Millenials, do we even want to own homes though?

“There’s nothing like the feeling of walking in to your first home” our mortgage broker sighed wistfully, as he pushed the hefty piles of paper towards me for my signature.

But as I walked into my newly purchased property, exhausted after scrubbing my disgusting, cockroach-infested old rental to the bone, I only felt confusion, apprehension and fear.

I am that rarest of creatures, a millennial who, through hard work and many acts of God, owns her home. But when I come back to it at the end of the day, I don’t feel young – I feel old and tired.

This week, another property mogul – Tim Gurner, this time – has said young Aussies should give up their creature comforts and knuckle down to save for a home. But as I lie awake at night in the home I’ve already bought, considering the crushing mountain of debt I have built, I often wonder – why the hell did I do this to myself?

So I own a piece of ground – I mean, great, I guess. From the second I bought the damn thing all it’s demanded of me is more money. There’s rates and renovations and responsibilities pounding down my door all over the place. A lot of the time I reckon I’d rather be with my mates who rent, pounding schooners at the pub – and not just because my partner, our two dogs and I are constantly at each other’s throats in such close quarters.

Rather than living the Aussie dream, I have a rising feeling I’m just a victim of it. And a dumb one at that, because I worked incredibly hard to be here.

Unlike so many fantastically knowledgeable billionaires, I tell the secrets of my success to anyone who asks, for free, without requiring attendance at thousand dollar seminar held in a cheap hotel. I partnered up young, we hardcore saved with two incomes – and even with all that, the bank of mum and dad had to come through with a loan.

As a property reporter and as a millennial I completely understand the outrage that builds every time some white dude with daddy’s money tells us all to knuckle down and give up life’s little luxuries to purchase a property. I mean, I did it, and I know how hard it is. How impossible it is for people who, unlike me, can’t borrow money from family. How impossible it would have been for friends who own property if they couldn’t have lived at home while they saved a deposit.

Everyone deserves a good whinge and I’m always happy to listen to friends struggling to buy. But often when I hear one of my mates lamenting the state of the property market, quietly running through in my head the average house prices for the suburb where they currently live, I quietly think to myself: “are you sure you want my life?”

Sure, you could give up literal joy and get a foot on the property ladder, and it would (apparently) set you up forever. But is it worth, like me, only really beginning to live at some distant point on the future?

I get it, older generation, when you say that buying anything is about sacrifice. I’ve always been a saver. I eagerly tucked away the $6.75 an hour I earned at my first job when I was 14, and at every other poorly paid job I had through university, and at every poorly paid job I’ve had since. I wore hand-me-downs from my middle sister and shopped at Vinnies well into my mid-twenties. I turned down nights out, holidays, meals – I’ve never seen free food, or a free tote bag, I haven’t nabbed.

I figured it would all be worth it, when I could plunk down my 10 percent to own some bricks and mortar.

But there’s something I didn’t quite realise about owning a home. Something they never seem to include in the “young tycoon buys suburb” style write-ups boomers love to forward to us 20-somethings.

Even after you’ve scrimped and saved, you just get to do it some more – and especially when you’ve just scored a Sydney-sized mortgage.

I get that I’m an idiot for not realising this sooner – I’m sure all the boomers will call me a millennial snowflake, or a straight up moron, and in some ways I agree. But even boomers, I think, can see the downsides to the home ownership dream, in their day and in the present day. If many of them were in a modern man or woman’s androgynous loafers, staring down a million dollar average price, and could have seen in a crystal ball all the things they’d be giving up to own a home, would they still have plunked down the dosh?

I’m not so sure I would.

The three grand or so I pay every month to the bank is the money I would be using to explore the world, to actually go out on a date with my partner, to take even a minute off from working and side-hustling.

But I don’t have that money. The bank does. All my dreams are on hold ‘til I’m older.

Don’t get me wrong, other millennials. I can already hear you. “You already own a bloody home, you don’t get to whinge.” Fair crack. It’s not that I don’t understand the supreme privilege of my position. I promise that along with being ambivalent, I’m also grateful. I know that I am basically a unicorn. A unicorn who lives in a falling down one-bedroom house, but singular all the same (yes, I swear, it’s a house with one bedroom – nobody will ever believe me that it’s a real thing).

But in so many ways, I’ve traded my youth for it.

I’m not saying millennials shouldn’t keep raging – we should. We’re being gaslit by the older generation, who bought homes when uni was free and wages were rising and when the city wasn’t so sprawling that a “budget suburb” meant a two hour commute to work.

And I’m not even saying that boomers shouldn’t keep telling us to save money for things we want – though it’s time they admit that the property market is fundamentally different than it was when they were younger.

I’m just saying that it’s time we stopped pretending that saving for a home is the only hard bit, and that there isn’t more to life than just getting your hands on a plot of land.

Millenials, I say ignore the boomers and enjoy spending your money on whatever you damn well want.

Like me, they’re probably just jealous.

Calm Down Christian Blokes, Nobody is Bullying You

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard about that Cooper’s video. If you haven’t, you can feast your eyes on it in all its cringe-y awkwardness here.*

I have a lot of thoughts about this video. Mostly, that it made me once again wish I could run PR for the entire religion of Christianity.

Seriously. How did nobody from a religion centred around loving your neighbour stop and think: “Hey, you guys, just a thought – maybe this video of three white guys, two of whom are Christian and all of whom are right wing, having a good lol over a beer about an issue that contributes to the fact that gay people are 14x more likely to kill themselves than straight people, is not going to go over well on the internet.”

Predictably, condemnation was swift. I’m not going to add to it – well, anymore than I already have in my attempt to describe the video above, which we can all agree failed spectacularly as a piece of impartial reporting. As previously discussed, I’m not the right person to speak for the gay community.

What I want to talk about is the condemnation of the condemnation. The pushback against the video’s detractors. Because, of course, the Christian white boys were outraged. How dare someone take a thing that they had made and not like it?

“We’re being bullied!” They cried. “What about freedom of speech?”

Firstly, Christian white boys, nobody was attacking you personally. They were not, for example, calling you out publicly for your decision to wear a one-piece swimsuit to the beach, or a tank top during a 40-degree heatwave, such as Christian men do to Christian women all the time. The dialogue was about the video, the very specific ideas in that video, and the presentation of such.

Secondly, in the style of many pre-schoolers I know, I think you need to learn a little lesson about bullying, because I’m not sure you know what it means.

The definition of being bullied is not “I said something and people did not think it was appropriate and got angry.”

It is especially not “I am a white man who practices Australia’s dominant religion and I said something and people did not think it was appropriate and got angry.”

Bullying is a big, popular kid and his gang of mates picking on a small kid who doesn’t have any friends.

If you honestly cannot see that the church has been the big, popular kid tearing down gay people and women and racial and religious minorities in the past, then I maybe can’t help you – you might actually be too far gone to change.

