Poking his beak into the vending machine, seeing what he can get

MoreArt is a public art show in the City of Moreland. I took a bike tour of the Upfield train line with The Squeaky Wheel.

Crow chilling out at Coburg station.

When I get there, he’s being bullied by a gang (ie group) of young kids, who are loitering (ie waiting for the extremely Sunday Upfield train) and clearly amused by the crow. They’re like, ‘Can we touch you?’

‘No’, he mutters sullenly.

‘Why not? Aren’t we your friends?’ (giggling) ‘Yeah, aren’t we your bros?’

The crow seems unimpressed but it’s hard to tell cos he’s wearing that thing over his head.

He moves away from the kids, poking his beak into the vending machine, seeing what he can get.

Unsuccessful, he then pokes it into the garbage bin, prising out a juice box which he puts on the ground and looks at for a while before crushing it with his foot.

He then sits back down on the bench. I take this photo. Then a proper photographer guy from the council comes, takes a closer-up shot.

As I leave the kids are getting a group photo with the crow.

There’s a second crow on the opposite platform, but I don’t think they are friends.

Thankyou to Benjamin Cittadini and also the crows.

And also:

Fugitive Piano by Michelle Robinson of arts collaboration andeverythinginbetween.
Quite romantic. Apparently they do performances too; the walking tour get treated to ‘The Entertainer’.

This is at Coburg Uniting Church, right near the shopping precinct. It’s basically a mould of the artist, Andrew Atchison, made with birdseed. The idea is that it’ll degrade over a number of weeks. He says he made sure he used a non-toxic glue (PVC? I can’t remember) so it didn’t poison the birds.  He’d tried egg first but it didn’t work. He tells us that the piece symbolises the precarious predicament of non-indigenous artists within Australia, with the birds representing the pre-invasion landscape.

As we’re watching him earnestly, this car rolls on by, packed full of people. And the guy squeezed in the back on the side furtherest from us leans over his friend and yells, ‘YOU WANKERS YOU’RE ALL WANKERS!’ Which is kind of funny, but a bit sad at the same time. I note to my friend (well, the friend that I’d met on the tour), that it’s a bit sad that someone would be filled with that much hatred. He tells me he thinks the guy was joking.

Now. This is of my favourites.

I have such a hatred of anything contrived that sometimes it even limits me from trying new things. But anyway, you know what I like about this (apart from the art)? Sansern Rianthong, who came on the tour with us, explains that it was basically fucking depressing (I paraphrase, he was much more polite) riding down this bike track and looking at the boring fence all the time, so he decide to create a bit of life. With straws. It was as simple and as brilliant as that.

Right next to it:

FUCK THE FENCES FUCK THE BORDERS NO-ONE IS ILEGAL. Yeah, way to change someone’s mind about an issue. And may I stress, this was NOT part of the exhibition.

Honestly, there was a lot of great public art. You know how sometimes you go to these things and they’re just shit? I remember the last time I was in Perth, going to a Sculptures by the Sea in Cottesloe. And I couldn’t find any piece that I really identified with. Perhaps the nautical theme often really kills it. Sorry, Sculptures by the Sea, I like that you exist, I really do. I’m not advocating a withdrawal of your funding or anything. One day you will be great.

I could post more of the great art up here, but I don’t want to ruin the tour, and also, I know you all have short attention spans. Suffice to say that there was a lot of great train station art. There’s a bit of a thing in Melbourne with freeway art, but train stations remain dismal and boring. But what better place to look at art than when you’re waiting for the train? You’re a lot less likely to get distracted and cause an accident.

Even our iconic Flinders Street station, which there’s recently been talk of using for a hotel. Which is stupid. It should be somewhere where you can linger, meet up with people, not spend too much money. Somewhere for everyone. I’m thinking, like, the train station version of Fed Square, except way more vintage, and also wheelchair-friendly.

