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Not all feminists are equal

I-am-a-feminist

The following thoughts came to me after a recent Melbourne Free University lecture on the Future of Feminism. The insightful presentation given by Melbourne Feminist Collective’s Neda Monshat and Alexia Staker led to a fascinating discussion in the second part of the event. Two points in particular finally convinced me to write about feminism and its future, if it is to have one. ... read more

Written by Aurelien Mondon on 30-11-2011, 1 user comment

My Limmud Oz speech

I’d like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and pay my respects to their elders past and present.

When explaining why BDS advocates were banned from presenting at Limmud Oz, the Executive explained that ‘the BDS campaign is an attack on Israel’s basic legitimacy and harms the Jewish people as a whole’.

I am nothing if not reasonable, so I wanted to report other treacherous, self-hating Jews who would not be welcome here either. Socialists are notoriously unreliable, and here’s what one living in Palestine in 1931 said:

We declare before world opinion, before the workers' movement, and before the Arab world, that we shall not agree, either now or in the future, to the rule of one national group over the other. Nor do we accept the idea of a Jewish state, which would eventually mean Jewish domination of Arabs in Palestine. ... read more

Written by Michael Brull on 23-06-2011, 2 user comments

LOL Bolt and free speech

‘The Holocaust started with words.’

Perhaps Ron Merkel, lead counsel for the nine Aborigines suing Andrew Bolt under the Racial Discrimination Act, would have been better to use a more local example. The policy that allowed the government to ‘assume full control and custody of the child of any aborigine’ (the Aborigines Protection Amending Act 1915), for example, or the Northern Territory Emergency Response Bill 2007, which aimed ‘to improve the well-being of certain communities in the Northern Territory’, but which its architect, Mal Brough, recently described as ‘yet another failed approach’. Or even the findings in the deaths-in-custody cases like that of Cameron Doomadgee – where, once again, no disciplinary charges were laid. ... read more

Written by Jacinda Woodhead on 31-03-2011, 12 user comments

Non-fiction review: From Moree to Mabo: The Mary Gaudron Story

1194_mary_gaudronFrom Moree to Mabo: The Mary Gaudron Story
Pamela Burton
UWAP

From Moree to Mabo is the compelling and readable biography of a remarkable lawyer. Although some of the detailed analysis of the key cases and political turmoils of Mary Gaudron’s time as Solicitor General of NSW can be overwhelming, it is hard to put this book down. If you don’t know who Mary Gaudron is or if you cannot explain what is meant by equal opportunity or if you have never heard of section 75(v) of the Australian Constitution, then this is a good book for you. ... read more

Written by Rhona Hammond on 29-03-2011, 4 user comments

Islamophobia revives anti-Semitism

Progressive Jewish Australians, such as academic Ned Curthoys and journalist Antony Loewenstein, both published in Overland, along with Michael Brull, one of Overland’s regular bloggers, have written a statement appealing to Australia’s major political parties to publicly and unequivocally denounce Islamophobia:

As progressive Jewish Australians we are deeply disturbed by the recent outbreak of politically motivated attacks on asylum seeks and Muslims. As Jews we know that most of the criticisms being directed at Islam, that it is a ‘totalitarian’ religion incompatible with Australian civic norms, that its practitioners are obdurate and backward, and that the religion itself is too atavistic to be incorporated within the modern West, are simply anti-Semitic stereotypes now applied to a softer target. For example the argument that Jews are incapable of being truly loyal to the modern state was a perennial argument against full Jewish emancipation in Europe. We call on all major parties to unequivocally denounce Islamophobia and to recognize that rhetorically disenfranchising and othering any section of the Australian community will have appalling long term consequences for Australian democracy.

Signed:
Ned Curthoys
John Docker
Michael Brull
Eva Cox AO
Sara Dowse
Antony Loewenstein
Peter Slezak
Susan Varga

... read more

Written by Jacinda Woodhead on 4-03-2011, 9 user comments

Speaking of ‘them’…

As 2010 was wrapping itself up in Christmas paper and curled ribbon, my sister-girls Cadie and Kimberlee came to stay with me for a few days. They live in Queensland and it had been months since I’d seen them, so we decided to go out for a couple of drinks. The cute little bar down the road was closed but the local pubs were making the most of seasonal alcoholism, so we walked a couple of extra blocks to the hotel by the railway station.

