Oh sweet Jesus, what the Christ are we ripping the sacred out of each other over this week?
What new black/white diametrically existential threat to one another culture war are we having now?
Protesting Drag Queens reading stories at a public library and a violent Samoan poem?
What. The. Actual. Fuck?
The motherfucking planet is melting down, the largest land war on the Eurasian continent since World War 2 could go nuclear at any moment, the planet is still reeling from Covid and Sino-American conflict could erupt at any moment alongside the reality of an environmental and cultural Omnicide and we are arguing about Drag story times and angry brown poetry?
I feel like I’ve woken up at a KKK rally wearing a Black Lives Matter hat.
How did shit get this dumb this quick?
What is most fucking despicable is the rank hypocrisy of the Political Right who chant ‘Free Speech’ only when it fucking suits them!
Let me be as clear as I can you raging meatsack clowns.
Drag Story Time:
Police intervene as queer community targeted by protest at Avondale, Auckland, library drag reading
Police have intervened as protesters interrupted a drag performer’s storytime session at Auckland’s Avondale Library.
Auckland Council head of Community delivery, North and West, Darryl Soljan said while the children were not disturbed, and the storyteller was safely escorted from the library, the incident was “distressing” for its team.
“We have chosen to remain closed for the rest of the day.”
The event was part of Pride Fest Out West, and involved dancing, songs, and stories told by a drag performer.
Men wearing drag has been a central feature of theatre since fucking Shakespeare. I’m not accepting any commentary from protestors who can’t appreciate that as a starting point.
Secondly, tolerance for one another in our society is actually essential for a liberal progressive democracy. Equally so is protesting. If these sad fucks want to protest Drag Queens reading stories to kids at the local library, they have that right, but it needs to be outside the library and at a respectful distance, the way we allow anti-abortion lunatics to protest abortion clinics.
Thirdly, I can’t take people claiming Drag Queens are pedophiles who are grooming or molesting children seriously if they aren’t also outside every Church in NZ making the exact same allegations.
Fourthly, let’s acknowledge the Trans Community don’t exactly welcome much aroha. Their hyper militant and woke cancellation fourth wave feminist and non-binary activist allies have made the entire debate radioactive to the point many want nothing to do with the issue altogether.
Fifthly, we want a culture that welcomes and respects diversity because that is important in a Democracy. I would have no problems whatsoever with my daughter watching and participating in a Drag Queen Story time, (in fact I’m pretty sure she has). The toxic moral panic driving protest is usually pretty knuckle dragging in its intellectual thuggery and based mostly on bullshit people have read on Facebook. If you think Drag Queens reading stories to children is sexual, perhaps you need to pause and reflect on that.
Sixthly, yes, yes, yes, There have of course been the few examples where some Drag Queen has turned up with an overtly sexual tone and that was never acceptable right? You can’t point to those few examples and misrepresent the entire value of diversity any more you can point to child molesting Priests representing the entirety of Christianity!
Seventhly, this shouldn’t be a battleground for the anti-Trans community to politicise. I appreciate the toxicity of the trans vs gender critical debate has generated a ‘the frontline is everywhere’ pitched cultural battle mindset, but unless you have an egregious example of a Drag Queen using the moment as an actual sexual fetish, it is cruel to extend the battle lines to public libraries in this manner.
What you want YOUR kids to do and not do is none of my fucking business unless you are abusing them. Likewise, what I as the parent of my daughter allow her to do or not do (within the spirit and letter of the law) is none of your fucking business. Attempting to equate a Drag Queen and the concept of diversity to child abuse is akin to claiming reading will damage your child.
Fuck off with that banjo twanging fuckwittery. We have way bigger fish to fry than stopping people having stories read to them at their local library you goons.
Violent Samoan Poetry:
Poet Tusiata Avia lashes ACT after party calls book The Savage Coloniser ‘racist’ and ‘hate-fuelled’
The author of The Savage Coloniser has hit back at ACT after the party called her work “hate-fuelled” and “racist”.
A stage show, which is receiving taxpayer money via Creative NZ, is now being produced based on the book by Ockham-winning poet Tusiata Avia.
