I never used to drive my car. It sat outside my house, different random parts either rusting or drying out depending on their orientation, the windscreen collecting dust, leaves, and at one point a mistakenly-applied-by-council ‘abandoned car’ sticker. Each year, registration loomed like a shadowy, expensive ogre, rendered marginally bearable by Bill, the World’s Most Forgiving Mechanic. Eventually, though, I realised that my car was more painful trouble than it was worth, so I got rid of it.

Now I’ve decided to do the same thing with my uterus. A reasonably accurate analogy except that Bill has never tinkered with my uterus or given it a pink slip*.

I won’t go into too much detail for risk of making blokes do that she’s-talking-about-lady-parts face that blokes make, but I have a couple of nagging medical problems with my uterus. Nothing serious, but definitely annoying, occasionally painful and everyday-life-affecting. About a third of all women have the same affliction, but I’m just really, really good at it. There are a couple of procedures available for treatment, and I’ve chosen a hysterectomy. I could not be more excited about it.

I used to love watching acclaimed kitchen goddess, the luscious Nigella Lawson, when she first appeared on the small screen as the West’s primary exponent of food porn. By God she was sexy, I thought, and her defiance of the fashion imperative for women to starve ourselves so we’d look like end-stage junkies was refreshing.

But lately it seems to me that Nigella’s spontaneity has waned, to be replaced by rather more artifice; she is now imitating her original self, as if that original has lost interest in the proceedings and withdrawn, bored, to observe. Another aspect of Nigella’s personality hams it up until she’s almost a parody of herself. This may well be intentional, and if so, she needs to ham it up a little more to reassure us. I suspect though, that Nigella really has lost interest in the character she created, but how does one discard such a popular and revenue-generating persona?

Defence of the Fertility Control Clinic

The front gate of the Fertility Control Clinic in East Melbourne is a frontline of the struggle over life and death rights in Melbourne.

A group of Catholic protestors (the Helpers of God’s Precious Infants) meet there at 7:30am, six days a week, to protest patients’ moral rights to a legal service, authorised by elected representatives of the people of Victoria three years ago. The protest expresses their unflagging commitment to expunging this parliamentary offence against the revealed word of their god.

Soften The Fck Up is an initiative aimed at breaking down the “tough Aussie bloke” façade and getting men to open up to each other if they are depressed, worried or, as they put it, just feeling crap. On their website, they say,

“We’re standing up to be counted. We’re saying it’s time we chuck out that tough Aussie bloke stereotype and bring back the laid-back Aussies. Speak up if you’re not feeling right. Soften the fck up like a real man would.

Look after your mates if something seems a bit off. Ask them if they’re okay. If they’re really okay. Ya gut will usually be right, even if your mate doesn’t wanna talk about it. Grab a beer and have a chat.”

I wanted to like it. I really did. Mike Stuchbery and Ben Pobjie, who I respect both as writers and survivors, have written articles for them which gives the initiative some credibility. But the more I looked at it and the more I thought about it, the angrier it made me.

While it’s wonderful that people are getting the message out about depression and mental illness, it seems to be being done in such a dumbed down, made-for-television way that I wonder whether it’s simply trivialising something that was previously ignored.

Porn is bad. There you go, I just saved you the trouble of reading most commentary and opinion on the subject. Porn Is Bad is the start, middle and end of just about anything you read or hear.

Gail Dines gave a series of hysterical screeches when she visited Australia last year, the best of which was her appearance on Q&A. Not that she brought anything rational to the discussion, peppered as her pronouncements were with epithets such as “Oh, yes, I’ve dealt with men like you before”, but she did manage to burn “gag on my cock dot com” into my memory for, it seems, all time.

Melinda Tankard-Reist sees “pornification” in everything from actual porn to K-mart catalogues, making it difficult to determine if she’s actually motivated by concern for women or is simply enacting the Madonna/whore obsession of her Taliban/Catholic religious beliefs.

My dear mother used to say: don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. And I’ve tried to follow that advice in everything I do. Of course, when I think of my mother, I automatically think of pornography, and not just because of my breastfeeding fetish.

