How YOU Doin'?

Brace yourselves: I want to talk about women.

Now, I love women. My wife is a woman. My mother is a woman. I have three sisters. I have two daughters. Some of my best friends -

Oh, sorry, I was accidentally reading from Being A Patronising Knobend For Dummies. I'll start again.

I want to talk about women. But maybe even more I want to talk about men. The reason is the discussion that I've seen swirling about due to this video:




Now I've seen a bit of debate about the value of the video itself, issues around the making of it and the purpose of it - I'm not going into that right here, right now. I mainly just want to talk about the subject that it raises, which is not a new subject or unique to the video.

I've written about the subject before, but it remains as relevant a subject as ever, and it remains as baffling to me as ever.

What I want to talk about is these dudes harassing women on the street. And by that I mean overt, aggressive harassment, catcalling, whistling, yelling of "compliments", insistently demanding attention from women who are just trying to go about their business...basically I'm talking about men who won't leave women the hell alone.

Now, my experience of this phenomenon is limited to things like that video, and stories told to me by lady friends. Because I don't see it happen. It certainly doesn't happen to me when I'm walking on the street - occasionally someone asks me for directions, and once an old man sat next to me at a bus stop and told me a story about the day he found his mother's corpse - but because I am a dude, and in particular I'm a real big scary-looking dude, I'm lucky enough that I just don't get exposed to it.

So I hear about it secondhand, and I find it unbelievable.

I don't mean that literally - of course it's believable. Just about every woman I know has direct experience of it - it happens a lot. But it's unbelievable because this behaviour is so absurd you'd really like to believe grown adult human beings would not have it in their repertoire.

I'm not saying it's the worst thing a man can do: obviously there are atrocities men are capable of far beyond what you see in the video above. But there aren't many actions a man can take that are more inexplicable than catcalling and street harassment. And if it's not the biggest issue facing us in the world today, it surely should be one of the easiest to fix.

So what I want to do is reach out to the men who do this and say: Why?

Why on earth would you do this? What the hell are you getting out of it? What does it profit you? Wherein lieth the enjoyment of this bizarre practice?

Imagine a drop-down menu of options. In each situation we encounter in life, we see such a menu, from which we may select what we want to do. When we're driving and we see a red light, our options are "Stop" and "Run the red". When we wake up in the morning, we a menu containing such items as "Get up and go to work", "Go back to sleep", "Call in sick and go play laser tag".

We'll get just such a menu when we see a woman on the street. But I am not asking here, "Why would a man choose 'Yell at her' or 'Tell her to smile' from the menu?"

I am asking, "How can these things even appear on the menu at all?"

How does it happen that acting this way is even an option for a man? Perhaps it is my crippling shyness and hatred of human interaction in general talking, but catcalling at a woman is as like to appear on my drop-down menu as "ram-raid the pet shop" is when I see a red light.

So how does it occur? How does a man reach a stage in life where harassing total strangers is one of the actions he's taken under consideration? I often see woman on the street. Often they are women who I find quite attractive. Quietly appreciating their aesthetic qualities is always an option. Attempting to inform them of my appreciation, demanding they engage me in conversation, or passing judgment on their facial expressions never is. Never has been. I would be mortified to even think of doing any of these.

So am I the weirdo, or are they?

A lot of men will say they're just giving women compliments, just saying hi, just trying to be friendly. Furthermore, they will say, it's no big deal anyway, is it? It's harmless. And if women don't like it, they can tell the men involved to faff off.

OK, cool. Indeed it is likely that in most cases these men are not violent psychopaths. It is likely that in most cases there will be no harm done. And if a woman does feel moved to tell a man to faff off, I'll be the first to applaud that lady's actions.

But when a total stranger is accosting you in the street, how the hell are you to know what their intentions are? How are you to know what their reasons for "just saying hi" or telling you you're beautiful are?

Say you're at a party. You walk up to a woman by the punch bowl and strike up a conversation. Unlikely to cause too much consternation. Because it's a party, Striking up conversations is what people do at parties.

It's not what people do on the street. A person trying to strike up a conversation with you while you're just walking along minding your own business is, and I can't stress this enough, WEIRD. There's no context here to make this approach understandable. There's no party, no workplace, no speed-dating night. When a stranger comes up to you on the street and demands your attention, no matter how "friendly" they seem, the question that must come to mind is why are they doing this? And having to ask that question is likely to creep you out. And when you're creeped out you are more likely to want to double your speed and get to safety than you are to want to make small talk with the oddball.

And that's not even getting into the question of the times when it's pure, blatant, unashamed aggression from the man. Which it clearly often is. What I'm saying is, a man interrupting the day of a woman he has never met for no apparent reason is liable to look pretty aggressive no matter what he thinks he's saying.

So why would you do it? Are you just plumb out of ideas about how to meet women? Has your eHarmony membership lapsed? Do you have the world's lowest threshold for entertainment? Did your mum tell you as a child that you were so special that every woman in the world owed you a chat? Do you have an oddly situation-specific strain of Tourette's Syndrome?

Please note what I am asking. I am asking WHY? This is important, because a lot of men are defending this behaviour by saying it doesn't hurt anybody, and so on and so forth. No big deal, no harm done, no need to smear decent men by suggesting nefarious motives behind it, etc etc.

But let's say that's all true: it still doesn't explain why you'd do it. I can see no rational explanation for calling out to strangers in public at all, be it compliments, obscene suggestions, or weather reports. I simply do not know why anyone would want to.

But my confusion grows exponentially when you take into account the fact that women all over the place have clearly stated they don't like it. Women subjected to it react in a way clearly indicative of the fact they don't like it. Whether it is causing serious harm, whether every woman thinks the same way, it's inarguable that many, many women are made at the very least uncomfortable by men doing this.

When you add this to the fact that there is no rational reason for doing it, it surely adds up to behaviour that is perverse to the point of derangement.

So I just ask men, what are you getting out of it? Please tell me. I need to know, what's the pay-off here? Because right now, it seems as if you are bothering people, interfering with their lives, annoying, harassing and intimidating them, in defiance of the obvious fact that they want you not to, for no reason at all. Right now it seems as if there is no pay-off at all, beyond the opportunity to upset a fellow human being.

And if that's the case...

I can only assume that you are doing it because you don't consider these people fellow human beings.

I can only assume that the urge to harass women on the street - an urge which strangely deserts you when it's a man you see walking by - is the same urge that causes people to tease animals.

I can only assume the pleasure you're deriving from your catcalls and your "hey beautiful" and your "give us a smile love" is the vicious pleasure of laughing at the discomfort of a lesser life-form.

I can only assume that you've divided the world into "people" and "women", and one of those groups is here to share the world with and one of those groups is here for your amusement.

In the end, I can only assume that you need to grow the fuck up.

Just a Disease

Hey, did you know depression is just a disease? Why don't we treat it like any other disease? Wouldn't that be great? Then we could really help folks could we not?

Except it's not. You know it's not. No matter how many times you claim depression is a disease like any other, and no matter how many times you link to really super articles about how depression is a disease like any other, and no matter how many times you applaud righteously for anyone who says depression is a disease like any other, you don't believe it.

I know. I don't believe it either. We know depression isn't just another disease, you and I: that's why we will never ever treat it like one.

Flu is a disease. We treat it like one. And I never met anyone, no matter how loudly they protested their caring credentials, who treated depression like flu. Because depression is nothing like flu.

You can't come down with the flu because one of your friends ditched you. You can't have a flu relapse because of a Facebook post mentioning that ex-friend. You don't suddenly develop flu symptoms due to something you read in the paper or saw on TV. You don't go through every day fearing that the next thing anyone says to you will bring your flu back with a vengeance.

Nobody ever tells you that you're brave for telling everyone you've got the flu, and then tells you to stop whining every time you sneeze. Nobody swears they understand what it's like having the flu before washing their hands of you once you get it.

When you've got the flu, you can call work and say you're sick. And when you show symptoms of the flu when you're at work, your workmates will show sympathy for your illness. Nobody makes complaints to the boss about your flu. Nobody says you're scary because you've got the flu. Nobody disciplines you for having the flu at work.

Nobody calls the police on you because you have the flu. Nobody has the law come into your house, threaten you with pepper spray, slap cuffs on you and throw you in the back of a van because it's easier to do that than try to talk to you about your flu.

When the flu kills you, nobody says you were a coward for letting it.

Depression isn't just another disease. You know it's not. I know it's not. If it were, we'd act like it. We don't because we know the truth.

And I don't want it to be just another disease. The whole fiction of "just another disease" is presented in a cloak of compassion and strips off to reveal the dismissal beneath. As long as you pretend it's just another disease, you will check that I've taken my meds, pat me on the head and be on your way.

