Sounding off

Is closing this blog tonight.  This is a bit like retiring from being queer, which I did five years ago.  People tell me that you can’t stop being queer, that it is something you’re born to.  It’s your identity.

And I ask, “Why not?” Being queer only matters if you have other people to be queer with, and I don’t.  It’s like, if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it fall ... was it really queer?  Apparently not.  At least, not that I have noticed.

People do read my blog, I know.  When I post, many of my friends read it and profess to enjoy it - god bless them.  But I haven’t posted very often and they won’t notice if I stop.  I’ve been thinking about what I would like to do instead, though none of these ideas will come to pass before I finish studying – and even then, it’s doubtful.

All the same,  it’s time to stop this pretence now. And I have some things to say on the way out.  Yes, these things come from a place of anger and if you don’t like it:  fuck you.  You have never been there for me and you are not worthy of my courtesy, let alone my friendship. 

Because friendship is real.  It’s important. It’s true.   It can be painful, when your friends tell you things that you don’t want to hear, or vice versa.  Having permission to say those things, and hearing them, and finding ways to continue loving someone, and being there for them, is what makes a friendship true. 

You can probably tell, if you have got this far, that I have a few things to get off my chest.  Here is a a numbered list. 

     1. Fucking gender-correct wankers.  This may seem a surprising complaint, from someone who many would class as politically correct him/her self (note the PC pronoun).  Twenty years of living in Sydney with adolescent twats telling me what to think about gender, and what it means to be “differently gendered”.  Twenty years of being too polite to say: I was doing gender difference before the internet existed.  Try that. Try coming out with a book from the National Library under your arm, you condescending moron. 

      2.  Twenty years of gay men telling me what AIDS means, and how I am not allowed to have an opinion because I am just a woman and wouldn’t know.  Well, AIDS tore my family apart while you were shagging in a venue, and I think that working in an AIDS service is about trying to help people (though god knows, they don’t seem to want or need helping) and not about choosing the colour of the curtains, you lazy, corrupt, misogynist arsewipe. 

3. Other white people lording it over me about racism.  Like … wtf?  And your authority to speak about racism comes from … where??  Oh, I know: from criticising other white people who are trying to do the right thing.  So noble and true!  And so productive!!!  Tell me, I was at the Yarbun festival twenty years ago while you were playing with your girlfriend … I didn’t see you there??   But you have an opinion now, don’t you?  And it’s better than mine, of course.  And your opinion makes fuck all difference to anyone except your other white friends on Facebook, but in a twisted bourgeois virtue-signalling way that’s kind of the point, isn’t it??!

See, I grew up PC.  I got harassed in High School for being a “communist”.  That was back in the 80s, when being a “communist” was still a real insult.  After High School, I noticed that people would tell me how lucky I was to have had a woke upbringing when they - poor mites - had grown up in conservative oppression. 

And yet I didn’t feel lucky.  It took years for me to work out why this was.  The answer:  because my family, though it had many worthy opinions, was also riven with mental illness and abuse.  And the mental illness and abuse were expressed through the right-on politics. 

Ooooooh.  Oh dear.  That’s not good.  That’s not right.  Left-wing families are supposed to be happy and loving and supportive. 

Can’t talk about that, then.

So I didn’t, for years and years.  Well, fuck that.  Now I am 53 and I am talking to anyone who will listen (and many who won’t!) and here are some of the things I have learned: 

Your politics are about your ego.  They are inseparable.  Your politics may be good.  They may be righteous.  But where is your ego in them?  What role does it play?  Where is your ego invested, and how, and to what extent?  Why do you need to be right?  What happens when it turns out that you’re just plain fucking wrong?  And worse, that the people who were right are on the opposite political team?  Are you capable of admitting that, and saying so?  How does that feel?  Pretty humbling, eh?  Or would you just rather keep pretending that you are right and they are wrong?  How long can you keep that up?  Forever??!!

Your team isn’t always right.  In fact, sometimes they are flat-out wrong.  It could be that the opposing team have no better answer, or it could be that they are right.  I grew up watching  the left tacitly defend the totalitarian ideologues of the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War – and we were fucking wrong!  The Cold War was brutal and filled with lies but history has revealed the truth: the left got it wrong.  The same thing happened in Ireland, where the left tacitly supported the murderous thugs of the IRA.  Remember that?  How does that feel now?  Pretty shit, eh? Or are you still living in some delusional, ego-driven world where you are right and the people who lived through it are wrong??

Mental illness is everywhere, including on your team.  In fact, there is probably more of it on your team than anywhere.  I had a friend – lovely woman – who was so into Aboriginal reconciliation that she became convinced that she was Aboriginal.  And then a few years later when the whole of the western world was out to get Muslims, she became Muslim too.  She had beautiful intentions, but she had a fucking mental illness.

Our reluctance to name and call out mental illness destroys the collective endeavours that we pursue, and succeeds only in alienating those who are victims of the bullying and abuse that people with mental illness so often engage in. Because people with mental illness don't obey rules, duh.  