I knew this particular establishment it for its trashy music and not-so-subtle clientele, and I warned the girls before we went that it wasn’t the classiest of places. Sure enough, we hadn’t even been there for ten minutes before some blokes sauntered up and asked if they could sit with us.

Too polite (or perhaps not drunk enough) to tell them to get lost, we assented. The conversation that followed was that kind of awkward, reluctant exchange that is always made more ridiculous by the fact that you have to speak louder than usual to be heard over Rihanna and Eminem - and to compensate for the fact that the people you’re talking to are actually quite drunk. There were three of them and they were in their late twenties. It was their office Christmas party and they were at the pub with a larger group of people, most of whom were milling around some tables about 10ft away, heads together, throwing us occasional glances. It wasn’t long before a couple more blokes wandered over, one of them receiving more of a welcome than the other as the guy directly across from me threw his arm around his friend and slapped him on the chest. ... read more

Written by Stephanie Convery on 25-02-2011, 9 user comments

A cure for stuttering

film3It’s true I think, as Adam Phillips remarked in one of his later essays, that we continually speak each other’s unspoken thoughts. We are not as discrete as we appear to be. There are many things in our lives that get spoken over and over, that we can’t stop speaking of, that are, in a sense, barely intelligible markers of things we don’t really know we are turning into utterance. It’s as if there is always something unspeakable inside us.

We all have pockets of unintegrated stuff hidden away within; autistic bits, psychotic bits, dissociated bits, and so on. They try and make themselves known again and again, in all sorts of weird ways. It’s as if we keep stuttering over and over, even stuttering about our stuttering. Those of us who are readers and writers may well be the worst stutterers of all. Writers speak in books, over and over. It’s as if the highly literate are people who just can’t shut up. ... read more

Written by Stephen Wright on 25-02-2011, 3 user comments

On the sacking of Jason Dowling

Jason Dowling has been sacked. Not for behaving badly at work, but for behaving badly in his own spare time. Jason posted some offensive comments on Facebook, was dobbed in to his boss by a stranger who happened to stumble upon his page and then given his marching orders. What’s the world coming to?

It’s not the first time bad behaviour outside of work hours has resulted in dismissal. As early as the late nineties, a Telstra employee was sacked for getting into a fight while at after-work drinks. The Commission member found that ‘employers do not have an unfettered right to sit in judgement on the out of work behaviour of their employees’. Vice-President Ross went on to say that ‘an employee’s behaviour outside of working hours will only have an impact on their employment to the extent that it can be said to breach an express or implied term of his or her contract of employment’. The VP must have thought that getting into a fight outside of hours wasn’t mentioned as a no-no in the employment contract. ... read more

Written by Isy Burns on 23-02-2011, 4 user comments

Some dreadful Australian commentary on Egypt

egypt_protest_First, take David Burchell:

There have been only two popular ideologies of consequence in the Middle East since colonialism’s squalid death in the 1950s: Soviet-style authoritarianism, with its specious liturgy of anti-colonialism, and the grand, exultant nihilism of the Muslim Brotherhood and its fellow extremists.

Now let’s think about a few popular ideologies since the 1950s. First would be the two most popular leaders from the 50s: Mossadeq in Iran, and Nasser in Egypt. Mossadeq was a secular nationalist, and so was Nasser (Nasser was a dictator, unlike Mossadeq). Nasser was wildly popular throughout the Middle East, and harshly repressed communists and the Muslim Brotherhood. ... read more

Written by Michael Brull on 1-02-2011, 2 user comments

Secularism and sensibility

Graeme Blundell, in his assessment of the public broadcasting station SBS, blithely observed that ‘turning thirty is difficult’. A couple of weeks ago Insight on SBS demonstrated just that. The program exhibited the fraught politics and murky ideological realities present when it comes to issues of religion and its place within Australia’s multicultural landscape, but also in the geopolitically unstable landscape of the Middle East. But this is not a new issue; it is just that we are seeing its manifestations in a post September 11 world with a voracious news media cycle.

