Peoples minds are warped

11 Dec 2014

You know what I think about Yumi Stynes taking her baby out in just a nappy?

Hot baby.  As in on a 30 something degree day the baby was hot.

That’s it.

OMG BABIES IN NAPPIES

Know what I think about all the judgemental types banging on about what is right and respectable and proper and appropriate and correct and and and and and and….

You’re the problem.

We live in a world where we are judged constantly.  We always have.  Our parents and grandparents generation lives with ‘What will other people think?’ so deeply ingrained in their psyches it’s practically cultish.

The simple fact is – it’s none of your damn business.  If you are so hung up on what other people are thinking about a baby’s right to bear chubby arms and rounded tummy you have a problem. Not Yumi. Not her husband.  Not her baby. And obviously not Johnson’s marketing team.

The cuteness. Total ovary explosion.

Yumi dressed her baby as a baby.  Not a fashion accessory. Not story bait. Just a baby.  Anything anybody projected on to that one simple act is representative of their own minds – and people – it wasn’t pretty.  A lot of people have twisted, nasty, petty minds that are smaller than a very small thing.

Children get approximately five years between birth and school to live freely.  They can wear what they want, where they want, when they want.  Want to wear your best dress to childcare? Go bonkers. Want to sleep in your ballerina tutu? Go bonkers? Want to go barefoot? Go bonkers.  Want to wear your Buzz Lightyear outfit to soccer practice? Go bonkers. Want to wear a swimsuit over your jeans and tshirt? Go bonkers.  Want to wear stickers on your cheeks to grocery shop? Go bonkers.

After those five years – they enter the system.  They wear uniforms. They develop friendship circles who influence their style and fashion choices. They play sports. Grow taller. Grow older. More uniforms. Then the uniform of non-conformity. Then the uniform of young adulthood. Employment.

But before school? Let them be free to dress however they freakin’ well want.

We rail against magazines that tell us what size to be, we petition department stores for longer shorts for girls and somehow, are completely oblivious to the judgemental bollocks we spill out. Our prejudices, our insecurities, our pettiness all spewed into the universe on social media, at the water coolers, over coffee about a baby that dressed like a baby.

Packing for a weekend away

Before we judge Yumi’s parenting – think on this, what example are you setting? What makes your choices about dressing children ‘right’ and others ‘wrong’? Why of all the issues there are in the world did you choose this one to be the thing that you articulate an opinion on?

And in the meantime – calm the fuck down. Please.

Pssst… I hear her parents sometimes use CLOTH NAPPIES said no baby ever

    

Isn’t it lovely? #humanrights365

9 Dec 2014

If you’re one of the lovely people that read my blog because they are interested in watching my brain vomit its content into the universe to see what lurks within – hello!

If you’re one of those lovely people that read my blog so that they can mutter all about how it’s all very well for me to bang on about things like marriage equality, bigotry, asylum seekers, building toilets, supporting third world development and the like but it doesn’t affect you and quite frankly you think my lefty do gooding rants are misguided and ill informed, and think there are problems we can focus on that are much more important even if you can’t name one right now – hello!

But isn’t it lovely that we’re all able to be here having an opinion?

Isn’t it lovely that I can wave a water pistol around my local park and nobody shoots me?

Isn’t it lovely that me and my well meaning white family can go about our business with nobody taking a blind bit of notice of any of us or making any assumptions about us apart from thinking that the mother seriously needs a hair cut?

Isn’t it lovely that somebody can ring Nick at work tomorrow and he can say “Sorry, I don’t have the authority required to answer that question” and nobody will fire rocket launchers at him as he drives home that night and then attempt to kill his family?

Isn’t it lovely that when I want to have a wee or a poo I can go and do so in complete safety, even if my privacy is violated by a two year demanding a hug?

Isn’t it lovely that I can freely send into the universe my opinions on the politics of this country, put my name to it and not find myself strung up by my wrists, whipped with electrical cords and systemically raped for traitorous behaviour?

Isn’t it lovely that I can work on the assumption that my daughters will have full access to a solid education without ever having to fear that their school bus will be boarded by armed militants who put a bullet in their head because they are females wanting an education?

Isn’t it lovely that the life expectancy of the four of us is pretty damn good because we have access to food, water and medical assistance which help us potter along to a great age?

Isn’t it lovely that when Nick and I decided to get married we were able to do that despite the fact that he was brought up as a Methodist and I was brought up as a Catholic?

Isn’t it lovely that we happened to be of the heterosexual persuasion and never had to worry about coming out, staying in or any other such thing?

Isn’t it lovely that if I decided I wanted to go to a church to celebrate the birth of the man they call Jesus this month, nobody is going to spit on me, hurl abuse or even hit me in front of my children for believing something different to what they do?

