10 easy things YOU can do to support gay marriage in Australia
The following is part two of this post. If you would like to read about why it’s so vital we allow gay people to have the same right to marry as the rest of the country, I highly suggest reading this touching statement on the Australian Marriage Equality website. They also respond point by point to some of the anti-gay rhetoric.
Consider this issue a real opportunity to affect change – and how often do we get to do that? Many problems of the world are so big, so complicated, they leave us feeling powerless as individuals to do anything about it. But bringing about gay marriage in Australia is relatively simple; If you want it, let the government know, and tell others to let the government know.
And when enough do the laws will change.
The day where gay people in Australia are allowed to marry is all but inevitable. But let’s make it happen sooner, rather than later. And let’s, with joy, become a part of that process.
Level: Make It Quick
1. Support the Greens bill: The ball is already rolling. Last month the Greens entered a bill called the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2009, which looks like this. If passed, gay people will finally be allowed to marry (yay!). Click here for quick and easy ways you can support this bill.
2. Contact your MP: Make a phone call, send a letter or email, pledging your support of gay marriage. And in that order you have levels of effectiveness.
If you’re not sure of your electorate, just use this Australian Electoral Commission search. Type in your suburb, click “find”, and in the results click the electorate name that comes up to find the name of your MP. Once you have that you can use this page to find their contact details.
The Australian Marriage Equality website lists some great tips for what best to say when contacting your representative.
You can also contact the dudes at the top!
3. Join and/or donate to the AME: The Australian Marriage Equality (AME) is a national organisation working for equal marriage rights for all Australians regardless of their gender or sexuality. Join online, and membership is $40, or $20 for concession. Or donate money.
4. Join a facebook group: Where there’s a cause, there’s facebook! The first lists some great events you can participate in.
- Gay Marriage Rights in Australia (requires login)
- Lets start with just 1,000 people to support Gay Marriage in Australia
- Australian Marriage Equality
5. Wear a white knot: Wear it every day to show your support for marriage equality. Srsly, everyone’s wearing one. Find out more about white knots here, or click here to buy one, or here to find out how to make your own.
Level: Relatively Radical
6. Attend the National Day of Action For Same-Sex Marriage: A national day of protest is happening on August 1, with a wonderful mass illegal wedding ceremony at Darling Harbour. Plus a march from Town Hall to Darling Harbour to protest outside the national Labor conference. Head to the Community Action Against Homophobia website, or facebook page for more details about attendance, getting involved, and registering to marry on that day.
7. Meet with your MP: A phone call is one thing, but letting your rep know in person is the best. Again the Australian Marriage Equality website lists tips on how to go about doing this. And contact them once it’s over to let them know how it went.
Hilariously, my MP is Phillip Ruddock who in 2004 introduced a bill that specified marriage to mean the union between “a man and a woman” and is therefore a staunch advocate of keeping gays out of marriage.
Level: Super Hardcore
8. Get involved: The AME are looking for bright-eyed individuals to setup local branches, that can lobby local MPs and educate the community. Get in touch with them if you’re keen.
Many of these national and state/territory lobby groups are also looking for volunteers and members.
9. On top of these things, think about what else can be done, and start putting those ideas into action or pitching them to these lobby groups. One nutty idea I had was to use the online tool The Point, which is a pledge that those who sign make to give money or act only once the pledge has reached a certain number.
For example, as straight, unmarried people, who do have the right to marry, we can promise that once the petition reaches 5 million, we’ll carry out our threat of refusing to get married, until that right is extended to all people of this nation.
10. And most importantly, spread the word. Email this post around. Direct people to the AME’s case for gay marriage. Send invites to your friends from those Facebook groups you joined. Blog about it. Let’s keep this ball rolling!
In my next post I’m going to write about what it was like to do some of the things listed here.
Wake up, and demand the ban on gay marriage be lifted
Back in 1969, Time magazine wrote a piece about a quirky, little phenomenon, newly gaining the courage to point one toe out of the closet, called “homosexuality.” A largely sympathetic, more curious than condemning culture piece, it nonetheless believed that homosexuality was the result of a disturbed childhood and ended with this analysis:
While homosexuality is a serious and sometimes crippling maladjustment, research has made clear that it is no longer necessary or morally justifiable to treat all inverts as outcasts. The challenge to American society is simultaneously to devise civilized ways of discouraging the condition and to alleviate the anguish of those who cannot be helped, or do not wish to be.
Some historical understanding may need to be given. The American Psychiatric Association didn’t remove homosexuality from the manuals of mental disorders until 1973, with the American Psychological Association following suit in 1975.
10 years later, in 1979, and with much changed, another Time piece on homosexuality looked into the way gays had become organised. They no longer wanted to be afraid of coming out, or barely tolerated in their gay ghettos. Gay people wanted to be accepted by the mainstream, recognised by law, and therefore had turned into a political movement.
But as the piece points out, as the gay movement picked up steam it gained an ironic tribute, “the rise of an alarmed, organized and vehement opposition that includes fundamentalist churches.”
It’s a time that was captured in this year’s wonderful film, ‘Milk’. Harvey Milk was an intelligent, generous, gregarious former Wall Street suit, who went on to become “the first openly gay man elected to any substantial political office in the history of the planet,” as told by Time, now in 1999. The magazine was profiling Milk as one of their “heroes and icons” in their list of The Most Important People of the Century.
