Keeping a Real World Shopfront is Tough at Westfields

Posted on December 3, 2012 by prestontowers

Now it’s officially time to admit that Christmas is coming (not in October, when the decorations go up in the shops), I am doing the little bit of shopping I need to do in small stages. Today, I went to a shop that sells the type of things kids would like for Christmas in a large Westfield. Such places are often held to be guides to our prosperity, our wealth. You would think things would be fine in a Westfield – especially as they tend to suck in the bulk of shoppers in any regional centre / city in Australia. I soon discovered, however, that they are not.

I picked up a present for my daughter – she is nearly 11 and I’m not trying to guess what she’d like. We had been to this shop before and she pointed the item out as being a thing she’d like. Now I was buying it from the same shop – maybe not how things are done for some these days. I like to buy things from shops, because the shop keepers can tell me something about it and I can take it back if necessary.

On this occasion, the shop’s owner, after telling me that it was a good unit, was unsure of the price. This was because, for the first time, he was having to discount his goods. Usually, he was telling me, he based his price on the original wholesale price, plus rent, plus wages. Now, however, he was having to compete with online sales – someone in China selling the unit on ebay – usually an outlet that has disappeared the next day or week. As a result, he was having to reduce the price.

There would be some who would call this a triumph of neoliberalism, the free market, where greedy shopkeepers are forced to reduce prices because of the ever shrinking world and the ability to buy stuff online. The same people who stridently oppose any kind of GST on goods imported into Australia.

For this shopkeeper, however, it just means that he isn’t making any money from the exercise. What is cut off the price are his wages, because the rent to be in the Westfield is fairly high and nigh on impossible to change – unless you close down and open again, having negotiated a lower rental, or if you are up for a lease renewal. The former is expensive and could cost goodwill, the latter can be a long waiting game, especially if business flattens out. There are shopkeepers, he was telling me that are shutting down, just to force Westfield’s hand.

Again, people could argue that such business are free to leave, to move to a premises with less rent. This is not a viable option in many regional centres, where Westfields or equivalent shopping centres are the only places where you can attract passing trade.

This loss of business – the worst seen by many – is the result of people going online to save a few dollars on discretionary items, rather than going to a shop that has a responsibility to follow through if something is wrong. That is part of the reason why I was the only person to be buying something from him for the hour before my purchase. He surmised that it’s probably a good thing that Westfield doesn’t seem to be too interested in building new shopping centres – the current ones seem to be struggling to hang onto all the current tenants, especially independent operators or people with a few outlets.

It was a rambling, fascinating conversation. After I wished him well, a few things struck me. Firstly, that last week’s absolute nonsense about the AWU and bagmen whatever has no relevance to anyone outside Canberra. None. More importantly, it showed me just what today’s freedom of the market is doing – the dramatic impact that is being felt in the community. That this “boom” economy is for many people an illusion, something they hear about in the media, but are not experiencing. It’s little wonder Tony Abbott likes to be seen in shopping centres – he’d be hearing stories like this all the time. About how things are tough. Not that he would ever have any ability or interest in doing anything about it.

Finally, it struck me that I know that people like buying online, they save money, they get precisely the colour they want, it saves having to brave crowds. This is, however, affecting people trying to make a dollar by selling things they like to sell and mostly know something about. Places that are also trying to employ younger people wanting their first job in somewhere other than a McDonalds. It is a reality that these places are sliding away, the world gets just a little more clinical, a little colder and that is a shame.

For the Love of the Game – The Folau Experiment

Posted on November 2, 2012 by prestontowers

The return of Israel Folau to rugby league has already raised a number of questions about sport, such as: whether it is possible to bend one’s body and skill from one ballsport’s requirements form to another very different ; the presence and power of money in the commercialised modern sporting world ; the very success of the GWS Giants experiment in western Sydney ; the future success of the Parramatta Eels. It raises all these points, but also a very important element in the life of a young, developing man – the passion and engagement of a human being wishing to be very best at what they do. This is why the discussion of Folau’s decision is pretty important in our wider culture, not just football.

As a Swans supporter of long standing who put himself in the frame of backing the GWS Giants, I have experienced a range of emotions, arguments, surges of intense engagement that is the continuing discourse of AFL. There have been a number of things I have observed, which have led to a set of current reactions to Folau’s decision.

There has been the argument that someone of Folau’s shape and cultural background is not cut out to play AFL – the nature v nurture argument. It was one forcefully put by Greg Baum’s piece (or to be more accurate, rant) where he said “that I don’t doubt that he tried but all he managed in the end was to reinforce the certainty that, overwhelmingly, footballers are born, not made. All that expensive nurture notwithstanding, nature wins.” It is an commonplace but ultimately poor argument. One can, as many have, taken at face value the lack of stamina Folau had as games went on in the season. Face value only, however – many of the first year AFL players in the Giants faded as the season went on. Many AFL experts who watched all of Folau’s games, like Neil Cordy, through the year were saying that Folau needed a good 2 years of hard slog to become a top flight player, and that he had the potential. Cordy uses the example of Mike Pyke, the Canadian rugby player turned Swan – a player who is rapidly becoming an excellent ruckman is the prime example of this point. It took him a while to hit the heights he has now reached – his contributions in the 2012 finals series were crucial. Folau could also have made an effective ruckman – he was developing a liking for the set play and could see the need for clever clearance play as the season went on. We will never know, as Kevin Sheedy has said. It doesn’t follow automatically, therefore, that Folau wasn’t ever going to be a great player physically. That, I really suspect, is more a question for those who know the game in detail – the sport science people who were working to give Folau greater endurance.

The place of money in modern sport was very much a issue in the foreground of any discussion around Folau’s place in the Giants. Many in Melbourne questioned the wisdom of spending so much on a player who had never played the game. It was a core part of Baum’s argument / rant about why the experiment was a failure. The recruiting of Folau was a larger question than mere money, however – it had more to do with Sydney and its parochialism. In order for the Giants to succeed in Western Sydney, the AFL needed a local, well known hero in order to inspire local youth to play the game as well as drawcard and talking point. They didn’t need a Gary Ablett Jr, they needed an instant Kieren Jack. That’s because the area is a highly parochial region that sticks by its locals and doesn’t really get as far behind outsiders who move in. Jack may have worked on this level, due to his league heritage. However, as much as I would love the Giants to have bought Jack, I would also be devastated as he plays such a crucial role for the Swans – he is still one of my very favourite players of the game. Besides, his style of game isn’t necessarily as crowd pleasing by itself than an Ablett or Buddy Franklin and his game flourishes because he is a vital cog in the Sydney machine. Folau could have had that ability to be a crowd pleaser, due to his physically imposing presence on the field. He also was, when on song, a better kicker of set shots at goal than Buddy. Folau was also a good target because Melburnians already knew Folau from his adventures for the Storm, which included spectacular AFL style marks.

The experiment was not, as Baum and other Victorians have asserted, a disaster. Cordy’s view that the publicity gained by Folau was worth the money holds more water. What the AFL gained with Folau was a foothold in the football conversation in western Sydney. As successful on the field as the Swans have been, they remain a peripheral team for most of the west. Suddenly, there were the Giants, featuring on TVs and radios with people talking about them, talking about Folau. Whenever there were public appearances, there were kids and parents, seeing Folau and the others. Most kids and many staff at my school only knowing that GWS even existed due to the playing of Folau. The aftermath of his departure will be interesting – but if for no other reason, the name and brand are out there in the community. It’s still early days. In any case, Folau being at the club had, I suspect, minimal impact on actual crowd numbers through the year, which were fairly meagre. If Sydney as a city is true to form, it wouldn’t be one player that will bring them to games. It will be once the Giants start winning more games.

What has been clear throughout the year is that there are many inside and outside AFL who want to see the Giants fail as a concept. There are fans of poorly performing Melbourne clubs who are jealous of the draft picks and money being spent in an area they see as a wasteland (I have heard so many disparaging references made in the last year to Blacktown made by people who have never been there – this is despite the fact the Giants play in Homebush and train in Rooty Hill). There are, surprisingly, Swans fans jealous of the money spent on the fostering of football in the west (we never got that when the Swans came up, they cry). There are also those rugby league fans and writers who crow about the losses of the Giants and the poor performances of Folau – most notoriously, Roy Masters, whose loathing of AFL and the Giants have no depths – even to the extent of him declaring Breakfast Points and Homebush Bay are inner city suburbs. Masters and others, including Matthew Johns, claim the AFL are out to “destroy” rugby league with the Giants, which is as ludicrous as stating that when Carlton started selling VB in Sydney pubs, they were going to destroy Tooheys. The bizarre propaganda that I have seen in the year is part of what appears to be the modern media’s self appointed role to tell people what to think, this time in sport.

That is why league’s cheerleaders like the Telegraph’s Phil Rothfield have belted the AFL, talking of the “war” that the NRL are now winning. It’s just silly that the main anti GWS paper (which the exception of Cordy) is the Daily Telegraph, because it is in the same stable of the AFL centric Melbourne Herald Sun. All confected, all pandering to how they want to shape audience reactions. Roy Masters must be dancing around, waiting to construct another poorly written hatchet job on the AFL. As ever, both Rothfield and Masters could take some notes from the best league writer at either Sydney paper, Brad Walter, whose piece frames the decision in the context of both games and cultures – with well chosen quotations from representatives of both codes. One of the best insights from the Walter article is that “Fairfax was told that Folau did not want to stand in the way of good young players coming through the ranks at GWS”, which if true, supports a view that Folau is a decent young man who made a choice based on an honest self appraisal, which will result in him being happy, but perhaps less financially wealthy.

This is the central picture that seems to emerge about Folau, that he is a quiet, unassuming man who wants to do his best and be at his best in whatever he does. That, ultimately, seems to also provide a clue as to why he didn’t work in AFL. He ultimately didn’t have the passion and love for the game. If he did, he could have worked harder at getting up to speed with the tactics and manoeuvres, as figures like Pyke and Karmichael Hunt is beginning to achieve. He could have been more assertive with insisting on being a ruckman and sticking at it. He was, after all, potentially a major star. This is why also why I personally, as a passionate believer in the Giants experiment, that he needed to go back to league. It wasn’t good for him as a person or for the club to have a player who clearly didn’t have the passion and nous. It wouldn’t have been good for Folau’s pride that Andrew “Sauce” Phillips, the young Tasmanian backup ruckman for the Giants was developing faster than Folau.

