Adult disabled children

Very quick post - I just want to pick up on something around the payments (or lack thereof, in many cases) to family-member carers of disabled people. One of many reasons the result is problematic is that it will pay parents but not a spouse or partner.

This is something that will disproportionately affect queer people, who are more likely to have no or a problematic relationship with their family of origin, who may well consider their partner their only family member. One of the more over-looked reasons for supporting this case was that by making multiple support options more equal, there would be less pressure to remain dependent on an abusive relationship or, hey, not feel obliged to live with parents your entire life for similar reasons to those most people don't, or who want a close relationship that is not based on "care".

But there's also a lot of infantilisation going on. Take the first sentence of this article: "A $92 million fund to pay parents who look after their adult disabled children has been revealed by the Government". Children. There was no reason for that word there - even with the decision as it is: "...to pay for care provided by the parents of adult disabled people..." would work just fine. But these parameters invite such wording; and it plays into the idea of disabled people as overgrown children, incapable of making their own decisions*, or having their own preferences about who they live with and who they depend on. And if that preference - or the best reasonable option - is parents, then it should be treated as such, not as the assumed norm.


*I think children are often more capable than we give credit for, but that's another post for another day.

Equality, the final frontier?

Cross posted from my usual place...
 

I came out of the latest Star trek film feeling angry, and let down.

In a film set in a future that is supposed to be pretty damn idealistic (great tech, multicultural/multi-planetary teams, etc.) this film was behind the times NOW.

This film just felt like one big "Male Gaze" to the point where at times I felt physically pushed out of the moment of enjoying a story by the horrible realisation this film wasn’t made for people like me (that's 50% of the population BY THE WAY film industry). The concept of a film so overtly made by men for men is problematic for several reasons, sexual objectification being one, but my beef is that women have ZERO independent character development; they are defined solely by their relation to the male characters. Meanwhile male characters are given development both within their romance and out of it.

Urgh, it turns out that it is not space that is the final unexplored frontier, it is equality.

First up, in a meeting of senior leaders –out of all the entire table of a variety of species discussing plans, 5 women (mixed races and alien). A few characters are overtly alien. There are Eleven white humanoid men.

Really? In the future, we STILL don’t have gender equality, or racial diversity? REALLY?

Uhura has always been a favourite of mine, and I was looking forward to seeing her in this film. Unfortunately she only had one token scene that didn’t revolve around her holding up the concept of Spock's humanity. She bravely negotiated in perfect Klingon, and appealed to the enemy’s' sense of honour to try and save her team. it didn’t work, but it was a neat moment of one of the team showing their true colours and value. Pity it was the only interesting thing she got to do.

The first scene to make me realise that this movie was NOT going to make me happy, was the arrival of Carol Marcus. A young female member of the team is introduced to her new captain (and obviously, boss) – Kirk. On her arrival to the ship Kirk overtly eyes her up and down, makes a loaded comment about how he is happy she is on board, and proceeds to hit on her for the duration of the film.

So just to reiterate, a man who is responsible for hundreds of lives in a workplace people have to LIVE at, he feels confident enough in his own power, and consequently, her lack of power, to sexually harass her within minutes of being introduced.

When I mentioned this to people the overwhelming, and disappointing response was that the action was in character with Kirk, who is to be honest, a bit of a knob. He is endearingly reckless, thoughtless, and laddish. That’s what “makes” the film.

Talk about missing the point.

In the future, there will still be risk takers and creeps, I can totally understand that. But in this film, Kirk didn’t force her back to his cabin to marry him, and consecrate the marriage to make it legal to make an alliance with his commander’s family… why? Because it’s a ridiculous, outdated concept, based on the B.S. model that women are chattel to be passed from father to husband in some sort of sick ownership.

Star trek is set in the future. The future where I hope fervently the idea that workplace harassment and the idea that any leader has the right to treat a staff member like they are there for their enjoyment is ALSO not ok. JUST as silly as the idea of a man "owning" a woman.

We don’t just stop having creeps in this world, the entire culture around what those jerks are allowed to do to other people changes. This is evidenced by all human rights changes ever.

In the future, all will be equal, right? Star trek was the first show to have a woman of African descent in a non –menial role*. It is SUPPOSED to take strides and be forward thinking – the 1968 episode "Plato's Stepchildren" Uhura and Kirk kiss. The episode is popularly cited as the first example of a scripted inter-racial kiss on United States television.

This show is supposed to be thoughtful, provocative, and philosophical.