I have seen this happen over and over, and it is at its worst when people with an active mental illness manage to gain positions in services funded to assist the needy, vulnerable and oppressed.  They proceed to destroy the people they work with, and then the service, and through this, the people that service is supposed to help.  This is wrong and shameful, to everyone who claims to care about the needy, vulnerable and oppressed.  

  

One of the things that I learned over the last forty years is that … and still, I am loathe to admit this …my team ... my beautiful team of ethical, high-minded, freedom-loving friends, can be wrong.  Worse than that, they can be fascists.  They don’t care about democracy.  They don’t care about peace.  They don’t care about justice or the rule of law.  They care about these things only when the other team is found wanting, which is always.  Yeah, right.  What they really care about is winning, and revenge.  Sound familiar?   

If you read the social media, you will see your own team advocate violence, and breaking the law – even killing people.  You will see them insult and denigrate and abuse the people they don’t agree with, make all sorts of assumptions – knowing nothing – about the person they don’t agree with.  I understand that.  I agree with them.  That's ok, right?  Because it’s our team.  They are right.  We agree with them.  We feel just as angry and aggrieved as they do.  Click “like”!

Really?  Really??  Does the word “hypocrisy” have no meaning at all?  Or are we so utterly lacking in self-awareness that we don’t notice?  Or do we actually think this is ok??

I suspect it’s the latter.  Because it’s ok if it’s our team.  Our team is right. 

And here's another thing that I know:  I am sure glad these fuckers aren’t in charge of our country.  Because I, for one, have absolutely no faith that my own team of Chardonnay-sipping keyboard warriors would be any better than those that are in charge.  You need think only of the people that were on our team.  Think Stalin.  Think Mao. Think the Khmer Rouge.  And think … fuck you.  Fuck off.  I will think what I like, and no wanker can tell me who I should be or how I should feel. I'll think for myself.  

Forty years ago

I haven’t been writing much lately.  The best way I can explain this is by saying that when I write I try to strike a particular tone.  It’s hard to describe this tone but it’s warm, humane and has a level of moral clarity.  Reflecting on this, I realised that this ‘tone’ also describes my better self.  In the last few years I have been preoccupied with grief and anger and that better self has been hard to access.  I figure that if I can’t write as my better self than I shouldn’t write at all.

And while I’ve been preoccupied with my own shit, I’m not big on solipsism – at least when it comes to this blog.  The GLBTIQQARXYZ community is full of people who feel compelled to tell us about themselves at length.  They seem to think that doing so is a political act and frankly, it shits me to tears.  If you can’t connect your own experience to bigger world, then don’t bother. 

Now I am self-indulgent, because of this photo that popped up on my Facebook feed yesterday. 

It was taken forty years ago, on a bright February morning at a state high school in regional Victoria.  It was my first year of high school and I would have been 11 years old.  I had had my first period just a couple of months before.  For someone who didn’t want to be a girl this was a trauma.  Not to mention bloody inconvenient.  In the school toilets there was an incinerator in one cubicle, where afflicted girls could dispose of their used sanitary pads while other girls stood outside and taunted them.  I quickly learned to avoid using the toilets at recess, and run out during class instead. 

But I am wandering down memory lane.  Back to the story.  Looking at this photo yesterday I thought, ‘but I don’t look any different to any of the others!’

What a ridiculous thought, I thought.  Why would I look different??

Because I felt different.  My brothers had convinced me that I was as fat as a house, for a start.  It was not, as you might guess, a supportive family.  Every day was a struggle to survive and each person fought their own corner with the viciousness they had learned to expect from others.  My mother, struggling to raise three children on a single parent’s pension, had an active mental illness which found its expression in marathon rages directed at the cause of her troubles: her children.  My father – medically retired from his job - was in hospital for months at a time.  We didn’t see him the Christmas before this photo was taken, though we were assured he would be home by new year.  When we went to see him he was gone.

‘Gone?’ my mother asked, ‘What do you mean, the bastard’s gone??’  

‘Gone,’ we shrugged.  ‘Like, not there.’ 

He did reappear, a few months later.  Brain-damaged and child-like.  Crazy.  Visits resumed, but there were no explanations, no questions, no guidance, no help.  Work it out for yourself.

I was 11. 

I was 11 when we were herded out of class for ‘school photos’ on that sunny summer morning.  It was in the rear quadrangle.  The ground was pebblecrete (lawn being reserved for the front quadrangle).  There were wood benches painted a khaki grey-green for kids to sit on, though for the photos plastic chairs were brought outside.  Girls in the front.  Boys standing on the wooden bench at the back.   

The school itself was quite new.  It had been open only a few years when I started – my older brother was one of the first male students.  The local girls’ high school was rebuilt with a brand new building on the edge of town, and in its new incarnation went co-ed.  The new building was all brown brick and orange plastic.  Its design was based on Bentham’s panopticon principle: impossible to see out, with an interior designed for maximum visibility.  There was nowhere to hide.

