“Generations of men are frustrated, angry and ashamed that, despite following the rules - and despite sacrificing the tender, emotionally connected boys inside of them - they're not getting what was promised to them.”

Ezra up a tree. Binalong Bay, Bay of Fires, Tasmania. July 2021.

See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Violence by Jess Hill

A bleak insight into the history, culture and laws around familial violence in Australia. The book offers a broad sweep of the movement Hill identifies as a "historic shift in power and accountability" in which "the Western world [has] finally started taking men’s violence against women seriously". The full truth of the latter half of this statement remains still to be seen.

Unlike the dry government reports and inquiries cited throughout the work, Hill gets behind the simple facts and figures (although there are plenty of these too) to give the reader a real visceral sense of the terror, abuse and personal and institutional failures behind the dreadful data.

It's not perfect, and I scratched my head at times in which she defers to various authorities and takes assertions at face value (telling rather than showing), but it largely doesn't detract from the whole. There is a tendency to simplify the very complex forces at work (it seems to posit a unified feminist position on psychoanalytic and psychological approaches to shame in relation to violence), but perhaps this is unavoidable if you're trying to appeal to a broad audience.

All up, a worthy addition to the literature and a great primer on the issues.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Comments

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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