aura), which each develop at certain times in a child’s life. Even if you do not class these beliefs as religious, they certainly require a suspension of the rational. 

Aside from education, Steiner also had some interesting ideas on other topics. The self-proclaimed “occultist” was responsible for the development of the complementary medical movement, Anthroposophical Medicine, which fused modern medicine with homeopathy and spiritual awareness. Steiner spoke of having direct experiences of clairvoyance, and of being able to see into the souls of children and read the future. While not necessarily supporting our conventional version of astrology, he believed in a connection between stars and human beings, and in reincarnation. 

No one is arguing that parents shouldn’t have the right to educate their children within the philosophical framework of their choice. If some parents want their kids to learn that humans have existed on Earth since the creation of the planet (although not in a physical form) then that is their prerogative. There should be no place, however, for such poorly-researched, spiritually-based mumbo-jumbo within our secular public education system.

Native birds suffer in a macho, shoot-em-up fantasy

This article first appeared on the ABC's Drum website: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3912794.html

A large man and a big gun versus a small bird that stands less than 40cm high: if ever there was an uneven competition, then this is surely it.

Hunting lobbyists would have us believe that duck shooting is a noble pursuit, based on skill, cunning and the concept of a "fair chase". The vast majority of Victorians, however, might suggest that there is nothing fair or noble about using a shotgun to pepper a cloud of pellets towards the body of a defenceless native bird that, for the other nine months of the year, is protected by law.

It is the use of a shotgun that represents perhaps the cruellest aspect of duck shooting. Rather than allowing a clean kill with a single bullet, shotguns release a spray of up to 200 pellets that spread out the further they travel. This season, many hundreds of thousands of unfortunate ducks will cop a pellet or two in the wing or beak that maims rather than kills. Repeated studies have estimated that for every 10 ducks killed, at least six will be wounded and not retrieved, often suffering a long, lingering death.

Despite there being only 22,000 registered shooters in Victoria, the number of bird casualties each year is far from insignificant. During the 2011 season, according to the Victorian Government's own estimate, over 600,000 ducks were killed. This does not include those birds that were wounded and later died, nor any protected species that were illegally shot. If we are to assume that another wet year will yield a similar harvest, and factor in the above wounding rate, we can expect more than a million ducks to be killed or wounded in the upcoming months.

Another, perhaps lesser known, victim of the hunting season is quail. This year Victorian hunters will be allowed to shoot 20 native Stubble Quail per day, a limit that - again according to the State Government's estimate - last year accounted for a harvest of 680,000 birds. In the case of the tiny, unobtrusive and often difficult-to-identify Stubble Quail, it is again extremely likely that many other protected species will be illegally killed. The Little Button Quail, for example, has more or less the same habitat and behaviour and is similar in appearance to the Stubble Quail. Experienced bird-watchers often have trouble distinguishing between the two species, and we can only presume that quail hunters face the same difficulties.

While shooters deny rarely - if ever - getting it wrong, the issue of misidentification is incontrovertible. Rare and protected species are killed each season and last year the list of protected species found shot and abandoned included swans, grebes, coots, magpies, spoonbills, stilts, cormorants, parrots, owls, birds of prey, and the threatened Blue-billed Duck and Freckled Duck. There are only two plausible explanations to account for the killing of these non-game species: either hunters cannot be trusted to accurately tell the difference between a duck and the very distinctive (not to mention nocturnal) Barn Owl or they have deliberately shot non-target species in a fit of excitement and bloodlust.

The Indonesian abattoir scandal last year rightly pricked our collective conscience. Footage of animals being subjected to painful and prolonged deaths led to much discussion about the treatment of animals immediately prior to and during their slaughter. Now imagine our public game reserves as a kind of abattoir - one in which untrained workers, some as young as 12 years old, are allowed to dispatch of animals. Picture an abattoir where a large proportion of animals do not die instantly but are shot and suffer in terrible pain for some minutes before being retrieved by a dog and eventually - mercifully - having their necks wrung. Or one in which 50 per cent of animals escape wounded. Such a facility would be shut down instantly.