Anyway, MoreArt has two train station pieces that particularly grab my fancy. The first is Interface by HIVE. It’s installed in one of those barred ticket windows, and comments on the fact that many of our transactional interactions nowadays are conducted behind bars or perspex screens, which create a barrier between you and the person selling tickets or whatever, so you only see them in terms of their office, not as a person.

The other beauty is Looking Down the Line.  A bluegrass band who recorded their music in a ticketing booth at Jewell station, and the tracks are now playing from the booth all day except between 11pm and 5am. The difference to the atmosphere is amazing. I ask the artist, Tobias Hengeveld what the name of his band was and where they perform, and he says they don’t have a name and they don’t perform but they do publicly jam at the Lomond hotel every Saturday evening.

I suggest to another of my newly-met friends that they should have music playing at train stations all the time. Yeah, she says, but knowing Metro they’d probably put on really annoying music.

I know it’d be difficult because people are often pretty sensitive when they’re commuting, especially in the morning probably, but perhaps they could get a different person to curate each day, make it a Melbourne thing. I guess one person’s ‘annoying’ is another’s epiphany.

Apparently a few years ago Metrotrains would only let the festival do art at one station, but now they’ve become a lot more lenient. Why the change of heart, I wonder? Anyway, it’s positive.

In summary, the tour is highly recommended and it won’t last forever. It’s happening in the next few weeks, details here.

It was more like something your Dad would listen to

Wesley Anne toilet graffiti: movie recommendations.

Ah, the Wesley Anne…not exactly a hotbed of anarchy.

There was some political graffiti though.

And this – some fucker in the other toilet cubicle had stuck a nail through the brick, for some reason. Wanton destructiveness.

I was at a fundraiser called Island Aid, to raise money for the community of Taku, a Pacific Island threatened by rising sea levels. It was pretty hippy; the smell of patchouli drifted toward me as I walked in. It was excellently organised and well-attended.

There was a folk/bluegrass band with a girl playing a cello. One of their songs was ’I love my life’, and talked about how we need more freedom of speech, everyone’s voice counts, and power corrupts. I mean, those were almost literally the lyrics, which broke all of the ‘show don’t tell’ rules. But the girl really had something; she was completely and unselfconsciously lost in the moment, unaffected, joyously dancing around. It was pretty much beyond criticism.

When I asked my friends whether the lyrics bothered her, she was like, ‘What lyrics?’; just absorbed in the music. It’s unusual, because my experience is that when there are shit lyrics, there’s something missing with the music, too: they usually interact.

At a dinner party the other night, a friend was saying how he couldn’t believe Gotye had released a particular song on his album as a single. He said this song wasn’t like any of Gotye’s other, well-written songs; it was more like what your dad would listen to, John Farnhamish.

Apparently even Gotye had admitted on radio that he wasn’t sure whether he should have put it on the record. I immediately realised that it was the same song I’d been listening to on repeat for the whole week.

It’s always off-putting when someone says something you like is shit. I mean, people say Hanson’s Mmmbop is a bad song, but I love it. Doesn’t it do exactly what a pop song should do?

We also got to talking about Rolling Stone’s top 10 worst 90s songs. Everyone else agreed that Macarena was a bad song, even though they liked it. But can something be considered ‘objectively’ bad even if, every time it’s played, everyone feels an irresistible urge to get up and dance? I don’t think so.

That said, I am reminded of Ben Lee’s album Catch My Disease and Trey Songz’s song Lol Smiley Face. They are nauseating but horribly catchy; I find myself hooked but not enjoying it either.

I don’t think the people who voted in the Rolling Stones competition can have really remembered the 90s. They hardly scratched the surface of shit songs. Here’s my list, which has an Australian flavour.

1) Life is a highway – Tom Cochrane

2) Everything I do, I do it for you – Bryan Adams

3) Scatman – Scatman John

4) Sister – S2S

5) Cotton-eyed Joe – Rednex

6) Savage Garden – Truly Madly Deeply

7) All I want for Christmas is You – Mariah Carey.

