I’ve been getting quite a lot of questions from readers about whether I think he really raped those women, and how that effects WikiLeaks.

I’d like to say that it just might be possible for WikiLeaks to be doing a good thing in regards to the public interest, and for Julian Assange to still be an asshole.

The MSM and by extension the public have been polarising the issue in such a way as to have us believe that if Assange really did commit “surprise sex”, assault, or the various other sexual misconduct charges that have been laid against him – then WikiLeaks should cease to exist. Or alternatively, if he is innocent, then WikiLeaks remains to be a good thing.

I’m here to tell you: the two are not mutually exclusive.

Guess what? Influential people are seldom morally righteous: Bill Clinton was impeached for his affair with Monika Lewinsky – but he also signed the Brady Bill imposing a five day waiting period on handguns, developed a health care reform plan (which eventually failed), and pushed his administration on to the internet issuing Executive Order 13011 – requiring the all federal agencies to go online so that the public has easier access to information. Bob Crane used to secretly film himself with prostitutes and landed up cut into tiny little pieces for it – but nobody stopped watching Hogan’s Heroes (because making fun of Nazis is hilarious!).  Mozart was a drunk, he also composed over 600 concertos, symphonies and operas. JFK was a philandering drug addict, who just so happened to solve the Cuban Missile Crisis. George Washington had slaves, but he also led America to victory in the American Revolution, and Thomas Edison is reportedly a plagiarist but will still be remembered as the inventor of revolutionary devices such as the motion picture camera and the light bulb. Can we pause to consider for a moment that Assange might well be a sexual deviant that just so happens to be working towards the common good by leaking state secrets and ensuring government transparency?

To say that Assange is a bit of a dick would be an understatement. A self-declared “combatant”, it is clear there is more to his role in WikiLeaks than working for the public interest:  “I’m a combative person”, he told an interviewer recently. “I enjoy crushing bastards… It’s very personally deeply satisfying to me.”

When Assange was contacted by human rights groups, worried that the Afghanistan cables would identify and risk the lives of aid workers, Assange replied:

“I’m very busy and have no time to deal with people who prefer to do nothing but cover their asses. If Amnesty does nothing I shall issue a press release highlighting its refusal.”

And in The Guardian’s Q&A this week, in reply to a rather long-winded question from a “former British diplomat” – “why should we not hold you personally responsible when next an international crisis goes unresolved because diplomats cannot function?”,  Assange replied:

“If you trim the vast editorial letter to the singular question actually asked, I would be happy to give it my attention.”

In regards to the charges – there are four, but very little is known about them. There are conflicting reports bouncing around the British press at the moment, claiming that Assange   tried to take advantage of one of the women while she was sleeping, and that he forced the other’s legs apart in order to have unprotected sex with her. Equally, there are also a lot of conflicting reports in the media questioning the credibility of the claimants. One is alleged to have connections to the CIA, then there’s the matter of a troublesome blog post about how to get revenge on cheating boyfriends. Despite all of this – the truth of these allegations are not known. The only thing I will say is that it is too soon, and we do not have enough information to be drawing any conclusions. The point is – guilty or not – it doesn’t matter. These charges have nothing to do with WikiLeaks, and should not be used  conveniently to condemn the organisation which consists of five paid employees and over 800 volunteers. As if the persona of one man is enough to tarnish an entire organisation.

News With Nipples also pointed out the hypocrisy regarding the way Assange’s arrest has been treated in the press, compared to another admitted sexual offender – Roman Polanski:

“It’s not surprising that the sexual assault charges against Assange have made headlines around the world, in a way that those against, say, Roman Polanski didn’t. I don’t recall politicians calling for Polanski’s assassination for drugging and raping a child and then spending the next 33 years avoiding countries where he might get caught. Just to be clear: one is a high-profile spokesman for a whistleblower website who has been accused of sexually assaulting two adults. The other is an award-winning film director who admitted drugging and anally raping a child. So why was one just a news brief in the world section and the other The Most Important Story Of The Week?”

Roman Polanksi actually admitted to the rape – (so I’m not sure why so many people rushed to his defence) – yet after thirty years, there has been no conviction. We haven’t yet heard all the evidence regarding the Assange charges, but the world is ready to condemn him.

We have no idea of knowing whether these charges are real, or whether there is enough evidence to convict Assange. Let’s try and remember however, – a guilty charge doesn’t mean he is guilty, likewise a not-guilty charge doesn’t mean he’s not guilty – it simply means there wasn’t enough evidence to convict. If Assange is guilty – then he deserves to go to jail. But regardless, neither verdict should negate  the benefits WikiLeaks has provided by trying to ensure a more open and transparent society.

For the first time in years the cynicism has lifted, and once again interest in global political affairs has peaked. We have seen a global defiance of national defence organisations around the world, and have witnessed the spectacular failure of governments to stem the tide of classified information being made publicly available to anyone with an internet connection.

As I write this, over 500 mirror websites have been set up by internet users in response to the attempts of governments and companies to bring down the site. (You can access a comprehensive list of all the mirror sites here).

