So And So stared out of the kitchen window at the view into the neighbour’s garden. She wondered if this was a deliberate voyeuristic move on the part of the house’s original owners or builders. Considering the fact that the neighbour was now a senile old woman who occasionally hosed her over the fence, So And So wished that there were at least a little more of a veil of privacy between the properties. She didn’t dislike the view, though – the neighbour’s garden was lovely, and the brick wall of the side of the house reminded her of the views from the old apartment building in Sydney, when all you could see around you were the walls of other people’s apartments. Thinking of Sydney always sent a little twinge of discomfort through So And So. Although it was a long time since she had lived there, and her time there had only been brief, the fact that she wasn’t there now never failed to lower her spirits whenever her attempts at trying to block out her current circumstances failed. But it wasn’t all bad, she had to remind herself. Constantly. The truth was, it was much easier to feel miserable than it was to feel happy about things, and she often felt guilty for not trying harder. When she stopped to think about these things it felt like she was dwelling on them, which she wasn’t, but giving any thought at all to them felt like giving in, and she tried her hardest to not acknowledge these thoughts and feelings when they crossed her mind. She didn’t mind living here, not at all. Just some times were better than others. Perhaps the advantage of Sydney had been that she had known such a miniscule number of people that her happiness had not been compromised by her interpersonal relationships – it had just been her and the city.

This was not something that could be said of her life in Adelaide.

Often So And So had stopped to ponder the notion that the majority of her unhappiness was caused by other people. If this was the case, then surely the idea of cutting back communication with other human beings to the bare minimum would be a welcome prospect. But it wasn’t. The only thing that made her feel worse than problems in her social life was the idea of being alone. Perhaps this was just part of the human condition – she didn’t know. She was only one human, and if life had taught her anything by now it was to not pay too much heed to the opinions and
thoughts of others. But no amount of intellectual or cathartic consideration could change the fact that, despite their tendency to bring misery, self‐consciousness and paranoia into her life, the people she loved WERE her life.

Precisely why it was crappy right now.

Whatshername watched So And So through the door from the living room to the kitchen. She was consumed by her usual conundrum of feeling like she should intervene in her friend’s private self-torture, but not knowing how. She had known So And So for almost her entire life, and had seen her through every one of her masochistic dependent relationships, and only now after having lived with her for a number of months was she realising just how little she understood her. Their minds worked in almost entirely opposite ways, and although Whatshername tried relentlessly to support her friend, often she found herself intensely frustrated by So And So’s inward focus and lack of insight. Whatshername had been living with some friends in Campbelltown, but when So And So had needed someone to live with, they had moved in together in Rostrevor, into a more expensive house with a much better garden in a much better neighbourhood. The only negative was that the street was a very quiet cul-de-sac, and the neighbours all seemed to go to bed at 5pm every night – unless they were staying up to hose over the fence and make confusing accusations about plant poisoning – and so the girls felt compelled to be quiet in the evenings, whereas in the last house the neighbours were up all hours of the night having domestics and therefore they could get away with whatever they wanted in the noise department. But Whatshername loved living with So And So, and from what she could gather, her friend liked living with her too. In the months since they had moved in together So And So had become increasingly less forthcoming with her feelings. Whatshername knew this was because she didn’t want to be an emotional burden on anyone, but she also knew how difficult the last year had been for her friend and she was more than slightly concerned with her friend’s mental recovery.
But still, she didn’t know how to reach out to her.

The last few months had been interesting, to say the least. Whatshername had watched So And So make some very… individualistic decisions regarding her social life, culminating in a huge messy tangle of the feelings and intentions of everyone involved, which had only come to an end with the decision of The Musician to move away to the other side of town. For some reason this had triggered the reaction in So And So which, Whatshername thought, was well overdue – she finally let go of her fantasy that any day now The Musician would wake up and realise he actually loved her back and wanted to be with her.

Whatshername wasn’t even directly involved and the situation had weighed so heavily on her that she could not even begin to understand how So And So had coped.
The house was still full of photographs of the written off cast members of the last few months of their lives. When Whatshername had asked So And So if she wanted to take them down, she had replied, “But then I would just have to put more up. A new feature wall of the current people in my life. That’s like trying to keep a wave on the sand. The cast will change again next week, why bother? I look at it more like the story of this house and our lives here. The house hasn’t forgotten. We’d have to move to a new area every time our friends changed if we really wanted to move on.”
The irony was, that’s exactly what The Musician had done, and Whatshername knew that one of So And So’s fatal flaws was that she was attracted to people who she wanted to be like.

“Do you want a cup of tea?”
 Doe turned around, startled. Frankie was standing behind her by the kitchen bench, her finger hovering above the kettles ‘On’ button. Doe snapped her fingers.
 “That’s right, that’s what I came in here for.”
 “For tea?” Frankie asked. She reached into the cupboard above the bench and brought out two mugs. One had a cat on it. The other was just green.
 “No, for the kitchen scissors. I lost the other ones.”
 “Ah. That’s unfortunate, because I lost the kitchen ones the other day.”
 “I see. Do you think its worth going all the way to Ikea for a pair of scissors?” “I think it’s always worth going to Ikea.”

The Musician had a lot of regrets about the last few months, despite his learned ability to hide his feelings successfully. Not only did he regret his own behaviour, but he regretted witnessing the unfair behaviour of others and not intervening. He bailed on his housemate at their place in Magill and moved to the other side of town with an old school friend. He had wanted to move closer to the city anyway – he didn’t drive and he didn’t like being too far away from town to stumble home drunk at 5 in the morning.
And his housemate never did the dishes or bought groceries or put the bins out.

The mistakes of the past few months had cost them all dearly. Their self- destructive actions had led to the annihilation of their friendships. All that was left of their relationships with each other were feelings of embarrassment and awkwardness. He knew that he had taken terrible advantage of So And So, and he didn’t even fully understand why it had gone so far. He had liked her, he really had. He liked her so much that he couldn’t completely fight the knowledge that he shouldn’t be with her, and his feet had moved before his brain could tell them not to, and then suddenly he’d used and discarded somebody he cared about and the guilt was too much for him, so he decided not to acknowledge it. He had to get away from it all. Because of the closeness of their houses he and So And So often ended up on the same bus, and the last time had been agonizing. Small talk, her staring out of the window, him fumbling with his phone, both choosing to not say the things they knew they needed to if they were ever going to salvage their friendship. Between them they had given a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘on thin ice’. In fact, even with the prior
knowledge that the ice was thin, they had crashed around atop it until there was nothing left and they had all sunk to the bottom of the piercingly cold river beneath.
It was easier to let each other go than to deal with each other anymore.

 “Aren’t you going to David’s house tonight? It’s late,” Frankie said, looking at the clock on her phone.
 “Ah. Right...” Doe tapped the tabletop with her fingers. “Did I actually forget that? I can’t believe it.” As if on cue, Doe’s phone started to ring inside her pocket. She took it out. “Yeah, it’s him. Do I answer?”
 Frankie shrugged. “Why are you asking me?”
 “I... don’t know.” Doe clicked the phone off.
 Frankie paused. “You’re seriously not going to answer it? He’s probably worried, you’re really late and not answering your phone.”
 Doe sipped her tea and didn’t answer.

 The Man In Pyjamas stood out the front of his house,
 staring down the road towards the looming figure of Black
 Hill in the distance. So And So had said she was coming
 over tonight.
 She was three hours late.

As I lie on the grass and look at the sky, I think of other nights when we had picked the constellations in the sky above my garden
We point out the saucepan, and my mother insists that it’s actually the little dipper.
My mother is the best at finding pictures in the clouds.
I have them all together, sitting in the garden,
The ghosts of almost ten years of life in one house.
They are laughing and talking and I can’t tell any one of them that they are my home
But they are.

“Remember how much I used to smoke?”
“Less than you do now?”
“Correct. I liked it when you started smoking.”
“So did I. He moved right after he quit smoking, didn’t he?”
“I guess. Didn’t really see him anymore after that.”
“Because he quit smoking? Isn’t that a superficial reason?”
“Because it was just easier that way. It’s easier to give up, stop chasing, stop forcing.” “But you never saw him again.”
“And that proved to me that I made the right decision. Who wants a friendship to be a constant chase? When it feels like you have to physically force someone to spend time with you it’s probably because you are and you shouldn’t.”
“I remember when it started to annoy me and I wasn’t even involved.”
“Remember that guy with the pyjamas?”
“Vaguely. I remember I had different hair at that point.”
“Pyjama guy went away across the seas. To fight the great war.”
“That war still going?”
“Yup. It has seen many casualties.”
“It’s taken a lot of young men, I have noticed.”
“Took all the good ones, at least.”
“Hopefully that means they will win, and they’ll all come back some day.”
“Hopefully not. Imagine that. Imagine them all getting off the ship, minds broken, limbs missing. The boxes holding the bodies being loaded off behind them.”
“It’s much nicer to imagine them all off on a cruise together. A lovely cruise ship that only docks to get more supplies, and once you get on, you can never get off again.” “That would be one hell of a cruise.”
“It’s a nice image though, isn’t it? All of them, all safe and alive again, having the time of their lives. But safely out of reach and out of contact.”
“Out of sight, out of mind.”
“How badly do you wish that was actually possible?”
“Wouldn’t I take all these photos down then?”

It isn’t cynicism. It isn’t romanticism. It’s just life. It’s hard to know.
Nothing is as meaningful or meaningless or as big or as small as life.
I hope you don’t already have one.

