The Limited Options Fairytales

I was recently given a bunch of children's books and among them were three short fairytales; The Princess and the Pea, Thumbelina and The Goose Girl.

Thanks to a childhood immersed in Disney Cartoons I knew that princesses were mostly white, had poor relationships with their stepmothers and were basically there to give up on their own ambitions when they met a prince.

There was some other weird business that I had forgotten about though.

In Thumbelina, a poor infertile woman goes to a "wise woman" for a child and ends up getting a tiny girl child out of a flower.

She devotes herself to making the little girl happy and all seems to go well until Thumbelina is carried away by a toad as a wife for her son.

Thumbelina isn't really fussed about losing her adopted mother she's more focused on not marrying the toad.

She gets put on a waterlily and whines to some passing fish to cut it loose so she can drift away.

After she makes it safely to the shore she realizes she has always been looked after and that she needs someone else to mooch off.

She finds a lady mouse and proceeds to eat all her food whilst not doing anything useful.

The mouse suggests she go and marry her neighbor the mole.

Thumbs isn't into the mole but she needs a place to crash so she puts up with him. In the meantime she finds an injured bird, nurses it to health and then flies away with it to the land of the flower people.

When she arrives they give her a new name to replace the one given to her by "the man."

She meets the prince and gets married to him right away at the ripe old age of 14 or something.

Hopefully her adopted mother discovered the joy of cat ownership.

In the Princess and the Pea there is an young prince who is obsessed with finding a "real princess" he goes around meeting nice royal ladies and judging the hell out of them.

He returns home despondent while a storm front blows in.

During the height of the storm there is a knock on the door and this dripping wet woman is there claiming to be a princess.

She's like, "y'all got any princes up in here? I'm in the market. I also need a nap."

They put her on this huge stack of mattresses with a pea stuffed under one of them and she doesn't even care that she has to climb the equivalent of three stories to go to bed and could possible break her neck if she rolls off one of the sides.

In the morning the queen asks her how she slept and she answers that it felt like there was a rock under the mattresses.

The queen decides, I kid you not, that only a true princess could detect a mushed pea under a stack of mattresses and that this weird girl who doesn't have the sense not to be out on a stormy night would be perfect for her son.

She meets the prince, he digs her super sensitive pea detecting skills and they get married a few minutes later.

And then there was The Goose Girl.

The queen in this story raises her daughter by herself and manages to rule the kingdom but still decides to fall back on the tired paternalistic bs and send her daughter off to be married to some dude she's never met.

There must have been some budget cuts in the kingdom because she sends her daughter off on a talking horse with two donkeys and an ill tempered woman servant.

I guess the next kingdom over is pretty close and there aren't any thieves about or whatever.

The queen also gives her daughter a cup and lock of hair which she manages to lose pretty early on in the journey.

The servant stages a mini uprising and forces the princess to change places with her. The princess does this without putting up a fight and they procede to meet the prince.

No one suspects that the bad mannered, illiterate servant isn't really the princess.

No one suspects that the washed and groomed maiden with her isn't really a servant.

The prince proceeds to court the servant while the princess works with geese and gets harrassed by a local farm boy.

She summons the wind and makes his hat blow away. Then she goes and talks to the severed head of her horse. As you do.

Finally, after the princess has basically spelled out the score to anyone with eyes, the king begins to suspect that something is up.

In the end, the princess marries the prince (who has a weak chin and beaked nose) and the people all love her because, "she was so beautiful and gentle" (read: non threatening.)

To sum up, if you are a princess you should be as helpless and meek as possible. The most important thing is to look pretty and get married before you hit 20.

It seems the indoctrination started early for me.

Between the Bible and Grimm's Fairy Tales it's a wonder I managed to escape a similar fate to these simpering wimp princesses.

It's good to be a commoner.

Song of the Week : Take That - Love Love

If ever wondered what an aging boy band and dancing gimps would look like in a video then have I got a treat for you...

Tyson Fury: Portrait of a Fragile Ego

This young buck with the jutting underbite is Tyson Fury.

I first saw him a few nights ago when he was signing a tone deaf rendition of an Aerosmith song to his wife after winning some sort of boxing match.

Today I read recent comments he made about women.

Here's one of those gems:

"I believe a woman's best place is in the kitchen and on her back, that's my personal belief. Making me a good cup of tea, that's what I believe."

People pay to watch Tyson punch and get punched, not offer up his retrograde views on women.

Maybe it was one punch too many that made him this thick.

He's already found a woman to put with him and his backward ideas so why does he feel the need to tell the rest of us how to live?

When I come across men like Fury my first feeling for them is pity.

It must be hard to have such a fragile sense of self. It must be rough to have your entire identity tied up in an idea of manhood that is threatened by a woman "getting out of her place" and doing well.

British heptathlon and Olympic champion Jessica Ennis-Hill obviously makes him squirm.

To counter this he offers his unsolicited views on her appearance.

"I think she's good, she's won quite a few medals for Britain, she slaps up good as well, when she's got a dress on she looks quite fit."

He could have stopped at "medals for Britain" but he swings into full fuckwit mode instead.

Ennis-Hill's performance has nothing to do with her looks just as Fury's boxing skills are not impeded by him looking like something that fell off the neanderthal region of the evolutionary chart.

Further responses from Fury about his previous comments:

"I'm a little bit backward. I didn't really go to school. Which part of a woman looks good in a dress is sexist?"

"Or was it about the cooking and cleaning? I stand up for my beliefs. My wife's there (standing alongside Fury). Her job is cooking and cleaning and looking after these kids. That's it."

"She does get to make some decisions. What she's going to cook me for tea in a bit when I get home. That's the decisions what she gets to make. That's my beliefs, just like I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as my lord and saviour and if anyone wants to despute that let them do it."