Not long after this photo was taken, my two best friends decided that they didn’t like me anymore.  I don’t recall the reason for this.  Years later I realised that it was probably about gender and sexuality, in as much as anything is about gender and sexuality when you are 11 years old. But the reason they didn’t like me was less important than the way they decided to express their dislike, which was through bullying. 

As opportunities to bully me in class were limited, they focused their efforts out of class. They taunted me mercilessly.  They followed me wherever I went: between classes, at recess, at lunchtime, and after school.  They liked to deliberately step on my heels as I walked.  They followed me to the locker bays which resembled a scene from Lord of the Flies, a documentary that we studied in Year 8.  They followed me into the toilets.  They followed me outside the building.  Once they sabotaged my bicycle.  Once they pretended to make up with me, and took me outside where they unceremoniously threw me into the rose garden in front of the school. 

Now, I had learned - from living with a parent with mental illness - that resistance just makes the abuse worse, so I didn’t react.  This was precisely the wrong way to respond to bullying (where the best response is to resist as loudly, publicly and aggressively as possible) but it was the way that I had learned.  And so it went on.  Not just for a few days, or a few weeks.  It went on for years. 

It went on in full view of my classmates.  It went on in full view of the scumfucks who enjoyed long careers as teachers at that school.  None of them said or did anything.  We turn away. 

I said nothing; it was no use.  I ran away.  I tried to be invisible.  I hid wherever I could.  The library was a good place – they rarely found me in there.  I read the encyclopedias.  I wagged school.  I pretended to be sick.  I couldn’t face it.  I couldn’t cope. It broke me, twisted up the leftover pieces, snapped each one in half again and trampled on the remains.

In the last years of high school, when these girls had found some real outlet for their adolescent libido and lost interest in me, I was castigated for my reluctance to “make up”.  I couldn’t explain my refusal.  It was confusing, but I didn’t want to.   

It’s not confusing anymore and I still don’t want to be friends on Facebook.  I am not close to the people I went to school with, but I have been in touch with a few over the years.  None has ever acknowledged what they saw, much less said anything.  We pretend not to notice.  Noticing makes us complicit. 

That school and its bright blue sky haunts me. I still live with the damage they did, even now.  I’m 51 and I wonder if anyone ever ‘gets over’ anything.  We don’t heal.   We just go on, wounded and bleeding, into the future.

That building has appeared in my dreams, so many times that it is tiresome.  Once, I dreamed that I was outside the toilet block and saw a tiny kitten, lost and alone.  Little and fragile.  And as I approached the kitten morphed into a much younger version of my self.  She was wearing that same bottle-green school uniform that you see in the photo.  Across the years, I reach out to her now.  I will protect you. 

https://bullyzero.org.au/

Opting out

The deadline for opting out of the My Health Record is today.

My Health Record, for those lucky enough to have never heard of it, is a national electronic health record designed to ‘follow’ you wherever you go, to whatever health service or professional you access. 

MHR (we public servants are big on acronyms) is a long-running public policy clusterfuck.  One would think that a web-based health record would have obvious benefits, helping to reduce prescribing errors, drug interactions, and providing convenience for patients who are required to relay their entire medical history to every health professional they meet. 

And one would think that such a tool would be easy enough to develop.  But while the Australian government has managed to ensure that my employer is required to provide full details of every dollar that I earn to the Tax Office, the MHR is much more difficult. 

The MHR is what you might call a public policy clusterfuck, taking fully fifteen years to develop.  I can remember writing about it in 2006, when an early version was trialled in NSW.  At the time I was working in HIV, and people with HIV could be reasonably expected to have concerns about the security of their personal information. 

That was just one concern.  Added to this, there were the problems of technology.  When the MHR was first proposed, many medical services did not have reliable internet access.  And those that did used a bewildering variety of different systems, so the MHR had to be compatible with all of them.  Then there was the inevitable argy-bargy between the Commonwealth and the States, who all have different agendas and priorities – the main one being that someone else should pay for it.  Then there were the pesky consumers (that is, us) who had to be consulted and insisted on raising the tedious issue of ‘privacy’ over and over.

But finally it’s here.  And in order to make the whole venture financially viable – it’s not cost-effective to spend a fortune on a system that nobody uses - the Commonwealth decided to introduce the MHR on an ‘opt out’ basis, rather than ‘opt in’.  This means that by default, you’re in.  So if you’re too busy, or too preoccupied, or not literate enough to read the news, or use a computer, or you just don’t care, you will now have a My Health Record.  And the convenient part, in public policy terms, is that those categories account for most of us so we’re in.  And if you don’t like it, hey, we gave you an opportunity to opt out.

For the record: I opted out. 

I wouldn’t have, except that I caught a story about it on the radio yesterday as I was getting dressed for work.  The erstwhile Fran Kelly was interviewing one Steve Hambleton, Chair of the My Health Record Expansion Committee and former President of the AMA.  Always the challenging interviewer, Fran asked Dr Hambleton about some of the concerns expressed. 