8) Around the World – Daft Punk.

9) Joan Osborne – What if God was one of us

10) I want to be a hippy – Technohead

Bring em back: the campaign to return tram conductors

Last night I went to a screening of Bring ‘Em Back, a documentary about Melbourne’s tram conductors screened by the Victorian Greens MPs, who are now actively supporting the campaign. In the Q & A, filmmaker Phillip Donnellon commented that, based on an experience with an aggressive tram conductor in Amsterdam, he felt that our society had changed. I think he was implying that we’d need to work hard to restore the conductors’ culture of playfulness, friendliness, and perhaps slight naivety.

But you can’t really make assumptions about how much our culture has changed based on one incident with an arsehole. I reckon there would have always been arsehole conductors. The film didn’t show the arseholes though: it totally sentimentalised conductors, interviewing the most colourful, emotionally intelligent, and articulate, many of whom were actually at the screening, and you just felt like giving them a hug.

Maybe they were all really like that? I don’t know; I wasn’t there. I guess it was a campaign film, so wanted to stay on message, didn’t want to explore all the shades of grey. It was a surprisingly well-made film though, despite its $10 000 budget.  To be honest, it really moved me, but I am soft, sentimental about Melbourne, and nerdy about public transport – an easy target.

These guys are amazingly determined – they’ve been campaigning for the return of conductors ever since they were removed from trams in 1998. They rock up to Gay Pride marches and other public events dressed in their uniforms, talking to people about their role with a panache and playfulness and sense of humour, which contrasts sharply with the horrifically earnest way most campaigns are run. And from what the movie says, this flair and approachability is pretty typical of the way conductors behaved. They used to do little party tricks, swinging from the bars and stuff.

Even though I’ve just said you can’t make assumptions about culture based on anecdote, it does seem pretty obvious that our public transport culture has changed; you only have to look at the thuggish behaviour of ticket inspectors and the fact that they feel the need to put security guards with semi-automatics at stations. It’s a more fear-based, compliance-based approach, rather than a human, social feel. Although, another thing Donnellon said was that a policeman had said to him that the presence of someone in a uniform on a tram is enough to deter misbehaviour.

I’m all in favour of restoring tram conductors, and adding a little colour and life to the drab commute. Maybe we can wipe those ‘I’m dead inside’ expressions off people’s faces and replace it with an ‘I heart PT’ attitude.  There does seem to be an appetite for restoring a friendlier face to public transport, and one that reinforces Melbourne’s unique culture. Particularly with trams, because people love trams, and even though they’re slow and so often overcrowded, you’ll notice they don’t get as many complaints as trains do.

As the government rips myki machines off trams, and fare evasion rates go through the roof (they are 20% in trams), reintroducing tram conductors seems like a legitimate economic proposition. And while tram conductors never had the power to impose penalties, the embarrassment of being asked for a ticket and not having one would be enough to get most people to buy one.  Aside from checking tickets, they could help tourists and disabled and elderly passengers. The film showed this amazing footage of people in wheelchairs cutting sick during the tram conductor protests: they didn’t want the connies to go either!

It’s going to be an uphill battle though: Labor and Liberal governments have opposed the return of conductors, and politicians are usually shit scared of changing their mind, which is probably justified because they’ll be castigated by the vapid media. I really hate that: a more intelligent way to proceed would be to accept that you might change your opinion based on new circumstances (aka Julia Gillard having to negotiate with the Greens on the carbon tax) or new information (aka no WMDs in Iraq). Not to say that you shouldn’t have firm principles or strive to keep your promises, just that you should be intellectually responsive.

The campaign’s quaint, fun, nostalgic flavour may work against it . It’s going to be fighting hard against the ‘times have changed, move on, get real’ attitude. And over the years of public transport mismanagement, people’s pride of, and expectations in, public transport have dissipated so much that they may probably struggle to muster up energy for the campaign, especially people who’ve never known tram conductors. But I guess if the economic argument is there, you may only need a small group of pretty dedicated people: a small push may be enough.