But I think a lot of Christians, including lots of white men, realise that the church has done wrong in the past, and has used its power in really terrible ways. The difference now, they say, is that we are no longer popular. People watched our big boys bully those smaller than themselves and left and joined the other side, in droves. There are more of them now, they say. They have gotten muscly over the summer holidays. They are the bullies and we are the ones being picked on.

To which, I have to say…weeeell…

Sure, bible-believing, church attending Christians are certainly thin on the ground in lots of places – and gay people undoubtedly have a lot of support on the issue of marriage equality. Those Christians in dissent** have long been outvoted by the general public (though still, bizarrely, in their next breath, claim they are supporting a silent majority).

But as any good networker will tell you, being powerful is not just about having friends. It’s about having the right friends.***

The fact is that, barring a lot of legal reform and a systematic cull of the older Caucasian blokes from beachside suburbs who run Australia, Christians are not being bullied.

It would be difficult, in this country, for us to be bullied ever. The constitution legalises our right to teach children about Jesus in schools.  Further legislation enshrines our values on everything from break time to BDSM. Any and every perceived slight against us is reported in right wing media as an attack on “the Christian values that built our nation.” There are so many Christians in parliament that they have their own prayer group – it meets on Monday nights.

If anything, we are overrepresented in positions of power. According to a 2014 article, during Tony Abbott’s time as prime minister, 8 of 19 members (42%) of the cabinet were Catholic, to say nothing of what I’m sure was a strong protestant showing. In contrast, only 25% of Australians said they were Catholic in the 2011 census – a number which I would bet money dropped in time for last year’s debacle.

There are only three out gay members of Australian lower house, 2% of the house’s total headcount (according to this 2016 article) and to my knowledge, no transgender members, while statistics indicate that one in every ten people is likely LGBT.

It’s easy to see why people don’t take too kindly when we say there is nobody to stand up for our values. When we argue we are being silenced, bullied and ignored.

Now, don’t mishear me, Christian blokes. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Christians or white people or men being in positions of power having political opinions, or voicing those political opinions – though if they’re Christian, they’re called to do that in a loving way. We live in a democracy, a system of government based on people giving their views on policies, laws and legislators.

The thing that the most privileged Christians need to get used to is the fact that people can now say whatever they want back.

Seriously. Whatever they want.

They have friends now. If those friends don’t want to buy your beer, that is their prerogative.

Even if we think we are being nice and doing a nice thing. Even when we think their response is mean or illegitimate. Even when we think we are right.

Our detractors can still say anything the like, and we have to try and be loving in response.

Not try to stand on our rights. Not try to yell louder. Not try to silence the opposition.

God’s promise to us was not that we would live lovely lives protected from nasty name calling. In fact, it was the very opposite.

I understand the fears Christian white men have. They have never been a minority before – they have never been powerless. But to wallow in their own suffering as though they haven’t and aren’t causing suffering, or as though Christians aren’t being gunned down with machine guns in other parts of the world, is laughable to anyone, and particularly to the women and minorities that their voices have previously silenced.

It’s time you all came out of your bubble for a bit of air, took a look around, had a chat with someone who’s not like you (that wasn’t just a debate about an opinion you’re secure in), and learned to deal with where we are instead of longing for a past that is very much gone.

I think it would really help some of you stop saying silly things that those of us living in the real world then have to try and explain to our non-Christian friends and family – and I think it might help the rest of the world be a little more sympathetic if we ever come under real attack.

Perhaps every Christian white man fear will come true, and you will all be right. Maybe Christian ministers will be thrown in jail for preaching the bible’s views of sexuality. Maybe they will take away our legal right to tell our children about Jesus. Maybe we will be told we have to make a cake for a same sex wedding.**** Maybe your kid, who I suspect is the real target of your worry and concern, will support values you do not support, or will not be a Christian, or is gay or transgender him or herself.*****

You know what I doubt is going to slow the advance of that day, of those days, which may very well be coming? Privileged people playing a false victim card too early, before anyone has made any serious attempt to limit the rights of Christians in the first place.

And if our brothers and sisters, about to be eaten by lions and set on fire and nailed to pieces of wood, can bless their enemies and pray for those who persecute them, I promise, you can shut the hell up and stop writing nasty homophobic comments on Facebook.

*TLDR summary: three white guys in suits drink Cooper’s beer and discuss the pros and cons of same sex marriage

**And we are not all in dissent

***This potential pun was unintentional, I promise, I hate puns because I am a humourless bitch

****Which like, sorry Christians but big fat who cares. It’s a cake, nobody is forcing you to have gay sex

*****In which case I hope you will do as the bible says, and still love them and take care of them

In Which I Complain About Adorable Children (and Myself) for IWD

A few weeks ago I wrote a post for this blog.

The content of the post was, as I intended it: Christians and gay people are fighting again. We should probably stop being mean to each other but Christians should probably stop it more.

A friend of mine reached out to me a few hours after it went up. I need to mention for context that she is a lesbian, I just didn’t want to say “a lesbian friend of mine” because that sounds like her sexuality is the reason we are friends – it is not, we are friends because she is great. She said the post was offensive and a bit gross, and told me why in exacting detail, which is something she did not have to do, because minorities do not exist to educate you about why you are a dickhead, they exist to live their own lives and you are just in their way. She asked me to pull it down and I did.*

I tell this story for three reasons:

1. I like to begin all my blogs with a rambling personal anecdote because I AM OBSESSED WITH MY OWN LIFE
2. Even if you think you are doing a nice thing, or at least making a point in a respectful and nice way, it is possible you are not
3. I am still here. I tried to do what I thought was a good thing, I learned that it was at best problematic, I felt sad for a moment, and then I felt angry that I could not say what I wanted, and then I felt angry that I was dumb and inconsiderate and I had upset people, and then I felt angry that society is not better and is fucked, and then time went by and I forgot about it and felt sad and angry about lots of unrelated things.**

The other reason I tell this story is because I’m about to roast some people for doing exactly what I did, and I sort of have mixed feelings about it but sort of don’t.

The subject of my roast is obviously, adorable children from Sydney Boys. They are not really children, they are young adults, it’s just that school uniforms make everyone look 12.

Today, these young adults – young adult prefects, I should clarify, as they did – made a video. In it, they face the camera, and repeat statements about why we need feminism. They do not, as I initially thought, make statements about why they as men need feminism – and feminism does have a lot to offer men and boys, apart from the chance to be outraged. They simply repeated statements made by their female friends and relatives about why they need feminism.

And people liked it you guys, they really liked it.

It’s been in my Facebook feed all day, and shared by everyone from major media outlets to loads of regular and kickass women.

Well, I freaking hate it.

Boooo adorable children and future hot guys raising awareness about feminism.