It is also emerging that Folau seems more comfortable with the rugby league star player culture than the developing Giants culture. It is not surprising that Folau went on holidays to the US with Eels stars Jarryd Hayne – he shares a Minto background with Hayne. He had little in common with his mostly teenage Giants teammates. It would also be hard for a former superstar player like Folau to be just a cog at a large conglomeration that is an AFL team, where little contributions are necessary throughout. He seems to someone more at ease with being a star player capable of brilliant moments that win games – hence the possibility of a return to that culture at the Parramatta Eels.

Few rugby league club cultures seem to encourage individualism and star building than Parramatta. With the exceptions of Luke Burt, Nathan Cayless, the Hindmarsh brothers and a few others, Parramatta is less a club of hard working grafters than a team of unknowns as well as a group of “stars” recruited and lionised by the club. These players are feted by the media and people of Parramatta, in and outside the leagues club. Many of these stars, like Chris Sandow and Hayne himself, are often more remembered for their lack of consistency as they are for their positive contributions. They don’t seem to have the same gritty team ethos as a Manly, Canterbury, South Sydney or St. George under Wayne Bennett, where the individual is less important than the team unit. This was evident especially with the removal of Daniel Anderson as coach – a fine coach who was unfairly treated due to the lack of effort from a group of underperforming stars. The consequent failure of Stephen Kearney at the club seem to underline this problem.

Ricky Stuart, who as Cronulla and NSW coach appeared to be as good as talking the talk as he was as a player, now seems to be continuing to accept this star ethos, paying complete focus on recruiting stars like Sonny Bill Williams or Folau, even to the startling extent of attending Hillsong church services in order to capture Folau. I hope for the sake of Parramatta’s long suffering supporters (which included me before Anderson’s removal), Folau makes a positive difference to the team. Certainly, he will arrive with greater endurance than he had before the sport science people at GWS worked on his body, reducing his bulk and improving his stamina. Clubs don’t win premierships – usually – on the back of one consistently performing star, however. I hope for his sake Israel Folau doesn’t get to feel as frustrated with the Hayne Tangara at Parramatta as he would have been playing a game he didn’t quite get.

The Derry / Londonderry Peace Bridge – Lessons for Penrith’s Green Bridge Proposal

Posted on October 30, 2012 by prestontowers

Recently I embarked on my first ever trip outside Australia. For people around my age – 40 – it is relatively rare these days to find someone who had never climbed onto the long haul flight and headed off. It was an ambitious first trip – nearly 4 weeks in England, Ireland and Iceland. Over the next few weeks, the blog will catalogue the things I observed and liked. It won’t be chronological – more what takes my fancy.

We came back to Australia with a Penrith City Star on our front driveway, complete with articles about people in Penrith objecting to a new pedestrian / cycleway bridge over the Nepean River. That the former member for Lindsay, Jackie Kelly, is involved is interesting, considering that she lives not far from the proposed bridge. It comes at the tail end of a long campaign for a bridge that would see people in Penrith and Emu Plains be able to walk and cycle across the river in safety, ease and comfort – something that can’t be done these days with the existing bridges. The campaign has involved howls of objections, especially from rowing groups, who would experience a change in rowing course along the river, due to the need for pylons. These same rowing groups cannot afford to use the custom built Penrith Lakes rowing courses built for the Olympics.

The Green Bridge proposal has followed a typical NSW planning process timeline, considering that the original proposal from Penrith City Council was for a bridge with seats and other features that would make the bridge more of a destination for walkers, cyclists and tourists. The RMS’ proposal to the State Government doesn’t entirely fit with that vision – it provided three options, none of which with seats along the bridge. Two of them dull, conventional walk / cycle bridges that clash with the environment and would encourage just quick movement and probably vandalism of yet another concrete structure. The third, the only one to make it from the European design group that were consulted by Council, contains some of the original vision, but not all – it doesn’t encourage people to stay and sit on the bridge. It appears that the desire to bring a bridge in at $20 million has been the overriding desire.

The Hideous Option

The Boring Option

Only Option Close to Original Vision

It has been interesting because the city of Derry (to the British, Londonderry) has gone through this very same process with its Peace Bridge. Across the River Foyle, £15 million was spent on a bridge that was built between two quite different communities. On the west side of the Foyle has the city centre, but also an almost entirely Catholic community – including the well known Bogside area, which, amongst other events, experienced Bloody Sunday. On the east side, the community is roughly 50 / 50 Catholic / Protestant. There were objections raised, communities questioning whether people from both sides would cross to the other, the cost, the name. Fortunately for the city, all barriers were overcome and the bridge has been built.

In a city as contested and troubled as Derry / Londonderry has been, such a project has become a symbol of the optimism and the movement of the city to a new era. It has, for a start, witnessed a large increase of people wishing to cross from the east over to the west, either by walking, running or on cycle. When I was there near sunset, there was a lot of foot traffic. Our wonderful B and B hosts (from the East Side) also told us about the pride people had for the bridge. We could see why. The design has helped with the success of the bridge for the community. Its curve and seats have been crucial for its stunning look and encouragement to sit and enjoy the river and surrounds.

The Curved Peace Bridge

How Derry looks behind the bridge

Also important are the seats – the Peace Bridge has two long seats, ideal for sitting and enjoying the view. During the day, the view is beautiful too.

One of the seats on the Peace Bridge

The view from one of the seats

And just in case you haven’t realised just how stunning the Peace Bridge really is from the bridge itself …

The Peace Bridge is rapidly becoming a tourist attraction by itself – and so it should. Like the city of Derry / Londonderry, it represents how people can rise above adversity and have a new, interesting future. Penrith should learn from Derry’s experience. Rowers should lobby governments to lower the prices at the Penrith Lakes. Local residents should see the wider benefits of opening the river to the community. The RMS and State Government should realise that by spending a touch more money, this 100 + year asset can be so much more than just a way of crossing a river speedily. Bridges can inspire and act as a magnet to an area. The Peace Bridge in Derry is one such project.

Chris Berg – Champion of the Outer Suburban Hero

Posted on September 23, 2012 by prestontowers

We know that Andrew Bolt is the ugly side of Australia’s commentariat, dog whistling, slavering at the riots from last week and the rest. But he also has also positioned himself as a commentator who speaks for the little man, the battler, the poor bloke pecked to death by the “media elites”. Of which Bolt, of course, is not one. It is just a pose, a positioning, a falsehood made to allow for the untrammelled advance of corporate interests. One of his more strident defenders is Chris Berg, who has a regular presence in many forums. He is very different to Bolt in many ways – especially in terms of his attitude to migrants. He is, however, similar in terms of being a user of artifice, the self positioned champion of the oppressed consumer.

Berg is often thought of as one of the “nice” members of the IPA, one of the few who isn’t after Liberal Party preselection. He is, however, a defender of the neoliberal system that provides cheap milk, no matter the cost to farmers. He now also likes the outer suburban resident. The “bogan”, in modern parlance. As ever, his words are in italics.

McMansions a sign of our country’s wealth, not a lack of taste

IS THERE any more snobbish word in the Australian vocabulary than ”McMansion”? This nasty term describes the big, new houses out in suburbs with names like Caroline Springs and Kellyville. McMansions, their nickname suggests, are the McDonald’s of housing – they’re super-sized, American and mass produced.

Interesting that he finds the addition of the “Mc” offensive and snobby, considering that he has long been a champion of multinational franchise companies like McDonalds. Surely to neoliberals, calling something “Mc” is a compliment. But that would undermine his desire to be seen as the person bashing these nebulous “elites” that use a convenient term to describe mass produced houses. And yes, they are mass produced from a template, hence the term. Maybe Berg should have suggested a better collective name for them. Curious also is the comment “suburbs with names like Kellyville”. It seems that Berg is inferring here that Kellyville is a new name, possibly named after a “Kelly”. This shows the new champion of the working class has an ignorance of history – Kellyville was a semi rural community long before it became the location of the large houses that have the current McMoniker.

Australians build the largest new houses in the world. The average size of a new freestanding home is 243 square metres. That’s 10 per cent larger than the average new American home. Naturally our big houses have critics. Sustainability advocates say McMansions are bad for the environment. Yet there’s more going on here. Because even the most high-brow academic critiques of McMansions seem to focus less on the houses and more on the people who live in them.

Terry Burke, a professor of urban studies at Swinburne University, wrote in The Conversation last year that McMansions breach the ”good principles” of environmental sustainability. Fair enough. But Burke doubled down: McMansions are very ugly, and their occupants, who also apparently own four-wheel-drives and send their children to private schools, are giving ”an ‘up yours’ message to the world”.

That sort of sneering contempt is not uncommon. The word ”McMansion” is usually deployed not to appraise a type of house, but an entire way of life. It is all about culture – the inner city world trying to understand their strange, alien suburban cousins.

One critic speaks for all, it seems. Everyone is a sneerer about the inhabitants of these houses because one makes extrapolates a conclusion about the attitudes attached to the building of large houses. Berg should know better than that – producing more than one example. This is, however, a Bolt technique. Also added to this is the comment that critics of the oversized houses are exclusively from the “inner city”. That’s because on critic speaks for all. This is convenient for the Berg thesis that any commentary on the oversized houses of the 1990s can be dismissed because it comes exclusively from inner city snobs. That Berg himself is of the inner city and a relatively recent escapee from that world, it somewhat makes his critique a touch hypocritical.

Suburban living in general is more environmentally friendly than inner-city living. A study by the Australian Conservation Foundation (no fan of consumer capitalism) concluded that, even taking into account car use, ”inner-city households outstrip the rest of Australia in every other category of consumption”.

Someone who lives in a big home can still train to work, conserve energy or water, and, if they choose, live a fashionably carbon-neutral life.