Wikileaks only grows stronger with every threat that has been made to the website, and to the life and livelihood of Julian Assange.

^Julian Assange on why the world needs Wikileaks.

Let’s take a look at all the attempts that have been made to bring down Wikileaks thus far:

- Amazon booted Wikileaks off its servers after Joe Lieberman pled for organisations to withdraw their support for the group.

- In an attempt to cripple Wikileaks financially, Paypal blocked financial transactions to the site so that users could no longer donate money directly to the website.

- A short time later software company, Tableau, removed graphs which categorised the cables by country and classification which were being hosted on their servers (ironically the data contained within the tableau software could only be accessed by PC users – so the loss only effected 50% of the internet community).

- On Friday the company which hosted wikileaks.org took the group offline.

- The French industry minister Eric Besson is examining ways of bannning Wikileaks in France. The company hosting the site, OHV, referred the matters to the courts. There has been no verdict thus far (but it didn’t stop the site mysteriously going offline again). The site was quickly rerouted through another Swedish server by the Swedish Pirate Party, and Wikileaks was back online again in a matter of hours.

- Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was arrested in Britain last night on charges of rape, molestation, sexual harrassment and “surprise sex” – (there’s an obscure Swedish law which provides Swedish citizens with legal recourse if their sexual partners do not use sexual protection without their consent). The circumstances relating to the charges are dubious at best. It is important to note that Assange’s lawyer says Assange was never read the charges, and this is a clear violation of his rights. I’m not sure there is enough evidence to convict Assange, moreover, what country has the jurisdiction to charge Assange for a crime which does not exist outside of Sweden?

- It has also been discovered that twitter is allegedly censoring the discussion of Wikileaks by excluding the term #Wikileaks from its trending topics, preventing people from knowing the true scope of discussion about Wikileaks unless they’re seeking it out independently  – although Matt Graves, the Communications Director of twitter, denies this. Bubbloy has published a very comprehensive and detailed analysis of the number of times the term #Wikileaks has been used on twitter, and the number of tweets relating to Wikileaks and found that the incidences by far exceeded any of the trending topics that were on twitter at the time the article was written. It’s exclusion from twitter trends is suspicious at best. I recommend you read the article in full for a more detailed analysis than I can include here.

- MasterCard and Visa have withdrawn their financial support of Wikileaks – however their cards may still be used to donate to racist organisations such as the Klu Klux Klan – an atrocious irony.

- Swiss Bank have used a legal loophole to freeze Wikileaks bank accounts. Apparently Assange used Geneva as a fake country of origin in his application and this excuse was enough to justify closing the account.

The attempts to bring down Wikileaks have only strengthened the organisations resolve (and the resolve of the interwebs) to keep the site online, and to keep the flow of confidential information open. Twitter users started surfacing such as “WikiAdvocate” and others like it – encouraging users to set up mirror sites in order to keep Wikileaks online.

The tally count as it stands now (according to the tally site Leaky Links) is 1097 mirrors. 142 of them are experiencing Denial of Service (DNS) attacks, 821 are online and 128 are up-to-date with 960 cables. (Thank you to @erinwye for providing me with this information).

The world will watch with interest the events which follow Assange’s arrest. It is understood that his legal council plan to resist extradition charges for fear he will be handed over to the Americans who are considering prosecution after it was reported that NATO has drawn up secret plans to defend the Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and Poland against any Russian threat. A Wikileaks spokesperson has already stated that they will continue to leak cables despite Assange’s arrest.

The world should take note. Though they have not yet released the “insurance cable” containing the remaining unpublished cables, (which is rumored to include cables relating to Guantanamo Bay), Wikileaks have already sent the encrypted file to people all over the world. A 256 digit code is required to decode the cables.

Arresting or assasinating Julian Assange will only make him a martyr for his cause. Neither arrests, nor shutting down Wikileaks will cease the flow of classified information around the web. If Wikileaks is eventually shut down, if Assange is convicted or killed,  hundreds of other websites and people will rise to take its place.  All journalists and anyone who believes in freedom of the press and freedom of information should be supporting Assange by creating more mirror sites for Wikileaks. Never again should the state withhold secrets that relate to the public interest. It is clear now that we cannot trust governments to act in our interest. Only through a free press, organisations that are prepared to risk closure and people who are willing to risk death and prosecution can information truly be free.

To quote the US High Court ruling on the Pentagon Papers “only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government”.

We cannot stem the tide. We should not be resisting the awesome power of the interwebs. It is the only guarantor of democracy.

It’s of NZ Girl editor Tee Twyford justifying the “I’ve got a lovely pair” campaign. Watch right to the end. I do like the whole ‘I’ve got my head cut off’ line. sigh. And particular the noises from the camera guy. “Titties!”.

The reason why I want you to watch this is because it seems like the NZ Girl editor Tee Twyford and GM Jenene Freer haven’t actually had a sit down and talked about what they’re going to say to critics.

While Twyford states – NZ Girl is a big website etc on the video, Jenene has said they’re only a small group of three women. That they’re “overestimated”. Which one is it?

