I want to read this book. The writer, Ariel Levy, doesn't seem like an idiot who wants to screw us [especially as she’s “childless and unmarried”. I don’t want to harp on this, but what IS THAT ABOUT? Is the similar status of a male author something that would be highlighted for us, etc? Call me a hackneyed old shrew if you will, but it’s only a clichéd retort because nothing changes.] Anyways, I think I'm going to have to read the book with a mindset divorced from any concerns about how it might be used against women in a multiplying set of newspaper opinion pieces, eg. They admit it. Post-feminist ideas about empowerment are bunk and are bad for teenage girls, by Douchebag Wanker/ess. Yes, I’m going to ignore those thoughts. Because it looks like there are interesting ideas in this book, and I believe I'll be able to consider them, up to the point where Levy writes, "It no longer makes sense to blame men." Because, that's just crazy talk, obviously. It ALWAYS makes sense to blame men, heh heh etc… However, it really truly feels wholly unnatural to me to blame women for any demeaning state of affairs. As a starting point anyway. So I'm surmising that in the book Levy encounters a lot of stuff that lead her to that point of holding women responsible, and I'm interested to see what that stuff is. And also to see if her arguments about what that stuff means hold up.

Anyone want to come to see her on Tuesday 25th October at Dymocks [234 Collins St] at 6pm? I’m thinking I might see about recording it for Women on the Line.

Anyways, to something unrelated. Was reading yesterday’s paper and was thinking, firstly, how brave that doctor is to be named and photographed for the front page of a newspaper as someone who performs late-term abortions [considering it’s something people get all psycho and murderous about] and how fucking cool he is about why he does it, ie. women should not suffer “simply because they find themselves in a situation that very few people want to help them with.” Masterful.

Secondly, I was thinking, JESUS, Abbott isn’t even trying to hide it:

“Mr Abbott said he believed it would help cut the number of late-term abortions by giving women more time to think about the consequences.”

I suppose it’s good that we have open admissions that this whole move towards informed consent and counselling and ‘cooling-off’ periods is not actually intended to help women, it’s intended to prevent abortion. Which underlines a point Leslie Cannold made about how superficial this new 'women-friendly' language around anti-abortion is. This statement also retains that lovely insulting aspect of assuming that if women take the time to think about abortion, they won’t do it. And it hints at the sinister consequences of enforcing this extra time, which I agree could lead to a reduction in the number of late-term abortions because there is that handy possibility of trapping women into continuing with a pregnancy when getting an abortion performed is made too impractical. Time is critical with late-term abortions. So let’s make them wait a bit longer and the baby might just pop out. YAY!