'Moral Panic 101: Equality, Acceptance and the Safe Schools Scandal' Quarterly Essay by Benjamin Law

From the BLURB:

Are Australian schools safe? And if they’re not, what happens when kids are caught in a bleak collision between ill-equipped teachers and a confected scandal?

In 2016, the Safe Schools program became the focus of an ideological firestorm. In Moral Panic 101, Benjamin Law explores how and why this happened. He weaves a subtle, gripping account of schools today, sexuality, teenagers, new ideas of gender fluidity, media scandal and mental health.

In this timely essay, Law also looks at the new face of homophobia in Australia, and the long battle for equality and acceptance. Investigating bullying of the vulnerable young, he brings to light hidden worlds, in an essay notable for its humane clarity.

‘Moral Panic 101: Equality, Acceptance and the Safe Schools Scandal’ is the new edition of the Quarterly Essay by Australian author Benjamin Law.

The Quarterly Essay, if you don’t know – is an Australian periodical that straddles the border between magazine and non-fiction book. And I will confess, I am not a regular reader of the Quarterly. But given what’s happening in Australian politics right now, and in the lead-up to a marriage equality postal plebiscite – I found myself compelled to read Benjamin Law’s coverage of what has often felt like conservative-hysteria.

For those of you who are blissfully ignorant (or just, not Australian) the Safe Schools Coalition Australia is group of organisations in Australia focused on LGBTIQ people in schools. Its mission is to create safe and inclusive schools for students, families and staff who are in these groups.

But when a national (non-mandatory teaching) program was rolled out, conservative media pundits and pop-culture markers seemed to swirl around the organisation that eventually led to a perfect-storm of – as Benjamin Law perfectly summarises – ‘Moral Panic 101’.

This Quarterly Essay edition is Benjamin Law’s attempt to wade through the “fake news” and op-ed fallacy that has taken hold of the Safe Schools discussion, and especially eclipsed the reasons why Safe Schools was needed in the first place … to help LGBTQ+ youth who are at higher risk of suicide.

I’ve read this Essay about three times now. And bawled my eyes out each and every time. Not because Law uses particularly powerful prose or flowery imagery – but because he does the exact opposite. Offering up a refreshingly straight-down-the-line account of how Safe Schools got started, what good it was doing, and how it all came crashing down thanks to ulterior-motives and dollar-signs, it seems.

Some have asked me if they’ll have to be in the right head-space to read this Essay. Given the years of media beat-up of Safe Schools, and now the marriage equality survey that’s designed to decide human rights by straw-poll … it’s a fair enough question and one I don’t have a perfect answer to.

This is a hard read, but a necessary one. I actually wish ‘Moral Panic 101’ were mandatory reading for anyone about to vote in the marriage equality survey – since so many have wrongly tried to tie Safe Schools to marriage equality and a supposedly hidden LGBTQ+ “agenda” … It might be a nice change for those hell-bent on muddying the plebiscite waters, to read an essay on Safe Schools that relies on facts instead of fears.

But no, the reason I think this is a necessary read – no matter that it’s also bound to be a painful one – is because Benjamin Law treats the group at the centre of the Safe Schools program with the respect they have always been due, but rarely granted in recent years. Kids.

 To read every article of the Australian has published on Safe Schools is to induce nausea. This isn’t even a comment on the content, just the sheer volume. In the year following Natasha Bita’s first February cover story, the Australian feverishly published nearly 200 stories either about, or mentioning, Safe Schools, amounting to over 90,000 words – four times the length of this essay. That’s at least one story about or mentioning Safe Schools every two days. This is a conservative count too, excluding the newspaper’s Cut & Paste sections and Strewth columns, as well as myriad letters to the editor. When I collated every article the Australian had published over this period into a single PDF, the resulting file was so large that my laser printer couldn’t handle it and I had to get it professionally printer and bound. The volume that came back is roughly the size of a standard PhD thesis. No one can claim the Australian isn’t thorough. 

 And yet, across this entire period, Australian – self-appointed guardian of the safety of children – spoke to not a single school-aged LGBTIQ youth. Not even one. Later, queer teenagers who followed the Safe Schools saga tole me the dynamic felt familiar. At school, it’s known as bullying. In journalism, it’s called a beat-up.

