Tag Archives: Australia

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Special

The world feels entirely impossible to live in right now. The war in Ukraine. The ongoing conflict between Palestine and Israel. US politics, UK politics, Australians voting no to our First Nations people having a voice, and let’s not forget Jacinda Ardern stepping down from being one of the most influential world leaders we’ve ever seen. Some of us are still reeling from that.

Then there’s stuff closer to home. We’re in the middle of a housing crisis here in Melbourne. It’s truly fucked. I’ve only ever been rejected from a new home maybe twice in the entirety of my renting history, but in this month alone I’ve had four rejections. I already have problems with rejection (and I’m an actor. Go figure) but this is ridiculous.

Everyone I know is hurting in some way, including myself. It seems that there’s an increase in diagnoses of neurodivergence and mental disorders, and many of us seem happy to use these as excuses or reasons not to try anymore – myself included. That’s not a criticism by any stretch. The first time I noticed it happening in someone else (and was irritated by it) was a bit of a smack in the face as I recognised it in myself. And it’s never fun to realise that oneself is just as much of a jerk as another.

See, there’s this pattern. I am let down by someone I care about, but then I let down someone else I care about, then they let their friend down, or me, or their parents or whoever, and it’s this never-ending cyclic doom swirl of people hurting each other because they’re hurting themselves, and now everyone’s pissed off and hurt and no one’s apologising because no one understands how hard it is to live with [insert diagnosis here].

Myself included.

Then there are those with no diagnosis (they do exist), and life’s hard for them, and they’re like, “well shit, I can’t complain about anything, can I? I guess I’ll just go sit in the corner and eat worms because everyone is caught up in their own tar pit.”

Yeah. We are. Because we live in an impossible world with impossible standards and hoops that only a certain percentage can jump through, and the rest of us are left standing with our proverbial dicks in our hands asking, “what the fuck just happened?”

I feel like I’ve been asking this question for decades. See, I have just realised that I have a certain outlook on my life and its place in this world. I believe (yes, present tense) that because of the traumatic bullshit I experienced as a child and then as a 20-something lost soul, then as a married 30-something that I deserve to have the life that I want. I deserve success in my chosen field (acting) because I got smacked with the trauma stick, but I picked myself up and pulled up my big girl socks and got therapy and help and therefore I’m Special™. Idris Elba should rock up to my doorstep and offer me a part in his next project, not only because I’m a Good Actor™ but because I deserve it. I’ve worked for it. All the underpaid/unpaid acting jobs I’ve done, all the underpaid/unpaid music I’ve written, all the meditation and soul searching I’ve undertaken allows me to claim that I’m Special™ and I should have all of the good things. Because, you see, if I’m successful, all the stuff I went through would have led me to that point. It will have all been worth it. If I don’t reach that goal, then, well, it’s tragic. And it means I’m not special.

I mean, that’s dumb, right? Like, it’s actually dumb, because my belief system is such that the Universe has no ego, therefore it has no care, therefore it doesn’t actually owe me or anyone anything and it just gives you shit because you actualise it, so being Good™ is a choice and not a requirement, unlike traditional religion that believes in sin and Hell and all that fun stuff.

I have been given a lot in my life. I’ve achieved near impossible things and manifested desires out of nothing. Not because I deserved it. Not because I’m a Good Person™. Not even because I worked hard for it. I got them, simply because I asked the Universe for them. So why haven’t I achieved the thing I want most?

Because I’m an idiot.

No, seriously. I’m an idiot. Despite my well-read, well-researched and well-lived belief system, there are still some things that I don’t believe I’m allowed to have. Maybe that’s the Borderline Personality speaking. Maybe it’s my Mum, or my Dad. Maybe it’s society. Maybe it’s because I’m a woman. Maybe it’s White Guilt™. I don’t know, but it’s a sticking point to any of us who are Good by choice.

Being Good essentially makes no difference in the quality of one’s life. Not really. Screaming assholes like Bezos and Trump get everything they want (except maybe true self-respect). Cardinal Pell pretty much got off child sexual abuse charges, only spending 405 days in jail before he was acquitted. Then he died! The only saving grace is that he didn’t get a state funeral, but I digress.

Conversely, people like Jacinda also exist. Chadwick Boseman also existed. Pedro Pascal, I’m pretty sure, is real. Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi exist – imprisoned for their goodness, yes, but still here. Ghandi was definitely a dude. All is not lost, is it?