My favourite quote from the video is, “One of our most popular articles is ‘how to get perky boobs’”. Sigh.

She says NZGirl do not have ads on the ‘boobs’ pages – yet essentially ignores the fact that the link goes to the main page which does have paid ads.

She talks about ‘a spike in traffic’ and that’s it. ‘We’re not a small site doing this in a bid to get attention’. She flat out denies the campaign has not brought in the most traffic they’ve ever had, and yet Jenene said on Twitter: “google anlytcs check: yesterday was biggest day in our 11 year history.”

They say they will ‘respond and evolve’ as a site in terms of pics going on porn sites. They talk about things they will do – meaning they STILL have not done anything about it. These are things they should have done before they launched the campaign (and maybe they could have actually checked to make sure they had support from the NZ Breast Cancer Foundation – instead of just saying they did when they didn’t*). On Wednesday night Jenene didn’t seem too concerned about the shots – she spammed anyone asking about it with “you mean people can right click & save them?? No kidding. I reckon all the girls aren’t stupid, no matter what you think”. That was before she seemed to imply I might have something to do with posting the photos on Xtube: “what a set up for your opinion….” she said after I asked what she was going to do about the photos on Xtube. She’s since taken down that Tweet. Lucky I retweeted it huh?

All in all it’s odd that Jenene runs a cash for clicks company and yet claims to not understand that the campaign will bring traffic to the site because it’s a bunch of headless breasts. As QOT said: “Jenene Freer, an editor at NZGirl, is director at a company called Actual Dialogue which among other things offers pay-per-click advertising tools. The Ideologically Impure betting agency will now be taking odds on whether this counts as completely amoral self-marketing, a high-faluting “social experiment”, or a fantastic own goal.”

*When I asked Jenene why she said they had the support of NZBCF when they didn’t she said “nothing like being misquoted by the media…..” When I asked if she was misquoted she said she was “significantly paraphrased”. There was more to and fro-ing and she finally said “I’m happy to give you the full run down – but not over twitter. 140 characters not enough. Email me if you want to discuss”. Funny I didn’t think you needed 140 characters to state whether it is true of false that you got support from NZBCF.

Really, I’m amazed at this point anyone doubts that this is anything other than a marketing ploy. I was sent an email today with a Market Intelligence Trend Report showing their monthly traffic. They’ve been losing readers pretty consistently. No wonder they pulled out all the stops to pull people in.

Links:

Pickled Think – Titties, Cancer and Consent

Scuba Nurse – Get your Tits out for the Girls; the educational version and We are on the same side.

A Lump in the road – Insensitive

The Hand Mirror – Compassion FAIL

QoT – There’s only one reason to care about breast cancer! and “self image issues, daddy issues and religious indoctrination issues”.

Rachel Hansen – Should we be asking girls to “get your tits out for the girls”.

If you have blogged about this issue, please share your links in the comments.

UPDATE:
Jenene has again implied on Twitter that I put the NZGirl photos on a porn website. When I first told her about the photos I assumed she would immediately contact the site and tell them that they were not allowed to use the images. I thought she would try to protect the women she had encouraged to post photos of their breasts. Sadly, she didn’t do that. Instead she implied I put the pics up. Her response to my tweet was: “what a set up for your opinion….” She deleted that tweet after numerous people said it was uncalled for. Yesterday a woman tweeted her about the porn shots. This was the exchange:

(I’m not going to name the woman) said this: “hey i was just wondering if youd heard about some of the photos being put up on an amatuer porn site?”

and “im not having a go because i support the campaign whole heartedly, its just that my pic was one of them “

To which @jenene replied: “mine too hon. An I take one guess on who submitted them. Anything to prove a point eh?” and “they’ve stooped to all sorts of low”.

I got a flood or DMs and emails about this. And I know people again called out Jenene on it. She said to QoT:

@qot_nz at no point would we ever dream of calling names. Our side doesn’t do that. We respect varying opinions & view points

And yet – she’s doing exactly that. I said to her on Twitter: Who is this tweet about then “@Jenene: “An I take one guess on who submitted them. Anything to prove a point eh?” – who is your guess?” – she would not say.

She then tweeted me: “how you’ve managed to single yourself out of that post is the part I am confused about. #itsnotallaboutyou” which is funny since she also said: ” I’m not going to get into a name calling argument with you. I respect you have an opinion & you are entitled to voice it.”

It’s all rather silly. I am not deeply upset about the accusation. I just think it’s sad. I wish she was doing more to protect the ‘girls’ aka women she put on her site. She could be spending her time contacting porn sites and getting the images removed instead of bitching on Twitter and blaming everyone else for her fuck ups.

This article was originally published at Boganette.com.

1. So You Think You Can Can-Can

Spin off from So You Think You Can Dance that is exclusively devoted to the now rather obscure dance style established in the late 19th century. If show gets low ratings make contestants live like they’re in the 19th century like they did in that Simpsons episode.

To succeed must: Feature the intolerable Baz Luhrmann as a guest judge.