Benjamin Law talks to teenagers, especially. Those who are articulate, scared, hopeful, dejected, loving … he listens to them. He listens to how queer communities are helping them, and how Safe Schools worked or would have been appreciated by them.

Again, I will warn that this is a powerful read. If you’re like me and this all hits very close to home, it’ll definitely make you cry. But, look – the final chapter is called ‘The Kids Are All Right’. Because they are, and will be. Because no matter the outcome of this marriage equality survey, or the hate-filled propaganda of those who fear change … it’s still coming. In fact, it’s already here – in the young queer kids Benjamin Law speaks to, and the communities who are supporting and striving to understand them, instil respect for them.

The Kids Are All Right. It’s adults who have to learn to do right by them – all of them.

*** 

Oh, and P.S. — not that this has anything to do with Safe Schools continuing to be needed, or exist in some states, but for equality —

Melbourne Writers Festival: book haul

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Melbourne Writers Festival 2012 – you came, you saw, you conquered. But now it’s all over, red rover and the count-down begins for Melbourne Writers Festival 2013. . .

In the meantime, I was admiring my MWF book haul and how wildly eclectic my tastes appear based on these book purchases. But quite a few of my bookish choices were either directly informed by events I attended, or by word-of-mouth buzz from around the festival. So I just thought I'd go through my purchases as a last little ‘sayonara’ to the happiest, bookish time of year.

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1.    ‘Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East’ by Benjamin Law

I’m probably most upset that I didn’t attend any Benjamin Law events. It simply came down to time-constraints and event clashes. Nevertheless, I showed my appreciation for this author by squealing when I saw his second book at the MWF bookshop (it wasn’t slated for release until September). I loved ‘The Family Law’ and have been really looking forward to his follow-up.

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2.    ‘Beneath the Darkening Sky’ by Majok Tulba

I attended a session for work, called ‘The Other Africa’ in which Majok was one of four African writer panellists. He was introduced, and the event chair spoke about Majok’s true story, which was absolutely harrowing – raised in South Sudan, his village was raided by Sudanese Armed Forces when he was nine-years-old, and many members of his family were killed. Majok barely escaped the SAF and life as a child soldier, but became an Australian refugee at age 13 and then spent much of his time in limbo. Now, from that story (and being told that ‘Beneath the Darkening Sky’ is about child soldiers) the audience were in a certain frame of mind, until Majok spoke. He was so warm and funny; and told the story of being eight and a half years old when he was handed an AK47 by a Sudanese soldier, but toppling over because his head was too big and body too small to hold the gun. That was, ultimately, what saved him from the fate of a child soldier. The audience laughed, and I immediately promised myself I'd go and buy his book, I was so fascinated to read about a man who had such tragedy in his past, but could still be so warm and inspiring. Really looking forward to reading this one, but my grandma has already ‘called dibs’ and asked to read it first. I await her very valuable opinion.

 

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3.    ‘The Museum of Mary Child’ by Cassandra Golds

This was partly me being suckered in by a gorgeous cover, and partly the convenience of having the GoodReads app on my iphone to see that most of my trusted GR friends have read this book, and raved about it. I think I saw someone's description of the book as ‘psychotic orphanage’ and was sold. Looking forward to reading this one.

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4.    ‘Goon Town’ by John Larkin

I made the supreme mistake of waiting an hour or two after attending the ‘Reading into Writing’ session, before I went down to the MWF bookshop. After that session I was really curious about John Larkin’s novel ‘The Shadow Girl’, because he said she was based on a real homeless girl he met at a school event once, who lived on the trains and cried when he gave her one of his books to read. Sadly, after the fabulous ‘Reading into Writing’ seminar all the school kids must have descended on the MWF bookshop – because the only John Larkin novel left was, literally, a single copy of ‘Goon Town’. So I snatched this sole surviving copy up (and felt a little heroic when the cashier commented, “last one left in the shop!”) and intend to read this, but also go hunting for a copy of ‘The Shadow Girl’, so moved was I by Larkin’s talk during ‘Reading into Writing’.