This is not the film, by the way, but a 10th anniversary tribute to the conductors. It’s not as good as the film, obviously. If you want the film, I can get it for you.

Intra-bike conflict

In the words of Jonathan Franzen when he told that boring story about birds at the beginning of his keynote speech, this story ‘doesn’t really do anything.’ But anyway, it entertained me for the morning.  

‘Stay in the lines!’ a woman yelled at two people riding side-by-side along Canning St. They were blocking her way and riding outside the bike lane boundaries.

‘We’re talking, ok, get over it!’ he yelled back angrily.

‘Get over yourself and your lycs [lycra!]’ she snarled.

‘Just ride safely!’ he said righteously.

She finally passed them, riding up into the Carlton gardens.

‘Illegal riding, good one!’ said the guy sarcastically.

She turned back at them, smiled wildly and whooped, shouting something incomprehensible.

That’s right. She actually whooped. When was the last time you heard one of them?

Sure, not buying a ticket is a shitty thing to do, but…

Here’s an example of an ineffective tactic for tackling fare evasion.

A marketing campaign run by a despised company, trying to get fare evaders to feel guilty about not paying for a crappy service? A service which they actually pay for, through their taxes, apparently without getting value-for-money?

The Age this week reported a Metlink study showing that one in five people on Melbourne trams didn’t have a valid ticket, with trains at 9.8% and buses at 9.2%. (As is typical, the original report wasn’t made available online by The Age, Metlink or the government, which is annoying for nerdy people like me).

The Victorian government responded by criticising the previous government for its soft approach to enforcement. ‘We need to get tough with fare evaders because we need every cent available to go into improvements across the network for the benefit of all passengers,’ they said turgidly. The Age seems to advocate a similarly punitive approach. In an editorial called ’Fare dodgers owe us all, big time‘, they blamed fare evaders for their abdication of social responsibility, and suggested the government should increase fines as London did.

Sure, it’s a shitty thing to do, not buying a ticket. But with a recently released study showing that ticket inspectors are particularly loathed (again, study not easily available), a hardline approach will compound negative perceptions of public transport, perhaps even encouraging disgruntled passengers to take on the system. And don’t we want people to feel proud of the city and its assets, not fearful and resentful?

Unsurprisingly, it’s difficult to find figures on the rates of ticket inspectors letting passengers off fines, but I’ve heard that it’s hard to talk yourself out of the fine. Most of the apparently ‘softness’ of enforcement seems to be inspectors not having time to check everyone’s tickets So the government’s suggestion of inspectors finally ‘cracking down’ on fare evasion seems a bit lame.

Metlink’s 2009 Revenue Protection Plan outlines the main reasons for fare evasion: inadvertent fare evasion, opportunism, ‘game theory’ (a simple calculation that savings of fare evasion will outweigh the costs of a possible fine) and service dissatisfaction. So while, increase in fines might have some impact on the game theorists, given that fines are already quite high, any benefit would be outweighed by its negative impact on attitudes to using public transport.

The best way to tackle fare evasion is to make it easier for people to buy a ticket, and more difficult for them not to. It’s likely that a significant portion of the reported fare evaders do so inadvertently: passengers may have bought a ticket but not validated, or been thwarted by overcrowding,  faulty cards, broken ticketing machines that don’t accept notes, a confusing fare system, or the lack of note accepters on trams. Inadvertent fare evasion would be reduced by making the ticketing system more reliable and comprehensible, as well as reducing overcrowding.

As for deliberate fare evasion, opportunism is obviously a basic prerequisite—if you knew you’d be checked you’d buy a ticket. This is why the rate of fare evasion for trams is lowest—you have to pass the driver to get on. Having more staff on trams, trains, and train stations would practically eliminate opportunistic fare evasion. But not more ticket inspectors. If public transport is to be a relaxing and enjoyable experience, we need staff on trams, train stations, and trains to help out not just by checking tickets but by giving us information, as well as looking after public safety and helping the less-abled where necessary.