Isn’t it lovely going to bed and not having my house torpedoed during the night and my death written off as collateral damage, and my neighbours forced to flee and then exist for years in refugee camps as a bunch of politicians work out which group of men with guns they are siding with?

Isn’t it lovely that I was lucky enough to be born with enough checks in the right boxes to be able to take my human rights for granted?  A lucky lucky zygote me!

Isn’t it lovely that most of Australia lives like that? Not all. No, not all.

Isn’t it lovely that the United Nations committed to a charter of rights for every individual on the planet so that those not blessed by happenstance can hope for the same freedoms that I do, knowing that they are not alone in working towards that truth?

So next time you’re weighing up whether or not somebody has ‘the right’, the answer is ‘yes’.

If we are all human, we are all equal.  Each and every one of us deserving of the same rights.  And if one single person doesn’t enjoy those same rights – then we are not equal, and we should all be standing tall and demanding those rights irrespective of race, religion, gender or our personal opinions.

If you deny the rights of any – you are tacitly agreeing to your OWN human rights being overthrown should circumstances change.  The very thing you think doesn’t matter because you don’t think it important, is often the one thing that would transform a life.  If circumstances were different, that transformation could be your life.

Every right matters.  Every single human right matters. Even if you don’t want it for yourself. That’s always a dumb argument.

Human rights are everybody’s business. All of the time.

Isn’t it lovely?

    

Signs you’re not getting that Santa photo this year

1 Dec 2014

So it’s December first and even though I swore I’d never be the kind of parent that had their children have Santa photos – my first kid was so adorable I couldn’t walk past Santa without propping her next to him and getting the photo.  To be fair, I was hard pushed to walk past anything and not photograph her next to it. In fact, sometimes I just photographed her without a prop and be damned with the consequences.

Then I had another baby – she was also ridiculously cute and thus it continued.  One big photo journal of my kids generally being adorable.  And then one year Tully wanted Mum and Dad in the photo or she wouldn’t have her photo taken and we launched in so enthusiastically we probably scared Santa. Because we have embraced the fact that kids LOVE things that aren’t cool or hip or trendy or in any way dignified.

But this year, there are some signs that not even the presence of the parentals is going to get our Cassidy to pose with Santa.

1. She is terrified by people dressed up as ketchup bottles handing out Heinz samples.
2. She is terrified by people dressed up as Pandas advertising WWF.
3. She is terrified by people dressed up as Koalas protesting fracking.
4. She is terrified by people dressed up as Kermit playing a banjo.
5. She is terrified by people dressed up as the Monkey at Monkey Mania.
6. She is terrified by the original Banana’s in Pyjamas – ie: people in costumes not animations.
7. She is terrified by Santa.

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A tale of domestic violence

25 Nov 2014

Nearly twenty years ago, I had a girlfriend who was regularly beaten by her partner.  She’d turn up in the middle of the night looking for somewhere to crash, she’d call asking to be collected from the hospital or occasionally ring me in the middle of the day – determined that this was going to be the day she left him and could I come and help her move.

He’d ring and demand she come home or turn up on the doorstep refusing to leave. Call me all manner of delightful names. I’d call the police, he’d leave and around and around and around it went.

I never turned her down.  Even when I found it hard to believe initially because he seemed like such a nice guy.  But I saw the bruises. I saw the x-rays.  I cried with her when he aborted her baby with a punch to the stomach.  I tried to get her to report him to the police or at least go to a counsellor so she had some professional support behind her but she always refused.

I was completely out of my depth.  I felt that I really did not have the experience to help her in any meaningful way. I  was flying blind and keeping a secret that was big and brutal.  But she was adamant.  She was worried about what people would think of her.  She said she knew that she just had to be a better wife and accept that sometimes she made him so mad he couldn’t think straight.

And then she got pregnant again. And she was determined that this was it. She told him that if she ever touched her while she was pregnant she’d report him. He slapped her for the insolence. She reported him.  He got a slap on the wrist and advised to stop mixing his booze and his bongs and focus on ‘the missus’. It gave him a fright though and while he was an arse to her verbally, he didn’t hit her again until she was about 6 months pregnant.

I collected her from the hospital. Broke her nose and her cheek bone slipping on the stairs she told the nurses and due to her bulk she’d fallen awkwardly against the stair rail.  The nurses didn’t believe her.  She didn’t even bother lying to me.  I took her to her sister’s house and her sister held her tight as she begged her to leave him.  She didn’t.

What she did do is make a deal with him.  If he never touched her or the baby again, she’d pretend the last few years didn’t happen and she’d cut off contact with everybody that knew.  Provided he promised to turn over a new leaf and never hit her, never drink and never do drugs again.

He agreed.  He swore that he was a changed man and that he would do anything he could to make sure that she and their daughter were safe.  That day I saw her at her sister’s house was the last I saw her.  The last her sister saw her. She changed phone numbers and moved house and the one time I saw her in the street she refused to look at or talk to me.

