Minimum unit pricing is a minimal step toward addressing alcohol misuse.

This month, the NT brought in a minimum unit price on alcohol. This is being lauded as great leadership in the battle against alcohol related harms, but what price based strategies like this seem to miss, is that problem drinking is not just a "let's have another drink" choice. These people are drinking as a result of other issues in their lives and they have an addiction. They will keep drinking until they are able to find healthy, functional ways of dealing with the issues in their lives, and they will need to come off alcohol slowly, under medical supervision. They already spend a fortune on alcohol. What bright spark thinks they will just stop because it costs a little bit more? Do we drive less because petrol costs a lot more than it used to? Did increasing the price of alcopops reduce teen binge drinking? Anyone noticed the current smoking rates despite the massive increase in cost? Similarly, sugar taxes are a crap way of addressing obesity.  Drinking coke and eating mars bars already cost a lot more than water and fruit. That does not stop people who want to drink coke and eat mars bars from choosing them. Does the illegality and cost of smack stop an addict using it? Do people only drink because it's cheap? What a ridiculous concept.

Those of us who do not a a drinking problem are mostly capable of rational thought about it. We can think, shit, I can't really afford another drink tonight. But imagine if you have an addiction. Physical symptoms that kick in if you don't drink enough. A mental health problem you are self medicating. You feel like you can't cope with the world if you don't have another drink. Are you going to think, oh dear, this all costs a bit much, I might just stop now? Of course not. You are going to drink away all the money you have available, then probably feel even worse about yourself, your life, your drinking, letting down your family or friends and want to drink more.

Price targeted interventions are like the GST. They are touted as fair things, effecting everyone, regardless of income. Did no one stop to think about the relative impacts? A bottle of cheap wine in the NT will cost $10 instead of $6.  That $4 will be meaningless to a well off alcoholic, but a much bigger issue for someone in poverty. For an impoverished person with a drinking problem, they are going to keep drinking, except now they will have even less money for food, housing, clothing, medication, you know, life essentials. They will resort to crime or begging in order to get the money to keep drinking, lose any housing they have managed to hold onto, forego food, because continuing drinking is not really a choice until the underlying issues are addressed. Price increases only add to the socioeconomic costs of problem drinking.

Price related interventions are a classic example of individualising problems in our society. We will punish the people who make poor choices by increasing the cost. If that has other negative impacts on their life, that's their fault because they made that choice. They should realise the consequences of their decision. The underlying message of individualising broader social problems is that people who drink are bad, people who are poor are bad, people who are obese are bad.

Truly great leadership would promote social and structural change. It would address poverty, violence, dispossession, isolation, mental health issues, racism and homophobia. It would fund support services and rehabilitation. It would challenge toxic masculinity. It would target the companies making money out of alcohol. It would restrict advertising. It would challenge the Australian culture of drinking. It would work to disassociate binge drinking from sport, parties, nights out, bbqs and other celebrations. Increasing the price of alcohol is an easy way of looking like they are doing something about the problem without actually addressing any of the fundamental causes that take drinking from a recreational pastime into a problem and not stepping on the toes of big business who make money out of alcohol.

The "great achievement" of this government - axing the tampon tax.

I have ignored the whole tampon tax campaign for years. It's one of those incredibly mainstream feminist campaigns that I've never been able to give two hoots about. The last few days, my feeds are full of people saying what a great achievement axing the tampon tax is. Now, I get it's kinda weird to have condoms and lube and an assortment of "natural remedies" listed as essential items that are GST free as well, but to be honest, condoms and lube are rather useful items and I've saved a lot more GST off them than I would have on tampons. Women's sanitary products are not only expensive, but an incredible source of landfill. About 11000 pads or tampons per woman in her lifetime, each one taking 500+ years to break down. There are about 12.1 million women in Australia. Making for 133.1 billion pads or tampons produced and thrown out by these women. Does that sound like a lot of rubbish yet?

This is why I can't get excited about the tampon tax campaign. Reusable menstrual products have moved on from the old rags used back in the day. The menstrual cup, washable pads and period undies are all comfortable, accessible, convenient, and much more sustainable than disposable products. They also happen to be much cheaper. So who gives a shit about the GST? If the money is an issue, buy a reusable product. I don't expect to spend another cent on menstrual products for the rest of my life. Making the total cost of managing menstruation from about ages 20 to 50 coming to less than $100. But the monetary cost isn't really the main issue. It's the 10500 or so pads or tampons I have not used. The government is claiming it will loose $30 million in GST each year from the tax. I'd rather they spent that money on giving women reusable menstrual products. That would acknowledge that they are an essential item whilst not supporting an industry of waste products.

So I'm just going to give menstrual cups a little spruik. They rock. Never again carry used tampons out from the crag, or for days on a remote bushwalk, or find someway to deal with them in developing countries. No wrapping and bagging and finding a bin. Or doing what a distressful number seem to, chucking them in the bush. Just empty, replace, go. Wash them once a day. They are silicon, it's a 2 second job. That's it. And your risk of toxic shock syndrome will basically disappear. Search for them on ebay, where you can get them for less than a single packet of tampons and wonder why the hell you have been forking out for tampons and getting worked up about the GST all these years. They were good value when you had to pay $40 for them. They are incredible value at $4. That $4 will last you 10+ years. Tell the government and the sanitary product industry where they can put their tampons.