Some people don’t like pornography. Now, before you cry out, “They’re witches! Burn them!” let’s cut them some slack. There are many reasons a person might be weird enough to not like pornography. For example, that person may be suffering from nervous hysteria and just need a good finger massage or fire-hose-induced orgasm to set things right. Not that I am advocating that members of the public immediately go out and begin aiming hoses at anti-porn campaigners’ crotches – let’s leave that to the professionals. My point is, we shouldn’t assume that just because someone devotes their life to telling grown men and women what they should and shouldn’t be allowed to watch and trying to turn sex into a joyless, shameful experience for all, that means they must be hateful granite-faced pleasure-vampires whose only satisfaction in life is that brought about by denying enjoyment to others. I would never say that. I’m sure porn-haters are lovely people, who just need a bit of gentle education.

Because you see, I really think if people knew a bit more about porn, they’d change their tune. I think they’re knocking it before they’ve tried it. And this is a mistake. Nobody should ever claim to dislike pizza without eating at least one slice. Nobody should ever condemn murder unless they’ve killed a tramp or two to get a feel for it. And nobody should ever, ever claim that porn is destroying civilisation without, at least once, sitting naked on the couch and putting their tenders through their paces while watching a very unconventional job interview.

Being a woman is difficult in 2011. Sure, it’s not like we have to cram our corseted bustles through the one-way turnstile in a cholera ward any more, but still — there are umpteen thousand messages and indicators coming from countless different directions telling us how to behave. To truly embody all that womanhood is, in all its daringly independent, lip-lined, booby glory, I don’t know which bits to ignore and which bits to pay heed to. Sexy, sexy heed. Or wait — unsexy, forthright heed. Ribbed heed for my pleasure? Shiny, bouncy, radiant, fifty percent more beautiful hee — LOOK, I JUST DON’T KNOW.

My pointers (and I don’t mean my boobs, unless that sort of humour is considered enlightened and spunky) come from the media, social networking, peers, parliament and periods. Well, not so much that last one, but we all know I had to give menses a mention at some point, so let’s just get that out of the way.

The kind of sheila I am depends on which chick bits I cherry-pick from society and culture, and unlike a set of perfectly symmetrical features, they don’t all line up. See:

We all know the salutary tale about the boy who cried wolf: his repeated but baseless entreaties became so familiar to the townsfolk that they ultimately ignored his cries for help when he actually needed it.

The fable’s lesson is a simple one — if you make a habit of crying victim for no reason, people grow desensitised to your alarms and will eventually become deaf to your calls for help.

This lesson seems to be lost on some young women today: they’re quick to label any ridicule or criticism of women as sexist. But is this really misogyny? Is sexism really rife in today’s public discourse or are these women simply crying wolf?

Most people, regardless of gender, search for the reasons that underlie their disappointments and failures. We wonder whether it’s because we’re too fat, thin, young, old, plain, attractive, disciplined, spontaneous, reserved or exuberant. Did we not put enough effort into something, or did we obsess and overdo it? Did we misread a room, a person, a set of instructions? Or read too much into it?

If you make it about half way through this issue you’ll find Heath’s 1,000 or so enraged words about Gail Dines. It’s a point of view that’s sure to upset a few people, but I published it anyway, because I think the rage is completely justified.

Gail Dines has been in Australia for the last few weeks, talking about the pornification of our culture and issuing dark warnings about what this is doing to our menfolk (by the way did you know she’s written a book about it, it’s available in All Good Bookstores).

Q and A has received a fair amount of criticism of late, not least from the Tribune’s very own Justin Shaw. While much of it may have appeared fair and reasoned at the time, it can now be revealed that the writers of said criticism are terminally deluded, and seek to maliciously mislead you gentle seekers of truth.

Four months ago, a Toronto police officer told a group of students that women shouldn’t dress like sluts if they want to avoid being sexually assaulted. When he uttered those words few expected them to not only be heard around the world, but for mass protests to occur.

The freedom I pleaded for twenty years ago was the freedom to be a person, with the dignity, nobility, passion and pride that constituted personhood. Freedom to run, shout, to talk loudly and sit with your knees apart. Freedom to know and love the earth and all that swims, lies and crawls upon it. Freedom to learn and freedom to teach. Freedom from fear and freedom from hunger, freedom of speech and freedom of belief. - Germaine Greer