ACT put out a press release criticising the book and stage show on Wednesday, saying the Government is “funding hate” with a show about “murdering James Cook, his descendants and white men like [him] with pig hunting knives”.
“The Government, through Creative New Zealand, which taxpayers fund and whose board Ministers appoint, is supporting works that incite racially motivated violence,” ACT leader David Seymour said in a statement on Wednesday morning.
The party is calling on the Government to withdraw $107,280 in taxpayer money that went towards the show and apologise for “giving so much to racism in the first place”.
Avia hit back at the criticism saying “ACT do not understand this poem”.
“I would counsel them to read Claire Mabey’s guide on my poem and understand what they are reading, before making uninformed, uneducated claims,” Avia told Newshub.
Excerpt from the poem:
These days
we’re driving round
in SUVs
looking for ya
or white men like you
who might be thieves
or rapists
or kidnappers
or murderers
yeah, or any of your descendants
or any of your incarnations
cos, you know
ay, bitch?
We’re gonna F… YOU UP.
What the fuck is this nonsense over a poem? Why is my sanity tested sweet Lord? Why?
Ok.
So a taxpayer funded poem that expresses the cultural anxiety and anger of being Polynesian in a white settler nation uses violent imagery and the performance art Right have taken snowflake trigger level offence and have complained to the Human Rights Commission?
Oh Fuck right off!
Look, the only two issues with publicly funded art is:
1: Is it any good?
2: We need fuck loads more money in publicly funded art!
Those are the only two parameters, and on the first parameter Tusiata Avia fails miserably.
It’s a tired boring teenage rant poem missing unicorns crying rainbow tears level banality, but she has every fucking right to express herself with such tired anger and Creative NZ have every right to back her freedom of expression!
Yes, artists are exempt from the strict letter of the hate speech laws, the same way we give comedians that leeway, the same way we give many important voices of a liberal progressive democracy! This is the very nuance we demand and yet here we have the performance art Right manufacturing outrage the exact same way the woke do!
It’s a tired poem that uses violent imagery, as a defender of Free Speech I absolutely stand by her right to be a mediocre poet!
Attempting to twist her poem and its taxpayer funded roots into hate speech is a reminder to the Left that we should always defend free speech because the fucking right always attempt to use hate speech laws as a means of strangling off voices they don’t like!
I don’t want you all to waste your energy on hating a taxpayer funded poem when the Taxpayer Funded Opera of those English Tourists is debuting this month!
Right Wing Hypocrisy:
The most appalling part of this entire fiasco over Drag Queen story readers and violent taxpayer funded Samoan poetry is that the very same raging hetero Right wing meatsacks who scream free speech 24/7 suddenly find their limits when it’s Drag Queens and brown people hu?
When they use their voice, suddenly it needs censoring?
The hypocrisy of the NZ Political Right who have all piled into this culture war is galling and stains all the dignity they’ve professed in previously defending free speech.
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Entropy, motherfuckers, entropy. If you’re in the underclass and literate, get your list in order, and cross those fuckers off when civil order collapses.
Yes yes yes Martyn we know a great amount of ‘leeway’ and sympathy should be given to Pacifika and Maori because….well just because really and of course they can get away with anything really when ‘colonisation’ is involved whether it be song/art/visual/book/poetry as they are ‘expressing themselves’ lol
Let’s see if some non brown poet writes something about ‘f*uck you up’ regarding the ‘brown savages’
…… hypocritical and indeed fear allows this, unfortunately the word RACIST makes the dissenting white voice quieten down from fear if speaking out in objection with something like this.
Good on ACT and Seymore….this is why they will Garner 15-20% this election.
Yes indeed. The words of that ‘poem’ are actual hate speech because they threaten violence.
Oh, and as a parent, you’d be mad to let your kids within a mile of that library.
why andrew do you think a drag queen is going to jump out and make them gay….you’d be better off keeping them away from church and sports that IS where the paedos lurk
As you say, “It’s a tired poem.” How could the woke within Creative New Zealand have seen such value in it over, probably, other applicants to fund it…..