2. Big Mother

Spin off from Big Brother, follows various Australian mothers who are attempting to conduct comprehensive surveillance of their kids. In the series finale the audience votes for the mother they feel most effectively followed her kids and steered them away from danger. The winner is crowned ‘Big Mother’.

To succeed must: Have publicity deal with A Current Affair and/or Today Tonight.

3. At The End Of The Day

A show that follows cleaners who work late into the night. Features before and after shots of the building they cleaned and the audience votes for who was the best cleaner. In the series finale the winning cleaner gets to become the face of a well-known detergent for years to come.

To succeed must: Feature incessant amounts of product placement.

4. Fair Dinkum

This show features politician’s awkwardly hanging around various Australian working families who have been exposed as doing it tough. At the end of each family’s story of doing it tough a big red FAIR DINKUM graphic smashes into the screen with over the top sound effects.

To succeed must: Be hosted by Mark Latham or Kochie.

5. FML*

Similar to Fair Dinkum but aimed at the MTV audience. The show features 16-25 year olds whose lives suddenly take a mild turn for the worse that is blown out of all proportion. The audience SMS’s what they think the best FML moment is and the winner gets a prize-pack featuring a large supply of some sort of horrible energy drink from a sponsor of the show.

To succeed must: Ensure that people featured in the show say the word “like” a minimum of five times per sentence.

Winner gets to do a music video with The Situation.

*visit here for FML definition if necessary

“Instead of harnessing the different qualities of men and women to energise us, we are striving to make men and women equal,” says Asher.

Asher says that while more women fight to shatter the glass ceiling men are become less like men. (I assume you mean straight men, right Asher?) And by “men” I can only assume Asher means the emotionally repressed morning whiskey drinking silent types that grace the screens of Mad Men. The ones that make witty racist and sexist jokes in between neglecting their children and cheating on their wives.

According to Asher women taking on more responsibility and opportunities in the workplace is making men feel a tad uncomfortable. It’s just that having women in positions of power is so confusing. It just comes with all these new rules. How can men possibly report to The Boobs? Having a male CEO is just easier, there’s no possibility of getting distracted by his boobs in board meetings, and the risk of making an inappropriate remark about his clothing is remote. The implication that the pursuit of equality = a reduction in masculinity is impossible to quantify. The threat of emasculation is hardly justification to cease the attempts to achieve workplace equality, there are plenty of steps that can be taken to help ease men through the “difficult” transition.

Asher continues by citing “renowned Australian neurosurgeon Charlie Teo” stating that he “believes men and women have different roles “set not only by society but set by physiology””.

“The current trend is for dads to be more hands on. But for all we know it may be proven in a hundred years time that that may be a negative thing for the upbringing of children,” he said recently on Seven’s Sunday Night program.”

(Well if Channel Seven says it it must be true).

“They’re there to be protective. A man has to have a good job; he has to do well at school so he can get a good job and support his family. A woman has to be loving and caring,” he said.

Wow. A renowned scientist. Well if a scientist says it, it can’t be wrong. You know a world renowned scientist  once said that African American people were less intelligent than white people based on the circumference of their head. Yep. His name was Dr Samuel Morton and it turns out that his hypothesis was completely wrong and his research was littered with errors, fudged data and miscalculations [1]. It didn’t stop him from telling people it was true, though – and it didn’t stop people from believing it. Never let the truth get in the way of a good argument. Just because a scientist says it doesn’t make it so. I’d also like to see what evidence Dr Teo has to support his hypothesis, but this proof is strangely absent from Asher’s article. I suppose we best take her word for it.

“As a 29-year-old single woman, many of my peers don’t appreciate my traditionalist views.”

Yes, it’s Asher’s age, and relationship status that is troubling to her feminist peers, not her self-loathing, anti-feminist views.

Asher goes on to say that feminism has come at the “expense of femininity, chivalry and attributes of the opposite sex that instinctively attract us to each other”.

I’m not sure why Asher is so concerned about the shortage of sexually attractive women – is there some drought I’m not aware of? Asher is not only confusing the idea of feminism and femininity (I’m going to invoke the Michael Richard’s defense and say some of my closest friends are feminists but they also shave their legs, wear dresses, and aren’t opposed to wearing red lipstick once in a while), she is also imposing her own definition of femininity on to other women. Furthermore, it is not this narrowly defined term of “femininity” that attracts men to women, women to men, women to women, and men to men – it’s chemistry – that certain Je Ne Sais Quoi – he likes the way she flicks her hair when she’s nervous, she likes the way he smells. It can take anything to attract people to each other and I guarantee if you put 100 couples in a room together and asked them what attracted them to each other no two answers would be the same. Sure, men like boobs and women like a nice pair of arms, but if attraction came down to just physical attributes, only super models would be breeding.

Asher references an excerpt from David Dieda’s book “The Way of the Superior Man” (doesn’t this say it all?) describing the attraction between men and women as “sexual polarity”, saying it needs “varying degrees of strength and vulnerability.”

