Thinking about “Sexing up animal rights: is it wrong?” By Katrina Fox and Stephanie Honor Convery in Overland

What exactly is the link between sex and animal rights? It’s weird to even be asking that question, but inspired by the debate in Overland between Katrina Fox and Stephanie Honor Convery, I’ve been thinking about whether it’s okay to use sexualised imagery to raise awareness about animal cruelty. Sex sells, so where do we draw the line over what it should be used to sell? This is such a complex issue, and seeing as Katrina Fox and Stephanie Honor Convery are far more qualified than I am to comment on the issue and they express their thoughts so eloquently, you should probably read what they have to say on Overland for a more considered analysis – but for now, here’s my two cents.

So, the issue is this. In September, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) announced plans for a porn site, peta.xxx, to draw attention to their cause – provoking, of course, a lot of debate about the questionable ethics of using images that objectify women for political advocacy. It’s not the first time PETA has caused this kind of controversy – they’re known for using sexualised images to get attention. From the (comparatively more innocuous) “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” ad campaign to this ridiculous “vegetarians have better sex” ad, which is so gross it was banned from the Superbowl, they have a long track record of this sort of thing. (more…)

Sometimes I think I can kind of trick people into thinking I’m cool. I try to impress people with my ability to sing along to Rage Against the Machine and my love for Fight Club, and sometimes I even convince myself that I’m a little bit rock and roll. But other times, I just come right out with it: I wish Taylor Swift was my best friend.

Listen for a minute. It’s easy to dismiss her and think she’s all sugary sweet and stupid. I mean, a) she’s a young female pop singer, b) she hangs around with that whole Disney Channel crowd, c) she sings about boys and high school, and d) she’s so pretty, with her long blonde curls and a wardrobe full of sweetly romantic dresses. But seriously? She’s just about the coolest girl in the world. She’s smart, she’s hilarious, she has class, and she has guts. And yeah, she’s so nice – but she also has just the right amount of bitchiness that I think we’d get along just perfectly. (more…)

Books by women I read this year

Given all the fascinating debate that has been going on this year about gender in the literary world (if you’re not up to speed, Sophie Cunningham’s essay in Kill Your Darlings issue 6 is pretty great), I thought I’d do a little tally of how many of the books I read this year were by women.

It’s not necessarily an accurate reflection of my entire reading life – I was consciously trying to read more female writing, both because of all the debate and for a now-aborted Masters thesis about female coming of age and female experiences of love and madness – and admittedly most of what I read in the newspaper, The New Yorker etc would have been by men – but still, here’s the verdict: of the 51 books I read this year, 35 were by women. That comes to 69%, which I think is pretty healthy!

Books by Australian women I read this year

But when I look at books by Australian women… it suddenly goes down to 8 books. And that’s only because I’m claiming MJ Hyland as an Australian writer, which I’m not even sure she identifies herself as. Look, I’m not the most patriotic of sorts and we all know how much I long to be in New York, but I do think it’s important that I try to support and engage with the Australian literary scene a bit more, and especially the female presence within it. So, inspired by Ms Angela Meyer of Literary Minded, I’m committing myself to the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012. (more…)

I just haven’t been able to stop watching this video. It’s completely brilliant and beautiful – a young girl called Riley paces angrily around a sickly pinkified toy aisle and rants to her father about the toy industry’s narrow view of gender roles. She seems so exasperated: “Some girls like superheroes, some girls like princesses! Some boys like superheroes, some boys like princesses! So why do all the girls have to buy pink stuff and all the boys have to buy different color stuff?”

She also shows a pretty astute awareness of marketing. She knows that the stores are “trying to trick girls into buying the pink stuff instead of stuff that boys want to buy,” but she seems so baffled as to why. My favourite part is probably her dad’s resigned sigh at the end: “That’s a good question, Riley.” Sometimes the way children see the world is the most logical, and this is a great example of how sometimes we need to take a step back to see how absurd something really is. (more…)

I’m feeling a bit low tonight. So! Let’s make the night better (for me at least) with some of the things I forgot about in my last link-roundup (and maybe a few more that came up early this week)

Jack Heath spent a year reading books by women by Jack Heath on Literary Minded

Over on Facebook, a few of my brilliant writer/editor type friends (like Sian Campbell and Elizabeth Redman and Erin Handley) and I have been having a bit of a discussion about this article. Obviously there has been a lot said about this topic this year, and the debate is so complex and so interesting it’s hard to know where to start to add your own two cents to it. Something interesting Erin brought up though is that perhaps a big part of the issue isn’t that people don’t read many books by women, but that men don’t read many books by women. So it’s pretty interesting to read about how Jack Heath set himself a challenge to only read books by women for an entire year, and what he got out of it. I think it’s pretty admirable, especially seeing as it meant he couldn’t read books by his favourite male authors, and some of his insights from his experiences are quite interesting. Anyway,  I think anything that helps spread awareness of this issue helps, and this post has been getting loads of attention, so that’s great. (more…)

