Monday, October 10, 2005
Read the following and weep at what is likely to happen in a very confused school near you any time now:
"Toilets and changing rooms are reported to be one of the main areas of abuse, harassment, intimidation and discomfort for gay, transgender, lesbian, intersex and bisexual students. All students must be able to access a single unisex cubicle to avoid such harassment. GLBTI students must be able to choose which toilet they use however. If a gay student still wishes to use the male toilets he must be able to do so safely. A transgender or intersex student should be able to safely utilise the facility that corresponds with their gender orientation.... The same must be the case for changing rooms.... Schools need to have uniform options that allow people to wear the uniform in which they feel comfortable. All students must be entitled to wear pants, skirts or shorts."
The above was drafted in connivance with the secondary teachers union (PPTA) by Safety in Schools for Queers (SS4Q), a national organisation, established at a conference of 190 youth, students, teachers, counsellors and health professionals from all over the country in June 2005. The conference was a collaborative effort of the Human Rights Commission, the PPTA, the New Zealand AIDS Foundation, Out There, the Family Planning Association, Rainbow Youth and a number of individuals from the GLBTI community.
Does anyone have the intestinal fortitude to stand up and say that this politically correct nonsense will ultimately be more devastating than the alleged harassment? If there is harassment, it is wrong. But you don't correct one wrong by perpetrating an even bigger one.
Heavy cannabis use could be a cause of Maori having the world's highest lung cancer rate, ground-breaking research suggests. Many Maori, from children to kaumatua, use cannabis in "epidemic proportions", says a study by Professor Richard Beasley of the Medical Research Institute in Wellington. [Dare we say that cannabis use might be behind a lot of Maori over-representation in a wide range of social statistics? In which case, all that government funding to close the gaps is aiming at the wrong target.]
Tony Blair has decided to back new nuclear power stations, which would be built on the sites of existing plants and presented to the public and his party as a job-creating answer to climate change. A year-long government inquiry into Britain's future energy requirements is expected by the Prime Minister to conclude that more nuclear energy is the only plausible answer to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The Bible Society in Australia has launched a complete Bible in SMS (short message service) text for users to download and send verses to friends and family. All 31,173 verses are free to download from the Society’s website, although callers pay a standard rate for transmitting them. The process of converting the full Contemporary English Version translation to SMS text took just four weeks, rather less than the average ten years of most translations.
The following piece from the Brothers Judd weblog breaks my self-imposed limits of brevity in this blog, but I felt that it warranted passing on. Orin Judd is responding to the following item from the news: "Developers announced plans Friday to open a multimillion dollar sexual "theme park" near London's Piccadilly Circus. Backers say the London Academy of Sex and Relationships, due to open next spring, will not be a sleazy sex museum, but an educational multimedia attraction that will teach visitors to become better lovers and provide valuable information about disease and sexual problems."
Now the Judd comment:
"Everyone has a now-familiar role to play in response to stories such as this one. Traditionalists are expected to splutter with red-faced indignation and mumble none-too-coherently about decency, morality, the corruption of children and the decline of family values, all in the embarrassed voice of one who is trying to discuss his private affairs publically. Delighted libertines move in quickly for the deconstructionalist kill and accuse naysayers of being in the grip of some warped psycho-sexual hell that only their radical “honesty” and “freedom” can cure. Leftists find torturously weird ways to put all the blame on the oppressions of a dark and dreary past and usually give their approval provided the spectacle is “socially meaningful”, which means as clinical and unerotic as possible. Libertarians wax poetically about choice, insisting that it is none of anyone’s business and that the mere existence of such ventures proves a pre-existing demand only a totalitarian would dream of trying to stifle.