Boooo.

Ok. Don’t get me wrong. Obviously, I do not hate the message. I don’t even hate the messenger. These boys tried hard to do a good thing and I reckon they learned stuff. They potentially weren’t aware they would become an internet sensation, and even if they were, the net effect of what they have done is still good. People are listening to them in a way they won’t to me or any other woman.

I just hate it.

I hate that these women’s stories, some of which are frankly pretty traumatic, still garner more respect, are still praised more for their bravery, are still shared more widely, are still more palatable to society, and are still heralded as more feminist in this form than when ACTUAL WOMEN TELL THEM.

You want videos in which women talk about why they need feminism, or articles in which women talk about why they need feminism, or freaking tweets in which women talk about why they need feminism? You want women telling their own stories of rape or being overlooked in the workplace or literally most other things that have ever happened to us? Those are all out there! In fact, they are all everywhere! They are so ubiquitous I couldn’t possibly link to them all. I, as someone who loves to trawl the feminist web, am frankly kind of sick of reading them sometimes.

The difference is that the privileged men that the boys in this video will grow into do not read them. They need to hear them out of the mouth of someone like themselves. A man.

They need this video of adorable children “sticking up for their mothers and sisters and future wives and daughters,” or whatever whatever.

And that. That. THIS is why we still need International Women’s Day. We need it because women are still beaten with the crazy stick when we tell stories men are praised for telling. We need it because male feminists still expect a cookie and some nice attention for trying to help. We need it because the same media outlets who days ago were crying foul over the ABC’s decision to take male voices off the air for one single day have suddenly come around to the feminist message because a white man said a thing.

Perhaps, like me, it’s time men spend some time listening.

*Reasons I pulled it down include: I dislike making my friends sad, nobody paid me to put it up so who cares if it is now not there, knowing my luck somebody would pick it up and roast it on Twitter which is not something I need in my life, I do not want to be a jerk who contributes to LGBT suicide rates, and etc.

**I don’t think I’m fundamentally a jerk for writing that post. I don’t think I’m fundamentally a good person for fixing my mistake. I think I’m a huge mess like everyone else in the whole world who learned literally one single lesson.

Good Work Other Women You Do That Thing I Don’t Care About

 

I care about sport about as much as I care about being able to apply perfect winged liner, which is not at all, ever.

But I couldn’t help but feel a little swell of pride last week as I watched a promo for the first WAFL match.

It was with no small amount of wonder that I watched these women, limbs on display in their practical shorts and singlets, huddle up before going out on the field. Their long hair was secured in bands and braids, kept out of their faces. There was no cleavage on display, only muscles. Their bodies weren’t sculpted for bouncing, but to kick.

They were their own cheerleaders – and even though I don’t really like watching sport, I was drawn so strongly to them, off to lead themselves to a tiny victory, in support of a much larger cause.

It’s scary, to be honest, just how rare it is to see a group of women dressed up to honest-to-goodness go and a do a thing. Not to sell a thing or to attend a thing or to be a thing, but to go out and just kick some general ass and take some freaking names.

In a month where Donald Trump signed a bill banning abortion rights while surrounded by a gaggle of smiling, old white men, these women were a bright ray of sun.

They reminded me of someone.

They reminded me of many someones.

They reminded me of my best friend from school who used to be the only girl to enter coding competitions, who had the last few subjects of her degree awarded honorarily because she was that good – and because she had to leave the country to start her job at Google.

They reminded me of my youngest sister, who is also studying computer engineering and politely corrects me every time I accidentally state that she is “going in to IT.” Apparently this is the equivalent of calling a journalist a copy writer.

They reminded me of my middlest sister and all the awesome women teachers and scholars I know, who inspire and inform, who don’t get nearly enough credit for the fascinating things they know and can tell us.

They reminded me of the women at work who are rising up a male dominated ladder to become kickass, full-on, hardline, hard news journalists, who get scoops and front pages and knows all the names of the people in the NSW state parliament – instead of Googling them as needed, like I do.

They reminded me of the women I interned for when I still thought I might be a lawyer, who were tireless, fearsome legal advocates for teenagers who lived on the streets and drug addicts just out of jail and women in abusive marriages and confused international students done for drink driving.

They reminded me of the women I know who truly understand and passionately love the business of business, who are rising through the ranks in HR or PR or MR while studying hard at night for a master’s degree, so they can one day nurture other women, can help us all pull each other up the jungle gym that dominates the corporate enclosure.

They reminded me of all the women doctors I know, who are just now, ten years after high school, finishing up their training – or still studying. Of the many other women in healthcare who don’t get nearly the same credit, but are just as crucial. To have the drive to do something that takes so much of you, and sometimes seems to give so little, is incredible and inspiring.

They reminded me of several women on my Facebook, who all seem to be getting Phds in  incredibly complicated science things that I do not, for the life of me, understand.

In spite of what every film ever released would have you believe, I am not jealous of any of these women.Their jobs and lives and choices are inspiring as hell, but they’re not right for me.

But I am so, so glad – I am glad beyond glad – that they want them and that they have them, and that they show us there’s another way. A way where we are more than bodies, more than things, more than numbers.

I am so glad that in every field there is someone to lead the way.

I am glad, selfishly, because if I ever decide to have a child, it will probably be a daughter.

We are a family of daughter-havers. My mum is one of four sisters and between them they had seven girls, no sons.

I’m sure in this hypothetical future people will come up to my fake daughter at a party and pat her soft little head and – because they don’t know what else to say – will remark that she looks so pretty today, or that they like her shoes.

I suppose I will have to let her hear it, to hope it skims off her. But if I see it sneaking and wiggling its way into her brain I will take her hand and pull her aside and crouch down beside her as she looks confused about why I am so weird. I’ll take her little hand in mine and tell her not to listen. I will say:

Don’t be a thing. You are not a thing.

Do a thing.

Do your thing.

Whatever the hell that is.

Please Get Over Yourself, Fellow White Lady

Hi! It’s me, your friendly neighbourhood privileged white lady! I have called myself in to the latest round of the privilege wars, because even though multiple excellent women of colour have written succinctly and well about why white ladies need to get over ourselves, apparently some of you out there just won’t listen! Like this bitch* fellow human being!**

Now sweetie, I read your article, and I want to you to know that I get it. I really do! I too went to a nice school and grew up in a nice middle class suburb with a pool and had nice parents who made nice money but still had room in their week to have lots of nice family time with me. Who could buy me everything the school said I needed and had time to read my home reader with me and make sure I did my homework. Who answered my many questions about educational materials and life in general and were so proud of me when I got into a nice selective school. Thank you for including us in your rant by the way – white people who go to selective schools are often assumed to have been somehow tainted out of whiteness by being around all those cheating immigrant children who got tutoring. But don’t worry, we still got preferential treatment and were frequently made prefects and held up as weird sex symbols!

