Julia Busuttil Nishimura’s miso pork chops with buttered sesame corn.Credit: @lookwhatcarolyncooked/@madam_godzilla
“Who Cares?”
Konrad Marshall’s piece on Isaac Humphries [February 11] could have been subtitled, “Homophobia in today’s Australia”. The fact that people need to come out at all indicates the extent they go to hide their true selves to feel acceptance by our society. While growing up, they receive constant messages that who they are is bad and wrong. Is it any wonder the actions people take to come out are invariably described as brave? You would have to be brave to put your hand up and declare your homosexuality in modern Australia.
During my high school years, a talented football star died by suicide knowing that his homosexuality was incompatible with the football world that was beckoning him. Later at university, in one of the saddest experiences I have ever endured, a brilliant student from the year below us died by suicide knowing that his homosexuality was incompatible with his family’s views and opinions. I attended both funerals but the sadness and rage fellow students felt at the latter continues to upset a great many of us, still years later.
When people, always heterosexual, utter trite remarks such as, “Isn’t it great that gays are so accepted these days,” I always remind them that gay people are not accepted, they are merely tolerated. Mr Humphries outlines one of the many disturbing aspects of homophobia in his describing, as a child, playing musical instruments, dancing, singing and writing music. He says these growing interests made him visibly more gay and noticeably more feminine. These interests are neither gay, nor female, nor male. These interests are human talents. Imagine telling Dene Olding, Paul Mercurio, Jimmy Barnes or Paul Grabowsky that their talents made them feminine or increasingly gay?
Humphries was repeatedly taught by our society to carry out this type of self-harm. At 25 years of age today, there are many years left ahead of him to unpack and recover from this harm. As a financially secure person, he will be able to afford the help and services needed. Many others are not as fortunate and either don’t make it or don’t fare as well.
David Andrew
Paddington, NSW
We all have so much to learn from Isaac Humphries’ answer to the question, “Who cares?” Thanks, Isaac for sharing your story – you’ve no doubt helped countless others and possibly saved lives. I wish you the very best. And to Konrad Marshall: you inquire and write with beautiful sensitivity. Once again, you’ve brought us such an important story.
Carole Meade
Kyneton, VIC
Mad About Menopause
Years ago, when we were in our 40s and 50s, our women’s group of seven poker players would laugh out loud when one of us would tear off a jumper or start fanning herself [February 11]. A flush (not in the cards), we would say!
Now in our 80s and 90s, we talk of backs, knees and great-grandchildren. After menopause, I remember my doctor, Liz, saying, ‘Myra, don’t slide into middle age!’”
Myra Fisher
Brighton East, VIC
Despite excessive bleeding and unexpectedly bloating like a puffer fish, I try to be consistent – as your article implies – with diet and exercise. I switch wine for green tea and walk, even if on some days it is only to the letterbox to find there is no mail. See you on the other side.
Jenny Stephenson
Wollongong, NSW
I have spent years growing into “me”, just as the writer of your story says that at 54, she has become her “most evolved and actualised self” – isn’t that beautiful? Women need to be kinder to themselves and each other. Your best face is not the one that tries to hide the “melty face” but the one you have earned. I love a good lipstick and sexy eye make-up, but it doesn’t define me or make me “beautiful”. I’ll never again have the skin (or waist) of my 20s, but I am here, aged 55, still showing my face to the world. Some of the people I loved most in the world never had that choice. Perhaps we should shift the reference point for beauty away from youth and not assume that as we age our “best face” is in the past. Such thinking sends a sad and limiting message to younger women. I don’t want my daughter, or any younger woman, to feel she will become invisible, or that beauty has an age limit.
Nicola de Vries
Glebe, NSW
The associate professor of reproductive endocrinology at UNSW (who is also a founding director of the Women’s Health & Research Institute of Australia) is male, as is head of the menopause clinic at Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital (while also a past president of the International Menopause Society and current editor-in-chief of an international menopause journal). This strikes me as being very odd.
Jen Gladstones
Heidelberg, VIC
Secrets and Lies
Sadly, Michael Visontay’s very fine article on Colditz and British spy author Ben Macintyre [February 11] fails to answer the most important question Visontay himself poses: “So how does he [Macintyre] reconcile the Germans at Colditz with the monstrous barbarity exhibited by the Nazis in the concentration and death camps?” (That is a devilishly detailed dilemma.)
Pasquale Vartuli
Wahroonga, NSW
Lifeline 13 11 14
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