In a provocatively named ‘Fear of Islam’, the same debate-show formula was on display. The former Muslim apostate, now an evangelical Christian apologist, castigating their former religion for the ills of the world; the eloquent professor using postmodernist terminology to elucidate the differences between radical and moderate Islam; the religious leaders with their authentically heavy accents representing their various amalgamated organisations; and a panoply of audience members with their agitating viewpoints all clamouring to be heard. Of course, there were cogent and sensible observations made, by Randa Abdel Fattah for example, but what was interesting to note was how the separation of church and state – trumpeted as a hallmark of western civilisation – is far from clear because the issue of where religion fits in the public sphere is still being debated. ... read more

Written by Farid Farid on 30-11-2010, 1 user comment

In praise of angry feminists

One of my most cherished friends is an angry feminist. Of all the people I know personally, she has probably had more influence on the way I understand the world, and particularly issues relating to gender, than anyone else. She could well be surprised to learn of this. We’ve argued about these issues many, many times. Possibly more than I’ve argued with anyone else – and I argue with people a lot. Not only this – she has yelled at me many, many times for my views on issues relating to gender. Not necessarily because she thinks my views in particular are awful. Because she thinks the issues are of such importance, and because she is so passionate about them.

I have tried to listen carefully to what she has had to say, and consider it honestly. Sometimes I have maintained my disagreements with her. Other times, I have been persuaded. I have tried to educate myself further at times, and have read an assortment of feminist writings (Greer, de Beauvoir, Ehrenreich, etc). ... read more

Written by Michael Brull on 22-10-2010, 38 user comments

Off to the Athenaeum

It was a shocking night for venturing out on Friday – rain, wind, dark (you get that at night), cold, a storm on the way. Bravely, I drove into town. After my last foray to the comedy theatre, I thought better of using public transport.

Meeting dear, generous friends in the foyer of the Athenaeum, I was excited. I’d watched some youtubes of Fear of a Brown Planet and liked them very much. I knew nothing about Allah Made Me Funny, but the title appealed.

... read more

Written by Clare Strahan on 18-10-2010, 14 user comments

Andrew Bolt is not happy

Andrew Bolt is not happy with what I wrote in response to the suicide of Josefa Rauluni. He says I’m either a ‘liar’ or ‘simply ignorant’.

I wrote that our politicians and corporate media peddled hatred and fear against asylum seekers, which created the conditions that caused Rauluni’s death. I made up a megaphone speech, which was plainly not literal, but could be considered implicit in what at least some of these people say and write. For example, if Tony Abbott promises to stop the boats, what does that say to people who arrived here by boat? It seems, to me, the obvious corollary is that they are not welcome, and Abbott would prefer they hadn’t come here in the first place. ... read more

Written by Michael Brull on 1-10-2010, 3 user comments

Garma

The first thing that sticks out about Garma are the tents. Rows and rows of them set up in designated areas: artists, volunteers, cultural tourists, paying attendees, academics, forum participants – all the way across the other side of the bungal ground to the Yolgnu camp. It’s a mini-city that exists for five days all set in the middle of a stringybark forest, which as you could guess makes for an interesting festival.

The theme of this years festival, the twelfth, was Indigenous Education and Training. The festival began with an open day for Yirrkala community, which included a visit to the school and art centre. Owing to transport problems I missed the school visit but did get to attend the art centre – an amazing building complete with perhaps the most comprehensive multimedia facility I have seen in a community. We’re talking 9 or 10 Macs complete with editing facilities. The centre also has its own cinema where films of past Garmas, ceremonies, footy matches, bark painting and pandanus weaving can be viewed. ... read more

Written by Scott Foyster on 30-09-2010, 3 user comments

A post from Tanzania: Preaching to pictures

On the ferry between Pemba Island and mainland Tanzania there was a video playing in the lounge area. It was, as a man I met on the trip described, ‘preaching to pictures’.

I met Abdul in a cheap guesthouse the night before the weekly ferry was due to leave for mainland. He is one of those guys who is infinitely interesting: born in Somalia, he left three months before civil war broke out and spent three years in a camp in Pakistan. At twenty, he arrived in Canada. He got himself to university, worked for the Canadian government, took a series of contracts in Liberia, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Kenya and Afghanistan, and is now working for the World Bank in Dar es Salaam. We were napping between conversations when he sat up and pointed at the television.

‘I speak a little Arabic. And this,’ he said, ‘is not the kind of thing they should be feeding the Tanzanian people.’ It was a half hour program espousing the almighty power of Allah, set to a series of images. It was a combination of sermon and passages from the Koran. For thirty minutes we watched news footage of natural disasters interspersed with clips from Hollywood disaster movies, shots of Westerners drinking and smoking followed by shots of Westerners being swept away by the Boxing Day tsunami – buildings flooding, bridges collapsing, cars up trees, James Cameron’s Titanic crashing into an iceberg. ... read more

Written by Louise Pine on 23-09-2010, 3 user comments