I’m well aware that the show has been problematic before now, and will continue to need to improve, but to see that NO progress has been made in this latest film, is as much of a kick in the guts as finding this out was…

“I was trying to make a movie, not tryingto make a Trek movie." – JJ Abrams
 

*how the actress herself was treated is more problematic – Nichols was the only performer in the cast who wasn't originally offered a contract, but instead worked on a week-to-week basis.

Who Was That Woman, Anyway?

It’s trite to say that books take you places. But true nonetheless. With books, you can disappear into other times, cultures, imaginary worlds. “Foreign” fiction is better than any guide-book at introducing you to a place and its people, and sometimes even better than going there if you want to see beneath the surface.

But if you live here and read enough of the stuff (say novels from the two Anglophone powerhouses – the United States and the UK-plus-Ireland) then a different feeling starts to kick in. Like what you’re getting to know is really life inside the American novel, not life inside America. At about the same point, for me anyway, “local” fiction itself starts to feel a bit foreign. Not in the way “foreign” fiction is foreign, but in the way local fiction feels rare, like something you don’t see very often. Which, when it’s good local fiction, also makes it feel precious and exciting and new.

I felt this way reading Aorewa McLeod’s new book “Who Was That Woman, Anyway? Snapshots of a Lesbian Life.” It’s a novel, yes, but as McLeod explains in the book’s front matter, it’s inspired by real life events. “Some details happened in real life, some did not,” she writes. “The characters are fictionalised and given fictional names.” The book’s 10 chapters, ordered by date, span roughly 40 years in the life of Ngaio, McLeod’s protagonist who, like the author, is an English lecturer at a university in Auckland.

The subtitle is sweet in the way it undersells the book. These are not only snapshots of a lesbian life, but of life in New Zealand, and life in Aotearoa. Snapshots of what it can be like to grow up here, and live here.

Its starting point is the 1960s with Ngaio, a university student, heading to Nelson to spend her summer break as a nurse’s aide because “an ex-schoolmate’s father was someone high up in the mental health service and he had suggested that nurse-aiding in psychiatric hospitals was a lucrative way of earning money in the holidays”. Ngaio is put in a ward with bedridden, severely disabled children. “There were enormous hydrocephalic water heads, tiny pinheads, huge slobbering mouths, bent bodies, contorted hands waving in the air, grasping blindly, clutching as if there were something to reach for. They could grip me with such desperate strength that I had to pry their fingers off. Many were blind. I couldn’t tell how old they were.” McLeod’s writing, particularly in the first half of the novel, is like that: direct and piercing.

It’s while she’s working in Nelson that Ngaio meets Suzy, her first love. Suzy is a Māori woman from a Mormon family who works as a charge nurse at the children’s ward in town. “She only goes for white girls,” a friend tells Ngaio. “All her family’s married white. That’s what the Mormons encourage them to do, to make it in the white world.” Who cares! Ngaio is in heaven. “This was it; this was what it meant to make love. This was the transformational moment of my life.”

update on merida makeover

just a quick post to say that activism does work sometimes.  after a successful petition and significant backlash against the proposed makeover of merida (covered in my previous post), disney has decided to pull the sexualised image:

In preparation for her "coronation ceremony" last Saturday, Disney gave the Brave heroine Merida a makeover, redesigning the character as thinner with a bigger bust, more revealing dress, a face full of makeup, less wild hair, and replacing her signature bow and arrows with a sassy sash. People were pissed and turned to the internet to voice their protests—which seems to have worked.

As a response to the public outcry, Disney has quietly pulled the redesigned Merida from its Princesses website and replaced it with the original Pixar version. It seems like petitions actually are useful sometimes!

in a world where we're constantly made to feel that our voice doesn't matter & there is no point in trying to change things, even small wins are meaningful.  anything that can counteract our collective feelings of helplessness can only be good.

disney: being brave is not enough anymore

i first learned about what disney was doing to merida, the main character from "brave", from this post.  i really recommend you go over there to see the pictures & the explanations of why it's so wrong.

i had mixed feelings about the movie itself, which i wrote about at the time.  as i said then, it's not the best film ever, but there were still plenty of positives and i thought it was a huge improvement on many of disney's previous efforts.  now, if only they could keep all those positive characteristics, and have the main character not be a princess. although, mulan was apparently not a princess, so maybe they get a couple of points for that one.

but regardless of what you think of the film, it's not like merida was significantly different to the shape of other disney female characters - she's still pretty slim, lots of hair, big round eyes (ok, again with the exception of mulan).  but her traditional image is less sexualised & more of an action figure.

