The preacher makes an entrance once a week.  I know he chooses Wednesdays because that’s my worst day, and the day I’ll be most irritated – he does it just to annoy me.  As his jovial face comes into view, I can’t help but think his immaculately trimmed beard resembles a vagina.

He talks of humming birds, rainbows and orchids.  I call his rainbow, and raise him Ebola and flesh eating bacteria.  He counters with sunsets and dolphins dancing on the horizon, but I’m ready for him and spit out tsunamis and earthquakes.   Defeated, the preacher skulks away.  I smirk and wallow in my own sense of unwavering moral realism, let out a silly giggle and hurl the book he left on my desk, hitting him on the back of the head.  

The silly cunt who works in the front office scheduled an appointment for me outside of my normal working hours.  The sour bitch did it because she knew I wasn’t well, and wanted to take advantage of the fact.  She nodded her head apologetically, but I knew I could see a smirk underneath her mock concern.  I wondered what the fuck went on in her vacuous skull, and concluded probably nothing.

There’s this fat arsed bitch who runs lingerie parties, and leaves catalogues around the office.  I enjoy running my eyes over the dumb slut models between the pages, but any guilt I have is quickly drowned out in a wave of mighty self-righteousness.  I can perve on these slags, and wank to porn, and still be untouchable because I’m one of the enlightened ones.  I imagine the toad hostess wearing some of the outfits in the catalogue and suppress an urge to vomit on her.

I’m vaguely aware of a woman telling me a story about being continually raped by Salvation Army Officers whilst she was a resident in a girls home.  She said one would insert a bottle inside her, whilst the other masturbated on her face.  I file this story away for my next enounter with the preacher, and can’t help but smirk.

Another woman is complaing about money.  You see apparantly some bitch owes her about $50, and she’s pissed off that she’ll never get it back.  The ‘bitch’ who owes the money bought her stash of methodone, then had the poor manners to die of an overdose.   “Cunt” she screams out, as she pushes her instant coffee off the stool.

Finally in bed, I’m distracted by those motherfucking termites I can hear eating my fence.  The cunts with their single minded hunger chose now to start their chomping, because they know now is exactly the time that will annoy me the most.  I can also hear the bubbling of the septic tank.  Those cocksucking bacteria have conspired with the palm tree root – the one causing the crack in the side of the concrete.  I know this, because it’s the section right outside my bedroom window, and  is the place the stench of the rank fetid fluid can most easily make it to my nostrils.

The rain is getting heavier now, water is running down the inside of my walls, and the animals are stirring.  My arm is sore, and I realise that my baby is lying on it.  I’ve had to hold her to sleep again as she sobbed miserably – a regular occurance.  I listen to her rythmic breathing, and wonder how I’ll make it, and where the fuck the alleged hummingbirds are.

We humans tend to build our identities around particular stories and narratives that are constructed and changed over time.  How we define these stories is what’s at the centre of  how we feel.  If our  story is viewed from a purely negative perspective, then it makes sense that our quality of life will be diminished. 

For example, a woman I recently worked with described her story as being about a weak and broken person.  It’s not unusual for her to feel this way as she had endured many years living with terrible domestic violence.  The flip side to her story, and the one I wanted her to see, was that despite the horrible situation she had found herself in, she had developed some amazing resilience that she used to keep herself and children safe.  She had stared adversity in the face, and kept going.

I helped her tease this story out a bit further, and she’s on her way to redefining herself.  Rather than a ‘broken corpse’, she’s now talking about herself as a prisoner – a prisoner wrongly jailed, who against the odds, fought back this monumental injustice to eventual freedom – kind of a Shawshank Redemption.  We’re in the process of creating a bit of a scrap book of her coping skills as a testament to her resilience.

Not long after I saw another woman whose story was similar in many ways – I had an idea!!  After our session, I contacted the first woman and asked if she’d mind sharing her story with my new client.  She was thrilled at the suggestion, and wrote her a letter.  My new client felt that hearing someone else’s story about how they coped with the hard times, not only helped her resilience, but also made her feel more connected.  I asked her to respond to the letter, and she later sent her a message describing how the original letter helped her.  Once again, this provided a connection, and made the first letter writer feel valued.

Connectedness is something that is at the core of resilience.  In her brilliant book, Resilience, Anne Deveson speaks of connectedness as being at the core of happiness.  If we feel connected, and believe that our presence in some way can positively influence the life of others, then we stand a much greater chance of happiness.