As long as it's just another disease, it can't be anyone's fault that I'm depressed. The strangling mood that is sucking me below the earth can't be sheeted home to anyone, as long it's just another disease. As long it's purely a medical phenomenon that can be blamed on nothing more than chemical fortune, you're not responsible for my depression. The fact I'm depressed will have nothing to do with the people who've hurt me, the cruelty of those I trusted, the contempt of the human race or the foulness of the world around me. Nobody is to blame, because it's simply a disease.

More than anything, I won't be to blame as long as it's a disease and nothing else. The fact I'm mentally useless three days out of every five can't possibly be down to any failures of my own. My conviction of my own worthlessness can't be connected to any reality, my self-loathing can't be down to any genuine loathsomeness. It just can't be, because everyone knows it's just a disease.

No I do not want this. I do not want this myth, asserted by all and believed by none, to stand in the way of any slivers of self-awareness that manage to penetrate my shell. I will not accept a promise that my depression is no fault of mine, from strangers and casual acquaintances. If my depression is fooling me about my own self-worth, so be it: it's no less than what everyone who hears about it does.

If those who assure me it's just a disease behaved to match their words, maybe I'd take their assurances more seriously. But they do not. And neither do I. And I don't think we ever will.

This is not because "we don't talk about depression enough". We talk about it too goddamn much. This post itself is just another little puddle of self-pitying vomit to join the ocean of regurgitation washing over us every day of people wearing their depression proudly on their sleeve, begging us to talk more, to understand more, to congratulate us all more on our illness. If there were any chance of public discussion assisting us all to treat it as just another disease, that would've happened long ago.

It hasn't and it won't, because we don't believe it. We'll claim it as a disease as long as it's convenient, and as soon as depression becomes awkward, it becomes a personality flaw, an insanity streak, self-indulgence, or the darkest of all, "mental illness".

Mental illness is not really illness, it's something we pity people for until they do something under its influence that upsets us, and then it becomes "no excuse". If we treated depression like any other medical problem, a person who acts irrationally when in its grip would be condemned no more than a man with a broken leg is condemned for his failure to walk; but that would never do. As long as the illness is mental, we are responsible for resisting it through sheer willpower - we are to use the very minds that the disease is in the process of ripping to pieces to overcome the process itself.

Still, afterwards we'll nobly assert that it's "just another disease", and we will go home happy with ourselves because we understand.

And every day a thousand voices will proclaim that understanding, and every day a thousand chins will nod wisely, and a thousand clever folk will find themselves satisfied in every way by the compassion they've shown.

And every day, ever so quietly, another few sorry souls will stumble and fall and cease to exist and all who knew them will take solace simultaneously from the fact that it's just a disease and there was nothing anyone can do, and that it was really all their own fault for failing to take responsibility. And not one of those poor souls will cause a pause in the thousand voices' clamour, or a halt to the thousand sage chins.

And we will all fight furiously against admitting to ourselves and each other that this thing devouring minds in our midst is not a disease like any other, that it's too strange and elusive and horrible to ever be.

Depression is the best disease in the world to have, because it's so easy to hide you can go about your day and never have anyone know the pain you're in. It's the worst disease in the world to have, because when you hide it, you make it worse, and when finally you break down and stop hiding, you think that'll make it better, and it doesn't.

I've never had any disease like that. I'm not going to pretend I have, or pretend that by pretending I can help myself.

You will tell me I'm wrong about myself, about my illness, about the way I'm seen. You might even tell yourself that.

And after hearing it from you, I'll probably tell myself that too, because wouldn't it be nice to believe that I'm wrong about the one crucial fact of my depression: that when I am huddling, shivering, sobbing, at the bottom of this endless well, feeling the black water rise against my skin and waiting for the moment when I stop caring, waiting for the moment when the dot of sunlight beaming weakly on my face winks out...that when I am down there feeling myself being torn apart by my own vindictive intellect, I am, in the final analysis, completely and irrevocably alone. That the further I fall, the easier it becomes for the illusion of companionship to melt into the smoke around my head.

You will tell me I'm wrong.

But when it kills me, some of you will still call me a coward.

When it kills me, some of you will still call me selfish.

When it kills me, some of you will still shrug and tell each other there was nothing that could have been done.

All of you will most likely be right.

Why I'm Alive

Why am I still alive? Well I think it's because I'm a fighter, because I am determined every day to struggle with all my might against the will to self-destruction. I think it's my courage that has kept me alive.

Haha, just kidding. Actually the reason I'm still alive is that every time I reach the point where it seems like maybe it'd be better if I wasn't, I find myself struck by one or all of a number of points:

Firstly, I am still alive because of spite. There are enough people in the world who I know would be happier if I was dead, that it seems worthwhile staying alive just to make their lives a bit more miserable.

Secondly, I know that on the occasion of my death, everyone who ever knew me, or pretended to know me, or heard of me, or didn't hear of me but got told about me after I had in fact died, is going to weigh in with some damn opinion or other.

Some of them are people who have treated me like shit in life, but are going to act like we were the best of friends once I'm dead.

Some of them are people who are going to pretend that they understand why I died, and try to explain it to other people, and argue endlessly over whose theory of my death is the more accurate, and the more compassionate.

Some of them are people who are going to be secure in the knowledge that my death is all about them, and tell the world how pained and soulful they are so everyone understands that my dying has many victims, but none so tragic as this particular casual acquaintance.

Some of them are going to say how sad it is that I have died, and follow that statement with "but..." so they can explain how actually it's not really all that sad.

Some of them are going to write blogs and thinkpieces explaining how really it was all my own fault. And some of them are going to write blogs and thinkpieces explaining how really it was all the fault of someone or something that by coincidence they were already writing blogs and thinkpieces about before I died.

Some of them are going to use the circumstances of my death to trigger a petition.

Some of them are going to get incredibly angry that anyone is sad about my death, when there are much SADDER things to be sad about, and isn't it just incredibly narrow-minded of us to be sad about my death?


And the point is, when I'm dead, I can't tell everyone having a public reaction to my death to go fuck themselves in their fat ugly faces. So I really have no choice but to stay alive when you think about it.

Luck

The other day I plunged headlong into a deep depression, accompanied by the screeching siren of anxiety. My chest tightened to the point where my heart seemed liable to explode. I gasped for breath. My stomach lurched and rocked like a capsizing ship. Tears were squeezing out through my eyes and I couldn't under any circumstances tell you why. Thoughts jostled each other in my head, crashed and broke one upon the next and melted into a morass devoid of meaning or coherence that could communicate no message beyond a loud, insistent "GET OUT".

Somehow, I did not get out. Somehow, I am here writing this. Unlike the friends I've known who aren't here to write anything, I found a way out of that tiny steel box that didn't involve opening a trapdoor and letting myself fall into space.

Let's not pretend I'm here because of some mysterious inner strength that let me ride it out. If I happened to see a crack in the wall of noise that allowed me to see ahead, if I have been able, at my lowest ebb, to clutch desperately at my own insatiable curiosity and clear a small patch of smog long enough to know it would never be satisfied if I left now...that's nothing to do with me.

I've sat in cars in the middle of the night with bleeding arms and pondered how much it would hurt to drive off a cliff. I've sat in the back of a police wagon with handcuffs on wondering how I could return to a wife and children who'd seen me humiliated and dragged away for my own protection. I've spent more time than I could ever have thought I would calculating the logistics of bringing about my own disappearance.

But here I am, and here I sit.

I read my friend Anna Spargo-Ryan's post about Peaches Geldof and wondered at the stroke of luck that has seen me live my life free of the ghastly addictions that have cut others short. I wondered at the good fortune that means I'm not currently the subject of a hideous MamaMia contributor's orgiastic spree of preening self-congratulation.

Because I can make no mistake - luck it is. By luck I find myself in comfort, in a warm house with a full stomach. By luck I find myself loved by my family, able to wait for my children to come home and hug me. It's not light at the end of the tunnel that gives one hope in the darkest of darknesses; it is having something for that light to illuminate, and it is by luck that when light comes in it shines on things I want to hold on to.

Recently a friend of mine lost her son, a marvellous boy who'd been subject to health problems that kept the whisper of tragedy forever in his family's ears. I've led a charmed life to not have to suffer that. I don't live in fear for my life, or for my children's. I'm privileged with extraordinary luck that I look ahead to their future without placing an asterisk beside every possibility.

A man I once knew, a great writer and teacher, a much-loved man, died just the other day with his wife and hundreds of others, brought down in flames and horror in a war none of them had any part of. For every person who died that day, dozens wept and cursed the most pointless of catastrophes. It's only luck that separates me from any of them. That separates any of you from any of them.