But hey – let’s be real.  I don’t think I got in to a selective school just because my parents did all those things for me. I mean, that was a big part of it, but I also think I got in because I’m smarter than morons like you.

And you know what I did after school?  I got a degree, just like you! Actually, I got two. Isn’t getting a degree hard? All that turning up to class when you could be getting a tan and finding a billionaire to marry? And then getting a freaking job? When we could be sitting around living off mummy and daddy’s ‘Tory’ money? Seriously, we are basically freaking saints for even trying.

And you need a little pat on the back, do you? A nice little congrats for studying so hard to get your creative writing degree while mummy and daddy let you live at home and pay nominal or no rent? A scratch and sniff ‘well done’ sticker for getting up an hour early to hit the gym and put on your makeup so you can get some bloke’s attention? Oh, life is just so very hard for us well-off white girls isn’t it, with parents to help us pay for uni and lend us money if we need it and generally act as a safety net. Oh wait, you didn’t know? You didn’t know not everyone could run home to mummy and daddy if they were suddenly out of work or found themselves in a pinch? Yes, I know it’s very strange isn’t it. Some children of immigrants actually have to send money home to their struggling families to help out. Some white women from working class backgrounds have to hold down a second job as well as their full-time gig so they can pay rent and their car loan simultaneously. Some of people of colour find it difficult to land a job at all, because white people have all of them, and we are kind of dickheads about sharing.

You know what though, as you so eloquently pointed out, white women do not have all the privilege – we are not yet white men. Sometimes our voices aren’t heard. Sometimes people don’t listen to our opinions. I mean, in your case, sometimes the reason they aren’t listening is because you tried to whitesplain someone’s religion to them – which is potentially one of the only times when I think a women’s voice need not be heard, to be honest.

But even if your opinions magically became well-formed and not inherently ignorant and potentially racist, you know what’s not going to get them heard or win you respect (at least in the long term)? Making yourself into a sex symbol, as you suggest.

Sweetie, prepare yourself, because I’m going to use some big words. They are patriachal bargain and they mean you’ve decided to operate within our current, broken system, wherein you trade looking like a model and writing opinion pieces in defence of the status quo in exchange for a nugget of potential love from daddy.

What you’re doing is like putting money into a vending machine thinking that eventually, if you give it enough, it will grow legs and follow you home and listen to all of your opinions. In reality, it will give out shitty poorly refrigerated sugar goop that will make you feel good for a moment and then leave you worse off than you started, with all your credit gone.

We fe****sts (sorry, I know that word offends you, but it means, as you so eloquently put it, that we believe in gender equality) believe in the rights of you and Kim Kardashian to work as hard on your bods as you like, and to display them any way you please. I’m sure you are indeed more beautiful than me, a girl who – you rightly guessed – only sometimes wears makeup, and applies it poorly. But don’t pretend you’re doing yourself any real favours – and please, don’t even try to pretend that what you’re doing doesn’t impact the rest of us.

Do you really want women as a gender to continue to be judged primarily on our looks? On our ability to ensnare a man? Because you do know that’s how we got here in the first place – this place where our opinions aren’t valued. We spent centuries as living statues and human sex toys – the only thing that’s changed is that now we can actually fill ourselves with plastic.

But you know what? I’ve said all those things, and at the end of the day, I know the deal.

I won’t change your mind. And I won’t change the minds of women like you.

But you know what me and all the women of colour, and the trans women and the lesbians and the working class ladies and yes, even the single mums, are going to do for you, ignorant lady?

We’re going to help you.

We’re all going to help you.

Whether you fucking like it or not.

Yeah. I know.

It seems like an incredibly stupid thing to do, and frankly it is, because I don’t want to help you, or the many women like you I know in real life or know online or who voted for Donald Trump***.

But I do want to help as many women as I can up to my level, the privilege level of privileged white girl, so that together we can push some other ladies up to levels we haven’t quite hit yet.

Maybe that will be you lady. In fact, knowing all of our luck, it probably will be. When you’re  and old white man and you’ve got an army of angry disenfranchised people banging down your door, your first point of call is probably your friend the hot sexy lady who defends you all the time.

My point is, you are not going to lose any of your power by the bunch of us going up a peg. You’re going to benefit even if you do it kicking and screaming.

And eventually, we will all beat down your door. We will rise to your lofty new heights. I hope someday people of every race, colour, creed and sexuality will be privileged enough to enjoy the heights of your personal arrogance.

And you know what? I hope against hope that you will join us, angry privileged white ladies. I hope against hope that I can be for you what male celebrities who tweet about domestic violence and date rape are for the rest of the world – a voice you’ll finally hear, because you can only hear voices who look just like you.

But regardless of whether you’re onboard or not, we’re all headed onward and upward.

See you in the past baby doll!

*Like I would ever call this woman a bitch! It’s a wonderful word reserved for smart awesome lady friends, and also for dogs, who are the greatest and don’t deserve to be lumped in with frivolous white ladies.

**I thought for a while and this was the nicest thing I could think of to call her.

***Please imagine this beeped out, in the style of Broad City. I recognise this reference may be ironic given that it’s mostly, from the bits of it I’ve seen, about white ladies.

Normally I save my posts for Thursday nights, but this one was too bubbly and angry to live inside me until then. You should see another one pop up Thursday evening (unless you don’t.)

This V-Day, Give the Gift of Demanding Gifts

Around this time every year some dumb meme that goes around that’s all “sure, your girlfriend says she doesn’t want anything for Valentine’s Day, but if you don’t get her something SHE WILL CUT OFF YOUR BALLS WHILE YOU SLEEP.”

My husband thinks this meme is hilarious, despite the fact that every year I literally thank him for not getting me anything for Valentine’s Day, because I hate it and it sucks.

So I CUT OFF HIS BALLS IN HIS SLEEP.

Just kidding – I like to keep that one up my sleeve to curb future bad behaviour. Also, it’s true that over my time as a human being, I have met an inordinate amount of women (including my past self) who seem to think they can just expect their partners to read their minds regarding how they expect to celebrate special occasions. These partners, they feel, should automatically know what they are thinking and feeling, even when what they are thinking and feeling is the precise opposite of what is coming out of their mouths.

They don’t think they should have to spell out what they expect from the special someone in their lives, because a) they have watched too many romantic comedies, and thus feel that all men should be able to read their minds in the way a 45-year old female writer can; and b) they feel that sharing their expectations honestly will make them appear ‘crazy’.

Instead, they end up drunk texting their friends sentences like: “I shouldn’t have to tell him that my birthday celebration needed to involve skywriting, he should just know,” which is not exactly the definition of non-insanity, at least as I understand it.

