Prejudices - what I wish PM Gillard had replied

“Oh that’s absurd …… are you wanting to have an open discussion about gay rights or are you raising this to attempt to belittle me, to say that I am not in a real relationship? That the relationship is somehow flawed, as judged by the criteria of your own prejudices?

What does your attack say about the prejudices that all male hairdressers endure? The prejudices you are revealing about bisexual people is especially offensive and sad.

So what exactly are you attempting with this line of questioning?”

How I wish someone would speak up against the consistent insults, prejudices and jokes about bisexual folks. In the discussions of our PM’s situation of being ridiculed by journalists and some politicians, it’s been fine for some, to make even more jokes about gay hairdressers. I am so over it.

And I am annoyed at Australian activists. If only all those liberal middle class marriage equality advocates would focus on the real issues of homophobia instead of all that (for me anyway) unimportant nonsense about marriage equality.

How about they put their efforts towards defending male hairdressers right to be hetro, gay, queer, bi or however else they roll, just like every other human being should have. Annoyed after another slick joke is made on ABC about the PM’s partner’s looks and if they are ‘macho’ or not.

##  http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4753660.html      a great opinion piece by The Drum

 

### Separate but I was reminded of the often arrogance and sanctimonious attitude of expatriates towards national colleagues, donor recipients and ‘them’, when I worked in Cambodia and Timor also made me sad and disappointed in regards to gay rights. Now ‘we’ Australians are going to export a homophobic attitude to all male hairdressers? My observations were that it was completely normal and usual to have male hairdressers in the Asian countries I visited. What I dread is that Australia’s narrow minded prejudices get exported …….

Red dirt homelessness

I have never been before to this particular red desert and yet the spinifex and red sandy earth feels familiar. It feels home-like. I know (or knew) the other side of this desert, over state borders to the north east, where Alice Springs is 1,500km away from here. Now I am in the prosperous mining area known simply as the northern goldfields. Although it is far south for me being as I am coming from Timor, so geography gets as puzzling as my homelessness already is.

My usual where-is-home puzzle has begun. Even when completely expected, this enduring puzzle is occasionally emotionally intense, social awkward when answering supposedly simple questions about where I come from and yet it’s a weirdly comfortable puzzle to me; maybe the perpetual traveling for work is resulting in a gypsy addiction to the puzzle of where is home.

My choices of what I consider ‘home’ to be, include at the moment; returning home to the Australian red dirt desert; home in Dili where I loved working and playing although by the end I was over the environmental and noise pollution as well as the crazy traffic; NSW because its only 3 weeks until I fly east for special time with family and friends; Ratanakiri, Cambodia because the similarities in remoteness and redness and thus my homelessness includes missing Dave, my Rat’ri timber house and the volcanic crater lake.

artist coloured mining 'tailings'

Being as I was convinced I’d be moving to far north Queensland or the Northern Territory there is a sense that home is the Australian ‘top end’ and I am now the intruder visiting the wrong patch of southern red dirt. Yet it’s now 12 years since I lived in central Australia so that link could have been overwhelmed by my more recent love affair with feeling at home in south east Asia.  

The facts are that currently, I am a stranger in a familiar landscape with all the homesickness of Timor, sentimentality for other locations and the odd sense of returning to desert dwelling. A combination which is allowing me to be immensely happy.                               

I am privileged to have my gypsy puzzle of where is home. 

Stuff happens, 2.

If natural spirits, a Christian god or a Buddhist style of karma caused my motorbike accident a year ago, the question and options of causality do not preoccupy me. At the one year anniversary I remain grateful and mystified that my body healed so well. My feelings are very secular, as I focus on the extraordinary capability of the human body. In addition my appreciation of the highly advanced scientific knowledge that came from the orthopedic surgeons, orthopedic registrars and the physiotherapists who contributed so much to my rehabilitation, is my focus.  

Who is to blame for my accident has recently been asked by some Timorese friends. Did I think that the natural spirits (lulik) and I were back in harmony? Or did I think that someone had used their black magic abilities to curse me. If I had been in Cambodia, local colleagues would have asked similar questions. I asked how did they identify black magic versus something happening due to lulik and they disagreed between themselves, revealing strong regional discrepancies about these matters as some were from west Timor and some from the east. One said he would have to confess on Sunday to his priest as the new priest was saying no-one should believe anymore in lulik. One fervently disagreed, saying it was okay to be Catholic but to keep the traditions of lulik and black magic. Another began her usual rant about Catholicism reminding us that she was equally passionately against the colonial religion and that only lulik was significant to modern Timor.

taxi windscreens 2/3 unusable by green

For myself, I was unlucky? Seven years full time in Asia on little 125 motorbikes in atrocious traffic conditions and I had one accident. My first time on a motorbike was about the age of 6 on the wonderful little 50cc bikes made for kids, under the supervision of my parents. Now I was unlucky one Monday afternoon at 5pm, having a bizarre accident of being knocked from my moto by someone on foot!

Years ago a young Ratanakiri, Cambodia, colleagues’ new family timber house had burnt down within months of it being built. He and his village immediately knew that someone in the family had made a mistake when cutting down the trees they used and had evidently disturbed the local spirits. Many animist ceremonies in accordance with their indigenous beliefs were held after the fire, to appease the spirits, to apologise to their village’s spirits and ask the spirits to not do further damage to the family. Our Buddhist majority culture Cambodian colleagues knew that the fire was not from natural spirits but of course was from upsetting their personal karma, possibly in a previous life but maybe more recently. They accepted that such things happen as the cycle of life and one had to go to the temples and pay respects to Buddha, your ancestors and elders in your family. Myself and my expatriate colleagues wondered how the fire was started. Was it a candle falling over, a child playing with matches or could it be deliberately lit by jealous neighbours? We had conversations about if others had heard of houses burning down and there were discussions about the duty of a work place employer to help out (days were given off to the young man and a cash advance on his salary) and the role of the Cambodian Red Cross’s assistance. The common word used by all expatriates, from many diverse developed countries and religious backgrounds, was that the indigenous family were very “unlucky”, especially since it was the family’s first ever timber house after always living in bamboo traditional style housing.

A year after smashing my upper arm with approximately 14 fractures, I celebrate that I am physically capable to do all the things I love to do. I consider myself lucky.