This is a fact, but a conveniently cherry picked generalised one. It doesn’t take into account a number of factors. One is the high number of rental properties in the inner city – any tenant can tell you that landlords are loathe to make any changes to their properties, especially expensive environmentally friendly upgrades. After all, it’s the tenant who pays the electricity and water usage bills, not the landlord. In addition, it is expensive to retrofit environmentally friendly solar systems and water saving devices into older properties in the inner city.

It is true that houses in the outer suburbs have enthusiastically taken up environmentally friendly moves. Some of the newer houses are so only because of government regulation (against which Berg is a constant critic), others by the enormous cost of heating and cooling the vast empty spaces of these houses. One of the crimes against the environment committed in the 1990s was open plan living, with its ducted air-conditioning. That is why when governments subsidised solar panels and provided a very generous feed in tariff, people in the outer suburbs took up the offer (Berg would have shaken his head at this move as well). These days, however, with power companies playing hard ball and not providing reasonable feed-in tariffs, power companies gain free power while the outer suburban residents lose out. A triumph of capitalism and the free market, in the Berg paradigm.

It further shows Berg’s lack of knowledge of these new suburbs when he claims that residents of suburbs can “live a fashionable carbon neutral life” by catching a train. For the vast bulk of the “McMansion” suburbs, there are no nearby train lines, few bus services (due to the presence of private bus companies) and therefore the three cars are a frequent reality of “suburbs with names like Kellyville”. I invite him to see the daily traffic queue out of Glenmore Park, south of Penrith, each day. Residents there are lucky to get out of their suburb under 15 minutes each morning, due to the lack of public transport infrastructure.

Why do we build our houses so big? Well, Australia has a lot of space. But more importantly: we can. Australia is probably the richest country in the world. We have the fastest growing income in the world. We have the highest median wealth. Our only real competition in the rich stakes comes from city-states such as Singapore and Hong Kong or oil plutocracies such as Qatar. And many Australians have decided to spend their riches on new homes.

In this logic, it’s fine to spend up, no matter the impact on the environment and the future. Just be as irresponsible as you like. Classic neo-liberal attitude towards the world.

Even if you don’t put much stock in income statistics, the size of our houses is – by itself – evidence that Australia is well off. Prosperity is about more than GDP data. Money isn’t everything. Anybody who has lived crammed into too few rooms knows living standards and adequate space are closely related. In rich Australia it’s understandable that many people desire extra living and storage space.

The issue here isn’t more living space – it’s excess living space which is eating up resources spent heating them up and cooling them down. Fortunately, the numbers of the so-called McMansion developments are reducing in the face of high energy costs and high carbon footprints. Suburbs like Oran Park in South – West Sydney have smaller blocks, thus smaller, more energy efficient houses that make less of an ongoing impact on the environment. It’s a pity, however, that instead of providing train access to the suburb, the O’Farrell Liberal Government is approving large pokie dens and CSG wells nearby.

This is where Berg’s argument about the modern houses turns a little silly. In order to indicate the place of the triumph of modern civilisation that is the 5 bedroom open plan house with home cinema, double garage and rumpus room – he uses a tenuous link to history in order to beat down his elitist opponents.

The people who best understand the relationship between housing size and living standards aren’t architectural academics or urban planners. They’re archaeologists.

Historians of the ancient world don’t have tables of wealth and income data. To estimate how rich societies were, they look at proxies. House are among the best and most accessible.

For instance, excavated homes are one way we know ancient Greece was far richer than other civilisations in the Mediterranean. According to the historian Ian Morris, between 800BC and 300BC the median Greek house size ballooned from 80 square metres to 360 square metres. And this wealth was shared among the free population, not concentrated among the ruling elite. Just as it is in 21st-century Australia. Large homes are now within the reach of moderate-income families. This is something worth celebrating, not deriding.

These moderate income family heroes are just like the Ancient Greeks – big houses are a reward, no matter the impact on the environment. He couldn’t be more patronising if he tried.

Antiquity had its share of sceptics about prosperity, too. Aristotle believed there was such a thing as too much wealth. The philosopher had determined what the ”good life” was, and he argued any excess property was unnatural.

It’s easy to imagine Aristotle tut-tutting about the big houses built by fellow Athenians. But it’s just as easy to imagine those Athenians ignoring his snobbery and enjoying the prosperity Greek society could afford.

Yes, let’s ignore Aristotle – what would he know? He should have stopped trying to dream of what a better, more satisfying balanced life would look like. He should have just grabbed a wine, ate a pig and watched some maxtreme wrestling in his private amphitheatre. No-one would remember him – but to Berg and his neoliberal cohorts, all that matters is consumption, not tomorrow.

Nancy and the Cow – Gerard Henderson the Cherry Picker

Posted on September 4, 2012 by prestontowers

The Preston Institute was named in kind-of honour of Gerard Henderson’s Sydney Institute. So it is somewhat fitting to me that after all this time, that Mr. Henderson is the topic of today’s blog. Henderson’s Tuesday Herald piece about the Destroying the Joint business is a glaring example of Henderson’s cherry picking of quotations to support his tenuous accusations of hypocrisy. It also shows his mendacious cherry picking of past history to bash the ABC. As ever, his article is in italics.

It’s not destroying the joint, but this double standard is a cow

Who would have thought that a throwaway piece of old fashioned Australian slang could, within a few days, become a matter of international interest? But that’s the modern world of instant communications , home to the ”IIA” syndrome. Meaning ”insult, indignation, apology” in that order.

“Good old fashioned Australian slang” – sounds a little like someone justifying “Abo” as a “good old Australian word”. Language does change for a reason – especially language that was designed to denigrate the person being discussed. Henderson, however, dismisses that requirement. That isn’t conservatism, that is a reactionary response – as in “it was good enough in my day”. The same goes for his slight on “instant communications” and the IIA syndrome – positing the idea that apologies aren’t really necessary, especially if you use old slang.

By the way, people – I think this means that any old slang is fine now when you are referring to Gerard.

When walking my dog Nancy early Sunday evening, I turned on to BBC Radio’s World Today Weekend program. Feminist Jane Caro was banging on from Sydney about just how sexist Aussie blokes really are.

Hendo is sounding more like his Media Watch Dog self here – throwing in an irrelevant Nancy reference. Also, the reductive phrase “banging on” is not the usual type of language we see in Hendo’s Herald articles. Denigration is fine when you are the one doing the denigrating in GerardLand.

Caro soon downloaded how 2GB presenter Alan Jones had recently declared: ”Women are destroying the joint.” The reference was to the former Victorian police commissioner Christine Nixon and the Sydney Lord Mayor, Clover Moore. Then Caro commented how one-time Liberal Party operative Grahame Morris had called 7.30 presenter Leigh Sales a ”cow”, after her interview with Tony Abbott.

Shocking, when you think about it. But not if you think for long. For starters, leftists such as Caro are invariably telling us that Jones is a mere shock-jock. Shock-jocks attempt to shock. That’s what they do. As to Morris, well he was born in country NSW. Calling a person a cow in such abodes is so common that the word gets an entry in G.A. Wilkes’s A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms.

Caro being a “leftist” is Gerard’s usual labelling schtick – and it is always amusing to see Henderson defending the likes of Jones for his desire to shock people with offensive phrases and commentary. It’s amusing because as we shall see later, Henderson has a different view towards people who shock with offensive phrases when the subject is someone “of the right”. Hypocrisy is rich in HendoLand.

It’s also fine in HendoLand to deride someone if you’re from the country. They are Different out there, and that’s ok. So ok, that is justifies a discussion of 19th Century literature.

Wilkes reported that in Three Elephant Power, ”Banjo” Paterson wrote that in Australia the most opprobrious epithet one can apply to a man or other object is ”cow”. Moreover in Bobbin Up, the feminist Dorothy Hewett had a character saying: ”I starched your petticoat stiff as a board, and it was a cow to iron.”

It fits the Henderson agenda to speak warmly of the 19th Century, considering that he seems to prefer 19th Century Industrial Relations policies. Indeed, he does seem rather at times to be a character created by Charles Dickens.

Sales soon activated the IIA syndrome. The Morris insult made, she quickly threw the switch to indignation, tweeting: ”I’d rather be a cow than a dinosaur.” An apology was inevitable. So Morris returned to the scene of his verbal crime on ABC Radio 702 to deliver a mea culpa. However, from what Caro told the BBC, there will be no forgiveness any time soon – despite the fact that no one suggests Sales even faintly resembles a cow.

In this piece of logic, Henderson is assuming that Jane Caro speaks for everyone – “no forgiveness any time soon”. Maybe people have forgiven Morris for his bovine remarks. We won’t know because Caro speaks for all. In any case, from what Hendo has been suggesting, there was no need for an apology – it’s fine for someone to call a woman a cow.

It seems the level of measurable insult declines if it is directed at a conservative – male or female – by a continuing leftist. At this year’s Mid-Winter Ball at Parliament House, Julian Morrow, one of the ”Chaser boys” (average age late-30s) referred to mining entrepreneur Gina Rinehart as ”the elephant not in the room”. Laugh? The room, full of journalists, joined in the joke – knowing it was a personal putdown.

And here Henderson returns to an event he will make frequent reference to for many, many columns – the Midwinter Ball. It’s his new “Latham lost control of both houses, he he he” moment. It is entirely irrelevant to the case of Jones, Morris and Caro – but because Morrow belongs to this “leftist” tribe of Henderson’s mind, they are all the same.

Never mind that there are many amongst this “leftist” tribe who also object to the jokes about Gina Rinehart’s weight. It doesn’t reflect well on opponents of Rinehart who focus on her physical appearance. It’s her politics and attempts to buy media influence that should be the goal. Such attacks on Rinehart give people like Henderson, Devine and Bolt material for rebuttal – which they use in every non-sequitur moment possible.

Indeed Morrow’s tone is common for the public broadcaster. The likes of Caro said nothing when Bob Ellis, in January 2011, described the NSW Liberal MP Gillian Skinner on ABC’s The Drum Online as looking ”like a long-detested nagging land lady with four dead husbands and hairy shoulders”. Moreover, the ABC managing director, Mark Scott, defended the publication of the piece because it was ”particularly robust”. You can say that again.

