STUPID SEX

“I just don’t see any reason to be a feminist,” the young woman walking behind me declares to her male companion. “Not in today’s world”.

            She obviously hasn’t heard that the average salary gap between male and female graduates doing similar jobs increased to fifty per cent last year. She’s also obviously never clicked on one of those pop-up porn ads on the internet.

            The nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries were defined by the inability of our moral and ethical maturity to keep pace with our intellectual curiosity and technological innovation. In the nineteenth, machines and engineering were going to make everybody’s lives better; we promptly began sending children to work in factories and down coal mines, while we got a head-start on polluting our environment.

            Then came the twentieth. No sooner had Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, et al revealed the beauty of sub-atomic science, than we used their discoveries to create the most terrible weapons ever devised.

            Now we’re able to link the world’s computers – and therefore their users – in a grand, universal mind. Like all minds, beneath the surface of this one races a strong current of sex. Not, in itself, a bad thing – except that our universal mind appears to be a drooling, sexually retarded sociopath.

            Click on one of those ads – or, like the academic authors of The Porn Report, just Google “free porn” – and you’re immediately confronted by sites with names like “Eighteen and Abused”, and “College Girls Exploited”. Although we’re assured the girls are all over eighteen, most look considerably younger.

            Once upon a time, in order to see a young woman kneeling naked on a bathroom floor while a muscle-bound goon relaxes his grip on her throat just long enough to make her drink a dog-bowl full of her own urine, you had to actually be looking for it.

            It’s naive, I know, to expect much porn to depict real, loving, joyful sex. Fair enough but, far from love, most of this stuff seems to express hatred – worse, contempt – of women.

            Follow the links long enough, and you can end up somewhere called “ZooTube”. You might think this is a site devoted to amusing footage of our furry friends; you’d be wrong. It caters to men for whom the gagging, strangulation, hair-pulling, face-slapping, spitting and name-calling of “regular” porn is no longer degradation enough; men so jaded they can only be turned on by seeing women fucked by dogs, horses, and anything in between.

            I’m not strictly anti-porn. Done properly, it can be a source of fun for couples and release for singles. But a lot of porn used to have an edge of naïveté that’s been lost as it’s become more extreme; it’s crossed the line from sexy to ugly. Me, I love women – and it’s in no way a turn-on to see them treated so brutally.

            Internet porn is as much a sign of our moral retardation as the nuclear arms race was last century. It’s little wonder we can’t have a grown-up discussion about issues like gay marriage; it’s got less to do with religious belief than the fact that, when it comes to sex, at least half our species are morons.

RUSSELL BRAND'S DRUG CRUSADE

It finally happened. Tonight, for the first time, Russell Brand really made me laugh. Was it one of his eloquent, witty descriptions of his scrotum? His always hilarious hair? No, sadly it was his earnest documentary about drug and alcohol treatment.

            Russell, you see, is a convert. Having realised the admirable accomplishment of getting, and for a decade staying, clean, he now thinks that the way he did it – residential, abstinence-based rehab – is the only way; and (ironically for a guy not averse to taking the piss out of religious faith) he spruiks it with positively evangelical zeal.

            What could have been an informative and powerful documentary was marred by Brand’s puritanical insistence that only one road leads to sobriety. We were treated to the spectacle of his visit to a busy methadone clinic, where he talked over a softly-spoken addiction specialist. If you’ve ever heard a Christian debate a gay Buddhist you’ll know the tone of the discussion – “You’re a nice person, and I love you, despite the fact that everything you do and think is not only wrong but evil”; that sort of thing.

            The real irony is that his own documentary highlights the flaw in his thesis. We begin with his immediate motivation for making the program – the death of his friend, Amy Winehouse – and end on the story of a middle-aged addict who Russell tries to help into rehab (we learn over the end-credits that she checked herself out after only three weeks. Oh, well, it’s her, not the program).

            While lamenting that he wishes he’d been able to do more for her, Russell somehow misses a glaring fact: at the time of her final relapse, Winehouse had been clean for more than five weeks after completing a residential rehab program.

            And that’s the problem with abstinence-based treatment for heroin addiction – as opposed to alcoholism: it renders relapse more dangerous. While the methadone Brand demonises has its faults (that’s another discussion), it does have one prodigious benefit. If you’re on a maintenance dose, your first slip off the wagon is much less likely to kill you.

