(no subject)

Grimly amused to see one of Sydney's gang rapists trying to explain that his culture was to blame, because his victims' dress and behaviour led him to believe they had no right to refuse sex. He's from a Pakistani background. How he thinks this explanation makes him any different from a White rapist, I have no idea.

(no subject)

Did an ego scan in Google, and argh. Preserved online for posterity, my 2001 letter to the editor about the reports of children being thrown overboard by asylum seekers. I wrote again a month later when it became clear that we had been lied to, but my follow-up letter wasn't published. Eternal embarrassment.

Also found: disgust at the "radio play" from Inside the TARDIS, the script for which was mistakenly attributed to me. I must get Jon to let me put up his original script, which IMHO was much sharper and funnier. And extracts from Set Piece the musical.

(no subject)

Gods, what a disappointing article from Paolo Totaro on the presumption of joint custody, to be tried for the first time in the world here in Oz.

...to start from the premise that mum is always the best parent is simply insulting to the men who perform the role with passion - and all the women partnered with men who take being a father seriously. It is also intellectually primitive, sexist and profoundly unfair.

It's also non-existent. Sexist attitudes may persist in the judiciary, but the law itself makes no such assumption - and when the Family Court must hand down a decision, fathers are twice as likely to win. Totaro, whose own shared parenting arrangements have worked just dandy, naively thinks the change has something to do with what's best for the children, rather than pandering to "men's rights" activists. The overwhelming majority of divorcing men work out their parenting arrangements themselves with their former wives, without the need for the intervention of the court. The new law is a bone thrown to a small minority of bitter men.