The therapeutic benefits of producing a collective document are emerging.  Theres’ a great paper by Frederick Mayer that argues -

that shared narratives, public stories, are the fundamental human device for enabling communities to act collectively. Stories have great power in the mind, both cognitive and affective.

The Dulwich Centre in Adelaide are poineers in theory of collective documents, and believe -

Collective narrative documents richly describe the special skills and knowledge of how individuals, groups and communities are sustained through difficult times. Once created, these documents can then be shared between groups in ways that enable those who have endured hardship to experience making a real contribution to others.

Now I can simultaneously hear Ayn Rand turning in her grave, and her wingnut sycophants convulsing uncontrollably.  The thought of anything collective is heresy to these misanthropes, but fortunately I couldn’t give a flying fuck with they thought!!

So now to my cunning plan.  I’ve known for sometime the power of collective wisdom, so I’ve decided to facilitate the creation of a collective document on behalf of those doing it tough in my community.

Since my writing is so clunky, what I’m going to be doing to be wandering around the place with a taperecorder speaking to people about their lives.  I’m going to chose people who are either in a very adverse situation, or have recently been in one.  I’ll be asking for their story, but I’m also particularly interested in hearing about how they manage to cope through the worst of times – this is the double sided story that people often don’t see in themselves.  I’m then going to compile these stories into some type of document, and distrubute it to the people who helped create it, but also to others around the country who may befefit from it.

The idea is to then facilitate some sort of response from those who may have benefited from the document, and once again distribute this to the original participants.   Does it sound a bit optomistic??  Of course it does, but I’ll give it a shot.

I’m going to introduce the concept on a recording shortly, with a bit more information.  I’ll then go about interviewing people, and put their recordings up for you to listen to as well.

From here.

When I hear members of the religious right and other moral panic merchants speak about the evil of pronography, I’m always dubious as to their motives.  Are they genuine in their concern for the degradation of women?  I really doubt it.   When a conservative says that they have the ‘utmost respect for women’ they are lying. Conservatives dislike women, and dislike feminism even more.  On one hand they bleat about the ‘evil’ of pron, yet their very ideology demands adherence to strict gender roles that cast the woman in the demeaning role of  the servant with the man as the master: a power sharing arrangement that closely resembles that of a man and his dog.  Conservative misogyny demands a post of its own, but this is about something else.

I wanted to distance myself from these conservatives as my stance on pronography is also one of opposition (though not outlawing) but for entirely different reasons.

I’ve been conducting research which is largely anecdotal at this stage, however an alarming trend has emerged. I have spoken with (via email) 31 women who have at one stage in their lives been involved in producing pornographic imagery. Of these, 15 (65%)report that at one stage during their formative years, they had been sexually assaulted – usually by a relative or someone known to them.

This is consistent with comments by prominent anti-pron Feminist, the late Andrea Dworkin who says -

The women in pornography are most often victims of child sexual abuse. Some studies show that 65 to 75 percent of the current population of women in prostitution and pornography (overlapping experiences for the same pool of
women) have been abused as children, usually in the home. People who work with women who are in pornography and prostitution to provide social services or counseling, some of whom have been in pornography or prostitution themselves, believe the percentage is much, much higher. Children run away from home, from the sexual abuse, to cities where they are picked up by pimps, raped, beaten, drugged, and forced into prostitution or pornography.

And,

Many women are forced into pornography as children by fathers who sexually abuse them; pornography is made of them as part of the sexual abuse they experience as
children. Many women are forced into pornography by husbands, many of whom are violent (battery of married women being the most commonly committed violent
crime in the country). Many women are photographed by lovers and find the photographs published as pornography in revenge or retaliation. Aspiring actresses and models are photographed nude, almost a trade practice, and find
the photographs published against their will and without their knowledge in pornography.

McElroy’s book, XXX (1995), conducted a survey of sex workers that was designed to establish the overall level of happiness of respondents during childhood. Though the survey didn’t specifically ask about whether sexual assault had occurred, 25% still volunteered that they had been sexually assaulted at some point.

Additionally, McElroy has an entire chapter devoted to interviews conducted with members of the ‘porn industry’. McElroy, sums up the chapter with a quote from another anti-porn Feminist, Catharine MacKinnon -

Empirically, all pornography is made under conditions of inequality based on sex, overwhelmingly by poor, desperate, homeless, pimped women who were sexually abused as children.