It's only luck that I'm sitting here writing this, instead of sitting in Gaza listening to the bombs drop. It's only luck that you're sitting there reading this, instead of starving in an African village or swaying on a leaking refugee boat or caught in the crosshairs of fanatics in Iraq.

There are those who want you to believe it's not luck. They want you to think we should offer punishment and threats to those who seek our help, because it's by their own failings and our own virtue that we find ourselves in our respective positions, rather than chance. They want you to believe that anyone finding themselves poor, unemployed or homeless has done so through their own choice and lack of moral fibre, and that therefore we must be harsh as we seek to impress on them how badly they've let us down by not being more like us. They want you to believe that what determines the course of human lives is the notion of "the deserving" - we get what's coming to us, and so we may feel free to pat ourselves on the back for managing to earn our good fortune.

I would rather recognise how lucky I am, and how the luck that befalls us has nothing to do with virtue, or strength, or deserving. And how that luck also bestows on us a duty. To make use of our fortune, and try to pass a little of it on.

I would rather hug my children, and thank whatever I may that I can.

Thanks

So a few hours ago I walked out of the office that I first walked into in September, 2006.

It felt a bit like this:

Because unlike every other time I walked out of that office, I wasn't looking ahead to the next day, or the day after the day after tomorrow, when I'd have to walk back in again.

Thanks to my having fallen into a big sloshy barrel of good luck and snared the position of daily TV writer for the Fairfax newspapers, I'm now a full-time writer, and no longer a full-time not-writer. This not only means no more eight hour days of reading newspaper reports about suburban graffiti, rural bowls results and grey nomad caravan magazines, but it also means no more driving for 2-3 hours every day to get to work and back, all the time feeling a bit like this:

Such an earth-shaking epoch in one's life can't help but cause a bit of reflection. I started working at my "day job" in September 2006, which means I've been there for seven years and five months, approximately. As dedicated fans will know, my first published piece of writing appeared on November 8, 2007 - this means that my career as anonymous desk-slogger pre-dates my career as online opinion snarker by more than a year. I've been in that job considerably longer than I've been able, even in the loosest sense, to call myself a "professional writer". The fact that I can now not only call myself such, but not qualify it with, "oh but I also have..." is quite exhilarating and something of a relief.

Until 2011 my day job was actually a night job. This means that for around 3-4 years my writing was mainly done in the mornings, after staggering home after the 11pm-7am shift, or else hurriedly banged out at night, after I woke up, before 10pm, when I'd have to leave the wife and kids and drive to work.

Since I switched to days my writing has mainly been done in the evenings after a more civilised shift, but still. always, in the fog of after-work fatigue. I think it's a weariness a lot of writers know, of doing the job you care about in the little narrow slits of time in between the job that you need.

I'm hoping I can now be less tired, and more creative, and more energetic, and that therefore this year will bring forth many magical things from me, online, in print, and on stage and screen. Fingers crossed, anyway.

It is in my nature to forever be pushing to achieve more, so I see this as another step forward, but nowhere near a final destination. But it's a big deal, a huge deal, for me, and I am very very fortunate to find myself in this new position. And if you have ever read, laughed at, linked to, retweeted, listened to, watched, or commented on anything I've done, you've helped me find this stroke of luck. 

I'm really, really grateful to you all.

The Benefits of Cowardice

The other day I wanted to die.

I didn't try to die, mind you, for two reasons: firstly because I am a coward; and secondly because I retained the ability to recognise that my death would affect people other than myself adversely.

But goodness I wanted to. To the point where I felt quite resentful of those people, whose wellbeing I felt responsible for - if it weren't for them my conscience would be much clearer if I could work up the courage to hasten my own demise. Which I probably couldn't, being a coward.

Killing yourself is, of course, illegal: one of those rare crimes that you only get punished for if you fail to commit it. The police can even arrest you if they think you might kill yourself. I found that out when it happened to me, the night they came to my house, threatened to pepper spray me, and took me to hospital in handcuffs.

I think about that night once or twice every day - it's a good way to bring myself back down to earth whenever I start to feel like I might not be a failure. I'm not sure there's any success I could achieve in life that would overwhelm the self-annihilation of that experience. It was a powerful sign of how badly I'd fucked up at life, and my capability for such monumental fuck-ups is something I carry with me, as a caution to not get too cocky.

Now there are people who will say to me, "You're not a failure, you're not a fuck-up, you're not a terrible person". But then they don't know me like I do, do they? It's my fundamental problem with taking advice on mental health from anyone - I know me better than you do, and if I tell you that my depression is, essentially, no more than I deserve, shouldn't I be trusted? You can tell me that my depression is an illness, but I might tell you that it's a perfectly reasonable response to the fact of my own existence, and I've got a lot of fieldwork on my side. And I know this, and I know that no matter how many times someone tells me otherwise, I'll have that knowledge in the back of my mind, and nobody can help me with that; nobody can take that away; and nobody can fully understand it, because nobody can ever fully understand what's going on inside another person. I, like everyone else, am alone.

This is what I have been trying to express: depression is loneliness. Utter, utter loneliness. And if I tweet about it, Facebook post about it, or blog about it, it's all an attempt to find some relief from that loneliness. Which can be found - comfort from other people, affirmations and sympathies help. But not for long. That stuff fades, because you know the only person who knows the whole truth about yourself is you. And you know that when words of comfort have been forgotten, you'll be left to keep company with yourself, and the words of hatred that you keep inside you and that are the only permanent thing you've got.

It's the loneliness that eats you away: not lonely because nobody cares, but lonely because nobody can help, and lonely because you know, deep down, that you don't deserve any help anyway. And lonely because you know that those times you don't feel lonely are just preludes to more loneliness.

And most of all lonely because this flaw, this production error, this mistake in manufacture that crept in when you were made, has done nothing but cause trouble and sadness to the people you care about, and because they'd be better off without you, but if you left you'd just be causing more trouble and sadness. And you can't be fixed, so you can look forward to spreading more trouble and sadness around for many years, until finally, you slink off and die. And as you lived alone, alone you will die.

I am not the only person to think the world would be better off without me in it. There are many of us. And though our friends will deny it, some of us right. And some of us are wrong. Some of us live in unremitting agony, unable to ever shake the obsessive conviction. And some of us swing back and forth, believing in a lighter world with a rightful place for us in it, until inevitably remembering the handcuffs and the slow shuffle out the door as the children watched. Some us are trapped, and after searching their prison desperately for false walls and hidden doors, take the only reasonable way out.

And some of us find ourselves thankful that we are cowards.

It's On You Now

All right. The government has decided that if you try to claim asylum via a boat journey, you're not getting in. You'll end up living in Papua New Guinea, at best. The government has decided that this will stop the boats, and the government is telling us that this is necessary to save lives, because the most pressing need is to stop people drowning at sea. The government is clear that this has nothing to do with pandering to xenophobia, nothing to do with a lowest common denominator grab for votes, nothing to do with embracing the politics of fear. It is about saving lives. The government has a responsibility to stop people taking risky sea voyages, and so they've put in place a plan to stop them.

Very well. They can own that then.

Personally I never thought drownings at sea were the fault of the government. I never thought that any government in Australia had ever "lured" people onto leaky boats. I thought it was ridiculous to suppose that simply by maintaining the possibility that people with a legitimate claim to asylum could find assistance and refuge and a better life in Australia, our leaders were somehow tricking those silly foreigners into believing their journey across the sea would be safe. I thought that I was in no position to judge whether refugees from war-torn lands were right to risk their lives to improve their circumstances. I thought that asylum seekers were neither halfwitted morons unable to figure out the dangers of a sea journey in a rickety boat, nor mindless puppets reacting only to the string-pulling of Australia's government - pull this string, they come, pull that string, they stay. I thought that in a world of refugees, we cannot prevent people taking terrible risks to escape terrible situations: all we can do is our little bit to assist those who come to us seeking assistance. I thought it is not our place to lecture those who've seen terrors we can't fathom on whether the chance of death at sea is worth taking if it means getting away from those terrors, or if it means avoiding decades eking out a fearful, hopeless existence in a refugee camp, or if it means giving their children the chance of a future containing possibilities. I thought the government does not bear responsibilities for the tragedies caused by the sick and sorry state of the world - only the tragedies resulting from the treatment it metes out to those who beg it for help. I thought that accepting desperate people into our country and allowing them to become Australians was the noblest thing that our government does, and that the ones who came by boat were no more or less deserving than those arriving by other means.

I thought all these things.

The government thinks differently.

