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Author: Jen Vuk

  • AUSTRALIA

    Hooked on monogamy

    • Jen Vuk
    • 10 August 2011
    6 Comments

    New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan said recently that  sanctioning gay marriage could lead to demands for the legalisation of polygamy. US author Sidney Callahan argues that, gay or straight, we all strive for 'pair bonding that contributes to equality and unity'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Childbirth grace and agony

    • Jen Vuk
    • 13 July 2011
    6 Comments

    Sydney mother Grace Wang was left paralysed from the waist down due to a botched epidural. When I first heard her story I recalled my own epidural experience with my firstborn, looking fixedly down at the floor trying to ignore the blood pooling around my feet. Childbirth can be a murderous business.

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  • MEDIA

    Let's talk about rape

    • Jen Vuk
    • 06 May 2011
    11 Comments

    Rape takes away the victim's free will and builds around them a wall of connotation and innuendo. For 40 minutes, American journalist Lara Logan was rendered silent by the mob that sexually assaulted her in Cairo. Little wonder when finally she spoke it came out like a roar.

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  • MEDIA

    Loving addicts like Charlie Sheen

    • Jen Vuk
    • 08 March 2011
    9 Comments

    I sat glued to US actor Charlie Sheen's fall from grace, which came to a head yesterday with his sacking from high-rating sitcom Two and A Half Men. The drama played out by his family, more so than the actor's meltdown, brought back a painful episode from my own past.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Granny chic is fashionable exploitation

    • Jen Vuk
    • 16 June 2010
    11 Comments

    As a child of migrant parents, I was taught to respect my elders, to view each wrinkle as the mark of wisdom and a full head of silvery hair as the ultimate badge of honour. I wonder how those in their twilight years feel about young celebrities dying their hair grey in the name of fashion?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The sexualisation of boys and girls

    • Jen Vuk
    • 13 November 2009
    12 Comments

    The pro-rape website set up by students of a Sydney college may be attributed to a culture that peddles sexualised images to both boys and girls from an increasingly young age. When a young girl's body is stripped of its innocence, we all lose out.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Agnostic in bed with science and religion

    • Jen Vuk
    • 24 July 2009
    1 Comment

    Nikki Gemmell, an agnostic, isn't afraid to confront uncomfortable themes in order to glean a glimmer of understanding. Religion and science may not have the selling power of sex, but each have indelibly shaped individuals as well as history.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    When feminism goes green

    • Jen Vuk
    • 22 May 2009
    5 Comments

    In the age of equal opportunity and unisex underwear, the feminist movement seems as incendiary as a cup of tea. Then there's ecofeminism, which argues that 'the domination of women and the domination of nature are fundamentally connected'.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Why humans rule the world

    • Jen Vuk
    • 06 March 2009

    Science journalist Hannah Holmes turns a cool, scientific eye back on us, reminding us of our mammalian origins and bringing us down to size. 'Knobby', pink-skinned and ludicrously top heavy, our peculiarity is also the key to our success.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Forty and feeling fine

    • Jen Vuk
    • 29 October 2008
    3 Comments

    Turning 40 is like any age — unless you're a woman. French writer Anais Nin wrote that we 'are made up of layers, cells, constellations'. Is it any wonder that at 40 those layers and cells start to settle in places we'd rather they didn't?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    When life begins in an ICU

    • Jen Vuk
    • 15 September 2008
    12 Comments

    Photos of my son taken just after birth show an unconscious newborn fighting for his life. Last week, as the Victorian Abortion Law Reform Bill was passed in the lower house, I caught myself siding with Peter Costello.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Book of the week

    • Jen Vuk
    • 22 August 2008

    What is 'Daddy's nigger rule', and what is the profound impact it has upon his son David's Tennessee childhood?

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