Author: Mary

Posted on

Harassment and bullying

This article originally appeared on Geek Feminism.

Warning: discussion of harassment and bullying. There is mention of self-harm and links to real-life bullying accounts at the end.

The substantive part of Corey’s comment which was not published on my “Why don’t you just hit him?” post was the following:

It’s like if you’re a parent of a bullying victim, and you find yourself repeating ignore it
So I’m supposed to treat women like they’re my children. Isn’t that extremely sexist and patronizing?

I didn’t reply to it initially because I think it’s a misreading: here’s the full paragraph of mine that Corey excerpted (emphasis as per the original post):

This is the kind of advice given by people who don’t actually want to help. Or perhaps don’t know how they can. It’s like if you’re a parent of a bullying victim, and you find yourself repeating “ignore it”, “fight back with fists” or whatever fairly useless advice you yourself were once on the receiving end of. It’s expressing at best helplessness, and at worst victim-blaming. It’s personalising a cultural problem.

I am, of course, saying that if one advises that women should or must hit back at harassers/attackers, then it resembles giving a bullying victim the same advice. Since the entire post is discussing why that advice is often bad advice, I’m fairly clearly not making the argument there that people should treat women as if those women are their children; I’m making the argument that they do, and they shouldn’t.

So much for that.

Except… that’s not quite right is it? Of course you should not treat unrelated adult women who complain of harassment at geek conferences like they are your children, because Corey and I would both tell you that’s sexist and patronising.

But the way we treat harassment victims and the way we treat child bullying victims have many parallels:

  • we tell harassment victims it’s the price of admission to the awesome community; we tell bullying victims that it’s character building, the price of admission to adulthood
  • we tell harassment victims they asked for it by wearing certain clothes or being a certain gender or not being a certain gender enough among many other things; we tell bullying victims that they’re so satisfying to tease, because of the way they react, that they are different from their bullies in some way and hiding that difference is the way to go
  • we tell harassment victims that he’s basically a nice guy and he’s just a bit inexperienced with women, or with alcohol, or with both, and that his social skills need gentle nurturing; we tell bullying victims that their bullies are actually fine kids with good qualities that we don’t want to crush by labelling and punishing them as bullies
  • we tell harassment victims that it’s a private matter that they could solve by ignoring it, or fighting back; we tell bullying victims that it’s… a private matter that they could solve by ignoring it, or fighting back

When they do report it, we also often leave them both with such failures that bullying victims and harassment victims both come to internalise the lesson that their persecution is a private matter, or at least that better keep it a private matter than tell anyone with power about it, because people with power will just back each other up.

(Should be obvious: I don’t support required reporting, or shaming people into reporting. I do support solving the problem when they do report.)

So harassment and bullying are the same class of problem, in fact they blur into each other very strongly: bullying of children and adults often includes harassment and assault (among the other forms of bullying, like sudden unexplained ostracism and you’re-our-friend-today-no-you’re-not yoyos and so on), an individual incident of harassment or assault might be the beginning of or part of a bullying relationship.

And neither can or should be solved by the victim, whether by ignoring, or by fighting back, or by changing themself into someone or something that the bully or harasser will approve of.

While, yes, adult harassment victims are not the same as child bullying victims, and they shouldn’t be treated exactly the same, here’s what I would argue: we should be treating them both a lot better. If you think that it would be extremely patronising if your chosen approaches to dealing with bullying in a child community resemble approaches to dealing with harassment in an adult community, then perhaps your understanding of the rights of children who are bullied isn’t bloody good enough.

It also really puzzles me, frankly, that geeks, who I think are a population that has disproportionate experience of being bullied at some point in their life, are so unwilling to recognise the dynamic and similar ones when it occurs in their culture.
Continue reading “Harassment and bullying”

Posted on

“Why don’t you just hit him?”

This article originally appeared on Geek Feminism.

Warning: this post and links from it discuss both harassment and violence, imagined and real.

Valerie has had a lot of comments and private email in response to her conference anti-harassment policy suggesting that a great deal of the problem would be solved if women were encouraged to hit their harassers: usually people suggest an open handed slap, a knee to groin, or even tasers and mace (no suggestions for tear gas or rubber bullets yet). I sent her such a lengthy email about it that we agreed that I clearly at some level wanted to post about it. What can I do but obey my muse?

OK. Folks…

This is not one of those entries I am thrilled in my soul to have to write, but here’s why “hit him!” is not a solution for everyone and definitely does not replace the need for people with authority to take a stand against harassment.