The film also depicts the work of conservative Christian singer Anita Bryant. In 1977, the passing of an ordinance that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in a Florida county, inspired Bryant to begin a highly publicised anti-gay campaign to repeal many of the hard won gay rights ordinances across the United States. However just as the anti-gay movement was born out of the gay movement, Anita’s campaign, and the murder of Harvey Milk, inspired many more to join the fight for equality in terms of homosexuality and the law. And hopefully, many more again, in this generation, with the release of the film.
It’s a half a century long game of tug-of-war, with both sides continually finding new recruits. Yes, there is more acceptance of homosexuality now than forty years ago, but only thanks to an anti-gay movement that continues to remain active, vigilant and organised. Because if they don’t, the other side will make overwhelming progress and possibly undo decades of hard work.
One only has to look at last year’s Proposition 8 to find an example of this perpetual two steps forward, one step back pattern. In May 2008, a California Supreme Court case in a 4–3 decision, ruled that bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional, effectively legalising same-sex marriage for that state. It was a triumph for everyone who had fought for gay rights, and many couples did marry, including high profile lesbians Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi.
Just six months later, on the same day the people of California voted in their new president, they also passed a new ballot proposition banning gay marriage once again. (The gay marriages consecrated during those months will continue to be recognised.) The battle for and against leading up to the vote had become the most expensive ballot measure on a social issue in the nation’s country with opponents of Prop 8 having raised $43.3 million, and supporters $39.9 million.
And it was this decision, passed with just 52 percent of the vote, that sparked a flame in me. While I always had vague feelings of support for gay marriage, it was, I must confess, something I had never really thought about. When I heard about gay marriage originally being legalised in California, and we began seeing pictures of happy gay couples tying the knot, it simply warmed my heart.
But with Prop 8, that happy chapter came to an abrupt and bitter end. Suddenly I had the feeling like we had been robbed of hard-earned progress. That indignation inspired in me questions I should have asked a long time ago; wait a minute, a section of our society aren’t allowed to have the same rights as the rest of society? And this is LEGAL? How can that be?
As I’ve said previously, for me many tricky debates are a question of different definitions, or different interpretations. And both sides have strong, though opposing structures of rationale to back their feelings up. But when it comes to the question of gay marriage, the arguments of the anti-gay marriage movement are terribly thin. I won’t go into all of them. These SMH readers (second letter onwards) get stuck into it if you need any convincing.
(UPDATE: This statement on the Australian Marriage Equality website says it best, and I found very touching. They also respond point by point to some of the anti-gay rhetoric.)
It seems pretty obvious that all most of the flimsy excuses the anti-gay marriage movement give, are just blatant, old fashioned, unjustifiable homophobia in disguise. Which is why, unlike questions of abortion, or interfering with dictatorships, or globalisation, or how best to deal with global warming, etc., I am concrete about my views on about gay marriage.
Which is to say, I believe EVERYONE has the right to marry, and be recognised by the State as so, no matter what their sexual orientation.
And no, de facto relationship status, or registered relationships status are not good enough. Here in Australia, same-sex marriages are not permitted, however cohabiting same-sex couples are recognised as de facto couples, which effectively gives them the same legal entitlements and protections as a heterosexual, married couple.
But this is not the same as a marriage. And the battle has moved to the next stage.
As Australians, gay or straight, we should no longer tolerate living in a nation whose legislation discriminates against a section of our society. How can we be a proud of country whose homophobia has been sanctioned by the government? It is time we really made Australia the fair and just country it purports to be. Until that day, our claims of egalitarianism are nothing but hypocrisy.
In my next post, I hope to learn and share some practical and effective ways we can fight for the legalisation of gay marriage here in Australia.
UPDATE: I’ve decided to change the title of this post. I think the original was not only overly sensational, it didn’t reflect the majority of the post’s intention.
How inevitable is the suburban nightmare?
My parents and the parents of my friends, are the lawyers, dentists, optometrists, doctors and businessmen of this world.
When they were my age, 25, and looked into their future, they saw a well-paid job, marriage, children, a big house in the leafy suburbs of Sydney and a luxury car. Above all else they came to value material wealth and prestige.
The children of that generation enjoyed the privilege of a private school education, and a comfortable, safe, somewhat conservative upbringing. But many also witnessed the menace that underlies suburbia: workaholic fathers more interested in becoming Very Important People than domestic life. Bored, frustrated stay-at-home mothers slowly going bat crazy. Affairs. Rising debt. Alcoholism. Bitter divorces.
And of course the ultimate cliche, of which I know three examples in my close circle: fathers remarrying much younger wives, while the mother, middle-aged and therefore expired, alone in her big house. Her sanity is being slowly eaten away by those left-over feelings of devotion to her husband (she had trained herself to be so) and her incredible, burning hatred of him (she can’t believe she supported him all those years, only to be traded in for a younger model).
But I am not my parents. Perhaps my upbringing has led me to take certain things for granted, and perhaps many more things I react against. Important to me is spirituality, intellectualism, creativity, Big Ideas (rather than Big People), discovery, internationalism, freedom, truth, romance, friendship and community. And too few of these things flower in the stifling burbs of Sydney’s north-shore.