 

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5.    ‘Tarcutta Wake – Stories’ by Josephine Rowe

I am sooooooooooo upset that I didn’t get to attend the Josephine Rowe event. Literally a week before the Festival started, I borrowed her first book of short stories, ‘How a Moth Becomes a Boat’, from my public library and fell in love. But it wasn’t until I was in the MWF bookshop and spotted that very same book on the shelves (and made the connection that Ms Rowe must be attending MWF!) that I looked her up and saw that I'd missed her ‘Micro Fictions’ session that had already been and gone. Drats, drats, drats! Rowe writes (as the title of her event suggested) ‘Micro Fiction’ – short stories that are sometimes 500 words or so, but no less beautiful for being so much shorter. I’m really quite in awe of her, and had started hunting (unsuccessfully) for copies of her second book of micro fiction before striking gold and finding it at MWF. So that’s good. And now I intend to write a review of the two books together. But I still would have loved to listen to her and maybe meet her. Like I said, ‘drats!’

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6.    ‘The Untamed Bride’ by Stephanie Laurens

I heard from two blogger friends that the Stephanie Laurens romance sessions were fantastic! Apparently she spoke at length on a pet-hate subject of mine – gaudy, smutty romance covers that seem targeted at male buyers of ‘Playboy’, but are actually intended for female readers (apparently marketing departments are going for that split-second-decision sale at the checkout line of a supermarket, the more eye-catching, the better – which in itself is an insult to the historical romance genre and its readership. *sigh*) Another friend said she learned an interesting factoid, which is that Bryce Courtenay is often cited as being the highest-selling Australian novelist, but in fact it’s Stephanie Laurens (who doesn’t get the kudos because her genre-of-choice is seen as being ‘less worthy’, perhaps?). Anyway, both of these second-hand accounts of Stephanie Laurens sessions made me want to read her, so I bought the first book of her ‘Black Cobra Quarter’ out of solidarity with the historical romance readership! I was quite chuffed to see that in the MWF bookshop, Ms Laurens had the most shelf space of any author, taking up 3-4 with her many, many books. 

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That's all, folks!

'The Family Law' by Benjamin Law

 From the BLURB:

Meet the Law family – eccentric, endearing and hard to resist. Your guide: Benjamin, the third of five children and a born humorist. Join him as he tries to answer some puzzling questions: Why won’t his Chinese dad wear made-in-China underpants? Why was most of his extended family deported in the 1980s? Will his childhood dreams of Home and Away stardom come to nothing? What are his chances of finding love?

Hilarious and moving, The Family Law is a linked series of tales from a wonderful new Australian talent.

In 2010 I had the rare pleasure of loving a book I'd been anticipating for as long as I'd been stalking the author.

Benjamin Law is a freelance writer who first blipped onto my radar when I started reading his pieces in hipster-darling magazine, ‘Frankie’. He also contributes to ‘The Good Weekend’, ‘The Monthly’ and has written for ‘The Best Australian Essays’ and even appeared on ABC’s Q&A. I love him. He’s enviably witty, self-deprecating, and writes brilliant argumentative pieces with first-hand experience as his weapon of choice. I'd been looking forward to his novel debut for so long, and when ‘The Family Law’ came along in 2010 I was not in the least bit surprised by the novel’s brilliance. . .

‘The Family Law’ is a biography in 23 parts – as Law recounts mundane and extraordinary familial events through 23 short stories.

Benjamin Law is gut-achingly funny – so funny he’s sometimes freakin’ painful to read. But he’s at his funniest when describing his family and their weird, endearing mannerisms and quirks – like in ‘Baby Love’, in which he writes about his Cantonese mother’s horror-filled stories about raising Benjamin and his four other siblings.

Mum also said childbirth was unbearably, gratuitously painful. When I once asked her to compare and rate each of our births – which was easier, which was faster – she balked. ‘No birth is easy!’ she exclaimed. ‘Of course a man would ask that question. Men can’t even begin to imagine. Can you imagine a lemon coming out of your penis-hole? Yes, yes! That’s what it’s like! I'd like to see a man squeeze lemons out of his penis-hole. OUT OF YOUR PENIS-HOLE, BENJAMIN. You can’t even imagine, can you? A whole lemon – with the points on each end and everything, except this lemon has limbs. Out of your penis-hole. PENIS-HOLE.’