He said anyone who claims to love it here but leaves is a sell out. But everyone is leaving.
People feel stifled here, in such a small town,
With the same things to do, week in, week out.
When I think about leaving, all I think about
is him.
The face of a dear friend.
Home becomes where you can coexist with the people you love And so many of them are here and have always been here,
But I couldn’t see this before.
Spread around the streets and suburbs Like guardian angels.
But I don’t trust you. I never have. But you’re still one of my favourites.

And even though you’re the last person I would rely on if I really needed help

You’re the first person I go to in my mind when my attention has turned to the creation of art.
The songs I sing about you, I sing to other people. I don’t show you the things you’ve inspired.
And why?
Because my love is mine, and you are not.
But still I find myself outside your old house in the rain And I know you haven’t lived there for years
And I don’t want or need to see you
And I don’t want to talk to you.
The fact that you’re safe and loved is enough
And I prefer the you on my page.
So I go, and the raindrops kiss my cheeks like you used to and I think that the main reason I once prized you so highly is that I wish I was like you.
She said to me one night during a long cigarette and tea binge that she is attracted to people she wants to be like,
Rather than people she wants to be with.
But to me she is already perfect.
And she’s the one who would come and rescue me if I needed rescuing, Any time
Every time.

“Jen, it’s your turn to speak.”
Jen blinked. Her eyes refocused – the group were all watching her expectantly. She caught the eye of Bill, the group leader, who smiled at her encouragingly, and gestured for her to begin.
“Um, well…” Jen got to her feet. She stared at the floor and cleared her throat. “Um, my name is Jen. I’m twenty-two years old. I’m a sufferer. My… condition started a year and a half ago, I was… camping. In the woods. For my friend’s birthday. And…” her voice struggled, tears forming in her eyes.
“Go on, Jen,” Bill said, gently, “don’t worry – you’re safe now. We’re all here with you.”
Jen took a deep breath and focused her mind. She swallowed back the tears, and continued. “And, I was attacked. I screamed and screamed but my friends were too far away to hear me… The doctors said I nearly died, I nearly lost too much blood. And since then, I just can’t… every month…” She trailed off. She looked up at Bill, who smiled at her again.
“I… don’t know what to do, I – I wake up in the woods, covered in blood, and scratches; I don’t remember anything, I don’t know if I’ve… if I’ve killed something or not… I’m scared people will find out, see the scratches on my back, start asking questions… I hear dogs barking in the street and I just want to rip their throats out -“ She broke off, choking on her tears again. Bill stood up and walked to her. He put his hand on her shoulder and said, “It’s ok, Jen. Remember, you’re always safe here. We’re here to support you.” She nodded, and eased herself back into her chair. She took a tissue out of her pocket and wiped her eyes. Bill walked back to his seat, and turned to face the group, still standing.
“You are all here because you are all sufferers. And the operative word in that sentence is not, as you might be feeling right now, sufferers – our operative word is ‘all’. You are all here for the same reason, and you are not alone. We are all here for each other. I know that you have all faced endless persecution out there in the world – people not understanding, dismissing you, inferring some sort of mental problem – people wanting to lock you up away from everybody else. But you have as much right to life as everybody else. You have as much right to be out there, every day of the month, as they do. You are the victims, not the perpetrators. This was done to you – nobody asked for this, and it’s not your fault that this happened to you, to any of you.”
From across the circle, Dan slowly raised his shaking hand in the air, not looking up from the floor.
“Dan? Would you like to speak?” Bill asked. Dan nodded, and looked up at Bill. “Can I sit?” he asked.
“Of course,” Bill replied, sitting back in his own seat. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“Thanks,” Dan replied. He held up his hand in greeting. “Hi, everyone. It’s my first time here, um, my name’s Dan, hi.” He gave a little wave. “I’m twenty-five, and… I’m a sufferer.”
“Well done, Dan. That’s the most important step. Everyone, let’s have a round of applause for Dan!” Bill applauded enthusiastically, and the others followed. Jen looked over at Dan, who was looking at the floor again. When the applause died down, he continued.
“Thanks, guys, thanks, um… I guess, how it happened, I was eighteen, and I was walking home late at night, down this little alleyway near my old house that I used to use because it cut a few minutes out of my journey, and… it just came out of nowhere, I didn’t even hear it. Before I knew what was happening I was on the ground and it was on top of me, scratching, biting… I managed to land a kick and it rolled off me and I got away. I walked into my house at about 4 in the morning and my parents got up to tell me off for being so loud and waking them up, and then they saw the blood and the wounds and as soon as I knew I was safely in the house I just collapsed. Woke up in hospital the next day. I tried to tell them, but… nobody believed me. They dismissed it as shock, and they knew I had been drinking. Nobody listened. And then a month later… Well, you guys know. And I felt so guilty, like it was my fault – you know, don’t I watch the news, or even movies, I shouldn’t have been out on my own at that time, in a cliché creepy alleyway, I was careless, I deserved to be attacked…” He put his head in his hands.
Bill stood up. “Why don’t we break here for recess? Everyone take some time, this isn’t easy for any of us – have something to eat, talk to each other, and we will resume in twenty minutes. Remember, the main reason we meet as a group is for you to support each other through this difficult time.”
As the members of the group began to stand and stretch, Bill slipped out of the room. He swooped through the low corridor and out through the building’s side door, into the courtyard. He quickly lit a cigarette, and slumped against a wall. When had his life turned into this? Running a support group for these self-indulgent idiots. This ‘condition’ paid his bills, but nobody would ever be able to convince him that there was anything more to it than the troubled minds of a few lonely and painfully ordinary schizophrenics. He paused for a moment in disbelief – he could actually hear them howling now, through the wall.

“Clinical lycanthropy”, he thought, sighing. He just couldn’t credit it.

What does the world inside your head actually look like??

The sense of community could be felt a little bit prior to our occupation, while meeting for GAs or painting banners together or meeting in working groups, but nothing compares to the phenomenon that occurs once the tents actually go up and people start pooling their resources to provide for each other. An instant bond is formed between everyone on site, and many people end up sitting up all night, just talking to each other.

Seeing how quickly and successfully new communities with their own processes and protocols can spring up is, I feel, the true threat of this movement to the establishment – it literally takes a few days for a group of people to set up their own community, and to establish their own system, and when this group of people are passionate and intelligent, the concentration of knowledge, ideas and wisdom within the group is actually astonishing.

I have come to love these people fiercely, whether I sat up all night under a sleeping bag with them discussing Marx, or whether I am a bit intimidated by them and admire them from a distance. These are some of the best people I have ever encountered. You learn each other’s ways quickly, and you adapt quickly to best serve the community. 4am provision runs. Going around cleaning up, collecting everything that people have scattered overnight. Sharing your gear around – if someone is cold, you find them a blanket or something warmer to wear. If someone is hungry, you feed them. If someone is scared or intimidated, you take care of them.

The danger in all of this is that we have proved beyond doubt how quickly we can assemble, re-evaluate, make democratic decisions and create our own systems, whether they’re on an Adelaide sized scale or a New York sized scale. Our new communities develop and flourish so quickly that the old systems in place will become redundant and then cease to exist, very quickly.

People opposed to the movement need to delude themselves into certain beliefs about it to protect themselves from their own feelings of guilt or misery, and unfortunately, most people justify their own existences by viewing other humans and their beliefs with disdain. You see very quickly how individual political standpoints come to matter less in a situation like this, because most political affiliations deal with very specific ideals, protocols, etc, and through this process, you are actually creating ideals and protocols democratically decided on by a group of people from extremely varied political and philosophical backgrounds. This is democracy in action. Some people want socialism. Some people want anarchism. Some people want communism. Some people want a reform of capitalism. Some people have different ideas altogether. Political standpoints and personal philosophies are as diverse as the people who carry them. But the community unites us. Common visions and goals unite us. Friendship and camaraderie and care unite us. Love unites us. When Zizek spoke at Occupy Wall Street, he urged people not to let the movement die, to not forget why we are here – to not consign ourselves to giving up, and then meeting up once a year to reminisce about these times. The thing is, because of the community and the resultant camaraderie, the good vibes and the sharing, we are having fun. Some people feel like we shouldn’t be having this much fun. But this ties into my next point: occupying isn’t just about making a political point – it is also an affirmative action, showcasing the benefits of communal living, showing the world how easy it actually is for humans to connect and co-exist in a way that is not encouraged in our societies anymore. I personally have been waving the banner for communal living for awhile now, but being in the camp has brought it to a new level in my mind because I now have proof that it can be done at the drop of a hat and without much personal sacrifice at all. It has to be said: communal living is the shit. Y’all should really try it.

There was a moment, lying on the grass in the cool night air, watching my friend play the guitar and sing. Another friend was sprawled out next to me, and she said, “Why can’t life always be like this?” To put this into perspective, we were sleeping in a city park, with only tents and sleeping bags or swags. We were using the public toilets across the road. Our kitchen is literally a few hot plates and some pots and pans. But we have our community. We have our good friends, people of all ages, ethnicities, religions and beliefs, and some of the greatest conversations you could imagine. Lying or sitting side by side, sharing blankets for warmth, sharing food, sharing tobacco, listening to musicians play, reading, debating, thinking – we have unity. We have community. And what could possibly be better?? What else do you actually need? And I ask that question out of the context of the fabricated ‘necessities’ that society and the current system teaches us we should need.

Don’t be fooled – the current system does not encourage community or unity. It breeds isolation and alienation, because it relies on individualism and competitiveness to sustain itself. It doesn’t want us to view each other as equal – it wants us to compete with each other, for social standing and for resources. And it wants the people who believe in and encourage community and equality to be silenced, because these communities are the biggest threat to its survival. This is why we are being referred to as ‘feral hippies’ and mocked for having these ideals – because these are the ideals that will bring this current system crashing to the ground, and people don’t want their ability to consume and hoard resources for themselves to be threatened.

