Public Address - Up Front (Home)

The Innocent Sleep | Aug 27, 2008 10:13

Sleep and I have never been great friends. We're more like hostile flatmates: we live in the same space, occasionally we co-operate, but no matter how hard we try, we can't get on.

The DSPS is manageable, if hugely inconvenient. I didn't even know it was a 'thing' until a couple of years ago. As a teenager I just accepted the 'lazy' label and climbed out my bedroom window in the middle of the night. (Climbing out was easy, getting back in was a good deal more problematic.) Though if you ask my mother, she tells stories of me baking and rearranging all the furniture in my bedroom at two in the morning, which I believe to be slanderous exaggerations. She also laughs at me when I complain about the difficulty of getting my daughter to go to sleep.

Once I had the hang of uni, I organised my course choices around making sure I had no lectures before eleven in the morning. I didn't need to do biology anyway. This worked until my Honours year, when I had Renaissance Drama for an hour and a half, first thing in the morning, in a room that got full sun. The plays had been about for five hundred years: I'm not sure why they couldn't wait round until I got out of bed.

In recent years, we've fallen into a nice rhythm. My Sainted Partner sees the kids off to school as he goes to work, and I sleep in. Or as I call it, 'sleep'.

Every now and then, though, sleep packs its bags and goes home to Mother for a week or so. For that week, I'll get something like twenty hours sleep total.

At uni, this wasn't a problem. In fact it was great. I had two other friends who were chronic insomniacs. We once killed the flat pumpkin (well on its way to becoming a sentient entity) using every knife in the house, and a fish slice. It was a frenzied attack, though to be fair my co-assailant's state might have been caused by the five litres of Coke he'd drunk earlier that day. On, need it be said, a dare.

Night was always my favourite time. It's a night wind that gets under my skin, the patterns of light on black, the unique smell of a city in the dark. Walking alone down Colombo Street at three a.m. on a Wednesday, the only sounds are your boot-heels and that little click traffic lights make when they change colour. The people you meet are different from day people, and in some way kin to each other. Even in prosaic Christchurch, there's a sense you could round a corner and find yourself in a Charles de Lint novel.

But now I'm old. Sleep deprivation is something that - like knocking back eighteen cocktails with a friend while waiting to go downstairs and drink four jugs so we could get one free - I can no longer bounce back from with a cup of coffee and a couple of Panadol.

Being an arts student, an altered mental state was practically de rigueur. As a mum (a phrase that always makes me feel like I should be selling cough syrup) the bizarreness of the sleep-deprived mental state is just a pain in the arse.

Moving through a world with all the internal coherency of a David Lynch adaptation of a Philip K. Dick novel makes the simplest tasks nearly impossible. Every object holds equal weight, painfully bright but slightly out of focus. I'll find myself standing in the bathroom holding a meat tenderiser, with no idea what I was doing.

The worst bit of insomnia is going to bed exhausted and not being able to sleep. It's different from being kept awake by a crying baby or that bloody drummer who lives next door. You have every opportunity to sleep, and instead you're lying awake staring at the clock while someone very clumsy plays an all-night game of Operation with your synapses. (It's 3:42. I wonder what Turkish Delight is called in Turkey?)

It's not so great for the rest of the family either. The only person capable of remembering where they're supposed to be and when turns into someone with all the even temperament and approachability of a cat wearing dolls' clothes. It's not the best time to tell me the school is having a cake stall tomorrow. Is it, dear?

After a few nights I start sleeping again, and gradually go back to normal. I edit everything I wrote and spend some time explaining to people that when I said 'shut your bloody whining' what Mummy really meant to say was… For now, there's a school cake stall tomorrow. They're recommended 'something healthy, like muffins', which I appear to have read as 'chocolate fudge cake'. So I'll be needing a packet of wine biscuits and my meat tenderiser. Now, where did I leave that?

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They Have the Best Rides | Aug 21, 2008 11:55

This column was supposed to go next week, but in the midst of the Boobs on Bikes debate, I realised that I was in danger of blowing all my powder in the comments section, so instead I'm going to jump my own gun. It's been put together in a hurry, so please excuse the lack of rhetorical flourish.

I'd like to introduce you to the Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy. I know there are a lot of feminist carnivals out there, and I've seen the same material featured in this one and the Down Under Feminist Carnival, but this is the one which most often speaks to me. That doesn't mean it's 'better' than the others. I'm not trying to privilege this voice above others, I'm just trying to add another piece to the picture.