A couple of weeks ago, I got this message in my Instagram inbox. It was from someone I don’t know, there was no name, no handle. Just this message. I probably don’t deserve this small kindness, but that’s not the point, stupid BPD brain, you shut up!

Anyway. I’m paying this forward. To you, dear reader.

A small voice in my head tells me, “see? You are special.” No, I’m not. Shrug. That’s okay.

Prioritize your mental and spiritual wellness. Do things that make you happy. Take time to nurture yourself. Don’t rush the process. Don’t judge where you’re at or where you think you should be. Just be kind and patient with yourself. Things are unfolding for you.

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A White Woman’s Response to Racism

Shut up and listen to black people. Be an ally, yes. Call it out when you see it, yes. But most importantly, shut up and listen. In Australia, in America, in New Zealand, everywhere. Listen. This happens because white people don’t listen.

That is all.

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Apocalypse Now?

I always knew I’d be around for the apocalypse. I’m indulging in catastrophic thought, I know, but it honestly feels like that. Firstly, in January, the whole of Australia was on fire. I’d walk through the streets of Elwood, an inner city suburb of Melbourne, and it looked like a disaster movie: red tinged and hazy streets, people darting from their cars to their homes, avoiding breathing in the smoke as much as possible. I caught up with a pregnant friend who lives in Canberra, and she spoke of investing in face masks and oxygen tanks just to make sure she and her unborn baby were okay.

Our government failed us, our Prime Minister going on holiday to Hawaii at the worst possible time, and it made us feel alone and afraid. But we prevailed and overcame, the true nature of Australia – the nature I admire – coming to the fore.

As soon as the bush fires were contained, however, we found ourselves in another crisis, unprecedented since the 1919 pandemic of the “Spanish flu” which killed 15,000 people in Australia before its end. However, unlike the “Spanish influenza”, the novel coronavirus (or in layman’s terms a new strain that has not been previously identified in humans), Covid 19 hasn’t had the same devastating impact on the health of Australia’s citizens. Rather, it’s affected our psyches in profound and possibly equally as devastating ways.

I was talking to my housemate about this just yesterday. The lockdown, the social distancing, the panic buying, and the self isolation are not limited to just us, or our town, or our state, or our country. Unlike the bush fires, that although affected the entirety of this vast continent was contained within Australia, Covid 19 has impacted the entire world. The. Entire. World. Just about every continent on the planet, bar Antartica, has a confirmed case of Coronavirus.

Before you start, yes, I know that the bush fires and Covid 19 are as comparable as cats and penguins, but that’s not my point. The bush fires were something Australia has dealt with before and many times, although perhaps not quite on the scale of January’s crisis. As gauche as this may sound, fires like these are quintessentially Australian. We pull together to fight them, we support our firies and our wildlife workers. We rescue our native animals from the flames and we rescue each other. We know exactly what to do to get through and survive a fire.

A global pandemic, however? We don’t know what the hell to do with this. And the initial response of some Australians was extremely disappointing. From casual racism to out and out violence against our neighbours – over toilet paper, no less – our inability to understand and listen to instruction was eye-opening. But it seemed to be happening all over the world. Everywhere had toilet paper shortages (I still don’t understand why), fights over hand sanitiser, and general panic related entitlement buying which kinda made me stop and have a really good think on human behaviour.

We really suck at this.

Because then the conspiracy theories started. Now look, I love a good conspiracy, and I’ve done my deep dives into the JFK assassination, 9/11, and Epstein didn’t kill himself (or if he did, he was allowed to), but I like to think I can keep a level head on what is likely and possible, and what is unlikely and improbable. What concerns me is that people I know and love, people who I consider to be highly intelligent and rational human beings are buying into absurd, insulting and quite frankly, ridiculous theories that are being spouted on Twitter of all places, by uninformed, shit stirring idiots, some of whom are leaders of powerful nations (I see you Trump, you goon faced twit). The theories range from Covid 19 being an elaborate hoax, or a means for the 1% to gain control of the masses by enforcing lockdowns, to it being a human-made virus deliberately set loose as population control or a foreign attempt to topple the US government. This is all apparently the start of the New World Order that the Reptilians, under the auspices of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, are preparing to unleash on the world and we better be ready, sheeple!!!!