And I know some people were joking. But not everyone was, you’ll need to trust me on this. Your “jeez, guys like that are lucky they don’t get a knee in the groin more often… hey wait, maybe you should just have a Knee In Groin Policy!” joke was appearing in inboxes right alongside material seriously saying that all of this policy nonsense wouldn’t be necessary if women were just brave and defended themselves properly, if they’d just for once get it right.

Here are some samples:

  • Duncan on LWN: What I kept thinking while reading the original article, especially about the physical assaults, is that it was too bad the victims in question weren’t carrying Mace, pepper-spray, etc, and wasn’t afraid to use it. A couple incidents of that and one would think the problem would disappear…
  • NAR on LWN: I’ve read the blog about the assault – it’s absolutely [appalling] and in my opinion the guy deserved a knee to his groin and some time behind bars. (NAR then goes on to note that women should also wear skirts below the knee; which is very much making it about the victim. Dress right! Fight back!)
  • A comment on Geek Feminism that was not published: …you also need to make it known to women that they need to immediately retaliate (preferably in the form of a slap loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear)… Women -must- stand up for themselves and report the guy, preferably after a loud humiliating slap immediately following the incident.
  • crusoe on reddit: You need to end right then and there. Its one thing to make blog posts, its another to call a jerk out for it on the conference floor, including stomping a toe, or poking them hard in the belly… Do not stew about it, do not run home and write a blog post about it. Just call them on it right then and there. (As long as crusoe doesn’t have to hear about it…)

First up, one key thing about this and many similar responses (“just ignore him”, “just spread the word”, “just yell at him”):

Harassment is not a private matter between harasser and victim, and it’s not the victim’s job to put a stop to it.

The harasser is responsible for their actions. The surrounding culture is responsible for condemning them and making it clear those actions and expressions of attitudes that underlie them are not acceptable. (See Rape Culture 101.) The victim may choose to go to the police, yell, hit, scream, confront, go to a counsellor, tell their mother, tell their father, tell their friends, warn people. They may choose not to. Whether they do or not, we are all responsible for making harassment unacceptable where we are. Harassment, and stopping it, is not the victim’s responsibility. (See But You Have to Report It!)

Am I against hitting a harasser in all situations? No. Am I advocating against it in all situations? No.

However, here’s a lengthy and incomplete list of reasons why victims may not be able or may choose not to hit a harasser and why it is definitely not a general solution for the problem of harassment. I even have a special buzzer on hand that will sound when the reasons are related to gender discrimination. Listen for it, it goes like this: BZZZT! Got it? BZZZT!
Continue reading ““Why don’t you just hit him?””

Posted on

Ethics classes to be offered in SRE time in NSW

This article originally appeared on Hoyden About Town.

the logo for the NSW Government Dept of Education and Training over a picture of a highway sign that reads "Ethics"Ethics classes in special religious education time (SRE) are almost certainly going ahead in NSW, in 2011 at least.

Background: Special Religious Education (SRE) is a period of time, up to an average of one hour per week, during which students at public (government) schools receive instruction in religion from volunteer representatives of that religion. The parents of the child nominate which religion of those offered locally (in some but not all schools, this will be limited to Christian denominations, here’s the full list of approved providers). They can also opt to withdraw their child from SRE entirely, but if they do so the school can provide supervision but not alternative lessons:

3. Schools are to support SRE by ensuring that no formal lessons or scheduled school activities occur during time set aside for SRE. Such activities may create conflict of choice for some parents and for some students attending SRE.
…
10. In times set aside for SRE, students not attending are to be separated from SRE classes.

11. Schools are to provide appropriate care and supervision at school for students not attending SRE. This may involve students in other activities such as completing homework, reading and private study. These activities should neither compete with SRE nor be alternative lessons in the subjects within the curriculum or other areas, such as, ethics, values, civics or general religious education. When insufficient teachers or accommodation are available, the school’s policy on minimal supervision will operate.
…
14. The principal retains an overall supervision responsibility for the conduct of SRE. Class teachers are not required to attend SRE classes, but may, with the agreement of the SRE teacher, assist or remain in the classroom.

An ethics alternative in SRE time was developed by the St James Ethics Centre. Their FAQs may be useful in understanding more about their classes and the background.

