In the ancient cult of the earth goddess Cybele Mater Magna, young male devotees would fall into a frenzy, grab a sword and, in a dramatic public gesture, emasculate themselves.
Some versions have the freshly made castrati run through the streets, choosing the family whose honour it will be to support them by tossing their severed gonads onto the doorstep. But what is generally agreed, from Ovid to Lucretius to Catullus to Pausanius, is that the now genderless youths, known as galli (or, in Greek, galloi) lived and dressed thereafter as women, becoming Cybele's priestesses, presiding at her worship and at ritual orgies in her honour.
This story might have nothing more than shock value, were it not for the obvious and unexplained feminisation of contemporary men. As Mal Meninga noted with disgust after a recent bloke-survey, "the nation's iconic hard Aussie blokes are a dying breed. We've become a nation of pansies...
Behaviour, too, emulates the female. Wherever you look, boofy footballer-types are accessorising with girl-stuff; proudly pushing strollers, being photographed naked with their newborns. The shopfront of Lockhart Menshed, in far west NSW, tells a poignant story. Here men can sit and talk, share problems and coffee, work the benches and lathes. But their product looks a lot like womb-envy; in a row, for sale, 20 bucks, a dozen or so neat wooden nesting boxes.
Even in overtly testosterone-based pursuits like sport and war, testosterone acts are treated like bizarre and unforeseeable accidents, rather than part of the deal. Barry Hall clocks an opponent on the field and is suspended from the Swannies. Nick d'Arcy thumps a teammate and is ejected from the Olympics, his career in tatters. Stuff that 10 or 20 years ago would have been dismissed with a boys-will-be-boys ticking-off is now punished harshly.
Elizabeth Farrelly
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/wax-or-be-damned/2008/05/23/1211183103112.html
If there was a time when things were different, when we were not ruled by layer after layer of incompetent government, when the population did not have a poor and beaten feel about it after the parasites in control had hoovered every last cent of them, then it was hard to remember. The roads were stifling in their conformity; and the points of difference, the out of control boys, the rude, sassy, in-you-face girls, they were ignored. There was nothing you could do. The elderly had long wrung their hands over the behaviour of the young; but there wasn't any doubt: the idiots had taken over the asylum.
He looked back, beyond the giant grey core which had obsessed him for so long, back, back, to spinning disco balls and spinning laughter. They were talking intensely, with strangers they might never meet again, although briefly it felt as if they would know each other forever. The pain was still constant, but had changed, and the laughter which underlay everything, glancing, cynical, smart comments and an urgent faith; it had all been washed away. He had thought the stories would bring justice, rectify past wrongs, but the past was the past and all was lost. Nothing could be further away, more pointless, than yesterday's news. Their comfort couldn't last, the cosy little family he had built.
One fractional stance away, one lost chord, one warming piece of protection, one grasp of the way things were. He was shattered by the passing of time. What he had seeked to grasp and hold kept slipping through his fingers. The noble causes which had given meaning to his life were miniscule in comparison to what had overtaken the planet. Foreign slaves were being sacrificed in an echo of the Mayan past. Layers of people provided ever more consumers. They were caught up in something far bigger than they could ever imagine. Look at the lies we are told every day. In contrast he was happy that things had come to this; he had always wanted to escape.
The cross had been our salvation, the most exciting part of town, a flash of urbanity in a land of suburbs. Wall to war, that horror had locked in. The flickering screens of the television could be seen through curtains, and a terrible cold had descended. Each house was an infinitely lonely house. The habitants might as well have been on television themselves, for all the humanity they had. He was outside, always outside, and hungry now, not having eaten for a long time. He was outside pleading and no one paid the slightest heed. He always knew there had been a different, more successful life, that once he had held down employment and been well regarded, but those days, decades ago, never even filtered through.
He had spent the day begging at the train station, dodging the police, just trying to get enough dollars together to get his sting for the day, he never understood why they made it so hard. Here he was in the cold night at Cherrybrook. The collapse had even got to hear, he could see it in the unmowed lawns and broken windows of what had once been the ultimate middle class suburb. Some of them still remained comfortable, the well cared for green of their gardens standing out from the neighbours. It would not be hard to find a place to sleep, but he was looking or a particular house, one where his mother had lived decades before. He didn't even understand why he was looking for it, why he was returning after all these years.
She was long gone and any trace of his family in this suburb had been wiped away by generation after generation, layer after layer. But the time lines interconnected; and he wanted to touch a point in the past when the world had been a very different place; when decisions made then could have changed the story now. He took a swig of the bottle of orange juice and metholated spirits he had so carefully prepared, wrapped neatly in the newspaper he had got from the shop. He hadn't watched, and he could smell his own stench rising from his clothes. He was looking for the clue of where it all went wrong, looking back to a time when he had belonged to a normal family, standing in the cold staring in.
They were never going to invite him in. If they saw him, they drew the curtains, frightened. The beggars were making it this far the city, and that in itself was frightening. The cold was preternatural, of a different dimension to the normal nights. The crevice beneath the Town Hall station that he had made his home had been blocked off by some bastard station attendant; and it was getting too dangerous to stay on the streets. Once there had been a lore, they shared their bottles on a good day and looked after each other; now all that was gone and he was as frightened of the other beggars as he had once been frightened of himself. He pulled his wretched jacket tighter around him, and shuffled further down the street, searching, searching, while the cold made him old and a tear trickled down his face, he didn't know why. There had been other paths, but he had been born defective; and here he was, the cold as bad as he had ever known, the alternatives long past being achievable.
THE BIGGER STORY:
Car enthusiasts, licensed premises and antisocial behaviour targeted
during May - Kings Cross
Police have been out in force at Kings Cross this month in a high
visibility operation targeting car enthusiasts, drug possession and
supply, licensed premises and antisocial behaviour.
The operation has seen police from Kings Cross Local Area Command joined
by the Public Order and Riot Squad, the Mounted Unit, Operation Taipan
and the Dog Unit on selected nights throughout May, including the last
two weekends and some nights during the week.
Based on intelligence, it is in response to incidents of alcohol-related
crime and drug dealing occurring in the inner-city suburb, as well as an
influx of car enthusiasts to the area in recent times, and targeted
licensed premises, public areas and roadways.
In one night alone earlier this month Operation Taipan officers stopped
145 vehicles, arresting five people, including three for drink-driving,
issuing 26 traffic infringement notices, six speeding infringements and
two defect notices.
Numerous people have also been arrested by police on the street for
offences such as drug possession, assault, resisting police and
offensive language.
Acting Kings Cross Local Area Commander, Superintendent Luke
Freudenstein, said the operation was about sending a strong message to
people coming into Kings Cross that criminal behaviour of any kind would
not be tolerated.
"We welcome people into Kings Cross who come here to have a good time,
but anyone who wants to commit crimes or partake in antisocial behaviour
will come under police notice," Supt Freudenstein said.
"It has also come to our attention that car enthusiasts who have
modified their vehicles and are creating excessive noise have been
flocking to the Kings Cross area in recent times and they are also in
our sights.
"Any drivers breaking the road rules will be detected and stopped, and
vehicles with these unlawful modifications, especially those which
emanate a lot of noise, will be targeted and reported to the Department
of Environment and Climate Control.
"Police will also work closely with that department and the Roads and
Traffic Authority, and any cars not heeding our warnings could be taken
off the road immediately."
Police attached to the high visibility operation in Kings Cross will
continue to patrol the area throughout the month of May.
Police Media.
Sydney Harbour from Lady Macquarie's Chair.
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