Over the last couple of months, starting there and spreading out the way the internet and cancers do, I've become more and more fascinated by the voices of sex workers on the web. They're not difficult to find. They're also all different. I don't know why this should be surprising, except perhaps that people in sex work are so often referred to in monolithic terms. They're all women, they're all victims, they're all subject to some degree of coercion, they're all lacking real choices.

Except they're not. Some of them are Renegade Evolution (mildly NSFW). There's no way in hell I'd have the ovarian fortitude to tell this woman she lacks agency. She's a one-time prostitute, current porn actor and out-call stripper, possessor of degrees in History and Theatre, columnist at Village Voice, and currently guest-blogging at Feministe. On top of that, she works with the Sex Workers' Outreach Program, so it's not just her own experience she brings to the blog.

I'll also point eyes at Wil Rockwell, a male sex worker, because I think it pays to remember those exist. And for a range of views, Bound Not Gagged, a collective blog for sex workers. From there you can access a plethora of links. (I counted them, and that is exactly one plethora.)

For dirty filthy pornographers, you can't go past Ms Naughty (NSFW!) – Candida Royale doesn't have a blog. The Ms is good for news in the porn sphere on censorship, as well as the travails of women making porn for women in a heavily male-dominated industry. And also Olympic perving…
I'm aware that the voices of those at the very bottom of the heap are still missing. The closest I can get is the University of Otago's report on The Impact of the Prostitution Reform Act on the Health and Safety Practices of Sex Workers, which includes first-person quotes from their interviews with sex workers.
I share the same problem Wendy McElroy had when she wrote her book, XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography.

With all the voices shouting about pornography-pro and con-the ones least heeded are those of women who work in the industry. Usually, when you want to know about something, you ask people who have first-hand experience of it. With pornography, however, most of the theories come from people who are "outsiders," with no direct knowledge of the industry.

I am open to this charge, as well.

I don't want to join the ranks of middle-class women sitting comfortably at their keyboards offering their opinions on sex work. Fortunately, with voices like those so accessible, I don't have to. I can still my mouth and my fingers and simply listen to what they have to say.

I'll leave the last word to Ren:

Now, what does get to me is the stereotyping, which comes from all sides, male and female, and on all fronts. I've discussed this before; the default ipso-facto image that the world as a whole uses as "Sex Worker"; the victim of childhood abuse, the junkie, the drop out, the person with no other choice, no other talents, no hope, and no where to go. And while the shoe fits for some…most street prostitutes, many dancers, some porn women (and men), it is not accurate for all. And that does bother me. It bothers me a great deal.

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Not Such a Hard Word After All | Aug 15, 2008 15:36

I love public apologies. They're so deliciously awkward. Basically, you're starting off already screwed, then seeing how much deeper you can make the hole before shutting your mouth.

The Veitch Apology has been well chewed-over, but I want to touch on it as an example of an obviously-flawed public apology. The person who wrote 'no excuses, except' should be dragged into a dark alley by the heavies from the Speech-Writers' Association and given a stern and grammatically-correct telling-off. Honestly, at least put some space between 'inexcusable' and your excuses. Rookie mistake.

At the other end of the scale, our own Prime Minister has become a doyenne of apologising for things she didn't do or wasn't around for. Agent Orange. Influenza in Samoa. The historic treatment of New Zealand Chinese. For a while it looked like she was jonesing for more stuff to apologise for.

My personal favourite was her apology to the White House for her statement that the U.S. would not have invaded Iraq if Al Gore was president. 'I'm sorry if you took offence' fills the role of an apology without actually being one. Its real job is to make the injured party look like a dick. Not that, in this case, they needed the help. (Briefly, if you believe that invading Iraq was the right thing to do, then Clark's insinuation that Gore would be too big a pussy to do it is actually a compliment.)

The Pope's been riding the apology pony pretty hard since he took office, too. There was that 'offensive to Islam' thing pretty much right off the blocks. The official apology said he was:

very sorry that some passages of his speech may have sounded offensive to the sensibilities of Muslim believers.

Sorry if you took offence. Cry-baby.

Since then he's been on his Apologising for Sexual Abuse World Tour. He warmed up in the U.S. in April, then moved on to the grand apology in Australia for World Youth Day.

We have to see what was insufficient in our behaviour and how we can prevent, and heal, reconcile. It must be clear, being a priest is incompatible with this behaviour because priests are in the service of Our Lord.

Because yes, previously we'd been a bit grey on the compatibility of molesting children and priesting. Glad we've cleared that up.

And while the apology made no mention of the systematic protection of priests by the Catholic Church and their concealment of abuse, at least the victims could be assured that the Pope "share(d) in their suffering". But just in case people got too carried away with understanding and contrition, Bishop Anthony Fisher got in before the Pope and laid some understanding ground-work:

Happily, I think most of Australia was enjoying delighting in the beauty and goodness of these young people… rather than, than dwelling crankily, as a few people are doing, on old wounds

Silly cranky rape victims.