“This force of attraction is the dynamism that often disappears in modern relationships. If you want real passion, you need a ravisher and a ravishee. Otherwise you just have two buddies who decide to rub genitals in bed,” writes Dieda.

Rubbing genitals in bed? David really knows how to turn a woman on. This is just flat out social Darwinism! I’ve mentioned this in several previous posts so I will try not to go into too much detail here but I really tire of the idea that there is a “norm” when it comes to sexual relations. If we cracked open the taboo of sex and really put it out in the open – it’s likely that we would discover there is no such thing as “normal”. That’s the thing with the dominant gender paradigm – it ignores anything that doesn’t fit into its nice cozy definition of what it means to be a man. In reality not all men want to be the aggressive male dominating the vulnerable woman who isn’t really that into it, and not all women want to be submissive. I know this may be hard for Asher to understand – but some men don’t want women with diminished sex drives. If that concept is hard for Asher to wrap her head around, this next one will blow her mind: some women might even have a more elevated libido than their partners! I know – shocking right? Needless to say I certainly do not give Dieda’s book as much crediblity as Asher does. To me Deida is just another chauvinist masquerading as a qualified expert telling people what they ought to be doing in bed, simplifying sexual chemistry down to a basic equation of: submissive woman + aggressive dominant man + erection = GREAT SEX. And if that doesn’t make for a healthy sexual relationship I don’t know what does.

Asher quotes a comment made by James May in a promotion for his new show called “Man Lab” about men lacking basic survival skills like wiring a plug, putting up shelves or countersinking screws. First of all – it’s illegal to do your own wiring in this country, but I digress. If you’re not convinced by Asher’s tricky use of statements of opinion from celebrities to booster statements of “fact” without considering what ulterior motives that celebrity might have, then maybe a reference to evolution will do the trick:

“For thousands of years men were providers and protectors and women nurturers,” writes Asher. “Evolution provided each with the physical and emotional assets to do these jobs well.”

It has never occurred to her that the changes in gender roles are themselves a part of evolution.

“Well into the last century the husband provided his family with a home and food and this sole responsibility gave him a sense of power and purpose. And women didn’t feel pressure to justify their existence with a career. They were proud home makers and mothers.”

I resent Asher’s implication that women were shamed into joining the workforce. It couldn’t possibly be that they were bored. The desire to contribute to society, to learn a skill, hell – to learn – is apparently out of the realm of possibility for Ms Asher.

“Now, two thirds of Australian families with dependent children have two incomes. Women are more independent, and consequently they are less dependent on men.”

I’m not sure why Asher wants us to believe that less people staying together out of financial obligation is a negative. What good would come from two people who don’t love each other staying together because of money? That sets an excellent example for their children, let alone the guilt, sadness and anxiety that results from growing up in a loveless household.

Asher states that women feel forced to rejoin the workforce after having children to avoid the stigma of being a housewife. Because the stigma of being a housewife is the only reason women want to join the workforce. It has never once occurred to Asher that women actually enjoy working, that some women find their job more enjoyable, or as enjoyable as parenthood. There’s no mention that some men would prefer to stay home with their kids given the chance, and that many regret missing the opportunity to form close bonds with their children because the gender pay inequity has forced them to be the main breadwinner. There is absolutely no shame in being a stay at home Mom or Dad. The pursuit of gender equality isn’t designed to make housewives feel ashamed, it’s to give both genders the choice to stay home, or the choice to work. Breaking the glass ceiling would change the family dynamic for the better: It would mean men and women could have the opportunity to share their work and family time equally and neither parent would feel as though they had to sacrifice their relationship with their children or each other in order to cover the cost of living.

“Women are also suppressing traditional feminine characteristics like elegance and fragility to take on high power careers and step into male dominated roles.”

Another subjective opinion put forward as a (completely unverified) statement of fact, associating power with masculinity. If Asher wants to stay home with the children, whilst taking on vaguely feminine characteristics (which I assume involves wearing pearls in the kitchen), more power to her, but the idea that power can only be a masculine trait is insulting and incredibly sexist. So too is the idea that women can only be found to be attractive for their feminine features and never for their intellect – in which case Asher is completely contradicting herself by writing this article. It’s because of the feminist movement that Asher could even publish her article on The Punch. Asher should just put away the laptop, shut down that twitter account, put on a pair of heels and start looking for a tower she can be rescued from – we wouldn’t want the men folk to feel insecure.

“However, a British survey of 2000 men revealed one-third of men would prefer to be the sole breadwinning traditional father while another quarter would like to be the main breadwinner with their spouse working only part-time.”

Lies, damned lies and statistics. We are not told what questions were asked in the survey. We’re also not told how these men answered these questions, or their reasons behind it. It could be that the men that took the survey wish they had more time to spend with their partners, or they wish that both parents didn’t have to work such long hours whilst leaving their children in child care or with babysitters. Without more information these statistics are meaningless.

“Instead, men are sporting aprons, doing their own ironing and pushing trolleys down supermarket aisles – roles that don’t exactly exude manliness”.