“Hate speech: you know it when you see it”
it maybe being from the uk I have a more relaxed attitude to drag(which is a boring and unoriginal form but whatever) we had xmas pantos(often featuring a woman dressed as a boy too) any number of comedians frocking up from les dawson to the phythons and I didn’t think of them as ‘groomers’ much less the fund raising for charity events in pubs…the tarts and vicars night..you’ll never guess what all the big burly blokes went as…that’s right exaggerated streetwalkers.
as for the poem it’s just bad barely literate juvinalia and a sad attempt to be ‘down with the kids’ that will only be read by middle class white people….the funding should be questioned on quality not content grounds…..the bits of the vagina monologues which are dropped in public are very disturbing apologies for paedos
No it’s not that @ gargarin.
There was a more relaxed attitude in many ways here in lil ‘ole Nu Zull that punches above its weight in the days of Carmen in Vivian Street and Trev Rupe.
Something happened – the era of self righteousness and dishonesty maybe, which is probably why she fucked off to Sydney. Might have been to do with the number of closet poofters (politicians, taxi drivers. media people) willing to subscribe, and who seem to be on the rise as all and everything becomes transactional and commoditised.
If you want to understand where this comes from look at what is happening in the US in Florida under governor Ron DeSantis. This is where ACT is drawing it’s operating manual from and we should be scared shitless.
National are also leaning into this with their attacks on Maori aspiration and anything to do with redressing historic injustice. When those on the left join in with full blown anti-woke hysteria we are heading into a dark place. Naming no names.
The 4 C’s of Conspiracy – Covid – Conflict in Ukraine, – Climate Change – Children’s Story Time
Pro nonce and pro Ukraine are separate issues
Both fall within the porn category.
Why not watch the entire rant rather than an excerpt? Begins at 4.35 at below link.
And why does not any so called journalist in NZ write about the origins and history of the theories which now swill around the intellectual pigsties which once, in far off halcyon days were known as universities? The origins of ‘woke’ no less. Again why should we accept the notion of ‘funding’ for the ‘arts’ or indeed ‘degrees’ in art, music, basket weaving etc. The arts tradition was after all a European construction, why are we still bothering with it or pretending that any of it means something. Prior to the European tradition the ‘arts were always an integral part of religious or philosophical and tribal traditions within any society. It was the Catholic faith which gave rise to the European arts tradition and then more particularly to the Renaissance. One thinks of Dante, Shakespeare, da Vinci, Palestrina, Chartres, through to Bach and all the rest. It was killed off stone dead by the end of the second world war when the idea of ‘arts councils’ came in. Never were anything other than political footballs and jobs for silly billies.
The lady snarling away in execrable English is not the victim of an illustrious British mariner, rather like millions of others, the dupe of Marxists who escaped Uncle Joe’s purges in the thirties and settled in Frankfurt. Known as the Frankfurt School they hightailed to the US when Adolf began promoting his National Socialist ideologies. Settling in to US universities they began to promote their own neo- Marxist theories which all these years later are now raging full bore in the West. Let’s have a full history of all this.
https://fb.watch/iXE8BiBSYH/?mibextid=2Rb1fB
it’s like afro-centric history it will fade away and be replaced probably with equally fucked up theories like ‘trickle down’
However some white kid from a low socioeconomic background writing poetry about driving around looking for brown people to f@&k up is likely to be investigated by the SIS, police and have the military’s SAS kicking down the door.
Try this –
These days
we’re driving round
in SUVs
looking for ya
or brown men like you
who might be thieves
Lani, Danielle
and a car full of white girls
we find you
on the corner
of the Justice Precinct.
You’ve got another woman
in a headlock
and I’ve got my father’s
pig-hunting knife
in my fist
Note – not written by me….
seymour house has proven himself to be a later day devotee of mccathism.
You just have to read some of the comments on this site, to see how many snow flakes there are on the right are in this country.
I’ve got some rope in the back of my pickup truck…
Wanna hang out?
Just say…
Shared my lived experience but was censored.
No surprise here.
so many comments censored.
Yes, maybe Martyn is worried about the coming election.
Seeing that got thru’, I’ll tack on my contribution here.
I’m all for freedom of expression. What I’m less enthusiastic about is something like Tusiata Avia’s writings being taxpayer-funded.
