Big Brother Kate and homophobia

The recent wave of homophobic comments by celebrities (Lleyton Hewitt, Big Brother Kate, John Laws) wouldn’t have happened under Keating and won’t happen once Costello cleans some of Howard’s culture out of government.

I think Kate’s comments weren’t bad except for the strength of her reaction and the “ew” comment, which was childish. There is nothing wrong with having a negative emotional reaction to something. I appreciate her honesty: most people would have taken the easy road and kept their homophobic sentiments to themselves. Which is a lot more common than progressive people would like to admit. And progressive heteros shouldn’t buy into the story that gay people don’t sense homophobia just because it isn’t expressed. If you intellectually believe something, but your gut reaction points you in a different direction, you have to make a decision over whether you are going to try to condition your gut reaction so that it corresponds to your intellectual position. That is where morality comes in. If Kate believes her emotional reaction to be morally wrong, she should change it. My reading is that, like many people spouting socially conservative positions, she was really asking for someone to provide her with a convincing argument she could take on board in her own mind to bring herself back from her homophobia.

American lived religion vs Jesus’ philosophy

I wonder what the explanation is for Americans’ identifying with Christianity so much while actually having beliefs and behaviours that are very different from those of Jesus. This article seems to suggest it is related to a knowledge gap. Which isn’t actually an attack on this mode of belief in itself - this form of Jesusless Christianity can constitute a legitimate religion in itself. The article is an attack on the possibility of intellectually reconciling the philosophies of Jesus and American Christians, not on the lived religion of American Christians itself.

The fact that such a division does exist between source text and belief means that the religion is on the tipping point of a new stage in evolution.

Where apparent contradictions like the American Christian Paradox occur, often it’s a matter of forces balancing each other out. Eg people who can’t be assertive with salespeople put up an aggressive front at first. It’s difficult to believe that Americans are innately four times more murderous than Europeans and that religion spreads amongst them as a way of countering their barbarity. It’s plausible that part of the story is that living in a violent environment with few government protections against poverty force people to rely on religious institutions for both material welfare and psychological reassurance. And, in the other causal direction, having your public mechanisms for dealing with poverty splintered into rival groups with different world views makes people less likely to want to collaborate on a unified welfare program. People perform charity not only for sheer altruism or even self-oriented feel-goodism, but also to assert hegemony over other people and their ideas.

Related to this is Peter Singer’s discussion of how the USA is the most religious rich country but has the strongest separation of Church and State, and how this constitutional prohibition arose precisely because the strength of religious belief necessitated it.

Coke spiking, GSAVE

Bin Laden picked up my idea.

Meanwhile the “War on Terror” has been renamed the “global struggle against violent extremism”. So they can call it GSAVE. Or Global-SAVE. More reassuring than WOT. And it doesn’t sound like the title of a science fiction movie. They should give it an unpronounceable symbol like Prince.

Once again people in defence (Gen Richard B Myers) have a more nuanced, peace-appreciative view of the world than their rightist civilian leaders. Not having to actually be involved in war makes you more eager to instigate war.

Breakdown of homophobia rates

The Australia Institute has done a study asking people if they agree with the statement “I believe that homosexuality is immoral” as a measure of homophobia. 35% of Australians agree.

More homophobic:
Males
Elderly
Uneducated
14-17 year old males
Poor
Baptists
Evangelicals
Rurals
Moreton area of Queensland
Central and South-West Queensland
Burnie/Western district of Tasmania

Less homophobic:
Females
Young people
Educated
Rich
Catholics
Anglicans
Uniting Church members
Irreligious
City-dwellers
Inner-city Melbourne
Central Perth
Central Melbourne

Who would have thought that 14-17 year old males were such a bastion of moral rectitude!

It’s interesting that the white middle-class enclave in the south of Sydney is more homophobic than poorer areas that are more ethnically diverse. Experience of one form of diversity encourages people to be more relaxed about other forms of diversity.

Gaps between the homophobic rates of males and females in different groups denotes some sort of phenomenon. Women need to support gay males and gay males need to support women if homophobia and misogyny are to be eradicated. They stem from the same thing: a disgust for femininity. If women are far more tolerant than men in a certain group, it may mean something like the homophobia is less intense, or that homophobia is likely to decrease in the future. Where women are just as homophobic or even more homophobic than men, like in the Hunter region, you’ve probably got something to worry about. Self-loathing translated into intolerance for other minorities is dangerous.