But despite the unquestionable cruelty of this sport, many shooters claim duck shooting is justified because it harks back to an "age-old" tradition. According to a report in last week's Sunday Age, the "boys and old men, fathers, sons and brothers" present at opening weekend were just "connecting with the environment". Could I suggest to these hunters that there are kinder and much more rewarding ways to get back to nature? How about observing the pink-eared duck's unique method of feeding in which two birds spin around a central point nose to tail in such way that small organisms are sucked up into a gyrating column? What about watching an adult chestnut teal noisily feign injury when a predator is nearby so that their young can swim off safely? There are more than 200 species of birds in Australia listed as vulnerable, threatened or endangered - why not work to try preserving our native birdlife rather than using it to play out some sort of macho, shoot-em-up fantasy?

Polls have consistently shown that Victorians overwhelmingly support the abolition of duck shooting - most can see that there is nothing noble or sporting about killing and maiming native animals. Year after year, however, the Government consults only with shooting organisations about the future of recreational hunting. Surely it is time that the public, and conservation and animal welfare groups were given a similar opportunity to voice their opposition to this cruel, anachronistic pursuit.

The ugly truth of spring racing

This article first appeared at: http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-ugly-truth-of-spring-racing/

Here we go again – time to dig out the fascinator, grab a six-pack of Bacardi Breezers and wobble off on impractically high heels to Melbourne’s Spring Racing Carnival.

At any other time of the year, the races are likely to be associated with dodgy bookies, the barbarism of jumps racing and problem gambling. Around this time, however, we start referring to it as the “sport of kings”, an elite, glamorous cultural event.

But how glamorous is it really when, for every one expensively-preened Fashions on the Field entrant, there are five young men wearing that consistently hilarious combination of tux and Aussie flag boxers? You can bet that while Lillian Frank or Peter Jago praise the young ladies present for returning to the modest and elegant trends of the 1920s, most people won’t go home without seeing at least a dozen women clutching a pair of vomit-speckled stilettos.

With all that sophistication on show, you could easily forget the “real” reason for the Spring Racing Carnival; that is, so that a bunch of people who don’t appear to care for racing at any other time of the year can barrack and bet as a large horse gets flogged by a small man. That isn’t sport - it’s the exploitation of animals to satisfy some primal idea of fun.

Putting aside other cruelties associated with the industry, such as the routine dog-fooding of those animals that are injured or just too slow, whipping a horse doubtlessly causes some distress and pain – if it didn’t, there wouldn’t be any point in the practice. Recently introduced (and fiercely contended) Australian Racing Board rules whereby a “padded whip” can only be used a limited number of times during a race surely acknowledge both the fact that whipping causes a degree of pain and that the public feels uneasy watching a horse being relentlessly beaten by its rider. Indeed, a recent study from the University of Sydney found that whipping race horses doesn’t increase their chance of winning.

But animal welfare is often the last thing on people’s minds as they take another dainty sip from their mini bottle of Moet through a straw and loudly urge on the favourite in the fifth, betting slip in hand.

Last year, in the Melbourne Cup alone – a race that lasts less than four minutes – Australians bet over $140 million. Across the day, more than $250 million in bets were placed and the betting industry proudly claimed that over eighty per cent of Australians had some kind of wager. To put this in perspective, Australia’s total funding in response to the East Africa Food Crisis, in which over 13 million people are at risk, currently sits at $128 million.

It seems odd that, at a time when we are publicly debating the relationship between problem gambling and depression, suicide, family breakdown and homelessness, we still set aside a public holiday to celebrate the fun and tradition of gambling. But of course, we don’t call it “gambling” in October and November – it’s more palatably referred to as “having a flutter”, an occasion when we can forget about collecting our 4c petrol vouchers for a short while and simply throw away $50 on a wildly unpredictable outcome.

