IT LOOKS like I’ve finally achieved my aim of whittling my readership down to three. So hello to Nana, Mum and Germaine — if you’re still reading. Last week I wrote a column questioning, among other things, women taking their husband’s surname. Talk about stroppy! There were more noses out of joint than in a Jeff Fenech lookalike competition.

The response was massive, totally unexpected and absolutely fascinating. Reader feedback, the letters editor and the opinion editor were flabbergasted by the sheer volume of people wanting to put their two cents in. Even Kerri-Anne Kennerley bagged me. She was “offended”, called me a “judgemental feminist” and said that I “probably couldn’t get a man”. I laughed for an hour. It seems you’re either with me, or with Kerri-Anne …

It was a case of Team Deveny versus Team How Dare You. Game on! Poke that animal in the cage!

I was shocked by what a deeply and blindly patriarchal society we still live in. How can this name thing still be an issue? Didn’t they discuss this on The Age’s weekly women’s issue page, Accent, in the 1970s?

I’ve poked the cage of private schools, clipboard-carrying parents, unnecessary caesareans, 4WD owners, even God, and I have never been so overwhelmed by a response (equally positive and negative). Team How Dare You were extremely defensive and highly emotional. There was a stunning lack of clear rational thinking in every response. It was glaringly obvious that many women who have changed their names have a deep conflict about the true motivation behind their decision and the convenient excuse they present to the world. The blokes were just as illogical. And angry.

Why would anyone care what I think? Who’d give a monkey’s about what a stranger writing in a newspaper would think about their choice? If someone had a go at something I’d decided to do, I wouldn’t give a rat’s. I’m happy with my choices.

I don’t give a stuff what you do. I’m just paid to write what I think. There’s no gun to your head. Turn the page. If you can’t stand the heat, read the Herald Sun. Why bother trying to set me straight. All you’ve done is prove my point.

The defences were, well, defensive. “Well it’s just your father’s surname anyway.” No, it’s not. It’s mine. I was born with it. And if you follow that argument through, then you are not changing your surname to your husband’s but to your father in-law’s.

“You are only a real family if you have the same surname.” Wrong. If a family wants the same surname, why don’t half of these families have the mother’s surname? It seems only women have names that are hard to spell, they aren’t attached to or they don’t like. Not men. Odd. And convenient.

Women told me their husbands would have been happy to change their surnames. But they didn’t. I asked some of these blokes who, according to their wives, would have been happy to. They either said. “No, I wouldn’t have but don’t tell her” or just shuffled their feet and muttered, “I dunno, probably.” You can say what you like now the deal is done.

I did a few radio interviews, and the callers were a real eye-opener. Men told me they agreed with me totally then proudly said: “I told my wife she didn’t have to change her name” or “I let her keep her name but the kids had to have my surname.” Where do I start?

It’s a choice, but what’s informing this choice is the issue. Why is it that it’s “just easier” for “the wife” to change name in almost 100 per cent of situations? It’s easier for many not to take on convention and consequently reveal the depths of dormant patriarchy among their nearest and dearest. Then it’s easier still to say: “It’s just easier.”

The stories I have heard of a backlash towards some women who kept their names were jaw-dropping. More women than you would think have confronted extremely angry reactions, with people telling them it is “illegal”, “unethical” and “selfish” not to change their names. Others just ignore the woman’s wishes and address her as Mrs He.

It’s the mindless default setting, the convenient and flimsy excuses, the extreme defensiveness and the lack of rationality that’s the worry. The personal is political. Surnames don’t need to be uniform. Our society can cope with an equal mix of families with the male surname, the female’s, both, hyphenated (both mother’s and father’s surnames first), male kids get one surname, female kids get the other and new family names. Bureaucracy can cope, but can you?

My theory? Many women want the same name as their children. They know their husband won’t change or they don’t want him to change (in fear of his being branded henpecked and/or she as a femonazi), and they are certain that he won’t accept the children having her surname or hyphenating. So change it is. And everything stays the same.