Is Tusiata Avia’s work actually poetry? What artistic merits does it have? I expect a poet to show great skill in either word painting, word music or philosophy. Or some combination of the above.
Tennyson, for example, is a brilliant word painter and word musician; but you couldn’t call him a philosopher. Yeats is a brilliant word painter and philosopher, but doesn’t strike me as very musical. A few exceptional poets combine all three talents – Shakespeare, Keats, Eliot.
Avia’s poem paints some graphic images, but with no great skill – a lot of school kids could have written something similar. I’m not hearing any music, nor perceiving any philosophical talent.
If it is poetry, it’s rather limited poetry. It was funded for political – rather than artistic – reasons.
Too right, he’s worried it will be too Right.
How do you equate merely defunding racism with criminalising speech?
I don’t disagree with with this take on Drag Queen story hour, there are a handful of egregious sexualised examples, a recent case being the Isle of Mann, but it is not the majority. The curiosity is why Drag Queen story hour is suddenly news through the anglosphere. Is it new or has it been around a long time, like drag in theatre which children have been attending for decades if not centuries.
For clarity, there is nothing inherently woke about drag, although like much else in culture it can be hijacked for woke causes. Resist the knee-jerk reaction to the superficial without looking at substance.
Also Drag Queens and crossdressers are not trans and shouldn’t be conflated.
Like the woke trying to cancel artists, this right wing cancellation risks a Streisand effect. The most offensive thing about public funding for Tusiata Avia’s poetry is that there is probably a far more talented artist who isn’t getting funded and doing minimum wage gig-work to get by.
“Also Drag Queens and crossdressers are not trans and shouldn’t be conflated.”
You don’t have a problem with trans people, do you?
@Sophora Lol I won’t dwell on my personal life but be no I don’t 😀 I was attempting disambiguation.
However i DO have a problem with much of what passes for contemporary trans activism, which has largely become a vehicle for Queer Theory ideologues. They are often counterproductive to even simple goals like long term Trans respect and acceptance while using LGBT people as rhetorical human shields oh and can be ridiculously homophobic.
Wokism (the various schools seeing society as a series of oppressor/oppressed cultural conflict theories) is a cuckoo in the progressive nest.
I must be naive to this ideological activism (if I understand you correctly). Can you give examples?
Exemplary clarity once again Tui.
Thanks PP
One of the issues with drag performances by non-trans people, is that it is similar to doing “black face” or “yellow face”, creating a false imagine of what a trans-woman looks like & can harm real trans-women.
tell that to the pythons or 100 and one british comics and all the casts of panto…kim g’wan darzya
as for cliched presentations, drag portrays a distorted innacurate depiction of how women are and how they behave…..so maybe drag is ‘woman face’ in fact a version of the black and white minstrel show…I don’t actually subscribe to that but it’s an argument that could be made
That’s partly why Drag and Trans needs to be disambiguated and why Trans people need to be disambiguated from Trans activism. Drag are not trans woman nor are they trying to imitate them.
Trans and drag often get on very well. Simple example, if a trans woman want to learn about makeup or walking in heels, men who do drag are ideal mentors, working with the same physical characteristics.
There are also many forms of drag from family theatre to risque adult stage shows. The issue is when ideologues try to smuggle in their own agendas.
The whole issue gets pretty complicated when everyone needs to be put in specific identity boxes. It would be nice if people could just be themselves, dress as they like, live their lives in the way they would like (provided they don’t harm others), and just feel safe to do so.
so how many bad examples are enough?
bratty give us just 1 example with references there are hundreds of evangelical paedos/closet cases
@RB One bad example is one too many, however this has nothing to do with drag and everything to do with Queer Theory ideologues using drag as leverage and a human shield while advancing their ideology (motte and bailey argumentation).
My point is to pick the right target. Do nothing about the few egregious cases and the ideology advances, expect more and worse cases. However crack down on and demonise ordinary drag performers who genuinely have kids best interests at heart and you create martyrs, more sympathy and supporters for the woke cause.
If it needs repeating, Queer Theory has nothing to do queer people.
ahh, yes, spicy heterosexual that want to feel included. Queer theory and queer people go hand in hand.
kids are probably in more actual real danger from the church pastor and sports coach than they are from drag queens
Drag and Cross dressing are both under the Trans Umbrella and part of the Alphabet Soup.