Many slaves believe that one day, they too can become the emperor.

“Never mind that now, I’ve almost made it to the point where I can actually make my point,” Rolf replied. “Now… where was I?”

“At your point, I can only assume,” Tibi replied, sighing. “Or, I can only hope.” She rubbed her eyelids with her fingers and tried to concentrate.

“Oh, yes, my point. Well, my point was…” Rolf trailed off, and Tibi gestured for him to continue. Rolf sat still, posed to begin gesticulation at any moment, but the thoughts didn’t come. He sat back in his chair, confused and disappointed.

“How did we even get onto this topic?” he asked.

Tibi shrugged. “You started talking and I started listening? It doesn’t really take much.”

“I need to use the ‘back’ button in my brain, like in a web browser.”

“Yes, you go use that hypothetical button. I’m going to sit here and try and recover the precious minutes of my life I just wasted on you talking until you could get to a point where you could actually talk.”

“Um, guys, this is great and all, but you’re kind of having a conversation now,” a voice interjected. The pair of quarrelers looked up, to find the group staring at them. They had forgotten they were not the only ones in the room.

“In that case, does anyone else have a point they’d like to make? A point they could actually make now, without using the group’s time to formulate the structure of the point they have to make in the first place?” Tibi shifted onto the edge of her seat.

“You mean, with a point already formulated?” asked Rolf.

“Yes.”

Den put up his hand. “Does that mean we can’t contribute if we haven’t previously outlined what we want to contribute?”

“Yes,” responded Tibi.

“No,” responded Maif, who hadn’t spoken for awhile. “You can’t previously outline a response to something someone else says before you have heard them say it. Before you even know that they’re going to say it.”

“I agree,” said Rolf. “I propose, we are allowed to respond to other people’s points, as they make them.”

“That wasn’t the point of what I just said. I said, people shouldn’t make POINTS without having thought about them previously. This isn’t a sounding board for your own ideological rhetoric – this is a group of people trying to organize themselves. Respond all you want – but by that same token, don’t respond to somebody else’s point by attempting to formulate your own point in rebuttal, right on the spot as you’re speaking.”

“Hold on, hold on,” interrupted Cheese. “You seem to be imposing on the terms ‘free speech’ a lot – how can we have an open air discussion, where people can freely discuss their ideas, if we impose limitations on the word ‘freedom’?”

“I am imposing on the logistics of facilitation of a discussion with no structure and no actual facilitation.”

“I agree,” said Pod. “Some of us came here to have a meeting. Some of us came here to wax lyrical. The people who came for a meeting don’t want to listen to ill thought out ideological banter. The people who came here to have others validate their ill thought out ideological banter don’t really want to participate in a structured meeting, because it is imposing on their ability to ramble freely.”

“If this isn’t a place for people to share their ideological theories, then where is?” asked Cheese. “I don’t mean to be obstructive here, but this is a meeting about a movement governed BY ideology, and if we can’t talk about that, then what is the point of being here?”

“The POINT of being here is to have a meeting. Let me just point that out right now.” Tibi tilted the brim of her hat down over her eyes and leant back into the comforting softness of the chair. “Do you honestly think I wouldn’t rather just have a chat? But this isn’t the medium for it – this is a structured meeting. We have protocol and regulations in place, specifically to prevent conversations like this.”

“It all sounds so bourgeois,” said Rolf, also leaning back, and sighing. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could trust each other enough to just facilitate the discussion ourselves, independently of rules and regulation and structure? If we could just have an orderly but in-depth discussion without it descending into chaos?”

“I think chaos is inherent in human nature,” said Pod.

“If chaos were inherent in human nature, we would have scrabbled around in the dirt until we became extinct. Civilization wasn’t built on chaos,” Rolf replied.

“Yeah, and civilization also wasn’t build on each person’s individual ideology and rhetoric. Humans wouldn’t have survived if they had acted as individuals – this is about getting past everyone’s own individual bullshit to get to a point of identification of common goals, followed by organization of ourselves to make whatever kind of stand we choose to make.”

“But how are we ever going to get past people’s rhetoric if we don’t let them talk about it?” asked Rolf. “How can we get people to a point where they can agree on something concrete if they can’t explore their own ideas for long enough?”

“Exploration of your ideas is fine, and necessary,” interrupted Tibi, “but it can be done in one’s own time. The idea is, you know what you’re going to say before you say it, because you’ve thought about it before, which shows respect for the group whose time you are commandeering, and in turn makes the group respect you because you are exhibiting your own capacity for critical analysis and logical thought.”

Frog put his hand up, looking dejected. “Um, I’m really sorry, guys, but… what were we talking about again? I’m sorry, it’s just hard to follow the train of conversation.”

“Active participation kind of helps that, man. I don’t want to corner you, but if you don’t really participate then chances are you aren’t listening properly, then for every time someone needs something explained again or needs clarification, if that takes five minutes, all those occasions add up and then we wonder why people leave before the meetings are over. No disrespect,” Pod finished quickly, holding his hands up as if in surrender.

“It also frustrates the people who are paying attention to no end, so they get cranky quickly and impatient and they aren’t polite about having to explain the same thing five times, then the people who need the explanations get upset and offended at other people’s attitudes towards them, and it becomes a case of us versus them, which makes the entire point of us being here in the first place totally redundant.” Tibi covered her face with her hands. “If our enemies tried to invent a ploy to disassemble us from the inside, they couldn’t come up with a better one if they tried.”

Pod nodded. “It seems like any situation where humans try to get together and discuss things and reach answers just has a self-deploying ‘self-destruct’ button, set to an unknown timer, built into it.”
“You know what I think it is?” Tibi asked. “I think that, the natural human state is complacency. So when we do anything but be complacent, it immediately feels strange, and we genuinely do not know how to comport ourselves once in that unfamiliar state. And we aren’t used to other people being anything but complacent, so it just confuses us to see others also not being complacent.”

“And this is because we have been robbed of our humanity by society,” Pod interjected.

“So, nothing too serious, then?” Rolf raised his eyebrow at him.

“Nope. Of course not,” he replied, vaguely, pulling at the material of his sleeve. “I’m sorry, what were we actually talking about again?”

“We were talking about whether or not we can talk about anything,” replied Den.

“…and how did we get onto that?”

“Hmm, I wonder!” Tibi was finding it hard to control her frustration, but at the same time finding it hard to channel it into anything that wasn’t just reductive. “No, seriously, I do wonder. I just don’t mention it because it halts progress.”

“It’s too dangerous to get used to other people validating your existence for you, anyway,” said Pod. “You get to a point where you can’t live independently of other devices through which others can validate you. You can’t just have a thought and be satisfied with that – other people have to praise you for it before you can give the thought any practical application.”

“But what if your thought is a suggestion that you think might benefit others?” asked Rolf.

“This is your fault anyway, Rolf. Your little speech got us into this mess.”

“Yeah, well, you were supposed to cut me off after 3 minutes.”

“How is that any less of an infringement on your freedom of speech than us wanting you to stick to the topic at hand? Only moments ago you were all so adamant that any infringements on freedom of speech in this sort of setting would only be reductive. Now suddenly this descent into madness and folly is our fault, for NOT infringing on your freedom of speech.”

Leon timidly raised his hand. Tibi pointed to him. He cleared his throat, and said, “Um, can I just ask, what happens with the people who aren’t at this meeting?”

“What do you mean?” asked Pod.

“Well, we can’t exactly make any decisions unless everyone is present to have a say. Right? Isn’t that democracy? Or is democracy just the rule of the majority?”

“We can’t cater to people who don’t attend meetings. If they aren’t present, then whatever, we have to continue the momentum in their absence and part of that is making concrete decisions at every meeting, so we can actually DO things. Rather than just talking about ideology.”

“Just putting it out there, a discussion about everyone’s own individual ideologies would be a lot more interesting than this current conversation!” Maif said, and held her hands up in a similar fashion to Pod’s earlier maneuver – the universal signal of surrender. The thing you do when you don’t want the gun pointed at you, no matter how strongly you feel about something.

“You’re right, nobody wants the gun pointed at them, but it has to be said, this conversation isn’t any more productive than us talking about our beliefs,” Rolf said, rolling his eyes slightly and then settling them in a sideways direction. “And, to be honest, listening to people’s personal beliefs WOULD be a lot more interesting, I agree.”

“I am dissenting to that,” said Pod, folding his arms across his chest and one leg over the other.

“Dissenting to what?”

“Dissenting to the proposal that discussing people’s personal beliefs would be more interesting and as productive as this discussion right now.”

“Nobody put forward a proposal.”

“That was clearly a proposal. And I am dissenting.”

“So, you think this current conversation is more interesting than a discussion about people’s beliefs would be?” asked Rolf.

“What I think about this current discussion is irrelevant, the proposal was that a conversation about people’s beliefs would be MORE interesting and useful than this current discussion. Regardless of what I think about the current discussion, I am dissenting to the proposal that listening to everybody’s monologues about ideological rhetoric would be MORE useful and interesting.”

“Well, should we amend the proposal, since there seems to be some dissent?” Maif asked.

“No, we shouldn’t amend that proposal – that proposal wasn’t even actually proposed!” Rolf said. “Pod’s just being reactionary.”

“Excuse me, but how am I being reactionary?”

“You’re being reactionary because you’re being close-minded – you don’t even want to listen to other people speak about why they are here in the first place. That doesn’t exactly indicate a lot of respect for this group of people.”

“I just have a keen interest in the Socratic notion that not all opinions are actually worth listening to, and just because the majority might prefer something, that doesn’t automatically make it ‘right’.”