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Insecure or conservative or stupid women are bowing to the wishes of their husbands.
WHO the hell is Jana Rawlinson? Jana Wendt I know, Jana Pittman I know, but Jana Rawlinson? So I check out the snap. It looks exactly like Jana Pittman. But her name is Jana Rawlinson. How bizarre. That has to be some crazy coincidence. A woman called Jana with a different surname who looks exactly like Jana Pittman. And, get this, she’s a hurdler too. Freaky.

(I wrote this in 2007. Jana has since divorced and changed her name back to Pittman)

Oh, I get it. She has put a few noses out of joint in the past so she’s keen on a bit of incognito action. You’d think she’d change her first name too. Then it dawned on me. She has got married, bizarre enough in itself these days, and changed her last name to her husband’s. What an anachronism. Maybe she changed her name to go with the chastity belt, the crinolines and the stick “no thicker than his thumb” that her husband is allowed to beat her with.

Wake up! We are in 2007. Women are no longer owned by their father and then their husband. So why are some women still changing their surnames? And why do some men still want them to? It’s sad, it’s misogynous, it’s archaic, it’s insecure and it’s unnecessary.

Why would you do something so drastic simply because you decided to delude yourself it was easier? Because you are deeply insecure, deeply conservative or deeply stupid. And in deep denial.

I ask women why they change their last name. They tell me “it’s just easier”. It’s not. How easy is it changing the name on everything from your driver’s licence to your library card? It’s not. Many of the families I know have up to three different surnames and have no problem at all.

If people really believe that mum, dad and the kids having the same surname is easier, why doesn’t the guy change his name? Why don’t they flip a coin and it’s heads we go for her surname and tails we go for his? Because it is not about it being easier. It makes me despair. We’ve come all this way and we’re still here.

Many women will say that their husbands wanted them to change their surname. So they did. Here’s a flash for you sister: if you do everything that your husband wants you to do, you may find yourself teetering round in a pair of stilettos and an apron all day saying, “Shall I fix some more food for you and the boys?”, or wearing a burqa.

Thanks to feminism, women should be allowed and encouraged to do anything they want. But the question I ask is why do some women still want to change their surnames? READ PART TWO. And then read about Why Children Almost Always Have Their Father’s Surname.

 

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Why do (don’t go there) most children(don’t go there) still end up with (don’t go there, don’t go there, don’t go there!) their father’s surname?

(Me on WTF do women change their names when they marry and why marriage is bullshit)

Let’s first acknowledge the existence of and look past the invisible electric fences, rumble strips of social convention and cattle prods of ”please don’t question our convenient answers because behind them is a scary place we don’t want to see”, and ask why, in 2010, most children in Australia (it’s impossible to find the figures but let’s have a conservative stab and say 95 per cent) are still given their father’s surname?

I asked women who never even considered changing their own surnames, but whose children ended up with the father’s surname, with little or no discussion in 95 per cent of cases.

Answer: ”It’s just traditional.”

”But you’re not married/re-married/work full-time/are assertive. That’s not traditional.”

Answer: ”It’s convention.”

”But you’ve kept your own name. That’s not conventional.”

Answer: ”It would upset his parents.”

”What kind of people would be upset by their adult offspring and partner making an informed choice to promote equality, or just because they wanted to? How healthy is it to conform to someone else’s medieval preferences and not do what you want?”

Answer: ”I didn’t really care.”

”Why? You cared deeply about the colour of the napkins at the wedding, the colour you painted the house and keeping your own name. Why didn’t you care about this?”

Answer: ”We didn’t even have the discussion.”

”Why not?”

Answer: ”We had the discussion.”

”So that’s enough? How deep did the discussion actually go?”

Answer: ”Neither of us really cared.”

Well, why, at the very least, didn’t 50 per cent of the kids whose parents said ”neither of us cared” end up with the maternal surname, a hyphenated one or a hybrid? Not 95 per cent paternal.

Answer: ”I hate hyphenated and hybrids.”

”Well, what about the maternal?”