Kelly crossed to Kerryn Phelps, the new Member for Wentworth (and another former President of the AMA), who was worried about the risk of inaccurate or incomplete information in the MHR.  Doctors might be liable for incorrect or incomplete data, she said. 

Don’t worry, Dr Hambleton assured: doctors are automatically insured. 

So doctors will be protected.  That’s important. 

The big advantage of My Health Record, Hambleton emphasised, is that it gives doctors accurate and current information.  It helps doctors.

‘But what about,’ Kelly pressed, ‘if a patient says – and I don’t know if this happens, but a patient says - “what about that anti-anxiety medication – I don’t want that put on my health record because I don’t want that getting out anywhere.”  And then another doctor three years on has no idea that this person is taking that medication and there’s a problem?’

‘That is absolutely true,’ Hambleton acknowledged.  ‘That absolutely does happen. That is true.  And people can say, “I don’t want you to share that one”’.

‘But isn’t that an in-built problem?’ Kelly asked.

‘It’s an in-built opportunity,’ Hambleton replied, ‘for patients to protect their privacy.  And it’s also an opportunity for me as the doctor to say, “look, you may not want me to write “depression” on your history but if I put the antidepressant in, the doctors will know…’

Know what? I wondered, as I did up my shoelaces.  What some little Sydney University fuck with six years of undergraduate medical science and one semester of training in mental health thinks they know about me and my life?

You see, what neither Hambleton, nor Kerryn Phelps, nor Fran Kelly, appeared to consider was: the possibility of discrimination within the health care system.  It was as if discrimination doesn’t exist.

Yet as any person with HIV, or gender issues, or mental illness knows, this is simply not true.  Discrimination is rampant, in every part of the health system.  This fact was brought home to me when I was gasping for air with severe bronchitis, and a young doctor asked quizzed me about my history of self-harm.

‘I really don’t think,” I gasped between coughing fits, “that my history of self-harm twenty-five  years ago caused the bronchial infection that I am presenting with today.  Please explain the basis for the causal relationship that you perceive.’

No matter.  Doctors can ask whatever they like and treat you however they like.   

And that’s why I do not consent to them having access to my health information.  I will decide who has access to my medical history, and the circumstance under which they have it.  Because I need to protect myself from their ignorance, ineptitude and discrimination. 

‘Aren’t you disappointed,’ Kelly asked, ‘That over a million Australians have opted out of the My Health Record?’

‘It’s about trust in the system,’ Hambleton replied.  ‘We have to build that trust’. 

No, I thought.  You have to earn my trust, because you have done nothing to suggest that you deserve it.  Once you’ve earned it, I will consider opting in. 

Balls

I’m a lifelong cricket tragic, so naturally I’ve been following the ball-tampering scandal unfold with unrestrained fascination.  But while I love cricket I don’t claim to be an expert, so won’t bore you with any analysis beyond a few observations that may be relevant:

1.  Ball-tampering has been around for years.  Its prevalence has increased since the advent of reverse swing in the 1990s, and various methods are used to achieve the desired effect.

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      2.  Players from most of the major cricket-playing nations have been caught tampering with the ball at some time or other.  Australia is an exception, but that doesn’t mean that our team hasn’t engaged in it – it just means they haven’t been caught.

      3.  The penalties that apply when players are caught engaging in ball-tampering are equivalent to penalties for other forms of misconduct.  These penalties are imposed by the ICC and are usually of the ‘fined match fee’ or ‘suspended for one match’ level.  As happened to Cameron Bancroft in this case, for example.

Anyone who knows about cricket will realise from these observations that I have no particular wisdom or insight about the game.  But you don’t need any knowledge of cricket to be enthralled by this saga, because it’s not really about the game.  It’s about other stuff.

I’m not the first person to make this observation, either.  Indeed, the association between sport and our Australian national identity was noticed early.  It’s un-Australian, the narrative goes.  It crosses the line.  We Australians play hard but we don’t cheat.   

Likewise, the relationship between sport and masculinity has also been observed.  This association has, predictably, received less prominence.  How is it, some have asked, that the nation is in turmoil about a few guys who cheated when sportsmen who rape or bash women rate barely a mention? This is a good question.  The answer is simple: Australian men might bash or rape women but they don’t cheat at sport. 

Now, some might agree with this formulation while others understandably object.  Most men don’t bash or rape, it’s not that simple, yadda yadda.  And they could be right, but this is not what interests me most about the whole pahlava. 

Rather, what interests me about this week is the repeated, agonising spectacle of male contrition.  These men – the players - were caught out in an act which, while common, is most definitely against the rules.  They tried to cover it up and then to minimise it but the reaction back home was immediate and powerful and it kept growing and soon they had to fess up. 

