History of the Why VSU Worked Young Marriage Twilight & word C*NT Romanticising Abuse tharunka UNSW STUDENT PUBLICATION ISSUE 2 VOLUME 55 SEX 50 OUT OF YOUR 950 Make the decision to properly fund Indigenous Health Australia is in the grip of an emergency: the Indigenous health crisis. The government is spending $42 billion on the stimulus package, handing out huge sums of money to encourage people to spend and invest. Let’s direct that investment where it counts. Let the Australian Government know you care about Indigenous health. Show that you’re willing to put your money where your mouth is by giving 50 out of your 950 to Indigenous health, through Oxfam’s Close the Gap campaign or an Indigenous health organisation of your choice. How to do it: Make a pledge by uploading a photo of yourself at www.stimulatechange.org and then send us a copy of the donation receipt when you get your ‘mullah’ from the government! You will get a payment of $950 if you are a full-time Australian student receiving Youth Allowance, Austudy, ABSTUDY and other student related payments. Many students who may not qualify for the $950 can still get $900 if they lodged a 2007/2008 tax return and paid net tax. The stimulus money will be paid between the 24th March and 6th April. We will send out follow-up emails requesting people who made pledges to forward us electronic/photographic evidence of their donations (e.g. receipts). Then we’ll post all the photos of these receipts on the results page so policy makers can see how many people are putting their money where their mouth is. For every person signing a petition, there are many others who share the same views. For every person rallying on the street, there are even more people at home, nodding in agreement at the TV. Policy makers know this. Now imagine how seriously they’ll take Indigenous Health if instead of just signing petitions and marching through the city, we actually show what it means to put your money where your mouth is. Your donation will go directly towards closing the Indigenous health gap. But it will also do much more. If STUDENTS show they can put their money where their mouth is, then SO CAN the Australian Government. tharunka EDITORIAL TEAM Bart Cummings Su Min Lim Sean Lawson Jonathon Tunn Kyle MacGregor DESIGNER Elliott Bryce Foulkes INSIDE 04 EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS 05 LETTERS Alison O’Connor, Alice Lang, Emily Bek, 06 WORLD NEWS OF THE WORLD Matt Kwan, Sophie Braham, Alan Zeino, SEX Gabriel McManus, James Fehon, Victor 08 CUNT Bourke, Thom Loveday, Matt Ward, Anh 10 TYING THE SNOT Tran Nam, Jess Bellamy, Dave Maher. 12 HIV - THE OLD AND THE NEW 14 PINK - SO WHAT? THANKS 15 HISTORY OF SEX Jude Whitfield & MPD Printers 16 TWILIGHT UNIVERSITY 18 ASSESSING Arc CONTACT 20 WHY VSU WORKED [email protected] 21 OB REPORTS PO Box 173, Kingsford, 2032 LIFE Office Level 1 Blockhouse, Lower Campus. 22 PAPER BLOG 11am-1pm Mondays. 24 BRINGING BACK SISYPHUS REGULARS 26 HYPOTHETICALLY SPEAKING 28 AGEISM & DR WHO Tharunka is published periodically by Arc @ UNSW. The views 29 DR LURK expressed herein are not necessarily the views of Arc, the 30 AGONY AUNT Representative Council or the Tharunka editing team. 31 BELLAMY’S BAROMETER Tharunka acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land on which the University now stands. 04 There are Good Reasons for a Women’s Collective DEAR THARUNKA EDITORS, This letter is in response to Bart Cummings’ article, ‘Why Not a Men’s Collective’? (edition 55, issue 1). I wholly agree with some parts of the article. The dismantling of some of Steven Biddulph’s arguments is somewhat commendable. The vitriol directed towards women and feminism and the blindness to women’s varied experiences that can come out of some men’s groups is a worry. I feel excited to see a male writer foregrounding the notion of male privilege. However there was a central and critical concept missing from Cummings’ opinion piece that unfortunately ended EDITORIAL up doing a disservice to feminism and Women’s Collectives. This concept is asymmetric power. DEAR UNSW, Cummings criticises author Biddulph, and certain groups as the Lone Fathers Association, the Australian Men’s Party and Robert Bly’s Wild Man (Mythopoet Gently you trace your fingers down Movement) for their questionable theories and isolationism. But he seems to be the spine of the magazine. You caress arguing that ALL autonomous gender groups, including Women’s Collectives, are its pages, cool at first and then warm bad and “isolationist”. This is where Cummings fails. And fails badly. between your eager palms. Slowly you move between its crisp sheets, and First, Cummings disregards the gendered power imbalances that structure then faster and faster. The