Well, fine.

But they should know, they can own that now.

I never believed the government bore responsibility for deaths at sea, but that's a responsibility they've taken on. Both major parties have stood up to willingly declare that the blood of asylum seekers who drown is on the hands of the Australian government.

Let them own it.

The PNG plan is said to be the way to prevent these drownings. The Opposition has their own tow-back, TPV plan, that they say will prevent these drownings. If this is the way they wish it to be, if this is the priority they wish to adopt, if this is the function they see as proper for the Australian government, then this is the standard by which they will be judged.

Because if Labor puts the PNG plan in place, or if the Coalition implements their own Howard redux policy, they'll have achieved their goal. They'll have done what they claim is necessary to stop deaths at sea.

And that means every death at sea from that point on is on them.

And we've got to hold them to this. If asylum seekers drown on their way to Australia, after the government declares that drownings are its responsibility and its policy the proper reaction to them, then with each death our politicians will stand judged as murderers - not by our judgment, but by their own. And it'll be up to us to remind them of that.

It's on you now, noble leaders. You want responsibility for their deaths, you got it. We'll hold you responsible, and see if you are so eager to hang yourselves when you've got no excuses.

Seize The Defeat

So, an offensive menu was printed up for a Mal Brough fundraiser. And we are, naturally, in quite a flap about it.

And yes, fair enough. It was gross. It was sexist. It was nasty. It was a shitty joke, and it wasn't even original.

And look, I have no problem with anyone asserting that Mal Brough is a sleazebag. There's the whole James Ashby affair, and oh yeah, that little thing called the NT Intervention. Believe me, I need no convincing that Mal Brough is a first-class dickferret of the very highest purity.

But here's the thing about menugate, or quailgate, or big red boxgate or whatever bullshit it's being called:

Tony Abbott will still win.

It has been blindingly obvious for some time now that the Labor Party is going to go down in flames in September. And yet somehow, the True Believers keep seizing on moments like Brough's menu, claiming that this time,. THIS time, the Coalition's goose is truly cooked. The voters simply won't stand for such appalling misogyny, the True Believers squawk. Women won't be treated like this anymore, they scream. Now that the Liberals have shown their TRUE colours, Julia Gillard's dignity and toughness and determination will win the day and all will be well.

I am sorry, True Believers: all will not be well. And every time you say that THIS will be the straw that breaks the camel's back, a new batch of polls come out and show that the camel is doing a buck-and-wing all over Labor's expiring corpse.

The reason we keep going through this is that the True Believers, justifiably appalled as they are by Tony Abbott's appalling character, cannot conceive of any other explanation for Labor's subterranean popularity than that the electorate simply doesn't UNDERSTAND how bad the Opposition is. Once they do, the story goes, everything will turn around.

Once again, I am sorry to be the one to break it to you: they know. Everyone knows. They've all seen him, they've all heard him, they've all read about him. And they either don't care, or see what you think are character flaws as virtues.

When someone you hate does something you disapprove of, it's seductively easy to assume that this will cause everyone else to hate them too, because you've been hating them all along. It's seductively easy to assume that everyone else thinks the way you do, and the only reason they disagree with you is they don't have all the facts.

Sadly, sometimes people have all the facts and still think you're wrong.

Sadly, sometimes people are bastards, and they like it when other bastards are in charge.

Sadly, Tony Abbott is going to be prime minister, and whatever miracle it might take to prevent that is going to have to be a hell of a lot more volcanic than a shitty sexist joke on a menu of murky antecedents.

And given that fact, why should we keep on making excuses for Julia Gillard's hapless Washington Generals of a government?

The fact is, Gillard ain't all that. Her asylum seeker policy is brutality embraced in the name of expediency. She made a mess of the mining tax in her haste to cave to big business and get the issue off her desk. She is continuing our pal Brough's racist intervention. She gave a nice big smack to single parents the same day she electrified the world by bawling out Abbott in parliament. Her stance on marriage equality enrages pretty much all her staunchest supporters. And her government has done many good and admirable things, she is singularly bad at turning them to her advantage, which, whether it be the media's fault, or Kevin Rudd's, or Abbott's, is nonetheless a fact.

So why should we on the nominally "left" side of politics be as eager as we have been to gloss over all that?

Well obviously it's because, for all her faults, Gillard is better than Abbott. No doubt about that. Though Labor has done some stuff badly, the Coalition will be ten times worse, and we have to fall in behind Gillard to stop Abbott getting in at any cost. Wise words.

But the fact is, Abbott IS going to get in. So what's the point of being "better than Abbott" when you're not going to win anyway?

While Labor had a chance, it made sense to bend our energies to supporting them, to keep the Liberals at bay. But that's failed. The Liberals have stormed the parapet. The shields are down. Labor is dead in the water.

So trying to keep Abbott out is now a lost cause. And any attempt to downplay the failings of Labor in the interests of realpolitik is no longer a brave stab at bringing about the lesser of two evils, but rather an exercise in futility that simply continues the relentless lowering of standards in political discourse.

Consider: if you are backing "crappy" because it's better than "crappier", when "crappy" has no chance of winning, you're not staving off "crappier", you're just ensuring that "crappy" becomes the best we can ever hope for.

So why not stop standing up for "crappy"? Why not starting calling out bad behaviour, bad policy, bad government, no matter which party is engaging in it? The partisan battle is over, let's redirect our energies into demanding better from ALL sides of politics. Let's make it clear that we want to raise standards.

Most of all, let's rediscover our integrity and commit to standing up, in all circumstances, for what we really believe, for what we think is RIGHT, rather than desperately trying to rationalise support for better-than-Abbott.

And hey, we've got preferential voting. We'll be putting better-than-Abbott ahead of Abbott anyway. Don't worry, as long as better-than-Abbott has a lower number next to it on your ballot paper, you've discharged your responsibilities to the temple of low expectations.

But when we're out in the world, fighting and arguing and debating and lobbying and tweeting and blogging and emailing ministers, let's stop shouting our disapproval of "them" while we whisper our disapproval of "us". Let's make clear that right is right, and wrong is wrong, and while political realities obviously have always to be recognised, we're not going to support any politician who flat-out reverses the two.

Right now, my fellow travellers on the Lost Bus Of The Left, we are down. We're outnumbered and outgunned. But even at this moment we can be heard, and we can make clear what we want. Even with our worst enemy in the Lodge, we can articulate how we want this country to be better.

And when the worm turns and we find ourselves up and about again, we can make sure that those who would represent us know that we want them to fight for what's right, not just for what's slightly less wrong.

We're about to get beaten. But if we can stand up, we don't have to be broken as well.

Sad

Is there anything more unattractive than a sad person?

Probably. When I was in high school I thought I might be more attractive if I was sad. It turns out I wasn't. But then I saw another guy who was really sad, and the girls seemed to eat that up. So the lesson learned was that sad people are really unattractive, when they were unattractive to start with, and sad people are pretty hot, when they're good-looking.

So I guess the real lesson learned was that there was no lesson learned.

I'm feeling pretty sad right now. "Why are you sad, Ben?" I hear you not ask, because seriously, you have your own lives to live. I often find myself thinking "nobody cares" but I think it with a sort of philosophical acceptance, because the fact that nobody cares is no reason to assume that anyone should. Sadness is a pretty first-world problem, I think. I'm writing a blog about it presumably because I crave attention and sympathy, but let us frankly admit that I don't deserve attention and sympathy. If you're giving me any, I've sort of conned you a little bit.

It's hard to say, when you're sad, whether it's sadness or depression. Saying you've got depression is dangerous, because it is a declaration that there is no good reason to be depressed. But there are lots of good reasons to be depressed. Read a newspaper. Or read a blog post about how soon you won't be able to read a newspaper. Or just think about your own life. See? Reasons galore.

I have plenty of reasons to be sad, ranging from the fact that the world is a huge horrible place full of death and injustice and misery, to the fact that I got unfriended on Facebook by someone I really like. So I'm running the gamut here, is what I'm saying.

But if I'm sad for genuine, real-world, external stimuli, then the obvious response is hey, count my blessins, cheer up, look on the bright side, come on, if you will, get happy. Sadness is not really a problem, per se, it's just an inconvenience, and half the time - or more - it's just me being melodramatic. Or, since you're probably just the same, it's YOU being melodramatic. So you know, snap out of it guys, stop being so much like me.

But if I'm sad because of the freaky chemicals in my head going weird for no reason, then that is depression, and it is an illness. Which means the solution is to go see a therapist and/or take my pills. So there's no call for me to go looking for that human touch, because I'm depressed, you see, and depression is a medical problem, so it needs to be treated, and it's really nobody's problem.