The report (PDF, 0.8MB) into the trial classes is available, and here’s some material from its introduction:

The findings of the evaluation demonstrate the effectiveness of the course in relation to improving students’ understanding and skills in ethical decision making, and the overall appropriateness of the course content, activities and resources and of the associated training. The evaluation also points to the success of the organisational model employed by the St James Ethics Centre, and considers the viability of this model for wider implementation of the course in NSW government schools…

The call for a secular ethics-based complement to SRE in NSW schools is not without precedent, and there is evidence here that secular ethics and SRE can exist respectfully side by side. In this evaluation an attempt has been made to assess the extent to which the ten week ethics pilot provides an appropriate model for an ethics-based complement to scripture, and to do so on the basis of rational argument and empirical evidence. Further decisions rest with the Minister.

There’s been some back and forth since:

  1. The NSW ALP government announced that rollout to schools would commence from 2011, starting with classes offered to Years 5 and 6;
  2. The Liberal opposition, which will almost certainly be elected to government in March 2011, announced that they would reverse this and withdraw classes if elected.
  3. The government announced that the ethics offering would be put in legislation, which will be difficult for the post-March government to reverse without support of minor parties in the state upper house.

My interest in this is long term: I have one child, and he’s a baby. But I am an atheist, and likely under the current system I would opt him out of SRE unless he specifically asked otherwise, and under the new system I would place him in the ethics classes unless he specifically asked otherwise.

I would, in fact, like him to be familiar with the history and teachings of the major religions in Australia. My own schooling was quite indifferent on that front. I attended Catholic primary and high schools, which do not have the SRE system: all students participate in scheduled classroom lessons on Roman Catholic beliefs. (In my experiences, not very robustly taught itself: the doctrinal positions opposing use of contraception came as a considerable surprise to my fifteen year old peers. “Bullshit, Miss.”) The secular state curriculum also seemed to lack much insight into religion or religious influences on culture and politics (and vice versa). The major exception was the Studies of Religion unit in Stage 6 (Years 11 and 12, the final two years); at my school we were offered a choice between a school developed religion course which would not count for university entrance, or the Studies of Religion course, which did. (Stage 6 has been considerably revised since, but this course is still available and you can see the present syllabus.) I attended Catholic schools for thirteen years without hearing about the split of the Democratic Labor Party from the ALP in 1955, for example. The ethics classes aren’t a cure-all for that hole in the curriculum, but they are not intended to be, nor should they be: that kind of material should be offered in the standard curriculum.

What do you think? If you have a child will you or would you have them attend the ethics option in SRE time? Will you or would you volunteer to be an instructor? (The website that is being built at primaryethics.org.au has contact details for would-be volunteers.) I am considering volunteering in 2012 assuming that the classes remain in place and that work and parenting commitments don’t make it impossible (as they likely will.)

Posted on

Ask Auntie Hoyden: get your dog outlines here, and other search engine queries

This article originally appeared on Hoyden About Town.

an on-set photo of Katharine Hepburn, with overlaid text reading "Ask A Hoyden?"auntie hoyden

Why, I enjoyed those posts (1, 2, 3) in which Lauredhel tried to answer search queries as questions too! So much so that I show up in this site’s logs looking for them. So today, I too become Auntie Hoyden.

Frankly, it appears to me that most people stop here on their way to I Can Haz Cheezburger (funny cat pictures, captioned cat pictures, supernatural macros funny, funny pics), but they also appear looking for soylent green simpsons, any medicine for truth speak and, in considerable numbers, anal sex diagram. (Which is a bit odd, Google finds plenty of considerably more helpful sites for me on that term.)

But let’s see what I can do for you all today, although my specialities are more in the computer line than the sexual health and breastfeeding line that is traditional for this.

pluralising names

Lauredhel observed in 2008 that there’s a construction in Australian English (among others) that allows you to use things like “the Marys of the world” to mean “people like one particular Mary” rather than necessary literally multiple people named Mary.

But if you’re simply interested in how to add a suffix to a proper noun in order to indicate multiple things with that name, here’s a style guide’s answer.

dog outline png

[Update 2019: freesvg.org or publicdomainvectors.org are currently more searchable than openclipart.org.]

I like openclipart.org for this sort of thing: it’s public domain clipart, take it, use it and modify it without credit. (Not that I don’t also love various Creative Commons licences that do require credit, but dropping that requirement makes using many pieces a lot easier. I’ve seen people who use CC images from Flickr need to put a credits roll at the end of slide presentations.)