Men doing their own ironing? Is the world coming apart at the seams? And pushing trolleys – well that’s just downright humiliating. A man couldn’t possibly draw pride from taking more responsibility for the “family unit” (as Asher refers to it). Apparently the workplace and the bedroom are purely masculine domains and as women seek to conquer both, men have run out of things to feel proud of. Apparently there’s no pride to be drawn from being an emotionally attentive partner and father, there’s no satisfaction to be gained from cooking a meal, or helping with the laundry – or doing anything to reduce the stress of your overworked partner – these are things only women can feel proud of.

“It seems marriage is becoming less about being dependent on each other and more about living independent lives. But is it making couples happier? Now, 40 percent of Australian marriages are predicted to end in divorce.”

(Note the use of the word “predicted”). With less financial dependence, and more focus on emotional compatibility could it be that more couples are becoming free to realise they’re just not compatible? We might find in the future that less people get married, but more married people stay together. Or even that more people are married and more people stay together because they are free from letting financial circumstances dictate their relationship choices.

This entire article is a case of cognitive dissonance – Asher comes across certain statistics that she feels somehow relate to her general worldview and uses them to bolster her argument without citing any real evidence at all that it is the case. It’s like saying two plus two equals a sack of potatoes. Relationships fall apart for a variety of reasons. Feminism isn’t responsible for divorce any more than women were responsible for male infidelity back in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and so on. Infidelity was reportedly higher but seemingly more acceptable back in the “golden days” than it is today – I’d be interested in finding out what reason Asher attributes to this – were women not feminine enough back in day either?

“Would we be happier if more of us accept that men and women are not equal?”

No. We would be happier if stopped looking at things through gendered perspectives and realised all people are different, and that all people deserve the equal rights and opportunities. We’d be happier if all people were equal.

[1] Michael, J.S (1988) “A New Look at Morton’s Craniological Research” Current Anthropology 29: 349-354.

For those not familiar with the Wonkleys, they are like the Walkleys – except without the prestige, glamour and cash prize.

The awards are voted for by you the consumer because it is your opinions that matter more than any other (certainly more than ours).

As an impartial news and opinion source, we would never want to influence your vote… but if you were to vote for us, we would never turn down the opportunity to bask in the loving embrace of our readers – being the ego-maniacal-fame-whores that we are.

If you were, hypothetically, looking for a qualified recommendation on who to vote for here are some other intelligent funny people and blogs who deserve your votes more than we do:

Ben Pobjie has been nominated in the category of best political journalist.

Kim Powell in the category of best amateur political blogger.

News with Nipples for the best amateur political blog category.

Ash Ghebranious has been nominated in the best political blogger category.

Julie Posetti has been nominated in the category of best journalist on twitter.

And Phony Tony Jones has been nominated as one of the best fake twitter accounts.

These are just a few of many talented people who have been nominated, so if you’re not going to vote for Social Scapegoat, then you should vote for any of these fine people. We are honoured (and slightly ashamed) to even be on the same list as these clearly superior minds.

Voting is now open for this year’s award categories, you can cast your vote here.

Voting closes on Sunday the 12^th of December.

The disgruntled malcontents at Social Scapegoat want to thank every person who nominated us for a Wonkley. We don’t know who you are, but if we did, we would deliver beer and chocolate covered strawberries to your door for a week. (We’re classy like that).

Seriously, it’s wonderful to be receiving such positive feedback from our readers and we appreciate your support. We love hearing from you – in emails and the comments section and we’re taking on board all the feedback we receive.

I want to express a huge thank you to all my fellow Scapegoats for their hard work over these last three years: Roxanne Bauer, Myles Harris, Preston Towers, Chase Stevens, Evan Hughes, Nick Porter, Michael Brull, Boganette, Lazy American Correspondent, Micah McGown, Helen Davidson, Ian Rakowski, Paul Christiansen and Will Jameson. All of these people work hard to create insightful and original content and are dedicated to  increasing the standard of debate. Without you, this couldn’t have been possible.

To our readers – you may have noticed there has been an article drought these last few days. After a long and busy year we are taking a much needed break for a few days. We promise more content will be online shortly.

Thank you again to all our readers for your support, your RTs, your banter, and your involvement.

You make it worth it.

- Claire Connelly
Founder and Editor of Social Scapegoat

We had the temporary departure of one of twitter’s (and one of my) most beloved people, after he made some worrisome generalisations that attracted the ire of women everywhere (except of course Miranda Divine).

It turns out that the comments that Stephen Fry made were quoted out of context by a niche publication who went on to sell his comments to other mainstream publications (including – surprise, surprise The Daily Mail) who proceeded to make mince meat of of him.

Now, I’m not going to get in to what was said, we’ve already dealt with that. But I want to take the opportunity to defend Boganette for publishing an excellent article that attracted the hostility of what seemed like the entire interwebs for having the audacity to question anything that his Fryness deemed fit to utter to a journalist.