And to what end all this cruelty and money wasted? Do punters get to share in the millions of dollars in prize money on offer? Do any of the profits go towards a worthy cause? No, it is all simply in order to generate income for already-wealthy horse trainers, owners and betting agencies.

While it might be nice to have a distraction at the end of the football season and few people would complain about getting a day off, let’s not forget that this unsophisticated, primitive form of entertainment comes at a cost, and that cost is borne by the animals involved, the problem gamblers and their families – not to mention those young “fillies” who wake up on the floor of a portaloo at Flemington on Wednesday morning. Surely the time has come for us to recognise that horse racing is neither a sport nor a cultural event. And while we’re at it, let’s throw out those dreadful fascinators once and for all.

Somalia's plight demands our attention

This article first appeared at: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/somalias-plight-demands-our-attention-20110829-1ji48.html

Australians demonstrated genuine concern and compassion following the Japanese tsunami earlier this year. Yet now, with East Africa facing one of the worst famines to hit the world in decades, it seems that the most we can muster is a kind of collective shrug of shoulders as we reach to change the channel.

Australia loves to think of itself as a generous nation – just look at how we responded to local disasters such as the Victorian bushfires and the Queensland floods – so why is it that we don't seem to care much about the situation in Somalia?

No one can forget the scenes of extreme poverty broadcast during the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s. Most can recall being transfixed by horrifying images of wide-eyed young children with visible ribs and bulging stomachs. Very few of us didn’t tune in to the Live Aid concert, believing that, as individuals and as a community, we could make a difference.

With the first formal declaration of famine since then, the UN has estimated that more than 12 million people in East Africa require humanitarian assistance.

A combination of drought, long-term malnutrition, political instability and ongoing conflict has resulted in more than half of the population of Somalia requiring urgent help, with about a quarter displaced by the food crisis.
Tens of thousands have already died and some agencies are predicting that the catastrophe will eclipse that of the Ethiopian famine.

You might think all this would cause some serious concern to Australians but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Sure it may be a crude indication of what interests us, but it is nonetheless disheartening to learn that Oxfam Australia has fewer than 11,000 followers on Twitter while Shane Warne has more than half a million.

Our top news stories in recent weeks haven’t been about the unfolding humanitarian crisis, they have been about the riots in Britain, in which five people died, and the sacking of Melbourne coach Dean Bailey.
Tragically for the Somali people, one of the reasons it seems that we have not engaged with this as an issue is because the famine doesn’t offer good television. Earthquakes, tsunamis and bushfires in First World countries where people have easy access to cameras and mobile phones make dramatic footage, but the news media cycle doesn’t cope very well with long-running issues that are low on sensational images.

Somalia is rarely covered in the daily papers or on the commercial network nightly news, presumably because someone thinks we are bored by pictures of overflowing refugee camps and crying African mothers, and would instead prefer to learn more about the controversial outcome of The Block.

Another difficult but inescapable possibility is that we just don’t care as acutely about people who are seen to live so far away and be so “unlike” us. The difference in our response to the Japanese tsunami and the East African crisis would indicate that we have more empathy for people and places that trigger a feeling of familiarity in us – never mind that Japan is a prosperous, First World nation with resources to help its own people, while Somalia is one of the poorest countries in the world, without a functional government and blighted by a 20-year civil war.

It should go without saying that the death of a child in Africa is no less tragic than the death of a child in Japan, or in Australia, and yet our emotional response is often vastly different.

So instead of  taking notice or putting our hands in our pockets, we invent excuses for our apathy. We tell ourselves that one person couldn’t possibly make a difference in a crisis that is so huge, yet we objectively know that even five or 10 dollars would provide life-saving food or medical assistance to someone in need.
In the past 18 months we have had the earthquake in Haiti, the floods in Pakistan, the floods in Australia, the Japanese tsunami and now the famine in Africa. Have we just had too much?