Answer: ”Both of us were adamant we wanted the baby to have our surname. But in the end (INSERT EASILY DISMANTLED REASON HERE) we used his surname.”

Here’s one I heard: the deal was the children got his surname but had to barrack for her football team. And can I ask those fathers who ”didn’t care either way” why they got their way in the end? Occasionally women say: ”My partner is very conservative.” Really? Not according to the porn history on his laptop. Or better still, without even realising, they said: ”I didn’t want to have the argument.” There. Stop there. You just said it. You knew there’d be an argument. Why didn’t you want to have that one? The surname is extremely important – hence the prevalence of the father’s surname in our society.

But the real issue is the denial, the self-delusion, the mutually accepted ”don’t go there” zones that inform the decision and the reluctance to rationally discuss it in depth. Discuss what we are still getting out of this primitive decision – the paternal surname providing proof, or illusion, of paternity and the hope of protection for our progeny and the genes we are hitching our wagon to?

Why are so many people still clinging to this convention in this day and age of divorce and DNA? A convention that insidiously reinforces power, control and ownership.

It’s a patriarchal minefield we deny even exists. Despite so much social change, this is a rusty nut that will not budge. And don’t be fooled by being fobbed off with ”it’s not important”. It is. Wait for the feedback from this column. Readers will doubtless attempt to undermine the importance of the issue, then me personally. They’ll announce their ”special circumstances”. Declare that it ended up going paternal because his name sounded better, his family name was dying out, it was important to his family, my surname is in the middle, etc.

They’ll offer examples of how other people are doing something else. But not them.

 

 

 

 

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For all the controversy I’ve gotten into with Twitter, I’ve never received an email from their legal department. Until two weeks ago. Attached to the email was correspondence alerting me the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney’s lawyers were threatening to sue them (and me) for a meme I had tweeted from my account. I’ve removed the offending tweet, but you can read the letters the Archdiocese’s lawyer’s sent Twitter here.

I have no proof Cardinal George Pell is a pedophile. I there is no proof Cardinal George Pell has raped children. I never intended to suggest to others he has.

I apologise unreservedly for any hurt Cardinal Pell may have suffered from me retweeting a meme, (that I didn’t make and didn’t tweet originally)  on April 10 that used his image and five words he said on Q&A the night. Here is the offending meme for your shock and awe.

Clearly it was significant enough hurt and embarrassment caused for him to lawyer up and spend the Catholic Church’s money to pursue defamation action against Twitter and me. There must have been deep deliberation over the decision to spend thousands of dollars of parishioners’ money on legal fees. Spending money that could have been spent feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless or alleviating suffering of the thousands of children raped by priests protected and supported by the wealthy powerful 2000 year old international child sex ring that trades under the business name Roman Catholic Church. Money that could have been spent burying nuns, in the same way as priests in private crypts instead of the mass graves they are currently buried in at Melbourne Cemetary. Instead of  spending it on defamation litigation, clearly illustrates how serious the breach I allegedly committed was in the eyes of Cardinal Pell. 

I assume I’m just one of the many people the Archdiocese’s legal team pursued. There must be many more, considering hundreds of people distributed the meme. I’m certain they would not have decided to commit to potentially lengthy and expensive legal fees pursuing Twitter and only me. My tweet could not have hurt more than others. No one, least of all a high ranking Catholic and follower of the teaching of Jesus Christ would have selectively chosen to attempt to silence one person. A person previously banned from speaking in a basketball court owned by the Catholic Church for International Women’s Day 2010. Such a decision would fly in the face of a Church that promotes their girls’ schools as places that foster ‘pursuit of excellence in a spirit of freedom, justice and sincerity’ and ‘nurture well-informed, articulate and independent young women who respond to the challenge of the real world with spirit and compassion.’

No one will ever see the offending material I tweeted, (unless they do a Google search), but I’d like to comment on what led to my alleged transgression and occasioned this response. It started during the Archbishop’s discussion with Richard Dawkins on Q&A, when the Archbishop was interrupted by laughter when he used the expression “we were preparing young English boys … for Holy Communion”.  The Archbishop hadn’t gotten “Holy Communion” out of his mouth when members of the audience burst into laughter, forcing Cardinal Pell to pause as the laughter grew.