Me being Zen

Visited Mum. Her face was all bruised and her front window smashed from her latest drunken escapade. Somehow I stayed in a relaxed mode and resisted the urge to offer any advice or lecture her and it made for a really constructive, empathic conversation. I refused to enter the subconscious borderline dance she does with people where she puts herself in the child-being-lectured position.

Every time I see Chloe I’m always left with this feeling of empathy for all other animals. Like I even feel like the cockroaches in my kitchen are individual personalities just doing their own thing and I can respect that.

At yoga the teacher slipped in a bit of politics during our meditation (right when we’re suggestible!). She said something like “There are three levels of peace that build on one another. The first is the peace you get from your connection to the Universe. The second is peace between individuals. The third is peace between nations. You can’t have peace between nations without the first two kinds of peace.” Cool.

Celebrity Sex Tapes

Have developed an interest in celebrity home made sex tapes. Porn bores me and even the celebrity porn that goes for longer than a minute gets the scroll-through treatment but I have some kind of compulsion to show it to people. To actually put it together on a DVD for other people to watch in non-sexual settings. It’s not a curiosity-driven need to take gossip magazines’ voyeurism to another level or a tall poppy syndrome thing. It’s something about the common currency celebrities represent - a place in the collective consciousness - and showing a subversive side to it.

So far I’ve downloaded:
Eve having this guy use a dildo on her
Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee in a car and on a yacht
Paris Hilton with some guy in night vision

According to Wikipedia the following also have sex tapes out there:
Colin Farrell
Jenna from Survivor
Tonya Harding
Jordan
Rob Lowe
Fred Durst
R Kelly
Kate Ritchie


I’ll write a commentary on them later.

Terrorism unleashes dormant racism

Arabs in the US are being secretly detained in dragnets, non-white Australian citizens are being deported and now you if you’re not white in London, you’d better make sure you’re wearing weather-appropriate clothes or face possible extra-judicial execution like Jean Charles de Menezes. In fact try not to even get a tan.

And another message to little John Howard: decoupling Iraq and heightened terrorism danger by saying there was terrorism before Iraq is simplistic. It’s a matter of degree, not either-or, black-and-white like you and Bush see it. And remember the Sari Club in the Bali bombing was an apartheid club targeted for that reason.

Subliminal marketing, consumer rationality

Universal is marketing that shitty Akon “Lonely” song really well. I’ve been falling asleep and waking up with it in my head and just realised why. They play ads for the ringtone for it during the last hour of Big Brother Uplate before I crash out.

Marketing and consumerism in Australia is becoming more Japanese. Not ashamed of being corny, unsubtle, etc. Maybe our children are getting their hands on more of the nation’s disposable income and a higher proportion of our consumption is centring on superficially, temporarily appealing goods. If rationality of the individual consumer is thus eroding there must be an effect on the efficiency of our economy (if you actually believe in the “rational consumer” myth).

Euthanasia and power attachment

Western babyboomers’ advocacy of euthanasia is related to their attachment to power. In the normal course of a life you start powerless and vulnerable and end so. People who spend their lives wielding power over the rest of the world must fear being reduced to dependence. Imagine surrendering yourself to the mercies of a generation whose world you fucked up.

More Howard terrorism synchronicity

And now he pops his head up in Tony Blair’s press conference after the 2nd set of London bombings. And he can’t resist bringing up the Ashes. I’m half-watching it now and already twice he’s broken into a shit-eating grin about cricket.
Howard’s terrorism synchronicity

Bird flu anti-viral stockpiling plan

Last night I had an extended daydream about buying anti-flu drugs, how many doses I would buy, which members of my family and friends I would give them to, where to store them, keeping it secret, etc. Reading this I’m thinking of faking the flu and stockpiling Tamiflu.

John Roberts, Separation of Powers and regression of civilisation

If I were American I would be concerned about the fact that Bush nominated John Roberts a few days after handing him a victory in one of his most important legal battles (the battle over the legality of the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals). Doesn’t make you feel confident in the separation of powers.

It’s intriguing to see the American Empire take another small step on its way to regressing into a dark age. Apparently Roe v Wade will only be hanging by a single vote now. People in the northern states must be regretting the civil war. You’d wish your progress wasn’t slowed by the half of the country that thinks Satan invented science.