Some people may have concerns about whether every cent of aid money can be guaranteed to reach the most needy, but we should not let this justify inaction. Recently the UN’s World Food Programme reassured donors that the “vast majority” of aid relief was reaching those in need, and people who are concerned about how different charities spend donated money can make informed decisions with the use of information provided on websites such as GiveWell.

The reality in Somalia is that people are dying every day from malnutrition and hunger. Mothers are leaving their weak and dead children by the side of the road as they walk to emergency food centres. Plainly, this is an emergency situation that requires an extraordinary response and we have a moral duty not to turn away.

Birth is no less painful or messy just because you're in a five-star hospital

This article was first published on 13 April 2011 at: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/birth-is-no-less-painful-or-messy-even-in-a-fivestar-hospital-20110412-1dc5b.html?comments=13#comments

Since when did giving birth become less about the baby and more about the ''experience''? According to their website, Melbourne's new five-star maternity hospital is committed to helping mothers cherish every moment of said-experience – from the first kick through to labour and delivery – with the help of flat-screen TVs, internet access and food from award-winning restaurants. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but shouldn't an impressive wine list be the last thing on the minds of mothers who are most likely in the throes of initiating breast-feeding?

But aside from coaxing would-be parents in with all their luxury hotel spin, The Cradle Hospital has reignited the debate about public and private maternity hospitals, claiming to offer a better standard of care than other hospitals because they have ''rested'' staff in-house, not on-call specialists as is the arrangement in other private hospitals, or senior registrars as are sometimes used after-hours by some large public hospitals. The inference of such comments, of course, is that women should be concerned about the levels of safety provided in other hospitals. One could easily assume that public hospitals – at the far of the spectrum when compared with facilities such as The Cradle – are practically dangerous (not to mention aesthetically displeasing) places to push out a baby.

First of all, it needs to be pointed out that Australian women enjoy some of the best obstetric and neonatal care in the world and there has never been a safer time in history to have a baby. Yes, things do sometimes go wrong during birth, but ploys such as these unnecessarily play on that fear to convince women to cough up more than $6000 in out-of-pocket expenses. Impending birth is guilt-ridden and scary enough without making you feel that you are a bad parent if you don't spend absurd amounts of money on your child, even prenatally.

I went into the birth of our first daughter full of the typical mix of nerves and excitement. When I suffered a sudden and very large post-partum haemorrhage soon after she was born, I was overwhelmingly grateful to be in a large public hospital. I might not have had a city view or canapes from The Press Club in my hand, but I was fortunate enough to be in a place with nearby intensive care facilities and extremely competent experts on hand. And the bill for this extended stay with specialist care? Nothing. Not the $2000-plus out-of-pocket costs that most private patients pay, and certainly not $6000.

Expectant mothers today are bombarded with choices (pain relief, elective caesareans, music optional) while also being burdened with expectations (this is how you must eat, look and behave while pregnant). It is no wonder that many women find this a very confusing and stressful time. We have set them up to believe that, for a price, you can buy some version of a relaxed, enjoyable, painless, intervention-free experience that is also something of a spiritual epiphany. Many new mothers feel understandably upset when such expectations are not met. Perhaps we'd be better off accepting and educating women that birth is – by its nature – often painful, always messy and sometimes unpredictable.

No one is arguing that parents shouldn't have options as to where and how they give birth. But it is important that pregnant women are supported with real data about the relative risks of the different models of care available, not subjected to scare-mongering by those in a position to make money from them. Women don't need marble foyers and 24-hour room service – we need increased services in rural areas, more support in establishing breast-feeding and better outcomes for indigenous mothers and babies.

Most crucially, we need a properly funded public maternity system so that all mothers-to-be, regardless of their ability to pay for a so-called ''five-star'' service, are provided with the very best quality of care available. Whether or not they choose to use it, no pregnant woman should feel that her well-being or the safety of her baby is being placed at a disadvantage just because she can't afford private health cover.