Children who have been sexually abused often develop a complex series maladaptions, including inappropriate sexalisation. Finkelhor and Browne’s ground breaking article, had this to say (PDF)

Traumatic sexualization refers to a process in which a child’s sexuality(including both sexual feelings and sexual attitudes) is shaped in a developmentally inappropriate and inter-personally dysfunctional fashion as a result of sexual abuse. This can happen in a variety of ways in the course of the abuse. Traumatic sexualization can occur when a child is repeatedly regarded by an offender for sexual behavior that is inappropriate to his or her level of development. It occurs through the exchange of affection, attention, privileges, and gifts for sexual behavior, so that a child learns to use sexual behavior as a strategy for manipulating others to satisfy a variety of developmentally
appropriate needs.

My position could best be described as follows – I’m not at all offended by the concept of sexually explicit imagery. I am however offended by the thought that an overwhelming majority of porn ‘actresses’, have probably been sexually abused as children. This may have led to the traumatic sexualisation phenomenon mentioned above, and an eventual move to porn or prostitution. Viewed in this light, I’m of the opinion that their involvement is actually a continuation of the original abuse.  If this is the case, is it accurate to describe consumers of pron as being complicit?

As a postscript to my original post on this subject, I’ve read some disturbing research conducted by Australian Academic, Dr Michael Flood. (PDF)

There is little doubt that pornography is an increasingly significant influence among boys and young men. And that internet porn, as well as other media and technologies and other social trends, are facilitating and feeding into sexual violence and abuse by boys and young men.

I can’t add a poll due to my idiocy a technical problem, so here are the options.

1) OMG! I didn’t think that that the embodiment of a perfect man existed until now!!

2) OMG! an almost 40 year old trying to look like a 20 something.  How cute!

3) Fuck man, are you going for a comb over or what?

4) One earring = poof.  2 earrings = fucking poof.

5) Bron luvs Albi

I received an email from a dickhead reader the other day in which he claimed that sexually aggressive women harass men far more frequentlythan the vise versa.  Not only that, but the loyal reader went onto tell me that this harassment was not only more prevalent, but also more emotionally disturbing.  Additionally!!  ‘predatory women’ have made the streets unsafe for men these days!!

Well, I’ve got a bit of an anecdote for you. Let’s say for example a man pulls up in his car to the local late night shopping centre.  He goes in and buys his milk, but upon returning to the car he notices a car approaching him slowly.  As the car gets closer, the occupants begin to yell out sexually explicit suggestions at him.  He then realises that the car is full of young women.  Is he worried?  He may be uncomfortable, but I doubt he’s genuinely concerned about his safety, and to be perfectly honest, most young blokes would be secretly thrilled.

Now lets contrast this experience with that of a young woman I spoke to recently.  Coincidentally she happened to turn up to the same late night grocer the following week.  Like the bloke, as she’s returning to her car she notices a ute appoaching.  The three men in the car begin to circle her in the empty car park screaming out sexually suggestive comments.  Is she scared?  Does she fear for her safety? Does she think that she’s at risk of being raped or murdered?

Over the fold is another puff piece that I wrote for the local paper earlier this year.

My friends tell me that I’m crazy!  You see, on the weekend I often enjoy flying my hang glider on the coast.  Floating high above the sand dunes gives me a unique perspective about the world far below.  Everything seems to just fit together perfectly, from the small children playing in the sand to the enormous manta rays elegantly sliding through the water just off the coast.  Somehow it all appears to be just right.

As I reflect on my time as a hang glider pilot, it hasn’t always been this way.  When I was a student pilot, I was terrified!  As far as I was concerned, disaster lurked around every corner and every small bump meant imminent doom.  You’re probably getting the picture here; hang gliding wasn’t fun at all for me in the early days.

I remember one particular flight I had early in my hang gliding career.  As a floated over the landing paddock – which by the way was an enormous 10 acre field – I couldn’t help but notice that this huge expansive paddock was entirely clear except for one small shrub near the middle.  As a got lower, I started to become obsessed by this shrub, until finally I set up for touchdown, and elegantly landed right in the middle of it.  Once the raucous laughter of the bystanders abated (10 minutes later), I was informed that this shrub had been christened “the student trap”.  Apparently I wasn’t the first (or last) person to pick out the only bush within cooee! The technical term for this is ‘object fixation’.  My instructor explained to me that I landed where I did because that was the focus of my attention.