And how! After days of media speculation, we were treated to a public confession from each of the identified culprits.  First the young rookie, Bancroft.  Then the golden boy, Australian captain Steve Smith.  And finally the villain, vice captain David Warner. 

Without doubt, these press conference confessions were ordered by their employer, Cricket Australia.  Cricket Australia had, in the words of Cate McGregor, spent the week ‘surfing the wave of public opinion’ –progressively amping up its response as the media amped up its coverage of the growing mess.  This surfing resulted in extended, arbitrary bans for each of the players deemed responsible.  And, to have any chance of returning to the game after their ban was completed, a confession.

Bancroft went first, his voice trembling.  “I’m sorry,” he repeated, as WA Cricket CEO Christina Matthews, offered a comfortingly maternal pat on the back.  The words “mistake” and “regret” were repeated, with a bit of “role models”, “letting people down,” “earning back respect” and hoping for “forgiveness” thrown in.  No doubt carefully schooled by his employers, Bancroft refused to buy into suggestions that he had been bullied or induced into the ‘crime,’ talking only of “taking responsibility”.

The headline act came just a few hours later, as Test captain Steve Smith fronted the media at Sydney Airport.  Smith took the same approach, and used exactly the same language.  The only difference was that his trembling voice disintegrated into tears as he acknowledged the effect of his behaviour on his family.  Pictures of Smith’s agonised face have featured in the media ever since. 

“Steve Smith’s tears just about undid me,” said one social media comment.  They undid me, too.  My own compassion appeared to reflect the public mood, which was moved by Smith’s grief.  Overnight, the privileged millionaire sportsmen were transformed into figures of pity.  “Mr Smith, you have raised a fine son,” intoned sports commentator Peter Fitzsimons.

A fine son?  Let us reflect on that judgement for a moment.  What makes Steve Smith a fine son?  That he is an outstanding cricketer is beyond question.  That he engaged in cheating has also been proved.  So what makes him a fine son?  The fact that he loves his Mum and Dad?  This is a fine sentiment, but it hardly seems worthy of such commendation.  No.  Rather, it is the fact that he loves his mum and dad so much that he cried about it on national TV. 

Now, not so long ago a spectacle such as this would have been impossible.  I am old enough to remember Kim Hughes’ tearful press conference when he resigned the Test captaincy in 1984.  The reaction was soaked in old-school masculinity: he’s weak.  A cry-baby.  And the inevitable, if only implied, accompaniment: poofter.   

This ability to cry marks a shift, a genuine change, in what it means to be a man in Australia.  For a man to have permission to love his family so much that he can cry about it in public is new.   Even when I was a child, a man’s family was virtually invisible – a mere addendum to whatever worldly achievements he might claim.  To be able to love, and to express love openly, can be nothing but good. 

It is useful to remember, however, that these changes apply only to men and masculinity.  A woman’s tears would have no effect, beyond inviting an interpretation of her behaviour as ‘manipulative’.  But for a man to cry, that’s different.  That’s real and important and enough to change our opinion of him. 

Even, in my case, of David Warner.  Warner has been widely blamed for the whole episode, as he reportedly came up with the nefarious plan.  Intellectually ill-equipped to negotiate moral nuance (a friend who knows him observed that Warner is ‘so dumb that he literally cannot walk and chew gum at the same time’), Warner stumbled through his prepared speech of confession.  He too broke down as he addressed his family.  “Your love means more than anything to me,” he said.  “I know that I would be nothing without you.”  Before he had a moment to compose himself, Warner was bombarded with questions.  None, however, addressed a line in his speech that went unnoticed.  “I am going to look at who I am as a man,” he said.  “To be honest, I am not sure right now how I will do this.”

An Australian story

The silly season is over, thank God.  We are back to regular programming on the ABC.  When you’re a single and 50, that’s no small thing.  First cab off the rank for my 2018 viewing was a new season of Australian Story.  I am a fan of this show.  The relentlessly upbeat attitude of some farmer who has had their arms chopped off in a threshing machine may irritate, but there is still something compelling about real people telling real stories. 

And let’s face it, I am a political tragic.  Last week’s episode about Christine Forster was, naturally, a no-brainer.  Forster is a Liberal Councillor for the City of Sydney, but she is more famous for being the sister of former Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

And for those who have been living under a rock for the last few years, Forster was also a vocal campaigner for same-sex marriage.  Earlier this year, she was on stage at the Sydney celebration of the Postal Vote, where I was a face in the crowd.

Forster is what some of us tactfully call a “late bloomer”.  That is, she was married with kids (four!) before she became a lesbian.  Apparently she met her partner Virginia Flitcroft at a day care centre, while dropping off their respective children. 

“We had an affair,” Forster confesses in Australian Story.  “I’m certainly not proud of that.  I wish that we hadn’t, but that’s what happened.”

