I am a failed TV snob. Watching Dear White People and Nanette.

I am a TV snob. Not as in snobby about what I watch on TV, as in so snobby, I just won’t watch TV. I don’t have one, and I can’t remember the last time I went to the cinema.

Despite this snobbishness, this month I have been overwhelmed by not one, but two things on TV. Spurred on by cold weather, shoulder surgery and the increasing difficulty in downloading stuff from the internet, I signed up to a free month of Netflix. I’m a little embarrassed about that. Not only am I admitting to watching TV, I signed up to an online streaming service. But, having put aside my shame, I discovered Dear White People and learnt that I can binge TV watch just as well as I can binge read. You know when you really should go to bed, but you just can’t put the book down? As a child, did you find yourself reading under the covers with a torch after you were supposed to be asleep? (Hi Mum! I’m sure you knew I did that. I doubt I really got away with anything I thought I’d gotten away with in my childhood).   This was me with Dear White People. Netflix just continues on with the next episode without even going through the credits, so before I had even had time to guiltily reflect on if I should really go to bed, the next episode had started and I was hooked. 2 entire series in 4 days. Not bad for a TV denialist.

What was so captivating about it? Well, everything. It’s clever, political, funny, moving, quirky, queer and sexy. Each episode shows a different perspective on the events, whilst also developing the story a little further. So it grows and grabs you in multiple directions. It explores the diversity of experiences, responses and behaviour of the students, refusing the idea that there is one black experience. And they are beautiful. Stunningly beautiful people. Do people that beautiful really exist? I’m sure I haven’t met any. Am I fetishizing black people? Actually, Gabrielle was hot too.  Go watch it. Just make sure you’ve got some time to get caught up in it.

Then there was Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette. Holy fuck. How does anyone write something like this? How do you rehearse it? How do you perform it, again and again and again? It’s incredibly personal, and incredibly brave. Plus it’s funny, clever, political, heartbreaking and repeatedly side swipes you out of the blue. Just watch it. A thousand other people have probably told you that already.

Of course, the world being as it is, somehow there are angry men (and the odd woman also strangely angry on behalf of the straight men)  still commenting on her performance as sexist, manhating, not funny etc etc.  For example, some of the comments of this review https://dailyreview.com.au/nanette-review-hannah-gadsbys-brilliant-netflix-special-going-set-fire-internet/75701/.  What is so hard about just listening? She is telling stories of her experience. Her feelings. Her pain. And whilst she is doing so, she is pointing the stick of her humour firmly at straight men. Then contextualising it in how straight men have been telling women to put up with their behaviour by “lightening up”, “it’s just a joke” for years. They never see the problem in their behaviour; it was women’s response to it.  The stick is in the other hand in this performance. She is not using it to perpetuate entrenched oppression. She is using it to reveal another tool of that oppression. To the men who can hear her through the challenge of that medium, congratulations. To those who can’t, well, my expectations of you were low enough already. Thanks for confirming them.

What are Malcolm's aspirations for a comfortable end of life?

Today Malcolm Turnbull tell us that aged care workers should aspire to a better job. Now, I’m a registered nurse in a public aged care facility. I am pretty bloody well paid. I love my job, and I have no aspirations to do something else. But I know that all of the personal care workers beneath me get paid crap. Many of them have done the job for 30-40 years. They are absolutely dedicated to their work.

Did Malcolm perhaps wonder if maybe we should pay the people caring for our elderly a little bit better instead? Who does he think might do the rather important and incredibly challenging job that they do if they all just aspired to a better job? It’s like he’s taken the ridiculous idea of trickle down economics and applied it upside down to an essential service.

Aged care seems to regularly come in for a hiding. A few years ago, there was a meme going around that our prisoners were better treated than our elderly. Now, I don’t think we should mistreat prisoners. Hell, I don’t think we should lock up most offenders at all. But it was a preposterous slur on the dedicated care that many facilities and the staff working there provide to our elderly. Many of our personal care workers are given responsibility way beyond what their training and remuneration really accounts for. And they do the best job they can because they are devoted to doing so, with staff to resident ratios that are frequently marginal.

Many nurses also begrudge aged care. Throughout my course, student nurses were focused on all the “exciting” areas of nursing. Acute care, emergency departments, theatre. Aged care is the lowest of the low. I think it’s massively underrated. A good aged care nurse is a project manager, a mini-VMO and a counsellor as well as a nurse.  We have the opportunity to really know our residents and their families. We have the opportunity to make the remainder of their lives as comfortable and enjoyable as possible. We have the opportunity to make their deaths as good as possible.