Now fellow women-folk, before you begin listing the myriad and offensive things men do to us, let me just say that I know. I get it. The men who date us are 98% minor scumbags and 2% token bi guys with amazing hair who end up married to hot gay dudes who wear a lot of fake tan. It may not be backed up by Census data, but you and I both know it to be true.*

But, let’s be real, we are none of us A+ sanity central all the time. Certainly, I am not. If my husband gets a Snapchat after midnight from a woman, I become immediately and completely convinced it is of some girl’s tits; even if the message has also been sent to me, and even though all the times I have given in to my lesser judgement and opened one of his Snapchats, it has been a lame joke about shared alcoholism. As a recovering cool girl, I fight the good fight daily to steer myself away from that tired lady-trope of “it’s fine” before I end up on that bumpy road of un-fine thinly veiled frustration that usually ends in at least minimal random crying and maximum man-regret and confusion.

The fact is that we have all been socialised to think we can’t ask for stuff, and that men should be perfect knights in shining armour who can instead predict what we want every second of every day. Somehow, we figured out that men are at best occasionally dumb dumbs and at worst the straight up worst; but we haven’t made the leap to, “oh, well guess I’d better spell shit out for you then.”

And guess who ends up crying and sending insane texts? Umm, that would be us, ladies. Your man is sleeping soundly, dreaming of Snapchat boobs.**

Frankly, this inclination we all have is ridiculous, because men are basically never afraid to ask for anything they need ever. If your man was only attracted to girls wearing inflatable T-Rex outfits, he would have brought one along for you to wear on your first date.

So, this year I propose a movement. There is no march, and you don’t have to think up a pun about Donald Trump. You just gave to tell your partner, straight up, exactly and everything you want for Valentine’s Day.

Yes. Everything. Even the things that they “should just know.”

If you, like me, genuinely do feel no real joy about V-Day and the only thing you want is to inwardly mock others for their slave-like devotion to capitalism, then by all means say nothing and receive nothing. But don’t think that makes you any better than anyone else, because it doesn’t. You have your own crazy, babe. We all of us do.

Better to be the girl who approaches her partner a few days beforehand, takes his or her hand, looks into his or her eyes and says  “babe, if you don’t get me a card and a single red rose and then take a cute picture of us and post it on your Insta while pretending like you did it of your own accord, I will leave you for that guy who’s always posting inappropriate comments on my half-naked selfies.”

After that, please feel free to fist pump the air like that greasy-haired rapey kid in the Breakfast Club.

Then, you wait.

And if your partner doesn’t follow through, feel free to CUT OFF HIS BALLS IN HIS SLEEP.

*If you are someone who dates women then the general premise still applies, although you may have to do some pronoun shifting. I assume that y’all are pretty much experts at digesting media by ignorant straight people by this point, so I doubt you’ll have much trouble.

**And then maybe getting yelled at by you briefly. But then back to sleeping.

Fast Food Journalism Sucks and You Can Help Get Rid of it

Image from Instagram’s sewmanycomments.

Yesterday I had a meeting with my boss.

My boss, if you were wondering, is a nationwide editor at one of Australia’s biggest media companies. We were there to talk about my performance.

Or rather, she was there to talk about my performance. I was hoping to have a nice big whinge.

Last year, a few months after I moved from a job I liked to take a new one at this, one of the country’s biggest papers, I was told we had a new deal. A deal with a big, exciting, existing website. We would all be expected to provide content for that website. To be exact, 15 pieces of content a week.

Each.

Yesterday, my boss told me my 15 extra pieces of content were not up to par. Not the quality she was expecting from an experienced writer.

“Not good enough.”

…

Not good enough.

It’s a comment journalists across the world have heard this year. Not from their bosses (though I’d wager I’m not the only one in that boat) but from seemingly every person with an internet connection.

Why are we still writing about Kim Kardashian? Where did our investigative content go? Why were so soft on Donald Trump? Also, did we know we handed Donald Trump the presidency? And also, while we were doing all that reporting about America, where was the focus on Australian politics?

Our reporting was too right wing, and also too left wing. It did not support Australian values, or it supported the wrong ones. There were too many thinkpieces, and also not the thinkpieces that I, personally, wanted to read. We damn media outlets keep expecting people to get their news from social media, but also, why was there no link on Twitter to that story about my kid’s school.

All of this talk was going on on social media, and on the blogs of a million and one “business influencers” or topless women who write poetry, and all of whom probably make more money than I do.

And I want to say one thing to all of these people, and to my boss, and to the internet at large.

We’re trying.

All of us. Really. Even those of us who have given up are trying.

Journalism is not a career you choose because you do not want to try.

First of all, we are trying to meet our deadlines, always the deadlines with us. And we are trying to meet them with less support than we have ever had before.

Sure, in the old days, a reporter might conceivably file three stories a day. In the old days, a journalist would be assigned those stories by his or her editor, then speak to the relevant people, then write the story in a little flippy notebook* and then call someone in the office.

A person in the office would type the story for them, another person might handle any relevant production** , someone else would sub the story, someone else or that same person would place it on a page and do the coverlines***, a photographer would handle the photos and any relevant artwork, and the editor would double check it and have a generalised grouse about the many things he considered wrong with it, and with life in general.

The ad reps would operate completely independently, then count their money and use it to throw elaborate Wolf Of Wall Street-style pool parties (which I assume they still do.)

The reporter would go and have a drink with one of his contacts while wearing a fedora (the timescape on this example has jumped around a lot but whatever I am too busy enjoying fake memories of these much happier times.)

Now, I do most of that.

Ok, not the pool parties. Or the fedora.

But yes. Literally ALL of those things “someone else” used to do are done by me. And I had to find that story in the first place, and pitch it my editor, and maybe he was at a meeting and didn’t get back to my email, and then did get back to it and wanted the story to already be finished, obviously, because he has a deadline.

We’re all about those deadlines.

No, I don’t do all of that stuff on every story I write, but enough so that I can say, with every slice of my journalistic integrity intact, that all of those things are part of my job description during a regular week.

In addition, I fight with the ad reps, who make more money than me but never, ever enough so that they will leave me the hell alone. I also fight with IT, because no journalist ever has been able to adequately explain to a programmer how to make a computer program that does anything close to helping us do our jobs. Seriously, nerds, one of you Silicon Valley types could make some very delicious money if you’re not busy designing the Uber of donuts, or whatever.

On top of that, I do all the boring things that every person who works in an office does, like beating up the photocopier and sitting in meetings and going to a co-worker’s birthday lunch and trying, trying, trying to get out of there somewhere at least in the vague realm of 5pm so I can have some semblance of a life away from my prehistoric Windows-based computer.

So, on top of all this crap, and writing a bunch of other stuff that this website does not want, I’m expected to write them 15 stories a week.

Like duh, they are terrible.