Forster’s confession came in the same week as revelations of Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce’s affair with a staffer.  Joyce’s behaviour has attracted much condemnation, particularly from the left.  ‘Barnaby Joyce doesn’t know the meaning of marriage!’ screams one link on my Facebook feed.  Au contraire, I think; I am sure he understands it very well indeed. The reaction to Joyce’s indiscretion makes me uncomfortable, not least because I have been on both sides of the moral Passchendaele of infidelity.  Those episodes left me with nothing but an appreciation of my capacity to behave badly and more usefully, a reluctance to judge. 

Yet Forster’s revelation attracted not a murmur.   Despite being a Liberal Forster is, it seems, a different case.  She is one of us, at least to the extent that she is a lesbian.  And Forster’s affair was set in the context of a journey to an authentic sexuality, which makes it ok.  Her former husband, whose feelings of disappointment and betrayal were likely equal to those of Mrs Joyce, is invisible.  He was dumb enough to marry a lesbian, after all.

But it is the story of Forster’s lesbianism, and her joyous marriage, that really interested me.  I’m not so naïve as to think that Australian Story is more than just that, a story – constructed, with the fingerprints of its makers fully visible.  But what does it tell us about what it means to be a lesbian now, in this modern, equality-loving Australia? 

The story begins on a joyous note:  the happy couple are choosing their outfits.  But this is a different sort of wedding, and the story is quick to make the point.  “I’m very retro 1950s,” says a Flitcroft, “Big skirt, big dress.  Christine’s going for a sort of morning suit, but more feminine.”  It’s hard to see how the couple’s outfits are relevant to anything except as code:  Forster, it seems, is to be coded as masculine.   Flitcroft confirms this, adding, “I couldn’t ask her to wear a dress.”

And very quickly, we cut away from the present for a guided tour of Abbott family history.  Despite the Abbotts being a “loving, caring” family, it seems that the young Christine was always different.  “I was riding billy carts ad bikes and making bows and arrows.  I had a Ken doll … I was what was termed in those days a tomboy.”

Australian Story can’t resist a peek at brother Tony as well.  The former Prime Minister was, according to Forster, “the apple of Dad’s eye, there’s no doubt about that”.  Yet this favouritism brought with it a prescriptive attitude to gender, as Forster observes, “My father was an only child and he was pretty much, from a young age, living only with his mother because his father was in the merchant marine so he was away a lot.  He would describe himself as being a real sook as a child.  So I think there was a deliberate plan from Dad, to make sure that Tony was a man’s man.”

The gender dynamics of the Abbott family would, it seems, provide fertile ground for psychoanalysis.  Yet Christine rebelled, even if unconsciously.  “Chris was very sporty, very studious,” a friend observes. “As we got older, through high school, we started to get a bit more into make-up and things like that.  She didn’t tend to do that.” Forster’s rebellion was, though, only partial.  As she proceeded to university, we are assured that she was “normal”.  So normal, in fact, that she married the unfortunate Mr Forster not long after graduating.

Yet viewers, already aware of how the story ends, await the truth.  It comes some years later.  “It probably wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I started to realise that I had a physical, sexual attraction to women.”  Then comes the famous meeting with Flitcroft at the child care centre which, Forster confesses, “hit me like a ton of bricks”.

Curiously, Flitcroft’s background is not subject to scrutiny.  She is not related to any Prime Ministers and her childhood toys were therefore uninteresting, I suppose.  But this lack of questioning is itself a code:  Flitcroft is a “normal” woman.  Her story begins with such a confirmation: “I was in a very happy, settled married life,” she recalls.  “With a beautiful 2 year old son and a gorgeous 5 year old daughter.  Externally it was Happy 101.”

What, then, are we to make of these codes?  Some feminists may be unhappy about the coding of Forster and Flitcroft as butch and femme.  In the 1970s, many feminists derided butch-femme as replicating patriarchal heterosexual relationships.  Later queer theorists have celebrated these same relationships, reading them more as a parody than imitation.  A woman in men’s clothing, they point out, is not the same as a man.

Yet whatever your take on the butch-femme dynamic, it’s revealing that Australian Story can represent it to a wider audience without explanation.  Clearly, this style of relationships has penetrated mainstream understandings of what it means to be a lesbian.  If that was the case fifty years ago, it’s still the case today.

There is no indication of what or whether the Abbott and Flitcroft families think about butch-femme relationships, but understandably the relationship upset both.  Here again we segue to Tony Abbott, now head of the Abbott clan after the recent death of patriarch Dick.   Abbott is by all accounts a decent chap when he’s away from politics, and it turns out that he and his wife Margie were “very supportive behind the scenes”.   The exception was his very public remarks that “children do better with a Mum and a Dad,” which mother Flitcroft found “hurtful, deeply hurtful”. 

Meanwhile the butch Forster – herself a mother of four – maintains a stiff upper lip and fights the good fight in the public domain.  Forster’s teenage sons continue the seal of male approval, with a friend reassuring us that, “Chris’s boys are very proud for their Mum.  She has put herself out there.  They are comfortable with her being gay.” 