Boganette, bless her cotton socks, has copped more than eyeful – and earful of abuse from Fryofiles everywhere for daring to question the brilliance that is Stephen Fry. These trolls – (yes, I call them trolls because not one of them dared to put their names to such abuse, let alone publish them publicly), had no problem offloading their vitriol onto Boganette,  failing to recognise the irony that they were adding to the very abuse they claimed to be offended by. His Fryness is a big boy, and I’m sure he is capable of defending himself – and he has.  For this I am glad.

Now that I’m done reveling in our general superiority to people who can’t spell, let alone string a proper sentence together, we (finally) reach a fairly serious point:

While I am glad to discover that Stephen Fry had been quoted out of context, I am not sorry that Boganette questioned the validity of his now debunked comments, nor am I sorry for trying to verify the original quote.

If anything I am glad that even Stephen Fry – master of everything that is brilliant, comparable to none – still is occasionally treated with a healthy dose of skepticism.

To me it is a sign of a healthy democracy.

No one should be above criticism. Not even Fry.

In his blog, where he sets the record straight, Fry says “I suppose the keenest disappointment I feel about the past week and the almost incredible weirdnesses it has brought in its train is the idea that there are people out there who actually swallow the notion that I am so stupid as to believe that women don’t enjoy sex.”

Fry adds that he took a temporary hiatus from twitter to avoid knowing anything more about the situation – and wait for everything to blow over. Fair enough. That is his prerogative.

But I would be remiss if I didn’t try and point out that while the folks at The Daily Mail were happy to publish the quotes without verification, we on twitter were punished (more by the Fryophiles than Fry, might I add) for actually trying to get to the bottom of the silliness.

I suspect the biggest criticism of this whole debacle will be about how the twittersphere and blogosphere tend to make mountains out of molehills  – a statement I greatly disagree with. In this instance, I believe that (contrary to what a friend of mine tweeted today), that (trolls aside), for the most part people were actually trying to tackle the issues they believe in, rather than focusing on what people say.

In his blog, Fry wrote “I had fondly imagined that in a free and open society one might be allowed to play with such ideas in a reasonable spirit of debate, but it seems not”. Contrary to what Fry would have us believe – people exercised their right to debate – not by keeping schtum – but by writing about it, and tweeting about it, and talking about it, and asking questions, disagreeing, counter-arguing and so on and so forth. All of these things are adding to the conversation not silencing it, (even if some parts of the conversations are stupider than others).  The people and publications that are trying to silence the argument by having the final word they’re not at all entitled to are the ones who publish unverified comments (that were made during a conversation Fry believed to be off the record) and expect their audience to accept the quote at face value. Clearly, that didn’t happen.

This is debate at it’s finest.

And I will never criticise any of our writers for trying to get to the heart of any issue – unlike the Daily Mail who were happy to take quotes at face value and publish them without providing Stephen the Right of Reply.

This is an important distinction that needs to be made.

Could it possibly be that the reason the blogosphere and twittersphere have copped so much flak over this is that they’re doing the jobs the press get paid to do, but aren’t?

Just sayin’.

I did not think it could get any worse for the NRL or lets face it, Australian Sport after the past couple of years. I was wrong.

However I am not going to focus on this incident as everyone else is, I am instead going to focus on the comments made by Joel’s manager, Jim Banaghan “The fact that someone has sought to compound the situation further by the use of social media only adds to the trauma but Joel accepts that it is his actions alone that are at fault.”

Social Media. We all know its power, we all know how quickly news can spread online. So why, in the age of sharing and engagement do professional sporting leagues, allow traditions such as “Mad Monday” continue?

Someone always has a camera phone, someone will most likely txt the photos, someone will put the photos online and boom, it explodes to millions of people and it will NEVER be forgotten, erased or lived down.

Let do so analysis on yesterdays Monaghan fisco in the online world:

Twitter:

On the 4th of November ‘Monaghan’ trended worldwide.

The photo that I saw early in the day came from @andrewbolt ‘s twitpic account. This is of course not the real Andrew Bolt but the infamous fake account that has been in and out of the press since it began.

Up to this moment (12:15am 5th of Nov), that pic has 58,383 views.

Tweetreach.com analysis: Tweetreach can analyse a maximum of 1500 tweets, so I am only able to give you a snapshot on spread of the incident.

From the 4th of November 7:15pm (and it started circulating on Twitter the day before) the Monaghan incident was exposed to 497,232 people and was directly interacted with by 232,846 people.

@andrewbolt ‘s tweets reached 38,425 alone.

Once again, these figures are based on 1500 tweets from a time period over 12 hours since it went viral. It’s safe to say Twitter users have pushed this to millions.

Google: The query “Joel Monaghan” returned 34,100 results from the past 24 hours.

Facebook: I am unable to get stats regarding news on twitter, however, my news feed is having a field day.

YouTube: I am a YouTube addict and subscribe to many channels. One of my favourites is Phil De Franco. Phil does a news show called “The Phil De Franco Show” where Phil reports on the news he finds of interest, in an insightful humorous light.

Phil is extremely popular on YouTube and throughout social media. He is a long way from being the most subscribed on YouTube but certainly has influence.