Most of us will grow old. If we end up requiring care, do we want our carers to be respected and rewarded for the work they do? Or just using it as a fill in to a “better” job?  If all carers were just using it as a bridge to “better” work, how would they develop the experience and skills to provide high quality care?

But just as when Malcolm was carrying on about penalty rates, he doesn’t care if we are looking after our society’s elderly at 3am, and he doesn’t care if we have appropriately skilled and remunerated staff. That’s not his world. Unfortunately for him, he’s got 20 odd years on me, so it will actually be his world a lot sooner then he might like to think.

A vindication of the rights of women to have a drink, a rant and be safe to do so (a short extension on Mary Wollstonecraft)

Just the other day, I was reading a tweet by a prominent Australian feminist asking, where are the changes since the #metoo movement? Well, I can’t say I’m surprised that there aren’t any.  Women have been saying this shit for years. #metoo was another request for women to not be listened to, yet again. To put their history, experiences and traumas out in the public sphere, where, yet again, people ignored them, disbelieved them and even abused them. All women know this shit happens. 100% of the women I know have been sexually harassed. A scarily large number of them have been abused and assaulted. This is no revelation.

And so, it is again, no revelation, that yet another woman has been assaulted and killed by a man. The surprising thing about it was that it was by a stranger in a public place. This morning I discovered that Ambulance Victoria attends a domestic violence incident every 7 minutes. Every 7 minutes. Even if I round down to allow for the approximately 2% of domestic violence victims who are men and assume there is only 1 victim per call out, that’s 8 women and/or children getting urgent medical treatment as a result of domestic violence per hour. 192 per day. 1344 per week. In Victoria alone. Need I continue? Imagine the cases where the woman was unable to call for treatment. Or she was too afraid to. Embarrassed to. Or because the abuse did not cause serious physical injuries. This time. Or she didn’t feel it was worth bothering emergency services yet again. She’s survived before, she’ll survive this time. Until the time she doesn’t. If you aren’t nearly crying at the thought of it, you must be yet another person who is not really listening.

I’m not even talking about those rates of sexual harassment, which is so insidious that women just expect it. Or assault by strangers. Or even casual acquaintances or dates. They happen. It’s preposterous that they happen, but the numbers of violence by close family members are shocking enough. Who needs more stats than that to want to do something about it?

Because this is no revelation to women, and particularly to women working with domestic violence, it is also no surprise to read Jenna Price calling for something more to be done. Something more than words. https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/for-eurydices-sake-we-need-to-do-more-than-go-to-vigils-20180618-h11i5k.html  And of course, more needs to be done. But am I alone in feeling well, how the fuck can women be expected to do more? Is it just me feeling bloody exhausted from speaking up about this shit all the time? Women are the majority of people speaking out and working in these fields. What can we do to really change something so entrenched in or society that no one acknowledges it even when it results in male behaviour that occurs in such volumes, is spoken about so much, shapes the lives and behaviour of women around the world and people still deny exists? Can we fuck off with the liberal individualist approach and admit this is not a few rogue individuals? Because if it was, well, they really get around.

Women more patient then me today (like Jenna above, and Clementine Ford here: https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/the-not-all-men-excuse-is-absurd-20180618-p4zm94.html) have included constructive lists of things that could lead to change. Eventually. Things that seem like basic things that have overlooked the world so far. And maybe that’s where I just become pissed off at the world. Should we have to educate our government? Grown men? How can we educate our young people when the adults of the world behave as they do?

Don’t tell me we have no need for feminism. Don’t tell me I’m a man hater. Don’t tell me I’m reading too much into the cold harsh reality. Don’t tell me #notallmen. Try “I’m horrified that this happens, I’m so sorry to hear about your experiences, I don’t want to passively participate in this, what can I do to change it?”. Look. Listen. Feel. Get in touch with the cold hard reality, even though it is confronting. Think and act. Maybe you’ll have a bit more energy for the fight than I have today.

What am I left doing about it? I’ve opened a bottle of red called the Stubborn Patriarch (thanks Alison!). It seemed appropriate. I put on some feminist punk and let off some steam on the internet. Tomorrow, as every other day, I will continue to live as I always do, challenging ideas, assumptions and behaviours inherent in a patriarchal society. Sighing for the gazillionth time that I still have to stand up and speak out about this shit. But in the meanwhile, tonight I am enjoying a drink, a rant and agreeing with Oh Bondage, Up Yours. And unlike many women in the world, I am safe to do so.