"The debate continues, but it is hard not to conclude that, whatever is actually going on in the nation’s bedrooms, the libertines have won the battle for hearts and minds in the West, at least outside of seriously religious communities. We’re all Freudians now, and the fear of prudishness and thwarted desires reigns supreme in popular culture and social discourse. As a consequence, Western society is fast losing, not only the common values, but also the common language that would undergird any reasoned discussion on how to contain or limit sexuality to avoid the destructive and obscene. Indeed, it is a particularly amusing modern experience to see dull and dutiful middle-aged types defend the legitimacy of sexual appetites and practices one suspects they would murder their spouses for even dreaming about trying.
"There is a always a place for debate on first principles, but on this subject it is masking our ability to see what is going on around us before our eyes. The devil is in the details, but few can debate details on this subject without snickers and leers and a quick retreat to the abstract. Far from bringing freedom and a relaxed, carefree contentment, the sexual revolution has given free rein to an unquenchable thirst for ever-greater preoccupation, experimentation and titillation. Only the wilfully obtuse would think the easier general accessability of porn is bringing satisfaction of heretofore repressed appetites as opposed to an endless demand for more porn, rawer to the point of abuse or parody. Theater aims to shock what it knows full well is an increasingly unshockable public, and so ups the ante with each passing year. Youth are cut loose without a rudder in an exploitative milieu only a fool would judge them prepared for. It is all well and good to debate pornography and sexual licence in the abstract, but at some point one has to confront directly the gulf between a young person's confusion and agitation at the glimpse of a racy French postcard and his trying to negotiate anal sex on the third date.
"No one really knows where all this is leading. The subject is too elusive and human nature too varied to reduce it to reliable syllogisms or Las Vegas-style wagers. But we know enough from history and experience to understand that sexual extremes are terribly destructive to both individuals and society, and we live in an age of sexual extremes--the obverse of the most rigorously repressed ideal Calvin ever dreamed of. Conservatives tend to focus on the predatory and exploitative aspects, but insightful artists from Flaubert to Woody Allen have sensed a perhaps even more disturbing enigma. The road to sexual liberation may pass through thrills and rapture, but it ends in impotence, disappointment, boredom and often a bitter emptiness. That so many adults know this within themselves, but have been so intimidated or programmed by the zeitgeist that they stand tongue-tied and watch their children choose that road, is an act of collective social suicide. Jacques Barzun’s clear-eyed description of our decadence explains why not just civilization, but also sexual fulfillment, requires a firmament of sublimation and even repression:
"The sexual act itself was imitated wherever it could be managed, on stage or onscreen; some performers went so far as to commit indecent acts in front of their live audience. There was a cult of nudity, in serious plays and on public beaches, quite as if in those settings bodies were not the reverse of aphrodisiac. Pornography, protected by the rules of fress speech, was abundant but of low quality compared with the classics from Petronius onward; even the 19th century models were better literature. Closely allied were the writings of innumerable doctors and psychologists, seconded by columnists in magazines and newspapers, who offered advice on coital technique, or methods for luring the opposite sex, or encouragement to the old not to give up. The preoccupation with the subject began about the age of 12 and was in proportion to the incitement.
"The greatest damage from the sexual emancipation occurred in the public schools, where sexual talk and behavor, being tolerated, distracted from work. The resulting early pregnancies caused disasters of all kinds. But so great was the thrall of the sexual that school authorities dealt with the problem by means of courses, free contraceptives, and handbooks giving a full view of the subject, its variants and aberrations. [...]
The sexual reality was often halfhearted and disappointing, much obsession but little passion–what D.H. Lawrence had called “sex in the head”. Men and women did not benefit from the boasted “revolution" as they had expected; it did give some people the free play they wanted, but it pushed many more into courses unsuited to their nature and capacities.
"It did not install the Mohammedan paradise on earth, although everything in sight suggested it had. Pornography is a form of utopian literature and, like the advertising of Desire, it set a standard that brought on paralysis. When an erectifying drug was put on the market, the millions who rushed to obtain it numbered the healthy young as well as the ailing old, and women at once demanded its feminine equivalent. It was apparently not known that desire must be dammed up to be self-renewing."