So if I'm sad, it's not really serious. And if I'm depressed, it's too serious for anyone to reasonably engage with.

So what I'm looking for is some kind of middle-ground between "count your blessings" and "take your pills", where the reaction is "let me tell you how much I love you, give you a hug, and come watch DVDs and eat cake with you".

Yeah, wanting people to hug you is a pretty first-world problem, but knowing that doesn't make hugs any less nice.

I guess what I'm saying is: being sad sucks and I don't know what to do about it besides write rubbish on the internet, but if you want to give someone a hug and buy some cake today, I say go for it.

Now here's a picture of baby tigers.

The Business Of Cruelty

"Since off shore processing began in August last year, 15,543 people have arrived in 259 boats. Seven hundred are on Manus or Nauru and the cost is heading into the billions."

"I want to die. I don't want to live more, because we don't have anything to do here. Your questions doesn't have answer, your fate is not clear, what will happen to you?"

"You see many guys here do suicide or hurt themselves, just because they don't want to harm the others. They just harm themselves because of bad situation, or because they show - they want to show their feelings"

"By last November there'd been reports of mass hunger strikes and at least eight attempted suicides. And a 35 year old Iranian man, near death after a 50 day hunger strike, had to be evacuated to Australia"

"There are temperatures in the 40s and humidity around 100 per cent. Heavy rain, no air conditioning and ah, insufferably hot. Um muddy tracks, um and when it rained a faecal smell of inadequately you know drained sewage effluent."

"There are now thirty children in the Manus camp. Most have been there more than four months"

"Journalists, cameras, and even photos are banned from the Manus camp"

"the minister's refusal to front up for an interview for this story with no reason given, other than we could turn up for one of his doorstops if we liked"



None of this is news, not really. Four Corners this week was really letting us in on the secret we all knew - that Australia's government is now in the business of cruelty. And this isn't a partisan thing. It's not Labor versus Liberal. The business of cruelty is a thriving joint venture in which both major parties are enthusiastically involved.

This business is allowed because these brave servants of the public interest which we elect have successfully entrenched the Big Lie that the government's responsibility lies with preventing desperate people in other countries from deciding how best to improve their lives, rather than with taking care of the desperate people that find themselves in this country. The government has decided its jurisdiction extends all around the world when it comes to deterrence, but doesn't even include its own territory when it comes to caring.

We've accepted that and other Big Lies, such as the one that tells us that our leaders are striving to represent the acme of compassion, with these policies designed to ensure that when refugees die, they have the decency to do it far away from us, in foreign camps, or on boats heading anywhere but here. Designed to ensure that the world is in no doubt that if, when you've got nowhere else to turn, you turn to Australia, you will be imprisoned, and isolated, and brutalised, and driven right over the brink of madness by a government determined, at any cost, to make itself monstrous enough that people stuck in the worst places on earth would rather stay put than risk coming here.

The hellholes created by our fearless leaders are not unfortunate unintended consequences of sensible policy: they are the entire point of the policy. They are not locking up children by accident. They are not causing people to hurt themselves, starve themselves, and kill themselves in spite of their best intentions. This is exactly what the policy is supposed to achieve. The government is deliberately causing suffering, because they have decided that causing suffering is the best way to achieve their aims.

Because their aims are to avoid criticism, to avoid protest, to avoid electoral punishment, from that great mass of Australians who become outraged whenever they sense that the government is being too kind to people who didn't have the good sense to be born into first-world privilege. Their aims are to neutralise "excessive humanity" as an electoral negative.

So please, when we discuss politics; when we thrash out the respective merits of the different parties; when we laud the prime minister's unwillingness to be lectured on misogyny by that man; when we proclaim one side's virtue over the other's:

Never forget that no matter how much better one side is than the other, both sides are in the business of cruelty. The lesser of two evils remains evil, and its evil is deliberate, ongoing, and vicious.

This government, this prime minister, this Labor Party is engaged in wilful and knowing savagery against its fellow human beings. This Opposition protests this savagery only inasmuch as it is insufficiently savage.

In the unlikely event that any members of either government or opposition end up reading this, please know, you are reprehensible. If you sleep at night, it speaks only to the humanity that you jettisoned long ago. If you can look at your own deeds without being blinded by burning tears of shame, you are lost, and so are we who have somehow allowed you putrid beasts to rule over us.

May you all go to Hell.

The Platonic Break-Up

If you are to undergo a painful separation from a romantic or sexual partner, you will find yourself in no shortage of advice on how to deal with it. Much of this advice will be completely useless to you, but you'll certainly be able to find it. Friends will offer it, TV and movies will offer it, songs will offer it, lifestyle magazines will offer it by the ton. Getting over a break-up is hell, but you've always got options available as to how you go about it.

More importantly, it's accepted that you will go about it. When you break up, it's expected you'll undergo a period of sadness and misery and mood swings and over-eating. A mourning period is exactly what you're supposed to go through, and society will smile upon your emotional turmoil.

But there is no such formula when it comes to the platonic break-up: the break-up of a platonic relationship. What do you do to get over it when your friends dump you?

I seem to have become quite adept at shedding friends, much the same way as a snake sheds its skin, except snakes don't cry. Like, ever. They're really repressed.

Anyway, the point is in the past year or so I have lost a few friends. Not in the genuinely sad way, in the lame petty sense that they're not my friends anymore. I don't really know why they're not my friends anymore, because they didn't tell me.

And that's one of the issues. When you're sleeping with someone and they tell you that you can't sleep with them anymore, it's perfectly acceptable to demand an explanation. And they'll say "It's not you, it's me", or "We're just two very different people", or "Sex with my sister is one thing, but with my budgie?" You'll probably end up feeling like a total prick, but at least you'll know what it was that's driven them away.

Whereas in this case I feel like a total prick but remain unaware of just what variety of total prick I am. Look, I'm sure it was my fault. Believe me, I have no trouble imagining why someone might not want to be my friend - it's people who still do want to be my friend who persistently baffle me. But it's just that I wished I knew what it was that had caused the state of friendship to morph into the state of non-friendship. I might have suspicions, but it's impossible to know - I'm so obnoxious in so many different ways that it's difficult to determine which one they picked.

And the problem with being dumped by a friend is that you can't just ask them what went wrong. I mean, you can, but then you're kind of being a dick, right? I firmly believe nobody has an inherent right to friendship from anybody else, and if someone decides they'd rather not associate with someone, they're perfectly entitled to stop associating with that person, and they don't owe anyone any explanation.

So yeah, these friends of mine who aren't friends of mine anymore, they're well within their rights. There's no reason for them to tell me why, or let me beg them to take me back. Which I would never do, even though I want to.

All this is because breaking up with a friend isn't really "breaking up", is it? It's not really a thing. It's not a phenomenon that merits cultural recognition and respect. It's childish to even speak about it, really. When a friend stops being your friend, you're supposed to just dismiss it with a wave and cry, "Good riddance!" If you've lost a friend, they were never really your friend. You're better off without them. You'll be happier this way. And certainly, it's nothing at all like the agony of breaking up an actual relationship.

But oh lord.

It still hurts.

It shouldn't hurt, it's pathetic for it to hurt. But it does. Friendships are precious to me. I treasure them, even if by doing so I am deluding myself into believing the friendship is as important to the other party as it is to me. Friendships boost me, and sustain my self-esteem. Every friend I have I count myself fortunate for, and flatter myself over - if another human being likes me, I might be sort-of OK? This is what I tell myself.

And so, eventually they become fed up or bored or annoyed or whatever, and they ditch me, and fair enough. But that really bites deep - that flattering I mentioned gets turned on its head: if having someone desire friendship from me is evidence of my excellence, having someone cease their desire for that friendship is evidence of my failure as a human being. And obsessing over just what I did to put myself beyond the pale does not improve this state of mind.

So, I hurt, and I mourn, and I turn into a big fat sook. Well I turn into a sook, anyway: the big fat bit was already there am I right? High five!

But there's no routine, there's no procedure. There's no correct way to mourn over a broken friendship. You're not really supposed to mourn at all. It's a secret activity. I don't even know whether other people do it. But I do.

Every friendship I've screwed up, in whatever way, I mourn, Every friend I no longer have, I miss. And I apologise to the thin air they've left behind for the ways I wronged them.

And I just wish there was a way to do this properly. But then that's what blogs are for, right?

ABORTION! Now that I've got your attention: abortion

OK. Fine. Right. Abortion, yeah?

I don't really like writing or talking about abortion, because...well, who does? Anytime you express an opinion on abortion you're likely to get someone calling you a monster or a Nazi or demanding to know how YOU would feel if you'd been aborted, and then you have to give them a lesson about logic and it goes on and on forever.

