A friend took this photo of a PETA advertisement he saw recently:

PETA thinks the only way to get people to care about the exploitation of animals is through the exploitation of women. Animals aren’t objects for our consumption and pleasure – women are!

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In celebration of International Women’s Day:

A bit cheesy with the 007 theme, but I really appreciated the statistics on women performing 2/3 of the world’s work but receive only 10% of pay and own only 1% of land.

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Is there an award for being the most insensitive, arrogant, misogynist asshole in the world? Because if there is, I have a candidate. And if there isn’t, I’m about to start up this award and mail a larger-than-life sized trophy in the shape of a cunt to Julian Assange.

I think I may even declare him my mortal enemy.

What’s the latest, you ask? The comparison of his legal issues to being gang raped. Uuuuggghhh!!!

Okay, to be fair, it wasn’t Assange himself who said this awful thing this time. Nope, it was his mother. Maybe she’s the source of his misogyny?

In her words:

“It’s a real David and Goliath situation,” Christine Assange said.

“You’ve got misuse of the European arrest warrant, first time ever that it’s been used this way.

“I would say that what we’re looking at here is political and legal gang rape of my son.”

Still, I don’t think my anger is misplaced. He still maintains that this case is a ridiculous waste of his time and continues to compare his political persecution (and I’m not denying that he is being politically persecuted) to the very types of sexual assault that he himself is accused of committing. He demonstrates no concern that the women accusing him would have felt violated by their sexual encounters with him.

To clarify (because there’s so much misinformation), the Judge in his case has summarised the claims against him as:

That in one case Julian Assange “deliberately molested the injured party by acting in a manner designed to violate her sexual integrity”.

His actions were allegedly violent and included holding her arms, forcing apart her legs and putting his body weight on top of her to prevent her movement, later rubbing his erect penis against her body.

Claims by the second woman are that he had unprotected sex with her while she slept, knowing she would not consent to unprotected sex and therefore constituting rape.

That’s some serious shit. This man needs to be held accountable for these actions and a message needs to be sent everywhere that the violation of autonomy is never okay, regardless of how much sexual pleasure it may provide you.

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I’ve avoided reading many news pieces about that whole 17 year old girl and nude photos of St Kilda Saints footy players affair as I felt like too few were questioning the manner in which it was reported that she obtained the photos. Of course, after the initial reports were published, the players implicated denied ever having met the girl, blah blah blah.

Then, it was stated, that the girl circulated the photos as an act of revenge for the players impregnating her the year before after meeting the players at a school football clinic.

For some strange reason, every media piece I happened across seemed more concerned with the violation of the players’ privacy in the release of the nude photos and very few have questioned how on earth does a 17 year old girl become so embedded and embroiled with a football club?? The poor girl has been on numerous radio programs in which she apologizes for her behaviour and everyone wants her to accept blame for becoming involved with the club and its players. But the club has denied any involvement with her. And then, when evidence was overwhelming, denied any misdealings with her.

But then, she released a video showing the 47 year old player manager, Ricky Nixon, climbing mostly naked into the bed of the hotel room he’s been paying for her to stay in for a couple of months. He admits to taking alcohol to her room, that there were drugs in the room, etc. Here’s a video summarizing:

Well, finally, a voice of reason emerged yesterday in an opinion piece in The Age:

There is nothing like the heady mix of footballers, too much grog, sex and drug use to send the media into a feeding frenzy, and the events of the past few exciting days have those elements in spades. Like watching a car crash, I found myself drawn to recent goings on even though I am appalled at the behaviour of the footballers, Ricky Nixon, the AFL and, last but not least, the media.

You will note I do not include the teenager at the centre of the storm, for the simple reason that she is, to all intents and purposes, a child. Children are supposed to have certain protection in society because it is considered by Parliament they are incapable of making adult decisions. Be under no misapprehension, this person is a child, irrespective of her physical appearance. As a person under 18, she cannot vote, drink or drive a car, all supposedly pursuits requiring a degree of maturity.

As reinforcement of this argument, we have all witnessed over recent months her misuse and abuse by all and sundry. Is it any wonder she seeks to assume some control over her situation and the way she is portrayed, no matter how misguided?

First, we have the fact that appears undisputed – that a number of footballers had sex with her. Although she appears to be at the age of consent, many would still regard her as a minor.

I am shocked at the vituperative nature of the attacks upon her, yet on the other hand the footballers concerned seek sympathy for being foolish enough to jump into bed with her. Give me a break! They met her at a school footy clinic. They had sex with a child, no ifs, no buts. They don’t deserve our sympathy.