Axing the tampon tax is not a great achievement. Surely it doesn't take any stretch of the imagination to picture things which might be greater achievements for women? The vote, legal abortion, sexual assault centres, anti-discrimination legislation, the tampon tax. Maybe we should refer our government to Sesame Street, because one of these things is not like the others. It's a token nod to women whilst failing to address a major source of waste and missed opportunity to promote sustainable (and affordable!) alternatives. But I guess it would be a fair depiction of this government that the best thing they did for women was remove the GST from tampons.

Queer travels

I’ve been doing a lot of driving lately. Somehow I ended up spending most of that time listening to queer and feminist podcasts. In fact, I got so caught up in one that I managed to get lost driving home from Byaduk. I don’t want to think about what that suggests about how much I am distracted from driving whilst listening to funny, quirky and political podcasts, because they make driving so much better.

Identity labels are controversial these days. I’m afraid I’m old fashioned. I know, it’s odd to hear me say that. Or maybe it’s not. Afterall, I am still a trad climber not driving around in a suburu and owning a cheap and nasty phone. Plus I can’t speak emoji, or say anything meaningful within 280 characters. But what I am oldfashioned about today is the label bisexual. I’m afraid I just can’t jump on board with pansexual. Even when I try and get over images of horny goat men ,

Who could forget Anthony's Pan from Feeling the Ceiling?

there are the fry pans. But other than my distaste for whatever the linguistic equivalent of aesthetics is, there is the somewhat more important issue of the politics.

People with non-exclusive sexual identities have long been invisible, ostracised and belittled by parts of both hetero and homosexual communities. We are too straight, too gay, undecided, pretending, dabbling, or judged by whatever partnership we are currently in. What useful purpose is there is fighting amongst ourselves over bi vs pan? The argument for pansexual is that bi reinforces gender binaries and pansexuality is about people not gender. Strangely enough, bisexuals have been talking about attraction to people not gender for, well, 50 years or so? In practice, bi identifying people are far from reinforcing gender binaries. But bi has been the rallying term in a long fought battle for recognition as an authentic orientation. Afterall, it's a phase some of us have been going through for a long time now! Bi was the word around when I was a young adult, and I've come to be quite fond of it. I don't want to give it up now, and I certainly don't want to be told I am reinforcing gender binaries through using it. Hell, I am a gender denialist. We have chromosomes, hormones and body parts. Physiological shit usually called sex, of which there are actually more than the standard 2 combinations promoted. All the rest is socialised nonsense and I can get ultra grumpy about what is called "feminine". But that's a whole other long rant.

You may have noticed Bivisibility Day last week. Or maybe not, in which case, the visibility aspect of it is obviously still lacking. But being bi can be a blurred road of passing and invisibility. You may never need to come out, or you have to come out again and again and again. Bi people seen with a single partner anywhere will always need to come out as not straight or not gay. Or to just let it pass. Did any of my workmates who met my male partners ever realise I have a history of female partners as well? Does that matter? Am I doing myself and the bi community a disservice if I don't care if they work it out or not? I do tend to not give a shit about what people think about me. I'd really like a world where people don't have to give a fuck about this stuff. One day, we might reach a point where no one makes assumptions about sexuality. But until then, is not coming out participating in heteronormalisation?

Coming out is one of those key passages in queer identities. No one comes out as straight. But when I think back on it, I don't think I ever came out. I don't have a coming out story. I just do stuff and I guess eventually people notice that I don't do the done thing. I don't even remember ever telling my family. But in the way that I also just talk about stuff, I expect I just told my Mum over dinner one night about the first girl I picked up. She turned out to be a little nutty, so I've entertained people over dinner with that story a lot since. I have no recollection of Mum's response, but, knowing my mother, she probably just asked if the sex was any good.

One of the things I love about modern teen fiction (for I have an embarrassingly large soft spot) is the way queer characters are completely normalised. They aren't token. They don't even stand out as a statement. They just exist. Major characters, minor characters, random cameos. Where were any of these in Nancy Drew or Sweet Valley High? This weaving of queer stories into popular literary worlds may be a powerful step in the move to noone having to come out, or for perhaps everyone having to come out. Perhaps it is a sign that we may yet reach a place where people don't make assumptions and are not shocked at whatever is revealed in the course of people just doing whatever it is they do. I expect I have been reading the outliers of modern teen fiction and that there's no shortage of heteronormative stuff out there, but let me have a little delusion that the world is changing. I am cynical enough already.

All this conflict over a few words brings me to the idea of solidarity. The LGBTIQ+ alphabet soup is continually growing. P and A are certainly on the agenda to be thrown in. There's a call from K and BDSM to join up too. A few extra Ps and Qs to mind. At what point does becoming all inclusive lose the power of solidarity? What are the common grounds we are rallying under here? The issues across this group are already super broad and this question would lead me off on another thousand word tangent, but my point is the P and B parts of the soup have an almost entire overlap. I don't go around arguing the semantics of whether pan as a prefix meaning all/everything really means you could be attracted to not only frypans and mythological creatures, but, say, dinosaurs or apricots. So please don't insist that bi reinforces binary sex and gender stereotypes. Instead, let's look at the shared issues arising from a non-exclusive sexuality in a world where people still assume an exclusive sexuality. A world in which bi/pan/omni/ambi/poly/whateveryouwanttocallit-sexuals suffer disproportionately high rates of mental health issues and violence. Fighting over semantics amongst ourselves seems an unlikely priority here.