            None of this stops him sashaying into Parliament and preaching his gospel of abstinence before a committee on the drug problem – his testimony strewn with the phrase “We believe” (While we’re on it, I know Russell can afford a suit. I’ve even seen him wear one – if there’s a red carpet or a talk-show host nearby. Yet, when addressing his nation’s parliament on one of the few things he takes seriously, he appears in distressed jeans, singlet and Stetson, dripping with cheap jewellery. Go figure).

            He’s right about one thing, though. Once the beast’s on your back, it’s never really off again. When he showed a video of himself, back in the day, bent over a strip of foil smoking heroin, all I could think was: “Good god, what a waste of perfectly good smack; has he never heard of syringe-outfits?”

            Now, I don’t mean to imply that Brand’s preferred treatment never works. Some people are capable of facing and wrangling the demons that led them to addiction, over twelve weeks, whilst in the depths of withdrawal-psychosis. Others need the time afforded by methadone. In both cases, the majority of people who begin the program will fail and relapse.

And there’s the point. The aim of treatment is to keep the minority capable of reforming alive long enough to do it; and to minimise the harm done by the rest to society and themselves. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. Abstinence is always the goal of drug rehabilitation, but to achieve it you have to survive. You do what works – anything.

Related Posts: http://tyrannyofglib.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/perhaps-shell-die.html

                          http://tyrannyofglib.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/cap-says-lion-tamer-on-it.html

REAL MEN II - Treat 'Em Mean

“Man, she’s like a princess or something,” are the first words to emerge, with the two men, from muttering shadows beyond my neighbour’s fence-line. “Guys would treat her like a treasure” (You hear all kinds of poetry sitting on your balcony at three in the morning).

            “Nah, mate, I treat her like shit, bro”. You’ve seen this guy before: body almost square; that awkward steroidal gait, arms stuck out forty-five degrees – the closest his biceps will let them get to his sides; no-neck bucket-head shaved high and tight, fudged up bristle on top; all chin and forehead. “She’s dying inside – she tells me all the time”.

            It’s not a drunken confession. This type of guy doesn’t drink much – too many carbs. No, the behemoth is bragging. He’s proud of himself.

            Why (Not, why is he proud of himself. You can answer that just by looking at him)? The question that screams at many a man and most women is: why would any woman subject herself to that? What’s the attraction?

            My friend, Parkstreet, has touched on this (Go to www.kentparkstreetblog.com and type “The Lovable Rogue” into the search field; highly recommended). Despite his many faults, however, the lovable rogue of my friend’s blog is at least entertaining. I know: my mother married two of them. But what hold does this brute exercise over a woman – let alone one with the choices our culture offers to beauty?

            It’s not a rhetorical question; I really want to know. Parkstreet and I aren’t the only two guys to have racked our brains trying to figure it out. And evidently loverboy’s companion is struggling with the answer too.

            It can’t be that he’s spectacular in bed. Women in a position to know tell me juicing gym junkies soon lose the ability, even if they retain the interest.

            Some would say money, but it’s not that either: he’s on foot. Although Hulk isn’t drunk, his mate obviously is. The only drinking holes within walking distance have been shut for hours, yet they haven’t taken a cab or driven home – whatever money he has left-over after gym fees went on the brand-name shirt stretched across his beefy back.

            So, I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind betting who does, though. It’s the guy whose shoulder the woman probably cries on when He-Man’s not around; maybe the one who, at present, is trying to talk him into behaving like a human being.

            Maybe she’ll run away with him. Wouldn’t that be lovely? Nice Guy gets his treasure; the woman gets someone who’ll treat her like a princess; and knucklehead gets to be with the one he truly loves – his reflection in the gym wall mirror. And they all live happily ever after ...

            ... Nah.

            Laurel and Hardy fade beyond the farther fence-line, voices mingling again with the darkness. I drain my coffee mug and step back into my own shadows. Maybe if I stare at the ceiling and groan long enough I’ll eventually get some sleep.

VILLAGE OF THE SPAMMED

I lost a reader today. No, not that way; he simply decided that social networking is no longer worth the risk to his privacy. You can understand his concern. If this was any other country – the USA or Britain, Russia or China, with an enormous, well-funded state security apparatus – you might share it.

            It wasn’t meant to be this way, was it? We were going to live in a global village. The free exchange of information, we were told, would pave the road to the New Jerusalem.