I saw him plenty of times boozing it on in town, often in the embrace of women that weren’t her.

Take the oath

I heard later that his friends knew about it, but were of the opinion that it wasn’t their business and that they’d always said she was a bit of a handful.

Victim blaming. Victim shaming.  The most powerful weapon in the domestic violence armoury.

The fact is the only person to blame for violence is the person committing the act of violence.

Things have changed a lot since then.  There are more support services. You can report domestic violence and the police will act even if the victim doesn’t want to file a complaint. Hospitals have more reporting responsibilities.  And people know now that domestic violence happens at all levels of society – it’s not something ‘other people do’.

I still wish, particularly with almost twenty years more life experience under my belt, that I had done more. That I had been somehow able to change her view that she was responsible for his behaviour. That I’d broken my promise to keep her secret from our circle of friends.

Domestic violence still kills one woman a week.  One in three women will suffer sexual or physical violence at the hands of somebody close to them.  One in four children are exposed to domestic violence.

Speak up. Speak out.

    

Not all eyes are created equal

24 Nov 2014

The Tullinator recently failed her 4 year old vision test.  We weren’t too bothered but because vision is ‘a thing’ for us genetically, we wanted to get it checked out straight away.  Our GP (who is several kinds of brilliant for all sorts of reasons) referred us to an Ophthalmologist who turned out to be all kinds of brilliant too.

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WTF Australian politicians?

20 Nov 2014

Cheeses.

Former Labor leader Mark Latham won’t shut up and what’s even more distressing is that a publication like the Australian Financial Fucking Review PAID THE MAN to write that crap.

Current Labor leader Bill Shorten doesn’t say anything at all about anything.  No matter what barbaric bullshit the current government thinks up he just sits around saying absolutely fucking nothing.  NOTHING.  The list is so freakin’ long of things he hasn’t said he couldn’t come back from it if he tried.  He’s basically waving a banner that say “YEP – I AGREE WITH TONY. WHAT A LOVELY MAN. LET’S ALL VOTE FOR TONY.”

Julie Bishop is denying feminism. Jacqui Lambie is getting more airtime than the squeaks from Christine Milne. Penny Wong can do no wrong but isn’t allowed to say much that isn’t about Adelaide because GOD HELP US IF ANYBODY SAYS ANYTHING SENSIBLE ABOUT FEDERAL POLITICS AND ESPECIALLY NOT A POLITICIAN THAT PEOPLE LIKE.

Tony Abbott just lurches from one petty moment to another with the glee of a pantomime villain (but with nowhere near the quality of script) and the fact that Scott Morrison actually was birthed by a human, is married and has children of his own is absolutely UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE.  There’s a man that doesn’t mind that he gets written into the history books as akin to Hitler, as long as he’s being talked about. That’s not politics. It’s ego.

And yes I think the previous Labor government should punch themselves in the throat for all that schoolyard bullshit “Rudd Gillard Rudd he said she said but today I’m the captain” that completely devalued anything useful they did or did not achieve for Australia.  Who could see through the petty vindictive politicising?

You know why Gough Whitlam’s funeral resonated?  Politicians with passion for leadership and doing the best thing for the country – he might not have been perfect but in 3 years he did good things for Australians.  Not good things for coal companies or media moguls or just his ego.  I thought John Howard was as low as we could go but it turns out he’s a fucking role model for young people.  At least he had an opinion.  Even if he was a bigoted dick.

And Paul Keating.  Why you started this sorry mess of mandatory detention I’ll never know but for the love of the dictionary – come back and throw some banana noses around parliament and get people fighting in parliament – not doing all this dodgy personality based behind closed doors bullshit.

Even Malcolm Fraser, he of the faffy faffy back in the day is saying CHEESES PEOPLE – THIS IS RIDICULOUS. I bet he’s not even voting Liberal anymore.  I bet he didn’t expect the country to be more backward in the 21st century than it was in the FUCKING 70s.  I hope he lives long enough to see our redemption though we’re probably doing nothing for his blood pressure.

And you know what – this rage of mine is impotent.  I’m blogging because it’s considered bad form to stand on street corners and shout profanities to the skies these days. I can’t do anything until the next election except write my letters to politicians and WEEP BLOODY BLOODY TEARS because Tony Abbott’s office is the only one to ever write back and thank me for my time.

We have compulsory voting.  We’re all part of this. This is what happens to a country when we choose political leaders based on what’s in it for me.  What can I get out of this?

Nothing in the end my friends.  Fucking nothing.  No extra money, no rights, no environment, no education, no support for the elderly, and absolutely no fucking credibility on the global stage.

This is what ‘we’ voted in.  Yay us.