But extreme polarisation in the US is a particularisation of the broader human mission to develop through dialogue and leave no souls behind. The whole human race can only develop as fast as the most spiritually retarded, like a train going as fast as its slowest carriage. We must have compassion, not frustration.

PBS on neurovariant genocide

The situation in the US re shunting the mentally ill into jails.

Conservative-appointed justices’ slide towards the left

It’s interesting how the US experience mirrors the Australian experience where justices appointed to the highest court by conservative governments slide towards the left during their tenure. It’s glib (and very tempting) to say that the legal and social complexities that justices at this level are exposed to mature their thinking.

Unempathic motivation explanations

The lesson here, Johnny, is that public opinion has reached the point where you can’t just waltz up to bombing victims, cameras in tow, and expect a nice photo opportunity anymore.

People don’t buy the story that the terrorists’ motivation is to give “a perverted, twisted and totally immorally depiction of extreme Islam.” Huh? If he had any empathy at all he might be able to imagine some motivations that aren’t nonsensical.

David Lynch Foundation

David Lynch wants to promote world peace through teaching children worldwide how to do transcendental meditation. Cool. The personal is the political, and not just in the traditional sense. If all humans felt connected to their soul we wouldn’t suffer the kind of power deficits that lead to domination and over-consumption. If all the monkeys have high serotonin then they can’t be herded into hierarchies. This is a sign of our shift into the Age of Aquarius.
David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-based Education and World Peace

Howard’s terrorism synchronicity

John Howard has a strange synchronistic connection with terrorist attacks. Like how he was in Washington during 9/11 and now he’s scheduled to be in London.

On another note it was just not good timing for the embarrassing display of guffawing and mutual masturbation at the Howard-Bush press conference. The smug laughter couldn’t have been more provocative visually. And no, Johnny, your election win was in spite of the levels of public support for the Iraq war so pull your fucken head in and stop making us a terrorist target.

More neurovariant genocide

Police have told Australian governments not to dump their mentally ill on them.
Neurovariant genocide

EU parliament coke central

Significant traces of cocaine were found on surfaces in the European Parliament. The same thing happened with the Bundestag and I think the House of Lords a few years ago. The coke thing might help explain the lack of empathy and sociopathic tendencies that creep into decision-making by people in power. If they mix it up with a bit of ecstasy we might have some more humanism in our politics. Bob Carr should divert some cannabis sniffer dogs from train stations and retrain them to sniff for coke at Macquarie St.

Rich people, trees, submission and moisture

This study by Jamie Kirkpatrick from the University of Tasmania suggests poor people try to compensate for their lack of power by removing flora from their homes and rich people find release from being in power by allowing their homes to be surrounded by nature. This is analogous to poor people going home and beating their wives and kids and rich people (especially lawyers and psychiatrists) always wanting to be submissive with sex workers. It’s funny how our non-public shadow ying-to-the-yang side needs expression.

I wonder what effect the difference in ambient moisture levels in rich and poor suburbs has on our physiology and psychology. The air seems more electric when there’s more humidity, like something’s gonna happen.

Neurovariant genocide

We have to have a word for neurotypical persecution of neurovariants. Genocide will do for now. Transferring us en masse from proper care to jails is a form of genocide and should be prosecuted in the future. According to this article there are 18 000 neurovariants in NSW jails. Not all of them would actually need to be in care; if proper care were afforded in the first place many of them would have been rehabilitated and be functioning.

51st state

We haven’t had a US ambassador for 6 months. Then again why send an ambassador to a protectorate?

More Howardian language analysis

More language trickle-down from Howard. According to Andrew Robb, Australians will be “comfortable” with the IR changes. *Shudder* And if you’re not relaxed and comfortable, you mustn’t be Australian. You must be un-Australian.

Howard’s clique must have little mini-scripts handed out to everyone else in the parliamentary party. One of them goes:
- Job creation
- Low inflation
- Low interest rates

Right exploiting footsoldiers’ insecurities

It’s true that Amanda Vanstone has been handed a poisoned chalice with the Immigration portfolio and it must be true that she personally finds her own government’s immigration policies distasteful, but there’s no excuse for doing Howard’s dirty work. Her own career must mean more than her own morals.

It’s disgusting when rich old white men are able to deploy people from other backgrounds as their cheerleaders. The right are always able to find a self-loathing member of a minority to betray their own people. And in Phillip Ruddock’s case they exploited his personal need for approval and fellowship to get him to convert from an Amnesty International member into someone even more eager to denigrate refugees than Howard.

