SEXUAL ABUSE ENTRENCHED IN NZ

Sexual abuse across all social classes by men and women, boys and girls, well- and poorly-educated, is deeply embedded in New Zealand society, and despite being explicitly outlawed in public places by section 4 of the Summary Offences Act 1981 it is everywhere considered so normal and acceptable that any law against it is a dead letter.

If a black man is punched in the head because he is black, that is racial abuse of the physical kind. If he is called a nigger, that is racial abuse of the psychological kind. Everyone understands that. Both are acts of racial abuse, both hit him hard in his mind and heart, and both damage both the abused and the abuser.

Words are powerful. The words we use, the words we choose, express our thinking and shape it. Then our thinking shapes our actions.

What are inaccurately and euphemistically called four-letter words, which Tolkien aptly called Black Speech, is sexual abuse of the psychological kind. It pours black abuse on the emblems and the essence of manhood and boyhood, girlhood and womanhood. Especially manhood and boyhood. Even a term that on the surface abuses women‘s genitals is most often hurled at men by men: the c-- word is the worst insult that can be flung at a man; it says he has no manhood.

The destructive power of the black words is multiplied by the fact that they do double duty as terms of strong mockery. For example, the black word for the penis also means a stupid fool, the black word for the glans penis means a very stupid fool, the black word for the testes is part of a term that means a gross and mindless blunder, the black abbreviation for the scrotum means something disgusting and repellent. Boys and men thus constantly have rammed into them the message that what makes and marks them as male is a disgusting and repellent joke. That is a monumental lie.

Women get off comparatively lightly, but it is small wonder that breast-feeding is rejected by so many when the word used for the breasts also means a stupid mistake. That too is a destructive lie.

The f--- word, when made personal with 'you', is a wish for what is obviously thought to be the worst punishment that can be inflicted. As rape yes, but it abuses the most loving act in human life, a damnable lie underscores the rest of the abuse.

Until New Zealand recognises that it is subjecting itself to a torrent of psychological sexual abuse in its addiction to Black Speech and starts eliminating it the physical sexual abuse that arises from it will continue.

For a start, section 4 of the Summary Offences Act 1981 should be rigorously enforced. Which means that police officers must stop using sexually abusive language. Radio and television should eliminate it from the airwaves, and if an otherwise worthwhile programme that includes is shown it it should be preceded by a clip that says what it contains and that it is sexual abuse so must be treated with contempt--in short, the abusive guns should be spiked. The Broadcasting Standards Authority should recognise and fulfil its responsibilities.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which New Zealand has signed, and which it affirmed in our Bill of Rights Act in 1990, lays down the fundamental principle of law as 'recognition of the inherent dignity and worth of the human person.' Together with 'recognition of the equal and inalienable worth of all members of the human family' that is *explicitly defined* as 'the foundation of freedom justice and peace in the world.' So in law and in truth whenever we denigrate our inherent dignity and worth we threaten our freedom, our justice, our peace.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says 'disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind'. That is always so. Therefore to eliminate the barbarism of sexual abuse and assault we must eliminate the contempt that leads to them. Which includes the contempt pouring like black pus from countless conversations.

It is simple cause and effect. That which is held in contempt will inevitably be attacked. There are attacks for good and attacks for evil. Evil attacks are caused by evil contempt. To eliminate them, it is necessary to eliminate the evil contempt. How is evil contempt recognised? It shuns the truth.

We recognise the arrant falsehoods of sexually abusive actions and images, but although the country is drenched in sexually abusive language few recognise it and care. The daily barrage of falsehoods about what makes and marks us as male and female, and which constantly drives down our self-esteem, male self-esteem in particulary, must be recognised for what it is and ruthlessly stamped out. We must accept and honour our bodies, not denigrate them.

When we tell falsehoods to ourselves about ourselves we act falsely to ourselves and others.The only difference is a matter of degree. In some the manifestation is extreme: rape and rape-murder. In others it is poor treatment of themselves and others, especially by men of women. Everyone who uses Black Speech is responsible for the damage it causes.

As W.H. Auden wisely observed:

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn.
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

GOOGLE PLUS

There has been a great deal of hype and hoo-ha about Facebook recently, but those of us who have discovered Google Plus know how much better than Facebook it is. Unfortunately, we cannot delete ourselves from Facebook, only render our accounts inactive, but mine has been zapped and I shall never go back.