Don’t get me wrong there are many wonderful things about a suburban upbringing. But there is also much in that picture I do not want for my own future. And yet having witnessed nothing else, I truly know no other.
Recently a friend introduced me to ‘Tete-a-Tete: The Tumultuous Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre’, by Hazel Rowley. I razed through the book like an addict.
Finally, paths which were without ‘respectability’ and yet so rich, so dynamic, so meaningful! They would spend hours and hours writing or conversing about new philosophical concepts in the cafes of Paris. They traveled. They were politically engaged. Disinterested in material wealth. Had ménage à trois love affairs. Had lifelong friendships. And lived in a community; the existential intellectuals of their day.
And oh yes, their day was the 1930s-70s. Simone De Beauvoir was my age 76 years ago, and yet even today her life would be considered brilliantly unconventional.
Yes, like all they had their fair share of tragedy and dysfunction. And no, I don’t consider an ‘open marriage’ the answer to my problems. My point is not that I wish to look to the lives of these two as a road map for my own. Simply how wonderful to ‘witness’, to finally know what ONE alternative looks like. That a life without marriage or kids need not be sad spinsterhood, or the superficiality of DINKs.
Another alternative I’d like to offer is my aunt. She is a Buddhist nun, and probably the most joyful person I know. She is always busy, active in her religious community, and striving for spiritual fulfillment. During this, my recovery, I have begun to read more and appreciate Buddhist philosophy.
Do I believe it possible for me to stay true to the values I listed previously, with marriage and kids in the picture? Walk a path that need not end in a ‘Revolutionary Road’ style tragedy? (Perhaps April and Frank would have become friends with Satre and Beauvoir had they made it to Paris.)
I believe so. And yet is this not an easy slippery slope to go down?
Kids are expensive, so are mortgages.
So you get that job which isn’t really the meaningful work you were hoping to do, but it pays well.
You also move out of the inner-city into the suburbs because it’s cheaper.
Kids are time consuming too.
So you see your friends less, you abandon your creative hobbies, and you leave that exciting, young community you were a part of.
The only travel you can do are quick two week holidays every year or so.
Time moves on.
You begin to hate your job.
You resent your kids and your partner.
You’ve lost many of your friends.
Hello, suburban nightmare.
Tips for travelers injured overseas
A friend of a friend recently wrote to me, asking for advice as he was currently in a similar predicament to mine two months ago: suffering a serious injury in a foreign country. Fingers crossed you won’t need to call on this in the future!
Before you leave
Buy travel insurance! Buying travel insurance buys peace of mind. You don’t want to be lying in a foreign hospital in pieces, telling doctors to push back on tests or treatments because you can’t afford to pay.
Be sure your travel insurance allows for unlimited costs when it comes to accidents, for the reason above. Looking after your health should be the number one reason for buying insurance, so if it doesn’t provide that better to look for another policy.
I didn’t bring my bulky travel insurance booklet/ policy with me, but I did pack the one-page travel insurance certificate, which had my policy number, a brief summary of what my policy covered and most importantly the toll-free number I could call to report my accident. If you’re really diligent you’ll also copy and paste this document into your email, so that if your stuff gets stolen you can access it there. Double points if you do the same for your policy.
This last one is optional, but I would have found handy. On a piece of paper that you should carry in your wallet, write your name (first and last), your nationality, passport number, travel insurance company, blood type, and any allergies you have, particularly to any medicines. This was the information the hospital was after, and if you’re in a non-English speaking country it may very well be easier to show them this piece of paper than nurses having to mime “allergy”.
At the time of your accident
Poor you! First piece of advice, stay calm. Are you in a developing country? Don’t assume the healthcare system sucks, you may be (if you’re lucky) pleasantly surprised, particularly in countries more socialist than our own. And if you’re in a non-English speaking country, try not to get too frustrated, and be patient. After all you’re the one who doesn’t speak their language, not the other way around.
If the police get involved ask an officer for a police report, detailing the accident. Also ask your doctor for a medical report. Be sure it is on hospital letterhead, and includes the date of the accident, the injuries suffered, and their advice regarding treatment and whether you’re fit to travel. Also ask your doc if they mind giving you their contact details so that should you find later on you need to clarify anything.
If your injury doesn’t require any further treatment beyond that day, be sure to also take home any x-rays, or scans that were taken. These are yours, and may be useful if you find there are complications down the line.
From the moment of your injury, keep every single receipt of anything you pay for. Later when you get home, you can check exactly what your policy allows you to claim, but at the very least it should include treatment, tests, medicine and travel costs.
This is a strange one, and may depend on your insurance company, but I wished I’d paid everything with card not cash. When I did my claims, I put in my bank statement, and my insurance company paid exactly the amount that turned up on my statement – including any foreign currency conversion fees! This way you won’t get gipped if the Australian dollar gains between the time of your accident and the claim, or lose out on charges for withdrawing cash overseas (a cost that I couldn’t claim.)
Returning to your hotel
Call your insurance company. If yours was anything like mine, they will have provided a toll-free number that can be called from anywhere in the world. When you call it’s best to have the following details: your policy number or customer number, which should be on your travel insurance certificate, and an address and telephone number you can be reached on. Check with your hotel if you can give their details for the last two.