“But how is that even related to democracy, if some people automatically aren’t entitled to opinions on things and to have their opinions be heard? And who gets to decide whose opinion is worthwhile enough to hear, and whose isn’t? That’s just senselessness!” Rolf realized he had gradually been raising his voice, and he sat back in silence.

Tibi and Pod looked at each other. She pointed at him. “And, go,” she said.

Pod sighed. “This notion that everybody is automatically entitled to opinions on things they know NOTHING about is the senseless thing. If everybody were as equally insightful and educated and analytical as everybody else, then this system could work. But this isn’t the case. You’re assuming a LOT of probably untrue prior knowledge of a person when you legitimize their opinion on something by actively listening to it. The issue is that if everyone is entitled to an opinion, and entitled to express that opinion, but no further demands are made of them, like the demand to actually research and understand the issue before forming an opinion on it and sharing that opinion, then every time we allow open air discussion, our time is wasted by people with no knowledge on topics and nothing to actually offer. You can’t debate a theory if you don’t have any knowledge of what the theory actually is, for example. But this doesn’t stop people. And, I’m sorry, but I refuse to dignify arguments with no actual content and no actual point with any sort of legitimization.”

“But then, how can you ever include the majority? How can you include people who might not have the same level of education as other members of the group, or who aren’t as like-minded and not focused on the same issues generally?”

“The majority can still be included, this is the thing,” Pod replied, “but in a system where there is a silent acknowledgement of the idea that, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, you don’t talk about it. You listen to others who DO know what they are talking about, and through that process, you learn, and build upon your own education and knowledge, and through this, then you start to formulate an opinion actually worth listening to. The problem is that everybody just wants to talk, talk, talk, mostly because these people probably are quite alienated in their daily lives, and they come along to occasions like this expecting that the people here will somehow be more tolerant. But tolerant of what? Of their lack of knowledge and critical analysis on issues? What they actually get is a roomful of extremely frustrated people, who spend quite a lot of independent time thinking and discussing these issues and theories, and they are sick to death of having to listen to people who don’t know what they are talking about but who either think they do, or who think that because of this abstract concept of ‘democracy’, they should still be vocalizing their opinions, when they actually don’t really have one based on anything substantial, in case they themselves cause the decisions of the group to become undemocratic.”

Rolf paused. “I can’t tell if that is reactionary or a genuinely intelligent analysis of the dynamic of these situations. I also can’t tell if I am supposed to agree with you or not – what am I committing to by agreeing with you on this?”

“Educated people who are sick of dumbing themselves down and constantly compromising their intelligence and comportment for the benefit of the less educated are always going to seem reactionary. Almost fascistic. Doesn’t mean they aren’t more or less hitting the nail on the head. If it wasn’t for this idiotic neo-liberal idea of ‘personal choice’ and ‘individuality’, we might not live inside a system where ignorant people end up being hero worshipped specifically for their own brands of personal ignorance. Note how my implication is also never that anyone is inherently less intelligent than other people – until I am proved otherwise I will continue to optimistically assume that it is a direct result of socialization and the failings of the education system. But the fact still remains that people with no education in and no knowledge of certain areas are therefore ignorant of them, and will probably have ideas that are of no use to us, if they aren’t just downright stupid ideas. And if productivity is what you’re after, it would be much more productive if those who already knew things talked and those who didn’t, listened, rather than breaking the flow of everyone else’s productive discussion with their jagged inputs.”

“Yes, but we, as the educated ones, aren’t allowed to vocalize this opinion,” said Tibi, leaning forward, “because then we get blamed for alienating other people. Our choice is either, to be alienated ourselves, or to steamroller over their arguments anyway, but that takes so much time and effort. Constantly having to explain yourself to other people is exhausting and I would be happy if I never had to do it again.”

“What if you were in the other person’s shoes, though?” asked Den. “What if you were the one without the education but you didn’t want to be alienated either?”

“Personally, I find the idea of speaking on topics I know nothing about more alienating than the idea of sitting quietly and actively listening to the insights of other, more qualified, people.”

“But, here it is again!” Rolf exclaimed. “Shouldn’t we give people credit for just giving something a try? And who gets to decide who is more qualified to speak?”

“Thousands of years of anthropology and human evolution, for a start,” Tibi said, resting her chin in her hand.

“The system in which we currently live decides who is more qualified to speak. It controls who is told what, who sees what, and it also controls what these people can do with what they’ve got, within these limitations it imposes on them – for example, the system decides who doesn’t get to have a university education, and then the system decides what jobs they will be qualified for, for the rest of their lives. So, it is perfectly understandable that people get fucking pissed off about not being listened to, and about society’s general message that nobody cares what they have to say, ever. But this is less about us not caring what others have to say, and more about our objection to our productivity as a group constantly meeting the barriers of ill thought out ideological banter, which takes place when we are trying to agree on specific details of totally unrelated things.” Pod was out of breath, and this debate was exhausting and frustrating him, so he stopped talking and rested his forehead in his hand.

“I… see what you’re saying,” Rolf said, slowly, “and the only thing stopping me from agreeing with you one hundred percent on this is just the factor of the sheer unfairness in all of this. People don’t ask to be less educated or even less naturally intelligent. They come to these groups in good faith, hoping that for once they will be recognized and heard and not marginalized. But, you’re right – they could choose to stop talking and listen. They could choose to be more analytical. And when I say unfairness, I mean on both sides – it isn’t fair that the intelligent, insightful and educated are perpetually unable to actually act without restrictions put upon them, restrictions necessary only for the benefit of other people, restrictions to facilitate inclusiveness. It isn’t fair that educated and intelligent people get marginalized, either, and in this world that tends to reward ignorance and blind faith, they do get marginalized more often, and feel alienated more often, at least in these developed societies. Maybe in other places too, I don’t know. And the idea that, if scenarios like this are one of the only places where these people can congregate and stand in solidarity with each other and support each other, then these people are getting a raw fucking deal, because even in these scenarios they aren’t limitless – they are restricted in every aspect of their lives, and then are criticized when they express any desire to put limitations on the ideas of inclusiveness and freedom of expression. It is no fucking wonder that anybody in this society would become cynical – look at our fucking lives. This is all we get to fucking work with, and it just doesn’t work and will never work, and we will be kept down by the soles of other people’s boots for the rest of our lives, no matter who we are, where we are, what we think – whatever. Unless of course, you’re the one with your boot on someone else’s back – and that’s an even worse life! Your own existence relying on the repression of others for validation? Pass. I’d rather be trodden on for the rest of my life than be the one who willingly treads on someone else.” He fell silent.

The group sat silently, awkwardly, some looking at the floor, some at the window. Some fiddled with their clothes, and some ran their hands through their hair. Tibi quietly sighed, and closed her eyes.

Pod sighed too. “Ok, guys, seriously – what movie are we going to see? This is just getting ridiculous now.”

The ones who have never had a deep thought in their lives, and are proud of it. The ones who demand you explain every facet of your belief system to them over the Internet, so they can criticize you for it, without having any semblance of a belief system of their own to offer up in return. And those that see this as a fair exchange – those who believe that this is an example of human connection through conversation.

Those who want to debate theories that they have no knowledge of, just to try and exert their own dominance. Those who are so convinced of their superior intelligence that every few steps they blunder into a trap laid by someone capable of actual thought, and still continue to vainly struggle against the tide of knowledge and analysis, of which they themselves have none. Those whose every action is a manifestation of the crippling fear residing within them.

Those who cannot even acknowledge that there are other humans on the planet, or that we even really have a planet, as it dies around them and they close their eyes in response. Those who walk not on the earth, but on something else, something unknown.

The liberal hedonists. The misogynists. The capitalists. The ignorants. Those who will follow Big Brother willingly when the final battle commences.

Those who hate humans, animals, nature, science, freedom, democracy, liberty, solidarity, brotherhood. Those whose only beliefs about the world centre around their own individuality.

Those who are happy to carry the monarchy and its throne, and the pope in his stone cathedral; those who are happy to carry the great weight of the wealthy upon their broad, stupid backs.

Those who are wilfully blind to corporate greed and the crimes of capitalism. Those who are wilfully blind to the world in general.

Those who say, “That’s just the way things are,” or, “It’s just human nature”.

Those who think that what they see on mainstream television is representative of any sort of truth, at all. Those who refuse to believe that our media is censored to within an inch of its life. And those who, as a result of this, seek no answers elsewhere, and therefore have no answers, no truth, no knowledge.

Those content to remain savage idiots until they have been ridden to the grave by the poisonous system they willingly perpetuate.

To the ones whose children will one day weep at the thought that their parents could have intervened, done something, anything, to stop civilization from crumbling to the ground and to stop the now irreversible destruction of the planet – and wilfully chose not to, despite knowing that it was happening.

To the ones who believe that this is all the will of some deity.

The problem with these people is they haven’t had enough war! Where else do morals come from?

WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Oh, look at the time, 1984 already!

Occupy Adelaide - Occupy Australia -http://occupyaustralia.org.au/

When I first considered working in a sex shop, I realized how quickly a job becomes just that – a job. My family was on the poverty line and without me getting an extra income, we were facing homelessness. I needed a job. I sent out countless resumes and applications in the months leading up to my decision to apply at the sex shop, and I didn’t get a single interview. Then when I went to hand in my resume there, I was given an interview immediately.

I was lucky that all I had to do to get paid was sell manufactured products and not my own body. Remember that word – lucky. Then tell me later if you consider yourself lucky to be in a position to CHOOSE to do sex work. If you do consider yourself lucky, what would you say to a woman whose only option is to sell her body or see her family starve or starve to death herself?? Will you tell her she is one of the lucky ones, she is truly liberated, and she should enjoy her work, ignoring everything else?

Let’s discuss.