Plus! openclipart.org provides SVG as well as PNG. SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is a free image format which allows pictures to be scaled up in size without loss of quality, as well as down in size. This is accomplished by describing an image in terms of lines or curves (hence, vectors) rather than in terms of individual coloured dots. It’s not very useful for photos, but it’s great for clipart (and fonts, which are generally described in vectors and thus can be scaled up).

openclipart.org has hundreds of drawings of dogs. I’m not sure if this person was looking for a silhouette of a dog, which I couldn’t find on a very brief look, or simply a line drawing of a dog, of which there are many. Here’s a cute one.

snuggle otter

Don’t. We love ’em but that doesn’t make them domesticated pets.

mother sprays milk

Does she ever. I breastfeed a ten month old baby. When he was little I had a supply suitable for twins, or perhaps sextuplets, and milk was everywhere. Then things balanced out and we had a nice interlude of not spraying. Then he got a bit more distractible, which resulted on the weekend in him getting a letdown, pulling off and slipping so that he headbutted me in the breast and milk shot out for the best part of a metre.

If anyone else wants to grace the Internet with a milk spray story, feel free.

australia’s prime minister 2010 smiling

On the 25th June 2010, one day after becoming leader of the government and being sworn in as Prime Minister, Julia Gillard smiled in the presence of the US ambassor to Australia, Jeff Bleich. This is important, because it was photographed by embassy staff, and as a work of the US Federal Government, it is thus in the public domain and you can get it from Wikimedia Commons.

anti filter

That’s us!

Can you help out with these?
squirrel give thanks
the worst shoe eveeeer
placenta accreta deathrate
crivens!

Posted on

30 Day book meme, 5: a book you hate

Day 5 of the 30 day book meme: a book or series you hate.

What? I’m supposed to choose just one?

Hi, I’m Mary and I hate books and movies like other people breathe. (That is, loudly, endlessly and especially so on public transport.)

I could, for example, tell you about Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver in which it turns out that the interesting enough characters of Cryptonomicon are actually projections of their exceedingly similar distant male line ancestors into the present. Plus beautiful women cryptographer something something something OH GODS IT’S A MIRACLE THE SPINE OF THE BOOK IS STILL INTACT. Or much of Isaac Asimov’s Elijah Bailey/Gladia Delmarre series. (I don’t like R. Daneel that much either, by the way.) Or, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. For starters, that sounds like a ghost answering the phone. Sort of The Ring with phones. Hello, now you’re going to die! Secondly, Roger Ebert has just seen Part 1 of the movie, and he writes: … and key actions seem to be alarmingly taking place off-screen. They do indeed Roger, they do indeed.

But, I do have a favourite hated book of all time. It’s Colony, by Rob Grant. Andrew loves Red Dwarf and found the novels quite reasonable, so picked up this solo effort set in a different universe.

I’m just going to go ahead and spoil this. You don’t want to read it.

Here’s the setup. There’s a guy who owes people some money, people who are “repossess your soul for the salt mines” kind of people that you don’t want to owe money to. This bit is irritating already, as frankly Our Hero is pretty bland, cowardly and self-pitying, and there’s no sign that we’re supposed to do anything other than wholly identify with him. Then, there’s a brief spark of false interestingness. Our hero is in desperate straits and is approached by someone clearly shady who would like to swap identities with him, and allow our hero to depart the entire planet on a settler colony ship. Safe as houses. Our hero pulls this off and boards the ship, finding people and conditions there greatly to his liking, only to discover that the shady one is a political eugenicist, opposed by nearly everyone else selected for the mission, particularly the decent ones.

What will our hero do? Why was Mr Shady so keen to swap places? Should he confess to the swap, which would appear to be the safer path if he can truly convince the other colonists? Or is there something going on here that he doesn’t know about? That sounds likely doesn’t it! Perhaps he will discover just enough to learn that it’s safer to play along, but continue to alienate everyone else with every moment they continue to believe he is Shady. Gosh, what a predicament!

But never fear! Rob Grant knows how to extricate our hero! There is a disaster aboard ship, and our hero wakes up seven generations later, when there are considerably more pressing problems, like the fact that the people who distrusted him have been replaced by disordered descendants of themselves, reduced to caricatures by inbreeding. Hilarity ensues, or does if you are Rob Grant, who clearly finds “average person at sea among humorous caricatures” hilarious. (His later book Incompetence is marginally better, but more or less on the same theme there. Why did I read that? I think curiosity to see if he could repeat this feat of coming up with a mildly interesting scenario and then sabotaging it so completely.) As best I recall, Mr Shady and whatever his reasons were for swapping identities are never so much as mentioned again. I actually can’t remember if I finished this though.

If you see this book, burn it.

Posted on

30 Day book meme, 4: your favourite series ever

Day 4 of the 30 day book meme: your favourite book or series ever.