The insurance company will set up a case file for you, and put you through with their medical team (their own doctors) to talk about the accident, the injuries sustained and the treatment received. If you’re in a non-English speaking country this is a great opportunity to check that the treatment correlates with what you would have received in Australia, and any further questions you have that was too difficult to ask at the hospital, or was possibly lost in translation.
If you’re asking about medicine, read to them the generic drug name – which will be same across most of the globe, rather than the brand name given by the drug company – which often differs country to country. E.g. Panadol is the drug name, “paracetamol” is the generic drug name.
Did you have to alter your travel plans due to the injury?
You should be able to claim much of the costs of any pre-booked travel plans, just check with your policy. However if plane tickets are involved your insurance company will probably ask that you attempt to get a refund through the airline first.
In my case, although I was not due to fly on the day of the accident, I was not fit to fly on the day I was to leave on my side trip to Spain. But when I called the airline, they said that I could only get a refund if I called 6 hours prior to the flight, and was in the hospital on that day! Luckily I did have an appointment as part of my ongoing treatment on the day of the flight, so I called them the morning of the flight and said I had to go to the hospital that day so I couldn’t fly.
In the evening I emailed them a doctor’s certificate verifying this, and received a full refund on this flight.
Does your injury require ongoing treatment?
Things get a bit more complicated now, and what’s best to do depends on your injury, treatment, trip and policy. It’s something that you will probably work out with your insurance company, and if you have your full policy booklet in your email read the whole thing now!
So here I’ll just give some handy tips that the insurance company may not share with you as it’s not in their interest.
My insurance company were quite explicit that if surgery would be involved in my treatment their plan would be to fly me home as soon as the doctor said I was stable enough to do so, so that the surgery could be carried out in Australia. However, they reluctantly admitted that if my doc said the injury demanded immediate attention and couldn’t wait for me to be fit to fly, they would cover this treatment in Argentina.
Another thing to take into consideration is how long your trip is for. Even if you do have to fly home for treatment, my policy covered costs for a flight back to the holiday, if there was at least one month remaining of the trip. It’s details like these that makes having your full policy booklet in your email useful. I wouldn’t trust the person on the line from your insurance company to tell or know all these details.
If it is necessary for you to fly home, your insurance company should arrange and pay for that flight. Be sure to check they organise anything extra your injury may require. My injury meant I had to have my foot elevated for the length of the flight, so I had to fly business class, and receive hotel assistance and hotel transfers.
The last thing to note is that even if the accident happens on the second last day of your trip, and your policy expires the day after, so long as the accident happens during the time of the policy, they must pay all costs incurred by the injury until the day your doctor deems you fit to fly home, and you do so. For example, I was forced to stay in Buenos Aires two weeks after my policy expired, because my Doctor had not deemed me fit to fly. But I was still covered for costs related to the injury because the accident happened during policy coverage.
Making your claim
Once you return to Australia you will probably find a letter from your insurance company asking that you send in all your receipts, certificates and other supporting material.
The package I sent them included
I kept photocopies of everything I sent them, and thanks to the list, knew roughly how much I expected to be refunded.
A few weeks later an agent from the company emailed me back with a list of everything they were willing to refund me (practically everything!) and the amounts for each item. I doubled checked that they had recorded and added correctly, and approved it. A week later I had a cheque come through the mail, yay!
If you have any additional tips, add them in the comment section.
‘Not-looking’: the strategy for love so many swear by
My gorgeous friend sighed with a twist of ecstasy when I asked how things were going with her boyfriend. At 8 months, her longest relationship. Suddenly the conversation flipped to me.
“That’s how I know it’s going to happen to you now! You know what the key is? You’ve got to NOT be looking for it? Remember that day we were at the races? I wasn’t expecting anything to happen that day and then I met him.”
I firmly replied with the line that I tell every person who insists it’s a matter of ‘not looking’.
“But I’m never looking for it, so that can’t be true.”
I’m never quite sure what the implication is when someone advices you to not-look. Does the act of looking actually repel love? What if it was subtle looking? Do you still give off that whiff of desperation which results to the love of your life going, “nope, not for me?” And by following their advice, and consciously choosing to not-look in the hope that one will fall in love – well doesn’t that mean you are kind of looking?
Or is it a matter of cosmic irony? Just as she least expected it …
In any case, what I said was true. I am almost always not-looking. Or should I say hardly ever looking. Perhaps, I will confess, there have been times my little heart has lifted with an inkling of hope. But at least 95% of my existence has been spent not-looking for love. And not once, in either the 95% of the time I’ve been not-looking, or that 5% that I possibly have, have I fallen in love.
And that day at the races? Falling in love, or even picking up was the last thing on my mind. Yet in the end she found her future boyfriend, and I chatted to a pretty damn cute guy who turned out to be gay. Go figure.
“It’s all luck,” I added.
Perhaps now you’re thinking the problem is that I am never looking. There’s another piece of advice: You’ve got to put yourself out there.
I like to think I’m pretty open and gregarious to everyone I meet, whether I’m attracted to them or not. The kind of person who is driven further into conversation when I recognise the potential for friendship, rather than a hook-up? Would I trade in this person for someone who is supreme at the art of seduction and has several notches – be they dates, hook-ups or boyfriends – on her belt?
