veganarky

The rise in (commercial) popularity of mixed martial arts style (blood) sports has been a s sporadic and peripheral interest for around a decade. In particular as I interchanged living in North America and Australia. I watched debates in Canada in the context of attempts to hold events there, and more-recently Australia. My reflections on masculinity, in particular crises of masculinity, is where this interest is mostly situated. This post is not necessarily a coalescing of thoughts, rather prompted by a recent Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event in Melbourne recently. It received signi…

My title here conflates two things, whereas my thoughts are about these as quite distinct — coming out of attending a well funded and institutionally supported conference (following on from a more grass roots one without any funding or institutional support beyond the participants themselves). I am reflecting on two different people speaking early on. One being an organiser of the event, another a keynote speaker. The former felt a need to talk about themselves, how many of these conferences they have attended, how they had been involved, what they had done in being so involved, what they had …

I attended a local, annual gig which raises funds for suicide prevention recently. I had not been to the show for a few years due to living elsewhere, being too ‘busy’, and my time being taken up with other projects. Where I live has a long history of progressive politics rooted in a worker struggles, a longstanding immigrant community and campaigns for justice. The music scene here reflects, embraces, and in many has ways provided leadership for decades. This was again clear in the festival, the bands, the discussions and the audience. Woman continue to play a key role in organising and runni…

I was at a bar recently which had an arcade machine with a punching bag. It would display a score related to how hard it was hit. Over the course of a couple hours I watched different groups of people using it, three in particular. What I found of interest was how they performed masculinity with regard to their perceptions of themselves and their perceptions of others perceptions of themselves. In essence, they were acting in accordance with patriarchal biopolitics. What came to be of most interest was the second group, or more specifically an individual who parlayed with the machine on his ow…