But look I've been thinking about abortion, and much like a mushroom sprouting from soil, an opinion has burst out on top of my head, so feel free to pick it.

The reason I'm thinking about it is because it's in the news a bit lately. Tasmania has introduced a bill to finally decriminalise abortion, and there is a bit of speculation swirling regarding the fact that in Victoria, the Liberals rely on the vote of rabid pro-lifer and perks-enjoyer Geoff Shaw, and that if Tony Abbott becomes prime minister he may have to rely in the Senate on the DLP's pro-life, pro-insanity Senator John Madigan.

So it's a bit topical. And really, it's always topical, because there are always people who won't let go, and keep trying to wind the clock back.

But here is the thing: I feel like a lot of the arguments go in the wrong direction, and they tend to go in the wrong direction because the anti-abortion lobby knows just which buttons to push. I think there is a line of thought which is not used often enough, and this is important because to me the real battle to defend abortion rights isn't in trying to convince pro-lifers to change their stance, but in the big middle ground of "don't-knows", the people who maybe haven't put much thought into it, but are ripe for the convincing by a pious-looking politician with a sincere-sounding speech.

First, we have to recognise that "pro-lifers" fall into two broad categories: real pro-lifers and fake pro-lifers.

The real pro-lifers are a minority - most "pro-lifers" are faking it. Real pro-lifers are the people who genuinely believe conception is the beginning of, not just life, but personhood. They sincerely believe that a foetus is a person with all the concomitant human rights that you or I have, and that aborting a foetus is the same as killing an actual child. They really believe the rubbish they spout about "the rights of the unborn child", and they won't listen at all when you point out that this is an oxymoron and there is actually no such thing as an "unborn child", given a "child" is someone who has been born. They also won't listen if you tell them that abortion can't be "murder" because murder is by definition illegal. Basically they won't listen to anything, so it's pointless to even try with these people.

And that pointlessness is, in fact, the point. The REAL pro-lifers are batshit insane. These are the ones who end up bombing abortion clinics and shooting doctors, and why wouldn't they? If you heard that down the road there was a government-sanctioned facility where doctors were shooting five-year-olds in the head, wouldn't you say some pretty extreme measures were needed to stop this? Wouldn't you, even if you lacked the courage to directly attack the child-killers yourself, heartily applaud those who did? How could you look negatively upon someone who stepped in to prevent children being slaughtered?

Well, that's how real pro-lifers see it. They are insane, and therefore their insane actions seem perfectly reasonable. And so naturally, there's no point trying to reason with them. They're fringe lunatics: we don't need to argue with them, we need to ignore them.

But then there are the fake pro-lifers. These are the ones who claim to be concerned about "the rights of the unborn child", but when faced with what is purportedly a nightmarish holocaust of kid-slaughter, say things like "safe, legal and rare", or demand that Medicare funding be removed.

I mean, imagine! Imagine believing that children are being murdered, but wanting it to be "safe, legal and rare"! Imagine saying, "Child murder is OK, but don't use taxpayer's money on it"! Come on.

Look at the debate that flares sometimes over instances of rape or incest. If you genuinely believed that foetuses were people, how could you make exceptions for rape or incest victims? "I don't think we should kill children except when their father's a rapist - babies need to be punished for that!" Please.

But a rape-incest exception, in fact, betrays a fake pro-lifer for what they are: a woman-punisher. The reason many "pro-lifers" are willing to entertain exceptions is because those exceptions deal with women whose pregnancy is not their fault.

And there is the key. The vast majority of "pro-lifers" are frauds who are simply out to punish women for having sex. They don't care about the "unborn children", or else they'd be marching with burning torches in the streets, storming abortion clinics daily. They will say their concern is for the poor dead babies, but then they'll go ahead and push for measures that allow abortion, but make it more expensive and difficult for a woman to access. Or they'll push to make it illegal, but exempt those women who came by their condition through "no fault of their own".

It is quite clear what these people are about. They are about ensuring that women don't "get away with it". They are about ensuring that if a woman DOES have the irrepressible audacity to have sex, she damn well better suffer for it. Either through a pregnancy or making abortions so difficult, expensive or dangerous that it turns her life upside down. The important thing is that women are made aware that their sin will not go unpunished. The important thing is that women NEVER feel free to enjoy sex without the threat of dire consequences.

And so what I say is, let's call these fake pro-lifers out. Every time a politician or a commentator or an activist claims they want to stop the killing of unborn babies, let's point out just how hypocritical they're being. Let's point out that if all they're willing to do is talk about it, call for cuts to funding or reductions in the numbers, they surely cannot be serious about considering these to be actual children.

And let's make sure those in-betweeners who haven't made their minds up and are just now looking curiously at the issue realise that the "pro-lifers" they see in the papers and on TV are full of disingenuous and malicious cant, and that if you want to be a pro-lifer, you can either join the lunatics or the liars.

Call 'em out, guys. The only way to make sure women retain control over their own bodies, is to make sure the other side doesn't get away with pretending that's not the field we're fighting on.

This Is Me

I like to count my blessings. I don't do it often enough, but I've been doing it more lately because I know what a good thing it is to do, to remind myself of what's fantastic about life.

And I have many blessings. My marvellous wife, my spectacular children, my adorable friends, the opportunity to get paid to write, and to have large numbers of people see my work. An absence of famine, war or violence from my life. The privilege of living as a thirtyish white man in a first world country. I am safe, well, and loved. Hell, my cup overfloweth.

I have a good life. I have a great life.

In fact, the only parts of my life that aren't good are the parts that are absolutely awful.

But those parts don't really count because they're not real. They're all in my head. They're my own weakness and stupidity overwhelming the logic centres of my brain. They're bullshit.

However, they do provide a fascinating (not really) insight into how a person can know their life is brilliant at the same time as they feel their life is unbearable.

But it's not real. Let me stress that. Let me stress in particular that I know it's not real. I already know.

Let me stress also that, as I mentioned above, I know how good my life is. I count my blessings.

This is relevant because when you talk about what's awful in your life, people tend to try to remind you of all the good things and try to scold you for not appreciating them, so it's useful to make it absolutely clear: yeah, I got that.

I got it. I got the good stuff. I got the blessings. I got what I need to be grateful for.

But there'll always be times when life remains awful, for one simple reason: I hate myself.

I've often heard it said that you can't love others until you love yourself. That sounds to me like crap, and I hope I'm right, because I like to think I love a great many people, but I could hardly hate myself more.

It may be that my overwhelming self-loathing is part of the bullshit I mentioned earlier. It may be it's all in my head. But I nevertheless know it to be true.

I know that I'm a failure. I know that I let my friends and family down every day. I know that I have wasted my time and my talent all my life. I know I'm ignorant, and lazy. I don't do enough, and I couldn't do enough if I wanted to because I lack the ability. I know I'll always have delusions that I can achieve beyond my grasp, and I know I'll be constantly disappointed when they're smashed time and again, and I know it won't stop me forming new ones and chasing after success like a pathetic dog running after a car.

I know I'm neglectful and callous. I know I treat people badly and that they deserve more from me, and I deserve less than I get from them. I know I disappoint people I love like it's going out of style and I know I have no idea how to maintain decent human relationships. I'm terrible in company and I'm useless alone. I unsettle people with my obnoxiousness and I disgust people with my desperation to be loved. I'll never have the love I want and I'll always have more than I deserve, if only out of pity, because if there's one thing I am worthy of, it's pity. No more so than the poor bastards caught up in my orbit though. Because I know I'm annoying, and insufferable, and destructive.

And I know I'm fat and I'm ugly and I'm flat-out disgusting. I feel sick every time I look in the mirror, and I know that's only fair because I'm repellent. And I know that this is mainly my own fault and I have brought my own revulsion upon myself through greed and laziness and lack of self-respect. And I know I won't change because I know I haven't got it in me. I know no matter how much I swear to improve myself, I'll fail. It's in my blood. I know I'll keep looking at the mirror, at that fat repulsive utterly unloveable creature, and feeling my stomach turn, till I go to the grave. I know every time I venture out I'm inflicting myself on the world, taking up too much room, getting in the way, turning off all I meet with my hideous size and unspeakable visage.

And I know most of all I deserve everything I get and more. I know when I look at myself I want to punch my face, hard and repeatedly, until I bleed, until I fall. I know when I think about myself I want to smash my head into a wall. I know every time I make a mistake, every time I let someone down, every time I make an unsuccessful pitch, every time I make a joke that doesn't get a laugh, every time I make a mess, every time I miss a day of work, every time I spill a drink, every time I forget to buy milk, every time I don't reply to an email...every single time I want to beat myself into unconsciousness.