Let me interrogate the question for a moment. Day 4 is “your favourite book or series ever.” Day 6 is “Favourite book of your favourite series OR your favourite book of all time”. That pretty much compels Day 4 to be about my favourite series ever, doesn’t it? Because if I choose the other door, I have to talk about my “favourite book of my favourite series” on Day 6, which would be strange if I hadn’t talked about the series, no?

In addition, I am actually not a big series reader and the meme has questions that assume that I read essentially all series all the time. My favourite series should be distinct from my comfort book, which should be distinct from my first favourite series which should be distinct from my favourite childhood book. That’s a stretch, frankly.

My favourite series right now, I think, is probably Le Guin’s Earthsea novels. (Not counting the Hainish setting, which doesn’t re-use characters, centuries or planets terribly often, and I don’t think that’s a series as the meme intends it.) Here’s a conversation I had on Geek Feminism.

Stephanie asked:

Okay, please explain to me what I’m missing in the Earthsea series. I read The Wizard of Earthsea on the recommendation of a friend who when he thinks of feminist, he thinks of me and vice/versa so he said I would LOVE them.

Only, I didn’t. If we were to submit the book to the Bechdel Test it would fail miserably. Furthermore all of the women characters are the basic stereotypes of evil witch or virginal damsel.

Does it just get exponentially better as the series goes on or am I missing something?

I answered:

The first three are in fact notoriously male-centric. Decades later Le Guin, with a much more feminist eye, returned to the universe and wrote a fourth novel Tehanu which was a woman’s perspective on the whole thing (although the second novel is also from the point-of-view of a woman, but it’s still About Men). There’s also a fairly large change in tone. The fifth and sixth books (which are a collection of stories and a novel respectively) are more in the tradition of the fourth, although not as exclusively focussed on women’s point-of-view.

With regard to whether to continue, I would suggest that you do so only if you want to follow the story of Ged, because otherwise you will probably find the whole thing pretty annoying. An alternative might be reading the second and then the fourth, fifth and sixth books.

I actually like the first three, especially Tombs of Atuan, better than Stephanie likes A Wizard of Earthsea. But even with Tehanu this wouldn’t have made it into this entry: the fifth book really makes it for me. But I’ll save that for Day 6.

Posted on

30 Day book meme, 3: the best book you've read in the last 12 months

Day 3 of the 30 day book meme: the best book you’ve read in the last 12 months.

I got into Ursula Le Guin’s writing non-Earthsea writing rather late, but now it’s like always coming home, for me. (Yes, haha, I have not in fact read it. I don’t actually seek them out, because I think her work deserves to be read over many years.) This year’s gem is The Birthday of the World, which is a collection of stories. The thematic draw of this book for me was the stories about various forms of introversion, of relationships unfolding slowly, of societies that have been the same way for a long time and who find meaning in returning and returning again. Thus, my favourite stories in the collection were: Unchosen Love (fear and helplessness in the face of passion) and Solitude (committed adult relationships and all interpersonal manipulation as evil sorcery). I liked Paradises Lost too (and the others!) but for a slightly different reason: I’ve always liked Le Guin’s marriages, indeed they form a really key part of the way I view marriage (as a word for intending life partnership rather than a legal system) and Hsing and Hiroshi have a distinct kind of me: marriage as a secondary part of life’s work.

Posted on

30 Day book meme, 2: a book you wish more people were reading and talking about

Day 2 of the 30 day book meme – A book or series you wish more people were reading and talking about

This one is rather leading: it seems to think I’m ahead of the curve on books and am going to be introducing a book or series that none of you have ever heard of. I am no one’s book wizard (incidentally, I’ve read a few hundred pages of Infinite Jest and it’s fun).

Still this one is easy compared to Day 20, favourite kiss. Favourite kiss? Yikes.

Anyway, a year or so ago I wished I had more people to talk to about Karen E. Bender and Nina de Gramont (eds) Choice: True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood, and Abortion. It’s an anthology of women’s stories about reproductive choices.

It’s simply a good (in the reading sense, not the emotional sense) set of real stories if abortion, infertility, pregnancy and birth stories interest you. Since I’ve been reading such since I was a kid, I loved it. I lack a huge number of friends (meatspace or online) who spend much time talking about reproductive choices.

The title doesn’t include childfreedom, but there’s at least one childfree writer, that said, if you’re not interested in parenthood decisions and stories in some way it’s largely not going to be an enormously interesting read.

