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Saturday 22 November 2008


Proclamations of the Red Queen

Entries from 2008 July

24th July 2008

Reviews: The Book of Boy Trouble (2005)/ The G-String Murders (2003)

Posted by: Craig Young

Gypsy Rose Lee: The G-String Murders: New York: Feminist Press; 2003.
Robert Kirby and David Kelly: The Book of Boy Trouble: San Francisco: Green Candy Press: 2005.
This time, I have two reviews apiece, one for each gender.
In 1995, two young alternative gay men stapled together a zine called Boy Trouble,  intended to deal with the lives […]

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Tags: General

22nd July 2008

Australia: Euthanasia, Depression and Tragedy

Posted by: Craig Young

In Perth, Philip Nitschke is once more in the headlines, probably much to the frustration of the euthanasia decriminalisation lobby. Sadly, this latest case is particularly heart-wrenching as it involves Erin Berg, a young mother of three children, under treatment for depression.
Erin was not terminally ill, which has led to enmity against Dr Nitschke for his […]

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Tags: Politics · Religion

21st July 2008

Silly Polarised Fundamentalist Gender Role Playing

Posted by: Craig Young

From the website of the New Zealand Christian Right’s anti-families website Family First comes yet more tiresome fundamentalist role-playing nonsense.
At a time when New Zealand has had two consecutive female Prime Ministers, two female Governor Generals, a female Supreme Court chief justice and female former CEO of Telecom, the Christian Right bizarrely insists on its […]

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Tags: Politics · Religion

21st July 2008

Australia: In Defence of Salo (1975)

Posted by: Craig Young

Appallingly, Australia’s Office of Film and Literature Classification has just banned Pier Paolo Pasolini’s controversial cinema classic, Salo or 12o Days of Sodom (1975) from further screening across the Tasman. I object.
This is an intolerable attack on creative and artistic freedom and should be strongly resisted on both sides of the Tasman. As its name […]

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Tags: Politics

21st July 2008

On Not Wanting to Understand Social Conservatives

Posted by: Craig Young

In the context of Canada’s ongoing fracas over safe supervised injection facilities for IV drug users, some have argued that social conservatives are being ‘misunderstood’ in this context.
What is there to misunderstand? According to Globe and Mail columnist Steven Chase, social conservatives tend to place a premium on concepts like purity, tradition and hierarchy, whereas […]

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Tags: Politics · Religion

20th July 2008

Review: Leo Bersani and Adam Philps: Intimacies (2008)

Posted by: Craig Young

In earlier work on apocalyptic views of gay sex and identity, I’ve been particularly critical of the hyperbolic rhetoric of conservative Christians related to ’sodomy.’ However, as I’ve also noted, some gay neo-Freudians have a similarly overblown view of gay sex.
Leo Bersani (and Adam Philips, his collaborator) have produced a book that appears to be […]

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Tags: Politics

20th July 2008

“Shame”, Gender and Sexual Identity

Posted by: Craig Young

“Shame” is a word that has some relevance to LGBT lives. However, it isn’t positively relevant.
“Shame” is the antonym of ‘pride.’ Thus, while pride means that one positively values one’s personal attributes, any consequent social identity and community of interest based on that identity, shame means converse personal and collective devaluation of attributes, identity and […]

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Tags: Politics · Religion

18th July 2008

Canada’s Safe Injecting Room Debate (Part Five)

Posted by: Craig Young

When is a safe injecting room site not a safe injecting room site? According to the Canadian Tories, it may well be because they want to try to bribe Quebec over to the dark blue side of Canadian politics at their next general election.
Contrary to the furore in Ottawa and Vancouver when the federal Tories […]

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Tags: Politics

18th July 2008

Giant Maori marxist lesbian deconstructionist Muslim DPB Claimant Climate Change Supporters (Oh My!!)

Posted by: Craig Young

And thank you to the intrepid Russki Brown, uberblogster, for drawing my attention to a quaint little piece about the raving right’s demonology of the centre-left.
As regular readers of my Gaynz.Com religion and politics column are aware, the far right of the New Zealand political spectrum is in bad shape these days. The League of […]

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Tags: Politics · Religion

18th July 2008

Australia: Is Catholicism “Poisoned by Sex and Violence?”

Posted by: Craig Young

Across the Tasman, there are two events to report related to the Catholic World Youth Day extravaganza.
One is that Brisbane’s progressive communities are planning their own protests against the papal visit, along with other Brisbane area progressive groups. The march is intended to start on Brisbane’s Queen Street today at 1.00 PM and will include […]

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Tags: Politics · Religion