speaking fearlessly

A quick post. I was thinking yesterday, seeing the news about America's (Trump's?) strikes on Syria, why don't more people speak against war? Why are our countries led by mindless fools using weapons to resolve disputes? I'm sure most people - the ones I know at least - don't support violence as a means to resolve disputes and specifically teach their children not to do that (although my grandsons LOOOVE playing with pretend guns). So why do we allow our leaders to do that? I know I've protested so many times against war for so many years. I guess the culmination, which I've probably written about on the other blog, and have certainly mentioned on Twitter, was the anti-Iraq war protest, the big one in Melbourne, with 200,000 people, in 2003 I think. The only protest on which all three of my kids have joined me, and one hich was totally and blatantly ignored by John Howard. The majority of people - not just in Melbourne, but in Australia as I recall - ...

So the title of this post is based on the old gag 'vote early, vote often'. Which is related in a way to the  old adage 'it's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease' - or whatever it was. And for bloggers, if you want to be read, you have to update regularly and often. But it's time-consuming. I guess you can link to a particular news article and express your views on that, which many bloggers do, but that's never seemed enough to me. On the other hand, it's time-consuming to create a blog post from scratch. I could put my tweets here, and try to add enough context to make a narrative? Maybe. So here's copies of  recent tweets and I'll try to add the context - later? Backwards in time: - Paul Keating was a funny guy and clever guy, but he was a patriarchal guy. Super was NEVER designed for women and i… twitter.com/i/web/status/9… - Lot of commentators missing the point on #StormyDaniels. It’s not just ‘tawdry’, or shallow,  or whatever, ...

just saw this under an article about why there aren't more women in public office " [commenter 1] Here's the thing. Women are inherently emotional creatures. Men tend to look at things from the logical stand point,  less often being caught up in the emotional charge of a situation. No ones stopping women from being politicians... [ commenter 2 in r eply ] here's the thing. shut the fuck up." Which made me laugh out loud.  This is what I mean - sometimes speaking uncivilly is the exact right response.  The first comment is apparently civil, but it's actually patronising and sexist, and reinforces the weight of hundreds of years of patriarchy and misogyny. The second is 'uncivil' but it's spot on.  (Comes from https://other98.com/cant-unsee-looks-like-photoshop-men-politics/ - which was a widely circulated meme about Photoshopping the men out of photos of political and boardroom meetings. Worth revisiting or checking out ...

This is about my confidentiality clause and why I've decided to breach it.* Long story but I made an equal opportunity complaint against the then Labor Premier and Deputy Premier, and the Premier's chief of staff, in 1999. I was dismissed from my job as researcher/adviser in early 1999 and I lodged the complaint later that year, after the Victorian election in which Labor formed government. The case was eventually settled before hearing about two years later. I agreed to a confidentiality clause, although I didn't want to. I've decided to breach it because of the #MeToo movement. Confidentiality clauses are an important reason why sexual harassment and similar issues have been hushed up for so long. I've often pushed the boundaries with mine, but until now I haven't formally and publicly breached it. The fact that I'm nearly at retirement and fairly financially secure also makes it easier to do so now. Theoretically I could be sued. I don't think I ...

I changed the blog name from 'speaking uncivilly' to 'speaking fearlessly' because I think that expresses better what I'm trying to do. There's complex issues about honesty vs truth, I'll try to explore it later but I have to go to the community garden now. 1.58 pm Back from community garden but have to do some gardening here now! So quick thoughts. A lot of people are pretty direct on twitter, including some academics eg Ben Eltham. But I think a lot of us feel constrained. It’s like someone said in the research project (the other blog) - political issues and evidence based issues are seen as different. If it’s ‘just political’ it’s ‘just a viewpoint’. Well every statement comes from a viewpoint, but we still have to respect evidence. From my viewpoint, the evidence is that we are approaching crisis. Climate change and other kinds of environmental degradation are happening very fast. Inequality is increasing. These things are interlinked. I can spend t...

this is just the start of this blog. I'll try to polish it up a bit as I go. I felt a bit constrained in what I could say on my other blog fairgreenplanet because it's directly linked to my research and my job as an academic. Obviously I'm still a researcher and academic, but the purpose of this one is to say stuff that I think is important as global citizen. The fact that that seems to conflict in some way with my work as an academic is clearly a BIG problem, which I hope I'll be able to untangle as I go. I don't think it's just me. I suspect a lot of academics, and others, like journalists, aren't saying what we really think because of some vague and ill-specified ideas about civility and objectivity and the proper conduct of public debate. I think this is contributing to the disastrous global mess we are in with climate change, environmental degradation and increasing inequality. Please bear with me while I try to figure this out. Warning: I'v...