No comedians were needed, because if anyone, be they a comic or cleric, were to say the words that Archbishop Pell said, the way he said them, the part of the brain responsible for the fight or flight response is triggered. This part of the brain is not conscious, it is ancient and is the place were we store our fear of snakes and other things that we think may hurt us. Like priests.

Some would accuse those instructing and pursuing legal processings of vanity, pride, narcissism and being more preoccupied with self-perception than heartfelt concern for the victims of the abuse. I wouldn’t. Though one could argue the name George Pell is so integral to the Catholic faith that the Cardinal’s reputation is indistinguishable from the church itself, he is just a man. And therefore entitled to his reputation – and again, his reputation does not involve sex with boys. The Church’s reputation does.

I’m calling on Archbishop Pell to forgive me as I have forgiven others for alleged damage to his reputation or damage likely to occur as a result of material published. I have been legally advised any reasonable person viewing my tweet could conclude I was suggesting the Archbishop was a pedophile.

Could, not would.

I accept this. But it is one thing to question my words another entirely to assume my intent. I was truly surprised. The humor I found was the type of the gallows. Not a personal attack on the Cardinal but an association created by a response to the large amount of sexual abuse inflicted by priests. A healing response.

Laughter is medicine. And what I do, while offensive to men who oversee the church, is a salve to others. Others who have suffered at the hands of Catholic priests.

I won’t lie, I’ve made the occasional joke that exploits the fact the Catholic Church’s brand has become so linked in people’s minds with child rape, the public doesn’t even need to hear the punch line to get the joke. The situation has been so worked over that comedians have to work very hard to get a laugh, if you don’t believe me, watch how far Lewis CK has to take this to be funny. The reason Louis CK didn’t get a letter from the church’s lawyers for doing this is because, the church isn’t a person.  One of the freedoms people have more or less recently obtained is the freedom to tell jokes about religion and about churches.  As long as no actual clergyman is named, telling jokes about priests raping children is perfectly acceptable. Or even singing songs. 

The Bishop’s words were fed into LOL speak, photoshopped and forwarded via the inter-tubes where I tweeted it – and in so doing I allegedly became complicit in the defamation of Cardinal George Pell.  

The law is the law, and we are all equal before it. Just as priests must be held to the same standards as the laity, so must comics.  It is not OK to call someone a child rapist, unless they are a child rapist, and I’ve made clear I do not believe Cardinal Pell is a child rapist. And I never intended to insinuate it. It is however a fact that that people might quickly wonder if he is a child rapist if he does not choose his words carefully. This is not because there are comedians like me. This is because of what priests have done and what inquires like the Ryan Commission have made it impossible to deny or the response to it by survivors.  As the Q&A footage shows – it doesn’t take a comedian to make the joke work.   

I don’t attack people, I attack ideas. I may prick pomposity, but I don’t tell jokes to tear others down. I’d like to offer a bit of wisdom to the Church’s legal team monitoring my twitter feed. Because while child rape is unquestionably wrong, much of the anger that makes people laugh at Archbishops on national TV, without the aid of my tweets, is from anger at the fact the church appears to many to be more concerned for the reputation of priests and the church rather than the welfare of rape victims.  

We may be all equal before the law but we are not all equal before the banks. Most people can’t afford lawyers to protect their reputations or guard against trespass with the method ‘kill one scare a thousand’. For those people there is laughter.  

I extend the hand of friendship and forgiveness to you Cardinal Pell and suggest we work together to raise money to help heal the pain of the thousands of Australian victims of sexual abuse at the hands of the clergy and the rehabilitation of the pedophile priests.  We could do this by appearing together in a speaking engagement. We could come from a place of love and healing to discuss shame, grief, reputation and forgiveness. We could give all the money to Broken Rites, a grassroots organization that supports victims of sexual abuse at the hands of clergy. Or to raise money for a campaign to call for a Royal Commission into child abuse in religious and other non-government organizations.

