fitzroyalty

Walking up Brunswick St on Wednesday morning I found a recent car crash, and once I realised no one was hurt, I became a simple voyeur. Not the only one, apparently, because virginiam has already put some pictures of the crash on Flickr. This is the power of social media – instant, online, and particularly powerful in being locally focused. Because the Flickr RSS feed my blog pulls uses the tag ‘Fitzroy’ I find photos of an event I witnessed appear on my blog before I am able to upload my own photos of the event.

Back on 29 May I attended a book talk by French philosopher Michel Onfray (official site and wikipedia) at the Night Cat in Fitzroy. His book The Atheist Manifesto is published in Australia by Melbourne University Publishing, which I used to work for. The Night Cat was full to bursting – there could easily have been 200 people inside, maybe more.

The talk was recorded by ABC Radio National for the Late Night Live program with Philip Adams, who is an avowed atheist, as am I. The interview by Adams was broadcast on the 11 June episode, and you can listen to it here (25mb MP3). As well as Adams, professional troublemaker and ‘national treasure’ according to MUP CEO Louise Adler, you hear Michel Onfray, philosopher and public intellectual, and interpreter Charles Sowerwine, who is also Professor of History at the University of Melbourne.

The Atheist Manifestor was reviewed in the Age newspaper, but I can’t say I think much of what Barney Zwartz writes: he obviously hates the book. Zwartz also blogs about the book talk here.

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Tori at Hamer Hall in Melbourne, 2005

Tori Amos has been censored on radio in the US and UK (and presumably elsewhere) because her song Big Wheel includes several uses of the term MILF (Mothers I’d Like to Fuck). But if you don’t know what it means, you can’t be offended. If you do know what it means, then you’ve heard it before. What’s the problem?

So what does Tori think of raunch culture? I’d like to have a serious conversation with her about it and many other aspects of sexual politics. Alternatively, it would be great to hear Tori interviewed by Ariel Levy, author of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (Tori and Ariel are both listed as ‘women you should know’ at the ThinkGirl.net site). Tori says that:

… in our society — if you go back to the Christian myth — we don’t let women have sexuality. I can’t accept that.

The MILF concept is discussed by the articulate sex commentators Em and Lo in a recent article. They question:

How exactly did a once-taboo erotic fetish become a widespread, culturally sanctioned ideal, a perverse mix of branding and empowerment? After all, a hot mom used to be a tragedy, whether in the literal sense (Oedipus? Mom-I?m-Fated-to-Fuck, Jocasta) or in the bittersweet Mrs. Robinson sense (?Oh, God. Oh, let me out,? begs Benjamin Braddock). Alternately, it was an insult: ?Oh, yeah? That?s not what your mama said last night.? A hot mom was by definition a bad mom.

Tori appears to be informed about the dabate. As her American Doll Posse persona Santa writes in her blog:

what women chose to do with Their Bodies in the 21^st century where we have more choice than we have had in a long, long, long, long time is important. Nobody is making us become objects in the west but ourselves.

So Tori implies that she is in control of her image and is making a deliberate statement in defining herself as a MILF. However, symbolism is not as simple as that. Em and Lo acknowledge a conflict or contradiction:

We, like many modern women, are trapped between two fears: that having kids will make us unsexy, and that trying to stay sexy will make us ridiculous. Our inner feminist tells us that MILFdom is not a solution but rather a self-destructive form of female-chauvinist piggery, to borrow Ariel Levy?s term: Are today?s mothers really so afraid of seeming past their prime that they accept objectification as a compliment? In this light, the MILF mandate is just another superficial standard for women to try?and fail?to live up to, the final, exhausting step for alpha moms trying to ?have it all.?

In another of her blog posts, Santa says:

clich?s about which women are in their own authority and which women are actually allowing themselves to be abused may just surprise us all.

This complex and ambiguous statement makes everything seem uncertain. What can we believe in? Nothing can be assumed or taken for granted. Despite this, Em and Lo conclude that:

But in the end, we?re suckers for the MILF: She may be glossy, she may be goofy, yet we can?t help but cheer for her.

I could say the same for Tori. I’m so looking forward to seeing her and her posse perform live.

On Saturday I went to the Abbotsford Convent and had lunch at Lentil as Anything, then went exploring in the building and surrounding gardens. The convent is a fantastic place to explore, because you discover many artist’s studios and various other creative premises throughout the building, and the vast spaces and long corridors stimulate the imagination to consider what life was like in the original convent. Below are some pictures of the convent.