Nope. And I’m trying not to make any value judgments as to which is the better kind of person to be. My point is that it’s OK to be me – someone who doesn’t have sex, who doesn’t date, and who has never been in love, just as it’s OK to be the kind of person who goes through the exciting but often emotionally draining dramas of dating. Or just as it’s OK to be a person in a loving relationship.
This is me. And not requiring improvement (at least in this area.)
It sounds terrible to define myself in the ‘absence of’ like that: “who doesn’t have ….” And yes, there is an element of feeling like you’re missing out on something. I wouldn’t mind having love, at some point. Yes I enjoy sex and kissing and touching. But if getting those things requires me to ‘play the field’ – which for me, being so unaccustomed comes out as disingenuous as ‘networking’, or attempt to trick the cosmic, ironic universe, then love, dating and all that jazz is not something I want.
And if that means a lifetime of not having it. So be it.
There are so many, many, many other things I would rather channel my energy into, before acquiring dating skills. The life I have now – single and sexless (well sex without someone else’s participation, ha!) – is it so bad? No, in fact it’s not only bearable, it’s awesome.
Occasionally I do become blue about being single. (I’d say, on average, for a couple of weeks every six months – still a very small minority of the time). And no doubt some of you reading this have been privy to the way I like to play up my perpetual singleness. The thing is, I want to stop all that. Because I think, when I do get bogged down like that, it’s better not to indulge. In fact it’s quite against my nature to mull over these elements in my life that I have sacrificed control of.
It’s much better, in fact, to say to me: hey, instead of fruitlessly wishing you could fall in love, why don’t you take all that pent-up sexual-romantic-frustration, and direct it to answering the question, how can you love the people already in your life, even more? Because trust me, those friends and family need it more than your completely abstract, non-existent problems.
Who you gonna call? (And are your friends on that list?)
When the chips are down, who’s really there for you?
It’s a question Kylie and I were discussing, and the answer should have been obvious. After all, Kylie is the friend who nursed me for two whole weeks in Buenos Aires, following my accident. (Read the last post for that story.)
And for many of you reading this perhaps the answer is obvious.
Well duh, my parents. Of course most of you are young enough that your parents could look after you, and live in the same country. But what about my mum, whose father passed away many years ago, and whose mother is very elderly and lives in Malaysia? It’s an eventual, possible scenario for me too, as I make my plans to live overseas.
OK it’s still duh, what about her husband? Well, my parents are divorced, and I think my mum would rather ask help from the postman than my dad and his new wife. And let’s face it, if my track record is anything to go by, marriage is not a sure thing in my life.
Well JESUS, you say, what about you, her child. OK so in this instance I am the one who would look after her. But lucky I’m old enough to look after her, and that she had kids at all. As I said previously, marriage and kids is no sure thing in my life.
And if you don’t have a husband, and you don’t have kids (the new family), and you’re living in a different country to your parents and siblings (the old family) can you rely on your friends in the city you are living in? Would they get out of bed at 4 in the morning to take you to the emergency hospital? Would they invite you to their home and nurse you for 3 months if your foot was busted?
It’s a question that is pertinent to Kylie who is single and living in a different country to her family and a question this wonderful blogger put to her audience.
At the heart and soul of the question is exposing the depth of your friendships. Is it unconditional love, made up of mutual support and responsibility? Or is it more a case of fun, accompaniment … convenience?
I thanked Kylie profusely for her help those two weeks, but she shrugged it off with typical humility, “you would do the same for me.” Which is true (although like I said to her, that doesn’t take away from what an amazing thing she’s done for me.) But months later as I was talking about the topic with her, I wondered if it was easier for us to find friends “who would” now while we were young and almost all of them aren’t married or with kids. What happens in 10 years time when most of our good friends will be married and have young kids to look after?
I like to believe that I will always take Kylie in, no matter what my familial status is. That what I have is hers. And I have a few friends with whom I have that kind of relationship. But truth is, I don’t really know. In fact I won’t really know until the chips actually go down, and you see which friends pull through for you. And that’s where the crucial difference lies.
With family, and your partner, you know. With friends, you must ask.
As you might have noticed before I grouped husband/kids as “new family” and parents/siblings as “old family.” As the perpetually single person in my group of friends, I have learned not to resent my friends when I see them less because they’ve started dating someone. The best way to see it is that new guy in their life represents the possibility of the “new family”. And he is going, or possibly going to give her something I can never: the promise of concrete, unconditional love.
Don’t get me wrong, some of my friendships are extraordinarily close. But with your best friend, if you find out she wants to move to, let’s say, Rawanda. Do you automatically begin having that conversation if you should move too? The answer is “no”, but the answer for a boyfriend/ girlfriend is “yes”.
Pilgrim Soul has a unique proposition to this modern day dilemma:
I am calling for a destabilization of the rules that surround who we can and should be able to rely on in this culture. That, like it or not, does involve removing the family from its current position at either the top of the pyramid or the center of the Venn diagram (take your pick of visual metaphors) of your treasured personal relationships. And I think the best way for us to encourage this is to advocate the changing of the law to allow people to choose anyone, regardless of affiliation to themselves, to enter into a legally recognized relationship of mutual support.