Look, I get it. The response to this virus, which although virulent is certainly not as deadly as the “Spanish flu” (I keep using quotations, because that flu didn’t originate in Spain and terming it as such was a racist act) or even the AIDS epidemic, is seemingly overblown and reactionary. We didn’t have this level of concern over SARS or the swine flu so why Covid 19 and why now? There are reports that the death rate numbers have been fudged, that there is a vaccine that “the government” won’t let us have, or that it is a bioweapon or escaped experiment from a Wuhan lab, or a cash grab by greedy Big Pharma, or is connected to 5G WiFi, the list goes on. There’s no denying that the world governments have spread disinformation in times of crisis for political gain in the past, and certain media like Fox News grab onto this for their own piece of the pie, but here’s why seriously buying into conspiracy theories is dangerous.

They don’t help anyone. The people who tout these theories as facts, people like Alex Jones for example, are, in my opinion, only interested in themselves. Their concern for the truth is negligible. Their concern for their own celebrity and self importance is more than likely what propels them. I stress, this is my own opinion, but having dealt with narcissists like these before, I can now recognise the behaviour.

The theories themselves serve little purpose than to seed distrust, create panic, feed fear and isolate people from one another. The theorists claim that the mainstream media and governments and scientists are lying to us! That may be so, it’s certainly happened in the past, but there is every possibility that these theorists are lying to us too; just because what they say is the opposite of what the gub’ment is telling us does not necessarily mean it is truth. It is just another story.

Theorists claim that the 1% are wanting to divide and conquer us. Let me just say, I believe utterly and absolutely that a large portion of the globe’s wealth belongs to a distressingly small percentage of the world’s population and indeed the class divide exists and is for the benefit of that small percentage. However, this “information” that conspiracy theorists spout is doing more or less the same thing. Dividing us. It’s making us doubt each other. The common person is rarely going to get to vent their spleen at the higher ups of the world. The common person is more likely to come into contact with the police officers and nurses of the world, the civil servants and the teachers and unfortunately, they’re the people who will be adversely affected by an off-kilter conspiracy theorist who believes that anyone who is against them is a part of the conspiracy and then kablammo! Someone is dead. Someone who is not part of the 1%.

So why do we buy into these theories? I really don’t know. Perhaps because we’re trying to find some meaning to this existence. Perhaps we’ve been lied to so much we believe everyone is lying to us. Perhaps we’re lonely and scared and giving control over to all-powerful secret overlords is easier than taking responsibility for ourselves.

But then why is information about Covid 19 so disjointed and variable? Because we’re in the middle of it. There won’t be truly accurate information about this thing until it’s done. And that is perhaps what we’re most scared of. Nobody has all the answers.

Writer and occultist Alan Moore said, “Yes, there is a conspiracy, indeed there are a great number of conspiracies, all tripping each other up … the main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Illuminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Grey Alien Theory. The truth is far more frightening.

Nobody is in control.

The world is rudderless…”

Perhaps we are rudderless. Especially now, with the whole world on tenterhooks. Nobody knows when this will end, nobody knows how we’re going to get through it, nobody knows what the world will be like after it’s done. The only thing we have control over is our own response to it. So let’s make our responses kind, yeah?

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Same Sex Divorce 101

Firstly, congratulations! Your marriage failed! The thing our queer community in Australia fought so hard for is something you’ve failed to execute! Hooray! Bet you feel shit, yeah? Yeah. Whether you’re the leaver or the leavee, this process sucks. It’s worse than just a relationship break up because it’s MARRIAGE. And it FAILED.

Secondly, if you’re like me and you married an abusive arsehole of the same gender, you’re also going through the trauma of recovery! All the good times to be had!

Thirdly, you’re gonna have to wait one year and one day before you can apply for a divorce. This is so you can sort out whether there’s any chance of reconciliation, but again, if you’re like me, it’s just an opportunity to be manipulated, used and lied to by your narcissistic spouse for a whole ‘nother year because you’re an idiot who believed that they were just going through a crisis and the love you shared was real and worth fighting for.

You’re not an idiot. It happens to the best of us, and through this process you can finally learn that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it take responsibility for its terrible behaviour and get life-changing help before it abuses another horse.

Here’s what you need to do if you’re going through a same sex divorce in Australia.