Right now a monomaniacal antipodean misfit seeks South American asylum, spouting all the while his messianic belief: that absolute freedom of information will absolutely free us all. His acolytes include human-rights lawyers, celebrities, and all manner of academics and idealists. The similarity of his rhetoric to that of John Calvin seems to have escaped them.

Not too long ago social media was going to free the Middle East. Facebook would roar, Twitter would tweet, and tyrannies would topple from Tehran to Tripoli. It's a nice story. Did wonders for share prices and advertising campaigns in New York and Silicon Valley. The reality was different.

Social media didn’t stop Egypt’s President Morsi appointing himself effective Dictator last week. Nor has it prevented his enactment of a new constitution – one heavy with Shari’ah Law. Whether Egypt’s new constitution passes or fails at a referendum, social media will have little hope of averting the likely consequences: either a brutal government crack-down, or a vicious civil war.

We won’t mention Syria. No amount of tweeting can help where China and Russia have money and the US has no interest (or any combination of the above).

 No, Facebook will not free the world any time soon; but what about privacy? At the moment our profiles are used to fashion ads for ourselves and our friends. Social media is a store, and we are the products. In Australia you’re more likely to be spammed than spied on ... for now.

Governments – authoritarian and “democratic” – have been quicker than activists to learn the real lessons of the internet. A century ago, Irish Nationalists feared infiltration of their groups by government agents. Nowadays it’s easier to train a few bloggers. These can then go online, monitor opposition activity, and disseminate propaganda.

 I don’t buy, sell or bank online, so I’m reasonably safe in that sense; but what about personal information? I make no secret of my past: drunk, junkie, and wastrel. In fact, I rather trade upon it – a kind of demented Dylan Moran of the blogosphere. I’m no longer doing anything illegal. My life, as my art, is an open book.

However, my network contains a fair cross section of political activists, artists and drug users. The right kind of government – or corporation – could use my profile to find them, and either arrest them, or follow them to bigger fish.

Conversely, imagine a government using the same techniques as Google and Facebook to create a flexible, intelligent, insidious and effective censorship system.

Freedom of information is a double-edged sword. As anyone knows who watches reality TV, some of the highest-security prisons have cells with transparent walls.

CHARACTER IS DENSITY

Julia Gillard here at home, David Petraeus in the US; the political circus is putting on the Character Show again. Are we being a little precious? Have popular perceptions of integrity always been synonymous with leadership and ability?

            I know people who claim to have bribed one of our modern luminaries when he was still a union leader. No suggestion that the future Prime Minister actually pocketed the dough. He was just the point man in charge of greasing the skids; it’s the way things were done – the price of a smooth ride in business.

            Without suggesting this is right, or should continue, it’s worth remembering: if this man had been exposed and precluded from office, this country might still be trapped in a 1950s mindset and a 1930s economy.

            John F Kennedy was not only a serial adulterer, but rode into office on his father’s electoral corruption. Ditto Lyndon Johnson (although, he did his own bribery). In fact, it was partly by virtue of his dubious associations that Johnson was able to ram through the most far-reaching civil rights legislation since the Emancipation Proclamation (on a related note, Martin Luther King Jr also had trouble keeping his trousers on).

            This brings us to Kennedy and Johnson’s tragic successor: Nixon. He should have been one of the truly great. As Vice-President he effectively ran the US for much of the prosperous 1950s while Eisenhower was occupied having heart attacks. Domestically, he was a “compassionate conservative” before it was a buzzword; on the world stage, a true statesman.

            Sadly, in Nixon’s case, character was destiny. He inherited a war and, in war as in politics, knew only one way to fight – totally. Escalate; deal from strength; carpet-bomb anything that looks like an enemy and sort out the collateral damage later. “Tricky Dick’s” major flaw wasn’t dishonesty or corruption – it was paranoia.

            And so on throughout modern history; from Franklin Delano Roosevelt – adulterous product of the Tammany Hall Democratic Machine – who steered the US out of the Great Depression, propped up Britain during the first years of World War II, and provided the USSR with the money and materiel to defeat Nazi Germany; to Thomas Jefferson, the spendthrift who fathered umpteen children on his slave, Sally Hemmings; and, of course, his namesake, William Jefferson Clinton.

            We could mention one historical exception, a man whose private life was blameless to the point of boredom; who neither drank nor smoked; and who set out a political ideology early in his career and delivered on every word of it – after becoming Chancellor of Germany in 1933.

            Our Federal Opposition should be careful. The Character Show is a Pandora’s Box. Any points are scored at the expense of the public’s respect for politics in general.