so why the need to make her skinnier still, with the head tilt, the arched eyebrows & the loss of her bow & arrows?  why change something that was working?

there's now a petition against the change, which you can find here:

The redesign of Merida in advance of her official induction to the Disney Princess collection does a tremendous disservice to the millions of children for whom Merida is an empowering role model who speaks to girls' capacity to be change agents in the world rather than just trophies to be admired. Moreover, by making her skinnier, sexier and more mature in appearance, you are sending a message to girls that the original, realistic, teenage-appearing version of Merida is inferior; that for girls and women to have value -- to be recognized as true princesses -- they must conform to a narrow definition of beauty.

as with the changes that were proposed for dora, it's important to fight back against the constant pressure created by images presented to us of female characters.  we all deserve better.

Breaking news: Stuffed Rape Culture

Today Stuff published an article about two rapists, convicted for raping a young woman and sentenced to 16 and 15 years in prison.  Both rapists had previous convictions for assaulting women.

Stuff's advice, right at the end:

TIPS ON STAYING SAFE
Travel in pairs
Make sure people know where you are, and when they are next likely to hear from you
Be aware of your environment
Do not travel with strangers

Just what I needed to finish the day.

The only thing the two young women - yep, that's right, the young woman raped here was already following Stuffed Tip One and was walking home with a friend - the only thing the two young women could have done to be safer in this instance is to not be with rapists.  Maybe those two rapists should have to carry signs showing their previous histories of hurting women?

You know what means you get raped?  Being unlucky enough to be in the presence of a rapist who targets you.  That's all.

Stuffed Tip Two:  Make sure people know where you are, and when they are next likely to hear from you.
Bollocks.  When people don't know where you are, it's not usually because you're being raped.  It would be more effective to suggest women with boyfriends, former boyfriends, male friends or work colleagues should set up rape alarms.  We could set off permanent signals when we're with these men, to alert people about where we are every 15 minutes perhaps, because these men rape us 84% of the time.  It will catch on, I'm sure.

Stuffed Tip Three: Be aware of your environment.
Good tip.  You should avoid being inside, because most people get raped inside (67% of rapes in NZ happen inside the home of the rapist or the person raped.) 
You should avoid night-time, because most people are raped at night.  
You should avoid being around men, because most people are raped by men (99% of perpetrators of adult sexual violence in NZ are men). That's that one sorted.

Stuffed Tip Four:  Do not travel with strangers 
Mmm.  This won't actually help, because most people are raped by people they know (84% of perpetrators of adult sexual violence in NZ are known to the survivor).  More like, don't travel with boyfriends, former boyfriends, male friends or work colleagues.  Wonder why they didn't put that up?

Rape Crisis Scotland have some other ideas:

Rant over.  Get busy with telling Stuff what complete and utter victim blaming creeps they are, if you feel the urge.  The research is here, in case they have trouble finding it.

Womensfest at University of Auckland

Fourteen events in this year's Womensfest organised by the Women's Rights Officers at AUSA - for full details check out the Facebook event page:

I'm very lucky to be speaking on a panel about the portrayal of women in the media on the Monday night - hope to see some of you there!

If you click on the image it should hopefully make it bigger and thus easier to read.

When did you choose? Every day, thanks.

Lots of my friends are posting this on Facebook at the moment:

And I get the point, really, that being "born like this" is one way many queer people experience our sexuality, and that, on the strength of this film, lots of straight people believe they are born straight.

But it feels too simplistic to me, and too invisibilising of quite how messy and complicated desire and love are, for lots of people.  Maybe we cling to identity certainty around that because it makes us feel safer.


Because we grow up surrounded by heterosexuality, by images of lust and love being different-gendered, with opposite-sex sex education (if any) in schools, with opposite-sex love stories in music, in film, in books, on television.  Of course most heterosexual people don't feel like they have "chosen" to be heterosexual.  If your desires fit into the dominant forms of desires around you, why would you even think about it?

I know plenty of heterosexual people who have chosen not to act on same-sex desires.  Ask any queer person how often we've had our straight friends drunkenly tell us "I've thought about it....." often followed by clumsy invitations which, at least to me, haven't been that appealing.

I know plenty of people who acknowledge the fluidity of their desires, because their identity has changed from one part of their life to the next.  Phrases like "hasbian" and "on the train to gaytown", while intrinsically disrespectful of people's ability to define our own identity at each moment in time - and explicitly biphobic - illustrate the fact that identities which feel definitive and important to us at one point of our life can feel just plain wrong at others.