Well, that’s a relief.  Who knows what her daughters think, as there is no mention of them.  Perhaps they were just too smart to put their faces on television.  But Forster herself is no dummy, which begs the obvious question of why she consented to this project.  We can, methinks, expect to see her face in a future political campaign, and for an office higher than that of Sydney City Councillor.

Yet I can’t help wondering if the males of the Abbott clan would be as supportive if Ms Forster were to become one of them.  That is, if she was transgender instead of a lesbian.  We will never know, because the word “gender” is never mentioned in this story. 

This might seem a glaring omission, as much of Forster’s story is about gender roles and gender variance.  Gender variance is at the heart of lesbian identity - so much so that the coded signals of the tomboy and the butch require no explanation.  Everyone knows these codes, just as they know the codes about sissy boys and effeminate men.  Yet to speak gender variance per se is something quite different, and usually avoided through sublimation and disavowal. 

“You have a choice,” says the marriage celebrant preparing for the pair’s nuptials.   “Of being called a groom, a bride, or a partner.”

“Neither of us are grooms, obviously!”  Forster responds defensively. 

Obviously. 

So it’s agreed: here come the brides.  And rather paradoxically, what a relief it is.

Being polite (and generalising)

My new job has brought with it a sudden rash of people declaring that they are “totally fine” or that they “don’t care” about my sexuality. 

To be more accurate, they don’t care about what they think is my sexuality.  What they think is based on some reference that I’ve made in conversation, usually to some relationship I had many years ago.  They hear a pronoun and compute:  female person, used female pronoun, must equal… lesbian!  The thought process doesn’t stop there, either.  It then proceeds to: must reassure the lesbian that I’m ok with lesbians! 

This has taken me a bit by surprise, I must confess.  It’s a new dynamic for me.  I’m used to working with people who are much too polite to make reference to such things.  Other people that I have worked with obviously had the same thought process, except for the last bit. 

Gay men and lesbians tend to come to that conclusion before I ever use any pronouns, based simply on how I dress.  Gay men tend to be the worst, in my experience, in the sense that they assume they know all about me, my life history, my opinions and my values - all based on how I dress.  Lesbians have generally been around enough women who don’t wear make-up to know that there’s not a big future in assumptions.

Straight people tend to think, ‘lesbian’ and then don’t say anything.  Often they genuinely don’t care.  This is particularly true for straight folks who have been around a lot of gay people.  Others probably do care a little bit but they know that it’s rude to make reference to it in public, rather like making reference to someone being fat.  It’s only when they have a problem with me that I become ‘that lesbian’, and this only comes out in private.

 

I haven’t been present for these conversations, obviously.  But I have been present for some of the conversations where I’m informed that it’s my own fault that people make assumptions about me, that I ask for it, because … because I don’t wear make-up, apparently. 

I’ve also been thin – or at least not fat - at different times in my life, and heard the way women who aren’t fat themselves and are much too polite to say anything to women who are tend to change when they have a problem with the [fat] woman in question.  Clearly, good manners are only skin deep.  Or a layer of fat deep, I guess. 

Lesbians are no better, in this regard.  They don’t go to a homophobic place, obviously.  It’s just ‘that fat bitch’ rather than ‘that fat lesbian’.  Gay men, of course, don’t need much encouragement to go to either place – though there are some honourable exceptions.  And straight men… I don’t know where they go.  I think for them it’s just ‘bitch’. 

There is, therefore, no moral distinction to be made between those who say they ‘don’t care’ and those who don’t say anything.  I prefer the people who don’t say anything, though.  If they’re straight, at least. Because really, I don’t want to talk about any of it. 

Don’t get me wrong: I have the same need for affirmation and validation as anybody else, and there was a time when I did want to talk about it.  Talking about it, however, taught me that you’re not going to get validation from people who have no idea.  All you’re going to get is dumb questions.  And people who have some idea can be even worse: they give you fatuous, offensive assumptions dressed up as validation.  I guess there is a lot of good work to be done, if you want to be an educator.  I don’t.  

Consequently, these declarations that people ‘don’t care’ about something I had forgotten about are a bit of a new thing.  I don’t know why it is happening: maybe it’s because the folks I’m working with now are a bit younger.  But they are obviously trying to do the right thing so it seems a bit, well, rude, to say, “I don’t care that you don’t care.  In fact, I don’t care if you do care.  I just flat-out don’t care!”

Instead I just politely ignore it.  “Right.  Good-oh.  Well, as I was saying…”

Dust

In a month of unemployment I haven’t done any of the things I said I would do but I have managed to clean up the house a bit.  The timing for this is good as it’s spring, though it hasn’t felt like renewal or rebirth or any of those happy clichés that one associates with spring.  Instead it’s been heavy and hard and I’ve had to push myself to do even basic things like the vacuuming. 

The dust in this place is endless.  They say it’s the ‘black dust’ – ordinary dust mixed with Sydney’s pollution.  And in this house there is cat hair, which is also endless.  It really doesn’t seem to matter how much or how often I clean because it doesn’t make any difference: the place is always coated in a sticky grey dust. 

