Felix Herbener

ARE MEN IN THE AUSTRALIAN ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT CHEESOIDS? Does the Australian environmental movement exclude men? I liken my struggle to fit into the Australian environmental movement to the difficulties of the robot Cheesoid (from the Mitchel and Webb sketch) in learning the difference between petrol and cheese. I write these words with my phallic petrol pump spout mouth, clumsily trying to articulate a response to what I perceive is a disdain of men in the Australian environmental movement. A fellow member of our movement quoted journalist David Roberts accusing Michael Moore of 'mansplaining' in his film Planet of the Humans. This made me sad. Would the facts of the film present any diffently if it were written and presented by a woman? What is mansplaining and can be measured and quantified? Or is the quality to be disdained some intrinsic part of the male anatomy? I want to disclose some personal things I have experienced in a spirit of sharing towards increased un...

THE AGE OF NO KINDNESS I went through a stressful time in Gladstone last year. Seemingly everyone was unkind and I couldn't be kind to myself. Forgiveness also is something I struggle with. I experienced stress in high school from illness and bullying and I was unable to overcome it on my own. My brother and sister were not at home and we are not close to this day. My mother was unable to help me overcome the sources of stress in high school, and that still makes me feel sad. Last year I experienced physical trauma from injury, and I just didn't have support. I couldn't cope alone and so sold and gave away everything I owned. I think about mean things I think teenagers said to me on the highschool bus. For two years of highschool I was afraid to be on the bus, I stood near the driver. Fearing bullying, such as having my hair cut. Last year I met some people who reminded me so much of teenagers on that bus, and then I was assaulted and half sterilized. Since then, I thin...

DEAR XR I'm nearly 38 and I'm too old for this. I need to focus on myself. I can't listen to the same obvious solutions that are never implemented. It's been 20 years and I'm done. I won't be one of those tottering seniors who unfatiguably attend meetings with younger folk, I want a home and a homelife. I was always the only one without a car, and always the most left out. I lived in poorer suburbs where activism doesn't happen, ironically. When activism is the activity of the exclusively affluent, it is more pantomime than representative. XR is trying to shock with art, when what is shocking is the distance in worldview between the activist who stops a train and the citizen who intervenes. Keep fighting the general apathy if you like, but the environment I grew up in is already not the same anymore. Queensland is drought afflicted and yet votes go to mining interests while farmers and the reef suffers: I feel there is something cognitively wrong with tha...

There are no secure jobs unless you have a vocational qualification or university degree and your own vehicle. The liberal democratic multicultural immigration program is dissolving social bonds and making individuals compete with skilled foreigners. Welfare payments are below the poverty line and job services increasingly suspend payments for noncompliance. Cashless welfare cards are used to control how welfare is spent. Mothers are forced to look for work from their child's eighth birthday. Modern life is enabled by mobile phones, computers and the internet; all of which cost money. Buy food for a few days and you will have spent over $100. Alcohol and tobacco prices are kept artificially high by government. Rent is unaffordable for just about everyone. Car registration, insurance, loan repayment s.