lip magazine: for girls who think feel create speak out live

You know the first time I met the Lip gals was when I submitted an article to Lip on Pregnancy Counselling Australia - a misleading phone service run by Right to Life Australia. I wanted to let as many people know that should they ever need help, this was not the number to call.

It’s been over two years, and after petitioning Sensis, the people who make the White Pages, writing to every major political party, and liasing with other activists, this phone service still has its number at the front of every phone book in Australia.

Yet I am not deterred. Senator Stott Despoja has picked up the issue and in June 2005 introduced a private members bill in an attempt to promote transparency in pregnancy counselling providers. Greens Senator Kerry Nettle wrote to the ACCC chair, asking him to investigate whether some pregnancy counselling services are in breach of the Trade Practices Act. Even JJJ took a couple afternoons to discuss the issue.

I’ve also received heaps of emails from people asking me about other, mainly local, services whose credentials as counselling services seem sketchy. I’m going to consolidate a list of false providers for the next phase of my campaign and am liasing with Reproductive Choice Australia to have the list available to as many people as possible.

Reproductive Choice Australia has written a very comprehensive article on the issue of false providers - everyone should have a read - particularly as the Howard Government is funnelling money into such services.

We need to have accurate information if we’re to make valued choices.

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Disgust is at least one word I’d use to describe the Howard Government’s latest homophobic quest. I wonder what would happen if he used the resources trying to stop gay people marrying overseas into…well anything that was useful really.

And if Johnnie hadn’t turned me off the prospect of ever getting married, I have been tricked into attending my first Kitchen Tea. I can’t believe after 9 years I am still surprised by strange Australian customs. (Some examples include a holiday for a horserace, the rudeness of the word “she”, and hip, hip, hooraying at the end of Happy Birthday.)

Of course I had no idea this was a traditional aspect of weddings, or what it entailed. My engaged friend lured me in by telling me we could drink champagne before noon! After some research, I’ve found that the Kitchen Tea is an all gal event, similiar to a baby shower, except you provide the bride with gifts for the kitchen. Not that we’re showing her what her role in the marriage should be, oh no.

I can’t wait to email my mother in Canada, who keeps sending my fella, a chef, kitchen utensils in her care packages. Oh the faux pau! And really, how many cookie cutters in the shape of a maple leaf does one household need?

I also found a resource on other wedding traditions at the optimistic website Forever After.
Some of the worst ones include:

THE ORIGIN OF THE BEST MAN WEDDING TRADITION

In 200 A.D, the male Germanic Goths of northern Europe, usually married a woman from within his own community. However, when there were fewer women, the prospective bridegroom would capture his bride from a neighbouring village. The bridegroom was accompanied by his strongest friend (or best friend), who helped him capture his bride.

WHY THE BRIDE STANDS TO THE GROOMS LEFT

After the bridegroom captured his bride, he placed her on his left to protect her, thus freeing his right hand or sword hand against sudden attack.

THE ORIGIN OF THE HONEYMOON

After “kidnapping” his bride, the groom would take her and go into hiding, disappeared with her so that his family could not rescue her. The couple hid for a month (moon) and partook of a wine, made of mead and honey called metheglen, which was thought to have aphrodisiac properties. By the time the bride’s family tracked them down them, the bride would probably already be pregnant! A “bride price” would then be negotiated.

Living in sin has never looked better….

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A report has been released about the Pill that notes 1 in 4 women who use this method of birth control will have their libido adversely affected. Feministing.com brought up a few good points about the time it took for the medical community to acknowledge this side effect, and how this medication would have been administered differently if it was men’s libido in question. Truly I’ve never been told by a medical professional that the pill might decrease my sex drive. Anyone care to correct me?

The conspiracy theorist in me wonders why the pharmaceutical companies worked so hard on Viagra, but not on ways to increase women’s libido. I know, I know, we’re not supposed to like it, but really, who are all these men having sex with?

Each other perhaps?

I think this year will be a whopper for issues of sexuality, especially if Heath Ledger wins a Best Actor Oscar for his role as a sexually conflicted cowboy in Brokeback Mountain. It’s already been banned in some movie theatres in the States and I’m sure we’ll hear an outcry from some of the Australian Religious Right groups. It sounds like a beautiful love story where two spunky actors get their kit off. All I can say is yeee – ha!

Is your libido working?

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Check out this article:

http://smh.com.au/news/opinion/the-tills-are-alive/
2006/01/06/1136387622246.html

It’s about magazine editors paying millions of dollars for the stories and photos of the stars. Sometimes I am impressed at how naive I can be or, at least, really unaware of how the whole publicity/popularity/starmaker thing really works. I had contemplated certain things, such as:

1. Has Kirstie Alley purposely put on and taken off weight as a publicity stunt?

2. Why are some celebrities all over magazines but not others who’d you’d expect to be there?

3. Isn’t it awful for those celebrities who get caught out on the beach or coming home from the shop with no make-up on or looking a little too skinny or a little too fat, or whose photographs are doctored to make them look a little too skinny or a little too fat.

As for Kirstie Alley, I was trying to figure out how the publicity stunt thing would work: just because she’s on lots of mag covers (especially when they’re calling her a fat, ugly cow), how does that actually get her money? Does it promote her own tv show, get Hollywood to hire her, let her be an advertising spokesperson? It never dawned on my she’d just say, hey $80,000 for this photo of me, thanks”. I thought the mags sent their own photographers around to snap photos (or photographers sell them to mags) and get their own writers to make up stories.