For me, despite a far from perfect birth, I still look back on the arrival of our first-born as one of the best days of my life – thanks to the help of a team of caring, highly-skilled doctors and midwives. Admittedly the quality of the decor might have been a bit drab and the sandwiches a touch dry but in the end satisfaction with the ''experience'' was essentially irrelevant. All that mattered was that we had a healthy, happy new baby.


Sarah McKenzie is a freelance writer.

The politics of making babies

This article was first published at: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/the-politics-of-making-babies-20110328-1cctq.html

The media is awash with stories of so-called ‘‘fashion babies’’. Whether we’re talking about Elton and David’s son Zachary, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban’s ‘‘gestational carrier’’ or Brisbane couple Melissa Keevers and Rosemary Nolan’s new quintuplets, everyone is apparently entitled to moralise about babies born by artificial reproductive technology or what columnist Miranda Devine calls ‘‘the latest fashion accessory ... or political statement’’.

A great many of the seemingly endless opinion pieces and letters to the editor assert that children need two biological parents, not the knowledge that they came into being via masturbation into a Petri dish.
Couples who use surrogacy are coldly accused of commodifying babies and ‘‘renting wombs’’. Same-sex couples who rely on a donor are said to be ‘‘unlinking the child-parent biological bond’’.

Even the sperm donors are getting bad press. Take, for example, the Oscar-nominated film The Kids Are All Right. While great, in that it normalises same-sex parents, the film portrays sperm donor Paul as somewhat manipulative, taking advantage of his genetic relationship to infiltrate and destroy a previously happy family. 

When single women, lesbian and gay couples, or others with fertility issues, decide to try for a baby, the decision isn’t usually one that is made blithely. Similarly, the decision to donate sperm isn’t usually made on a whim.

When we were asked to donate to close friends, my partner and I didn’t just casually knock back a couple of glasses of wine and reach for the specimen jar. We considered our position  carefully and consulted a range of resources and services. Some people, it seemed, felt concerned that we were inviting trouble on ourselves — that I and my children would feel betrayed or jealous that my partner had ‘‘given’’ a baby to someone else, or that the resulting child would one day make a claim on our family estate.

In the end, though, it was easy. Our friends were in a loving, stable relationship and we felt sure that they would make wonderful parents. With two children of our own, we could think of nothing better than seeing our friends experience the unparalleled joy of having a baby.

Fortunately, we already had a working model in the family of how a lesbian parents-donor relationship could work to provide children with a caring, stable home surrounded by an immediate and extended family who love them and have their best interests at heart.

Late last year a healthy baby boy was born. There was no jealousy and no regrets — just the great pleasure of seeing two people we care about, dazed and happy in new-baby-world.

Although our own children are too young to get some of the technicalities of their now-extended family, we make a point of talking to them about how we all played a part in creating a new life and a new family for our friends. We use the language of ‘‘half-brother’’ and ‘‘donor’’, even though they don’t yet understand what these relationships necessarily entail. Most of all, we are conscious of making sure that our donation is out in the open and doesn’t start to feel like some dark family secret.

Unfortunately, talking about sperm donation with others remains something of a taboo. Often, just by its nature, there is a degree of embarrassment and ‘‘ickiness’’. However, by not talking about the issue freely, we run the risk of marginalising children who were conceived by donor sperm and of discouraging men from considering donation.

According to Melbourne IVF, the number of men donating sperm in Victoria has been steadily decreasing since 2005 — currently there are just 184 registered donors in the state. Simultaneously, demand has increased since single women and women in same-sex relationships were granted access to IVF. Even of those men who do donate, only a percentage is willing to donate to single or lesbian parents.
If we were asked by our friends to donate again  to try for a sibling, we would do so without a moment’s hesitation. Sensationalist headlines aside, and at the risk of sounding sappy, there is truly no other gift as rewarding as that of helping others create a much-wanted baby.

