Have you ever heard any say “I didn’t recognise them with the glasses”?
It is our eyes that undoubtedly offer the best visual form of identification, this is something we have known a long time. It is why all the old cartoon images of thieves have them with a mask that covers around their eyes.
This month News Ltd has shot itself in the foot by contradicting its own logic.
News Ltd and it’s columnists have been hard at trying to tell everyone just how dangerous the burqa is and how it should be banned in the name of national security. Apparently not being able to see the face and only being able to see the eye area means the person cannot be identified and should be immediately feared and treated with the utmost suspicion.
The clever people in the Coalition and News Ltd can’t even tell its a woman apparently
However it would seem that the reverse applies when it comes to identifying the daughter of a Greens Senator.
The Greens Senator Larissa Waters left herself open to justified ridicule when she talked about the No Gender December campaign.
Waters appears to believe that the “genderfication” of toys is a bad influence on our young nippers, and toys should not be advertised as “for boys” or “for girls”, so things like GI Joe or Barbie should be aimed at both sexes. It is a similar story for clothing apparently with kiddies having clothing suggested to them based on their sex.
Is Larissa really suggesting that children’s dresses should not me modelled by young girls in K Mart catalogues as it insinuates that they may be meant for only girls to wear?
I have been reliably informed that retailer Sportsgirl is not planning on changing its name to Sportsperson in the near future, nor do the publishers of children’s books have plans to change illustrations to non-gender based stick figures to avoid upsetting five year olds unsure of their sexual orientation as yet.
The irony of an immaculately presented Larissa Waters with her blonde hair neatly styled, her big blue eyes, her flawless make-up and lipstick, the earrings and the designer dress telling the world of the danger of Barbie dolls being aimed at girls specifically is not lost on me.
Larissa Waters – next she’ll be asking stores to stock bras in the menswear section so men who like wearing womens underwear are not discriminated against
Nor was the hypocrisy of her comments regarding kids clothing lost on News Ltd when a photograph appeared Waters’ Facebook page of her daughter not dressed as a prince, but in a pink princess outfit.
However in publishing the photo of Larissa’s child News Ltd have contradicted themselves without thinking.
Given the age of Waters’ daughter efforts had to be made to protect her identity and in a bid to ensure that she was unidentifiable News Ltd hid her identity by altering the image to hide her face.
They did this not my airbrushing a burqa over her head, in fact they did quite the opposite.
They used what I refer to as the “Reverse Burqa Technique”.
The Reverse Burqa Technique is where a person’s identity is hidden by blacking out the part of a person’s face that is left exposed by a niqab or what most people refer to as a burqa.
The image News Ltd used of Larissa Waters daughter
I find it quite funny indeed that an organisation that wastes so much of its time telling us all that seeing a person’s face is what identifies them, not the eye area, yet when it comes to protecting themselves legally they do the exact opposite to hide someone’s identity.
Suddenly when News Ltd have a legal obligation to fulfil rather than a political agenda it is not the persons face or hair that identifies someone it is suddenly the eye area. In fact it is the exact area that the burqa leaves exposed.
Those of us who have been around for a while would remember the pictures of shoplifters in the supermarkets with the black lines over their eyes rendering them unidentifiable. This tells us that the Reverse Burqa Technique has been used for decades, it’s just we didn’t know what to call it.
We should not be too hard on Larissa Waters, maybe she hit her head on something that morning or was having what some would describe as a “blonde moment”. As far as a politician endorsing one thing and doing another it doesn’t come close to Tony Abbott securing a free scholarship for his daughter while trying to jack up everyone else kids university fees.
However News Ltd’s actions are seemingly attempting to further inflate racial tension in our community and further stereotype what is a peaceful religion currently being poisoned by a few extremists and targeted and misrepresented by the intolerant.
Even when they know the opposite of what they say is true.
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Sh!t Wixxy this is a beauty and mate you`re quick to come up with the appropriate description-
Reverse Burqa and I`l #reverseburqa hashtag on Twitter hahaha.
Blond moment for sure because she still hasn`t specified herself and only gone from bad to worse.
It`s coming about that what we have held as a norm is being discriminated against.
I want that all discrimination be stopped as most political correctness has gone WAAAAAAY overboard.
This is rancid, another pathetic attack on the Greens when all she said was girls should be allowed to play with trucks. This is disgusting as anything NewsCorpse had to say or do.