  1. Take a breath. It’s shit, but it’s going to be okay. By the end of the process, you will feel better, even if you didn’t want the divorce in the first place.
  2. Get some therapy to help with the yuck feelings that are going to come up at various stages of the process. If you don’t deal with them feels, shit’s gonna get real.
  3. Your ex is gonna be a dick. You’re gonna be a dick. There’s going to be a lot of dicks happening, even in a lesbian divorce. Prepare yourself.
  4. Jump on to the Federal Circuit Court website here to find out how to apply for a divorce. Same sex couples can’t do it online yet, even though it’s been legal for over a year now, so I flung an email at the National Enquiry Centre and a lovely lady sent me back the printable pdf of the application.
  5. Okay, here’s the tricky bit, and it’s to do with fees and court appearances and all that. If both parties carry a Health Care Card or a Pensioner Card or any of that biz, you can submit a joint application and get a discount on the fee (about $300 down from the full fee of $1000). Both applicants have to sign the Affidavit and you don’t need to serve documents on the other party. Also, court attendance is not required if you file a joint application, but you can request an appearance if you want. I didn’t want, so I didn’t request. If only one of you has a concession card and you want the discount, then the card carrier has to submit a sole application. This means the applicant has to serve documents on the respondent, and if you have kids under 18, you have to go to court. You don’t have to go to court if there are no children.
  6. If you do not have combined assets or property, you don’t need a lawyer. Getting a divorce is expensive enough as it is, you don’t need the added cost of lawyer’s fees if it’s not necessary.
  7. You will need to get your application witnessed. I used the sergeant at my local police station. He was cool.
  8. Once the application and all its copies have been submitted, you will get a stamped copy back of your application with the date of the court hearing, even if you’re not attending court. I found this information helpful in preparing for the mental shitstorm that happened around that date.
  9. Once the court hearing is complete, your divorce will be finalised one month and one day from that date.
  10. Have a party. I did. It was very cathartic and you and your friends can yell “fuck you” to your absent ex as you smash a cake with their face on it.

I’m going to be honest, the entire process was brutal. I felt like a failure. I felt like I had let my community down. My ideals and principles regarding marriage were shattered. I learned that there is very little support for same sex couples going through divorce, despite the amount of campaigning we did for marriage equality. Even though it is now legal, I felt that what I was going through wasn’t taken very seriously. Maybe because we’re still not used to the legality of our relationships, maybe because people didn’t realise I was actually legally married, maybe because not a lot of my friends in the community were married so they didn’t understand the gravity of it. I don’t know.

The nature of my relationship with my ex was confronting to a lot of people in the queer community, I realise now. People are uncomfortable with intimate partner violence anyway, and hearing about it makes the average person feel impotent, unable to offer support, unsure of what to say or do. A lot of people in the community still like my ex. She’s seen as a nice person, and because she’s a fairly well known performer, the community wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. I would comment on the manipulative and controlling things that she did during the divorce process and they would back away slowly, unwilling to be involved, which is their prerogative.

However, I had overwhelming support and love and respect too. So much so that there was a crowd of people at my divorce party, there to celebrate and commiserate with me, there to cheer as I continue to move on to a greater life as a gay (bisexual) divorcee, finally free of an awful lie of a relationship.

My ex wife’s ex was there. A woman who I had previously maligned in my attempt to remain loyal and supportive to my wife; a woman who graciously gave me her hand in support when I needed it most as she understood that we have a unique shared experience of surviving an abusive narcissist; a woman who I feel I need to apologise to and thank for the rest of my life was there, raising a glass with me. Solidarity in survival.

So, yes. My greatest advice for going through a divorce? Have your tribe with you. The people who have proven their loyalty and trustworthiness are the ones to have by your side. They will keep you sane and they will remind you that you are not a failure, that you do deserve real love. They will remind you just by being there that although this is an ending, it is also a very bright beginning.

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Just Say Yes

 

Yes folks, it’s that time again! It’s that time to pull out my dusty old copy of the Gay Agenda, turn to page 246 of sub-section 39b (the Bi Agenda) and wax rhetoric about marriage equality! Yay, that old chestnut.

Australia, while a wonderful country in many ways, is a little bit backward. Besides the rampant racism and xenophobia, the alarming domestic violence rate, and the existence of XXXX beer, Australia is the land of the seemingly homophobic government. Tim Minchin puts it best in his latest online offering, so I won’t go into why it’s ridiculous that marriage equality isn’t legal. But let me just explore our options here.