"My belief is that my wife should be at home looking after my kids and cooking and cleaning. She's a very privileged woman to have a husband like me. Not everyone's in her position but the ones who are are very lucky. That's my opinion." 

So, if you are a woman your job is to put out, have kids, make dinner, clean the house and wait for a man to give you orders.

You are not allowed to have your own thoughts and goals. You are the property and possession of your man.

This sort of thinking drives domestic violence and is harmful coming from a person who has young fans who will want to emulate him.

Fury seems to be doubling down on his sexism and acting genuinely surprised that anyone who sees a women as actual persons would be offended by what he said.

And of course his wife stands by him. He has all the power in their relationship and she's accepted she has to adhere to his particular ideas of femininity if she wants to keep her life together. I wouldn't want that sort of life for anyone I care about.

It doesn't take a college degree to treat women like human beings in Fury's case however, it will take an epic battle against ignorance.

Saving The Girls

Nick and I watched a disturbing documentary on television last night.

Ex Australian Federal Police officer Denis Gray teams up with his mate Christopher Payne and another ex AFP officer named David Thompsett to go to Subic Bay in the Philippines. Their goal is to set up a sting operation to shut down a club where underage girls work as prostitutes.

The documentary was filmed by Luigi Acquisto and is called "Children of the Sex Trade."

At the same time these men are carrying out their investigation, an ABC television crew is also there investigating the American who owns the club and keeps an underage girl he calls "Princess" as his personal play object.

His name is Arthur Benjamin.

He grins creepily while being interviewed and tries unsuccessfully to pass himself off as a human being.

When speaking about Princess he says:

"She was hungry, she needed someone to take care of her. I'm in. You know what I want."

"But if she fucks up, does something I don't like, I kick her out, doesn't bother me. There is always another one."

It's as if someone re-wrote the character Humbert Humbert, stripping him of all intellect and charm and inflating his sense of male entitlement to the maximum-only this is no fictional creation, Benjamin is real.

And of course there are others like him. They come from America, Australia and the local area.

They rationalize what they are doing by saying that they are giving the girls money to feed their families.

One guy advises the undercover reporters not to try to wrap their minds around the issue too much.

If you stop to think of the girls as humans it takes the fun out of using them apparently.

Also, the last time I checked it was perfectly legal to help someone else out financially without demanding sexual favors in return.

The AFP group get in touch with an NGO called PREDA which was founded by Father Shay Cullen.

His organisation says their goal is to give girls rescued from the sex trade a better life.

Through Cullen, the AFP men are able to convince two sisters, Michelle and Marisol into helping them build a case against Benjamin and his business, "The Crow Bar."

I had a lot of issues with this documentary.

I'll start with the way the two sisters are treated.

It's obvious they are uncomfortable and fearful about ratting out the bar owner and the "mama san" or woman who runs the club and acts like a pimp.

There are reported "death squads" in the area who carry out extra judicial killings against people who speak out and the girls are obviously putting their lives in danger.

The men interview Michelle about how she was abused by an Australian man when she was 14 and how her mother basically sold her into that life.

While she cries and seems traumatized the men focus on pressuring her and Marisol into signing the statements that will ensure their success in bringing down Benjamin.

At one point Marisol disappears and all the men can think about is how that will affect their sting.

They don't seem concerned about the reasons that would cause Marisol to hide from them.

PREDA stresses the importance of giving the girls who are victimized a real childhood. They show images of children in a religious service led by Father Cullen.

It's obvious that their help comes with a healthy dose of Catholic dogma.

While this group seems like the girls' best chance of getting help, I hate to see that help have religious expectations attached to it.

Isn't it possible Catholic values that teach birth control is wrong, women are inherently inferior to men and that sex is only for procreation might be doing harm as well?

It seems like you can't afford to ask those questions because the way the girls would live without the organization would be so much worse.

The documentary shows this area of the Philippines as an economically depressed place where income and gender equality are in short supply.

I know Father Cullen wants to give the girls a normal childhood but what comes after that?

Let's say a girl finishes her basic education. What is there for her to do to afterwards earn money and have a better life?

Basically, there are a plethora of seedy bars filled with a host of Omega males waiting to live out their slimiest fantasies.

There are  corrupt authorities willing to protect these businesses due to the kickbacks they receive.

What else is there?

Spoiler alert: The Filipino authorities, AFP guys, ABC guys and one U.S. Department of Homeland Security officer named Eric McLoughlin successfully carry out a raid on The Crow Bar.

McLoughlin seems to mistake the raid for a bust on a heavily armed gang as he shouts at a couch full of young girls, "I want to see your hands! Sit down! No talking!"

I am infuriated as I see this American-flavored power trip.

I wish someone would tell McLoughlin to sit down and not talk. It's not his country or his raid.

Hell, Benjamin doesn't even get sent to the States to face charges. He's locked up in Manila.

The most disturbing part in the documentary comes in the end when the AFP men are saying goodbye to Michelle. She is weeping while Gray gives her a kiss on the cheek. He then boards a plane back to the safety and comfort of his old life in Australia.

The documentary ends by saying both Michelle and Marisol have received death threats and gone into hiding.

I wonder why these brave crusaders couldn't have set the girls up with their own business in Manila or tried to get them refugee status in the U.S. or Australia?

Instead it's, "thanks and good luck with your life." You've served your purpose. It's been real.

Meanwhile the men are hailed as brave heroes and get to pretend to be humble public servants.

I predict the Crow Bar will be replaced with something equally sleazy, like a mushroom springing from a pile of shit.

Even now the sex trade is thriving in Subic Bay.

Until the issue of child prostitution is dealt with from every aspect that allows it to exist and thrive, the cycle will repeat.