[updated with links at foot of post]
Another Alan Jones outburst, another meme, another Facebook page.
I must say, it’s awesome seeing a picture you created all over the place! Thanks to all for sharing!
#destroythejoint twitter.com/TheAviator1992…
Powered by Photobucket— Stephen Ragell (@TheAviator1992) September 2, 2012
Join me, together we can
#destroythejoint twitter.com/jilltomlinson/…
Powered by Photobucket— Jill Tomlinson (@jilltomlinson) September 2, 2012
Torey Maguire reckons feminists should just ignore Alan Jones, since he’s just a formulaic shock-jock troll, but I don’t agree. “Don’t feed the Trolls” is bad science, and we should feed the trolls if we need to. The point of speaking up is not to change the mind of trolls (most unlikely to occur), nor is it “giving in” when we supposedly should be “not giving them the satisfaction” of showing that they’ve needled us – the point of speaking up is refusing to be silenced and articulating our community standards. Creative mockery to underline the point that we are not “offended”, we are contemptous: that’s cathartic as well.
Elsewhere: Let’s destroy the joint
Categories: ethics & philosophy, gender & feminism, media, social justice
Friday Hoyden: Gillian Triggs 
Hands up anybody now who’d trust Rolling Stone to tell their story? 
DUFC #69 
The #NotYourAsianSidekick conversation 
Hoyden About Town 
I am loving the hell out of this whole thing. I want t-shirts.
As part of my efforts to #destroythejoint, I’m busy trying to complete my Java programming assignments. My system for this is 1 hour of programming time, followed by 30 minutes of housework, as a regular loop until my brain collapses in a heap.
So far today, I’ve accomplished: two loads of dishes; four loads of washing (before the heavens opened and drenched everything out on the line); one swept floor; two loads of sorted dry laundry; three packages of stuff returned from their temporary storage locations (after we had the lino in the main room replaced last week and spent a week with the house packed into the lounge room); two and a half loads of drenched laundry hauled back in off the line to be re-spun and hung out again when the weather clears (which means there’s three and a half loads to be hung out in total); four pages of algorithm notes for a program to transform a “dotted decimal” IP address into a decimal representation of the 32-bit binary digit it actually represents (the IP is input as a string, the calculation to do the transformation is fairly trivial; the data sanitization involved is a right whatsit and actually takes up about 95% of the actual program), and three methods in the class which will eventually be the Java program.
(Or in other words, I’m another bit closer to being able to program my very own guided missile and really dEsTrOy the joint!)
*envies megpie’s productivity*
Have just added a link to the foot of the OP: News with Nipples Let’s destroy the joint
Ooo yes to t-shirts!
Tigtog – the trick is I’m doing the housework to avoid doing the programming, and the programming to avoid doing the housework. Plus I have the timer going. I’ll admit, I was feeling somewhat unproductive yesterday, since I hadn’t actually finished much (most of the programming time was spent scribbling and turning ideas over in my head, or swearing at NetBeans – the Java IDE we’re required to use). However, writing it all out like that makes it seem much more impressive.
Plus, of course, it’s probably more practical tasks than Alan Jones actually accomplished yesterday as well.
There are t-shirts at cafepress, but they’re not nearly as cool as they should be.
Feminism is in the news again this week. And last week. And the week before. Hasn’t it been a great year for feminism? Three cheers for feminism!
It is one issue on which feminists and other rational people will agree unconditionally. Jones, his ilk and their string pullers should be put in a huge gunny sack and dropped into deep water beyond the coastal shelf.
Paul, I don’t think even Alan Jones deserves death for his opinions.
Should he however become afflicted with an extremely painful ulcer on his vocal cords which obstinately refused to heal and which made his voice sound as ugly as his attitudes? I confess that I would laugh nastily were he no longer capable of speaking on the radio.
I hope he becomes a really nice person so he can look back in horror at his actions, but I probably watch too many vampire shows.
Oh Kim, you’re so much nicer than I am.
My own take is that the people who, in the words of Terry Pratchett “tell the mob what to do” should be faced with some rather hefty legal and financial penalties for such things. Purely for example, perhaps, an equivalent length of time bereft of publication/broadcast privileges to the cumulative amount of time mob members spend imprisoned (so if you, for example, spark a riot which leads to 30 people being imprisoned for 30 days each, you’re off the air or out of publication for five years); or alternatively, a fine (for corporate offenders) equivalent to the total of all fines/damages ordered for individual members of the mob (again, a riot is sparked by inflammatory but uncredited articles in a particular newspaper. Five houses worth $500,000 each are burned down as a result, and a further $500,000 worth of damage is done to any number of other properties; arrested rioters are fined a total of $1 million between them all, plus damages. The newspaper would thus be fined $4 million).