In addition to the great joy we have felt watching a new little person come into the world, it has also given us the opportunity to reflect on how we bring up our own children, and to consider how the next generation will come to view family life differently.

Through our situation, I hope that we can teach our daughters that families come in all different shapes and sizes. It doesn’t matter whether they have one parent or more, the gender of the parents, whether their parents are married, or whether they were conceived in a Petri dish. Surely, all that matters is that children are brought up surrounded by people who want them and who love them.

Why the new 'porn norm' is hurting women

This article was first published on http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/why-the-new-porn-norm-is-hurting-women-20110302-1be54.html#comments 3 March 2011

Porn is well and truly part of mainstream culture — no longer hidden behind neon-lit shop fronts and brown paper bags. With the advent of new technologies, accessing pornography is cheap, quick, easy and anonymous; in fact, it is estimated that one-third of Australian adults are consumers of porn.

It is tempting to think that the majority of this material is of the lame-storyline, large-moustache, Vaseline-lens variety. However, porn that would have been labelled hard core back in the ’70s is now more likely to be considered the norm. Recent research shows that acts of aggression against women are a commonplace – indeed expected – part of the porn narrative.

In defending their industry, many accuse the ‘‘anti-porn brigade’’ of focusing only on particularly violent examples of pornography. A recent study published in the journal Violence Against Women, however, has analysed the best-selling porn videos to see just how widespread and routine the degradation of women in pornography has become.

 

The research found that physical aggression was present in 88 per cent of scenes. Of these, there was an average of 12 aggressive acts per scene. In addition, name-calling occurred in about half of all scenes.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the perpetrators of violent acts were most commonly men, while the targets of their violence were nearly always women. In almost every case, women were shown reacting to aggressive acts with pleasure or neutrality, enforcing the idea that women enjoy being dominated or degraded during sex.

Sexual acts that women would typically find painful or degrading were common in the videos analysed, such as women being forced to perform oral sex immediately after anal penetraton. Boston sociology professor Gail Dines has previously reflected on this particular sequence and noted that it often comes with a ‘‘joke’’ about the woman being made to ‘‘eat shit’’. Professor Dines further points out that the brutality of the industry has become such that most porn actresses have a ‘‘shelf life’’ of three months because their bodies are so physically damaged by the job.

Even defenders of the industry would have a hard time arguing against the unequivocal finding in this research that there has been a sharp increase in the levels of aggression shown in films over the past two decades. They commonly contest, however, that the degree and frequency of violence towards women doesn’t matter because porn is ‘‘just fantasy’’.

It has to be pointed out that no one is suggesting that men who sit down to watch porn go out afterwards to assault or rape women. However, the trend towards the increased degradation of women in porn means we run the risk of becoming desensitised to depictions of sexual violence. We also raise the very real possibility that a generation of young men and women will come to view the humiliation of women as a normal part of sex (to say nothing of a distinct lack of female pleasure).

It would be simply naive to claim that porn has no effect on our society. Porn and culture interact, simultaneously reflecting and shaping each other. The increasing expectation of young women (and to a lesser extent, men) to look and act in a way that reflects the so-called ‘‘porn aesthetic’’, the popularity of ‘‘sexting’’ and the increasing uptake of practises such as labioplasty are just a few examples of porn concepts that have made the leap into mainstream culture.

It stands to reason, then, that when we fantasise about hurting women, our real relationships suffer.  When we gain sexual arousal from the (even fictional) debasement of women, it changes the way we view men, women and sex, on an individual and a societal level.

But for all the disturbing findings in the recent research, perhaps the most depressing statistic was that kissing, hugging or laughing was depicted in only 10 per cent of sex scenes. This statistic alone should be enough to make us want to challenge and change the ‘‘porn norm’’ so that it includes positive representations of women, and space for intimacy, trust and respect.