It may not be a good book to read while pregnant or if you have infertility or pregnancy-related grief: there’s a second trimester abortion for pre-eclampsia (there’s an earlier draft of that one at warning ReadingWritingLiving) for example, a “baby scoop” birthmother’s story, and several other tragedies).

In fact, probably my single major criticism is also inevitable given the book’s scope: many choices are extremely serious, often distressing and conflicted, by the nature of soliciting stories from women willing to write thousands of words about a reproductive choice they made. Given that I tended towards being anxious anyway, it didn’t provide a great basis for pre-pregnancy reading, I should have been reading Pregnancy and Birth: loved it more than lollipops (not, as far as I can see, an actual title on the market).

Also, if you are thinking along these lines about disability politics, abortion and reproductive choice, you will probably find it an incomplete anthology: there’s a mother who chose to abort a fetus that would have been a second hemophiliac son, and a mother who had a
primary CMV infection and a healthy child, but not a lot of questioning of the a healthy child is a better child assumptions.

Posted on

30 Day book meme, 1: a book series you wish would just freaking end already

Reposted from here

There seem to be a lot of 30 day prompts around at the moment, and I might take on a few of them. The first is the 30 Day book meme, now that I’ve finally found a list of all the prompts. I am not commiting to 30 continuous days.

Day 1 – A book series you wish had gone on longer OR a book series you wish would just freaking end already (or both!)

I’m ready for the ending of Isobelle Carmody’s Obernewtyn Chronicles. There are actually only five books to date (six in the USA, where the fifth book was split in two), and apparently only one more to come (again, two in the USA). But it started in 1987! I started reading it in about 1994 or so. Every book since has been supposed to be the last one. And it’s
ultimately only one large plot arc, and thus very little has actually been wrapped up. Most of the subplots are still unravelling too.

I don’t know why Carmody has taken so long with this one. Perhaps she works slowly, or needs to spend time away from her worlds. But I’ve always thought that the single plot arc, and the first person point-of-view from the same character, is probably a mistake for this series. It’s become a really rich world politically and several of the secondary characters do a lot behind the scenes, but the structure requires the point-of-view character, Elspeth, who is a suspicious, traumatised introvert, to be present in order for the reader to learn anything.

It is nice to see an introvert done well (per Ursula Le Guin’s introduction to Birthday of the World, it isn’t often). Also, Carmody hasn’t made the mistake of making Elspeth’s arc terribly terribly boring in comparison to what is going on in the background (I’m one of the people who feels that JK Rowling managed to write the least interesting parts of events of Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hallows by virtue of sticking with Harry’s point of view) but to be honest I am starting to get more interested in some of the secondary characters and plots than I am in her and hers. But it seems the Chronicles will conclude with the conclusion of her arc, and I’m ready for that.

Posted on

Books I haven't finished lately

A sort of an inverse book review, books I have closed, or returned to the library, without finishing them.

Treason’s Harbour by Patrick O’Brien. I probably will finish the Aubrey-Maturin novels at some point, but I don’t think it’s going to be this year, and perhaps not next. I’m not sure exactly why I suddenly went off them, but I think it’s because I don’t like Jack as a character very much. He’d probably be a lovely person to complete your table for dinner (better than Stephen for many dinners), but I don’t want to read twenty novels about him in a short period of time.

Generation text: raising well-adjusted kids in an age of instant everything by Michael Osit. I am in theory deeply interested in problems relating to cyberbullying and so on. In practice I have no patience for the write-ups. As an example, Osit early on compares hypothetical Bobby, fresh-faced teen of the 1960s with surly hypothetical Jake of the late 2000s. Bobby loves his mother’s eggs for breakfast! Jake never leaves his room, because his six speaker sound system is replacing parental affection! Remember your childhood, Osit seems to be asking. Before there was all this stuff?

Well, no, not really, not as you mean it. Bobby is my mother’s age! There are very few people who were teenagers in the 1960s and who are parents of teenagers now. Bobby may well be a grandfather, or at the very least wondering why his 30 year old son won’t leave home despite having so much money to spend on a soundsystem.

I was born in the early 80s. I had an email address before I left high school. I am one of the very last groups of middle-class Australians who did not go through their teens with their own mobile phone. (I got one at nineteen, and my fourteen year old sister had one before the end of that year.) Once at a sleepover my fifteen year old friends and I collectively had terrible cybersex with a random guy (or perhaps another group of teen girls?) on a Yahoo! (or something) chat room. It’s going to be a while before authors of books on parenting teens are aimed at me, I can see that.