Then again, I’ve always thought our culture was pretty much built around the idea that words are powerful things (think of religious codes, legal codes, scientific theories – we use words to shape our worlds, and by doing we make it clear words have power). I get annoyed when people in positions of power (such as the almost inevitably white and male radio and pulpit demagogues, like Mr Jones) try to pretend words are neither powerful nor important when the circumstances suit them.
Megpie71 – we already have incitement offences that people can be criminally prosecuted for. But I’d imagine that the bar is set fairly high – which I think it should be.
You are are right, tigtog. To deny Jones attention would be a form of virtual castration for him.
He would be cast aside immediately by his owners, who are the first authors of a criminality that has surely played a part in asylum seeker deaths at sea, beating up of mid east wars, continued suffering and death in indigenous communities, attacks on environmentalists with likely consequences in the future, welfare recipients and of course, the feudalist war on women.
A quick trip to the bottom of the Tasman in a sewn up gunny-sack with a large rock for company would be too merciful.
Paul, it doesn’t have to be that way. Noone needs to die, and we can address the ideas without “virtually castrating” the person.
I’m afraid I’m still boggling right back at the beginning of paul walter: “feminists and other rational people”. I’ve yet to see the coherent argument that one can be rational and deny the humanity of women. Or are we taking the right to vote, education, work for equal pay, etc for granted, and those things no longer count as “feminist”?
(In other words, is paul walter new? Can I call troll yet?)
Aqua, paul walter is not new. He’s been commenting intermittently here for years.
There are people, myself among them, who believe that while men can be feminist allies, they can’t be feminists. So I had no problem with this sentence.
In that case, I believe I can only be a feminist ally, not a feminist. But I don’t think I’d describe myself as “other rational people” all the same.
I, OTOH, think that men can be feminists. But I won’t go any further with this here and derail the thread.
Recently, sparked by this post, I wound up clicking through to something somewhere that I can no longer find, which featured the email address where you can forward your sentiments regarding the fitness of certain individuals for their awards, so I then sent this:
To honours@gg.gov.au
To Whom It May Concern,
I understand that Alan Jones (a well known broadcaster on radio) has received the honour of becoming an Officer of the Order of Australia.
I further understand that such a recipient who brings himself into disrepute may have said honour removed.
Mr Jones has made repeated threats of violence against women, most notably stating on radio that the Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, ought to be drowned at sea in a chaff bag, as though she were an unwanted kitten.
He has repeated similiar remarks as recently as last week.
I am aware that ACMA has reviewed Mr Jones’ statements, and cleared him, but I am hoping that the bar for appropriate behaviour is set higher than that at your organisation.
Yours sincerely,
My Real Name
Australian Citizen
In the recent days, I received a reply:
Dear My Real Name
I refer to your recent email regarding a member of the Order of Australia.
You will understand that I cannot comment on the deliberations of the Council for the Order of Australia (“the Council) as they are confidential. I can say, however, that the Council considers all nominations on their individual merits and decisions on whether an award should be recommended are based on information provided by the nominator and referees. Some referees are supplied by the nominator and further referees, who provide independent comment, are obtained by the Australian Honours and Awards Secretariat.
If you have further information that you feel would be of interest to the Council, you can forward it to:
Ms Sharon Prendergast
Director, Australian Honours and Awards Secretariat
Government House
Canberra ACT 2600.
I appreciate the time you have taken to provide us with your views and will bring your email to the attention of the Council at their next meeting.
Further information regarding the nomination process can be found on the Governor-General’s website http://www.gg.gov.au or http://www.itsanhonour.gov.au.
Yours sincerely
Assistant Director
Australian Honours and Awards Secretariat
Government House
Canberra ACT 2600
(That’s my bolding, by the way).
While I’m not thinking that spamming these people would be a good idea, since I have been told that my views will be brought up at their next meeting (and I do not know when that will be), I suspect that a number of emails expressing views that Alan Jones is not a fit and proper person to hold his award will carry more weight than one alone. So if you think that a man who says that our female prime minister ought to be drowned at sea should not be an Officer of the Order of Australia, then now might be a good time to say so. Email and snail mail addresses are noted above.