Service dissatisfaction also contributes to the decision to fare evade. Given the often appalling service people receive on trains (late, overcrowded, don’t arrive at all), or trams (packed in like sardines), they’re less likely to feel guilty about fare evading. Why should they, when their pride and trust in the public transport system is at rock bottom? So another way of reducing fare evasion would be to actually get serious about improving the system. Similarly, some people taking short trips feel that their tickets are overpriced;  a way to tackle this would be to reintroduce short trip fares (the previous state government got rid of the city saver), or create a more incremental pricing system.

The government’s statement that they need to get tough on fare evaders so they can throw the money back into the system for our benefit is laughable. The way the system is set up now is far from efficient and mainly serves the interest of private operators. Their monthly fines for poor performance are capped and consistently less than their profits; therefore there is little incentive for improvement.

The operators also know that once they’ve won the franchise, they’ve pretty much got the government under their thumb, because no matter how bad they are, there are severe political costs attached to terminating the contract and risking disruption of an essential public service.

What’s more, under privatisation, separate operators have little stake in coordinating the system so it works better over all. The result is a limited span of hours, and transport ‘black holes’ in outer suburban areas, which also tend also to be less well-off, creating a self-perpetuating circle of transport disadvantage. When a public authority, on the other hand, manages public transport, less profitable routes are able to be subsidised by profits from the popular routes, so the overall system is better networked with more equitable coverage.

The state government’s promised central public transport authority is a start, and may improve planning and coordination. However, without getting rid of privatisation, it’s difficult to imagine a future in which people can go anywhere they want, easily, without using a car.

SlutWalk – cos Gen Y feminism is no longer an oxymoron

‘Cos you know how, like, nerds reclaimed the word nerd and Greeks reclaimed the word Greek? Like, anyone who’s been bullied, it’s become, like, a trend to reclaim the word’ (comment overheard at SlutWalk).

Has feminism become such a dirty word that it’s cool? I haven’t seen so many coolsies at a protest since the live music rally. SlutWalk was dominated by females in their 20s and 30s. Despite a few ripped stockings and short skirts, nobody really managed to look ‘slutty’, except in a contrived, costumed kind of way. I’d describe the predominant fashion as Fitzroy cool – you know, understated T-shirts and vintage dresses and colourful woollen scarfs?

In a way, it doesn’t really matter whether people get involved in feminism out of passion for the cause or as a fashion statement. Motivations for these sorts of things are usually mixed, and they change over time. It’s common for people to get involved in social justice issues because they think it’s cool or they want to make themselves feel shiny, but that’s not to say they don’t care about the issue too, and often as they get more involved, this passion solidifies. Why second-guess someone’s motivations when they’re trying to do good things?

Getting Gen Yers to attend the protest at all was a massive achievement. As my one of my fave feminists Monica Dux, who spoke at the rally, explains in her book The Great Feminist Denial, while many Gen Y women subscribe to feminist views, they’re reluctant to identify as feminists. They have capitulated to the propaganda perpetuated by the haters, namely, that feminists are hairy-arm-pitted, man-hating bra-burners.

While SlutWalk wasn’t marketed as a feminist event, I’d like to think that it was a first step towards roping in the youngsters. A big cheer went up when Ursula Benstead, counsellor from the Western Region Centre Against Sexual Assault, identified herself a feminist, and clarified that feminism wasn’t all about hairy armpits: ‘The principle is that women are entitled to all the same rights and privileges, including the right not to be sexually assaulted and not be blamed for being sexually assaulted.’

SlutWalk made feminism feel fun. In her speech, Monica Dux admitted that she wasn’t wearing any undies, but not because of the walk – because she hadn’t done the washing. She pointed out the double standards when it comes to what men and women are wearing: ‘Nobody says to a man, oh look, your jocks are a bit tight, better be careful.’ Someone in the crowd yelled ‘Tony Abbott!’