Marilyn the fact is she openly backed a campaign which goes into the marketing strategies of toy manufacturers and retailers, maybe you should read it so you you know it goes further than an off the cuff truck comment
http://www.nogenderdecember.com/#x-content-band-17
If the Greens decide to back ridiculous campaigns then they should be attacked for it as you would expect any other Party to be attacked for supporting something ridiculous, they are far from above criticism as many seem to think.
What is disgusting is the attitude that they are the one political party that shouldn’t be held to account…
Very thin skin on most Greens I find Peter
When they ripen they`ll be Labor
Yes, Peter, she backed a campaign which goes into marketing strategies … to say that toys shouldn’t be marketed on sexist stereotypes. Which isn’t quite what Marilyn said (she only covered one small part of it), but she was a lot closer to the truth than the article is.
Somehow, arguing against stereotyping is turned into arguing for reverse stereotyping.
Because she said ‘let kids wear what they want regardless of gender’, she is condemned as a hypocrite when her daughter wears a dress.
Do you get how stupid that is?
The only way letting her daughter wear a dress would be hypocrisy is if she said girls shouldn’t be allowed to wear dresses. Which is about as far removed as you can get from what she actually said.
Likewise, condemning her for “her blonde hair neatly styled, her big blue eyes, her flawless make-up and lipstick, the earrings and the designer dress” completely misses the point. She never said girls shouldn’t be allowed to embrace feminine stereotypes if they choose to, she said that stereotypes shouldn’t be forced on them.
You can do better than this Wixxy.
bighead, perhaps if you actually took the time to understand the Greens positions, rather than just following the distorted versions the mainstream media report, they wouldn’t seem quite so thin-skinned. But after the fiftieth time explaining that no, that’s actually not even close to what she said, can you really blame Greens for being a little short-tempered?
Thank you Tim but I`ll stick with my earlier view which is comparable to Wixxys in that the Greens can`t handle criticism.
I`m as Left as they come and as a social Democrat {Socialist} I know criticism only too well.
Better harden your political hide Tim because you`re in for a rough ride.
FYI,I was a Socialist before Bob Brown began the Greens and he taught me one great thing.
He taught me that to be homophobic is wrong.
Like our Gough Whitlam or Ben Chifley the Greens have mighty shoes to fill at the retirement of Bob Brown and do get some of his thick hide about yourselves.
As I have said it is about the campaign she endorsed no what she said…
If she had said nothing and just pointed a a campaign poster while giving it the thumbs-up it would make no difference.
Promoting a campaign that seeks to take the gender out of products for a month may come off as more sincere if it is perhaps done by someone less made up and immaculately presented, which goes against the point of the campaign, maybe it is actually she who missed the point.
As for her own kid we won’t have the chance to interrogate her child with questions so we are to just take it for granted that the child chose the garment herself.
So what makes her child different from all the other children who’s parents this campaign is aimed at?
Why should we just assume Larissa’s child chose the outfit when she doesn’t assume the same of other children, and hence backs a campaign that appears to have failed to recognise that children are born with genders?
That’s right, she’s a Green…. along with Hillsongers one of the few that cannot commit a sin in the eyes of their followers
Also to whom it may concern I reckon Wixxy took more the piss our of News Corpse in this or at least 50/50
You have been too quick to dismiss the campaign the senator was supporting. There is clear evidence of a link to causes of domestic violence. I note somw commenting see your column as a chance to make derisive comments about the Greens theyaound like they belong at the bottom of a bolt or akerman column. .http://theconversation.com/toy-war-debates-misunderstand-the-causes-of-domestic-violence-34963
I am quick to dismiss the campaign as it is utterly ridiculous.
From the link you posted re the “evidence”
“The importance of recognising the link between gender-based toys and domestic violence lies not in identifying its direct effects on the individual, but in understanding how it contributes to cultural norms and ideals which enable violence against women to occur.”
That could be used to link absolutely anything that is a cultural norm to domestic violence, drinking water, breathing, even having a Greens MP in parliament
I don’t tend to read comments of Bolt or Ackerman posts, but campaigns like this should come with a tin foil hat for each backer.
Like it or not children are born with a gender, and there is irrefutable evidence of that.
As for the comments, I can assure you that the comments that I have to censor as being abusive and being completely inappropriate nine times out of ten are from Greens supporters, and often on matters we agree on.
I am staunchly Labor, however regular readers will know that I tear into my own Party in a major way if I see a failing. Green supporters however seem to think their party can do no wrong. That is delusional…
To be frank,if people really want to ban the burqa, why are they not demanding the same of the hoodie as well as religious garb worn by nuns?