Google Plus, Google+, G+ has been well named. It is a plus in every way. It has a simple interface that is a delight to use, every aspect is easy to configure (including privacy), and the brilliant concept of Circles fits perfectly the way we arrange our lives.

On Facebook everyone is a 'friend.' That is silly. 'Friend' is a precious word that cannot and should not be applied to hordes of people.

But on Google+ you have Circles. You can call them whatever you please, and put whoever you please into them. You get a few Circles to start you off: Family, Friends, Acquaintances, Following. You can drag people into those ones, you can create new ones, you can rename any Circle any time. You can have oodles of them.

And the people you put in your Circles only know that they are in one, or more, of your Circles. They do not know which one.So you could have a Circle you called Ratbags of the Universe, or Best Photographers in the World, or Rocket Scientists, or Fellow Waihekeans, Sweeties, or whatever is appropriate, and put people there. You just enter names, and drag their pictures into a Circle or Circles (people can be in multiple Circles).

Postings on Google+, unlike on Facebook, can be edited, so if you made a typing error, or just want to change or add something, you can. And you can make them as long or short as you please. You can of course add pictures, videos, text, links.

And there are Ripples, where you see, live, how postings are rippling across G+ as people share them.

Then there are Hangouts. You can get together with up to nine other people on your webcams. You can jump from a posting directly to a Hangout if you want to change from postings to a live meeting about that post. And Hangouts on Air enable you to broadcast to the world on YouTube, which is also part of Google and is integrated with Google+. As are GMail and Google Search and other Google stuff.

When you go on to Google+ that black bar at the top of your browser changes. Your name, with a + in front, is added at the left-hand end. So that is what Google+ means, Google plus You. Everyone on Google+ is Plusser.

I could go on and on. But if you are on Facebook not Google+ you are using a second-rate service. Third rate, or worse.

It has been going less than a year but is already heading to towards 200 million users. It took FB eight years to get the 900 million it claims to have. I hope that does not count my deactivated account...

Google search is used by two-thirds of the 2.3 billion users of the Internet. So which will win? Google+ or Facebook? The best, of course...

To join Google+ click here

Or just click on the +You link at the left-hand end of the black bar at the top of your browser (assuming you have Google as your homepage).


.....


Footnote, made in May 2013. Google+ used to exhibit good design, which made it a pleasure to use. But then to my dismay it did a revamp and ditched so much good design and displayed so much insensitivity to how the human mind works that I ditched it. No more Google Plus. Which is a pity, because the G+ idea is superb, but I cannot stand bad design. And I have far more interesting things to do, things that do not involve being constantly annoyed by foolish shortcomings. G+ is becoming as dictatorial and take-or-leave it as Facebully. So I chose to leave it. My account remains, to be a point of contact, but I do not.

BLACK CAT AT THE DOVES

Doves belong to the pigeon family, and 'Putting a cat among the pigeons' is an old saying, often expressed as a bit of a joke. But it is no joke when you find a black cat from somewhere has tried to sneak up on the doves that thought my place was safe.

A sudden loud flurry of dovish wings panicking outside the office caught my attention this afternoon, and I went out, to see a sinister black shape retreating behind a tree only a couple of metres from where the birds had been feeding on the ground.

Now the birds are nervous and easily spooked. They are wary about coming down to the ground, and when one panics they all flee back up to the trees, even though there is no cat..

A few weeks ago there were twenty-three, but two died, a mother and chick, and I think that whole family must have succumbed to whatever it was they had eaten or whatever bug they had caught, or perhaps the father went elsewhere to seek a new mate, so that reduced the flight* to twenty. But now it is a very wary twenty. :-(

The tamest one, the female I call LightFeet, has been getting very, very tame, even perching on my shoulder for and hour or two while I worked. I hope she will not be affected by the coming of the black cat, that the general wariness of the flight will soon dissipate, and that that cat will exit the scene permanently.

(*The collective noun for doves is a flight.)

LOVE IN THE FOREST

Birds grow up at astonishing speed. If we were the same we would complete our entire education and be married in six months flat.

The photo shows two doves that were eggs only a few months ago. Now they are fully grown and have chosen a mate. The one with the well-feathered feet I have dubbed BigFeet2, because the feathers make her feet look big (I think she is a female), and because there is another dove amongst the twenty-one that now live in this forest that also has well-feathered feet, albeit not so much, but was born before BigFeet2, which I call BigFeet1.

The photo shows the male bird (if I am right about gender) grooming his beloved.