And that's just what I want to do now, for my unmitigated narcissism in writing this. Because if there's anything worse than how much I hate myself, it's the burden I place on the world by insisting on sharing it with others. I'm very sorry.

I am, as Whitman said, large. I contain multitudes. I am smart and funny and dull and wise and foolish and arrogant and shy and loud and quiet and loving and kind and vicious and cold and sad and happy. But of all my shining facets, the biggest, the one that outshines all others, is self-loathing.

This is what it's like. Knowing you have a great life, and knowing it feels terrible. This is what it's like. Knowing you're a good person, and knowing you're a dreadful person.

This is what it's like.

When you say these things people tell you you're wrong, or that you need to snap out of it, or that you should adopt a more positive attitude. They tell you to count your blessings.

All of it's useless. I know I'm wrong, but I know I'm right. I don't want to be told anything. I just want to tell you - whoever "you" might be - that this is what it's like. Hating yourself.

Depression claimed me years ago, and it's made sure that my worst enemy is myself.

And I just want him gone.

Let's Have It All

Remember when Freddie Mercury sang "I want it all"? It wasn't very good, was it? Killer Queen was a much better song. Luckily, though, Freddie Mercury wasn't a woman, or else he might have been "tying himself in knots" over the question of having it all, apparently, according to the Daily Telegraph which opened its interview piece with Julie Bishop with the assertion that this is what women do when considering the matter of all, re: having it.

OK, so first of all I am going to question the truth of this knot-tying claim. I know quite a few woman - in fact some of my best sisters are women - and I've never seen them tie themselves in knots. In fact I've never seen them tie anything in knots: is that weird? I wonder if they know how to tie knots. But I digress.

First of all, I want to see some cold hard figures on how much time women spend worrying about whether they can "have it all". In my experience, if there's one area in which women are a lot like men, it's in the area of not spending vast swathes of their lives fretting over what percentage of all they can have, instead choosing to get the fuck on with life. And if there's another area in which women are a lot like men, it's in almost every other area there is, so maybe we, as a species, can ease back the throttle on this wacky battle-of-the-sexes bullshit we've been punching ourselves in the face with for the last ten thousand years.

Secondly, tell me what "it all" means. Some have told me it means having a great career and a nice family and a good place to live and a bunch of nice stuff; in other words, "it all" just means "being happy". In which case, yeah I guess women CAN have it all. I think there are happy women out there.

But no, I don't think that's what it DOES mean, when someone in the so-called media refers to "having it all". Let's not spend too much time interrogating ourselves over the exact meaning of our idiom when we all have a basic shared understanding of what we're talking about.

Essentially, when we talk about women having it all, we're asking whether the mum who's waiting after school every day with a tray of cookies can be Julia Gillard, and whether Julia Gillard can be the cookie-mum. We're asking whether Gail Kelly can run a multi-billion dollar financial behemoth and still never miss her kids' soccer games. We're asking whether Nicole Kidman can win Oscars and be back from the ceremony in time for school drop-off.

We are asking, in essence, can a woman scale professional peaks without giving up their natural, Jesus-assigned roles as primary caregiver and lactating nurture-queen?

Or to put it perhaps more cynically, can a woman avoid our disapproval for abandoning her traditional role, while simultaneously absolving us of any blame for stopping us from living the life she wants to?

Can, in the end, a woman, so to speak, have, when you get right down to it, it all?

No.

Look I don't want to make you pull out your hair and throw yourselves into bonfires, but Julie Bishop is right. Women can't have it all.

Know why?

Because nobody can.

You know men? You've probably met some. They're those women who sweat more than usual, and for some reason never ask whether they can have it all. People often think men don't ask that because they already know they CAN have it all.

No.

Men don't ask whether they can have it all, because they already know they can't. Or at least they should. They probably don't because they're morons, but if they thought for a second they'd know I'm right. So, guys - think, OK?

Nicola Roxon recently announced she was quitting politics, because she didn't want to sacrifice time with her children for the sake of her career. She found it impossible to "have it all", so she had to make a choice: miss out on some of the benefits of parenting, or miss out on some of the benefits of politicking.

She didn't have to make that choice because she's a woman, she had to make that choice because she's a human being. Every man in politics makes that choice too. Yes, indeed - when a man decides to head to Canberra, he's deciding to absent himself from his family for big chunks of time, just as a woman is.

When a man decides to put in 16-hour working days to make his business grow, he's slicing those hours off the time he has to be with his kids, or off the time he has to HAVE kids, or a decent relationship, or any other trappings of domesticity he might want.

When I decide to write article after article and book after book, and go out to tell jokes to strangers, I'm choosing to pursue my career instead of play with my kids. And when I decide to turn down those opportunities because I want to play with my kids, I'm handicapping my career for the sake of my family. And when I decide to work three or more jobs at once, I'm desperately trying to strike the right balance so I can have a little bit of both worlds, instead of throwing in the towel on one front and storming full-bore at the other.

What I'm NOT doing is committing myself 100% to my career AND committing myself 100% to my family, because that would involve a denial of basic mathematics, and I would consider that a gesture of unforgivable rudeness towards the numerical community.

I can't have it all. You can't have it all. None of us can have it all. Our lives are about chasing happiness, not some insane regretless Shangri-La of personal fulfilment.

And that's why "can women have it all?" is a dumb question, based on a moronic premise and infused with the half-witted artificial gender divisions that have been making us miserable throughout history. And I object strongly to the question's existence in our public discourse, let alone the myriad attempts, both by those propping up their own vested interest in keeping the question current, and by those gullible enough to be fooled into believing it's in their own interests to keep trying to answer it. And here's why.

Firstly, as I briefly alluded to above, it's a question with an ulterior motive. The question is asked in order to position "having it all" as a desirable goal for a woman, and it positions it thusly to achieve the twin goals of making women feel ashamed if they don't behave the way a nice girl should, and to make society feel better about standing in the way of women with ambition. We're talling you that you SHOULD be trying to have it all, and so if you're a less-than-perfect mother, you've let us all down, lady; and at the same time if you're finding you can't make your way up the greasy pole, it was nothing to with us - we WANTED you to have it all.

So Julia Gillard and Julie Bishop are unnatural for not having kids, and Nicola Roxon just couldn't hack the pressure.

But here's the other side of that: as I said, nobody is asking whether men can have it all. It's assumed that a failure to achieve total contentment in every facet of life is a uniquely female problem. But as I also said, that is patently not true. Yet every time the subject comes up, it's only women who are apparently struggling with this.

And why is that? It's because it's assumed that it's easy for men to have it all, because it's assumed that men don't care about the things they have to give up. It's assumed there's no tension between family and career for a man, because family is something men don't care about. You're working non-stop and your kids are in bed by the time you get home every night? You're always away from home on business and only see your family a few days every month? Your wife is practically a single parent because you just can't afford to stop? As a MAN, that must be exactly what you want!

And so, we are told, men breezily go about having it all to their heart's content, because whatever bit of "all" they don't have won't matter to them. They'll leave the domestic guff to the ladies, because that's what "having it all" is to a man. The ladies, of course, won't be able to have it all, and shame on them.

If this situation is reversed, of course, the woman jetsetting off to a high-flying career while the man keeps the home fires burning, nobody's having it all. The woman was supposed to be able to do both, because of her magic vagina, and the man might as well have a vagina of his own if he's going to go about acting like a woman.

And there you have it. Women can't have it all because they're not good enough: men can have it all because they don't give a shit about their families.

And so know this, social commentators and cultural pundits, armchair philosophers and tabloid sexperts: every time you push the question "Can women have it all" out into the public consciousness, you're being sexist in two directions at once and letting us all, men and women, know that our hunch was right: we should all be hating ourselves as hard as possible all the time.

So for fuck's sake, you guys, stop doing it.

Ugh

Feminism, right? Sometimes, I think, we can get sick of talking about feminism, and hearing about feminism. Sometimes it's just exhausting, isn't it? Boring. We wish sexism and misogyny and patriarchy didn't keep getting raised. We'd like a break.

I feel this, I really do. I bet a lot of the people who spend a lot of time talking about feminism get sick of it sometimes too. Unfortunately, as much as we'd all like a break, it is difficult for feminists to take a break when every day some idiot goes and illustrates perfectly why they have to keep hammering away, because there is just so many more concrete-thick skulls to penetrate.

I was watching Q&A last night, and this really hit me with monstrous force, as I watched Kate Ellis MP attempt to answer questions and address issues in the face of some truly mind-boggling rudeness and disrespect from a sniggering bipartisan triumvirate of Lindsay Tanner, Christopher Pyne and Piers Akerman.