"Toilets and changing rooms are reported to be one of the main areas of abuse, harassment, intimidation and discomfort for gay, transgender, lesbian, intersex and bisexual students. All students must be able to access a single unisex cubicle to avoid such harassment. GLBTI students must be able to choose which toilet they use however. If a gay student still wishes to use the male toilets he must be able to do so safely. A transgender or intersex student should be able to safely utilise the facility that corresponds with their gender orientation.... The same must be the case for changing rooms.... Schools need to have uniform options that allow people to wear the uniform in which they feel comfortable. All students must be entitled to wear pants, skirts or shorts."
The above was drafted in connivance with the secondary teachers union (PPTA) by Safety in Schools for Queers (SS4Q), a national organisation, established at a conference of 190 youth, students, teachers, counsellors and health professionals from all over the country in June 2005. The conference was a collaborative effort of the Human Rights Commission, the PPTA, the New Zealand AIDS Foundation, Out There, the Family Planning Association, Rainbow Youth and a number of individuals from the GLBTI community.
Does anyone have the intestinal fortitude to stand up and say that this politically correct nonsense will ultimately be more devastating than the alleged harassment? If there is harassment, it is wrong. But you don't correct one wrong by perpetrating an even bigger one.
Heavy cannabis use could be a cause of Maori having the world's highest lung cancer rate, ground-breaking research suggests. Many Maori, from children to kaumatua, use cannabis in "epidemic proportions", says a study by Professor Richard Beasley of the Medical Research Institute in Wellington. [Dare we say that cannabis use might be behind a lot of Maori over-representation in a wide range of social statistics? In which case, all that government funding to close the gaps is aiming at the wrong target.]
Tony Blair has decided to back new nuclear power stations, which would be built on the sites of existing plants and presented to the public and his party as a job-creating answer to climate change. A year-long government inquiry into Britain's future energy requirements is expected by the Prime Minister to conclude that more nuclear energy is the only plausible answer to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The Bible Society in Australia has launched a complete Bible in SMS (short message service) text for users to download and send verses to friends and family. All 31,173 verses are free to download from the Society’s website, although callers pay a standard rate for transmitting them. The process of converting the full Contemporary English Version translation to SMS text took just four weeks, rather less than the average ten years of most translations.
The following piece from the Brothers Judd weblog breaks my self-imposed limits of brevity in this blog, but I felt that it warranted passing on. Orin Judd is responding to the following item from the news: "Developers announced plans Friday to open a multimillion dollar sexual "theme park" near London's Piccadilly Circus. Backers say the London Academy of Sex and Relationships, due to open next spring, will not be a sleazy sex museum, but an educational multimedia attraction that will teach visitors to become better lovers and provide valuable information about disease and sexual problems."
Now the Judd comment:
"Everyone has a now-familiar role to play in response to stories such as this one. Traditionalists are expected to splutter with red-faced indignation and mumble none-too-coherently about decency, morality, the corruption of children and the decline of family values, all in the embarrassed voice of one who is trying to discuss his private affairs publically. Delighted libertines move in quickly for the deconstructionalist kill and accuse naysayers of being in the grip of some warped psycho-sexual hell that only their radical “honesty” and “freedom” can cure. Leftists find torturously weird ways to put all the blame on the oppressions of a dark and dreary past and usually give their approval provided the spectacle is “socially meaningful”, which means as clinical and unerotic as possible. Libertarians wax poetically about choice, insisting that it is none of anyone’s business and that the mere existence of such ventures proves a pre-existing demand only a totalitarian would dream of trying to stifle.