I’m not sure I really thought about which way the money flowed: from mag to star or from star to mag.

I always thought, you never see tabloid stories about Michelle Pfieffer or Harrison Ford, for example. I presumed that was because they were nice people who did not court the tabloids. And I thought maybe Jen and Brad were having their privacy unduly violated by hungry magazine editors, who were mostly making up stories. I didn’t think they were getting money for access to the story!

I never thought Princess Mary and her hubby, or any other royalty for that matter, were getting paid by magazines - more that they were offering themselves to the magazines because it helped their own popularity. How stupid do I feel!

I’m no longer going to feel bad for celebrities now that I know that get money to be featured in the tabloid press.

It’d be great to be able to do a story on how all this really works…

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Well, working in the Office for Women and reading Germaine Greer has my mind going whir, whir, whir. Here’s what I think today:

Feminism has really fucking changed the world. There’s so much we still have to do, but damnit, we’ve come a long way. All these arguments about abortion, contraception, IVF - its all really the same argument: will we accept that technology coupled with advocated social change means that women can have any life they want - or won’t we.

I feel like screaming to conservatives, “The world’s changed, man, get over it!”

All this medical technology allows women to make good choices and to make bad choices and to try to change the consequences of their bad choices or to make a good choice that has unintended consequences. I hope that as time goes on and feminists keep writing their books and articles, we will learn from each other what kinds of choices tend to work and make us happy and what kinds don’t.

I was wavering over my position on the whole IVF and government funding it thing, but I think I’ve decided I’m for it - though I think more needs to be researched/said about how its probably really not good for a woman’s health and is pretty horrific and maybe should be limited. My arguments against were:

I don’t think you are supposed to get everything you want in life. It doesn’t seem right to be able to buy yourself everything your heart desires, baby included. Especially as that has implications for only rich people getting what they want

It isn’t a life-threatening procedure, so if you are that desperate to have a baby, fund it yourself.

Having a baby is not a human right.

For fuck’s sake, adopt - there’re enough babies in the world. Let’s make that easier and cheaper.

We need to divorce parenthood from the biological thing. It doesn’t have to be your biological baby. It is your baby if you raise it.

But since I can’t understand the desperation to have a baby AT ALL I don’t think I can take that opportunity/choice away from the women who are that desperate to go through such a horrific procedure for such a long time with such a little chance of success. And having the government fund it makes it more accessible to poorer mothers, though maybe not as it is still quite expensive.

If contraception and abortion services are government funded then IVF probably should be too.

I’ve been thinking today that though on the one hand technology raises so many ethical issues, the reality is that we’ve created it to use and we’ve already so much changed the “natural” way of living that we should go forward and see where our human brains take us.

I agree with Greer that in an ideal world we wouldn’t need technology to help us have the lives we want because we wouldn’t do things like get pregnant when we weren’t meant to, we could easily raise babies and work or not work without conflict, etc. But since this isn’t likely to ever happen - as long as the world is so unequal and male-dominated - we’ll need the technology to enable us to make the choices we want.

And one last thought: Hand up if you feel mature enough/old enough to have a baby. I’m 30 and I don’t feel nearly mature enough. I find the whole having babies too late thing an interesting concept. Our culture has created “young womanhood”; our culture has allowed us to remain immature, or acknowledge our immaturity, or acknowledge our desires to remain young and free as long as possible. I love that, but how does that reconcile with the fact that at 35, when you might actually decide you’re ready, your too old. How else do you deal with that other than IVF? See, we’re changing the world so fast, nature can’t keep up!!

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Well, well,

We couldn’t get through the first week of the year without further debate on abortion.

Research in New Zealand has found that in a study of about 1,200 young women, those who had an abortion were a third higher to have mental problems, such as depression, than their peers who continued with their pregnancies.

Anti-abortionists have used this research to back their argument that abortion is harmful to women. Selena Ewing, interviewed on the 7:30 Report believed that the research showed “that abortion can certainly do great damage to women’s mental health.” Ewing is a prominent member of the anti-abortion group Women’s Forum Australia. Read more about this group on the latest issue of my website, Do Not Be Quiet

Others pointed out the flaws in the research. In a letter to The Age Professor Doreen Rosenthal from the University of Melbourne, explained that the study did not make comparisons between “those who had or had not terminated an unwanted pregnancy, but between those who had terminated a pregnancy and those who had continued a pregnancy that was probably desired and planned.” Meaning if you have an unplanned pregnancy, you’re going to be depressed whether you have an abortion or not.

Another letter to The Age, written by Lesley Cowie, questioned whether this depression could be linked to the isolation women feel who have an abortion because the topic is still taboo. More importantly, stated Cowie, “a significant potential exists for women’s mental health to suffer should choice ever be removed.”
Here, here.

Perhaps most shocking to me is how the press discussed the many other studies currently being conducted on abortion. Do we really need more research to tell us that abortion is a difficult and lasting decision?

I have two suggestions:
1. Why don’t we spend some of the money used on researching the effects of abortion on providing children with better sex education (yes this includes religious schools too).
2. Why don’t newspapers admit that half their staff are on holidays, nothing much is going on in the world, and there is just so much cricket reporting anyone can do - so we know when it’s going to be a big week for abortion “news”.

Not that I would ever enter the debate by writing an article on the subject….
Erin

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Greetings/Happy Holidays

I was back at work today and the inevitable question came up: “What did you do on your holidays?” Well, you can imagine I didn’t have the same answer as most people as I finished my latest edition of DNBQ. Check it out: www.donotbequiet.com

Geez work is a drag….
Erin

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