Together, let’s change the immediate association with the words ‘Catholic Church’ from ‘child abuse’ to ‘healing’.

I would love to donate some money to help pay the legal costs but unfortunately I am a bit broke right now. If it’s any conciliation generations of my family have donated millions to your institution over centuries.

And Cardinal, if you want to discuss the speaking engagement, do give me a call. I’d be thrilled to hear from you and please, call me Catherine.

Peace be with you.

Catherine

UPDATE

The day I put this response up, that evening I performed in a debate with QC Julain Burnside.

Before we went on stage he offered to represent me pro bono. I tweeted out the news at 6.30pm. By the time we got off stage Cardinal George Pell had caved and called off the defamation litigation.

Want some more Deveny/Pell action?  OF COURSE YOU DO! Some good reads CRIKEY, the hilarious LETTER to George Pell’s lawyers and CARDINAL PELL SINGS STREISAND’S GREATEST HITS. Deliver us from evil …..

The Age Lawyer Judy Courtin speaks on sexual abuse by Catholic clergy here.

Four Corners ‘Unholy Silence’ here

Four Corners ‘Cardinal Pell Guilty’ here

My response to a Catholic school asking me donate to their fete.

Gunnas Writing Masterclass Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Bendigo, Ballarat, Yackandandah, Brisbane, Perth, Apollo Bay, Mildura etc. Also coming up Gunnas Stand Up Comedy with Nelly Thomas and Gunnas Journalism with Michael Lallo. 

 

 

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THE People’s Republic of Moreland is pretty trendy these days. I know this because we now have junkies and Pilates. All we need is a juice bar and we’ll be completely up ourselves. Oh, that’s right: we do, and we are.

Right now, we’re excited too. It’s hard rubbish collection season or, as I prefer to call it, the Tightarse Festival. I’ll tell you something for free: if you want to get 60-year-old men walking four times a day, put on a hard rubbish collection. They’re gagging for a shuffle around the block when there’s a possibility they may find a replacement catcher for their mower, a piece of cyclone fencing to store in their shed and never use, or a broken carpet sweeper they can put out out for next year’s collection. (I can only imagine the look on the face of the wife as one of these men drags another air-conditioning unit the size of a Torana up the driveway, explaining: “Before you say anything, love, it’s for parts.”)

Come dusk, every man and his Crocs are out. Pushers, walking frames, scooters and even attractive people with glasses of wine are doing the hard rubbish shuffle. The participants in this Carnival of the Once Loved but Now Unwanted stroll by in a trance. Having a squiz, poking stuff with a foot and, after careful assessment, selecting only the best to proudly lug home. There’s an element of addiction about it, too. “Just one more street,” you hear people saying. “I hear Campbell Avenue has lifted its game this year.”

 

And there’s no shyness about it. Bold as brass. “Look at this,” said a man to me as he pried a smoked-glass coffee table with ornate brass legs from under a piece of corrugated iron. “Why would anyone get rid of this?” I don’t know, maybe because they don’t spend evenings listening to Neil Diamond, snorting cocaine and sharing crack-addicted hookers with David Hasselhoff.

A mate who grew up in Balwyn — beige one minute, beige the next — tells me the hard rubbish festival was very different in that biosphere. People thought of hard rubbish as, you won’t believe it, disgusting garbage! I know; they’re obviously sick. If you see offerings on your neighbour’s nature strip, she told me, or worse, bumped into neighbours putting it out, you avert your eyes and both pretend you haven’t seen a thing. What happens at the hard rubbish collection stays at the hard rubbish collection.

Lady Balwyn was once woken by her father at 1am and forced to liberate their neighbour’s unwanted dresser under the cover of darkness. The object in question was to be used as storage in his shed. She was allowed to go back to sleep only after helping her father paint it a different colour so that no one who dropped by to borrow a shifter would ever know. As he slung her $10, he muttered: “Don’t tell your mother.”