@RB That is the ‘woke’ alphabet soup and woke categorisation which is for political leverage.
Anecdotally Drag and LGBT people get on very well but to buy into the woke categorisation cedes the philosophical territory and you end up debating on their terms.
I use LGBT because it comes from a time when activism was genuinely progressive.
“poem that expresses the cultural anxiety and anger of being Polynesian in a white settler nation” But she is a settler immigrant herself whose waka arrived here some hundred years after the first european wakas. Does she have the right to come here and dis a Paramount Captain Notable Navigator and World Explorer James Cook! Really, Cook as a stand-in for white people, should be fucked up by brown people in SUV’s? This is the underlying fear that sees cops and the justice system incarcerate brown people without hesitation. Is it incitement to violence or ‘just a poem’?
Another case of “it’s Ok when the left do it” with the poem. Let’s just have some consistency one way or the other
As for the drag performer – let’s see the context. If the individual was in a highly sexualized outfit reading to young kids is that really on? What was the “show” about and was it overtly sexual in nature? Again if your target audience was under 10 then the protesters have an argument. Priests don’t flop their penises out during sermons therefore not an apples versus apples comparison.
And finally – they closed the library after the event. Really? Distressing for the Team – really? What are they 5 years olds manning the library?
“And finally – they closed the library after the event. Really? Distressing for the Team – really? What are they 5 years olds manning the library?”
Maybe because it felt like an invasion? I’d be shaken by it too, & I have a damn thick skin.
panzerboi the falseness of your statement is evident from the posts here..check out mine and I’m a lefty once again you confuse middle class agitantion with left politcs….deliberatly I’m guessing
You would be surprised by how many people feel uneasy or are frightened by religious zealots.
Indeed 5 year olds running thelibrary
The problem is that both – kink for toddlers and the violence against some people glorifying poem were funded by taxes and rates. And free speech ended there. Also free speech is not free of consequences.
see my comments on panto and comics bratty
both should not be in a library on taxpayers and rate payers funds. Go to Caluzzi and pay for your self.
no argument huh bratty?….do you know how ‘woke’ you sound…YOU are cancel culture at it’s pinnacle
You are assuming the drag performer was getting paid. I think that you will find that you are wrong in that assumption.
Why do you assume that the performer worked for free. They would have been paid for by the Auckland Council/Library. After all these men want to make a living of their art.
as rupert murdoch is about to find out bratty
Oh I’d forgotten about the unruly tourists show! Wish I could see it. Hope it’s hilarious anyway
These days
we’re driving round
in Campervans
looking for ya
or kiwis like you
us Gypo kids, gunna Fuk you up.
Poetry.
as they were irish travellers not english the gypo reference doesn’t apply in context
If a white man wrote the same words about killing Maori he’d already be in Jail
Or a Police officer.
Time will tell if it is good poetry. What ever good poetry is.
We should support free speech even if some abuse this right.
I grew up in a system that restricted frerdom of speech. My Dad ides to call restrictions stupid, becsuse it is much better to know ehst the enemy (ultranationalists) think…how right he was.
The funniest and most bizarre in the whole “poemgate” story is that it inspired a politician to day the truth. Hilarious. A first on the history of humanity.
What gets me is so many who prominently rabbit on about freedom and personal choice seem to spend a lot of energy on trying to control the freedom and choice of others.
IIRR Rawiri Paratene is Marama Davidson’s father. Marama is still I think the Green’s poster girl and very concerned about proper speech and culture. Her father was censured for reading out at a school or library some work that referred to bloody battles I think; Maori were involved victims/perpetrators/actors?
There is a need to know about such stuff but within limits. Trouble is on TV and internet where limits is a bad word; there is more dangerous mind-bending stuff than I’ve had hot dinners. What about cancelling the ruddy internet or limiting it to two hours a day for business purposes? Take the pictures off so we have to read using the thinking part of the brain and not just the goggling! Can’t be done it’s here to stay – going to suck out our humanity and leave us as dried corpuscles. Robots are okay will be the call, people are too emotional and boy do the moneyed know how to stoke that fire.
