Wohoo! There's hope for energy from hot rocks...

...and Australia has absolutely loads of them.

Although this article is a bit presumptuous in saying that they'll have their power plant operational by March when they haven't got their proof of concept plant working, it's still very exiting. If all goes well it'll be good for the planet and the riskier portion of my share portfolio.

Prostitution - some things to disagree with the radical feminists about.

I read with interest the article on the global sex industry in The Age today, mainly because of the title "The Vagina Dialogues" which I mistook for "The Vagina Monologues" and I was kind of hoping they'd come to Melbourne so that I could see them (finally). Anyway, not monologues, not even dialogues really, just a catchy headline - The Age has outdone itself today in that respect, but I might post about that later...

British feminist Sheila Jeffreys claims that us "neo-liberalists" view prostitution as simply a form of work (that'll be me), and that we should be more outraged at the buying and selling of women's bodies. I'm not sure that I'm happy with that as a blanket statement. Sure, when I hear about sex slavery I get as angry and unhappy as the next person. But I think it is a grave error to confuse sex slavery with prostitution. Also, to be blindly outraged at the buying and selling of women's bodies is dismissive of all the work done by sex workers campaigning to be recognised as a legitimate profession. Of course, in my ideal world, prostitutes are all doing the work by choice, they are well educated regarding their sexual health and how to maintain it and they work in nice places with lots of security guards and the means to summon them if they get a dud client. I know this is the reality for the minority of sex workers, but I also know that the other realities have other complications, drug addiction being a classic. If you're so drug fucked you can't hold down a job, you're desperate for more, and someone will pay you for the use of the one possession you can't lose... well....

I agree with Jeffreys that more of the money being made by the sex trade could go to the women themselves, but I feel that way about factory workers too. Big business is bad in itself, to label prostitution bad because of an association with big business is another error.

Perhaps I should reveal why I'm such a big fan of prostitution in my idealised form:

1 - Prostitution allows all kinds of people to have access to sex who otherwise couldn't or wouldn't get it.

It's obvious really, but some people need you to point out the obvious. I'm talking about people who are shunned by their partners, the disabled, the super busy or the just plain ugly. Who am I to say that these people should never have sexual intercourse simply because they cannot find a bedmate? If a person cannot walk, we find ways to help them get around, if they can't talk we find ways to get them communicating, we don't turn our backs on them reasoning that it's their tough luck and they'll just have to suffer without things the able bodied among us take for granted. Why should access to sex be any different? Are we so prudish that we cannot suffer the thought that the unfortunate might have sexual needs? In my opinion it is better that they safely pay to have those need fulfilled as the alternatives to not bear thinking about. Of course, this solution makes sex the privilege of the wealthier portion of the sexually frustrated population but that is a whole other can of worms I do not have time to address here!

2 - Prostitution keeps families intact.

Oh yes indeedy. Bear with me on this one. In this scenario, the frustrated marriage partner is not only paying a prostitute for sex, they are paying their sexual partner to go away afterward. I argue that prostitution, as long as it does not become an addiction, is a far more family friendly way of fulfilling frustrated sexual needs than cheating on your partner with someone else. This is because of the drain the cheatee can have on the family. There is the time drain where the cheater is off with the cheatee, there has to be courting and bonding before the actual sex and all of this takes time. Prostitutes take far less time by comparison. There is the emotional drain on the family where the cheater becomes emotionally distracted and distant, if one assumes there is no emotional attachment to the prostitute there is nothing to distract the cheater from the family. There is also the financial drain caused by maintaining a cheatee. Prostitutes cost money, for sure, but do they cost as much as the gifts and food, and places to sleep often entailed by an affair? Unless the cheater is a complete miser or having an affair with a rich single person the answer is probably not. And finally, lets not forget the emotional trauma often suffered by the cheatee at the hands of a cheater who refuses to leave the family. The pain of being the "secret other" is not to be underestimated. Going to a professional third party for sex may not solve the initial problem that lead the cheater to seek out extra sex in the first place, but at least it's less likely to cause any further problems.

I'm more than happy to hear from people who disagree with me. However, I will maintain that prostitution is actually a vital part of a healthy society. Particularly if that society is going to glorify unnatural modes of existence, I'm thinking here of the ideal that one partner can satisfy your every sexual need for your entire monogamous life. Sex is one of the few arenas where seeking out satisfaction outside the partnership is frowned upon in our culture. If you need other things such as books, company for exercise, conversations about antique cars or the occasional back massage it is considered ok to get them outside the relationship, but sex? Oh no, if you're not getting what you want in that area tough luck buddy, you chose your sex life when you chose your partner. This seems to me to be ridiculously exclusive and based on an ancient tradition whereby women were only allowed to have sex with their husbands so that the husbands could be sure of the paternity of their children.