My mother, a staunchly anti-porn feminist, also saw how quickly a job becomes a job. She put her beliefs aside to support me because she knew we needed money. Not once did she imply that I should not work at this place because of what it sold and what the products represented to society. It even became a novelty, and the general consensus amongst everyone I spoke to about it was that not only was it a perfectly acceptable job to have, but that it also might be quite funny and enjoyable.

When I look back on this, I am actually deeply upset that nobody I had in my life at that time called me up on it and said, “Hey, have you considered the ethical implications of what you’re doing??” But it is very hard to have ethics and morals in this world. There’s no money in it.

My experiences at this business were, on the whole, horrific, but not due solely to the moral implications or even the somewhat disturbing clientele. The business was run by a pair of exceedingly unpleasant, egotistical, underhanded psychopaths, and by the end of my 6 month stint there I was finishing every shift in tears. The anxiety made me throw up on several occasions whilst at work, and sometimes I was so ill and light-headed that I would have to sit in the office, unable to stand up without falling. The bosses spied on me on the store’s cameras. After what would become my final shift, I came home and said to my mother, “I know we need the money, but I can’t do this anymore. I can’t even work one more shift – I can’t bear it.” I was twenty years old at the time. Two days later I handed in my resignation, and left, after a few more of the boss’s underhanded jibes at my lack of skills as a sales assistant and a few more minutes of him staring at my tits. (His perceived lack of skill – he didn’t have the insight to realize that being under constant threat of shouted verbal abuse and at the mercy of the constant ‘up and down’ glances men direct at women thinking they can’t see them, tends to affect a person’s performance negatively.)

And I was lucky I was able to walk away when it got to the point of being intolerable. Some people aren’t that lucky.

He also had no knowledge of what else was happening in my life at the time and the effect it was having on my ability to function. He, however, was allowed to screech abuse at me when he was having a bad day, even when there were customers in the shop. On one occasion I couldn’t use the computer to complete a sale because my hands were shaking so badly, and I had to ask the customer to wait for a few minutes while I calmed down. He had witnessed the scene and was very understanding and implied that this was not exactly a good model for a business.

Not exactly the most liberating of environments.

So what did I actually learn working in such a place? Once the initial ‘I finally have a job and therefore will not starve now’ phase had passed, a continuous internal moral and ethical conflict kicked in. Funnily enough, the porn was the product that I engaged with the least in my job, because there were rules against talking to customers about the content of the DVDs because, and I am not even joking, “Some of them just want to hear you talk dirty”. I also wasn’t required to clean the DVD room or the products in it, so I only went into the room once a shift to cast an eye over the shelves to make sure they were neat. Once a shift was more than enough, as the products made me feel so physically ill that I had to avoid looking at the proclamations on the covers about the activities being ‘barely legal!’, and the images of unsmiling female faces covered in jizz or a woman with five penises being shoved into her face or that facial expression people get when deep-throating. You know, the one where they look like they’re about to vomit and cry at the same time.

So romantic.

Not exactly McDonalds.

But, a normal part of daily life in such a business nonetheless. Another normal part was the constant concern that a man might decide to start ‘servicing’ himself in the DVD room, and the notion that, as a twenty year old woman, I would then have to approach him and insist he leave the shop. It had happened several times before I started working there.

Comparatively, this was a very clean business. Nothing illegal, no ‘back room’, nothing. I had multiple people come into the shop trying to buy illegal drugs like amyl nitrate, and on one occasion a man came in who tried to sell me some, but that was it. One customer came in and told me he had inserted a toy into his anus ‘a few months ago’ and it had never come out. That conversation went for about an hour. One customer called the shop and demanded to know what specific ingredient in the prostate massager he had bought made it glow in the dark and was it radioactive. He demanded to know my name and told me that he would not be ‘fobbed off’ with a non-factual answer. Of course we would sell radioactive sex toys, of course! There was only one occasion where I started to feel really unsafe, when a customer came in looking for something he could discreetly slip his partner so she would want to have sex when he did. He kept trying to touch my arms during this conversation and I had to hide behind the cash register so he couldn’t get near me.

Considering the obvious dangers of putting a young woman in a position like this, it might surprise you to hear that the owners of this particular shop hired young women exclusively. They claimed it was because they made other women buying toys more comfortable……

…..but I didn’t sell toys to women. In the entire time I worked there I sold one toy to a woman, and she said she was in a rush so our interaction was limited to me taking her money and putting her purchase in a bag. She didn’t need to be made comfortable. I sold toys to men FOR women. I sold male toys to men. I sold lingerie to men FOR women. Couples, gay and straight and of both genders, sometimes came into the shop but never purchased anything. And I certainly didn’t sell any porn to any women, ever. I only worked there for 6 months, but I can swear that I never sold ANY porn in any format to any women.

The place wasn’t big on female sexuality, basically. A wall of toys for use by women means nothing if no women are buying them, and a room of pornographic DVDs relates to nothing but men’s sexualities when no woman ever buys a thing from it.

So who was buying the porn?? I hate to present a stereotype, but the people buying porn were 90% men over the age of about 50. The other 10% were men younger than middle aged, and they tended to buy things that involved urine. (I wish I was joking). ‘Pissing Swinger’ was a big seller.

Our most popular DVD section was the transvestite section. The boss told me that on my first training session, and I didn’t believe him. But he was right. Porn that involved women with penises was the most popular.

The second was the section featuring girls who looked as young as they could get ‘em and still be legal.

Mmm. Liberating. Holy.

And you were lucky if you made any sales anyway. The most common scenario would be men coming into the shop, looking at the DVD room for a good half hour, then walking out of the shop ‘awkwardly’… So, yeah, most of the clientele wouldn’t even pay – they got their kicks for free, a good indication of the level of respect they had for the people in the films and a good indication of the amount of thought they had put into their desire to view pornography: none, bar the desire for the inevitable masturbation session.

The average person watching pornography isn’t deconstructing it or thinking about the bigger impact it has on society. We NEED to acknowledge this fact when we talk about this topic.

I want to share with you one of the scenarios I remember most vividly from my time there. An elderly man came into the shop and said, “I’ve got these four school friends and we are all turning eighty next week. I’m looking for something really hardcore. I’ve been to a few different places and I haven’t found anything yet.” So I sent him into the DVD room to look. He scoured the room for half an hour and then left empty handed.

We catered to absolutely every genre and fetish that people could possibly want, bar underage girls and boys, bestiality, necrophilia or anything else illegal.

So, what did this man consider to be hardcore?? What did he want that we weren’t selling?? This incident really stuck in my mind – I found it very concerning, considering the content of some of the DVDs we sold, DVDs I, a self-confessed sexual weirdo, couldn’t even look at the covers of without feeling sick.

I have to stop here and speak a bit to cancel out the notion that people with any sort of an anti-porn stance are prudes, etc. I am the opposite – a demented and damaged pervert. Without going into too much detail about my private life, I am at the other end of the spectrum. If anything, I am unhealthy. Or, I should say, I was, and am now in recovery. And I am the first to admit it – there are some dark places in my psyche and they manifest in bizarre behaviours that a lot of people would deem ‘not normal’. I don’t deem them as normal either, because I know where they come from – they are results of trauma. In my personal life, promiscuity and strange sexual behaviours ARE related directly to deep-seated psychological issues. I have a personality disorder and am a depressive. My father abandoned me when I was seven years old. I’ve seen him once in the subsequent 14 years. I crave really strange kinds of contact with other human beings, often of a nature that is punishing to me, and why?? Because I has issues. And I know that.

Buuuuut other people see these kinds of behaviours normalized in pornography and watch other people do them and think it is all fine and normal. From my own personal experience my strange desires come from a place of severe dysfunctionality and a very negative self-image. When I used to watch porn, it was because I either wanted to identify with a woman being abused or I wanted to see abuse happen. Fucked up, I know. But it gets worse – I didn’t have to try very hard to find the kind of thing I wanted in mainstream porn. In fact, finding something that didn’t fit my criteria would have been harder.

My reasoning was sadistic, inappropriate and quite disgusting –

What’s your excuse??

WOMEN SHOULD NOT HAVE PEOPLE WANTING TO SEE THEM BE BRUTALIZED AND VIOLATED AND WOMEN SHOULD NOT WANT TO BE BRUTALIZED AND VIOLATED.

I am almost a cliché of the issues that anti-porn spokespeople spout as the reasons for why women get involved in any sex work. Now, I never actually exchanged money for the use of my sexuality, but at a point in my life I considered it as a viable option and that is the issue I am addressing.

I remember once at the age of about fifteen, a friend of mine told me she was planning to become a stripper when she was eighteen.

Like it or not, we gotta address this stuff. It’s real. It’s out there. Probably happening to your daughter.

I do not indulge in these self-destructive sexual behaviours or seek these things from my lovers anymore, and I am proud of myself for at least that, despite my other much stronger feelings of shame and self-disgust regarding my past. Overcoming the traps of sexual intimacy has been very difficult. There’s always an inference between two mutually loving and respectful people, that ‘since we respect and love each other and we know that, what we do to each other doesn’t actually matter because it is something from a place of respect and part of respect is respecting the other person’s wish that you should hold them down and fuck them while they struggle to get away, it is only a kinky sex game, come on’. It gets dangerous. The boundaries get bigger and bigger and the line to toe gets further and further away. I choked someone into unconsciousness once. If he didn’t want me to he could easily have fought me off – but he didn’t. Does that make either of our positions in the equation acceptable?

……….

I’ve lived through this and I don’t understand my own reasoning, because it isn’t reasoning – nothing like that comes from mutual love and respect. You’re going into a whole different game there. And I can certainly say right here and now that I have dated equal numbers of men who would never do any of these things to a woman even if she asked for it. My current partner will probably have an aneurism when he reads this article.

