8. ...Baby One More Time – Britney Spears 1999

 There's nothing that I wouldn't do

It's not the way I planned it

Show me how you want it to be

Tell me, baby, 'cause I need to know now

 

Okay, so this post is a follow-on from the previous one because I’m getting very pissed off with having to hear about my friends being subjected to various forms of abuse.

To quote the great Aussie comedian Hannah Gadsby when she was interviewed about her Nanette show on The Project in July 2018, she stated that she was sick of hearing:

 

‘ . . . boys will be boys, so women must be careful. Well, can we get men to be men?’

 

I really can’t see how it becomes the woman’s responsibility to not get raped! I just wish I could articulate it as well as Hannah Gadsby.

Are men really that incompetent as human beings that women have to adapt their behaviour as if they were encountering a crocodile in the mangroves?

Now I want to bring my observations on this front a bit closer to home.

Unfortunately, at age seventeen my big sister got herself caught up with an arse-wipe that wasn’t shy of bashing the women in his life.

I evidenced this one weekend when my sister and I were sleeping over at the govie-house the arse-wipe lived in with his mum and eight month pregnant sister. As I turned off the shower in the morning I could hear screaming. Loud, blood curdling screaming.

Not knowing what was going on and a little bit scared, I hid in the bathroom until I heard a door slam and there was no more screaming. When I came out of the bathroom the arse-wipe was gone and with my sister, the arse-wipe’s mum and the arse-wipe’s sister not being forthcoming with who had been screaming or why, I didn’t ask about it.

Through the course of the day, with arse-wipe now back from wherever he’d gone, we went to the questionable Canberra institution that is the Street Machine Summer Nats. Throughout the day I saw many instances of the arse-wipe almost shitting himself as ‘friend’ after ‘friend’ physically threatened him because he’d been borrowing cash off everyone, but had failed to pay any of them back. As the pay or be bashed ultimatums flew, the arse-wipe was very obviously scared for his physical wellbeing.

Anyhow, late in the evening, now back at his mother’s place the arse-wipe hid in the combined shower and bath while the father of his pending niece roamed the house looking for him.

Turns out the screams I’d heard that morning was the arse-wipe’s sister not taking too kindly to the arse-wipe hitting her. Remember, she was eight months pregnant . . ..

So, this guy that I’d watched squirm away from multiple threats of violence from the brotherhood all day had actually started the day by laying into his pregnant sister. As all of this unfolded in front of me, it was revealed that he was also a bit partial to bashing his mum, which was why she kept kicking him out of home, and he and his previous girlfriend had split because she didn’t like the idea of tolerating the occasional bout of physical violence.

This is the only time I’ll write about my sister in a negative way. I was disappointed in my sister for keeping the arse-wipe around.

‘Oh my God! A woman!’ does not have to be careful. Boys have to grow up and quit thinking women should tolerate this crap.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-u5WLJ9Yk4