Talking of lumping together, here we have responses to Bob Ellis. Apparently Jane Caro didn’t make any reference to Bob Ellis’ many tirades about women. Not that he’d actually know that, not being a user of Twitter. (Imagine, for a minute, Gerard on Twitter. It is one of Twitter’s biggest pities that no-one has ever done a good fake Gerard account). Jane Caro doesn’t speak for everyone, despite what Gerard says. There are always, however, crowds of people of both genders and largely from this “leftist” tribe decrying Ellis’ decrepit rants on Twitter. Not that Gerard would mention that. It is by omission and selective quotation that Gerard is at his most intellectually dishonest and mendacious.

Also, it is apparently incorrect for the Drum to post work from a variety of sources. Gerard omits mention of the vast array of “right wing” material appearing on the site, as ever. He does mention, however, an old chestnut. Marieke.

Earlier, Jonathan Green, the then-editor of The Drum, published Marieke Hardy’s description of the Liberal MP Christopher Pyne as a ”douchebag”. It was later spiked. In 2008, The Drum also ran a piece by Ellis referring to Hillary Clinton’s ”towering frigidity” and complaining (without evidence, of course) that she did not engage in a particular sex act. No word was heard from Caro at the time. In recent times, Green was promoted by the ABC and now presents the Radio National Sunday Extra program.

Back to Marieke and back to Ellis. Again, did Jane Caro tweet about this article? Even if she didn’t, does she have to comment on everything? There were again a pile of people on Twitter objecting to Ellis. It’s almost become a meme.

But Henderson again excludes facts and those who would make his argument harder to make. He also has another swipe at Jonathan Green – an editor frequently criticised for publishing many articles by members of think tanks like the IPA and former Liberal Party politicians. Not that Henderson would mention that either. Here he integrates his greatest piece of spite – insinuating that Green’s employment on Radio National was in some way a poor decision because he published articles by Bob Ellis and Marieke Hardy. It is breathtaking that Henderson would use an article in the Herald to continue this absurd vendetta based on the flimsiest pretext.

In March, Germaine Greer appeared on Q&A and urged the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to get over her (alleged) ”big arse”. Invited back on the program last week, Greer was at it again. Responding to an approved question, Greer declared Gillard has a ”fat arse” and advised her to ”wave that arse”. This was also not mentioned by Caro in her whinge on the BBC.

Did Jane Caro have to mention everything that has even been said on Australian TV in the BBC interview? Really?

It is true Gillard has been subjected to some sexist comments by the likes of the Liberal senator Bill Heffernan and the former Labor leader Mark Latham. This has been properly criticised. But there were few defenders of John Howard during his time as prime minister. In his 2005 book Run, Johnny, Run, author Mungo MacCallum variously called Howard an unflushable turd, a little c—t and a shithouse rat. Right now, MacCallum’s latest book is being promoted by the supposedly advertisement-free ABC.

I suppose Jane Caro was supposed to have commented on this as well.

But in spite of all the confected outrage, bad language has probably not proliferated. It’s just that what was once said in the pub now features increasingly in sections of the mainstream media and overwhelmingly online.

Has probably not proliferated. Probably not – Gerard’s not sure. What is he sure of is that it’s fine for people to use old slang terms – no matter how offensive – because Bob Ellis and Marieke Hardy used offensive words.

A sense of perspective might help. In the meantime, Morris should be counselled against using 19th century colloquialisms in these oh-so-sensitive-times. And Sales should desist from getting offended about not very much at all. At least it would free up the BBC for some real news from the antipodes.

Yes, perspective. The perspective of Gerard, running the ABC, non doubt. An ABC that wouldn’t be employing the likes of Jonathan Green nor running interviews with Jane Caro. Talking of Caro – if Gerard designed memes, this is how he’s see her:

And then there is this one…

The Martyrdom of the Famous – Trolling Matters when it Happens to Famous People

Posted on September 2, 2012 by prestontowers

This past week the Twitter echo chamber has been alive with the sound of Trolling. Or at least people talking about trolling. For those who are frequent users of Twitter, internet forums or blogs, trolling is a constant presence. I used to be a member of a forum that discussed TV – as well as politics. I was constantly trolled, threatened and the like for having progressive views about politics and the environment. I took them seriously until I realised that the trolls were sad little people with no power who, frilled necked lizard style, puffed themselves up to look threatening.

The same has gone for people who tweet / blog / write about politics – constant trolling / threats and the like for a while now. With what is a blight on our society, some of the trolls have been vicious and have had a deep and lasting impact on people who attempt to make a difference in society. We saw two good pieces about such people in the last week. David Paris wrote about this well in the new Limited News. Helen Razer’s horrific stalking / trolling experience also provides pause for those unlucky enough to have their real lives interrupted and ruined as a result of having a media profile. Razer’s experience is one that shows us how serious and damaging trolling can become.

What is annoying, however, is that every so often, trolling is said to be vitally important and a concern – but only when it happens to really famous people. Those celebrities and politicians who don’t really tweet that much suddenly seeing what the rest of us non celebrities see on a daily basis. While I appreciate that Charlotte Dawson has gone through a rough time she didn’t deserve, it seems that the act of trolling is really only worthy of attention when it happens to famous people. The usual media and politicians pile in, blaming “anonymous” people on The Twitter – these same people showing that they have no understanding of how to use Twitter to block, report and ignore the trolls. How people can ask others to join in on the blocking and reporting.

So then come the torrent of articles and the like telling us that Trolling is Bad, people. The most laughable example of this was The Age bringing Catherine Deveny back from exile, saying how she deals with trolls. While I agree with a number of her points – including how to use Twitter to block them – she isn’t a good example of how to act on Twitter. Her schtick as a comedian and writer is to stir up people with outrageous comments and blanket statements (well, trolling). Many people I know stopped following her a while ago for that reason – she seems to like the negative reactions. This is why The Age are showing how out of touch they are, asking people like Deveny for feelpinions about trolling. It’s lazy work, finding a tweeter notorious for getting negative reactions. It’s the same when the ABC’s PM program asks Tommy Tudehope for his opinion as a “Social Media Expert”. Out of touch.

Fortunately, the echo chamber will die down on this trolling business – just as it will with that other pointless exercise of getting Alan Jones to recant his misogyny or have advertisers withdraw support because he is expressing the same views he has expressed for a very long time. The trolling will continue to non-famous people – and will damage people who don’t realise that there are sick people out there who are seeking attention. It will also damage those who aren’t used to any kind of attention, especially not negative attention. Then, every so often, when it happens to a famous person – the news, the blogosphere and the twitterati will participate in a circular wringing of hands for a few days.

As T.S. Eliot might have said

Let us go then online, you and I,
When the twitter feed is spread out against the screen
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted hashtags,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights on #auspol and #qanda
And Instagram photos from restaurants with oyster-shells:
Tweets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question. . .
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Destroying the Joint.

Mastering the Rage – Roy Masters’ Vendetta Against the AFL

Posted on June 5, 2012 by prestontowers

On the weekend, I was fortunate enough to be in Geelong to continue to follow the journey of the GWS Giants. It was great to see them put in a big effort to shut down the imposing Cats’ premiership winning central corridor play for the first half. It was like watching the Gold Coast Titan shutting down the halfback – five eighth – hooker combination of the Melbourne Storm, to use a rugby league analogy.

The main question I was asked in Geelong was why I followed AFL – and I gave my 1981 VFL v Rugby League TV coverage answer. Maybe I should have said that I didn’t like the teams produced by Roy Masters. I didn’t, though, because I don’t have a vendetta. That isn’t the case with the former coach, who, in his heyday, was responsible for ramping up the “Fibros v Silvertails” rivalry of the 1970s.

He seems determined to use the same caustic, vitriolic approach to the threat he perceives from AFL in the form of the Giants. Today’s article in the Herald continues that battle from the warhorse.

Lonesome Giants endangered in wild west

June 5, 2012

On a hiding to nothing … GWS star Israel Folau. Photo: Steve ChristoYes – the article starts with Israel Folau, the league convert who continues to develop his skills. To criticise the slow speed of that conversion in an easy target.

They are called Giants but the AFL’s newest team has more in common with the giant tortoise of the Galapagos Islands than the usual cast of super-size heroes.

The Galapagos tortoise nicknamed ”Lonesome George” is considered by researchers to be the rarest creature on earth. The 90-year-old, two-metre high shell-back therefore qualifies as a protected species and deserving of even more care and comfort than that accorded other rare giants, such as the colossal squid and the giant tube worm.

And the point is…

But the AFL’s Greater Western Sydney Giants are an even more exotic beast, judging from the protection they receive from that vile enemy, the media.

Ah, there’s the metaphor.

Week after week, the opposition scores twice their number of points, yet the media describes these abysmal defeats as a ”giant effort”, ”brave performance” or ”gallant”.

Perhaps watching a Giants game might help Masters understand the difficulty of starting a new AFL team without a core group of seasoned players. Maybe going back into the annals of the Penrith Panthers, who took 24 years to win a premiership. Perhaps Parramatta, who took 34. Or Cronulla. All new clubs struggle for early positive results, except if you were the Brisbane Broncos. All that context is left out of this comment, revealing Masters’ agenda of criticising without context or understanding of the game about which he is writing.

Sure, the team is very young, consisting of the best draft choices in the nation and coached by a man, Kevin Sheedy, who is described in terms usually reserved for Albert Einstein.

Masters makes this comment without quotation – though, it does need to be said that Kevin Sheedy is often spoken about in positive terms. Possibly winning four premierships as a coach affords that kind of respect.

But when is someone going to point out the Giants’ efforts in remaining competitive until half-time is not good enough?

I would like to have seen Masters write about the Gold Coast Titans in 2007, demanding they win from the start. I don’t think he would have. In any case, it is a poor comparison, because the Titans had purchased star players like Scott Prince and Luke Bailey and had a more experienced team than the Giants or the Suns.

Just as Lonesome George’s ancestors liked to island hop, the Giants have abandoned their Blacktown base for Sydney Olympic Park. This received very little attention in the media, which is obviously responding to the Giants’ open-door policy.

“Open door policy” – it is not clear why Masters would object to a football team being open to the media when so many object to the closed door tactics of teams. It is a bad thing, apparently. Here also we get the main nub of Masters’ vitriol – the playing to regional warfare.