Obviously. I am not a superhuman – and additionally, I am not able to snap my fingers and make “the news” happen. If I could, I would be writing a story called “Local Whinger Wins Lotto” right about now. Sometimes, “the news” that this certain website is looking for happens and sometimes it does not. It normally does not happen 15 times a week.

But look, complaining aside, this is all very serious.

Oh, not for me, my boss has probably forgotten all about me by now. She was very understanding and probably now has 25 other reporters to go and meet up with.

This is all very serious because the media is a thing that needs to be taken seriously.

Not because those of us in the media are all obsessed with ourselves – although obviously we are, please see this whole article as evidence – but because our entire government is based on the media being a thing that is taken seriously.

Yet somehow, it is also still a business. It needs to make money.

The government can’t fund it, because that might affect what we report on.

So, we’ve relied on people to fund it.

You see, Gen Z, people used to buy this pile of dead trees called a…oh, you’ve seen them in the old movies you ironically watch? Excellent, excellent. Because people used to buy the paper and it used to pay journalists to write the paper. But people don’t do that anymore. Now people expect to read their news for free on the internet.

And then companies used to pay the paper to advertise in the paper, but now companies all advertise on podcasts and coffee cups and the Instagram accounts of various hot young “influencers” who will probably be my boss someday and run a seminar for me on how to attract an audience to my content.***

So, if people don’t pay us and advertisers don’t pay us, what does?

The usual. Dodgy corporate hyjinks.

Deals and schmoozing and boozing and also gambling, lots of gambling, all the news companies loooove investing in that glorious gambling.

All of which is amazing fodder for higher ups to go “we can’t afford more journalists. We gave all our money to the Department of Gambling. You need to get more out of your people. Also, they need to take a 15% pay cut, even though their current wage is $45,000 a year and thus unliveable anywhere in a major city.”

And then, we have to write 15 stories a week.

And all of them are crap.

You know what you don’t have time to write when you have to write 15 stories a week? A real slamming, stat-filled takedown of Donald Trump.

Or housing affordability.

Or the wage gap.

Or literally anything worth anything.

So instead, you write a story about a b-list celebrity who fell over at a club and flashed her vag and you post it, hoping nobody will notice and…

Oh, wait a sec.

Stop press, if  you will.

Everyone fucking loves it.

Because it turns out, nobody wants to read that other bullshit anyway.

They want to complain that it’s not there. But let me tell you, the stats are in, and they do not want to click on it.

So your boss tells you to write more articles about vag.

And more people like them, so you write a few more.

And repeat. Until death.

Quantity up, quality down. That same old equation despised by businessmen everywhere.

So, let’s all take a moment to wallow in the depression that is capitalism, shall we? Then we’ll talk solutions.

….

Another moment, I know I need it.

….

Ahhhhh.

Ok….ok. We’re good now I think.

And yes, as promised, I have answers for you.

OBVIOUSLY, because after old white dudes have mucked it all up, it’s always us ugly brown-haired chicks who have to come in and bloody fix it. Standard freaking life.

Jokes, normally it would be a racial and sexual minority it’s just that my profession hasn’t learned how to cope with either of those things yet.

But can we fix it? Yes we can.

1/ Go and pay someone your legit money for journalism

No, amateur porn does not count as journalism – it doesn’t matter if it’s politically themed****. Your mate’s sad Patreon for their restaurant blog is also a no-go. Choose a major paper in your state or city and subscribe to it. Go on. I believe in you. It’s no more than you’d normally waste on porn, or beers as you slag off your mate’s terrible restaurant blog*****. Most papers have discounted their web subscription-style programs so heavily, and will throw in so many free extras, you might even make money.

2/ Read or listen to some real reporting about a real thing

Don’t worry, you don’t have to give up vag slips completely – I already made you give up porn and you need something good in your life. But while you’re on the internet, go to the home page of that paper you just subscribed too and read an article that makes you do a little inner yawn. You know what I mean – that stuff you pretend you read but probably really don’t – like politics, finance or world news******. Actually, you don’t even have to read it – just open it and leave it there a while as you stalk your ex on Facebook or pay that huge electricity bill you’re blaming on your housemate.

That way, the paper will let a journalist keep writing about that stuff, instead of re-assigning them to full time coverage of Kylie Jenner’s Snapchat.

3/ Cut journalists some friggin’ slack

Let me tell you a secret about journalists.

We earn like, no money.

Like ridiculously little money. $45,000 a year was my pay at my first job, and it really has not risen very far since then, which is terrifying.

We cannot afford anything else, and thus, the only thing we have is our integrity – which we now compromise every day for the chance to, maybe one day a week, write a story we think really matters.

I’m saying this to prove that we must be trying. We must think this is important. There is literally no other reason to do it.

So yeah, look, if you have to say shitty things, I get it. People who are trying hard can still be bad at their jobs – and the media does have to do better, we know.

But if a journalist does great reporting, celebrate it, like and share it, show the big wigs at the top that this is the kind of content you want to see.

And please, for the love of God, stop calling every hack with a blog a journalist. Because only certain hacks with a blog are journalists and dammit, I am proud to be one of them.

*THESE ARE REAL and we still use them! Isn’t that funny? Before I got told to buy one when I was at uni I always assumed it was a movie trope, like women wearing makeup to go to bed.

**Production are magical people whose basic job description is “get the thing made.” They liase with the right people or do back end stuff to post things online or lay out the pages of a paper and generally do things the people whose names are on stuff do not want to do and we love them. Mostly. Except when they get mad. Which is most of the time, we are not organised people.

***I’m hoping there will also be a section on looking hot while staring wistfully out a window, which I am yet to really nail.

****Do they have politically themed porn? Does anyone even pay for porn anyway? I tried to be funny and relevant but I am way out of my depth here you guys. Halp.

***** Which I would probably also like to mock- can you invite me sometime?

******While we’re on world news – if you want the papers to cover it, you need to actually READ THE DAMN STUFF not just re-post that viral Instagram post that goes around every time there’s a terror attack in a Western nation, and some poor speller tries to put the media on blast for not covering a similar attack in the third world.

Yes, it is undoubtedly appalling that people are racist and terrible, but the media is only  a mirror of what you want to read – and you, let’s face it, are probably racist and terrible, like the rest of us. As I was taught at university:  1 Australian death = 10 English or American deaths = 100 European deaths = 1,000 deaths anywhere else. I nearly cried the day I heard that, because humans literally suck so hard, but it’s true that stories about world news are shoved at the back of the paper for a reason – people don’t read them.

My Boobs are No Longer in Fashion and I Could Not Be More Excited

 

A few weeks back I was watching the first episode of Luke Cage, in which Luke Cage totally bangs some super hot lady.

The super hot lady, obviously, take off all her clothes right away, while Luke Cage remains almost entirely dressed, because that is how sex happens when you are on TV*.