Now, in my opinion, in the area of feminism and gender relations, there are very many areas on which room for disagreement exists. I think reasonable people can differ on many issues without anyone being assumed to be stupid or bigoted. And you can disagree on all sorts of things. You can disagree with me, or anyone else, on women's portrayal in the media, or on women's dress, on affirmative action, on pornography or sexual freedom or sexism in the workplace. I would not necessarily think you a fool for taking a different position to mine on any of these issues.

But if you try to tell me that feminism's job is done here, that we are not still living in a society that is positively drenched in sexism, then I will laugh you right out of that cosy little cocoon you're snuggling up inside. Because if you're living in this world, and you think everything is cool, men-and-women-wise, you're pushing a line so obviously and directly at odds with the evidence in front of your face that you might as well be telling me that you just rode into town on a flying sheep.

Q&A seems such a minor, petty thing to focus on - and it is. It's a tiny drop in the sexism ocean, and there are sure bigger problems out there. But last night's episode crystallised so exquisitely for anyone watching the heart of the matter - the disrespect, the sneering condescension, and the hostility towards women from which so much inequality and injustice springs.

This wasn't a rowdy debate where everyone was talking over one another. This wasn't someone feeling so passionately about a subject he just had to break in to be heard. And this was not a case of one or two interruptions. This was interrupting, cutting off, and shouting down Kate Ellis pretty much every time she dared open her mouth, in a manner that couldn't have been more efficient and systematic if Tanner, Pyne and Akerman had got together beforehand and plotted the course of the evening out on a spreadsheet. This was Akerman preventing Ellis getting her point out simply by repeating the word "shadecloths" four or five times, as if that was a counter-argument that would shoot her down; or later on, breaking in to an answer she was giving on education in order to kindly tell her to go and talk to Margie Abbott. This was Ellis attempting to answer an audience member's question but being drowned out by Pyne and Tanner starting up a conversation about Downton Abbey as if she wasn't even there. And this was Pyne in particular (and this is pretty much his lifelong form line) talking over the top of the minister every single time she looked like getting near speaking her piece. It was a horrible display by three men who, according to all reports, claim to be grown adults of fully-functioning intellectual faculties. But in the presence of a federal minister whose views on a range of issues are actually quite important to the country, but who happened to be a woman, they could not find it within themselves to grow the hell up and act like decent human beings. And, what's more, host Tony Jones seemed quite happy to let them stomp all over the discussion like a pack of St Bernards tracking mud over a carpet.

Of course the other guest, US playwright Nilaja Sun, barely got to talk at all, although some of that could be put down to  most of the discussion being very Aus-centric: but when you have five guests, two of whom are women, of which one is barely allowed to talk, and the other has every statement swamped by the bellows of the swaggering Ox Chorus surrounding her, it paints a stark picture of how women are treated 'round these parts.

Bear in mind, again, this is a minister. Not just a woman who wandered in off the streets, but an accomplished, elected representative, in a position of considerable responsibility with significant influence on our government. Patronised and shut down like a schoolgirl answering back to the principal. It was, to put quite mildly, revolting.

And why did they do this? Because they knew they could. They knew that if you shout down a woman, you get away with it. Let's not pretend they would have acted that way if Bill Shorten had been in that seat - nobody's default setting is "disrupt" when a man is talking. What's more, they knew that Shorten would have fired back, and they knew that Kate Ellis couldn't without being painted as shrill and hysterical. Ellis knew that too - she knew the minute she rose to the bait, told someone to shut up, demanded to be given due respect, she'd be tagged a harridan, which is why she put in a performance of superhuman restraint and class, and emerged looking a more worthy person than those three men put together.

And this is not a Labor vs Liberal thing - Akerman and Pyne were repellent, but Tanner joined in the shut-up-girlie game with gusto. The Liberal Party seems to be captive at the moment to a particularly nauseating cabal of misogynists, but this cuts across the left-right divide. It's not even man vs woman - rest assured there are women who would have watched that show urging the men on to shut the mouthy bitch up.

I've said it before: the battle is between pricks and non-pricks. You're sick of hearing about feminism? Fine: let's not mention feminism. Let's drop the battle of the sexes schtick. How about we just talk about human decency? How about we talk about the ability to treat another person like a person, that ability that is sorely lacking in men like Akerman, Tanner, Pyne, Alan Jones, Tony Abbott...and on, and on, and on. How about we talk about looking at someone and not deciding, based on what they've got in their pants, that you're perfectly justified in treating them like a cross between an irritating insect and a disobedient toddler? How about we talk about, if this isn't too much of a stretch, a public discussion where how seriously you get taken doesn't depend on whether you're packing a penis?

Last night, we saw that the men who believe they have a right to power over all of us have zero tolerance for any woman trying to muscle in on their turf. We saw the clear, shining face of sexism. And those of us with a scrap of decency should be under no illusions: we're in a war here.

Generosity Please

I am not telling you anything you don't know, but the media is a strange and shifting place. Being a freelancer in the middle of it is an uncertain and slightly terrifying existence. I keep on writing because I happen to think I'm pretty good at it, and that it's a worthwhile career to pursue, but I can't say whether I'll still be doing this in a year, two years, five years. As much as you might do it for the love, money is, sadly, a necessity round these parts, and if there's no money to be made writing, a lot less writing is going to happen.

As a writer, my past, present and future are all bound up heavily in brave, supercool independent media, that have given me a break, given me an outlet, given me an audience and given me a little bit of cash to reward my efforts too. They've been bold to do this, and I'm eternally grateful to anyone who's published me.

But these outlets are just like the mainstream behemoths: they need people to be willing to pay for good content. There's free stuff all over the internet of course, but if we want a world where there are talented people with the time and inclination to really throw themselves into their work, we need to stump up some dollars to give them that chance, and make sure a thousand flowers can bloom in the media desert.

So. With that in mind, here are a few places you could sling a few bucks to - if you're not already - to help them stay afloat and make a go of things. All of these are great organisations that I've written for, will write for in future, and recommend highly.

First New Matilda. This was the first place to publish me at all, when I was, in the most literal and extreme sense, an unknown. They took a chance and I owe them forever for that. They brought my political writing into the world. But beyond me, they have loads of brilliant content, like Ben Eltham's work, stuff about Israel, asylum seekers, the environment and much much more, from an array of talented writers who provide genuinely alternative viewpoints to the mainstream. They run on a shoestring and do it with style and substance, and without paywalling. They rely on the generosity of their readers - why not be generous?

The King's Tribune. Subscribing to the KT not only gets you access to the full extent of their spectacular line-up - and it is spectacular, featuring not just me, but geniuses like Helen Razer, Jo Thornely, Greg Jericho, Tim Dunlop, John Birmingham and many more, plus awesome interviews and features - but also it gets you an actual paper magazine. Can you believe that? In these days of digital chicanery, MySpace etc, the Tribune has shown faith in the beauty of the printed word, while also spawning a snazzy-as website. It takes some balls to push that boat out, and it's resulted in a real high class mag that entertains and enlightens AT THE SAME TIME. Subscribing to the Tribune will be money well-spent, but what will also be money well-spent will be donations to the magazine's indiegogo. After an incredible amount of hard work, the KT is on the verge of making it as a real going concern - it can keep operating. But the proprietor has accumulated debts that need to be repaid if that's to happen, so the fundraising is on, and anything you can spare will be greatly appreciated to help keep alive the brilliant magazine that you'll be subscribing to! The indiegogo site goes into more depth about just what the funds are being raised for, and includes a video which features Helen Razer, played by me.

Lastly, Bide magazine, a brand-new quarterly digital magazine of society, culture, politics, and basically the entire scope of human existence. It is a sophisticated little corner of the web for lovers of reading to lose themselves in, and it's run by my friend and well-known genius Anna Spargo-Ryan. For an annual subscription you pay $10 which is OBSCENELY cheap, and if you help it thrive, I shall be privileged to keep contributing certain whimsies to it.

Of course there are heaps more than these, worthy of support, but these are three that I'm involved in that, if you like what I do, I think you'll find are worth keeping afloat. Sometimes it can seem that the media is asking a lot, when you can get so much content without paying, but really, subscribing to any of these outlets is actually pretty damn cheap - it's just a different payment model than slapping a few bucks down at the newsagent. And all of them will provide entertainment, information, discussion, debate and perspectives you might not have seen before. If you want smart people to keep giving you the benefit of their smartness, you have to play your part. I, and my colleagues, depend on you. Do give it some thought.

(oh and buy tickets to my show too)