Knowing and admitting that you are at least a bit perverted and a bit odd is in itself odd, in a world where people are presented daily with the things you do BECAUSE you have severe psychological issues, but they are presented as totally normal sexual behaviours to be emulated and seen as ‘good sex’. Hello, mainstream porn. And here I come to the crux of the problem –

I am dysfunctional and severely damaged.

What’s your excuse?

But I’m functional enough to be a few weeks away from completion of my first university degree, to be an award winning writer at the age of twenty, to have and maintain good friendships and loving romantic relationships. I have a good relationship with the family I have left.

Trust me; we’re out there, walking the streets where your children are. How would you feel if your son came to you as a parent and said that a girl made him hurt her?

Conflicted, I bet.

Anyway. Back to the story. So I worked in a sex shop. At the time I was very involved with a chap who was also big on the whole violent sex thing. He wasn’t when we first met, and that transition was my fault. I have no knowledge of his subsequent sexual relationships, so I can’t say for sure whether or not I actually changed him, but the most important point to be made here is that by the end of our relationship, he was violent with me even after I told him to stop, and he continued to do these things to me on multiple occasions, no matter how many times I asked him not to or said that I wasn’t enjoying it. Our relationship was rocky at best, he was even more psychologically disturbed than I (ergo, vulnerable), and our interactions with each other grew increasingly more and more depraved, demeaning and degrading, as a reflection of how miserable we were as people, and our individual self-hatred and self-disgust. I could see some weird parallels between my work and my personal life. Constantly being surrounded by sex makes you numb to it, eventually. It just becomes a product you’re selling, and it HAS to become a product you’re selling, otherwise you might stop and realize that humans selling themselves is a little twisted, especially if you believe the human body to be sacred or sex to be sacred. I had to dehumanise the women in the films I was selling in order to justify myself selling them, and I had to dehumanise the women in pornography that I watched myself, because I KNEW that what I was doing was disgraceful. But, rather than stop it, I continued. I wasn’t ready to face my actions yet.

Toys, lingerie, magazines, DVDs, whips, ropes, it is all just a part of sex as a product. I flat out reject the concept of selling sex as a product now, and of using sex to sell other products, and you can blame capitalism and patriarchy for that little phenomenon. Actually, you can blame capitalism and patriarchy for pretty much everything, including the reason men feel compelled to watch porn in the first place. When you become numb to something you become more extreme in your behaviours in order to continue to feel, a similar principle to a common reason given for self-mutilation. My relationship got worse, and as a result I had to dehumanise myself. He kept hitting me even though I asked him not to. Forcing me into bed when I wasn’t into it. I had a lot of physical pain inflicted on me that was way beyond what my threshold could handle. And, I let him take photographic evidence of a lot of this stuff (which I later destroyed when he wasn’t home after we split up). He also thought it was appropriate to attempt to remove articles of my clothing in front of his friends. But I let it continue, because I had lost the connection to my body, and to the idea that sex was anything more than just a product. My mind made the person and my body was just an unrelated object. I didn’t feel intimate or loving at all when it came to sex anymore. So I let myself be degraded and dehumanised over and over again, and I actively participated in it.

But, our bodies AREN’T separate to our minds!! In reality, our bodies are the only thing in the entire world that we ourselves actually OWN.

And all I did in the industry was sell the things other people made. For the most part I think the realities of the porn industry scare me because I see how easily I could have, at that stage in my life, been assimilated into it, without deconstructing it AT ALL. When I heard that one of my friends had been paid $700 to give a guy a blowjob on the internet, I even considered it – I was poor, and the idea of earning $700 for a few minutes work was mind blowing. And my point is that, people decide to work in the industry for a reason. It might just be money, my own motivation for working in a porn shop selling films in which women are continuously abused, and my reasoning behind considering ‘doing porn’ myself and my friend’s reason for actually going through with it, but does that make it a liberating, progressive or good industry? It might be because they enjoy degrading physical experiences as I did, but does that make it a liberating, progressive or good industry? It might be because they think that it doesn’t matter what we do during sex because all sexuality is normal and it doesn’t matter what we do to each other because it comes from a place of mutual respect between two people. As I did. Some of them might just like sex and might only make non-violent films where they are worshipped instead of degraded or objectified. Ok, but – if one person’s sexual desires are allowed to be shown in pornographic films, then we can’t say ‘hitting women (or men for that matter) is bad, not to mention illegal, and we aren’t going to show that in porn’. Or can we? But then what happens to the people who now don’t have an outlet for their desires? There’s the rub – we either attempt to protect ourselves and other women and men from people who might become predators by continuing to manufacture pornographic material that satisfies their violent or abusive urges. Or, we run the risk of excluding these people and leaving them to their own devices. Out on the street. Where actual potential victims are.

This is why people who work in the sex industry don’t want to believe that their actions have a negative effect on the broader community: because admitting you are part of the problem is a lot harder than claiming you are part of the solution.

But we don’t let people have porn with children in it, even if that is their only sexual interest, so why isn’t it the same with porn that degrades women?? Because child pornography is illegal? Because paedophiles won’t assault children if they can’t see child pornography? Why isn’t porn that portrays violence against women illegal then? From a human rights perspective, why is porn that debases or degrades ANY HUMANS not illegal??

I guess because law enforcement is so soft when it comes to sexual violence and violence against women. Even rape isn’t a big enough deal for them to prosecute accordingly, and the notion that anybody, with the way things are now, would bother policing pornography is just stupid. They don’t even care when women get raped or beaten in reality, we are kidding ourselves if we believe that they care about what happens to women in porn.

What will keep me safe on the streets at night? This is the world we live in. I can’t support pornography when things are as they are.

I come now to the use of the word ‘liberation’, which is the fundamental basis of my argument against a pornography industry that allows these images of women being violated to not only enter the public domain, but that demand others pay for the viewing privilege. My argument is not black and white and that watching images of people having sex is bad and people shouldn’t make porn and people shouldn’t watch it.

As someone who has learned the hard way the true value of the human body and of human intimacy in life, MY argument is that, when individual choices have an impact on every other human being on the planet because they are perpetuating a severely damaging and dangerous stereotype, we need to consider humanity above people’s individual choices to indulge in self-destructive violent behaviour. Don’t lie to yourself or anyone else and refer to it as liberation, and if you have psychological problems that cause you to want to brutalize others or be brutalized yourself, SEEK HELP! And keep in mind, I indulged in these behaviours myself for years, convincing myself that it was all ok and it was natural for me to want to be brutalized. It really is not. In my defence I was young and naïve and I have the psychiatric reports to prove that I AM NOT NORMAL. So, resultantly, I do not see these behaviours in anyone as normal.

I would love to see what human sexuality would be like in a world where we didn’t have the mainstream porn industry we have now, where all sorts of behaviours are normalized because we can see them in a film. I’d love to see what my own sexuality would look like if I hadn’t been a victim of so much psychological trauma during my childhood and adolescence. It took me many years to just get to the stage where I could admit that my personal self-destructive sexual behaviours do not come from a place of normal, healthy sexuality. It is difficult to accept the consequences and the resultant damage I have inflicted on myself and others in all of this. It is difficult to admit that just because you think, for whatever reason, that you enjoy something and that it is a good thing to be doing, it is actually destroying you, not to mention the negative impact it is having on society as a whole, and that you NEED to stop, not just for you, but for humanity’s sake and feminism’s sake. And the other part to this puzzle is that I found plenty of men who WOULD agree to do these terrible things to me, who wouldn’t refuse just based on principle. Which, surely, they should, right?? Unless it is from a place of mutual love and respect, of course, because that is how we treat those we love and respect. With abuse.

There is darkness lurking under the surface of most people. This still doesn’t make it ok to abuse each other or enjoy watching others be abused or enjoy being abused or enjoy abusing. Humans are sick animals, poisoned by capitalism and consumerism and religious dogma. My friend in high school once told me that her extremely Catholic uncle had hanging in his house side by side an extremely graphic pornographic poster of a woman, and a crucifixion ornament. When she told me this, she shrugged and said, “That’s Catholics.” That’s cognitive dissonance – conflicting feelings that make coming to a concrete decision impossible without forsaking at least part of what you believe in. And we wonder why humans are so conflicted and dysfunctional.

The world intervened in my case. I got out while I still could, and I was bloody lucky. I found the support of feminism and of the ‘radical’ feminists who speak out against women being brutalized in pornography and I realized just what the world had turned me into. I became an extremely political person. I am in a very good relationship now where I am well cared for and highly respected (I met my partner at a meeting of a feminist group). But when I compare the person I am now to the person I was about ten months ago, I almost reel at the shock of remembering what I was thinking and doing at the time. Change is good. I advocate change in the sex industry. If people want to watch videos of respectful sex to make their own sex better or to have better sex on their own, ok great. Maybe eventually the need to not have this option will arise, but that will be then. But if you want to get off on images of women (or anybody, to be honest) being brutalized, violated, gang banged, verbally abused, insulted, etc., no no no. If you need that shit to have an orgasm then there is probably a bigger issue you should be worrying about and seeking psychological help for. But then, isn’t it safer for these people to have porn that satisfies their desires so they aren’t out on the streets preying on women??