In the People’s Republic of Moreland, it’s a different ball game. For someone to adopt something from your hard rubbish is a great honour. If you appropriate something from someone else’s hard rubbish they are obliged, possibly legally bound, to liberate something from yours. If not, some serious loss of face can result.

“A filing cabinet from outside number 76? Sorry, son, three years back they turned their noses up at our disintegrated urine-soaked sofa, the split compost bin and the decapitated garden gnome after we’d given a good home to their dilapidated card table. We were humiliated. It killed your grandfather.”

When at a neighbour’s place it is custom to acknowledge any item of yours they have liberated. “Hey! There’s our buckled leopard-print toilet seat. It looks so much better here. Well spotted.”

A few years back we dragged to the nature strip a clapped-out stove covered in rancid sausage grease and full of mouse shit. When I arrived with the grill drawer a minute later there were three men with hacksaws going at it like the clappers.

And that’s why I love this place, , a suburb where old Aussies, young Lebanese families, student households, Italian nonnas, Greek yayas, Somalian youths, Indian cab drivers and latte-frothing lefties like me live side by side and covet each other’s rubbish. It’s United Colors of Benetton one day and an episode of Mind Your Language the next.

But maybe I’ve misjudged it, and this place is changing faster than I’d realised. When the wind blows in the right direction, you can smell the gentrification. Now I’m a little worried about the hard rubbish I’ve selected to release into the wild this year.

Every waking moment I’m perched at my front window hoping the rusted exercise bike, a three-legged plastic outdoor chair and a tangled beaded curtain will catch someone’s eye. So far, nothing. The citizens of the People’s Republic of Moreland must be up themselves. I blame the juice bar.

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NEW York. They say if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. Which explains why I’m still here and in the last week have done gigs in Fawkner, Scoresby and Eildon. And why I spent today in Canberra. For work. No one comes to Canberra for fun, just porn, firecrackers and to see if the serves of beef stroganoff in the Parliament House canteen are as stingy as reported. After a day in Canberra I’ll no longer die wondering what it would feel like to be bound, gagged and trapped in a toilet with Wayne Swan. Don’t ask.

The alarm went off at 6am. I didn’t know that 6am existed. The only reason anyone should be up at that hour is if they are coming home from a rave dressed as Tinky Winky, giving birth or dying. On the 7.05am flight to Canberra I’d never seen such a miserable bunch of grey-suited trolls in my life. No one watched the safety demonstration. Everyone was praying the plane would go down and we’d all die. Which you kind of do when you arrive. Canberra’s slogan should be “Save the Airfare. Just Kill Yourself”.

Canberra’s a giant office. No one lives here. People just work here. It’s so squeaky clean and Truman Show-esque I spent the day fighting the urge to make with a spray can and defile the place with dick and balls. People in Canberra don’t have a sense of humour. Well, the ones I caught the taxi from the airport with didn’t. A cabbie pulled up to the rank and said, “Parliament House.” I was one of three randoms to jump in. The driver said, “Does everyone know what multi-faring is?” The other two grunted. I said, “Is it like group sex with cab vouchers?” No one laughed.

After checking out the “night life” and deciding there’d obviously been a biological attack and I was the only survivor, I returned to my hotel room and flicked on the tube. Nothing to watch. Apart from commercials for Magnet Mart and an ad for a store called Bing Lee to the tune of I Like Chinese.

When there’s nothing to watch, I switch to Channel Nine, pour a glass of wine and feel superior. I was sucked into homeMADE by the trendy typography and the name Chontelle. I’d love to tell you it’s a new show but it’s just every makeover show you’ve ever seen but worse, with less money and people who don’t even annoy you enough to hate. homeMADE may as well be called We’ve Given Up. You’ll Obviously Watch Anything. Now It’s Just a Dare.

Two groups of “hot designers” provide renovation porn as they “do up” suburban homes. There are budget blow-outs, spats, feature walls, deadline panics and horrible, horrible makeovers. It’s a great opportunity to see what’s hot in Bacchus Marsh interior design. If someone did that to my place I’d have them sent to Canberra for the term of their natural lives.

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