My guess about their genders is based on seeing BigFeet2 mounted by her mate. That seems conclusive, but BigFeet2 also does the cooing and bowing behaviour typical of males, although that may only be the warning cooing that means 'Move over, that food is mine!' But I expect they know which is which, and there will in due course be eggs then the flutter of smaller wings.

As I write this the pair are wandering, and occasionally flying, round my office.

But a few days later, as if they knew my doubts about their genders and wanted to put me right, they made their beautiful fluttering unions three times on the floor of my office, and BigFeet2 was on top every time. So he is a he. And his mate spends more time grooming him that he spends on her, which makes it conclusive.
:-)

TWENTY-THREE THEN TWENTY-ONE

Up till  the 10th of March the greatest number of doves I had seen on the ground at the same time was twenty-three, although the usual maximum to fly down from the trees in the morning to feed on the ground and from my hands was twenty-two.

That was haw many there were on the morning of the 9th, but two were noticeably off-colour. They were hunched down, not eating with the rest and looked very sleepy. The other twenty were their normal vigorous selves. At night I saw that two were hunched together well under the office part of the building, and in the morning to my dismay one was dead. The other one, a fairly recent chick, died a few hours later despite my attempts to revive it. I assume the first one was its mother. Perhaps she ate something she should not have, such as a poisonous karaka berry, and passed it on to her chick in her 'milk'. I buried them in the forest at the foot of large boulder--Dove Rock as I call it.

So now, somewhere round here, there are twenty-one doves but since that day no more than twenty have arrived on the ground at once.  

NINETEEN!

For the second time this week there were nineteen doves waiting for me when I opened the door at seven o'clock. Nineteen little white angels, with angel wings spread, making a concerted rush to get inside, eager to be fed on the little bits of cheese I was holding in both hands.

It is very hard to get out a door when there is a mass of white wings and feathered bodies trying their best to get in. But a very nice way to start the day.

Then when I bent down and opened my hands I had the usual exuberant, eager mass of angel wings beating round me. Wonderful!

TOLKIEN'S BIRTHDAY AND BOOKS

Today is Tolkien's 119th birthday, or as he would put it his eleventy-ninth.

Yesterday I ordered the proof of The Wing-Friends, an enchanting fantasy set in the ancient past that I wrote many years ago. Dorothy Butler liked it, and thought it should be published, but the publisher did not think there was enough of a market in New Zealand, so now it is being published by CreateSpace, part of Amazon. The process is very straightforward, the proof reached first-approval stage quickly and the physical book will be in my hands shortly. Once that has been checked and signed off it goes out all over the planet.

The greatest compliment ever paid it was by Dorothy Butler. I had reason to contact her many years later over someone else's book, and asked if she remembered mine. Yes, she did. A memorable story is always the best kind. I hope others find it as appealing.

Meanwhile my eBooks have continued to sell well on Amazon's Kindle Store, even when their promotion days ended, About 1500 copies so far in less than a week. The short horror-story, The Thing, is going like a rocket to my astonishment. A lot of people must like a bit of gross terror, or perhaps they see that it is like the real world: get it horribly wrong and things go horribly wrong for slightly more than 3 nanoseconds.

I am particularly pleased about my 10,000-word novelette Loving Minds, another fantasy, but a modern one. It was to a large extent inspired by a conversation I found myself next to on the Jet Raider ferry one night. It melded with other thoughts and imaginings and Loving Minds was the result. The sort of romance that can really only be dreamed of...

MY BOOKS AND STORIES PUBLISHED!

Over the years I have written a huge amount--millions of words of one sort or another--ranging from professional writing in information technology, business and science, to children's and adult fiction, to legal opinions, to blogs, etc. The fiction has covered a very wide range, from fantasy to horror, from romance to humour, from metaphor and environmental activism to classic tales reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm and Tolkien.

Some of my stories are very short, some are full-length books; they vary in length from a mere 360 words on a single page to over 33,000 on 84 pages. But 360 words can be just as compelling as a much longer work. The length should be whatever it comes out to; it should fit the story. The 360-word work is a horror-story, whose brevity heightens the horror (and the black humour).

None of my stories have been published (on paper, I mean), either because I made no attempt, or as was the case with my first book, a fantasy called The Wing-Friends, because although the publishers liked it they declined it. They liked it because their reader, the famous Dorothy Butler, recommended it, but they did not think there was a big enough market in my native New Zealand to make it worth their while. The opinions of publishers are the bane of author's lives...