The vibe was fantastic, and if you got as far as showing up, the message – that it’s men who have to stop raping women, rather than women having to avoid being raped – was clear. Benstead talked about having to turn tell girls who’d been sexually assaulted that they had to wait for six months before seeing a counsellor, because the centre was so swamped with clients.

Clearly, sexual assault is still a huge problem, and so is victim-blaming, including self-blaming. I know several people who’ve been sexually assaulted, and in each case, they blamed themselves – for inviting the situation by being too flirtatious, or not fighting hard enough.

It was encouraging to see quite a few men there too. One of the key messages was that men need to take responsibility for tacking sexual assault. One of the speakers, Cody Smith, a trans man and victim of sexual assault, choked back tears as he called on men to take responsibility for changing the behaviour of their friends. He’s spot on – the most effective way to change the mind of men who think that, for whatever reason, they can take what’s not rightfully theirs, is for their mates to speak up against it. This is why behavioural change programs often use male role models to teach their mates about respecting women – for example, check out the Be the Hero project, which tried to get school boys to teach each other to be respectful.

As I discussed in my previous post, the protest was probably less appealing to older feminists. It seeemed that for some ‘old guard’ feminists, the flippant reclaiming of the tainted word ‘slut,’ and the protest’s ironic, faux marketing, would have been pretty hard to swallow. Nonetheless, it was disappointing to see Leslie Cannold criticise older women for failing to take the ‘activist baton’ that young women had commendably seized. Firstly, there were older women there, and secondly, reinforcing divisions between older and younger feminists doesn’t seem particularly helpful.

As I mentioned earlier, some of my friends, both young and old, refused to go because they felt that the term SlutWalk implicitly sexualised rape and put the focus on women rather than men. They were also confused about the protest’s intent – was it condoning porn? Prostitution? They didn’t want to attend something that might be supporting these things. It’s a pity that SlutWalk turned off potential supporters with its marketing, and in the future I hope they can come up with something equally sexy and media-friendly.

At the same time, good on the organisers for drumming up that kind of buzz for an issue which struggles to get the attention it deserves. And for those who actually showed up, the overriding message was pretty clear – that we need to teach men not to rape, rather than women how not to get raped. If you accept this basic premise, disagreement around the details isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Providing nobody gets hurt and people respect differing views, people learn through conflict. Debate and talking over the issues can help you develop a position, and sometimes, change your mind. As Benstead said, if SlutWalk creates a dialogue about sexual assault, misogyny, and social justice, that’s a good thing. And if equally, if we can use irony, controversy, or fashion to attract people who’ve never been involved in feminism before, that’s a good thing too.

Slutwalk – people are smart enough to get it

When the SlutWalk event popped up on my Facebook account, it immediately appealed to me. The message, that women have a right to wear what they want, and act what they want, without being insulted or assaulted, seemed clear as mud, and I liked the subversive irreverence of using the word ‘Slut’ in this context. Still, some critics of the protests say the term is too susceptible to misinterpretation – of course, they get it, but they’re concerned about other people.

They suggest that these people will see the large photos of ‘sluttily’ dressed women in the media and assume that the protest’s a mere spectator sport. Lecherous men will see it as a fortuitous opportunity for men to leer at the wayward women, and women will buy into this patriarchal mindset by strutting their stuff for the eyes of their oppressors.

It’s true that we live in a world where AFL players still treat women as pieces of meat and people still sell buy T-shirts which say ‘And U Wonda Why They Call U Bitch’ – another reason why SlutWalk is important. In this context, it’s legitimate to question whether people are really ready for the level of conceptual complexity of the phrase ‘SlutWalk.’

So how would the average person interpret the protest? It’s pretty difficult to tell – I mean, who’s really tapped into the zeitgeist of the suppositious ‘average Australian’ these days? My sense is that these critics are underestimating people – that many people are familiar with these issues, even if they don’t spend much time thinking about them, and they do get it.