Dark future for wrong psychics

This article first appeared in the Herald Sun on 31 December 2010.

There are many things to dislike about end-of-year celebrations – the pressure to make New Year’s Eve memorable, the shameful amounts of money wasted on fireworks, drunken renditions of Auld Lang Syne.  But perhaps the most annoying tradition is the reporting of ‘psychic predictions’ in various mainstream media.

According to a 2009 Neilsen poll, 49 per cent of Australians believe in psychic powers despite – it must be pointed out – a distinct lack of supporting evidence. However, as 2010 draws to a close, we have a unique chance to put some of these beliefs to the test by reflecting on the accuracy of psychic predictions made at the start of the year. After all, the rest of us face performance reviews at this time of the year, so why not critically appraise clairvoyants as well?

Surprisingly, some prophecies made for 2010 were frighteningly correct – more erratic weather, petrol price and interest rate rises. Never mind that these were already well-established trends prior to the beginning of the year.

On the other hand, most specific predictions were categorically wrong. According to a report on A Current Affair, this year was also meant to see: Tony Abbott deposed as Liberal party leader; an assassination attempt on Barack Obama (specifically, a flesh wound to the upper arm); health problems for Queen Elizabeth that would require her to step down; singer Jessica Mauboy embroiled in sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll; and a “huge” health shock for Elton John.

A psychic in The Cairns Post also predicted that we would witness an attempt on Barack Obama’s life in 2010, as well as experiencing a bigger financial crisis than ever before and the somewhat bold assertion that increased recording and reporting of UFO sightings would cause world governments to finally admit “the truth” about extra-terrestrial life.  

According to the Courier-Mail’s crystal ball gazing, Tiger Woods’ marriage would be salvaged, Miranda Kerr and Orlando Bloom would definitely not marry, and Peter Costello would be prime minister come the end of the year. You can only feel sorry for Julianna Suranyi who, at least up until now, says her predictions “never” let her down.

Inexplicably though, psychics somehow managed to miss the result of the federal election, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Haitian earthquake, the Chilean mine explosion, the recent Christmas Island refugee disaster, and just about every other important news story of the year. Perhaps the cosmic energy just didn’t align in the way it was supposed to this year.

But does it matter if the psychics get it wrong? Surely it’s all just a bit of festive season frivolity, something to fill the summer editions of magazines and the off-ratings period on TV?

I’d argue that the end-of-year palaver where psychics claim their special spot at the window into the future is, in fact, dangerous. While the predictions rarely contain anything more than an educated guess into the personal lives of celebrities, and a few vague and ubiquitous generalisations about natural disasters, we have to remember that such fortune-telling is, at best, deluded, if not downright deceitful. In even entertaining such bunkum, we promote uncritical thinking and allow irrational ideas to sit alongside real news and commentary.

Of course the real harm comes when psychics intrude on the suffering of vulnerable people, such as during the year when high-profile Sydney psychic Debbie Malone had a vision regarding the location of missing Sydney girl Kiesha Abrahams. When a dam was drained at the insistence of the clairvoyant (together with any remaining hope of Kiesha’s family and friends) it wasn’t the first time that a psychic has attempted to interfere with police investigations, cruelly raising the hopes of a distraught family in the process. After Don Spiers’ daughter, Sarah, disappeared in Perth in 1996, the grieving family was contacted by over 400 psychics – something that Don later said contributed to his decline into chronic depression.

Once again then, the year doesn’t seem to have been a very successful one for the psychics – with an astoundingly poor strike-rate in relation to so-called predictions, and the continued abuse of vulnerable and desperate people.

So this new year, when the media once again fills with inane insights into the forthcoming year, can I add my own to the mix? I predict that in 2011 those with supposed supernatural powers will yet again fail to provide any accurate or helpful information about the future. And that, perhaps, is what will make the new year so exciting.

To access the original version of this article, see: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/dark-future-for-wrong-psychics/story-e6frfhqf-1225979109994