It’s a nice idea, marrying a best friend. (And as the comments in that post show, does exist in some places, including, apparently Tasmania.) But for me, I can’t help but think that for a lot of people, even if you were to enter one of these platonic marriages, the number one spot will always be reserved for that special someone. And if that special someone comes along, can that first marriage really be maintained, at its original intensity?
For me this whole issue is connected to a social construct I’ve always had a problem with: the nuclear family. Let’s face it, it doesn’t work. How do I know that? Look at the insanely high divorce rate. Look at my family. It’s ridiculous to expect one mum, and one dad, to carry all that pressure of earning all the dough, and keeping all the members happy.
Sometimes I wish we could go back to the days of old. Like back when we use to live in tribes and the entire tribe would raise the next generation of children. Then it wouldn’t even really matter if you didn’t have kids, there would always be kids around for you to help raise.
Or if we can’t do that, to at least go back to Jane Austen style village life, where everyone took care of each other. The mornings were spent calling on each other’s homes, asking about each other’s business. When Mrs So-and-so was sick everybody would bring fresh eggs, or homemade cake. Everybody would visit the Whoevers when there was a new baby. I mean geez, I had been back for two months before a neighbour dropped by (and even then it was to tell us our tap was leaking.)
Yes, this is a question of community. If we still lived in tight communities this need to get married, and quickly breed your own support system, wouldn’t be so pertinent. If we implicitly knew the entire neighbourhood would be ready to shoulder the responsibility of care, we’d probably have a whole lot less angst about who would be there for us. (And no one would have to worry about “dying alone”.)
So … anyone want to start commune?
The kindness of friends, new and old
Yesterday I brought you a rather heart-warming tale of my selfless mother, but today I wanted to dedicate some space to a few other people who helped me out since the accident.
To give you some back story, it happened in Mendoza, about 14 hours away from Argentina’s main city, Buenos Aires. On this particular day I was doing what many tourists do in Mendoza: going on a “wine and bike” tour, with a bunch of friends I’d made at my hostel.
Sounds like a dangerous combination right? The thing is, we hadn’t even bicycled to the first winery – so I hadn’t had a drop to drink – before I ploughed straight into the truck. What can I say … I’m just really, really bad at riding. As I lay down on the road, screaming at the sight of my muscle peering back at me through the giant rip in my foot, my friends came to my rescue and comforted me as we waited for an ambulance.
Three of those friends, just days into our acquaintance, accompanied me through the 7 hours I spent at the hospital getting x-rayed and stitched up. They helped me buy medicine and crutches, and shared their hostel-cooked dinner later that evening. The kindness of (virtual) strangers is amazing.
But the next day I faced a daunting day alone. I dreaded the idea of having to hobble on my crutches down to the busy main street, somehow hail down a taxi, go to the police station to file a medical report, head to the hospital again for a bandage change, get back to the hostel (and tackle the many stairs there) and even more dubiously find some food. All in a country where I spoke barely any Spanish.
I couldn’t sleep that night from the stress (and the pain). I kept imagining falling down onto my foot, which was already seeping blood into the bandage. Never had I felt so very alone.
Thankfully the next day one of my friends from the day before, Jenna, offered to sacrifice yet another day from her holiday to accompany me (my phrasing, not hers). With some guilt, and a lot of relief I accepted her help, even though the day before I had insisted that I would be fine by myself.
But I couldn’t endlessly rely on these backpackers. Clearly I had to get back to Buenos Aires where one of my oldest and best friends lived. There was just a 14 hour bus ride standing in my way.
Up to this point I hadn’t cried once. But halfway into the bus journey, with my foot dripping into a plastic bag that I had stuffed with tissue paper to absorb all the blood, it all became too much. I managed to get it together a couple of hours before Buenos Aires, but as soon as I got off the bus, and saw Kylie standing right there, waiting to pick me up, I began bawling, bawling, bawling again.
I had this immense sense of relief seeing her, and I think in anticipation on the bus. I didn’t have to keep it together anymore, I could just cry and without guilt, let this dear old friend help me.
And what an absolute angel she was. For the next two weeks I settled into my little nest, that was her couch with all my belongings in arms-reach. She would cook delicious meals for me, put on the bath for me (with loving smelling bath salts), pick-up my medicine from the pharmacy, and when she could she accompany me to the hospital. And juggling this with work and university.
But when it became clear to the doctors that the recovery time would be months, not weeks, I knew I had to go home. Even though Kylie insisted I wasn’t a burden, she loved having me stay, the fact of the matter was it simply wasn’t fair on her, when the person at home who could look after me (mum) neither worked nor studied.
And let’s face it, if I felt less guilt as I transferred from hostel friends to Kylie (a very good, long-time friend), there’s even less guilt when you transfer to your family.
Love is a perfectly edited piece of toast
I am so glad I slammed my bicycle into a fast-moving semi-trailer two months ago.
Despite the fact that I had to have 30 stitches and a skin graft on my very damaged foot, which, will never look the same again. Despite the fact that I had to cancel my trip to Spain and return home to Sydney. Despite the fact that it’s meant 2 months of staying at home, hobbling on crutches. Despite all of this, I am so unbelievably grateful it happened because it meant one thing:
I’ve realised my mum loves me.
Most of us, sort of implicitly know our parents love us. But there are less of us who are really close to our parents, who are friends with them, and do get to experience that rush of love. I don’t fall into that category of the lucky.
