CONTENTS
Japanese girls: smaller, faster, more economical
Judge hit herself in face with jacket as 'experiment'
News from the sex war front
This page has items of news that are of interest to the war of the sexes, feminism and our general contemporary attitude to sexual power. Some is bizarre and some is just kooky. All of it says something about the way we live.
The stories are currently only direct transcripts from newspapers.
Puss-n-boots
A women's lobby group has called on women not to have sex with men who wear Windsor Smith shoes as a protest against a series of billboard advertisements. The national Women's Media Centre Queensland said the Windsor Smith billboards, which depict a man cradling a woman's face close to his groin, were "offensive and distressing". She said the advertisements should be withdrawn.
At least 20 of the roadside billboards in Brisbane have been defaced by the Feminist Underground Guerrilla Group, which found them offensive and degrading. But the company said yesterday it had no plans to replace the nationally run advertisement.
(Daily Telegraph, Wednesday March 15, 2000)
Japanese girls: smaller, faster, more economical
...Surveys show that up to 75% of young Japanese parents now prefer baby girls.
Daughters are seen as cuter, easier to handle, and even more important in this fast-aging society, more likely to look after their elderly parents.
A passion for baby girls has spawned hot-selling books and magazines, advice services for sex selection and clinics dispensing pink suppository jelly to help produce girls.
"Boys don't listen and are harder to raise," said Amnia Malachite, 27. To improve her odds of conceiving a girl, she scrupulously followed the advice in a popular sex-selection book and took her temperature for a year before trying to become pregnant. She sobbed with joy when her daughter was born.
Los Angeles Times, (reported in Sydney Morning Feminist, Saturday November 27, 1999)
Judge hit herself in face with jacket as 'experiment'
A Family Court judge has been accused of being unfit for office after she hit herself in the face with a case exhibit, a jacket, as an "experiment" while alone in her chambers, in order to make a finding in a case. (This involved a husband in an extended legal request to obtain contact with his child.)
"Justice Lawrie...explained how the mother of the boy threw a jacket belonging to her son into a moving vehicle driven by the boy's stepmother in order to return it. The jacket struck the stepmother in the face....I was quite satisfied that the wife did not intend to hit or cause harm to any occupant of the car... I was unable to cause any significant degree of discomfort even hitting the metal tags against my face."
In his complaint ...the father says that "in essence I have been in a case for 2 1/2 years which has miscarried because the judge has hit herself in the face."
Sydney Morning Herald transcript, Saturday January 2, 1999
Court clears wife of wounding
A pregnant woman who stabbed her husband three times with a kitchen knife during an argument was found not guilty yesterday of malicious wounding.
Manly magistrate Andrew George found the police had not proved beyond reasonable doubt that she had been reckless and that she might have caused harm.
Mr George dismissed the malicious wounding charge and a second of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. He said the husband's evidence suggested he did not believe his wife's actions would bring about the injuries he suffered.
[The husband] told the court he and his wife had argued over the ironing of a shirt when he arrived at their home at 6pm...
The Manly Daily, Wednesday August 26, 1997
When the chips are down
A 59-year-old Queensland woman stabbed her boyfriend with a steak knife because he wouldn't send back an extra bowl of chips which arrived with their meal, the Supreme Court in Burnie heard yesterday.
The jury was told how widower Mr Brian King, also 59, loosened the top of a salt shaker so that the contents spilt on Anne Downey's food. She then squirted him in the face with sauce. Ms Tamara Jago, defending, said Downey, who faces a charge of unlawful wounding, had just heard that Princess Diana had ben killed, and was extremely upset.
AAP in (Sydney Morning Herald, November 17 1998)
Vertigo magazine's nude cover photo the dizzy limit
CENSORSHIP by a student group has left the cover of a university newspaper blank.
The Students Association at the University of Technology, Sydney, said the cover picture taken from People magazine, was sexist and in breach of copyright. So the cover of the current edition of Vertigo was published as a blank red page and a fictitious interview , titled "The Patriarch vs Feminazi", was also removed. But furious editors, claiming thev have been censored, said the material had been merely a jibe at political correctness.
Josh Szeps, 20, who writes a column under the name Alan Akerman admitted the picture of a semi-naked woman was in poor taste but said students had the right to see it. "I am outraged and deeply saddened that students who would have I liked to see the cover, and think a student newspaper should push the bounaries, didn't see that happen," said Mr Szeps, the son of actor Henri Szeps. He said the Students Association stopped the front page because it had radical left-wing views and not because the picture was sexist or illegal. "The key issue is that a political authority has no right in preventing people from reading something which might be a little controversial or risque," he said.
The controversy erupted when the editors tried to use the picture to satirise the previous "Womyn's Edition", which had been devoted to feminism.
The editors took the picture from People magazine and planned to use it with the titles "Welcome Back Men" and "Well, Buckle Up, Pedro, Because This Time It's Our Turn". But the Students Association objected and, at a recent meeting of it's elected representatives, used its power as publishisher of Vertigo to stop the front page.
In an angry reponse, the editorial team planned to run a completely blank cover with the words: "This cover was censored by the Students Association of UTS."
But they were further confounded when a lone dissenting editor sided with the Association and changed the colour to red and the word "censored" to "deleted".
Association president Genevieve Derwent said the picture contravened university regulations on discrimination and could have attracted legal action. She said pictures of naked women had appeared in Vertigo before, but in this instance the one proposed was to have been used in a sexist context.
Written By SIMON CRITTLE (Daily Telegraph, or Sun Herald, 1998)