To be fair, there are sensible reasons for their deserting Blacktown. The modern footballer is, in his own way, a coddled creature. He likes all his training demands at the one location. Collingwood, Carlton, the Broncos, Storm and Titans have centres of excellence, where players can train, be massaged, watch videos, treat injuries, swim and answer pesky media inquiries in the one complex.

The GWS player in the pre-season was spending up to four hours travelling between venues for training and their luxury resort in the inner west.

Luxury resort. Breakfast Point is not a resort and nor is it in the “inner west” – but let’s not facts get in the way. The reality was that the club has set up a close set of living facilities near their home ground – also preventing the situation where players can take off to nightclubs and perform various activities of which Masters may well approve. In addition, the Blacktown venue was no available for training in summer months, due to the presence of Cricket NSW.

By relocating to Sydney Olympic Park as their base for training and playing, they are eight minutes’ drive to their Breakfast Point villas, and closer to their upper middle-class supporter base in the Hills district.

Again, Masters plays on class consciousness and lazy stereotyping for his point – that this isn’t “real” “Western Sydney” the club is representing. This denies the reality of pockets of AFL supporters and clubs throughout the western, north western and south western suburbs – not to mention the Blue Mountains, where AFL has had a large presence for many years.

I am also guessing that current players for Parramatta, Penrith, Canterbury and the Wests Tigers aren’t living in fibro shacks in Lidcombe. Some of them may even live in villas.

It makes these young, high draft choice players less vulnerable to being lured back to Melbourne at the end of this season.

There is more than just location that will be influencing the decisions – but looking into that would take some actual research.

It’s not known how much money has been spent preserving the habitat of the Galapagos giant tortoise but considerable taxpayers’ dollars have been devoted to the Giants.

The NSW government spent $15 million on developing the Blacktown precinct for a second AFL team and cricket. It also allocated $45 million for the upgrading of the Sydney Showground to make it suitable for Australian football.

Apparently, spending money on preserving tortoises is not something that adds to the greater good of the population in the Masters mindset. Neither does providing for community infrastructure like football grounds. Governments spend a lot of money on different codes and sports. There is the $8.4 million spent on the Canterbury Bulldogs’ training ground, Belmore, the $136 million provided to the Sydney Cricket Ground for an upgrade to their members’ sections, Penrith Stadium’s upgrade and so on. Not mentioned is that the Showground will continue to be used by the Royal Agricultural Society and will be good for a number of events, due to its proximity to trains and buses. The same can’t be said for Belmore or Penrith, which are not used for much else other than football. Facts, though, are as lonely as Masters’ tortoise in this article.

According to reports in July 2008, Blacktown council siphoned off its taxpayer-provided sports budget for the facility, described as a $27.5 million project.

The AFL and cricket provided $2,875,000 and with the NSW government tipping in $15 million, presumably Blacktown council provided the rest.

Presumably? Masters possibly should have got on the phone and find someone who would know how much they contributed. This comment, though, is loaded with the implication that the money is now wasted – though cricket’s use of the facilities is just a peripheral fact that is swept away in Masters’ pursual of a one eyed agenda.

On the eve of the Giants’ first home game at the renamed Sydney Showground, Skoda Stadium, the federal government announced it would contribute $2 million to facilities at Sydney Olympic Park.

A press release from the Minister for Sport, Kate Lundy, announced the funds would be allocated to ”an elite-standard AFL training oval and community sports field”, while ”the AFL and the GWS Giants will build a multicultural community education centre (MCEC), which will feature a 75-person theatrette, dedicated classroom and community meeting rooms”.

Strange that Masters posts this without comment, Andrew Bolt style. He either finds nothing wrong with providing community facilities for people near Homebush, or he is wishing for people to pour scorn on the proposal. It is a strange way to compose an article.

The ACT government has also given the Giants $26 million over 10 years to play four games a year in Canberra, while Wagga Wagga council will pay $300,000 over three years for pre-season games.

Masters could have mentioned the money provided to NRL teams by cities that host various home games throughout the season as a way of balancing the money that is paid for such a right – but that would introduce objectivity here – a commodity more rare than Lonesome George.

The AFL insists they haven’t abandoned Blacktown, pointing out it will be used as a base for development where they claim to spend $4 million a year.

They will also play an additional televised pre-season game there, run their elite junior competitions plus train there for 12 sessions a year.

Again, posted without comment. Perhaps that’s because it sounds reasonable that the AFL will still use Blacktown in a way more appropriate for its size and access to transport – it is an excellent facility for those purposes and will continue to be long into the future.

Just as scientists are desperately searching the Galapagos Islands to find a mate for Lonesome George in order to perpetuate the species, the AFL’s plan in having two Sydney teams was to foster the code in Australia’s biggest city.

And we get back to Masters’ metaphor, now turned vicious – that the AFL is like an old, dying, desperate tortoise. It more shows the desperation of a bitter man seeing that AFL might have a future alongside the NRL in Sydney.

The Swans have access to the harbour and the city, something the people of Sydney’s west have been travelling to for 70 years.

Oh, really. Masters should listen to supporters of the descendants of his Wests Magpies – the Wests Tigers – bitterly complaining about the onerous journey to Moore Park, with its buses. Or others claiming that even Homebush “isn’t western Sydney” when referring to the Showground. The recent fan forums undertaken by backers of the new West Sydney soccer franchise have had the consensus view that Homebush is too far. So, the “harbour and the city” argument in relation to the Swans is woefully off the mark.

They won’t welcome the view the Giants had to leave Blacktown because the players were spending too much time in cars.

That is not the argument of the Giants. Perhaps reading the whole of the press release would have helped Masters.

Similarly, Lonesome George has rejected the Volcan Wolf tortoise and those other floozy tortoises marine scientists have paraded for him to reproduce with.

Floozy tortoises. Thanks for that.

The artificially created mating of the now inner west Giants with the Swans might have a similar fate, particularly in stimulating interest in Australian football in Sydney’s greater west, a region long taken for granted.

A region long taken for granted by whom? The AFL? NRL? The article doesn’t say, but it can be fair to say that the AFL is doing anything but taking it for granted – otherwise, why spend the money. And it’s puzzling that Masters insists that the Swans and the Giants are “mating” – if anything, they are rapidly developing two different identities. As for the “inner west Giants” – that a pretty silly label from a man defending a competition where the “Wests Tigers” have home games in Leichhardt and Moore Park.

Roy Masters will continue his vendetta on every forum with which he is provided – such as Offsiders and the Herald, due in part to his own status as a respected former coach – pretty akin to Sheedy. The difference is, though, is that we won’t see Sheedy write a vicious attack on the Melbourne Storm or the NRL in general. That’s because first of all there doesn’t seem to be a single AFL writer who hates league in the same way Masters hates AFL. In addition, the AFL don’t seem to feel threat from the NRL. Masters, however, loathes a future that will see people choose either NRL or AFL for their children for reasons that aren’t really that apparent, other than an irrational hatred.

Masters himself is a bit of endangered species – the Old Grizzled Anti AFL Leaguie. The species, as represented by Masters, is not really like a Galapagos Tortoise, it is more like a Tasmanian Devil, increasingly isolated and snarling at passers by.

Blessed are the Cheese Leerers – The Absurdity of Transactional Relationships

Posted on April 25, 2012 by prestontowers

Responses to my previous blog post about Bettina Arndt have prompted me to consider just how people see relationships and the politics surrounding the choosing of a partner. It struck me that what Arndt and many other writers of her type are writing about is a transactional relationship. That is, that the chief reason for women to go to university, get a “high status” job and therefore a big salary is to ultimately gain a similarly trained and salaried mate. Using statistics about pay scales and university education feeds into this concept that relationship construction is about financial status, not other factors.

This idea is hardly new – there was a time once where women of “high birth” were good only for increasing the status of the family that produced the daughter, or keep the status quo. Jane Austen addresses this in her work, where she is advocating a slight move away from the transactional relationship, towards one where people of marginally different social status – ie. Fitzwilliam Darcy and Lizzie Bennett – can defy social convention and pressures find other things in common. In Arndt’s world, Anne de Bourgh would have married Mr. Darcy.

The article from an increasingly detached social observer – just see how much credence she places in American bloggers – demonstrates how much is not understood about the changes education and technology are bringing to the development of people and relationships. Her example of the “Alpha Male”, who I called Dr. Malcolm Franklin – Hamm – going for a girl in her 20s – eliminates the possibility that the girl in her 20s could be a sparkling conversationalist. Or that they could have interests in common. I have found in my interactions with women in their 20s – especially on Twitter – that there are many quirky and engaging women in their 20s – which would come as a shock from people who are older who see them as “competition” or some such. These are women who pursue their own interests and adventures, whether it pleases men or not. I think of @superhotmel, who has an abiding interest in Lego minifigs ; Keira Nightingale – @bambiandthejets – who has a profound love and knowledge of AFL and has taken that and applied it into making an excellent collection of supporter stories ; or @erinrileyau and @nicolacastleman, with whom I have had many long conversations about politics and football ; then there is the most under followed Tweeter I know, @tollplaza, who applies a very funny and unique slant to life and television. Especially Psychic TV. Seriously, people should follow her. There are many other examples, such as the spark for all this, @rubywildflower. It is entirely possible that someone in their 30s, 20s, whatever, from whichever background, would find great joy and companionship with such people who have their own interests and passions. It is a mistake to look at two people in a room, in love, and assume that it is a relationship not built on love and mutual interests – instead, that it is purely transactional. This whole point can be made about women in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond who also possess a dazzling array of experiences, knowledge, passions, interests that make them interesting, intriguing, attractive, fascinating. These people all defy the stereotyping that articles like Arndt’s so easily adopt. That is because they have chosen to be interesting and wonderful on their own terms – not terms deemed by those who wish to think society is a system of games and transactions.