Logically, if we can satisfy needs for anything other than sex outside of marriage, then we should all be signing up for life with the partner who was best in the sack. However, hardly anyone does. I didn't, and for a plethora of excellent reasons, one of which is that I'm just not that sexually driven. But if extra sex ever became a priority, you can guarantee I'll be seeking out that extra sex from a paid professional rather than going through the ugly emotional messiness of an affair. Radical feminists are wrong to tar all forms of prostitution with the same brush. Lets hope they see the light.

Bill Bailey for... something good...

I pinched this pic from Hoyden About Town. Awesome. I want one of those T-shirts.

Wow, someone has really done their homework on the Tell The Truth Coalition!

For those of you still interested in the Tell The Truth Coalition, this makes extremely interesting reading. Someone called Brian from unbelief.org has done some homework on the members including our favourite ol' Ron van Wegen.

When it comes to birth, men can be fragile creatures.

This piece in The New York Times spoke volumes to me. It's an ordinary bloke's account of his failure to cope with his daughter's early arrival on the bathroom floor.

I don't like a great deal of the sentiment, such as his expectation of how the birth would proceed:

I had been expecting the birth to occur in an orderly fashion at the hospital: the midwife and nurses in scrubs, regular reports on how many centimeters her cervix had dilated, an opportunity to hold Leslie’s hand and wipe her brow. I had wanted to be the useful partner — and the witness. When the baby arrived, I would accept her from the nurse before placing her on Leslie’s chest, basking in the tableau of mother with newborn child.

Could his vision be any more polluted by the patriarchal myth that women need to be flat on their backs surrounded by a team of experts in order to do what most of them have been doing either alone or in the company of family members ever since we became bipedal? Does he have any idea of the history behind his desire to be the first to hold the baby? (In ancient Rome the father would be given the baby in order to see if it met his approval, if it did not it was exposed or sold into slavery.) Does he have any idea how useless (and annoying) brow mopping is? (If I had a dollar for the number of times I've seen women giggle over their husband's earnest brow mopping on Mummy Bulletin Boards... If my husband had tried that he'd have been flung across the room and possibly banished.) My guess is that our author is oblivious to both the implications behind his desire to be passed the baby and his misguided utility. I can't really blame him. He's a product of western culture, particularly American culture. So, when his wife yelled that she was having the baby in the bathroom, he did what he'd been taught to do - panic and call an ambulance. The birth of his daughter without him brought home a stark reality: he wasn't needed at all, it was quite possible he'd made things worse.

I think that unless we are careful, instead of being a participant in something wonderful, men like this one can be made to feel like irrelevant spectators. For the raw truth is, they are not needed at the birth. Natural and water birth pioneer Michael Odent goes so far as to say that male partners should not be allowed at births, that they only get in the way. I half agree.

I definitely wanted my husband there for the birth of my second, but I didn't take it for granted that my partner would be there the way I did with my first. He was very deliberately included in a team of half a dozen people and prepared appropriately for the event. The poor man, who comes from a very patriarchal home, was lectured to, shown videos, read to from books, made to be my advocate when I needed one, and given very strict instructions as to the boundaries of his role. Just like most other Australian blokes, his experience of birth was limited to movie portrayals and anecdotes from older relatives so he needed an entire re-education: history, medicine, male power and the myth of control. The man stepped up to the plate like an absolute hero and ended up catching his daughter (I was on my hands and knees for that one). He'll never forget it and neither will I.

My husband was the antithesis of the helpless, panic stricken ambulance caller. He knew what he could do, what I only I could do and exactly how he could facilitate it without getting in the way. He was amazing.

However, had he displayed a reluctance to be swayed from the patriarchal medical model he'd have been excluded. It would have been horrible and heart-breaking but I would have done it. The birth was both something I had to do, yet was also something that was happening to me - it was a tug-of-war between me, my body and a baby clamouring to get out into the world. I would never risk having someone present who might disrupt the delicate relationship I needed to establish with my body to achieve a good outcome. Husbands who panic, or who encourage their wives to accept interventions to satisfy their need to feel like "something is being done", are not capable of acting in the best interest of their wives. They'd be better off in the waiting room nursing their cigars.