My mum rarely shows much emotion. Nor is she much of a conversationalist, and we share very few interests. Often (almost always) we seem to see the world in completely different ways. So I had always read into the lack of intimacy in our relationship as a very poor sign. Were we to forevermore be these alienated beings, living side by side, never connecting?
But perhaps I was wrong, or confused.
In these last couple of months in which I’ve been recovering my mum has tirelessly cared for me; bringing me meals to my room, driving me to doctor’s appointments, washing my clothes and reminding me to do my foot exercises. All without a word of complaint, or any hint that she’s at all sick of it.
And for me this expression of unconditional love was crystallised in my breakfast yesterday morning.
You see the day before my mum brought me breakfast and apologised for how the toast was burnt. Apparently the slice was too long so it couldn’t go in the toaster length ways. But when she toasted it sidewards, there was so much sticking out at the top, she thought she’d re-toast it again upside down, but which consequently burnt it.
The next day’s bread was toasted to perfection. As I bit into it, slathered in peanut butter and honey (my favourite), I realised she had carefully cut off two of the ends so now the bread had fit into the toaster. Beautiful.
My time here has made me realise that I had been looking for my mother’s love in all the wrong places. Her love can’t be found in non-existent kisses and cuddles, or long conversation. But in the way she has cooked, cleaned, driven us around, and just generally cared for us and been there for us kids, all these many years. Even in the sometimes wise, sometimes crazy nagging, has been love.
Similarly, I had been looking to express my love for her in all the wrong ways. She doesn’t want to talk (she doesn’t understand anything in my life, it’s all nonsensical to her), she doesn’t want me to take over the household chores, she doesn’t want to hear my lectures about various problems in her life. All she wants is an obedient and respectful daughter. I can handle that.
And I have also remembered one piece of common ground … craft! When I was in school I use to love doing craft. Ever year I had a new thing I was interested in; friendship bands, beaded jewelry, cross-stitch and so-on. It was the one interest my mum and I shared. The one thing we could talk about and she could depart her expertise.
And despite the fact that in my later years of school and post-school I lost interest in craft, my mum would continue to buy me books on scrap-booking, or painting watercolours, or making Christmas decorations. She would take me to school fetes and quietly appreciate the homemade craft and amateur art (but rarely did she buy anything for herself). And the only present from me where she really seemed excited was this elephant cross-stitch I made, and that my sister sewed onto a pillow.
With nothing to do all day these last couple of months, my mum encouraged me to take up knitting. At first I was reluctant – my first attempt many years ago seemed to prove it was not something I had a natural ability with. But I gave it another go and am now onto my fourth scarf! Mum’s even shown me some more elaborate stitch patterns which I’m about to get stuck into.
This whole experience has taught me that you can’t always expect things in your life to follow convention. And sometimes it can still be alright when they don’t.
For a truly wonderful look at the complicated relationship between sons and fathers, listen to this heartbreaking episode called “Go Ask Your Father”, from radio show “This American Life”. From the website you have to pay, but if you email me I can send you a copy.
Abortion: a question of how you feel about fetuses
The world’s most fiery debates are so for a reason: they’re complicated and/or the ethics involved are not clear cut.
Take abortion. I believe abortion should be legal, but I understand where some anti-abortionists are coming from.
An anti-abortionist would argue that from the moment of conception, the fetus is a life of its own. And just as a mother cannot kill her baby, a mother has no right to kill this life. There is no logical argument of ethics that I can bring up to counter this.
Australian ethicist Peter Singer says in his book “Practical Ethics” that, “if we make the comparison with a fetus of less than three months, a fish would shore more signs of consciousness.” And suggests, “we accord the life of a fetus no greater value than the life of a nonhuman animal at a similar level of rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, capacity to feel, etc. Since no fetus is a person, no fetus has the same claim to life as a person.”
And you wouldn’t tell a woman it’s illegal to kill her fish.
However this, like all definitions of what is a human life (and what isn’t) is still arbitrary. And one that I believe will always have blurry lines. So MY feeling that the mother does have the right to abort is not really a solid argument of logic – I simply feel differently about the fetus at those first weeks of term, than anti-abortionists do.
That is not to say I like abortion. Having once had my period come a couple weeks late, during those weeks of not knowing I began to worry about that possibility, and considering the options came to the realisation that I myself could never have an abortion. (No doubt the fact that I come from a family who have the capacity to support me and the baby financially has a huge impact on that stance. Not to mention live in a country where I won’t be executed for being pregnant out of wedlock.)
Nevertheless my feeling, and the emphasis really is on feeling, is that the mother has the right to draw that line, not society.
All in all, my views on abortion are not absolute enough to join that fight (I am far more firm when it comes to supporting all programs and laws that try to reduce unplanned pregnancies and aid poor mothers.)
There are other debates, however, that I am more concrete on. Hopefully those will determine the decisions I make in my life, particularly when it comes to work. Over the next few posts I’m going to have a look at some of them.
1. Australia is NOT egalitarian! [rage against the gay marriage ban]
Check out The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart three part measured and thoughtful debate on abortion with Mike Huckabee, and this one-page summary from the BBC of the ethics around abortion, or this comprehensive look.