My favourite apology of the year so far has been somewhat more obscure. This is the breath-taking apology of "Michelle", the dominatrix who filmed Max Mosley at a BDSM orgy. Briefly, she had gone to the News of the World, told them Mosley had commissioned a 'scene', and been given a small camera, US$24,000, and instructions to see if she could get him to give a Nazi salute.

You can watch Michelle's apology here, delivered on Sky News shortly after she was unable to appear to testify on the matter in court, due to emotional distress. She is obviously deeply contrite that her deliberate actions had logical consequences that were, to her, apparently completely unforeseeable.

It was absolutely terrible, it was really difficult to do. Mainly because you are feeling a nervous wreck, you are doing something you shouldn't be doing and obviously it wasn't very nice at all. It was a horrible situation.

Events obviously spiralled out of her control after she shopped one of her clients to a tabloid. For a start, it turned out his wife was quite distressed. "She didn't ask for this and I am very very sorry that it came out how it did." As opposed to coming out as a nature documentary?

Even worse, poor Michelle's poor husband had to resign his job with MI5. (Imagine the work parties. "Your wife looks vaguely familiar, have we met somewhere?") To be honest, in a profession that relies on discretion, I wouldn't be rushing to use her services, either. (Dominatrices are in an odd position in Britain, where the law doesn't recognise the possibility of consenting to assault.)

Mosley, meanwhile, sued the NOTW for invasion of privacy and won £60,000.

For those interested, PerfectApology.com has a list of criteria, by which you can assess public apologies for Epic Fail. Veitch, for instance, fails on #1, 3, 4 and 8. Perhaps Paul Holmes could give it a quick shuftie.

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A Short Word Before We Begin | Aug 12, 2008 10:58

I am not Keith.

I've been not Keith my whole life. I've just never been as acutely aware of it as I am now, stepping up to the Public Address plate as the Blessed Ng steps down, resulting in a massive average bar-lowering.

This is no reflection on Hadyn, whom I'm sure will at least be using some numbers in his columns. He's already counting things. Numbers and I don't get on. We went our separate ways when I was seventeen and faced a choice: 7th Form Maths with Stats, or sleeping in for an extra hour four days a week. This was a total no-brainer. The only enjoyment I was getting out of the class was seeing how late Devin could turn up and still be marked present.

A friend asked me the other night how I could possible have words like ague and callipygean stacked away in my brain. The answer's fairly simple. You know that bit of your brain that understands physics? The bit that knows 'why maths after fourth form'? Full of words. I may not be able to count, but my kids think 'looking up a word' goes, "Mum, how do you spell…" Yes, I have a lit degree, but degrees are no indication of aptitude. I once watched two engineering students fail to open the easy-peel wrapper on a block of cheese. And you don't ever want to get an English lecturer started on the standard of grammar in essays.

I'm also white, incredibly white. So white I like Antiques Roadshow. Descended from a line of Suffolk farmers going back to the mid-sixteenth century. When I was eight, my father told me I could do whatever I wanted as long as I didn't marry a Maori. Sometimes I feel like he's looking up at me now, thinking 'I really should have been more specific'. The only sport you can engage me on is cricket, and that's partially because every Whedon fangirl likes to use the phrase 'the sound of leather on Willow' as often as possible. Somebody really should be working on getting PA's racial diversity up, but it won't be me. I'm working on getting in touch with my inner lesbian midget.

I shall, however, be sticking with the New Wave PA determination not to endlessly bitch about my health. So there'll be no mention of my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, fibromyalgia, dermatitis, migraines, hip ligament damage, tomato allergy, Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome or insomnia. For all you can tell, I could be dozing painlessly in a massive tank of puttanesca.

Nor will I be pimping my children for column material. Again. Grumplestiltskin and Princess Kick-Arse deserve the right to give away all their own secrets on the internet for themselves. Note I make no promises in re: my friends or the rest of my family.

Like any good Democratic presidential candidate, Public Address is often described as elitist. The discourse is daunting and insists on using words like 'discourse'. People are intimidatingly and unfairly armed with information to back up their opinions. Well, I once got sternly frowned at in a Lit Theory lecture for calling Deconstruction 'intellectual wanking', and I've been known to discuss my underwear preferences on the internet. Bars don't get much more lowered than that. After all, we midget lesbians need to be able to reach our beers too.

Please note: some statements in this column may not be entirely, or even approximately, true. Start as you mean to go on and all that.

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