And so what if SlutWalk is perceived as a perve-fest? Men always perve, and men who are there will undoubtedly be perving. If I was a man, I’d get right down to the protest tomorrow to fix my appreciative male gaze on many sexy women who will be in attendance, and I might learn something from the speeches, too – there’s a difference been checking a woman out and wanting to take her behind your truck (or BMW, if you like) and have your way with her. And from a woman’s perspective, why is wearing skimpy clothing or heels, even if it’s to impress men, necessarily disempowering?

Which brings us to raunch culture.  In The Age the other day, the protest’s organiser, Clem Bastow, commented, seemingly with a hint of sarcasm, “Who knew that in organising SlutWalk Melbourne, my colleagues and I were apparently just confirming our role as another pawn in the raunch culture game?” Yet surely Bastow, who’s been involved in feminist stuff for a few years now, would have foreseen that the term SlutWalk, which implicitly references raunch culture, would invoke these divisions on an issue where feminists could otherwise present a unified front – after all, who condones rape and victim-blaming?

The strategic wisdom of choosing such a divisive term is questionable. Perhaps courting controversy was the only way to attract attention to the issue – in that sense, it’s certainly worked. But I can’t get any of my friends to come along to the protest. One was concerned that it reinforced notions that rape was about sex, rather than power. It’s a good point – given that the residential house is the most common place for a rape, and in most cases most perpetrators are known to the offender, what place does slutty clothing have in the whole thing? It might send mixed messages – but again, people are, in my view – pretty smart – I think they’ll get it. For other friends, word slut has too many negative connotations to reclaim. This is understandable, although personally, I’d rather reclaim it and then put it through a paper shredder; make ‘Slut’ my bitch and then expunge it from the face of the earth.

It’ll be interesting to see what age-groups are represented at the protest. I suspect SlutWalk is more likely to appeal to Gen Ys than older people, who are probably less likely to find the irony funny or clever, or to reclaim the term with such careless abandon. Julie Szego references her age in The Age today when she explains the reasons why SlutWalk “doesn’t light her fire” (generational differences even implied in the musical reference to the Doors): “I would happily embrace my own inner slut were it not hiding under the weight of motherhood and middle age.” But targeting Gen Ys might be good start; they are receptive to feminist ideals, but have capitulated to the false stereotypes of feminists as hairy man-haters, so many are reluctant to get involved in something ‘feminist.

In Julie Szego’s article today, she goes on to suggest that victim-blaming is a trivial issue, as legally and socially, Western countries have moved on from that. She dismisses the AFL, NRL and Defence Force controversies as a mere aberration, rather than a reflection of deeply entrenched views. Feminists should concentrate on the ‘hard issues’, she argues – rape in the Congo, etc.  But ask sexual assault workers – the issue of victim-blaming isn’t dead, and it’s not trivial. Szego’s comparative argument is overly simplistic – like saying we shouldn’t worry about poverty in Australia because it’s so much worse in India.

Despite its weaknesses, SlutWalk’s unlikely to do any harm, and may do some good – mobilise (some) women’s rights advocates, raise awareness amongst disengaged or uninformed, and perhaps cause a few people to question some of their unexamined assumptions about rape victims. So, you could either get bogged down in arguments, or just show up, and see what happens.

PS. Sweat – by Inner Circle. Can it be reclaimed? I think it is inherently sexist, and ‘offensive’ in a way, but it’s just so catchy. Sorry. For a while, every lunch-time, my friends and I used to dance to it at Primary School, in the same room where we received religious instruction from Supa Club. We even used to do the elbow pumping motions to symbolise getting jiggy. Me and my friend used to be the girl, because we had ‘brown eyes.’ We suspected it might be about rape, but kind of ignored it. Since then, I’ve been exposed to alternative interpretations – that ‘cry out’ is about pleasure, and they’re actually just talking about enjoyably rough sex. I’m not so sure.