Weather Update

So! I have not frozen yet! The insanely cold snap on the Anzac Day long weekend hasn't been repeated - today is actually quite warm, and by that I mean ten degrees when I walked to work. Aside from that, the BOM tells me the temperature at 8am has been shifting between 2 and 6 degrees for the last couple of weeks, and I'm very proud of myself for a) not freezing and b) incrementally decreasing the number of layers I'm wearing.
We're down to knee-high-socks with no tights under my suit pants, people! (That's because I crazy overheated the other day when the building aircon went loopy and I was having a low-level anxiety thing. Better cold legs in the morning than passing out in the afternoon.) The wollen jumper has been packed back into the cupboard, and the beanie left off (which gives me a few weeks' window of decent hair, rejoice). I can't even remember where I put my scarf.

Of footballers and Herald columnists...

Miranda Devine < Sam de Brito < Annabel Crabb.

Devine distinguishes herself by making an ALMOST coherent, albeit infuriating, argument for increased sexual decorum on the part of ladies (in order to moderate teh menfolks, who clearly can't moderate themselves).

De Brito makes half a good argument: he argues that 'it's not about consent, it's about what's right', but while he's talking about it just not being right for older, famouser footy players to gang-bang young drunk women, and how you wouldn't want it to be your sister or daughter, he seems to be operating on the assumption that 'consent' means utterance of the word 'yes', or not uttering the word 'no'. Even if you're drunk, and surrounded by football players. If he'd stopped to think about why he felt it was wrong, and why he wouldn't want it to be his sister, he might've got somewhere.

Annabel Crabb is <3.

But surely somebody, at some point, needs to cut through the forgiving fug of psychoanalysis and evaluate this quaint league tradition (apparently it's called "bunning", a new word for most of us) for what it is.

Strip away the fame and the adulation and all the trappings.

Strip away the girl, even, and ask the obvious question.

Which is: Why would a group of blokes come together, as if drawn by some invisible gravitational force, and gather in a room to masturbate with each other?

What do we ordinarily call that behaviour?

Much criticism has been made that the players who engage in "bunning" are exploiting these girls for bestial sexual purposes.

I don't know.

Those girls are being used all right, but I reckon they're being used as beards to disguise the otherwise perfectly obvious, screaming queerness of what's going on.

Come on. Are you kidding?

Let's say it out loud: it's the gayest thing ever.

And these are the same blokes who can't wait to climb into dresses for stunts on The Footy Show. Don't think we're not putting two and two together.

So come on, chaps.

If you want to get together and celebrate your oiled, toned bodies in the celebrated Greek tradition, then go ahead.

Just leave the ladies out of it, will you, and do us all a favour?

(Is this flippant use of homosexual stereotypes for the purposes of shaming and regulating straight behavior? Should I not be laughing? *overanalyses*)

Omg, now I'm using my medieval blog for vaguely RELEVANT gender rants!

Why Chretien de Troyes pwns modern fantasy in the matter of significiant female homosocial relationships among characters.

Thanks to Trojie for being the sounding-board for my initial workings-out on female homosociality in modern fantasy literature.

Also, unrelated, HAPPY BIRTHDAY PADS. I'd write you a present only I still owe David a present from last summer :P.