            Still, the Prime Minister is in a spot: the scoundrels I’ve named had real accomplishments to offset their faults. In trying to govern by sound bite, she has largely avoided that encumbrance.

            Her real problem is that recent allegations fit squarely with a narrative she herself created – that of a Machiavellian schemer who knifed her predecessor, lied to the nation, and made a deal to retain government then welched on it. She did this to herself.

            Now she’s doing it to the rest of us.

666

I saw it rise from the water. In the spirit on dosing day I watched its pitching progress. Belly drag. All fins and stumpy legs.

Aeons. Shifting form. Always the reptile eye. Glinting from the undergrowth; hiding under rocks while extinction rained from the heavens. Emerge ...

Faltering upright. Grows. Overspreads. Instinct in a self-aware veneer.

I saw it kill. Blunt stones. Sharp sticks. Tooth and nail. Nails and iron shot. First, to live; then, to have. I saw it grasp and hate. I saw it reason.

Pleasures it found. Music hath charms to sooth the savage beast. Building and creating thought to think away its animal.

I watched it make a world and create itself a God (How long, Oh LORD, must our souls go unavenged?) Behold, I bring forth fruit from the vine and bread from the earth; I clothe you in the skins of your brothers.

Horsemen came to kneel before it: Pestilence and Famine, War and old blind Faith; rider on a pale horse, Death.

Groping for the Wisdom of Days it brought down fire from the skies. Drunk with its own wonders it raised from the earth an image unto itself. Copper and plastic; web of dripping silicone. All authority was given to the Beast and its Image. And none shall buy or sell who will not bow before it.

Life or death. Blessing or cursing. Love or fear. Behold, I lay them before you. Choose.

Shadow or the heart? Our reptilian brain. Us.

We are the Beast.

CHILD ABUSE ROYAL COMMISSION - ABOUT BLOODY TIME

It’s mildly disturbing to discover you agree with Christopher Pyne about something. The use of the confessional seal to protect paedophile priests is an appalling anachronism. The Catholic Church is one of few still employing it – some denominations even practice public confession.

            Cardinal Pell has responded in his usual arrogant fashion to news of the Royal Commission. He defends the sanctity of the confessional, and looks forward to the investigation sorting the “real cases” from the “exaggerations”.

            Until now, while usually disagreeing with him, I could respect the Cardinal-Archbishop for his mind and achievements; so much for that ...

I used to respect another bishop, the one in charge of the diocese where I grew up. He was friendly, approachable, and good with kids. At all the milestones of my catholic upbringing – reconciliation, first communion, confirmation – there he was.

His local subordinate was the Monsignor. There are photos of me with both these men on my big days. The Monsignor used to come occasionally to my grandmother’s house; sit in her kitchen, drink her tea, and eat her biscuits.

I don’t know if either of these bastards, when he put his arm around me and smiled into the camera at my first communion, had heard a specific confession of what was done to me. I don’t even care. They knew what had been done to other boys, and had moved the offending priest to another diocese. None of the parents were ever told.

Both are dead now. Both taught the doctrine of Purgatory. The revelations of recent months make me want to believe in it: I’d like to think they’ll spend some time there.

In announcing the Royal Commission the Prime Minister used an unfortunate phrase: ‘Those who averted their eyes from this evil’. Averted eyes aren’t the problem; aiding and abetting abuse is the problem. For years the church hierarchy actively covered up child abuse, not merely protecting abusing priests but moving them on to find fresh victims.

Even now, there is anecdotal evidence of them hindering police investigations. Their method of dealing with victims – and here Cardinal Pell is personally culpable – is to throw money at them and shut them up. Given that one frequent outcome of child abuse is drug abuse, that hush money has done even more damage.

 And still the Cardinal sings his old tune: It’s all a media smear campaign; priests need to be protected from the moral trauma of disclosing criminal confessions; and anyway, other people do it too. I’m waiting for him to mention the recent BBC troubles.

He’s right in one respect. The Royal Commission must, and will, investigate abuse in more than one organisation. It should search as widely and as long as is necessary to root out this scum from our institutions – the perpetrators and their collaborators.

Is the Catholic Church unfairly being made the face of this issue? An institution which regards itself as the world’s spiritual parent and arbiter of public morality deserves to be held to the highest standard: it succeeds or fails above all by example.

Ordinary Catholics, their children, and the majority of honest clergy who serve them deserve better. Perhaps a little public penitence would do some good.