I wanted it to be lighter.  In the disturbed decision making process that surrounded my decision to leave work I imagined a lighter, easier life.  Naturally that picture was set in a lighter, cleaner house.  Less cluttered, less heavy.  Of course, it hasn’t turned out that way.  I don’t know whether it’s my age or my state of mind but even cleaning seems to have become complicated.

 

What to keep?  What to throw away? 

Behind the curtain in the lounge room, for example, I find two model cars parked neatly on the window sill.  One is a yellow Mini Minor – I always wanted a Mini Minor.  Three times I’ve come close to getting one.  When I was 17, my mother and I saw a red Mini in a used car yard on the outskirts of Bendigo as we were driving home to Shepparton one Saturday.  The price tag?  $499.  I was so obsessed that I badgered Mum into getting some friend of a friend who lived in Bendigo and knew about cars to go and check it out.  It’s fine, he reported, except that it needs new rings.  New rings??!!  That would have cost at least another $500, not to mention how to get it home from Bendigo and I didn’t even have a proper licence yet.  I let it go. 

Ten years later when I was living in Canberra there was a lime green Mini parked on the corner with a ‘For Sale’ sign in the window.  They wanted $1400 for it but I didn’t know what was wrong with it and I didn’t actually have $1400 and besides, I had a perfectly usable 1973 Corolla.  A few weeks later my partner bought me a frypan for Christmas and said, ‘You know, I thought about buying you that Mini but I wasn’t sure you’d be up for it’.   My heart ached, but I just had to let it go. 

Even five years ago when I was looking to buy a different car and the local mechanic showed me a Mini that he was fixing up and it had a BMW engine in it and leather seats and all the trimmings but he wanted $22,000 for it and I didn’t trust him and I hate grey so I let it go. 

I don’t remember when I bought a yellow model Mini Minor but I have an idea why, though I am not sure why I would keep it now, cluttering up the window sill and gathering dust.

    

The other car is a black VW Beetle with hippie flowers.  You can guess that I love Beetles, too.  I about buying one that I saw parked around the corner in - you guessed - Canberra, in my early 20s.  They wanted $1600 for it but my friends took one look and turned up their noses.  ‘Buying someone else’s problem,’ was their verdict, and I let it go. 

The model VW came into my life in Nevada, of all places.  It was in the late 90s and I was pursuing a stupid love affair, all the way to the US.  We drove from San Francisco to Las Vegas and somewhere in Nevada in the middle of the night we stopped at a petrol station and on a whim, I bought a model VW Beetle for $7.99.  That trip was nothing but an extended exercise in betrayal although, with the advantage of hindsight, I thank God that the betrayal came earlier (though not early enough) rather than later and just prefer to forget the whole thing though I have held onto the model car which is the only tangible relic from the whole episode. 

Why? 

I have enough Buddhism to know that attachment is the cause of all suffering.   This ancient truth is, well, true.  So why keep the model VW?  What am I attached to?  The love affair, which gave me much, much more misery than joy? The affair that, though I thought it about it way too much for way too long, I haven’t thought about it years now?  Or something else? 

A different life.  A moment of possibility, glimpsed somewhere in the middle of the night in Nevada and never seen again.  Often, I hear people talk about the importance of living without regrets.  Sometimes I wonder if I have anything else. 

The place is full of these random, useless objects.  When I’m in a good mood I have been known to say, ‘Everything here has a story’.  My friends - bless them - are too polite to say, ‘Yes, and that story is boring.’ 

The books – the place is full of them.  Some people have been impressed by the books and I certainly was, in the past.  There was a time when a collection of Foucault’s interviews was the thing that I desired most in life.  Now I never look at them, and they just gather dust.  But I can’t get rid of them.  I would give them away, but nobody now is interested in a collection of Foucault’s interviews. 

In my bedroom is the dressing table, which I remember buying back in the early 90s.  I thought it was an antique.  Turns out it was a reproduction but it has lived in a few houses, that dressing table.  I’ve managed to clear off some of the clutter but there is a bowl full of jewellery that has pride of place.  The jewellery is rubbish – things that I’m either allergic to (in my late 20s I became allergic to non-precious metals) or things that I have inherited from my mother and grandmother.  I never wear any of it.  The children to pass these things on to, I never had.  Hell, I never even liked my grandmother.

Clearing away the jewellery I find fully half an inch of dust at the bottom of the bowl.  The bowl itself is a relic – a pottery creation from art class in Year 7.  Forty years I’ve carted that bowl around.  Glazed in a delightful shade of 1970s brown, I imagine it reminiscent of Murano glass except that the bowl is hopelessly off-centre and wobbly.  Regrets aside, it could use a wash. 

As I turn it over in the sink I discover something long forgotten.  My name is etched into the underside of the bowl.  My full name, which I hated then as I hate it now.  But there it is, etched in ceramic.  ABIGAIL GROVES.