The second this unfortunate woman slipped off her bodycon dress, I let out of a little squeal of surprise and pain. Not because she was having sex with Luke Cage, he is a bit of a babe.

“What?” said Nick.

“Her boobs!” I said. “Look at them! Her poor boobs!”

The unfortunate mammaries were crammed into a push up bra so improbable I was surprised this woman was even able to remain upright. She must have been praying for the moment she got to be topless in front of tens of thousands of people just so she could get them out of that thing.

The assumption among society for seemingly forever has been that you either have big boobs or you’re willing to shell out for an expensive torture device to get them.

Enter Vogue, itself a torture device, which had a decisive word for everyone’s boobs last week.

They are out.

Dunzo. No more boobs. Nobody likes them anymore (except Luke Cage). Put down the expensive magic bras and invest instead in a buttoned up shirt with a pussy bow.

Now, this is unfortunate for me, because my boobs are usually classified as “pretty big” or “pretty enormous,” depending on whether the speaker buys sports bras from Target or those heavy duty triple clip ones you can’t get at Cotton On Body.

And it freaking sucks.

I literally always appear three sizes bigger than I really am. Normal office attire makes me look like I’m in a porno about sexy librarians. Clothing often fits everywhere else except over my chest, meaning a huge chunk of my wardrobe is made up of dresses and shirts that share more structural design with a camping tent than anything you’d find in a fashion mag. Despite this level of effort and self-sacrifice, old ladies at church often glare at my chest, as though I grew my boobs specifically to track them down and seduce their husbands.**

You know that creak an old stair makes when someone in a horror movie steps on it? The noise that signals to everyone that shit is about to go down?

That’s the noise my bra makes when I walk. Or shift in my seat, or you know, move. At all.

I have been literally given the fashion advice “Kim Kardashian is curvy, look at what she wears.”

That is horrifying. No human being should have to go through that.

My back hurts, my neck hurts, my wallet hurts from spending $120 a pop on a bra. And while looking for that bra my brain hurts because apparently a significant amount of women STILL want to buy a push-up bra even though they are an E-cup. WHO ARE THESE MONSTERS AND WHY DO THEY HATE THEMSELVES?

And every six months or so I have to sit through some hot skinny bitches with pouts on their perfect faces telling me “I just don’t understand, I’d love to have such great boobs.”

I’ve even had to sit through conversations in which acquaintances and co-workers told me they were about to shell out tens of thousands of their hard earned dollars so some fake doctor could cut their chest open, whack in some plastic, stitch it all up again and then pray to the God of malpractice lawsuits that nothing leaked or became infected.

WHY WHY WHY.

Big boobs are not great. My boobs are not great. You know the definition of a body part that is great? A body part that is great is functional and does not cause pain to its owner and does not require hundreds of dollars in upkeep each year.

You know whose boobs are great, skinny bitches? Your boobs are great.

I know, because during that one summer when all I ate was plain toast and nectarines, I too had normal-sized boobs. *Cue misty eyes*.

But you know which part of my body hurt then? NO PARTS. And do you know where I bought my bras? TARGET. GLORIOUS TARGET. And they were actually pretty and had cute shit like polka dots on them instead of being all weird and creaky and tan and misshapen.

Yes, some boys may like big boobs, but LITERALLY WHO CARES what some boys like. Some boys like Jeremy Clarkson. Some boys’ favourite book is The Da Vinci Code. Some boys think pineapple belongs on pizza. Some boys voted for Donald Trump.

Some boys are not a good judge of things. There is no accounting for the taste of some boys.

So please, bring on this new era of small-titted greatness. I welcome our new overlords of the A-cup. This is – and I feel like I should put a trigger warning on this phrase given the amount of times it has been co-opted by old men with right wing political views – perhaps fashion’s first great victory for common sense.****

Besides, as some drunk guy once told me at a party once, more than a handful is a waste.

*Seriously, if Game of Thrones was the only sex education you had ever had, you would 100% think sex happened like:

1/ Woman takes off literally all her clothing and stands full frontal, facing the dude, which he stares at her like she’s a piece of clothing he wants and he’s deciding whether or not it’s too expensive

2/ The guy gives a long, impassioned monologue about his feelings, which are usually about something completely unrelated and gross, like his dead mother or the girl he’d rather be banging or his unquenchable thirst for the blood of the Lannisters

3/ The guy runs at her like he’s going for a tackle in a game of rugby

** I’m not, I just wanted to get an Oreo from the snack table.

***Since the bushy eyebrows comeback of 2014, of course. Long may our lord Cara Delavigne reign.

A Ball of Shame in the Pit of My Stomach

The second year me and my husband were married, we went round to his family’s house after Christmas lunch with my folks.

We went out to the back porch, and I stood shocked, awkward, as one of his brother’s mates sat on a plastic chair, cleaning a gun.

I live in Australia, so the times I have seen a gun at all are few and far between – which is wonderful, and one of the reasons I like living here. But because of this I was a bit afraid.

But it doesn’t excuse what I did next. I stood there while this man – who I won’t name, though he deserves it – rattled off hateful slander of all sorts. Everyone was a target – Asians, muslims, aboriginal people – though he had more colourful names for all of them. There were a few hateful remarks about gay people and some jokes about hitting women thrown in for good measure.

I stood there and I did nothing.

I didn’t stop him. I didn’t fight back. I didn’t say any of the 100 perfectly logical rebuttals I thought in my head.

I let him talk, because I didn’t want the people around me to hate me, and because he had a gun.

And because occasionally – only very, very occasionally – I agreed with him.

It does make me annoyed to think that a very, very* small percentage of immigrants choose to have more children so they can get more welfare. I am frustrated that housing is so expensive, in small part because of Asian investment. I do worry about terrorism in this country, which is not always connected with Islamic Australians, but has been in the past and might be in the future.

And I am so, so ashamed.

It burns and drops through my chest and belly. The admission of these things I think can barely leave me, but I’m starting to think it’s important that it does.

I complained about this man’s words to everyone I knew but I didn’t mention this very, very, very small, shameful part of me. I hid it from everyone. I hide it from myself. And sometimes that’s a terrible thing, because in the darkness of our own hearts things can turn twisted and strong and make us do awful, secret things.

They don’t always. But they can. And they have in America.

Americans have bottled up their prejudice, too ashamed to show its face to the people around them. They have told the media, polling agencies, their friends, the internet that they would never vote for this horrible man Donald Trump, this monster who puts down and belittles those who don’t have his systematically entrenched power – his maleness, his whiteness, his $14 million loan from daddy.

They lied.

They did vote for him. They voted for him in unprecedented numbers.

They did it quietly. They did it in secret. They thought nobody would know. But now we all know.

