Here old Gus is taking his life into dangerous grounds. But bear with me....

Jane Caro:

During the 2016 American presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump was irritated by some pointed and dogged questions from (then) Fox News journalist Megyn Kelly. He vented his anger by saying “you could see blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever”.

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/opinion/disgust-at-female...

I hope it is not too strange for an old bloke to talk about women. Gus has seen it all — well a lot of it. 

Girls in remote Indigenous communities are staying home from school each month because they do not have access to tampons and pads, a new survey has found.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/03/indigenous-girls-...

There is one moment I can’t stop thinking about. Near the end, Kerr casually mentions that she once tried leech therapy as part of her wellness practice: “One was on my coccyx because it’s really good to, like, detox the body, rejuvenate the body … I had a leech facial as well. And I kept the leeches. They’re in my koi pond.”

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/14/gwyneth-glows-like-...

See also: The great slide into crap...

One of the things I joke about with my mom all the time is that if I was conventionally hot and I had a slammin’ body, I would be president. Absolutely. Because when I think about how hard I’ve had to work to get to where I am – one of the things that gets under my skin is that I’m always referred to as prolific. And that’s fine. I am prolific.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jul/03/roxane-gay-lindy-we...

Some time after that, Russian President Vladimir Putin told interviewer Oliver Stone: “I am not a woman, so I don’t have bad days.” There was not so much outrage about these comments, despite them clearly referencing women’s menstrual cycle; perhaps because we expect less of the leader of Russia than the leader of the US.

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/opinion/disgust-at-female...

Gus: Here Putin did apologise for this "nasty" quip and admitted that men can have bad days too. It’s human and there are natural cycles. men and women cycles are different he said. 

And everyone is at a different stage of the cycles. Nature accidentally staggers the steps of every individuals in order to maintain variability. Dealing sensitively with these variations is our gift to humanity. We learn to be sensitive.

But PMT (or PMS) is not fiction. Not that all women suffer from PMT. With this natural process, comes a certain amount of anxiety and pain. Are we pregnant? Menstruating can hurt. I have seen some women going nuts “once a month”. It’s not an illusion. We are told that PMS (PMT) often includes both physical and emotional symptoms, such as acne, swollen or tender breasts, feeling tired, trouble sleeping, upset stomach, bloating, constipation, or diarrhoea, headache or backache, appetite changes or food cravings, joint or muscle pain. "I have PMS and a gun. What's your problem?" (see: a discourse on feralism .....)

 

 

 

One can sense the air becoming thick with all this hormonal battle. It bleeds a little. Far less than we would think — as shown on this awful show called “Embarrassing Bodies”... Men could actually bleed more. From fights. And it hurts more, but men do it deliberately as a silly proof of manhood. 

“Who killed Davey Moore, why an’ what’s the reason for?” the words written more than 50 years ago by Nobel Laureate, Bob Dylan, should echo throughout Australia following the outrageous test of human brutality staged in Brisbane over the weekend. The aim of each combatant was to render the opposite incapable of continuing the battle by inflicting injury. The main target for injury was the brain.

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/jeff-horns-brutal-brisbane-fight-another-r...

Former prime minister Tony Abbott has warned the Liberal Party is “haemorrhaging members” and needs to change, calling for the party’s membership to be “liberated” from factional powerbrokers.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/theres-a-fight-on-...

 

Blood. Life. Politics...

Finding insults using blood as a theme is not that hard, but demeaning. But to say the least, despite being men, Putin and Trump are not as bad as Abbott on the misogyny scale. Trump’s battle with Mika is a sideshow alley. Mika and Joe tried to “politically” punch Trump in the gonads and got similar in reverse — but not being political animals, they got the blood treatment. Mika got the worst of it. Joe is a wimp.

Many men are silverback brutes trying to pass as gentlemen. Women are cactuses trying to pass as flowers. It’s an impass. We could wonder how we manage to procreate. Apart from a few Adonises and Venuses, men are ugly and women make-up their faces not to look like that of men. 

Let me mention a fascinating documentary shown last night (3/717) on ABC2 on two beautiful aboriginal women going for a body building championship. The process is raw emotional and tense as the women try to find acceptance, especially that of themselves. The food has to be measured to provide maximum muscle and minimal weight. It’s a battle. And they feel naked while wearing the scanty bikini to show their pack of six (or eight). On the day of the competition, their faces are transformed by make-up to make them look “feminine” while their body is like Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger in his heydays. It’s conflicted. but there is nothing wrong with this game if you want to be part of it. 

Accepting who we are and making “the best of it” is one of the key of our happiness. The second major key is that other people do not give us grief or hurt us for their own pleasure, which often underwrites their low self-esteem or their desire to control. 

Many women in the world are in a second rate position and accept this (often) painless fate because it’s part of the cultural tradition, including religious beliefs. We have lived with this for more than 4,000 years and we’re still in the throes of misunderstanding men and women. 

 

Where to from here?

The burqua is a form of empowerment of women. Strange for me to say this. It is designed to keep women away from the desires of men, but it empowers the woman — by remaining unknown, with impossible human interaction other than those chosen by “her” men (husband and family members) — yet it is an instrument of submission, akin to slavery as it also limits curiosity. 

If we are a young man looking at a woman with lust, we’re “romantic”, if we are an old man looking a woman we’re perverts. The line is fine. 

If I have an argument (right or wrong) about an idea with a woman, I am labelled a chauvinist anti-feminist. It’s a self-defence and protection mechanism. I can cope and I know when to shut up. From a man perspective, attacking an idea held by a woman is as if a man was attacking her womanhood. If I have the same fight of ideas with a bloke, a lot of red-ned and beer will be drunk and we’ll agree to disagree — or find a common beach on which we can fight them, the other idiots. If a woman attacks a man with an idea, it’s an attack on his “right to be superior”— a fictitious right which has been ingrained since childhood via sneaky religious and annoying cultural conventions. The woman under the burqua is not allowed to have an opinion in public. And when two women disagree, there could be a variety of undermining each others, including later-on gossip while often appearing conversing with civility about mundanity. 

This has been some of my relative observations and no-one is perfect. but we can still strive for equality and less bloodiness in our relationships. People like trump are boorish silverback who resent upstarts pissing in their territory. They also expect female capitulation and they know when to get it. But they will also promote the Amazons, the female fighters, in their own way.

The monkey in us needs to be tamed. Religion has been at the source of much of our antiquated way to deal with each other sexual genderisation and reinforce the monkey by making us believe we're angels. Here Tony Abbott is the epitome of what’s wrong with our social interactions. He is a little shit and wants us to know he is still pissing in the territory of others. He is a liar as well and he won’t change.

But I personally, wrongly or rightly, was worried about a Hillary Clinton victory. I was worried she would have wanted to prove she was more equal to men. She would have pursued Putin is like she did of Gaddafi. This was her stated aim many times in not so many words. This could have turned ugly and certainly nuclear. There far more chance for the two blokes, Putin and Trump to come to deal mano a mano in an understanding of manhood territory. So far, the election of the idiot boofy trump has delayed the main fight. Let’s hope they agree to disagree and leave it at that. It could be the start of a strange but necessary friendship, though unwanted by the media and the hawkish promoters who always want a fight. In this case let them fight like in a wrestling match. Pre-arranged. No winners, just a few bruises and a bit of blood, followed by a drink at the pub.

 

Gus Leonisky

your local old fart....