Fraser goes on to say:

St Kilda Football Club put the child up in a hotel for a while and when she ran out of credit, the Herald Sun, out of compassion, paid for a couple of days’ accommodation in the immediate aftermath of Nixon’s ”inappropriate dealings” (whatever that means).

The Herald Sun said it was so concerned for the child’s welfare that it had her solicitor present to confirm that the offer of two nights’ accommodation was for her well-being, not as an inducement. Talk about arse covering, if one participant in this sorry and sordid saga had proper concern for this child, she would be given counselling, not a motel room where she was left to her own devices. One wonders if this offer will be made to every homeless child wandering the streets of St Kilda.

On any assessment, this child is damaged and apparently on an unstoppable course of self-destruction. She is in urgent need of help, not condemnation.

And where is the AFL in all of this? Its much vaunted new code of conduct and respect for women seems to have left the country with Nixon.

Really, all I have to say is: fuck yeah! Thanks for that, Andrew Fraser.

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A vehement supporter of freedom of information, I’ve been defending Assange whenever the hot topic of his arrest comes up. Today was the first time I’ve questioned my support for the Wikileaks founder.

In an attempt to defame the world famous outlaw, journalists have been on a mad hunt for anything they could use to smear the profile of Assange, apparently in an attempt to show him what full transparency feels like. Well, they found some online dating profiles.

And it turns out Assange has a very low opinion of women. Slighted a few times, Jules? In his OKCupid profile, Assange describes himself as:

“Passionate, and often pig headed activist intellectual seeks siren for love affair, children and occasional criminal conspiracy”

And what qualities in a siren is he looking for exactly?

“Such a woman should be spirited and playful, of high intelligence, though not necessarily formally educated, have spunk, class and inner strength and be able to think strategically about the world and the people she cares about.”

But apparently that type of woman isn’t available in white, Western countries, as Assange adds the caveat: “women from countries that have sustained political turmoil” since

Western women are “valueless and inane”

On another profile, this time on CouchSurfing.com, Assange describes himself as “very protective of women and children”. Hmph.

Thanks, Jules, but I don’t need your protection and maybe the reason you haven’t found love is because you’re self-obsessed and overly self-congratulating. How could anyone live up to the high standards of adoration you’ve set for yourself?

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New research in Australia has emerged that has found that the vast majority of women in Australia think of their vaginas as unattractive. And that’s putting it lightly.

In a survey of nearly 800 Australian women (read: large, credible sample size), nearly half of all respondents said they had considered or would consider cosmetic genital surgery. A whopping 75% (!) said that they did not want their partners looking at their vaginas during sex, since they felt they would be a “turn-off.”

Half of the group, which had a mean age of 34, worried that their partner would find the look or odour of their genitals ”repulsive”, while one in four feared the size or appearance of parts of their vulval region were unattractive or inadequate.

Labioplasty is on the rise in Australia and more and more women are suffering such high levels of anxiety regarding the appearance of their lady parts that they can’t relax during sex.

One doctor relays a story of a patient:

”In my private practice I had a 16-year-old girl who came in and said her 18-year-old boyfriend told her her vagina didn’t look like the images he saw on the internet.

”That’s often where the beginnings of anxiety start.

”Young women are very confused.”

Unfortunately, the PhD candidate behind the research, Frances D’Arcy-Tehan, did not go as far in her policy recommendations as to question the role of pornography in shaping society’s expectations of women. A major driver of technological development, pornography has also been at the root of female subjugation and self-loathing. The issue is not only that women’s self-perception is being affected by pornography, but also men’s perceptions of women. That an 18 year old boy, instead of being ecstatic at the opportunity to have sex with his girlfriend, would question the appearance of her genitals is alarming. Because of this pervasive and perverse industry, boys are coming to expect not only certain standards of beauty from women, but also standards of behaviour in the bedroom, much of which has little to do with women’s own pleasure.

This is discouraging news.

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The World Economic Forum has released its Global Gender Gap Report, in which it ranks countries according to gender equality measures. Canada came in 20th. 20th. This is even behind a country in which 40% of men admit to having raped a woman (South Africa).

According to the WEF:

[The] Global Gender Gap Report assesses gender equality in 134 countries looking at economic participation and opportunity; educational attainment; political empowerment; and health and survival. The report examines both men and women’s access to resources and opportunities rather than the levels of resources and opportunities available in a country.

Most admirably, the report judges the countries on actual examples of the gender gap being narrowed rather than the efforts being made to do so.