The example provided in Arndt’s article from the 30 something journalist – “and those who remain are leering by the cheese table” has struck me as fairly symbolic of the absurdity of the world Arndt is writing about. It is one aspect of transactional relationship theory that one thing a “high status” person would not do is enjoy food. Such people, in my experience, talk of food as being a burden, not a total pleasure. They speak of it having to be restricted in diets, as food needing to be entirely healthy. As such, they would always refer to things like cheese as a pleasure and pain – “ooooh, I love cheese, but it goes straight to my hips”. Personally, it doesn’t bother me if it does – that applies to men and women equally. I love cheese, craft beer, good food. I like sharing it with people who are similarly inclined. If I was at that party, I would be seen as a man leering by the cheese table, because I would have seen a particularly nice bit of roquefort, blue or Wensleydale. I probably also would have been trying to avoid a journalist who seems to be rather judgmental and dull. People who think of people from the opposite gender as a “goal”, “target” or “person of similar status” are generally boring people who talk of their latest diet / exercise regimen – certainly not good TV programs, music or cheese. Talking of leering at cheese – here is some champion cheese leering – for more examples, visit my tumblr peoplewholeeratcheese.tumblr.com – I thank @miss_shiny for the name. Blessed be the Cheese Leerers – for we will enjoy our lives and relationships.

We are All Omicrons. Bettina Arndt and the Manosphere

Posted on April 22, 2012 by prestontowers

Hot on the heels of my previous Ruby Wildflower blog post about the attitude of men towards women, pops up Fairfax lifestyle columnist, Bettina Arndt, proving the points I was making about out of touch lifestyle writers making stupendous claims about men and women in their 30s. In Arndt’s case, making bald claims and spurious evidence to support her case. There are those on Twitter who immediately roll their eyes when Arndt’s name is mentioned – and say that writing about her just encourages her. I would argue the opposite – it is precisely because people don’t write detailed critiques of people like Arndt that she gets away with the absurdity. In addition, she has a far higher readership than pretty much every blogger in the country. So, here is a bit of a breakdown of what she wrote and just what is so breathtakingly wrong about it. Her article will be in italics.

Why women lose the dating game

In the Arndt world, going on a date isn’t an activity designed to find people with which you have a connection – it’s a game. With winners and presumably, losers. This is not the actual purpose of a date – which should be about finding something unique, compatible and so on. But then again, I’m not a lifestyle columnist.

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Even the ads by Google on the SMH article’s page add to this idea that romance and seeking relationships is a game with “secret” words and some kind of trick to “make Him fall for you”. Nothing about finding things in common.

Playing the dating game Photo: istock photos

The photo spells out the tone in which the article is composed – telling us that romance and dating is to be measured in financial terms

Bettina Arndt listens to the other voices in this debate: the men.

“The other” – making men seem like something mysterious and “other” rather than a fellow human being. It’s off to a good start.

Naomi sat in the back row of Melbourne’s Grattan Institute, about to watch her fiance give a lecture. She was joined by three unfamiliar women – all attractive, well groomed, in their mid-30s. From their whispered chat, she quickly realised they weren’t there to hear about politics and economics but to meet her eligible man. Naomi explains: ”He’s 36 years old and is definitely someone who falls into the alpha-male category: excellent job in finance, PhD, high income, six feet two, sporty and very handsome. And he’s an utter sweetheart.”

Arndt starts her piece with a startling image of the woman in her mid 30s. Not interested in politics or economics. Just interested in meeting a man. They are “well groomed” not because of a pride in their appearance or out of necessity in the professional world, but in order to attract a Man. Not just any man – an “alpha” male. What makes a man “alpha” presumably is a high paying job, a PhD, being sporty and handsome. I am imagining a man who is part Malcolm Turnbull, part Dr. Karl, part Buddy Franklin and part Jon Hamm. The type of man people meet all the time. It does make me wonder what would make him a “Beta” – maybe a humble Masters Degree, or if he doesn’t play sport, not particularly handsome, a lowly job as a public servant – or that unforgivable sin, being short. Maybe if he had a job as a high school teacher, was 5 foot 6, not good at sport and was fairly ordinary looking, he’d be an Omicron. Never mind how kind, intelligent or nurturing he may be. Let’s continue with this affirming, positive image of the modern woman.

Naomi is an attractive 28-year-old PhD student. She has been in a relationship with her fiance for six years. Her new companions were very friendly and chatted to her during the break. But then her partner, who had been socialising at the front of the room, made eye contact with Naomi and smiled.

”The women saw this and it was like the room had suddenly frozen over. There was silence and then one of them asked me if I knew him. I wasn’t going to lie, so I told them he was my partner and how long we’d been together. It was amazing how they responded. They stopped smiling at me, shifted awkwardly in their seats and looked me up and down as if they were trying to figure out how a girl who still wears jeans and ballet flats could land a guy like that.” The women left before her man gave his speech.

As soon as women in an economics lecture see that their dream man wants an intelligent woman in her 20s, that’s it for them. The sisterhood breaks part instantly. They are so shallow that can’t understand why their dream Alpha Male would want a woman who wears jeans and comfortable shoes.

Everything makes sense to me now. Yes, women really are that shallow. That is everyone’s experience of women in their 30s – certainly, every woman I talk to in their thirties is not listening to what I say, but wondering if I’m sporty and hunky. These same women flee the room when my partner comes in, without makeup and with a pair of flats on. This is my experience every time.

Actually, not really. If I do discover if a woman is like this, I run a mile. Not literally, because I’m not very sporty. But I would if I was an alpha male. Because I’m a Sigma, I just wait until I get a chance to mutter to myself how incredibly boring said person was. The same goes for men who have the same approach to the judging of women. I don’t discover this attitude that often, fortunately. Back to Bettina’s terribly representative example.

Naomi is stunned by the number of women in their 30s who throw themselves at her partner: the colleagues who sign emails with kisses; the female journalist who pointedly asked, post-interview, if he was married.

This Alpha Male is important – clearly, he has the Lynx Effect without having to buy the evil smelling concoction. Women of all levels of education – even journalists – lose all reason and dignity as he walks down the corridors. If I didn’t know any better, I would swear that the article was written by a teenage boy fantasising about his power with the ladeez. It is then, however, we get the crux of the Arndt argument.

Yet given the plight of thirtysomething women seeking partners, it’s hardly surprising that her boyfriend is in their sights. We hear endless complaints from women about the lack of good men.

There is a plight, a disaster, a problem for women in the thirties seeking men. “We” – whoever that is, though I expect it’s Arndt and her circle of friends – can’t find a commodity they define as “good” men. I expect it’s the Alpha Male that we met earlier. You know – Dr. Malcolm Franklin – Hamm. And they are complaints that are endless. But why are these women going through this disastrous “good man drought”?

Women astonished that men don’t seem to be around when they decide it is time to settle down. Women telling men to ”man up” and stop shying away from commitment.

It’s the fault of women. They went off and had careers and then, when they decided to settle down (clearly, all of this planned), the men disappeared. Not only that, but it is women who scared these “good” men away. But I digress – as Bettina has. She did, after all, declare that her article was about “the man’s point of view”. So, after this amount of time establishing just what a good alpha man is and establishing the attitude of women in their 30s, we are introduced to this “point of view”.

But there is another conversation going on – a fascinating exchange about what is happening from the male point of view. Much of it thrives on the internet, in the so-called ”manosphere”. Here you will find men cheerfully, even triumphantly, blogging about their experience. They have cause for celebration, you see. They’ve discovered a profound change has taken place in the mating game and, to their surprise, they are the winners.

Here is a secret. When the dinner is cooked and I go into my home office, I call out to my partner “sorry, I can’t talk to you now, I’m on the manosphere”. I read all those blogs by men bragging about the Alphaness and how they are winning at the dating game. Blogs written by blokes in their 30s about their experiences like this one, with all the bragging graphs, this one with stuff about clubland, or the scene in NSW. Arndt helpfully provides her own examples, such as these:

Dalrock (dalrock.wordpress.com) is typical: ”Today’s unmarried twentysomething women have given men an ultimatum: I’ll marry when I’m ready, take it or leave it. This is, of course, their right. But ultimatums are a risky thing, because there is always a possibility the other side will decide to leave it. In the next decade we will witness the end result of this game of marriage chicken.”

The endgame Dalrock warns about is already in play for hordes of unmarried professional women – the well-coiffed lawyers, bankers and other success stories. Many thought they could put off marriage and families until their 30s, having devoted their 20s to education, establishing careers and playing the field. But was their decade of dating a strategic mistake?

Dalrock sounds like a prize wanker to me. And then I read his blog – you can be the judge of whether that opinion can be supported. He represents himself as a “happily married man in a post-feminist world” – whatever that is. It sounds to me that in his twenties that he met women who had heard some of the views he is currently expressing in his blog and they made up a reason to make him go away. Being a man who likes to make things sound better than they were, he talks about “marriage chicken”. Arndt has then read Dalrock’s bitter attitude towards women as a truth about women in their thirties. This provides a note to any aspiring columnists in lifestyle sections in mass circulation papers – if you want to make a spurious point, you will find a bizarre blog to support that point. Continuing with that theme, we have other “representative” men:

Jamie, a 30-year-old Sydney barrister, thinks so: ”Women labour under the impression they can have it all. They can have the career, this carefree lifestyle and then, at the snap of their fingers, because they are so fabulous, find a man. But if they wait until their 30s they’re competing with women who are much younger and in various ways more attractive.”

This raises the question – how many times have we heard the cliche “women think they can have it all”. It’s a phrase I have NEVER heard come from a real person. NEVER. If you know someone who actually uses that phrase, put a piece of tape across their mouth, because whatever will come out next won’t be worth listening to. Jamie is another in the wankosphere who clearly has had many rebuffs from many women and has said as a way on self-consolation “women in their 20s are so much more attractive”. He doesn’t say in what way they are “more attractive” – it sounds as if he hasn’t been out with women in their 30s or their 20s. If he did manage to “snag” a woman in her 20s, she would find very quickly that Jamie is a boring man who judges people according to age and uses cliches like “having it all”. Arndt has swallowed this phrase from the unacknowledged source as evidence of Man Attitude – but then has moved onto statistics. Nothing like good stats to support an argument, no?

The crisis for single women in this age group seeking a mate is very real. Almost one in three women aged 30 to 34 and a quarter of late-30s women do not have a partner, according to the 2006 census statistics. And this is a growing problem. The number of partnerless women in their 30s has almost doubled since 1986.

