Posts Tagged ‘Sexuality’

Locals lash out over ‘full’ Christmas Island

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

Paige Taylor; 3/3/10

It is not the influx of asylum-seekers on Christmas Island that Andrew Gooley has grown to resent. Rather, it’s the cashed-up immigration workers who squeeze themselves on to the tiny Australian territory and push up costs. Mr Gooley, his wife and two children will be kicked out of their rented apartment on April 13 because the new owner plans to let the property to immigration workers and service providers. After a boatload of asylum-seekers was detected close to Christmas Island on Sunday, Mr Gooley let fly at his local member, Labor MP Warren Snowdon. The national park gardener, who earns about $60,000 a year rehabilitating mined rainforests, said the only available unit was a flat for $550 a week, $250 a week more than he currently pays.

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Under-age hard sell

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Stephen Lunn; 11/8/09

Psychologist Steve Biddulph reckons he has sniffed a change in parents’ attitudes as they confront their concerns about the sexualisation of their children. He has noticed mothers and fathers are less clueless about what’s going on with their children and are becoming angrier. What they’re angry about, he and other experts said at a conference on the media’s sexualisation of children in Melbourne last week, is the stripping away of their basic right to grow up at a pace that will allow them to enjoy their childhood and grow into well-balanced adults. From the influence on girls and boys of the portrayal of women as sexual playthings on Sunday morning music videos, to easy access to pornography via the internet, to discussions of sex in magazines read by primary school children, to the marketing of suggestive clothing to girls as young as five, parents are starting to steam. They might admit to some blame, busy working lives reducing their capacity to better monitor and control their children’s influences and environment, but many are coming to the view that malign effects on children, particularly as a result of marketing and advertising, aren’t receiving the attention they deserve at government level, Biddulph says.

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Posted in Aid / Trade, Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »

Teenagers want sex — but a third get unwanted sex

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

Farah Farouque; 4/8/09

In their most impressionable adolescent years, a third of high school students say they have experienced unwanted sex. The vulnerability of teenagers, especially girls, is highlighted by a survey of the sexual experiences of almost 3000 students, in years 10 and 12. It found the most common reasons for unwanted sex were pressure from a partner or just being drunk. Researcher Anthony Smith told The Age that, strikingly, girls in year 12 were having more sexual partners and drinking 30 per cent more than they did when a similar survey was done in 2002. Professor Smith said the extent of unwanted sex detected in teenagers underscored the need for sex education in schools to better explain links between underage drinking and sexual behaviour that might be accompanied with regret later.

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Posted in Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »

Sexual regressor

Saturday, July 4th, 2009

Doug Ireland; 4/7/09

Sexual Politics in Modern Iran; Janet Mary; Cambridge University Press

A leading Iranian scholar in exile has published a new work of history and analysis that is a howitzer aimed squarely at the hypocrisies of today’s sexually repressive theocratic Iranian regime, whose violent repression of the women’s movement and lethal campaign to purge homosexuality have revolted the world.Janet Afary’s Sexual Politics in Modern Iran meticulously details the historical evolution of gender and sexuality, and of the roles and customs of women and same-sexers, from pre-modern Persia (AD500 to 1500) right through the sexual revolution that began in Iran seven decades ago.This panorama of Iranian sexual and gender mores and behaviour, informed by a deep understanding of the role of class in the moulding of sexual codes, will be a seminal work for years to come.

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Sexual freedom won’t spare you regret

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

Leslie Cannold; 24/5/09

Here’s how a 15-year-old West Australian girl described a sexual encounter she had with three boys at a party after too much drink: “It felt really good at the time but afterwards I felt cheated and used.” The Matthew Johns affair is the last in a long line of incidents and developments – including burlesque, pole dancing and lipstick parties – to have sparked welcome debate about power, consent, vulnerability and responsibility in contemporary relationships. But regret – what provokes it and what it reveals – has been left to one side. Either that, or it is deployed by authoritarian forces (radical feminists and conservative Christians) as proof that women are vulnerable victims when it comes to sex, sexuality and relationships, who need as much protection from others as they do from themselves.

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India’s third sex in unique appeal

Saturday, January 24th, 2009

24/1/09

A petition in India’s Supreme Court could pave the way for official recognition of a third sex, according to campaigners for the country’s eunuchs. If successful, gender boxes on government forms could be ticked male, female or “kinnar”, the way the country’s estimated 1 million eunuchs describe themselves. Eunuchs once enjoyed a proud place in Indian society, gaining trusted positions in royal courts protecting noblemen’s harems.

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High cost of free love

Monday, July 14th, 2008

Caroline Overington; 14/7/08

There are a couple of things that people want to know about Dawn Eden. First, could that be her real name? Second, how long since she last had sex? The first question is easy to answer. Dawn and Eden are her first and second names (she was born in 1968 when her parents were immersed in a Californian hippy culture); her real last name is Goldstein but she dropped it years ago “because I got tired of people who saying, ‘Oh, you’re Jewish’.”  Eden was born Jewish; now she’s Catholic and proudly chaste, which explains why people so often want to know when she last had sex, and why she gave it up. The answer is “complicated”. “I became a Christian in October 1999 but I did not immediately walk the talk. For a while, it was sin, repent, sin, repent. “After a while, say after October 2003, I felt in my heart that I should begin living the way God wanted me to live.” Eden’s book, The Thrill of the Chaste explores her journey from a sexually active rock music journalist in New York City in the 1990s, to her new life as a Catholic. During World Youth Day events beginning tomorrow in Sydney she will speak about her chastity and her conversion.

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Posted in Christianity, Human Rights | No Comments »