Here are the top 36:

I was surprised to see Australia at 23rd, behind not only Canada, but also Mozambique. Having just returned from a very lovely three weeks in Mozambique, I mean it no disrespect, but given that the majority of people still live very traditional and rural lifestyles, I would have expected the gender gap to be wider than in Australia. On examination of the country profile, Mozambique ranks high for political (9th) and economic (5th) participation, though quite low for education opportunities (123rd) and health (110th). Not bad for a country that only gave women the right to vote in 1975. Australia, by comparison, ranks 1st overall for educational attainment, but lags in economic participation (24th), political participation (39th) and health (73rd).

Some interesting highlights:

• In wage equality for similar work, the UK ranks 78 out of the 134 countries.
• The US climbed 12 places to enter the top 20 for the first time in the report’s five-year history.
• At the bottom of the list are Yemen, Chad, and Pakistan

According to the WEF, the majority of countries in the rankings have made improvements to the status of women and the gender gap over the last year. Hopefully this is a sign of progress we can expect to continue.

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Last week, celebrity gossip news made the mainstream with the announcement that the Bosnian government was revoking permission for Angelina Jolie’s new film project. Originally sold to the government as a “love story” about “a couple that meets on the eve of the war”, controversy has erupted with rumours that the film is actually about a Muslim rape victim who falls in love with her Serbian rapist.

According to the AFP:

Hollywood trade daily Variety reported that the film will tell the story of a Serbian man and Bosnian woman who fall in love in the middle of the war, but are driven to take different paths.

However Bosnian press reported the movie would be a love story between a Muslim victim and her rapist, a Serb, causing outrage among victims’ groups.

“They no longer have the authorisation to shoot in Bosnia. They will have it if they send us the scenario with a story which will be different from what we have been told by people who read it,” Grahovac told the radio.

The culture minister said that while he could not stop the film from being shot somewhere else, revoking the filming license was a way to “express our disapproval for the shooting of a movie which does not tell the truth and hurts a large number of victims”.

Jolie has already started shooting the film in Hungary and was planning to continue it in Bosnia.

Jolie is in hot water as the writer, producer, and director of the film. Women’s war victims groups have understandably expressed concern to the government:

“This is misleading history. Among thousands of testimonies by women raped during the war, there is not a single one that tells of a love story between a victim and her rapist,” Bakira Hasecic, the head of the Women Victims of War Association in Sarajevo, stated as quoted by AFP. “We will not allow anyone to falsify our pain.”

I understand Jolie is likely motivated by the assured Oscar whispers that come with such controversy, but I have to say this crosses the line. Let’s start by setting aside the ethnic element and the form of the sexual violence in this film, extreme (and genocidal) war rape. Let’s say it’s just a film about a woman who falls in love with her rapist. That is offensive enough. It is apologetic and undermines decades of work on women’s rights. But then to suggest that one of the tens of thousands of women who were systematically and violently sexually assaulted in an attempt to exterminate their ethnic group, to impregnate them with Serbian seed, to sexually torture them for the purpose of destroying not only these women, but their families and communities, could turn around and fall in love with a commander of one of these rape camps – it’s too much.

One rumour is that the love between the Muslim woman and the Serbian man is born during the war after the aforementioned Serbian soldier had brutally raped the Muslim woman and cut off her breast.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found systematic use of sexual violence, sexual enslavement, rape, and torture by the Bosnian Serb armed forces as an ‘instrument of terror’. They declared that a “hellish orgy of persecution” occurred in various camps across Bosnia. Here is one woman’s testimony:

FWS-87 was in seventh grade and a virgin when it began. In court, she couldn’t remember how many times she was assaulted during eight months of torture, gang rape and enslavement.

FWS-50 was assaulted by a Serb soldier armed with a hunting knife. He threatened to slash her skin in the shape of a crucifix if the Muslim woman refused to have sex.

FWS-105 said the drunken men did “whatever they wanted” to her. One bit her neck until she was covered with blood.

FWS-95 wept so loudly in court that her sobs were audible through the prosecutor’s microphone across the room. But she refused to let the proceedings be adjourned.