Well are all guilty of focussing on negatives at times, but the major problem with this thought process is that it subconsciously leads us directly to where we don’t want to go.  Take some time to explore all the other possibilities that exist in the large paddock of life, and in time, you wont even notice that single shrub, let alone land in it!

I haven’t read the new white paper on homelessness (anyone know where I can download it?) however I have a few brief words to say about homelessness.

Firstly, it’s my experience that chronic homelessness is usually the result of mental illness and the accompanying complications it causes.  You could build a million new houses, and this wouldn’t significantly affect the number of  people with mental health living on the streets.

Let’s just have a brief snapshot of the reasons people are homeless.  The following is a survey conducted by services funded under the Supported Accommodation Assistance Service (SAAP) which is a joint Commonwealth and State initiative.  In other words, they survey only applies to people who actively seek out homeless/emergency accommodation.

Most common reasons for houselessness (SAAP survey): (via homeless.org.au)

• Domestic and family violence (22%)
• Eviction/previous accommodation ended (11%)
• Relationship/family breakdown (11%)
• Usual accommodation unavailable (11%)
• Financial Difficulty (10%)

As you can see, mental health issues don’t appear on the results.  This tells us clearly that the problem lays with the fact people with mental illness don’t significantly engage with emergency support services.  This isn’t unusual, as the nature of many serious mental illness’s means that people become completely disconnected from society.

Here’s some mental health statistics to consider  (via the MHCA)

• 62% of persons with mental disorders do not use mental health services1. Reported reasons are:
  • stigma associated with mental disorders
  • fearfulness of medical treatments
  • poor distribution and costs associated with specialist services, and
  • the inappropriate mix of medical and psychosocial services provided by government-financed systems.

Let’s look at the funding for mental health in Australia.  According to the MHCA, Australia spends a meagre 7% of it’s entire health budget on mental health services.  When you consider that Mental Health accounts for 20% of the cost of the health budget, then you’ll soon see why this number is inadequate.  When compared to other western country’s whose mental health budget is between 10-12% of the total health budget, it becomes obvious that we’re lagging serious behind.

The Government should be commended for making homelessness a national issue, and I’m sure that their initiatives will help a large number of people.  However, unless as part of the strategy includes a significant increase in mental health spending, then people with mental illness will continue their slide through the cracks.

I was quite a good cricketer when I was in my teens and early 20s and enjoyed a little success at club level.  With visions of past glory in my minds eye, I decided it was time to sign up to play again.  Now at 38 I’m certainly not the oldest guy out there, but most local grade cricketers appear to be in their 20’s, so I’m certainly one of the older statesman.

My first game was a beauty, and I top scored for my team  and bowled pretty fast.  What I discovered was that the speed at which I bowled became inversely proportional to the speed at which I was able to get out of bed the following morning.  BOY! Did I whinge – I’m sore, can you rub my shoulders?, my feet hurt!

The following week I went to watch the junior team play.  I reckon that the boys would be about 11 or 12, and was humbled to discover that they bowled faster than me!  Whilst fielding one of the young fellows had a ball drilled at him that he tried to catch.  It hit his hand awkwardly, and I could tell by the ear piercing yelp that it did some damage.  The young crying and gasping fellow was escorted from the field to his worried looking dad.  The boy looked at his dad with one of those ‘please make it better’ looks that most parents would be familiar with, and tried to bury his face in his dad’s chest.  Jeez, did the dad look awkward.  He sort of patted the boy with an uncomfortable hand, with his eyes darting around to see if people were watching him.  “she’ll be right mate, stop carrying on like a sheila!”  ..Laughter…

The boy eventually calmed down, but the whole event really upset me.  Why didn’t this dad just take his son in his arms and hug him?  That’s what this young fellow was craving, just the warm safe embrace of his dad.  I guess I shouldn’t really be surprised by his reaction though.  Men are conditioned from a young age to view any outward emotion as weakness, and crying, well crying is something women and poofters do.   But why is this the case?  I could see from the dad’s expression that his first instinct to hug the boy, but fear of what people would think overrode this most basic of parental instincts – to protect and care for your child.

From my experience men who are able to express their emotions (other than anger, cause that’s a ‘tough’ emotion) are more grounded in life, have stronger relationships and are less prone to depressive illness.  Certainly things are different now, and far more men are comfortable bucking stupid stoic convention, and allowing themselves the opportunity to experience the world differently.