To summarise, any man who believes that birth should be orderly and furthermore, CONTROLLED should definitely be banned from attending births. Most of them love their wives and want to be supportve, but their panic in the face of their helplessness is not, well, helpful.

India: Abortion without the husband's knowledge is mental cruelty and grounds for divorce *sigh*

According to India's national newspaper The Hindu, having an abortion without your husband's knowledge is an act of mental cruelty toward the husband and grounds for divorce. The logic employed here is so alarming my neocortex was clamoring for a cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down.

How could he be affected by abortions of which he had no knowledge????

I'm trying to think of other acts that could be performed without the spouse's knowledge that could also be construed as mental cruelty. This in itself is tricky as I've always thought of mental cruelty as something that is DONE to another person. It is an act that requires two parties, a perpetrator and a victim.

Perhaps my confusion stems from their use of the word cruelty? Good philosophers always check for a terminalogical dispute, so, from my Apple Dictionary:

"cruelty |ˈkroōəltē|
noun ( pl. -ties)
callous indifference to or pleasure in causing pain and suffering : he has treated her with extreme cruelty.
• behavior that causes pain or suffering to a person or animal : we can't stand cruelty to animals | the cruelties of forced assimilation and genocide.
• Law behavior that causes physical or mental harm to another, esp. a spouse, whether intentionally or not.
ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French crualte, based on Latin crudelitas, from crudelis (see cruel)."

OK, if they are using the legal term (and I assume by the nature of the article that they are) then the act must only harm the spouse, and does not necessarily have to be directed at the spouse. For example, gambling away the couple's life savings and house might be considered an act of cruelty though the act is not directed at the spouse at all. My gambling example could also serve as an instance of the act occurring without the knowledge of the spouse - at least initially.

So in this case, the husband obviously wanted children and upon learning that his wife had terminated three pregnancies suffered mental anguish (or more likely anger at being gipped) and sued for divorce. Fair enough? Maybe, until we check out the flip side of this scenario.

The players are the same, we have a husband who wants children and a wife who does not. The wife becomes pregnant and due to a slight alteration in her situation cannot secretly terminate the pregnancy but must carry, bear and rear a child or children she does not want. Will she be able to sue for divorce due to mental cruelty? NO. Colour me surprised at the inequity.

Oh no! Don't be friends wiv da boyz!

This is primary school-yard logic from a journalist who I assume is at least old enough to vote.

Articles like this are only going to be taken seriously by the most vacant of women, and will barely blip on the radar of men who think of women as people rather than potential bedmates. Crushes can be dealt with and most of them pass, leaving rock solid friendships. The kind of emotional immaturity that results in a person only having close friendships with their own sex is unfortunate and curable. Articles like this do not help.

Expectations for GREAT Maternity Services Reform - National Day of Action - November 16th

Great Expectations- National Day of Action


The recent review of Maternity Services in Australia is an historical event. Not only is it numerically significant it heralds the presence of what is most important actual Government support for much needed maternity service reform.

The Rudd government has been forthcoming in their promise to review maternity services and to improve upon them. Health Minister Roxon has publicly challenged the current medically dominated system and highlighted the need and the opportunity for enhanced midwifery care.


The timing is such that a visible presence is now required to make a really powerful impression that reform is necessary, wanted and indeed expected from the Australian public.


We have chosen the 16th of November to be a National Day of Action to support and make known our Expectations for GREAT Maternity Services Reform.


Please consider gathering in your local community or in a central capital city location to cement the support that we the women, men and families of Australia give to reform of Maternity Care provision in Australia. A picnic, candlelit vigil, or walk for reform are some ideas for gatherings that could be utilised to draw media attention, educate, show support and celebrate the pending report and recommendations.



The winds of change are blowing and this presents an incredibly exciting and celebratory chapter for all who have worked at one time or another for reform.



For further information about events …


Please call Janie Nottingham 0359 748364 or Mobile 04206 20808

Email Janie.nottingham@gmail.com

Prostitution and Proposition K in San Fransisco

Legalising prostitution seems to be a no-brainer to me. Mainly because it increases the safety of the people who work in the industry. However, I'm painfully aware that I have not been exposed to all the arguments on the issue so I check stuff out when it crosses my path. I came across this on the University of California Feminist Legal Theory blog. It's interesting, as are the links out.