Well, no, because porn normalizes these behaviours for them. As if rape hasn’t been normalized enough in this world, we really can’t afford to continue to normalize ANY sort of abusive or violent or degrading behaviour towards women, or any form of patriarchal domination of women. We just can’t. Nope. Or more girls will decide at the age of 15 that being a stripper is the way to go, and more girls at the age of 19 will request their partners beat them. Remember the whole patriarchal oppression thing that has been happening since the start of civilization?? Can’t ignore it, can’t pretend it isn’t there, can’t pretend we are equal, can’t pretend the fight is over and everything is fine. Can’t pretend it is all just double standards, as an ex of mine claims (I sure know how to pick them) – to do that you would be ignoring hundreds and hundreds of years of oppression, oppression that is still totally prevalent, and now quite sinister and underhanded a lot of the time. And consumerism is the blanket society uses to hide inequality between people in privileged countries – we have everything we could ever possibly desire, what more do we want?

Umm, freedom, maybe? Just for starters. To not have vulgar things shouted at me by men from passing cars in a public street? To be able to walk around at night without nearly shitting myself every time I hear a leaf rustle? I’d swap my MacBook and my Coca-Cola for my personal safety any day of the week.

A focus on reforming the sex industry rather than eradicating it should be our priority, for now. We have no way of knowing if simply making nicer porn and stopping the circulation of anything promoting violence against and the domination of women will have any positive effect whatsoever – we have never totally reformed the porn industry before. We’ve never tried to tackle the ideology behind what is portrayed in mainstream pornography. The eradication of the industry is something we should only think about if our attempts at changing the industry don’t have any effect, but we owe it to the women working in the industry to try and give them a better life, rather than demand they all cease work and earning an income instantly. We should certainly offer them some kind of reform program, for those who do not want to be in the industry, that provides them with financial support and help while they look for new work and provides them with whatever counselling or psychiatric help they might need, if any, to help deal with their experiences in the industry. Because it isn’t all positive and we all know that – but a blanket ban on porn and the manufacture of it still won’t fix these problems. Banning something, no matter how bad it might be, will not remove the reasons it existed in the first place from the world.

People are already trying to change the industry, make ‘woman friendly’ porn, develop better conditions for the workers – whether we like it or not, it isn’t a black and white issue, and we don’t have the option of just saying yes or just saying no. It would be great if it were that simple and we could stop all abuse towards women with a two letter word. It would be great if all women stood up and said, “Hey, we’re not going to participate in our own exploitation anymore – we are tearing this system down.” Personal ideology is great and all, but it isn’t directly helping anything, and demanding that suddenly thousands of jobs not exist just is not the way to do this thing. There are actual humans at the bottom of all this ideology, living actual lives, and I believe in human rights and worker’s rights and the rights of the children of these workers to not go hungry or be plunged into poverty because suddenly their mother or father has no income and must find a new line of work.

But. Don’t get me wrong here. I am definitely of the opinion that pornography as it exists now IS NOT liberating in any sense of the word. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist, it just means we should not refer to it as liberating, and if it isn’t liberating, then we should probably start considering what it actually might be. That’s the first step in this process, and we aren’t even there yet. Selling your body is not liberation – it is kind of the opposite. Selling your body, the only thing you have in the world, is THE deepest kind of oppression – and one you are facilitating yourself. And prostitution may be the oldest trade, but that is only because it comes from a time when women had either very few or no other options to earn an independent income for themselves. So, in effect, a time of extreme repression of women, prompting women to make desperate choices in order to survive. As we all know now I have a tendency towards disrespect for myself and therefore am the kind of person who might have gravitated towards such a thing, had I not identified this and worked tirelessly to change my behaviour and attitudes since. It would be so easy for me to be paid to be fucked. It would also be easy for me to hate myself on the deepest possible level and for that to manifest in me deciding to be paid to be fucked, as it manifested in the past in me becoming a participator in extreme sexual violence. Basically, I can’t trust in myself or in anyone that these decisions aren’t the result of a deeper issue, even if the issue has not yet been identified. And if humans really do just have a natural propensity towards wanting abuse and violence, then why am I still bothering to get up in the morning?? The species is fucked and it needs to be annihilated for its own good.

But then, the idea that, in order to SURVIVE, my only option would be to sell my body… well, that just isn’t comprehensible to me, and probably isn’t comprehensible to women of privilege who defend their choice to work in mainstream pornography – I am safely here in Australia where I have countless other options to earn an income and that situation probably will never arise, so my opinion is an opinion and nothing more, because there is no actual threat of this in my life. Therefore, the claims of women who make the choice to work in pornography or prostitution is liberating are also only that, opinions, and should not be taken at face value as any sort of an actual answer to this debate. The idea that some women HAVE to sell their bodies to survive and support their families is just horrific and we should all recognize it as such – it ISN’T a choice for a lot of workers and they need to be taken into account as well as the workers who entered the industry by ‘choice’, whatever they define that to be. We can’t ignore a sector of women forced into a brutal demeaning lifestyle they have no control over just because liberals in the west think porn and prostitution is all about a person’s individual choices. We have a duty as humans to protect other humans in threatening situations, regardless of anything else.

Selling my labour isn’t considered liberating – are you seriously still going to argue that selling your BODY is liberating?

You have nothing in this life except your body. That’s why the sharing of physical intimacy is special to humans, because it is a human saying to another human, “Here. Please take everything I have in the world – I want you to have it.” And the other person says, “I will take everything you have and raise you everything I have”. If someone slaps you across the face throughout this act, then that isn’t exactly respectful to the monumental thing you are doing for them. And you wanting to be brutalized during this act isn’t exactly respectful to yourself.

You might have noticed that I present countless different views and opinions that all exist within my mind on this issue. This is because, the more I think about it, the more analysis I do, the further away I get from any concrete answers. I’ve thought about this topic a LOT, and talked to a lot of people about it, and most people agree with me – the more we analyse, the further we get from answers, because the situation is just so infinitely complex. But anything is when it is a battle between what people perceive as an individual’s right to make their own choices, and other people saying ‘well, maybe just because they want to do these things doesn’t mean it is right or that their actions aren’t hurting other people, and hey, maybe we should step in’.

But, it’s my body and I’m not allowed to smoke pot or inject heroin or stay up 5 days in a row on meth and people say I shouldn’t be allowed to have abortions and want to take that right away from me and some people say I’m not allowed to have sex before I’m married, and people say my friends aren’t allowed to be joined in a loving legal union. It’s their choice to want to get married, but in reality, the choice that they are not allowed to is made by other people, or by a previously existing system with a hell of a lot of problems.

So, why do people think that it is so important to have personal choice when it comes to porn and prostitution, when so many other areas of our lives are so heavily dictated and personal choice doesn’t exist?

Because a hell of a lot of the people advocating FOR mainstream pornography and for prostitution are already consumers of it and don’t want their privilege and personal choice of being able to consume these things to be threatened. Or they are workers within the industry who obviously have their livelihoods at stake – like I said, you’d be surprised at how quickly a job becomes a job. People have to convince themselves first that what they are doing is right and ok, and on an issue like mainstream pornography, the damages caused by it are so immeasurably huge that people NEED to form strong opinions about why they should be allowed to continue to do it. To be a member of a fascist army, for example, you’d have to believe pretty strongly that killing members of the proletariat army was the right thing. Or, you’d have to want to not die enough to kill other people, no matter how wrong you thought it was. Or, you’d just have to enjoy killing people……

Does this sound familiar? A very similar process of thought. Sadly, so often the choices humans make are prompted by a ‘do or die’ scenario, and this in itself is shameful. Either that, or society rewards and legitimises our tendencies toward violent psychopathy.

We are a horrible species, really, aren’t we?

The people who oppose the individual choice to partake of any behaviour that harms oneself or other people instantly become repressors, repressing people’s individuality – I am a socialist first and a liberal second, and I am also of the Socratic opinion that even if the majority of people want something, it doesn’t automatically make it right. That isn’t to say that I personally know what is right, either. As a socialist I have humans as a whole in my thoughts. The choices made by individuals have the power to totally destroy things for big sectors of humanity and this is the only reason I would intervene in anyone’s personal choice and this is the crux of the problem that people love to deny – whether you like it or not, your actions can affect society in untold ways. This is why a privileged woman says she chose to join the trade and being paid for sex is liberating, and an underprivileged woman says ‘I am only doing this because I have no other choice’ – the punters look at both sides of the argument and of course they side with the woman who says it is liberating, because it is just easier for them. They don’t need to challenge anything or take a look at themselves and their desires that way, and they continue to get what they want. It’s not fuckin’ rocket science – of course people defend their right to get what they want personally, without any thought to its affect on the rest of humanity. Most people aren’t socialists or humanists. Most people have no insight into the world because they buy the ideas that capitalism and patriarchy sell to them without thinking, and because when facing the actual realities of the world, most people don’t have the stomach for it and choose a life of escapism. If this wasn’t true of humanity, the world would look VERY different right now.

The choice to perform in a violent or degrading piece of pornography, as a woman, fucks things up for ALL WOMEN ON THE PLANET. Not to mention all the men who are conned into believing that this kind of behaviour is not only normal, but that women like it or even expect it – they are victims of the system too. Who knows, their masculinity might be under threat if they don’t appear to know instinctively how to behave in the bedroom, so what do they do? They emulate what they see. It’s safe and easy. And like I have stated before, clearly resultant from a deeper psychological issue regarding self-esteem and self-confidence. Vulnerable people are also on my mind – they need to be protected, from themselves and from each other and from any predators. If a man thinks what he has seen in porn is normal and copulates with a vulnerable woman and convinces her that it is also normal, well, are you starting to see the connections in the chain?? If a woman copulated with a vulnerable man and convinced him to brutalize her, and he only did it because she said she wanted it – again, it gets bleak pretty quickly. I’ve done a fair bit of desecrating the human body in my time and it is probably my biggest regret, that I didn’t work out what was wrong earlier and didn’t get help earlier.

And, still, all I actually did ‘in the industry’ was sell someone else’s product. I didn’t make it.