Women not having a partner is a Problem, according to Arndt. Therefore, the increased number of women without a partner over the years is a Growing Problem. Never mind the increase divorce rate, where women have, as a generation, felt more empowered to leave a relationship that isn’t working, but then not just hopping on the next male passing by. Also, never mind women who choose to live a fulfilling life that doesn’t need a man to make it feel Complete. Those women don’t exist in Arndtland.

The challenge is greatest for high-achieving women in their 30s looking for equally successful men. Analysis of 2006 census figures by the Monash University sociologist, Genevieve Heard, reveals that almost one in four of degree-educated women in their 30s will miss out on a man of similar age and educational achievement. There were only 68,000 unattached graduate men in their 30s for 88,000 single graduate women in the same age group.

Ah, in Arndtland we do have the Alpha Female – the “high achieving” woman. To her, these university educated women are rapidly seeing a decrease in university educated women. That’s because the measure of success for Arndt now is a university education. Those women and men who didn’t go to university aren’t high achieving. Possibly even Sigmas.

And the higher-education gap keeps widening. In the past year, the proportion of degree-educated women aged 25 to 34 rose from 37.7 per cent to 40.3 per cent, according to the Bureau of Statistics, while for males the figure remained below 30 per cent, having risen only 0.5 per cent in the past year.

It gets worse for these ridiculous women who sought to get a university degree – there’s now far too many of you, competing for a pool of university educated men that hasn’t changed. Clearly the Dr. Malcolm Franklin Hamm market hasn’t an endless elasticity of supply – demand has increased. Women should be dismayed by the demand / supply curve. (If I was Greg Jericho, I could produce a graph for you to look at that shows what that would look like, but I’m not, sadly. Mind you, if you were an Alpha Woman reading that graph, you wouldn’t be interested in looking at a graph like that. That’s because you would be busy thinking about your Alpha Man). Maybe it’s the fault of women who competed against men at high school and won the university places. In Arndtlogic, you should have paused and thought of the uni graduate marriage pool in your 30s before studying for the HSC / VCE / Uni Entrance Exam. This is confirmed in this paragraph from Arndt -

Although there are similar numbers of single men and women in their 30s overall – about 370,000 of each across Australia – half these available men had only high school education, 57 per cent earned $42,000 or less and 95,000 of them were unemployed.

There it is. Worthless Upsilon men who don’t earn much money or went to uni are your lot. Plus the unemployed. The unemployed – the Omegas of our society, in Arndtlogic. Why are women destined to a life spent with Upsilons and Omegas? Because it’s THEIR FAULT.

The high expectations of professional women are a big part of the story. Many high-achieving women simply are not interested in Mr Average, says Justin Parfitt, the owner of Australia’s fastest growing speed-dating organisation, Fast Impressions. Parfitt adds: ”They’ve swallowed the L’Oreal line: ‘Because you’re worth it!’ There’s a real sense of entitlement.”

Yes, the owner of a speed dating organisation is the authority on Men and the attitude of Women. In a perfect synergy, he uses the language of advertising to frame his point of view – in the way we all do when speaking about society. Let’s not let the spectre of exhaustive research hang over this piece – let’s hear more from Mr. Speed -

He finds many of his female members are determined to meet only men who are tall, attractive, wealthy and well educated. They want the alpha males. ”Most of the professional women rarely give out ‘yes’ votes to men who aren’t similarly successful,” reports Parfitt, who struggles to attract enough of these successful men to his speed-dating events. Sixty per cent of his members are female. Most are over 30.

Yes, men are so easy to judge in 5 minutes of mindless small talk in an absurd speed dating situation. Plus, so many women in society rely on speed dating to find their ideal partner. Again, I’ve never met anyone who think speed dating is nothing more than a massive giggle. I’d be interested if anyone found anyone remotely interesting at such things. However, Arndt uses this female pickiness at speed dating as a chance to make one of her more outlandish conclusions.

During their 20s, women compete for the most highly desirable men, the Mr Bigs. Many will readily share a bed with the sporty, attractive, confident men, while ordinary men miss out. As Whiskey puts it at whiskeysplace.wordpress.com: ”Joe Average Beta Male is about as desirable to women as a cold bowl of oatmeal.”

I went to Whiskey’s Place. Aside from declaring that “America is a Hard Left Nation, No Question About It”, he speaks of “Alpha male struck naïve Freshman girls” in a way that I wouldn’t necessarily advise you read. Arndt uses as support for her view a blog that is representative of nothing more than a Republican male confused about the world changing around him.

Data from American colleges show 20 per cent of males – the most attractive ones – get 80 per cent of the sex, according to an analysis by Susan Walsh, a former management consultant who wrote about the issue on her dating website, hookingupsmart.com.

If you visit “Hooking Up Smart“, another American site about dating there you get a number of the terms of reference that frame Arndt’s piece. The “manosphere” for a start, plus “MWALT – Most Women Are Like That” and other fascinating acronyms. The numbers look a bit strange to me – a bit even. Those 80 per cent of men are clearly Upsilons or Sigmas not getting sex in college. But they do in their 30s, I suppose, according to the logic. Let’s look at those sexless men.

That leaves a lot of beta men spending their 20s out in the cold. Greg, a 38-year-old writer from Melbourne, started adult life shy and lonely. ”In my 20s, the women had the total upper hand. They could make or break you with one look in a club or bar. They had the choice of men, sex was on tap and guys like me went home alone, red-faced, defeated and embarrassed. The girls only wanted to go for the cool guys, good looks, outgoing personalities, money, sporty types, the kind of guys who owned the room, while us quiet ones got ignored.”

He barely had a date through much of his 20s and gave up on women. But then he spent time overseas, gained more confidence, learnt how to dress well and hit his early 30s. ”I suddenly started to get asked out by women, aged 19 through to 40. The floodgates burst open for me. I actually dated five women at once, amazing my flatmates by often bedding three to four of my casual dates each week. It is a great time as a male in your 30s, when you start getting more female attention and sex than you could ever have dreamt of in your 20s.”

Greg, the writer in his 30s is getting a lot of sex, despite being a dreadful Beta. A representative man, clearly. He tried to “compete” with sporty men in his 20s and now he is in his 30s, he is getting sex. He WINS! Nothing is said that perhaps the women he was trying to date in his 20s didn’t share the same interests as him, or perhaps he sucked in the lie than many men believe in their 20s, which is “punching above your weight”, which translated actually means “go out with someone entirely wrong for you”.

Greg, to me, sounds like he’s another resident of the wankosphere. He can seem to be nice, friendly and personable to women in their 30s – but to Greg, it’s “sucked in, women! I am just sleeping with 5 of you at once! I am a WINNER!” Ah, no, Greg, you aren’t. You are someone boasting to Bettina Arndt. But I digress.

That’s when some men start behaving very badly – as the manosphere clearly shows. These internet sites are not for the faint-hearted. The voices are often crude and misogynist. But they tell it as they see it. There is Greenlander, an apparently successful engineer in his late 30s. In his early adult life, he was unable to ”get the time of day from women”. Now he’s interested only in women under 27.

”The women I know in their early 30s are just delusional,” he says. ”I sometimes seduce them and sleep with them just because I know how to play them so well. It’s just too easy. They’re tired of the cock carousel and they see a guy like me as the perfect beta to settle down with before their eggs dry out … when I get tired of them I just delete their numbers from my cell phone and stop taking their calls … It doesn’t really hurt them that much: at this point they’re used to pump & dump!”

Cock carousel. Pump and dump. Hmmm, delusional doesn’t apply to the women, “successful engineer”. Sounds like he’d be a delightful dinner companion.

It’s easy to dismiss such bile but Greenlander’s analysis is echoed by many Australian singles, both male and female.

Yes, it is easy to dismiss Greenlander, Bettina. But you don’t, because you have Conclusions to be Made.

”It’s wall-to-wall arseholes out there,” reports Penny, a 31-year-old lawyer. She is stunned by how hard it is to meet suitable men willing to commit. ”I’m horrified by the number of gorgeous, independent and successful women my age who can’t meet a decent man.”

Penny acknowledges part of the problem is her own expectations – that her generation of women was brought up wanting too much. ”We were told we were special, we could do anything and the world was our oyster.” And having spent her 20s dating alpha males, she expected them to be still around when she finally decided to get serious.

HORRIFIED! WE WERE WANTING TOO MUCH. WE WERE LIED TO BY THE FEMINISTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I WANT A MAAAAAAAAN NOOOOOOOOW!!!! IT’S THE FEMINISTS FAULT THAT I CAN’T HAVE AN ALPHA MAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!

If anyone knows Penny, she needs support. She sounds a touch judgemental.

But these men go fast, many fishing outside their pond. The most attractive, successful men can take their pick from women their own age or from the Naomis, the younger women who are happy to settle early. Almost one in three degree-educated 35-year-old men marries or lives with women aged 30 or under, according to income, housing and marriage surveys by the Bureau of Statistics.

Men are fishermen. And they are marrying younger women. Not that the phenomenon of an age gap of 5 years isn’t a cultural norm or anything. That maturity levels between a 30 year old woman and a 35 year old man might be pretty even. No, let’s not let that idea enter the Arndt thesis that women in their 30s are in the wrong pond.

”I can’t believe how many men my age are only interested in younger women,” wails Gail, a 34-year-old advertising executive as she describes her first search through men’s profiles on the RSVP internet dating site. She is shocked to find many mid-30s men have set up their profiles to refuse mail from women their own age.

Wails Gail – nice rhyme. Anecdotal evidence of RSVP is another tool here – and those men in their 30s who go on RSVP seeking young trophy girlfriends are representative of, um, men who are probably delusional enough to think that women in their 20s will “want” them. That the idea of “punching above their weight” hasn’t died as it should have when they were 21. Maybe, possibly, perhaps. Not that the idea is entertained here.

Talking to many women like her, it’s intriguing how many look back on past relationships where they let good men get away because they weren’t ready. American journalist Kate Bolick wrote recently in The Atlantic about breaking off her three-year relationship with a man she described as ”intelligent, good-looking, loyal and kind”. She acknowledged ”there was no good reason to end things”, yet, at the time, she was convinced something was missing in the relationship. That was 11 years ago. She’s is now 39 and facing grim choices.