For me, the construction of "born this way" as the dominant way of thinking about sexuality is intrinsically conservative, intrinsically seeking solidity around emotions and desires.  Of course many, many people will have identities that remain constant throughout their lives, and of course queer people have different access to that because we have to buck compulsory heterosexuality to name who we want to shag and love.

But what about those of us who don't?  What about people whose identity fluctuates, based on the social contexts they are in?  What about the people who make choices not to follow desires, because it would be too hard for them, for whatever reason? 

Desire is frequently confusing.  Ever been attracted to someone, then freaked out when their gender is different from what matches your monosexual identity?  If you're a straight woman or a gay man who fancies Justin Bieber you might not want to click on the link.

I've claimed a solid identity around being bisexual for 24 years.  The reality of how complex that is for me is something I rarely talk about, because of quite how fragile the respect available to people who identify as bisexual can be.  Since I started knowing I could love women, that's being pretty constant.  My attraction to things masculine is much more ephemeral and context, and masculine person, dependent.  I believe that's mostly about the patriarchy, but it may well also reflect that I just fundamentally on average find hot women hotter than hot men - who knows?

And I've never - before or after I came out - fallen in love with a man.  Never actually even that close. 

Some people would no doubt argue that makes me "really" lesbian.  I know many lesbians who would and do describe their desires quite similarly to mine, but we identify differently because desire, lust and love are complicated things that mean different things to different people.

So my Facebook friends sharing this film, by all means let's encourage heterosexual people to interrogate heterosexuality - and in particular the privileges that come from being the norm, like being able to sleep with your lover when you're paying money to stay somewhere.

But please, please, please let's not shut the door on the delights of nuanced understandings and experiences of desire and love as changing, fluid aspects of our identity.  We lose something when we oversimplify such complex aspects of human experience.

Sexual abuse and culture

There's an interesting article from Joseph Harker, essentially arguing that whiteness is invisible when we talk about sexual violence, a privilege not enjoyed by Muslim people:

Every day across Britain, it seems, there's a new and horrific revelation of sexual abuse: last week we had the guilty plea of veteran TV presenter Stuart Hall, who confessed to 14 cases of indecent assault against 13 girls, the youngest only nine years old.  Days earlier the possible scale of child abuse in north Wales children's homes was revealed.

But after the shock has subsided and we have time to reflect on these revolting crimes, the main question in most reasonable people's minds must surely be: what is it about white people that makes them do this?

While Mr Harker has left alone the obvious male connection that all of these perpetrators - white and non-white - have in common, he raises a valid point, well.  And one which is just as relevant in Aotearoa, where as Moana Jackson points out the Kahui twins, Nia Glassie and James Whakaruru are household names, while the Nelson twins, Timothy Maybin and Samantha Nelson are not.

What I'm slightly disappointed by in Mr Harker's article though is the lack of attention to power in other ways.  Sexual violence thrives in situations in which there are power imbalances.  Predators target vulnerable people.  Child sexual abuse perpetrated by adults is in the main not by "paedophiles" but by men who have sexual relationships with other adults as well as targeting children. 

This power might be institutional - Jimmy Savile say, with his powerful role within the entertainment industry in the UK.  Where there seems to be a problem, given the Coronation St roll call of men accused of raping children is growing.  Institutional power within educational organisations, or community groups for children, or religious based organisations, or residential services for children, or facilities to care for children.  Social power that comes with adulthood, or being a caregiver, or helping out with babysitting.

We need to ask questions of culture if we want to prevent child sexual abuse, but they need to be much broader than racist deficit assumptions for Muslims, Maori or any other people of colour.  What was the culture in the British entertainment industries which has led to a Police investigation arresting  pop star Gary Glitter, comedian Freddie Starr, DJ Dave Lee Travis, publicist Max Clifford and comedian Jim Davidson, alongside of course the Jimmy Savile revelations and the recent arrest of Rolf Harris?

How many children and adults did these men sexually assault?  How many people knew about it?  What did they tell themselves?  How can we stop that happening again?

The Steubenville rape convictions put the spotlight on the inability of young sportsmen to identify sexually assaulting a near comatose young woman as something unacceptable.  One teammate of the convicted rapists who saw the rape and walked away had just moments earlier stopped another teammate from drinking and driving.  How do we shift those cultural norms, so that young sportsmen are just as determined to stop their teammates raping as driving drunk?