You don’t need to sell your own soul – I’ll do it for you.

But I made money by selling people films within which women were abused. I will be atoning for this for the rest of my life.

One of my most loved friends is a female who was raped. When I was younger I had a male friend who, at the age of 15, narrowly escaped a sexual assault from another man in a public toilet. I can’t help but feel like my ‘individual choice’ to have violence inflicted upon me in the name of sexual gratification contributed to those events. My ex pretended to rape me on multiple occasions, and when I think about that now I actually want to throw myself off a bridge. How many women did I hurt with my ‘individual choice’ to simulate a rape scenario within the privacy of my partner’s house? Every single person on the entire planet, because I was responsible for perpetuating a disgusting stereotype of sexuality that is slowly destroying us all. But, role-play is ok in any circumstances though right, because it’s all part of normal healthy human sexuality and it’s an individual choice and we know it isn’t real and it comes from a place of mutual love and respect –

Be quiet.

I have been a student at Flinders University in Adelaide since 2009, when I was a fresh-faced teenaged high school graduate. I entered the institution with the naïve hope that I would be respected and safe there, and seen as an intellectual and social equal by those around me. I put my trust in the lecturers and the coordinators and the staff in general, with the hope that they would support me and protect my right to be viewed as an equal being, and would step in were I ever to experience any kind of unfair prejudice.

I was naïve.

Recently, I had the need to go to a location on the Flinders University Sturt campus that I have never had to visit before: the paramedics office. That is, the administrative office for the paramedic degree, not an office where we keep our special on-campus paramedics. Long story short, I have an associate (also female) who is studying paramedics and needed to stop at the office to talk to someone before we drove home. I have often walked past this office on my way to my own department, but have never gone inside. Idly attempting to look busy and as if I belonged there, I wandered over to the office noticeboard, which was crowded with newspaper articles about paramedics and Flinders alumni – inspirational stories about young people thriving in the industry and saving human lives.

And then, my eyes settled on something else. Despite the fact that it was prominently displayed near the centre of the board, this particular item was far removed from the inspirational stories and notifications of upcoming educational and industry-based opportunities for students. Something that caused me to do a double take, because I literally could not believe what I was seeing.

There are some things that you must keep in mind at this point in the story, the first of which being that this is the office of people in charge of the paramedics topics and students, at a university – a so called seat of learning, where a large number of the attendees are young people, some of them only eighteen and right out of high school, as I was when I started my studies. This is a place that should take the responsibility to take care of young people and to teach them about the world and about themselves seriously; a place that, I would have hoped, would also have a steadfast moral and ethical standpoint on issues such as gender equality and human rights, which the students would receive the benefits of. A university should be encouraging students to have immeasurable compassion and respect for other humans, of all genders, of all ages, of all nations, and encouraging in them a desire to experience their world firsthand and work together to find a solution for a sustainable and safe future for the planet and all of its inhabitants. Flinders University is, of course, co-ed – men and women are around in equal measures, interacting with each other in every instance, studying in the same areas, and all opportunities are equal.

Or, so we believe.

Sadly, I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that this is a pretty superficial smokescreen to conceal what is actually occurring within the halls and classrooms of this institution, and most likely, within the walls of many other educational institutions. It seems that we just cannot escape the stranglehold that chauvinism, sexism and raunch culture has on our society – not even at university. It seems that my money is good enough for them, as is the money of all potential female students who want to study there, but it would seem that we are still just not worthy of equal treatment, because we are female, and the judging criteria and rules are therefore different.

I have often wondered why so many of the young people I have encountered at Flinders University are either utterly ignorant about the history of the feminist movement and the relevance that it still has today, or who just think that feminism is a big old joke – a bunch of women who are just jealous of the physical attributes of other women, and therefore have an irrational hatred of men because they want the same kind of attention that men give to the women who’s physical qualities they secretly covet. The reason for this lack of knowledge in the area is simple – because, nowadays, everywhere they go, they are faced with the idea that women ARE just objects, despite anything else they might have heard. This underhanded reinforcement of these offensive and totally archaic ideals are EVERYWHERE, including, it appears, in our educational institutions.

I almost found myself confronting the poor woman at the desk in that office, because I could not believe what I was seeing. I could not believe that, in 2011, in a UNIVERSITY, a place where people have the formative experiences that will then form their character, such a thing would be deemed appropriate. I could not believe that a female sits in that office every day with this in her eye-line. Hanging on this noticeboard, in the paramedics office, where students who are learning to become medical professionals responsible for the lives of their charges go to speak to the people in charge of their educations – a photograph of a young man in a paramedic uniform, grinning, surrounded by about 8 large-breasted, fake tanned, hair-extensioned women in bikinis, posing suggestively, below a sign that said : “PARAMEDICS: THE PERKS OF THE JOB!”

I wish I was joking. I wish that the consistent message that women are there to be objectified and men are there to be celebrated was all in my imagination. Sadly, it isn’t. It is everywhere, including in our educational environment.

The most ironic thing about this was that, if you consider what it actually takes to become a paramedic, the sheer strength of both will and body, compassion, care, the desire to help others, the intelligence and willingness to work extremely hard to both get into the program in the first place, to succeed in the program, and then to succeed in the work force – what do the female paramedics think about this message, that a perk worth mentioning was not, you will save lives, but, you might get to meet a whole lot of women in bikinis? They may as well directly be told that, sure, they can stick around and complete their studies and become fully qualified medical professionals, but they will never be truly respected until they strip off and oil up and pout for the camera or pout for some actual men. Because, obviously, that is what liberated women do – they don’t pretend they can be equal to the men around them by training for the same job. They know better.

Don’t get me wrong, there was another image, to show the perks of the job for a female paramedic – she gets to meet a male sporting personality! And, it gets even better – he will be a fully clothed male sporting personality, who will stand beside her in a photograph that only shows their faces and shoulders.

This is a representation of the problem in essence: many people CANNOT TELL the difference between the messages portrayed in these photos. This is why feminism has been swept under the rug in our society, this is why so many people are totally ignorant of what the actual reality is for women in our society today, this is why so many females feel that the only way to be validated is to pose and be sexy and become something desirable, instead of being the person who desires, and why that often manifests subconsciously. Because this message is EVERYWHERE. And it is shameful. No wonder everybody buys into it, if this is the message given to them at the university they are attending in order to get an education and move into a related area of work. I notice these things because I am actively looking for them, in the hopes that I can affect some sort of change – they are often so underhanded and almost invisible that I can easily understand how somebody would absorb them without actually deconstructing them first, hence the issue – people are not stopping to think about what they are actually seeing, and consequently, they have no idea about what is happening in the world around them.

The female paramedic gets to stand next to a man, a celebrity sportsman, which automatically takes the focus off her because he is the famous one. However, the male paramedic gets to stand in the centre of frame, surrounded by a harem of nameless, almost naked women with bulging breasts and oiled skin. The males in both photos are in the position of power in the situations. The women, on the other hand, are still only good enough to stand beside a powerful man and have a photograph taken, whether they be in a paramedics uniform or in a bikini.

Herein lies the paradox: this is sending out an EXTREMELY clear message about the values of our society, and yet a lot of people simply cannot see it. And, if they do see it, they dismiss it, because they look around them and see women who appear to be equal to men, which reinforces this notion that feminism is over because it has achieved its ultimate goal: equality between the sexes.

But, how would the parents of the young women enrolled in paramedics feel if they knew that this was on public display in the OFFICE of the people in charge of their children’s education and well-being whilst at university? Do we want our daughters to exist in this world? What about our sisters? Female friends? Romantic partners? How would people react if this poster was hanging up in a high school, or even a primary school? The eighteen year olds who finish year 12 and go straight to university are NOT adults. They NEED guidance and support from the environment around them. What is the difference between an 18 year old at a university and an 18 year old at a high school? Aside from a few pieces of paper and a location change, there isn’t one. The assumption that ANYBODY will reach a certain age, the magical age of adulthood (whatever that is these days), and automatically know right from wrong, despite the fact that they are bombarded daily with a conflicting message from the media and society, is ludicrous. There is a direct correlation between theory and practise – when the theory says one thing, no matter how unethical, immoral or illogical it is, the practise will NOT automatically become subversive. The media, advertising and all of those delightful things are still only concerned with ‘selling’ these bizarre and false stereotypes of what it means to be a woman or a man in our world, and while ANY of these messages are still being sold to us, the problem will still exist.

At a co-ed university, where men and women are taught the same things, they still feed us society’s message: at the end of the day, women are objects, whether they are practical or ornamental. They might be in the same classes as males, learning the same things, they might be smarter, they might produce better work, but at the end of the day, they are really only just there as a novelty. On the surface we pretend that we are equal, but right below the surface, not even hidden, is this second message. We will placate the feminists by allowing women into this university, but woe betide them if they think that they are truly equal to men.

I don’t know who put the picture up there. I don’t know what gender they were. I don’t know who wrote the chauvinistic sexist message to go along with it. I don’t even know if they REALISE what is offensive and inappropriate about it. I think that is the part that scares me the most, that there are people EVERYWHERE without the knowledge or even the bloody common sense to differentiate between a woman being objectified and a woman being celebrated.

And if you think that I don’t want to be one of the women in that first photo, you’re 100% right. I don’t want to expose my body for attention or put on a show of cartoonish stereotypical female sexuality to get attention, from males or otherwise. I prefer to attempt to gain respect and validation based on things with actual substance. But I also don’t want to be the woman in the second photo – the smart, educated, trained woman, at a level within her career equal to that of the men around her, who is still reduced to standing to the side of a ‘powerful’ man in a photograph, with a plaque that proclaims that this is her ‘perk’, her reward, for all her hard work and skill.