We know they’d take a leader who rapes women, who wants to build a wall to keep out immigrants, who opposes marriage equality, to maintain something they don’t feel they even have.

It can’t just be the loud men with guns who solely brought him. It must be some of the people who stood, saying nothing; people who didn’t fight back, because some deep part of them saw this as sense.

Some poor sad part of them thought of the tiny wrongs done against them, wanted the best of the land to themselves, didn’t want to share.

What they thought they did in secret they now can’t hide from the light.

And I’m sorry.

I’m sorry to all the people who weren’t born with my white skin or my middle class parents, my safe home in safe country.

But I’m sorry also because I know this will happen again.

It will happen again and again and again, until privileged people give up our shields and fences. The places we hide our shameful feeling that we might lose something, some power we won’t even admit we have, some quiet, unfelt rule of “better than”, our #notallmen and our #alllivesmatter. It will happen again and again until we try and collectively face up to the army of angry, disenfranchised people we have created and the big orange monster we have sent to try and fight them.

Until we face down a man with a gun and say “you are wrong. That is wrong. You do not speak for me. I will try to be better” we will never move.

We must face down those who aren’t like us, but we must also face down those who are. Perhaps a bad joke was a slip of the tongue – but surely a polite correction is better than polite silence.

We must say “I am sorry!” not because we are good, we are none of us good, but we need to be better.

Perhaps we will be pelted and pelted and pelted with anger –from both sides, from all sides. But it’s time we took it. We need to show those parts to the world.

And they need to be beaten out.

I would never, ever have voted for Trump. But people with these same parts did.

Take them away.

I’m sorry.

I’m so, so sorry.

It’s Your Party, Hump a Bin if You Want to

This amazing photo collage is by the Daily Mail, and from what I can tell, includes images from Getty Images and AAP. Please don’t sue me I’m poor and this is too great to not use.

I’m going to start out with a confession.

I have no love for drunk stories.

Your drunk stories are like doing heroin or trying to psycho-analyse your dreams. Perhaps enjoyable if you are you. Straight up illogical to everyone else.

I know this will come as a shock. I have sat through them. I have squealed in all the right places. But I hate them. They are dumb.*

But, while I would honestly rather talk about my tax return, I endure the drunk stories of my friends and coworkers with grace. Like me, they have a right as semi-functioning adults to blow off steam anyway they choose – whether it be at home re-watching old sitcoms with a wine (like me), out grinding at the cliz-ub (do people still call it that? Did they ever?) or enjoying that last bastion of moneyed boganism, the races.

The races is a place where Australians go to ruin their lives. Everyone gets dressed up, and then they have a drink and then they put money on a horse and then they have too many drinks and then they waste all their money on a horse and then they wake up on a lawn strewn with garbage covered in their own vomit.

Personally I freaking hate the races, as my idea of a good time doesn’t include control underwear, losing money or horse violence. But if you are on older bogan with skin like an old leather bag or a slightly overweight young person who likes the way you look in a bow tie/fascinator, and you wish to make the sacred pilgrimage to our nation’s second best city for the Melbourne Cup and act like a total clown, great.

But woe betide you if you expect to escape sexism while you’re there.

Old mate News Corp (where I ahem, totally work, these are solely my own opinions, etc etc) published a piece today entitled ‘Ladies, You are an Utter Disgrace‘ (thank you, thank you, but really, it was a team effort.) It warns us gals that we’re very welcome to attend the cup’s festivities, but God help us if we expect to join  in.

“Where is your sense of dignity?” 100-year old etiquette lecturer, I mean, columnist Anne Usher berates, “How could you consider it appropriate in any way, to behave as some of you did? Your classless antics don’t just reflect poorly on you. They impact every single Australian woman — and how we are perceived in the eyes of the world.”

Hold up. Firstly, pretty sure she stole most of this from the speech my year three teacher gave after someone put glue on an annoying blonde kid’s seat and none of us would own up. Which, fair enough, it was pretty moving.

Secondly, it seems by “the way we are seen in the eyes of the world” she means one American wrote a piece about how ‘those Aoss-ies done look stupid’. These are a people who are seriously considering Donald Trump to RUN THEIR DAMN COUNTRY. I don’t even need to make a joke about The Donald, because he is his own punchline. So I think I speak for all Australian women when I say we don’t give a cheap polyester hair piece what those morons think.

Thirdly and most importantly, why the hell do we need to have a sense of dignity in the first place? Women have rarely been given one before.

But Usher wants to change all that. She says that instead of swigging from bottles and flashing vag at random passers by, we should emulate Jennifer Hawkins (what is her job?) or Kate Waterhouse (what is her job?) and Julie Bishop (JBish has two jobs. One is being awesome at politics and the other is refusing to define herself as a feminist and thus crushing female dreams across the nation.)

These women are classy. Their hair is shiny and they did their makeup just like Instagram said. And then they stood around and smiled at everyone and made polite small talk and if an old creepy man “accidentally” ran his fingers along their butt, they just tittered and figured it was all in the spirit of the thing. They didn’t try to (gasp) make any jokes or (shock) eat any canapes or (what) grab any man butt. They are good girls dammit.

Boys will be boys. Ladies, please perfectly curl your hair and then get out of the way.

At least, that’s how Hutton would have it.

“Sure,” she says “there’s just as many images to be found of boozed up blokes skylarking — but aren’t we as women better than that?”

Answer: No. And why the hell should we be?

How many times does it need to be said? Women are people just like men.

We’re expected to work like men, earn like men, take criticism like men – and then go home and spend the weekend in our matching Peter Alexander nightie and robe sets doing embroidery?

If we come to the party, we are there as accessories, not people.

Smells like horse shit to me.

Personally, I long ago got tired of standing on the sidelines trying to look as hot as Jennifer Hawkins (spoiler alert, this will never happen). She looks bored as hell anyway. So when I do get off the couch and head out to whichever local watering hole my cool friends tell me is worth it, I will not be getting blind-vomit-drunk or hooking up with a rando, because frankly that is not what I want to do. But I will sing karaoke and get in screaming fights about politics and sometimes throw my shoes at people.

So, while I may not really want to be there while you throw up in a gift bag or pretend to give a blow job to a can of pringles, I will defend your right to do so as long as I can type.

Grab life by the bin handles and hump it.

Just don’t tell me about it afterwards.

 

*If any of you other boring people were wondering, faking interest in a drunk story is extremely easy. All you do is take what you want to say and stop approximately a third of the way though, like:

You keyed that bitches car? That’s so awesome(ly irresponsible do you know how much a custom paint fix costs)

You went home with him and the sex was bad?! Babe no way (could you expect anything else drunk men are terrible at sex they can barely even find the ground good luck to them with anything smaller)

You spent $300? You’re crazy (when it comes to managing your money please let me get you a high interest saving account)