Things that got me thinking this week:

On Christopher Hitchens, death and dying

Trial of the Will by Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair

Interestingly I read this essay by Christopher Hitchens on Friday morning, just a few hours before it was reported that he had passed away. Even more poignantly, his article is about death and the pain of dying, or, more accurately, the pain of not dying. He questions the veracity of Nietzsche’s famous maxim “whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” That might be true in the case of heartbreak or walking away unscathed from a car accident, but Hitchens talks about the reality of intense suffering in terminal illness, describing his own ordeals and the experiences of the late political philosopher Sidney Hook (who just by the way, happened to be  Jon-Jon Goulian’s grandfather), who survived a horrifically painful stroke and fervently wished he hadn’t. (more…)

Andrej Pejic modelling bras for Hema, and why I think he is just the coolest

Okay, so anyone who has spent any time with me in the past six months or so will know that I’m completely enthralled by Andrej Pejic. I think he’s an absolute genius, and he inspires me in a lot of ways. Firstly, in the obvious sense – he inspires me because of his utterly captivating, otherworldly beauty, the way he challenges boundary after boundary, the way he continues to take everyone’s breath away with every new outfit, every new runway show, every fashion editorial.

But maybe more than that, he inspires me because he just seems so completely serene while he does it all. Obviously I have no idea how he really feels inside – but you get the sense that he’s genuinely just really comfortable with who he is, that he actually doesn’t care what anyone thinks. He just does his own thing, and he does it without being all defensive and “hey fuck you man!” about it. He’s only just turned 20, but there’s something really mature about they way he seems to really know himself.

Anyway. So this week he’s making headlines for one of his latest gigs - modelling push-up bras for Hema lingerie. Which is pure genius,  and with Andrej’s sassy, sardonic sense of humour you can just tell he loves the whole idea of it. A lot of the things he says or does, it’s like he’s secretly laughing, and you can just tell he kind of thinks this is a scream. It’s kind of on the same wavelength as the incredibly clever Dermablend concealer ad Rico Genest (better known as Zombie Boy) starred in, and I think it’s very cool. (more…)

For the past few years, I have been involved with a small Melbourne-based group called Friends of Kolkata, which raises money and awareness on behalf of the Institute of Social Work in Kolkata. Together we run several projects to help improve the livelihood of women and children living in poverty in Kolkata, including a scholarship program, a day care centre, and computer and English literacy classes.

This year has gone fast, and we want to thank you everyone who has supported us in any way. Your interest and contributions are so valuable and make a real difference to lives of women and children in Kolkata who need it the most. And trust me, these kids are adorable.

The year began with our trip to India, which was an incredibly valuable experience that allowed us to reconnect with ISW and see for ourselves how fantastic our scholarship recipients are doing. Since our return, we’ve been working at getting our new website, online store and online donation system up and running – so make sure you check it out if you haven’t yet!

Here’s what else we’ve been doing this year: (more…)

Here are a few articles I read this week that got me thinking, and I’d implore you to click on through.

We’re all real women … what do men or size have to do with it? by Clementine Ford on The Drum

One major problem with the whole “real women have curves” thing is that it still places female body types in adversity with one another. Instead of saying it’s okay to be any size, it just reverses the typical preference for super-skinny types and disparages those women. Saying that having curves is “better” or “more real” and “more womanly” than being skinny doesn’t help anyone. This is such an interesting and complex issue, and Clementine Ford expresses all these ideas quite eloquently. Importantly, she points out something that is easy to miss, but that’s pretty salient to the whole issue: the “men prefer curves anyway” argument that always comes up just reinforces the idea that male desire should be integral to the way we feel about our bodies.

(more…)

In the first of my ’3008 Bookshelf’ columns for 3008 Docklands magazine, I reviewed The Man in the Gray Flannel Skirt by Jon-Jon Goulian.

Jon-Jon Goulian is one of the strangest people I’ve ever met. He’s also one of the sweetest, and his utterly lovable memoir is both heartbreaking and heart-warming, leaving you with an intense desire to give him a big hug – and maybe go out shopping with him.

For anyone who has ever felt like a fish out of water, Goulian’s story strikes a familiar chord. On the surface, there was no real reason why he should have felt out of place. Growing up in the sunny beachside town of La Jolla, San Diego, surrounded by a family of doctors and lawyers and political philosophers, and blessed with a sharp intelligence and talent for soccer, he was all set on a very conventional path towards success. (more…)