Moron of the day: Claudia Rosett

This unreadable article was actually written by a journalist with a Master’s in English. Unwieldy subclauses ahoy! Appears not to understand the meaning of the words “epistemological” and “enjoin”. And try translating this:

Any conclusions or even inferences about contacts between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda are subjected these days to the kind of metaphysical test in which existence itself becomes a highly dubious philosophical problem, mired in the difficulty of ever really being certain about anything at all.

My attempt: “People questioning the nexus between Saddam and al Qaeda lately have been questioning the concept of existence.”

And metaphysical does not equal ontological, stupid fucken bitch.

Pathologically principled

People are always shocked that terrorists are otherwise conscientious. To be a terrorist you have to be pathologically principled. If you don’t give a shit about the world or are only interested in yourself, you’re not going to be a terrorist. You’re going to be drinking your life away, driving a 4WD, going shopping or accruing power to yourself.

"Not afraid"

Website called "we're not afraid" has address "were not afraid" (as in "but now we are"). It's embarrassing the childishness of the language Westeners use in reaction to terrorism. The "I'm not scared" thing conjures an image of a five year old with their hands on their hips, jutting out their chin. "Defeat the forces of evil" sounds like you're about to reach for your lightsabre. "Attack our way of life" (besides being insensitive to people who would love to have our "way of life" but never will) sounds like the kinds of explanations of motive litigants on Judge Judy use.

ACTU ad, co-opting language

Love the ACTU ad where the evil-looking boss goes “We’ve all got to be a little more flexible.”

We have to tackle the oppressors head-on to move the discourse to the left over the long term. (Of course you can get cheap party-particular electoral wins in the short term through small-target “third way” -type trickery.) One way of directly countering the right is by co-opting their language just as they’ve done to the left.

The way the boss sneers “flexible” in the ad is a direct attack on ownership of this term in the context of industrial relations. Euphemisms like “labour market flexibility” will be rendered inoperative if the left succeeds in making “flexible” a negative.

Assumption, abstraction, left-brain, Levinas essays

My talent for sniffing out assumptions is really the other side of the coin of a deficit in my intelligence: the ability to work in an abstracted system before I anchor its symbols. I have trouble trusting the process. It’s a kind of inflexibility. Like, “I refuse to engage with this system till I understand the whole thing.” It has to do with impaired left-brain function.

I did a whole course on Emmanuel Levinas, didn’t understand a thing, wrote my essays stoned and came 3rd in a class of about 40. This mostly reflected the Emperor’s-new-clothes wanking that passed for lecturers, and, I suspect, Levinas’ work itself. But having my left-brain lit up through THC allowed me to manipulate abstracted symbols in a way that was compatible with the system without actually understanding the symbols or system.

Ken Livingstone v Rudolph Giuliani

I wonder how the bombings in London will affect public/media perceptions of Mayor Livingstone compared to how 9/11 affected Giuliani’s standing. The human need for father figures/gurus in the face of trauma and uncertainty was responsible for Giuliani’s unmerited rehabilitation. Reaction will be informative given their respective positions on the left-right political spectrum. So far I think Ken Livingstone’s language has been measured, sophisticated and wise.

Time scientology article

Scary article from Time about scientology. There’s a bit about John Travolta being blackmailed into staying with threats of revelations of his “promiscuous homosexual behaviour”. So maybe Tom Cruise knows L Ron Hubbard was into amphetamines, barbituates and hallucinogens but has other reasons for defending scientology?

More fucked “science”

Study by Bruno Frey correlates high levels of TV viewing with life dissatisfaction. Correctly acknowledges circularity (which causes which?). Then goes on to say that highly employed people are unhappier with more TV, but unemployed people are not, and draws the bizarre conclusion that this proves TV makes you unhappy by chewing up your time.

OK, a hint: if you’re a harried executive watching so much TV that it interferes with your work, then this is dysfunctional behaviour in itself. A healthy executive doesn’t choose to replace large slabs of work time with TV for no reason.

TV is unhealthy but this study is worthless.

Moron of the day: Barry Haase

Kalgoorlie MP Barry Haase for criticising Toni Collette for writing a letter to John Howard demanding an end to cruelty to sheep and saying that people lose their "rationale" (sic) the further they get from having "dirt under their fingernails". Interesting coming from someone who was a caterer and company director. Propagating the myth that Australian farms are actually run by rustic men in Akubra hats rather than corporate fucks.