In 2004 John Howard’s Liberal government introduced the Marriage Amendment Bill, changing the definition of marriage in the Marriage Act 1961 to state, “Marriage means the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life. Certain unions are not marriages. A union solemnised in a foreign country between: (a) a man and another man; or (b) a woman and another woman; must not be recognised as a marriage in Australia” (source). What that means is that the government pretty much sanctioned discrimination based on sexual preference and it was done without consulting the Australian people.

In 2013, however, the High Court found that the Constitutional standpoint of marriage included same sex couples and that basically the federal Parliament has the power to decide to whether same sex couples have the right to marry. Instead, good ol’ Malcolm Turnbull has decided that we should have a plebiscite, even though his government can pass the law if they choose to.

What’s a plebiscite? Well, time to get my nerd on. A plebiscite (ˈplɛbɪsʌɪt,ˈplɛbɪsɪt/) derives from the mid 16th century: from French plébiscite, from Latin plebiscitum, from plebs, pleb- ‘the common people’ + scitum ‘decree’ (from sciscere ‘vote for’). The sense ‘direct vote of the whole electorate’ dates from the mid 19th century (source, Google dictionary). The word is a noun and its definition is:

  1. the direct vote of all the members of an electorate on an important public question such as a change in the constitution.
  2. a colossal waste of time and $122 million (second definition is the author’s).

Why is it a waste of time? I’ll let australianmarriageequality.org take this one: “… a free vote costs nothing. A plebiscite will become a platform for hatred and division. We elect politicians to make laws, not handball them back to voters. Issues that raise religious and moral concerns are almost always resolved by free votes in parliament, not plebiscites. A plebiscite is not binding so the issue will have to return to Parliament anyway, at which point there should be a free vote. There is more community support for a free vote than for a plebiscite, especially when voters are aware of the cost of a plebiscite.”

Kinda a no-brainer, huh?

Of course, the majority of the LGBTIQ+ community has rallied around the issue, stating that all love is equal, that it’s a human rights issue, and most importantly, that there are other far more pressing issues to put that time and money towards. We are the last developed English-speaking country in the world to legalise it. It’s embarrassing.

But there’s another facet to this issue, a less buoyant, positive, fluffy facet. Yes, love is love. Yes, we should have the right to marry whichever consenting adult we like and be happy. Yes, marriage is not about gender. But on the other side of that truly beautiful coin is the sobering reminder that things can turn shit. Marriages end, dreams die, break ups are horrible and can be really messy, and the unfortunate thing is that in Australia, there’s not a whole lot of legal support for same sex divorce. Our marriages aren’t even recognised for one thing, so it’s stay married forever, or go back to the country you got married in and become domiciled, and then apply for a costly divorce. Break ups are disruptive enough, but the added insult of not actually being able to legally divorce the person one legally married in another country means that closure is deferred, the connection to one’s ex is still active, and salt is rubbed in the open, suppurating wound.

As it stands, my marriage was not taken seriously by some members of the communities I am a part of (much in the same way that my sexuality isn’t taken seriously, but that’s a different post). Therefore, by extension, my divorce is not taken seriously, and that adds to the devastation. My need to cut ties, move on, perhaps even marry someone else is thwarted by this myopic view of a relationship that was very real (if I want to marry a man in the future, I can’t, as I will be committing bigamy in every country in which same sex marriage is recognised). It’s a cruelty on top of an already hurtful situation.

Divorce rituals are important for healing. Many cultures and religions around the world have rituals that are designed to break the bond and ease the suffering of both parties involved. People throw divorce parties. A temple in Japan allows visitors to literally flush their failing relationship down the toilet. I could do all the rituals in all the world, but still, the country I live in doesn’t give me or my ex the option to make it legal. And that’s shit.

I hope that this plebiscite will not go ahead, because there are many, many people that I love (including myself) who will be affected by the inevitably hateful ‘No’ campaign. The anti-marriage equality lobbies that we have in Australia are champing at the bit to unleash their homophobic vitriol upon my community, and this plebiscite will give them leave to do so with relish.

However, I fear that it will go ahead, so I’m throwing everything I have into campaigning for an overwhelming ‘Yes’ vote – even if it isn’t binding, even if the government continue to be a pack of cowards, even if it doesn’t lead to an immediate legalising of same sex marriage, I will still vote yes. I hope all my Australian readers will do so too (mind you, if you’re a regular reader of this blog and you don’t vote yes, my mind boggles as to what you’re doing here).

Once upon a time, I campaigned and protested to have my love recognised. Now I’m campaigning to have the end of it recognised. Equality is equality.