"The debate continues, but it is hard not to conclude that, whatever is actually going on in the nation’s bedrooms, the libertines have won the battle for hearts and minds in the West, at least outside of seriously religious communities. We’re all Freudians now, and the fear of prudishness and thwarted desires reigns supreme in popular culture and social discourse. As a consequence, Western society is fast losing, not only the common values, but also the common language that would undergird any reasoned discussion on how to contain or limit sexuality to avoid the destructive and obscene. Indeed, it is a particularly amusing modern experience to see dull and dutiful middle-aged types defend the legitimacy of sexual appetites and practices one suspects they would murder their spouses for even dreaming about trying.
"There is a always a place for debate on first principles, but on this subject it is masking our ability to see what is going on around us before our eyes. The devil is in the details, but few can debate details on this subject without snickers and leers and a quick retreat to the abstract. Far from bringing freedom and a relaxed, carefree contentment, the sexual revolution has given free rein to an unquenchable thirst for ever-greater preoccupation, experimentation and titillation. Only the wilfully obtuse would think the easier general accessability of porn is bringing satisfaction of heretofore repressed appetites as opposed to an endless demand for more porn, rawer to the point of abuse or parody. Theater aims to shock what it knows full well is an increasingly unshockable public, and so ups the ante with each passing year. Youth are cut loose without a rudder in an exploitative milieu only a fool would judge them prepared for. It is all well and good to debate pornography and sexual licence in the abstract, but at some point one has to confront directly the gulf between a young person's confusion and agitation at the glimpse of a racy French postcard and his trying to negotiate anal sex on the third date.
"No one really knows where all this is leading. The subject is too elusive and human nature too varied to reduce it to reliable syllogisms or Las Vegas-style wagers. But we know enough from history and experience to understand that sexual extremes are terribly destructive to both individuals and society, and we live in an age of sexual extremes--the obverse of the most rigorously repressed ideal Calvin ever dreamed of. Conservatives tend to focus on the predatory and exploitative aspects, but insightful artists from Flaubert to Woody Allen have sensed a perhaps even more disturbing enigma. The road to sexual liberation may pass through thrills and rapture, but it ends in impotence, disappointment, boredom and often a bitter emptiness. That so many adults know this within themselves, but have been so intimidated or programmed by the zeitgeist that they stand tongue-tied and watch their children choose that road, is an act of collective social suicide. Jacques Barzun’s clear-eyed description of our decadence explains why not just civilization, but also sexual fulfillment, requires a firmament of sublimation and even repression:
"The sexual act itself was imitated wherever it could be managed, on stage or onscreen; some performers went so far as to commit indecent acts in front of their live audience. There was a cult of nudity, in serious plays and on public beaches, quite as if in those settings bodies were not the reverse of aphrodisiac. Pornography, protected by the rules of fress speech, was abundant but of low quality compared with the classics from Petronius onward; even the 19th century models were better literature. Closely allied were the writings of innumerable doctors and psychologists, seconded by columnists in magazines and newspapers, who offered advice on coital technique, or methods for luring the opposite sex, or encouragement to the old not to give up. The preoccupation with the subject began about the age of 12 and was in proportion to the incitement.
"The greatest damage from the sexual emancipation occurred in the public schools, where sexual talk and behavor, being tolerated, distracted from work. The resulting early pregnancies caused disasters of all kinds. But so great was the thrall of the sexual that school authorities dealt with the problem by means of courses, free contraceptives, and handbooks giving a full view of the subject, its variants and aberrations. [...]
The sexual reality was often halfhearted and disappointing, much obsession but little passion–what D.H. Lawrence had called “sex in the head”. Men and women did not benefit from the boasted “revolution" as they had expected; it did give some people the free play they wanted, but it pushed many more into courses unsuited to their nature and capacities.
"It did not install the Mohammedan paradise on earth, although everything in sight suggested it had. Pornography is a form of utopian literature and, like the advertising of Desire, it set a standard that brought on paralysis. When an erectifying drug was put on the market, the millions who rushed to obtain it numbered the healthy young as well as the ailing old, and women at once demanded its feminine equivalent. It was apparently not known that desire must be dammed up to be self-renewing."
