Posts by Emma Hart
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Well it's not my story
I think my acknowledgement of that was inherent where I said 'it's not your story'.
Would have had more impact if you'd actually said it was your story.
It's not my story. I am not 'you'.
Perhaps this pretense is evidence that you're still trying to escape from something.
About there? Cause, y'know, what the fuck ever. It didn't work for you, okay. But don't tell me what I'm doing like you know better than I do. It's condescending.
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You know what kills me, before I even get to the stories? The 'Hide My Visit' button. Of course, but also... god. That's horrible.
That got me too, Danielle, and the detailed instructions on how to clear your cache. It speaks volumes.
Makes me remember my wife hasn't seen her father since she was 9.
The last time I was home, my mum gave me a bunch of my stuff to take away. In among all the old photos was a birthday card I don't even remember receiving from my father, sent when he was living in Brisbane. There was some confusion about when it was sent, but the postmark told me he knew how old I was, but not what year it was. He asked for a photo of me - he hadn't seen me for about six years. And because it was a card for my fifteenth birthday, I know I didn't send it, and he died a couple of months later. Alone.
I sat there for about half an hour, holding that card, trying to work out how the fuck I felt about it.
My girls have been asking anxiously why I'm crying.
I'm planning to get my shit back together some time before my kids get home from school.
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Thanks, guys.
Part of growing up for me was really wanting to understand how this could have happened. My mother is a very smart, strong woman. I think the most important thing to realise is that it's never bad all the time. Sometimes it's lovely - I hate to be clichéd, but I think Once Were Warriors did a good job of portraying that. And as Deborah says, it is very, very difficult to 'just leave'. You don't have to be weak or stupid or lazy to stay when it might mean losing your job and your home, shifting your kids' schools, avoiding your friends and family. You just have to be human.
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In lo-tech news, "Samoan film censor opens door for lesbian vampires" says the Harold. And then chooses a screengrab of a male-female couple to illustrate the story.
Well, unlike, say, Milk, in Lesbian Vampire Killers, the nasty lesbians get their comeuppance. With stakes. There's probably nothing in the least Freudian about that at all.
And now I have a strange urge to rewatch Bordello of Blood, which is something I never thought could happen.
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As for the "safe adults" thing, it riles me a bit because for years, even as qualified registered teachers, we weren't allowed to so much as change a child's clothing without witnesses.
At about the same time, my partner was a volunteer at our children's kindergarten, running the library there. He wasn't vetted, but there were tight and awkward controls on what he was allowed to do - so if a child tried to sit on his lap, he had to push them off, there was no hugging or comforting allowed. I knew lovely young men at the time who decided not to go into teaching specifically because of the fallout from the Civic Creche case.
What these authors are doing is admirable and I believe necessary as a wake up call, to stand up and say, this attitude where every single person your child comes in contact with is a suspected paedophile until proven otherwise is damaging and wrong. It's well past time we stopped using 'paedophilia!' as a way to shut down discussion.
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Continuing to keep shunting things over here, Thomas has an ongoing list of ISPs and their position on the filter. Oddly Telstra seems to be backing away from their original position.
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You want chocolate snobbery? Course you do. Now you can buy Schoc on-line. The strawberry and black pepper is awesome.
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I should note that the DIA has made a change to that letter. Now, instead of saying
We understand that Internet NZ is happy with our plans
it says
Internet NZ has requested further information which the Department will provide.
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Also of images of adults who are understood to be depicting juveniles.
This is an area I do have concerns with, because it's a not-unpopular fetish.
Also, what's a child? If it's 'anyone under the legal age of consent', what do you do with images of fourteen year olds produced in Canada, where 14 is the age of consent?
I don't wish to in any way imply that the DIA is blocking things which are borderline, just to convey that it's not always easy to identify whether you're looking at a 'child sex abuse image' or not.
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Okay, I've asked a couple of questions of the poor guy whose name is on the email, and he's promised to get back to me. These are they:
Does the DIA expect or require ISPs to inform their customers that their internet connections are being filtered. Do you have any issues with the fact that the trial was conducted without informing the people whose connections were being filtered?
Also, given this justification:
The distribution and viewing of images of this abuse – wrongly called child pornography – is trading in human misery. It is the result of real children being sexually abused and exploited in the worst possible way. Each time anyone anywhere in the world accesses one of those images, the child depicted is victimised again.
why does the filter cover written and drawn material, where there is no evidence that any child has been harmed in its production?