I have noticed quite a few sending the Monaghan fiasco on to him. If Phil decides to put it on the show, it will be viewed worldwide by his many viewers. How many?

Some Phil De Franco Stats:

YouTube Subscribers: 1,336,494

Channel views: 51,031,877

Total Video Views: 440,297,571

Twitter followers: @PhillyD 150,437

Facebook Fans: 251,297

I could go on with figures all night, however the point I want to make is, when will those in the spotlight realise the social media is here to stay.

We can see above just how quickly an incident will spread and how far it can spread.

Gone are the days where the txt you send around to the guys will stay there. Gone are the days where “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” is relevant.

I understand the need to let off steam after a long season, but does Mad Monday in its current format, after reading the above figures sound like a good idea or does it sound negligent?

Yes everyone has a right to privacy, but in this era, no one has privacy, especially not those who are in the public eye.

Everyone can be a journalist to an extent. Most have the technology to do so.

When Australian Sport and its athletes, celebrities etc. But more importantly, the professional leagues like the NRL, open their eyes and wake up, they will see that not just Australia, but the world is watching them, always.

I would like to congratulate you on your success Monday night. With your successful ‘attack’ on The Great Leader John Winston Howard (GLJWH) we have successfully made the Left Wing Progressive Barbarian Scum look not only crazy but like pansies. I must say that missing GLJWH was a genius idea and I assure you that you will be commended.

The damage you have wrought upon the Progressive brand is unimaginable, you have reinforced every stereotype that we have spent the last century creating, our comrades in the News ltd. Newspapers will be able to use your example for years to come, indeed our allies in the US have used similar incidents to effectively marginalise the Progressive movement, preventing it from entering the mainstream thought.

Fortuitously the accursed ABC displayed a ‘tweet’ calling for someone to throw a shoe at The Great Leader moments before you initiated the attack. The foolishness of the ABC and our planned attack will only lend additional weight to our myth of Left-Wing bias. A small but substantial victory in our efforts to privatise the horrid public broadcaster.

David Hicks appearing was unexpected, thankfully your actions have diverted attention from the fact The Great Leader utterly failed to answer the question in any meaningful way. Indeed without you deliberately missing, people may have noticed this. Not only that but there may have been some sort of outcry over his admission he doubted the damage of forcefully removing children from their parents causes, -a rare slip on his behalf- your ‘attack’ distracted from this too.

The attack has served to destroy any chance of having intelligent and reasoned debate over any issues that were raised during The Great Leader’s appearance on Questions and Answers, preventing the best opportunity for discussion of the Great Leaders twelve years of Governance and destruction of the fabric of Egalitarian Australia.

Peter Gray your efforts on our behalf will not go unrewarded nor will they fade from memory. You have served the cause well and shall be commended, we thank you for your efforts and wish you the best in your future en-devours for the cause of Conservatism.

- CS

Many people in Australia seem to think that because Aboriginal people seem to get ‘more government handouts and benefits than white Australians’ or because ‘they get preferential treatment in many areas of society … over other Australians because supposedly they are a minority’, there is no inequality.

Those arguments are simplistic, absurd and inexcusably ignorant of Australian history.

Yes, some Aboriginals do get benefits – health care concessions, lower interest rates on home loans, and so on – that most of us don’t, but so what? Most Aboriginals are in a very different situation to the rest of us, particularly us white Australians. We don’t tend to be discriminated against when seeking employment. We generally live longer and healthier lives. We don’t have a history of being oppressed.

Frankly, Aboriginal Australians are among the most disadvantaged indigenous people in the world. I defy anyone to prove otherwise. While it’s true that they live in a civilised, technologically advanced, democratic country, for much of their history since colonisation they haven’t been treated like Australian citizens (they’re still not recognised in the Constitution) and have been left to live in third world conditions.

There’s a line in a Blue King Brown song that says something like, “White man holds the key to black man’s identity”. I used to disagree with this, thinking that Aboriginals needed to stop allowing themselves to be victims. I was wrong. It’s white Australia that is treating them like victims, like children, thinking that we know best and they should do what we tell them to; that they should assimilate and be white like us (if only in lifestyle).

There are no simple solutions, and assimilation or segregation is not the answer. Continuing to throw money at the problems, many of which white Australians have created, will not repair 200-plus years of damage.

But we can start with trying to understand their culture; to understand why they may be reluctant to sever a traditional connection with their land in order to find employment in our larger towns or cities; to understand the challenges they face every day, even the ones who do move away or have long since lived in our cities; to understand the underlying causes behind the violence and the drinking; and to accept that we have a responsibility to help them so that one day they don’t need special programs or benefits to enable them to simply live.

So to the haters out there: No, Madeleine didn’t have a political agenda and she wasn’t after more money for Aboriginals. She was after better understanding of what her people face every day. She was asking for all of us to help her people stand up and overcome Aboriginal disadvantage, to take some responsibility for helping Indigenous Australians where successive governments have failed.

She was asking us to be the Australians we like to think we are, but too often are not.

(This post was originally published at Discord and Dissent).

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