Here’s another:

Instead of a blindfold, the Serb soldiers bound Enisa’s eyes with their socks. The stench made her throw up, so they hit her until she learned that ‘Serb socks don’t smell’. Seven ‘heroes of the nation’ raped her and beat her for days. At first she resisted, so they brought her to her senses by knocking her teeth out with a rifle-butt and breaking her jaw. When she lost consciousness they would ‘give her a bath’, i.e. douse her in cold water. Terrified that she would be driven mad, she suddenly liked the idea and saw madness as a way out. She began singing Serb songs louder and louder, then dancing with the chetnik who had presumably butchered her husband. The soldiers were dumbfounded. They threatened her, held a knife to her throat, but she only sang louder. Believing she had gone off her head entirely, the soldiers paid less attention to her and she managed to escape, by hiding in a potato sack. When the journalist Seada Vranic spoke with Enisa a few months later, in July 1992, she saw before her a hunched, grey-haired old woman with a contorted face. That was just one month before Enisa’s twenty-eighth birthday.

How likely does it seem that these women would find love from these scenarios??

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After weeks of indecision following the closest-race-in-Australian-electoral-history (probably?), Australia finally has a government.

On 21 August, every Australian went to the polls (because they were illiberally forced to by their rights-denying government) to vote for the new government. Prior to the campaign, Labor leader and incumbent Prime Minister Julia Gillard enjoyed considerable support and was tipped to win rather easily. Unfortunately, that wasn’t how things turned out. With seats split evenly 72-72 and 76 needed for a majority, the next two-plus weeks were rife with closed-door meetings, negotiations, and promise-making between the two major parties and independent MPs making up the remaining seats.

Yesterday, the remaining 3 independents finally announced their decisions on which party to support. Labor just snuck in, making up the 76 seats through coalition with the one Green MP and the promise of three independents to support their government.

Normally, I wouldn’t write about federal politics, much less electoral politics. However, I got to thinking today about what this historical election outcome means for Australia. I decided to make some predictions.

Over the next three years, I predict:

• No real change. First and foremost I want to emphasize that I don’t think much will change. I think this not only because of the instability of a minority government and the fact that the new government will have to negotiate with both the left and right for all proposed policies (resulting in very weak, centrist policies), but also because that’s pretty much the nature of politics. If this election has shown anything, it’s that Australians are hungry for change. Labor lost upwards of 14 percent of their traditional votes to the Green Party this election after years of moving to the right. The two major parties are now so similar in policy that it would be difficult to find one major issue on which they disagree. Australians are ready for decisive action on issues such as climate change, labour laws, same-sex marriage, parental leave, etc and no such action is being offered by either party. Had the new government needed only to rely on the one Green MP for their coalition, we may have seen more accountability to these demands from the people. However, the breadth of the coalition suggests no real change can be expected in the next three years.
• Which brings me to my next prediction: The electorate will blame Labor for lack of change – and the next election will see a decisive swing back to Liberals.
• No change will mean:
  
  • No increase in minimum wage for the next 3 years
  • A paid parental scheme will be introduced, but will be restricted to 4 weeks of minimum-wage pay for new parents and will involve some sort of fine print that excludes a host of people that could use paid parental leave, like casuals
  • Same-sex marriage will not be legalized. It will continue to be considered acceptable for politicians, sports stars, and public figures generally to make homophobic jokes
  • Troops will remain in Afghanistan for the next 3 years. More Australian soldiers will die. National service will not be mandated.
  • No new taxes on the rich or on corporations
  • No new regulation on labour standards that would reverse any of the damage done under WorkChoices to workers’ rights
  • A very, very weak climate change regulation will be introduced that will involve industry self-regulation and limited or no enforcement mechanisms.

What do you think?

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A draft of a forthcoming UN Panel of Experts report has accused the Rwandan army and its allied rebel groups in the DRC (including the AFDL) of committing genocide against Great Lakes-region Hutus between 1993 and 2003. The findings are seminal for confirming the long-debated existence of a genocide against ethnic Hutus occurring at the same time as the Rwandan genocide, in which Hutus perpetrated mass killings and abuse of Tutsis.

About 20 human right officers have documented, through hundreds of pages, what they call widespread and systematic attacks by the Rwandan army and the Congolese AFDL rebel movement.

Those targeted were Rwandan Hutus who had fled into Congo after the genocide against ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda.

But the report says that attacks against Hutus who were not refugees seem to confirm that all Hutus were targeted.

In some regions, it says, checkpoints were used to identify people of Hutu origin and eliminate them – estimating that tens of thousands had been killed.

The report is expected to severely tarnish the international image of Rwandan president Paul Kagame, who led the Tutsi rebellion against the genocidal and predominantly Hutu government of Rwanda in 1994, which ended the Rwandan genocide. However, recent election results in Rwanda that saw Kagame win 93% of the vote with allegations of significant political oppression of opposition groups would suggest this is an image that needs tarnishing if the international community is serious about ending conflict and mass human rights abuses in Central Africa.

The big question is – will Kagame be indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity??

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