Rod MacKenzie's Blog, page 6

Pedophilia, paranoia and becoming strangers to our children

I stroll through the Now We Are Six woods not far from my home in Birkdale, Auckland. Any second Piglet will bounce out.  I shall ask him, ‘What day is it today?’ Piglet will squeak, “It’s today.’ And I shall exclaim: ‘My favourite day!’ The streams are laced throughout Auckland suburbia, with bridges over them and thickets...

A beginner’s guide to dealing with smartphone addiction

Well done on having the courage to read this! Don’t be afraid. Think of why you need to abstain from, or at least minimise, when using smartphones and other devices. Make a list of reasons. This will require a lot of honesty. But by being honest you are being kind to yourself and others. These...

Crossdressing and our ruling class (women)

Feminism has little or nothing to say about crossdressing. I would like to explore why.   Crossdressing can only be a masculine activity. But women can wear any men’s clothing. Male garb often makes them more sexy or striking. Men, when they wear women’s clothing, often look silly. Surely even to feminists. Women generally want...

EFF off…and political moral vacuums

I don’t know if I am in a minority, but when I first heard a new political party was in the process of being formed in South Africa, and it was called EFF, I thought this was a joke. “Oh eff off,” I spluttered. More questionable names for a party are difficult to come by....

Bloody hear me! Tantrums and novels’ striking openings

  “It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my teenage gay lover when Ali announced the archbishop had come to see me.”   So snorts the opening sentence to Anthony Burgess’s Earthly Powers – almost. Instead of “teenage gay lover” St Anthony uses the word catamite. The sentence...

The sacred art of listening

To spend time in silence deep in nature far from other people is to know that everything is listening. There is the profound sense that the world around you is deeply attentive, and by listening to that, you honour the presence of everything. The bruises in bark, stone, leaves, dust, the flicker of a tiny...

Frogs and queens: Crossdressing, spirituality and Feminism (II)

“The moral failing most common to men is brutishness.” So says “Jill” the wife of a crossdresser. “Jill” writes this in the context of having learned – with limitations – to accept her husband’s crossdressing behaviour as outlined in an appendix to Bert & Lori: The autobiography of a crossdresser, written by Robert J Rowe...

Frogs and queens: Crossdressing and déjà vu (I)

Most of us have split up with a member of the opposite sex. I love the unintended pun: splitting genes, separating the masculine from the feminine. My favourite was Frances. She betrayed me while we were still “an item”  for a  friend, Angus, who turned out  to be a cross-dresser. To everyone’s surprise. Imagine being...

The wonder and mystery of doors

My first remembered door was a toilet, me traumatised on the wrong side, trapped, wailing. Dad slid under the door a mysterious bit of serrated metal, introduced with the newly minted word, key, key … pick up the bloody key! Then, as I triumphed over the white oblong of wood and its forbidding creaks, three...

Our sexuality and the demise of the business tie

My mother was the first culprit, bending down to smooth out my collar and adjust my school tie. The electricity of that touch is what stays. Future women sent glitters down my spine, the pretty Mrs. Martens being foremost in school memory. Blond, full of English literature, Barbie doll clothes equally filled with secrets, she...