October 2023

Hey Caddyshackers

Hoping that you’ve had a chance to take a good look around our website and spotted the What We’re Reading page in your travels?

Maybe you need some upcoming summer reading inspo?

Haven't been to that page yet? Here you go.

Back Story

Our team all love to read, but Naomi & Jen are prolific, voracious readers. Hard copy, tactile, no Kindles here, sniff ya books, type readers. Nothing weird about that sentence AT ALL. Our people know what we’re saying.

Jen could have a whole library wing dedicated to her for all the books she recommends for Wollongong library to buy (and has donated when in great condition) and Naomi’s house mimics a library with all the fabulous book bargains she has purchased at second hand stores.

Shout to Lifeline’s South Coast Big Book Fair. If you haven’t been, it’s well worth it. What a production of cataloguing, time & motion! BTW, reading is good for you because it improves your focus, memory, empathy, and communication skills. It can reduce stress, improve your mental health, and help you live longer. Reading also allows you to learn new things to help you succeed in your work and relationships.

Anyway, there’s really no need to reinvent the wheel and great book reviews are already out there. So, when we set up the What We’re Reading page, we checked in with Booktopia about linking to their reviews. They were delighted to have us do that. Of course they were, hello more traffic to their site.

Fun fact: Booktopia was founded in Sydney, Australia on 4 February 2004. Co-owners Tony Nash, Simon Nash and their brother-in-law Steve Traurig are unassuming, middle-aged dads who ran an internet marketing business before they founded Booktopia.

They started on a $10 per day budget and took three days to sell the first book, but then the business grew rapidly. Zero affiliate links with Caddyshack Project!

On the What We’re Reading page, we do pop in our humble three-word review of the books that we read and provide a link to the author(s).

You’re Welcome!

We are going to tell you how good!

When we flick through our ‘library’ we often think ‘gee we have read quite a few books’. But every now and then a book comes along that is so good, a whole blog needs to be dedicated to it.

Hi. Welcome. You are on that blog.

Jen’s first thought about this blog was “Nope, can't put ejaculate responsibly into an email subject header” to announce that our latest blog is live. Ejaculate Responsibly is the title of the book that is just SO GOOD it qualified to have its own blog. Once you are here, no blockers or safety filters apply and we can tell you a little bit more about this small but powerful book. We’re just going to keep putting Ejaculate Responsibly in bold with capitals.

Cause we can.

No kidding, this book is a paradigm shifter and challenges the water that we swim in every day.

We are including Gabrielle Blair’s bio here because we love to know the inception of something.

Gabrielle Blair

The author, Gabrielle Blair is the founder of DesignMom.com.

Started in 2006, it has been named a Parenting Website of the Year by Time Magazine.

Both of her books: “Design Mom: How to Live with Kids”, and “Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think About Abortion”, are New York Times bestsellers.

As a thought leader for over 16 years, Gabrielle has written and moderated hundreds of discussions on difficult topics and interviewed some of the most influential people in the world. Her writing is quoted and shared across the globe daily.

Gabrielle and her husband, Ben Blair, have six children — Ralph, Maude, Olive, Oscar, Betty, and Flora June. After six years in Oakland, they moved to a small town in Normandy, France where they are renovating a house from the 1600s.

Totes another book right there!

From Booktopia

In Ejaculate Responsibly, Gabrielle Blair offers a provocative reframing of the abortion issue in post-Roe America.

In a series of 28 brief arguments, Blair deftly makes the case for moving the abortion debate away from controlling and legislating women's bodies and instead directs the focus on men's lack of accountability in preventing unwanted pregnancies.

Highly readable, accessible, funny, and unflinching, Blair builds her argument by walking readers through the basics of fertility (men are 50 times more fertile than women), the unfair burden placed on women when it comes to preventing pregnancy (90% of the birth control market is for women), the wrongheaded stigmas around birth control for men (condoms make sex less pleasurable, vasectomies are scary and emasculating), and the counterintuitive reality that men, who are fertile 100% of the time, take little to no responsibility for preventing pregnancy.

The result is a compelling and convincing case for placing the responsibility—and burden—of preventing unwanted pregnancies away from women and onto men.

From Oprah Daily

"Any reader of this gorgeous manifesto, men especially, would be hard-pressed to walk away from it without being reminded (*mind blown emoji*) that putting the entire very heavy burden on women to not get pregnant, or to be unable to terminate because of all that’s gone on to make abortion illegal or inaccessible, makes a lot less sense than just not getting them pregnant in the first place."

From the back cover

ABORTION IS A MEN'S ISSUE. By making the case that men are responsible for all unintended pregnancies, Ejaculate Responsibly turns the usual unproductive and polarizing abortion debate on its head. In 28 brief arguments Gabrielle Blair gets us out of the destructive loop centered on controlling and legislating women's bodies, focuses on men's accountability, and presents a powerful, fair, and effective way out of the abortion impasse.

From the book’s dedication page

To the people of the future who get to live their lives with no anxiety about unwanted pregnancies, and to the responsible ejaculators who I’m confident can and will make that possible.

Possibly Jen’s favourite quote from the book

We’ve put the burden of pregnancy prevention on the person who is fertile for 24 hours a month, instead of the person who is fertile 24 hours a day, every day of their sexual life.

Couple of big chapter headers

Men are 50 more fertile than women

Sperm live up to 5 days (one egg, or ovum, has a fertile window of approximately 12 to 24 hours).

Women’s fertility is unpredictable

Ovulation is involuntary, ejaculation is not

Vasectomies are less risky than tubal ligations

*Gabrielle argues her case from a cisgender heterosexual perspective. She welcomes all readers and feels that applying LGBTQIA+ inclusive language to her arguments would only serve to erase the singular experiences of queer, trans and non binary people, whether they are people who produce sperm or people who can become pregnant.

More back story

After almost 50 years, the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the decades-old Roe v. Wade decision, which said women have a constitutional right to have an abortion in June 2022. Explained here in this 3 minute video.

Gabrielle recommends that men commit to ejaculate responsibly and build a culture that expects all men to ejaculate responsibly by insisting on using a condom every time they have sex. “Should I wear a condom?” needs to be as universally recognised as a ridiculous question. Just like asking “Should I wear a seatbelt?” is ridiculous.

Gabrielle poses that opening up this narrative can shift national and worldwide conversations around abortion away from unproductive debates about women's bodies and toward helpful and practical discussions about what men can do to prevent pregnancy.

Want to be part of a movement?

Heck yes!

We can start with changing the discourse, demanding fact-based sex education, increasing access to contraception & holding politicians accountable.

I hope this has inspired you to read this book and to ... ejaculate responsibly.

Shout out to Wollongong City Library. When Maddy first spotted this book on the Gram, Jen thought for sure she would need to buy it. But, pleasant surprise, the library already had it on their shelves! They have a lot of great books... many of them featured in you... guessed it, one more time… our What We’re Reading page.

Wollongong City Libraries are a proud member of ACON’s Welcome Here project, and are safe spaces for members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Their libraries hold inclusive events and talks during Pride Month, and at other times throughout the year. Check their events calendar to find upcoming activities.

Additional services can be found in the local Illawarra LGBTI Support Directory.

As always signing off with,

Peace, Love & Protection

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