J Michael Bailey Bisexuality Study IV

This will be my last post on this but I'm just really over pseudo-science. It turns out J Michael Bailey is into homosexual eugenics - or "parental liberty" (as he calls it) from the misfortune of having a gay kid. He's been forced to resign from NU for academic misconduct and check this discussion for some dirt on his own proclivities!

Problems with J Michael Bailey Bisexuality Study
J Michael Bailey Bisexuality Study II
J Michael Bailey Bisexuality Study III

J Michael Bailey Bisexuality Study III

Good comment on the study, misogyny and J Michael Bailey’s history of attacking transsexuals.

Problems with J Michael Bailey Bisexuality Study
J Michael Bailey Bisexuality Study II
J Michael Bailey Bisexuality Study IV

J Michael Bailey Bisexuality Study II

Another thing the bisexuality study is implying is that in guys that say they’re bisexual, 50% are gay, 33% are asexual, 17% are hetero and 0% are bi.

Problems with J Michael Bailey Bisexuality Study
J Michael Bailey Bisexuality Study III
J Michael Bailey Bisexuality Study IV

Problems with J Michael Bailey Bisexuality Study

Gerulf Rieger, Meredith L Chivers & J Michael Bailey at Northwestern University have done a study, “Who are bisexual men? Sexual orientation and sexual arousal in men" questioning the existence of bisexuality in men.

Problems:

1) Involves response to 2-dimensional images. This leaves out smell, touch, energy, etc. Two-dimensional porn is a *very* specialised arena of human sexuality and is highly abstracted from actual sexuality. It carries varied cultural connotations.

2) Genital response was measured. Genitalia can only express part of the response.

3) 1/3 of the “gay”, “straight” and “bi” men had no response. By the logic of the study (genital response = sexual attraction) these people are asexual. Are a third of gay men lying, hiding their asexuality?

4) The other 2/3 of the men had a genital response to one sex that was “4 times” the response to the other sex. Ie, *all* sexualised men have a sexual orientation comprising a 4:1 ratio one way or the other. So all sexualised men are bisexual in a 80% to 20% ratio? By this reasoning the study actually proves there is *only* bisexuality or asexuality, and that the bisexuality is remarkably fixed. Doubt it.

5) Ignores emotional, societal, economic, etc motivations.

6) Ignores free will.

7) Does not provide for possibility of sexual orientation cycling over periods of time.

8) The authors have found that bisexuality exists in women but not men. Unlikely. This fact could be an entry point from which to dig the mistakes out of the study. What differences between men and women are causing these differences between measurements of arousal in men and women?

J Michael Bailey Bisexuality Study II
J Michael Bailey Bisexuality Study III
J Michael Bailey Bisexuality Study IV

McDonald’s defensive

McDonald’s Australia must have a really shitty PR company. The series of ads last year with the CEO Guy Russo whingeing into the camera about the “Supersize Me” doco were nothing short of embarrassing. The language he used to attack it (something like “if you’re silly enough to eat McDonald’s everyday of course you’ll end up sick”), his whiney tone of voice, the fact that they actually ran the ads in the first place. Now they’re running ads where they get people in the street to eat their deli rolls, then surprise them that it’s McDonald’s food (“Wow I can’t believe it’s Macca’s”, which equals “This doesn’t taste as shit as normal Macca’s food”).

Splitting the ALP II

An article relating to the division in the ALP support base.

Fuckwit cabbies

Over being judged. Just assaulted a taxi driver who didn't stop for me. He was forced to stop at the lights. He locked the door and I reached in the window, unlocked it said "What's ur problem?", grabbed his can of red bull and threw it at him, ripped his glasses off and tried to break his rearview mirror. Had just waited half n hour in King's Cross for a cab and was forced to walk all the way up to the Wall where I met someone I used to do sexwork with.

And I don't feel the slightest bit of remorse. I hope he enjoys driving around wet the rest of the night. My finger is bleeding but I'm getting old and have no time or inclination to apologise for existing anymore.

Crystal meth projection

Ice freaks tune into the hypocrisy channel. They project their feelings onto everyone else. It’s a function of paranoia. The paranoia is a peculiar brand that makes them source the blame for their self-esteem issues in the other rather than themselves.