friction society. I think that we live in a society where women are generally told that they builds against your flesh. On and on it are less in so many different ways. I have experienced, heard and read that many continues, longer than you would have women feel disrespected and unheard by some men. imagined possible. Sometimes around issues to do with violence against women, some women prefer It’s true that the second time is better to work only with other women. It is the developing of self-confidence and the than the first. This edition of Tharunka empowerment from working with other women and working in a non-hierarchical is positively swollen with humour, manner where collectives try to hear everyone that renders autonomy sometimes content and ideas. In university news, necessary. These do not always necessarily correlate with the traits that Sean Lawson and Alan Zeino release Cummings associates with the listed authors, men’s groups and the men’s rights their pent-up frustration regarding movement. As long-time activist Wenny Theresia told me last year, “being part of Arc’s rather flaccid attempts to a Collective is the complete opposite to how we have been socialised.” This insight reinvent itself post-VSU. On page is the opposite to the functioning of the authors and groups to which Cummings 14 Matt Kwan directs a hot spray of refers. Those groups especially want to reinforce a singular masculinity without loathing at Pink, while on page 10 Alice much critical thinking. Lang offers a gushing appraisal of marriages in New College. And be sure Second, being part of a Women’s Collective or women’s caucus does not mean to delve into our centrefold spread, a that members believe that autonomy is the final or even the only answer. It also deep and probing examination of the doesn’t have to be an either/or situation in agitating around women’s rights. When word ‘CUNT’. the 2008 Women’s Collective campaigned around Sexual Violence Against Women on Campus, the positive response was astounding from people of all genders At last you emerge, breathless with from all different backgrounds. Solidarity! pleasure and exertion. A strange calm creeps through your body. Lying on Finally, last year the Women’s Collective had a one-off mixed genders group. I your back, you imagine you can see the think it was pretty much a disaster. wisps of breath from your body tracing up to the sky. The piece was important but I suggest that all writers who want to discuss feminism and Women’s Collectives speak to people who identify as feminists Then you look over to the magazine. It (not just the prominent ones) and to people who are or were part of Women’s is splayed wide open, as if to invite you Collectives. I’m not sure how an outsider can make the claim that Women’s in yet again. You plunge back into its Collectives are inherently isolationist. depths. Also for everyone: if you don’t already know it – this website is HOTT http:// With love, mensbiblio.xyonline.net/ Tharunka Editorial ‘09 CLAIRE NEMORIN. 05 Build a Bridge and… To begin with, the Draize eye-test is no longer used in Australia except when testing substances designed for use in the eye. In these exceptional cases experiments must DEAR THARUNKA, be approved by both the Animal Ethics Committee of the As an Engineering student I am writing to share with you my institution involved and the relevant state Minister. This concerns regarding the article “UNSW Anthropology 101” has been the case for at least the last 20 years. Unless the published in the last issue. particular brand of toothpaste Emily is using is somehow intended to clean your teeth by applying it to your eyes, it will While I can understand the author’s attempt to create some not have been tested on the “pink cornea (of) a white rabbit light hearted O-Week humour, I feel that the stereotypes sitting on a laboratory bench”. featured were sexist, racist, politically intolerable and over all just inappropriate. Even in less enlightened countries, use of the Draize test is very limited and usually involves anaesthetisation, very Personally, I took offence to being labelled a Fascist Bogan. small amounts of substance, and washing out of said Stereotyping the political beliefs of a whole faculty is a substance at the first sign of irritation. Any chemical that symptom of poor character and judgement, Mr Author. I feel is known or suspected to cause pain is not tested by this that the negative and untrue accusations you created have method. the ability to disengage an already apathetic student body. Emily’s inaccuracies continue: it is not the case that rabbits Also, I didn’t know that UNSW only accepted international are ideal for the Draize test for the reason of not having students from America.