So. Can someone tell what letter in the Alphabet people Alphabet is the Drag Queen represented by?Q? Or ‘t’ or Bi or f followed u & p?
I wouldn’t take my kids to an event like that, but if other parents choose to I say good on them. No one is being groomed! I don’t have an issue with drag queens, apart from a couple of encounters with them in Wellington in the 90s I’ve rarely come across them. I saw a drag queen chase a guy down Vivian st and give him a hiding once, and I saw one deck another drag queen at a gay bar where my mate was DJ’ing. I wouldn’t mess with a drag queen, lol.
You didn’t learn from your encounters RAF?
what qualifies her as a poet? previous published work? or did they just fund a rant cos hey boxes to be ticked
Christ!. Some of youse fellas would be rilly rilly pissed off if TDB closed down comments entirely.
There is this expectation that those that run TDB must immediately drop everything to moderate your words of wisdom, then publish. As in NOW!
Gotta be a conspiracy eh?
If you think you’re being censored, start your own fucking blog and let’s hear your words of wisdom and wonderment. I’d be all ears
Either that or go over to The Standard – run by the world’s best ITC professional
Happy Friday OWT
Lots of things don’t get published ever, not later.
Most of my comments are unpublished. So much for the blog owners championing of free speech!
Wow! A published comment – immediately, no less!
Too true. What’s the word for it… hypocr- something?
Anyway, I’m mainly here for the comments, that’s where you see the undercurrents of society.
why do so many rightards post here, because it is largely unmoderated…go to whichever ‘chan’ is popular this week
Actually it’s because there are so many left-tards that need correcting.
This should be a place for discussion and dissection of ideas and policies, and trimming off the necrotising layers adopted by the left and right. No one person or cult can take the high point and be sure they have all the answers. It’s not certainty that will win the day for us all, it is having baklance, and understanding and being flexible enough to move and recognise the best way to go to achieve the practical and principled society we need to go forward.
But if your reasoned reply doesn’t get published, while another’s insult does, that hardly furthers debate.
but the right consistently fail to correct anything ‘no’ because fox talking points don’t fly, you guys get pulled up on a point shrivel and fade to come back with another tucker carlson strawman
But how do you know that the reply wasn’t censored, rather than not given?
I don’t but neither do you except in case of your own personal posts no
And that’s why censorship kills reasoned debate.
There’s no point in hanging around in echo chambers, hearing what you already know, you will never learn anything new.
@No Comment, This is true of the majority of blog readers including myself. The hypocrisy and chicanery of politicians and their press shills are too dreary and obvious.
Nevertheless a few blogs like ‘Strategic Culture or ‘New Eastern Outlook’ entertain no comments. Their articles though, are often worth reading. In the wind and deluge of racial rhetoric it is heartening to read about responses to the earthquake in Turkey. At the end of the article there is a link to a song in the sentence.
‘So who could hold back the tears when Masaka Kids Africana – a Ugandan kids’ choir – made a song for Turkey?’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxKq0HB5VrM
https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/03/02/africans-big-heart-for-turkey-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxKq0HB5VrM
The whole ‘Free Speech’ brigade is a bit of a farce to be frank.
You have David Cuming of the Israeli Institute ‘deep into it’ – on the board, until someone criticises Israel and suddenly you are an anti-semite.
I agree with ‘oncewastim’ bugger of and write your own blogs you are all so pure and on to it.
I have heard Tusiata Avia doing her poetry in public I thought she was fantastic. But then for most of you snowflakes you have probably never read or heard poetry anyway.
I do have my own blog, but I like to know what those who don’t share my views are thinking, and to test my own ideas against those who may hold different views.
Fighting for your kind to be recognized, accepted and legitimized in a democracy is nothing new. Continue to advocate, educate and shout from the rooftops if you must, but just remember your lifestyles, opinions and worldview should and must remain open to scrutiny, rejection and yes even ridicule.
I do have my own blog, but I like to know what those who don’t share my views are thinking, and to test my own ideas against those who may hold different views.
If you think this poem isn’t hate speech you may have suffered from a stroke please call a doctor immediately. Replace the word white with black and read it again. This art is racist garbage