And I acknowledge this is an extremely controversial topic, of which I am not an expert. So I invite you to share your own opinions below, so long as it’s done in a spirit of openness, respect and constructive discussion.
Why all coke-snorting party people have blood on their hands
OK that’s a picture of my cousin with a can of coke, but of course today I want to talk about this kind of coke.
I’m sure many of you reading this have tried it, at some point, if not regularly now. After all, it’s the drug du jour here in Sydney.
But by snorting that line or two after a few too many drinks on a Friday night, you are immediately and intimately linking yourself to a violent and bloody world of:
- organised crime (a tidy word for trigger-happy gangsters and contract killers)
- terrorism
- the weapons industry
- police and government corruption
- contributing to deforestation and
- the degradation of communities and indigenous tribes
The majority of the world’s cocaine is produced in Colombia, something like 80%, (followed by Bolivia and Peru). And the country has been mired by a four-decade-old war, in which the country’s guerrilla groups have the rural poor by the throat, and fund their terrorist activities with the money from cocaine production. Yes, the money you paid your coke for.
I can’t stress what a cancerous plight cocaine is on the country of Colombia. Have a look at these distressing statistics:
3 million people have been forcibly displaced, a number that is second only to Sudan. Read this to hear the heartbreaking tale of the Wounaan Indians, who were forced at gunpoint to produce coca leaf (which is eventually turned into cocaine) by rebel groups.
Although the production brought lucrative profits, along came drinking and prostitution as well. However, when “leaders in Union-Wounaan, the largest settlement, sent word to the guerrillas that their coca-grow-ing days were over. A day later guerrillas seized a teacher from his classroom. His mutilated body was found hours later. The next day a tribal leader was seized and beaten to death”.
700, the number of hostages the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, (FARC) have, and let’s not forget last year’s rescue of French Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, who was held for six years in the wet jungles. Assassinations, disappearances and murders are all part of the game for these guerrilla groups.
900 civilian deaths in 2008 due to land mines, which are used to protect crops and processing labs.
4.4 square metres of valuable rainforest destroyed for every 1 gram of cocaine snorted, or
2.2m hectares of the Colombian Amazon forest cleared to grow coca in 20 years. It is estimated that it will take between 100 and 600 years for just 1 hectare to recover. Deforestation also leads to global warming and extinction of flora and fauna. Also consider river water pollution due to agrochemicals (coca grower use 10x more than growers of legal crops). (See the guardian’s gallery on Colombia’s “ecocide”).
And for me, this is the kicker …
3,000 people killed each year in Colombia’s “Cocaine War” (although some put that number up to 17,000 murders a year!) I want you to really imagine that. Take a football field. Fill it up with 3,000 people, imagine their faces, their names. A few of them are young boys just 11 or 12 years old seduced up by the glamor of the gangster, others innocent civilians at the wrong place, wrong time. And now imagine each of them being shot dead. That’s what’s happening in Colombia, EVERY YEAR.
And then let’s throw in the drug addiction and prostitution, which has destroyed countless more lives, in both developing and the developed world.
Now I realise dismantling the drug industry isn’t all that’s required. One needs to make growing legal crops a lucrative option for farmers, and give both rural and urban poor opportunity so their only alternatives aren’t simply work hard all your life yet remain poor, or the live fast-die young lifestyle of drug dealing or terrorist organisations.
But on a personal level, after reading this, how do you feel about buying drugs? Let me put it to you in another way.
If you knew there was an 80% chance, or even a 50% chance, that the diamond you wanted to buy was a blood diamond, would you buy it? Well that coke in front of you, the chance that somewhere along the line someone’s life was taken, destroyed or exploited, would be somewhere up in the 99% range. That entire criminal underworld kept alive on all the money being circulated between players, used to buy weapons that kill? That’s your money.
I’ve talked mainly about cocaine here, as I’ve just returned from South America, plus recently watched a documentary made by Alex James, the bassist of Blur. A story came out in which he admitted to having spent 1 million pounds on cocaine during the height of his party days. Following which the VP of Colombia invited the now organic-cheese farmer, to his country to see the devastation the drug has wreaked.
So yeah, that’s the insidious back story to cocaine, but other drugs have similar stories to tell.
On a recent episode of The Daily Show I learned about certain districts of Afghanistan where there is no government or military presence, the Taliban have imposed the cultivation of opium (from which heroin is derived) which is funding the costs of weapons and arms for their insurgency. Which means heroin that was being sold here in Australia, was helping to fund the very people our troops were fighting against.
The fact of the matter is that drugs – including ecstasy, cannabis, amphetamines – are illegal. And while they are illegal that means they are probably being produced and imported from developing countries (including in Africa and Asia, check out this gallery for all the global trafficking routes) because only there are the people poor and desperate enough for this high risk game. And while it’s an illicit operation, there are no laws protecting the farmers from extortion, or the factory workers from inhumane working conditions, the natural land from being destroyed, or all those at the bottom of the drug world food chain from being murdered in urban warfare.
(The use of the word “war” is not over-sensationalising. Watch the excellent film City of God, set in the slums of Brazil, plus the documentary on the DVD, for a look into that terrifying world. Or read about the recent Mexican drug wars).
Remember, there is no such thing as ‘fair trade’ drugs!
Would love to hear your thoughts on this.