How many times in history have books been declined by publishers, or only published in very limited numbers, because publishers did not think they would be successful, but then were runaway best-sellers, never out of print? The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Lord of the Rings are two of myriads of examples.

To get round that, the ideal is be your own publisher but traditionally that has meant a large initial outlay because of the cost of a print-run and marketing. Print-on-demand publishing, in which copies are printed only when ordered, opened large cracks in that obstacle, but although the outlay was not as large it was still not an easy road, especially if you had a number of works to publish.

In the past few days I have discovered, rather belatedly to my chagrin, that Amazon has swept away all obstacles with free services, both ebook and print-on-demand. The ebooks are published via Kindle Direct Publishing; the print-on-demand are published via a part of the Amazon empire called CreateSpace. The Internet has radically changed the author's world. Yay! No longer do publishers have the whip hand, or any hand at all. Now the author is in charge, and has a direct line to readers. Which is how things should be.

So I have started publishing a number of my stories myself. The shorter ones are or will be in ebook format, for reading on an electronic reader or a computer. The longer ones will be in print-on-demand paperback format.

To find my stories go to Amazon and enter my name in the search box: Nobilangelo Ceramalus, or just Nobilangelo, or click on this link. As the days go more and more will be there. so far I have published seven ebooks. Soon I shall publish my first print-on-demand book, The Wing-Friends. I also plan to publish an environmental book, The Earth-Guard, via print-on-demand, as well as other things in both formats, about a dozen all together perhaps.

The exclamation mark at the end of the title of this posting is therefore an indication of my relief at being able at long last to get my stories out into the world where they belong.

I hope there will be people who will enjoy them.

EIGHTEEN!

The title says it all. This morning eighteen doves were waiting at the feeding-place. So much for my reckoning that there were seventeen. The scrum of birds round my hands when I held them out full of cheese was amazing.

To make a most dovish start to the day even more special, about an hour later I went outside for a short dove-break and held up one hand with food in it to the trees. Down came a dove, paused on the edge of the roof, then on a perch beside me, then hopped to my hand and fed there. To my delight it was the most lovely one, the bird I had thought it would be fitting to call Guinivere. Pure white, lovely eyes surrounded by fine grey circlets, beautiful feet...

MULTIPLYING! SEVENTEEN AND COUNTING...

Good grief! How many doves are there? Late this afternoon I counted seventeen in the feeding-place. They are multiplying... At their present rate of increase we shall have to move out of the forest within a year. ;-)

The sixteenth one that appeared the other day but was too shy to come down to the ground turned out not to be an adult, as it she had seemed at a distance to be, because she has since been down a couple of times and as the pink ceres of a chick. She is very timid; she trembles with fear, and hardly knows how to eat, so she is noticeably thin. I expect she will copy the others and gain in confidence.

I do not think she was one of the seventeen, so all together there may be eighteen.

This morning there were thirteen doves gobbling bits of cheese from my hands, and the blackbird chick came very close to one hand, which suggests that she is a female, although her singing suggests the opposite, but till proved otherwise I shall think of her as female. I tried to her get it get her to eat out of that hand, because she was only centimetres from it, but she is not yet that confident, and the scrum of doves would have been daunting. However it she is now happy to hop about the porch feeding close to my feet, if there are no doves competing with her. She gives them competition too; she clacks her beak at them if they try to take 'her' food.

OLIVIA TWIST? AND SHY SIXTEEN

It seems, to indulge my tongue-in-cheek naming faculty again, that Mrs Housekeeper's personal name is Olivia Twist, because this morning she taught me a new word in Dove. 'Coo' uttered in particular way when you are a dove hunting about someone's office floor for something to eat and foraging everywhere, including under his desk, means 'More!' Or perhaps it was 'More, please!' I am not quite up on the details of dovish manners yet.

Her colleagues must have had the same thought, because the entire fourteen turned up when I was taking a lunch-and-dove break early in the afternoon. The speed at which they descended out of the trees and gobbled up the first bit of food showed that very plainly. So I fetched more. Of course.

After the Board get-together I arrived back to find to my surprise that while I had been away the doves had multiplied. The fourteen that had been there at midday had become sixteen. One, an adult, is rather shy. The closest it came to joining the others was to hover above them at the feeding-place, then go and sit in a tree, so it must be new to this part of the forest. I wonder what the final count will be. I shall try to avoid Board meetings. They are obviously dangerous; they cause multiplication...  ;-)