I often receive notifications from Facebook about a new petition I might be interested in signing, generated through a page or site known as Change.org. Invariably I am not interested in signing whatever new petition is going around because the ones I hear about make me with to God people would find something more constructive to do with their time. Volunteer at an aged care home, or maybe just go out into the road and pick up rocks and then eat them, because seriously, folks, I am usually not interested in your whiny bullshit online petitions. However, I might just have to go on Change.org and get one going along these lines: Stay Out Of Our Lives With Your Nanny State Censorship Horse Poop. Target have acquiesced to the demands of one such petition and withdrawn Grand Theft Auto V from their shelves. Target, get some bleach and a bandage to treat that self-inflicted bullet wound to your foot, because gamers are just going to buy that game elsewhere, and deny you a sale. The so-called problem with GTA5, as the hip call it (I'm not hip, but my husband is a gamer), is it includes violence against women. The fact that it includes violence against men as well is apparently of no consequence. Today I had a chat with my 13yo, and asked him if he understood violence against any member of society regardless of gender is unacceptable. He looked at me as though I had taken leave of my senses and replied, 'Of course I do, Mum.' I said to my children, 'You know what you see on TV, and in games, is not what happens in real life, don't you?' Again, they wondered had I gone completely bonkers because my kids are sensible enough to know that if Wile E Coyote detonates a bundle of dynamite and it goes awry, he is going to be pretty much blasted into miniscule smithereens that will land everywhere like grisly hailstones, rather than stand there with a black charred face and a stunned expression. My kids are not likely to go handling dynamite for this reason. Given we live in NSW, they don't even go fart-arsing with Tom Thumbs and throw downs. Funnily enough, last night my son mentioned the land speed of a roadrunner, and that a coyote is actually twice as fast. 'Then why doesn't that coyote ever catch that roadrunner?' I asked, and my son rolled his eyes and replied, 'Because it's a CARTOON, Mum!' So yeah, I think my kids are smart enough to differentiate.
So here's an idea slightly left of field, for all you petitioners: how about giving people enough credit to exercise common sense, and allow for the fact people know what's real and what isn't?
Okay, next target on my list is Senator Larissa Waters, who is calling for a No Gender December petition, or some such malarkey. This is based on the idea that gender based toys pander to sexist stereotypes that could stop girls achieving what they could. For fuck's sake, you dingbat, wasn't Barbie an astronaut at some stage? If not, she's been a doctor, a lawyer, a nurse, a teacher - she's done it all. And you are seriously going out on a limb (which will break and you are going to flounder like said Wile E Coyote before thudding to the ground) to suggest that there could be some connection to domestic violence with traditional gender based toys. Does my sister-in-law clocking my husband on the scone with his own Tonka truck when they were kids count? This is seriously the biggest load of bullshit since muster at The Okay Corral. I'm not going to be told what toys to get my kids, and great-niece and great-nephew, this Christmas. When I choose things for my kids, I don't give a fart in the high wind if it's gender specific. I wonder does it need batteries. I wonder will my kid like it. I wonder will it disintegrate within five minutes of being unwrapped. I wonder is it a choking hazard (not for my kids, my brother's grandkids). I wonder does it have tiny breakable bits that I'm likely to cut my foot on. I wonder lots of things, but whether it appeases some bloody Brave New World type notion that toys must be genderless ain't one of 'em. It's like Aldous Huxley and George Orwell had a baby, and this is what grew out of that unholy conception. An eminent child psychologist has pointed out kids are generally hard-wired and have a pre-disposition to certain types of toys, so just fucken go with the flow, okay?
Finally, it's the British Board of Film Censors for declaring certain acts to be illegal in pornography being produced. They're essentially fetish, from what I can see. I worry our Board might follow in their sensibly laced shoes. Not so much that I want to watch depictions of all these fetishes, but because I'd like to be able to in privacy in my own home, if it is MY CHOICE. Among the items on the No-No List are spanking, caning, female ejaculation, and urolagnia. I am guessing they're quite happy with violence in mainstream cinema, but a fetish enjoyed in private by a tax-paying citizen makes them hold their skirts and dance on the table, all the while going, 'Eeeeeek!' How are they going to cope with the film version of 'Fifty Shades of Shit, er, Grey' when it opens, if it is true to the book? Why do people care so much about what blows another person's hair back (when done in privacy)? Why should it matter what's being depicted in a porn flick if it is being portrayed by informed actors over the age of eighteen? Are they so afeared that someone might watch a water sports flick and then go out and piss on a passer by? Hell, we've got football players here who are probably happy to do that!
Sick of these meddling Nanny State-ers. So yep, might be time to get on Change.org.
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