”We arrived at the top of the staircase,” Bolick wrote, ”finally ready to start our lives, only to discover a cavernous room at the tail end of a party, most of the men gone already, some having never shown up – and those who remain are leering by the cheese table, or are, you know, the ones you don’t want to go out with.”

Those cheese munching men are clearly something to avoid. How dare they leer at cheese. With the assent of her fellow writer, Arndt comes in with the punch.

So, many women are missing out on their fairytale ending – their assumption that when the time was right the dream man would be waiting. The 30s are worrying years for high-achieving women who long for marriage and children – of course, not all do – as they face their rapidly closing reproductive window surrounded by men who see no rush to settle down.

The clock is ticking. Because that is what all women desire and want. As well, men in their thirties just all want to go out and score women in their 20s. So say RSVP users and American bloggers – so it must be true.

And, of course, many women eventually do find a mate, often ending up with divorced men. There are complications with that second-marriage market, in which men come complete with former wives and children. That was never part of the plan.

Oh, DEAR! How dare they. DIVORCED MEN!!!! Is there a letter lower than Omega? And those messy CHILDREN from another relationship. How terrible. Women can’t possibly bond with such spawn, can they? Actually, as I have seen many times, they can. With beautiful results. I find that conclusion one of the most personally offensive, in terms of men who are “second” hand goods. That’s because, apparently, life has follow a plan and be a fairytale. And divorce isn’t a part of it, despite its prevalence. A prevalence not dealt with in the sharp statistical analysis with which Arndt has written up until now. Talking of sharp, now a summary of one of the millions of self help books -

Many really struggle with the fact that they aren’t in a position to be too choosy. American author Lori Gottlieb gives a painfully honest account of that process in her book Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr Good Enough.

”Maybe we need to get over ourselves,” she writes. The 40-year-old single mother enlisted a team of advisers who helped her realise that while she was conducting her long search for the perfect man – Prince Charming or nobody – her market value had dropped through the floor.

”Our generation of women is constantly told to have high self-esteem, but it seems that the women themselves are at risk of ego-tripping themselves out of romantic connection,” she writes. She acknowledges she made a mistake not looking for a spouse in her 20s, when she was at her most desirable. She advises thirtysomething women to look for Mr Good Enough before they have even less choice. ”They are with an ’8′ but they want a ’10′. But then suddenly they’re 40 and can only get a ’5′!”

Yes. Marriage is a commodity. Men are to be compared on a numerical scale – which confused the heck out of me – it was Greek letters, now it’s numbers. Women should just be happy with the drecky cheese men. To finish with, we have a last word from the wankosphere -

Women delaying their search for a serious relationship have set up a very different dating and marriage market. The Sydney barrister, Jamie, finds himself spoilt for choice. Like many of his friends he’s finding women actively pursuing him, asking him out, cooking him elaborate meals, buying him presents. ”Oh, you’re a barrister,” they say.

While many of his mates are playing the field, determined to enjoy this unexpected attention, Jamie is ready to settle down. He’s very wary of Sex and the City types, women who are convinced they are so special, but he’s confident he will soon find someone with her feet on the ground.

”I’m lucky,” he says, ”to be in a buyer’s market.”

Yes, Jamie. He sounds like a keeper to me. A definite Dr. Malcolm Frankin – Hamm who definitely doesn’t leer at cheese.

Addendum – Check out the new Tumblr – People Who Leer At Cheese.

Excluding the Quiet – Newspaper Lifestyle Sections Selling Us the Loud

Posted on April 21, 2012 by prestontowers

Two days ago, my friend (whom I have not met), @rubywildflower, sent out a request for a guest post on her blog, which I thought was a good challenge. I don’t usually use this blog for comments on love and relationships – it’s more of a culture / politics / sport type of thing. I wrote it, she published it – and I received lots of great compliments and retweets from people who don’t usually respond to my blog posts. That was very cool and unexpected.

It brought me to realise, though, that in the realm of comments on love and relationships, newspapers, magazines and TV really do, for the most part, represent the views and worlds of a very small proportion of the population. The loud. The brash. The insider. Flick through any lifestyle section of a newspaper in Sydney and it is, like the real estate section, all about the inner city. People living it loud and large, drinking, partying, staggering through the weekend. Women trying to emulate Sex in the City. And people are expected to live vicariously through its participants. Samantha Brett and her “push up bra” sensibilities. I have never met a Samantha Brett – and nor would she want to meet a quiet man like me. Sam de Brito and his insouciant air when he sells his schtick – “I’m an unreconstructed man / I loathe political correctness / take me or leave me”. I have never known a man like that in the real world – he seems to me to be more like Pete Campbell from Mad Men, pretending to have “everything”, when it’s just an act. Selling an image, rather than being an actual person who thinks those things. Mia Freedman, for all her practiced self deprecation and charm also strikes me as rather unrepresentative, in that she has been a publishing insider for many years, getting invites to things her readers will never go to (but desperate want to), meeting people her readers won’t and so on. She is, though, being her true self, which is a plus – however, it’s not a real self in which I have much interest.

It’s a world so removed from a number of us it’s almost another planet. I have always been pretty quiet when in pubs and parties – awkwardly so. I do talk a bit when warmed up and the people I am with seem interested in what I have to say – and vice versa. It doesn’t come naturally to me. This is why I usually loathe Sydney’s loud bars, with their too loud music and talk-averse atmosphere. Sydney also seems to be home to some people who will turn up to a drinks session, see that no-one is loud enough for them, then leave. I like it when those people leave. It is pretty clear that they don’t want to talk to the quiet people, the nice people – just those that are like them. I have personally found Melbourne’s bars and people to be more welcoming and open for long, interesting chats – but again, that’s just my experience.

This is not to say that lifestyle sections of newspapers are totally bereft of excellent writers who do speak for the quiet, the nice, the shy and the awkward. There is, however, a place for those that don’t live it large. Anyway, here is my take on how men (well, at least me), see women, as posted previously by Ruby Wildflower.

Not all Men are Sam de Brito

Reading Twitter throws at me a range of experiences and life pathways I find fascinating as well as overwhelming. What I find overwhelming is how many women have a default position of putting themselves down and also thinking of themselves as uninteresting or undesirable. It really does my head in.

This is because many women seem to be wrestling with a negative self-perception caused by any number of factors. The magazines I look at as I avoid the “Down, Down, Prices are Down” posters are astonishingly good at parading the idea that a certain look, weight loss and exercise are much more important than personality. Make the mistake of reading just one paragraph of the stuff and you are dragged into a world of dumb. Look at the TV and there you see The Biggest Loser and women crying because they can’t find a man because of their size. Then there’s Sunrise, Today and those shows that demonstrate that intellect, a finely tuned bullshit meter and a healthy dose of cynicism won’t get you a gig on TV.

This all leads to the idea that people in general won’t find you interesting or engaging if they aren’t a certain way. So, as a result, many women on Twitter stay quiet for fear of being criticised / seen as dumb. So, for people who seek society’s acceptance, it’s a self-perpetuating cycle. They shouldn’t be quiet or scared of being judged. Everyone says stupid shit on Twitter and in blogs. I certainly do. I use it to say whatever comes out of my brain and I cop all sorts of abuse and criticism. If I know it’s unjustified, it hurts for a few seconds (it used to hurt for longer) and I move on. If it’s justified, I suck it down and will admit to my blunder. It’s what makes Twitter so good – it shows a lot of our flaws and strengths, all at the same time. All of us of either gender should use it as a way of understanding ourselves and the way we interact. In short, women shouldn’t be defined by the way others see them, women or men – but often do it. The rest of this post, however, will be about men and how men in their 30s see women in their 30s. If people are interested.

Women who want men to notice them, date them, be with them, this is for you. If it’s men you seek, they are out there. I was out there in my 20s, pretty much the same person I am now, except I had zero self confidence and believed I would be single all my life. I was always the friend women never saw as a possible boyfriend. The confidant, not the hot, sexy edgy man they sought. I see that a number of women in the 20s (and 30s) are still seeking the “other”, the edgy, often arrogant, haughty man who practices the bullshit “treat then mean, keep them keen” mantra. And it is bullshit. Any man who actually believes that mantra isn’t worth spitting on, let alone deserving of your intimacy. This is kind of myth that blokes like the odious Sam de Brito perpetuate in his largely unreadable column and twitter feed. Good men know that de Brito and his ilk are insufferable wankers you wouldn’t buy a beer for. The ones who give other men a bad name.

These same men also read people like Samantha Brett and her type and think of them as “high maintenance” and therefore avoid them like the plague. High maintenance infers that you will spending a lot of your own coin just to keep a woman who wants to substitute substance for flashy bling. That is also a false relationship. If your partner has a job which enables her to bling up and feel good about wearing nice things, then great. Partnerships should be equal and that should also apply to spending money on things. Money shouldn’t be the basis of any relationship, it should be mental, physical and spiritual connections (and I don’t mean religion here).

There is nothing wrong with admitting to loving Lego, World of Warcraft, politics, whatever really floats your boat. And there are single men out there who want to connect with you. They want to spend a quiet evening discussing the latest episode of Mad Men and celebrating how Joan kicked that arsehole of a husband out the door. They want to go to dorky movies with you. They are harder to find, perhaps, because the dating world seems to demand that men, as well as women, put on a false front and set of criteria in dating profiles. The men you seek will like the whole package – they won’t be talking to your breasts, but they will like them all the same, no matter their size. The same goes for your bodies – there are men out there who realise that true sexiness is defined by what the mind does with your own body as well as that of your partner, not how it would look like to a magazine audience.

They are out there, these men, if you want. They might have some emotional damage, they might be coming out of messy divorces or relationships, they might have children. They might not be exciting, edgy or hot in a conventional way. They may also need some guidance in the bedroom, especially if past partners were of the “I threw him a bit once a week / month / year” variety. But they will provide engaging conversation and support as well as other benefits.

The Preston Institute

Seeking obfuscation and receiving it on a daily basis.

Category Archives: Cultural Comment