Posts by Suze Vermeer
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Danielle,
I wouldn't dream of telling your how to do your feminism. Didn't intend to be homophobic either. I suppose I am interested in the semantics of it all and the idea that thoughts and actions might follow on from words. I know that's the theory. Some men, though, can talk the talk and use all the appropriate language and are still the biggest misoges this side of Playboy Mansion. I have friends around whom I avoid using the c word because I know it offends them, though it doesn't offend me.Deborah, Dyan
Thanks for your comments. I think personal insults in any discussion are out of place, whether they have a gender basis or not. -
Trotter is a provocateur who sometimes goes over the top and sometimes IMHO gets it completely wrong. His writings seem to come directly from the id. Generally, though, I find his opinions stimiulating. Columnists with a brain are rare.
Deborah
I am obviously a cruder person than you, but no less a feminist.
Do you think those descriptions back in the day of Blair bending over for Bush (with the implications of sodomy) are men-hating? -
Thanks Deborah, yeah, I had read that initial comment about J Shipley opening her legs, etc. But I don't believe that metaphor is misogynistic, either.
Craig
I see the media neither as whores nor pimps. It's not that sinister. They are just a group of people captured by their own narrative. The media is a big dumb beast. -
I don't believe Steve Barnes' original flippancy was misogynistic, no.
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This Winston business is a bit of a beat-up. The media are locked in their obsessive battle with him to such a degree that they have developed tunnel vision and are slavering like hounds on a hunt.
IMO he is an irritating, paranoid egotist, but lots of ordinary people, who mistrust journalists anyway, just see the issue as reporters and editors being mean to Winston, who they believe is championing the little man's cause against big business. Sure, this stuff needs investigating but could the media please stop frothing at the mouth?And Danielle,
I thought Steve's aside was funny. I, too, would not want the mental image of J Shipley spreading her legs when I was trying to eat. Just as I wouldn't like to have to comtemplate, say, the "dried arrangement" of a trouserless Rodney Hide. Surely we don't have to find everyone's genitalia appetising? This is a standard comic convention along the lines of the joke: Q: What is the worse thing about the No 69 position? A: The view.Let's keep our powder dry, as it were, for real misogyny.
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Commiserations, Damian. What a magnificent beast, that Tonka. We love our dog Shady so much we can't imagine life without her. I have also had some fine felines in my time, but perhaps not as pom-pom-y as Tonka. (De-furr the vacuuming for a while.) Pets make us more human. And even witnessing scandals and goings-on, they never judge us!!!
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"I find it fascinating that media agencies hire ex-sportsmen and women to be commentators, because very few of them are good. they may be able to notice subtleties of the game that we (mere mortals) can't, but often they can't articulate them."
This is so true. I actually found it a relief to hear the Aussie commentators on the recent All Black Wallabies games played in Oz. They expressed their analysis in a much more viewer-friendly way. I'd rather have no commentator than some of the ex-sports stars we are subjected to. They're nice enough but not eloquent enough.
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Che
Want to acknowledge your doing well out of a sort-of Once Were Warriors background. You obviously have grit and brains. Others of you, who were brought up by working solo mothers who did well, that's great: the John Key experience, and I mean that sincerely. If the mother has a work ethic and values education, solo motherhood is not a disaster for children. I hope my son is not going to be statistic either.I brought up a child (from when he was 3) as a working solo parent, but often wished I had opted for the DPB.
From the age of 5, my kid was at school from 9 till 6, when I would rush to pick him up in time from Oscar (after-school care based at the school). If late, you pay $10 per 10 mins. If our school had not had an Oscar programme, I would have been stuffed.
My son hated it and could never do any sports or music, etc, after school because I couldn't take him there. He managed a term each of soccer and swimming when we depended on the kindness of strangers (well, other parents we didn't know very well at the school), but it was an enormous hassle and required continuous organisation and wrangling.
We could never have his friends over to play after school, which puts you in social debt. People in our lower middle class neighbourhood were helpful, but you don't always want to be owing.
I dreaded my son getting sick, and forced him to school on many occasions, urging him to man-up, only to be rung by the school and asked to come and get him cos he was fluey, whatever. Work gets pissed off if this happens too much in one term.
When you have finished a hard day's yacker, you have to rush to get your kid, cook their dinner and be the good-enough parent with time, homework, reading, etc.
The exhaustion and stress of this lifestyle is huge and you give up a lot of your own life to work while working and raising a child on you own. I'm not bitching cos I chose to work rather than get DPB, but I often think it would have been better for my son to have had me there as mother during his childhood.
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I'm a sports fan, too. I really appreciate your sports blogs. The mainstream media, with a few exceptions, don't seem to be able to report/comment on sports in an intelligent and humorous way. So, thanks for the info, insight and laughs.
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"And unless you've got heaps of examples of Once Were Warrior children becoming policy anecdotes, no anecdotes please."
Sorry, that was meant to be policy analysts, not policy anecdotes!!