Going into ‘The Family Law’, I knew it would be a cackling-good read. I've been a big admirer of Benjamin Law’s sense of humour for years now, but actually it was the stories in which he balanced humour with introspection that stood out for me. Even more were the stories that started out lightly humorous, but masked much wider (often political) issues that really bowled me over. Benjamin Law sneaks up on you like that – he comes across as quite the joker, quick with the quips about being the only Asian not good at maths – but he’s masterful at using his personal anecdotes to ask big questions of the reader.

Now, I should also point out that Benjamin Law is gay, and a very vocal supporter of marriage equality in Australia. Law writes beautifully, self-deprecatingly and most importantly earnestly about realizing he was homosexual and coming out to his family. But I was sort of surprised to discover that it wasn’t his story about being gay in Australia that really struck a chord with me (though it did that too). In fact, it was the story ‘Skeletons’ that I think wonderfully illustrated Law’s talent for combining humorous anecdote with striking persuasion. In this short story, he talks about how his mother and her family moved to Hong Kong from Malaysia when she was fifteen-years-old, after they heard reports that ethnic Malays were murdering Chinese people. From Hong Kong, Law’s mother and father decided on Australia to escape the Chinese-run government after colonialism. After his parents arrived in Australia, gained citizenship and started a family, his mother’s family members started migrating to the land down under to start a new life too. As Law explains: “They let their visas expire, quietly and without ceremony” - they started having babies, taking out mortgages and opened a restaurant. And then when Benjamin was just a boy, the Australian Federal Police landed on their doorstep – raided the family restaurant, and arrested his uncles, and later returned to take his aunts and cousins to Villawood Detention Centre to await their fate. The family’s plight made national headlines, but in the end it did no good;

They left in stages, family by family, newspaper report by newspaper report. No matter how any applications were filed, petitions sent or campaigns established, nothing was of any use. Then, only weeks after my mother’s thirty-second birthday, she said goodbye to her two elderly parents at the airport. They were the last to leave, having been asked by the government to go voluntarily after their application for sponsorship was rejected. Mum was four months’ pregnant by then. When they left, her parents asked what the use of crying was.

After his mother’s sixteen deported family members left Australia (and all their worldly possessions behind with her), Benjamin’s mother developed a hording problem. For a long time she kept every family memento and school project; stacks of magazines littered his family home and as Benjamin puts it; “we were sentimental to the point where it became pathological.” His mother couldn’t let go, she kept the last physical links to her family for as long as she could. I love this story for a lot of reasons. Re-reading it now, when the ‘boat people’ debate has sparked all over again and Tony Abbott’s current buzz-word, ‘illegals’, is being repeated by every ignorant asshole, ‘Skeletons’ is a really beautiful and quiet story that puts a face and real heart into the whole debate. Benjamin Law’s family are not what the majority of Australian’s would consider to be the idea of queue-jumpers, and that’s what makes it so powerful and highlights Benjamin Law as a funny guy with a lot to say.

One of the great things about all of Law’s stories is the way he instantly hooks readers and draws them in. All his opening lines are a little bit kooky and fabulous. One of my favourites is from ‘Amongst the Living Dead’:

For as long as I can remember, I've thought about my mother’s death on a daily basis. This wouldn’t be such a strange exercise if she were actually dead, but the thing is, my mother’s alive – perhaps aggressively so.

 Like I said, I first read and loved this book in 2010 – but it’s only recently that the book has returned to my shelf, after being passed around to every friend, family member and stranger on the street that I could convince to give Law’s debut a read. My copy of ‘The Family Law’ is now a little bit bruised and battered from being so lovingly read by so many. I’m so happy that Benjamin Law has his second book coming out next month, ‘Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East’ – I can’t wait for his second outing, which will no doubt further my obsession with this heartfelt and humorous writer-extraordinaire.

5/5