The most important issue, whenever we are talking and thinking about culture, is that the analysis - and the shift to building and supporting protective social norms - needs to come from within the group of interest.  I don't know why the British entertainment industry has been providing such a safe place to abuse for men for decades.  But people working there will.

I don't think we should be scared of talking and thinking about culture when it comes to preventing sexual violence.  In fact I think it's imperative we do that work, if we want protective social norms which promote respect, safety, mutuality and consent as foundations.

We just need to be looking at our own cultural belongings first and foremost.  There's plenty of social change to go around.

Crosspost: The Power of Like: Solidarity in a time of social media

Cross-posted from The Daily Blog 

It used to be pretty lonely being a left-wing feminist off-campus.  While I had political friends I was reasonably sure were feminist too, I was surprised enough times by sexist statements from lefties and ardent rejections of the f word by sisters in the movement that I didn’t take it for granted that we were fellow travellers on the Down With Patriarchy journey. 

Slowly but surely I started to identify like-minded individuals, many of them already people I gravitated to for other reasons like simpatico senses of humour.  But still it was a lonely every-day existence sometimes, with energy stored up from those sparse get-togethers to see me through. 

These days my life fair buzzes with feminist left-wingedness and it’s mostly thanks to my friend The Interweb.  Through the internet, blogging at first, then Facebook and now Twitter, I have met so many amazing women; feminists all, left of centre mostly, and each a jewel in their own way.  It seems hard to remember now that five and a bit years ago, before The Hand Mirror existed, I was often nervous about posting a feminist-minded status update; how could I know that my Facebook friends wouldn’t trot out the old tropes “man-hater” or “feminazi” or, perhaps worst of all, silently defriend me. 

I’ve also found the feminist friends I had all along but didn’t recognise as such, or wasn’t sure of; people from my past, before I was actively political, who I knew from school, or sailing, or via family connections.  They’ve been able to show their agreement and support through the really very small, but often highly significant, act of clicking Like.

For me this solidarity has been amazing.  Not only have I been able to make visible my work, I’ve been able to receive feedback, not always positive but generally always well-meant.  The Likes, the comments, the occasional Shares have been like a kind word in my ear, or a thumbs up and a grin from across the room.  Retweets and Favourites are the high fives of the digital world.  They give me a warm glow that helps to keep me going when the world that isn’t in the ether is getting tough.

Here’s a very different example which reached across political boundaries: the solidarity shown by dozens, possibly hundreds, of tweeters and bloggers when Colin Craig of the Conservative Party decided to take on The Civillian’s Ben Uffindell for a mischievious satirical misquote.

The proliferation of hashtaggery poking fun at Colin Craig was not just a chance for people to exhibit their wit (although it was also that).  It was in a very real way a chance to show support for Uffindell and his (often) good works on The Civillian.  Tweeters nailed their colours to the mast, very publicly, and most of them weren’t in Colin Craig’s shade of blue. 

Then there were the solidarity blog posts, from other oft-times satirical bloggers Danyl Maclauchlan and Scott Yorke, and even a newspaper column from Toby Manhire, again standing alongside Uffindell, for satire, for freedom of speech, and for puncturing the pomposity of politicians who act in such a humourless manner.

The Power of Like is now an undeniable part of our political interaction.  Those who are excluded from the internet are excluded too from this solidarity.  I hope we can get better at becoming more effusive with our honest compliments and warm thoughts in real life too

down under feminist carnival

a quick post to say that the 60th down under feminist carnival is up at news with nipples.

enjoy.

Stamping out human rights

When I was training to be a journo, the Sri Lankan Embassy wrote an official complaint about one of my articles on the human rights abuses of Tamil people in Sri Lanka.  I've visited Sri Lanka, and though there was much to enjoy, the Tamil ghettos which every Sinhalese person I spoke to could not even see feel burned in my mind.

So on the surface, Canadian complaints about Sri Lanka hosting a Commonwealth event because of their ongoing and recent human rights abuses of Tamil people makes sense to me.

Until you think about the Commonwealth.  The countries colonised by England.   Leaving aside Africa, divided up by Europeans drawing lines on a map to make stealing resources easier, and British behaviour in India and surrounding countries, let's focus on Canada and white settler behaviour just for a moment.

Canada is the home of ongoing alienation of indigenous Canadians' rights.  Here are a list of the current bills which First Nations Canadians object to:

• Bill C-38 Budget Omnibus #1; 
• Bill C-45 Budget Omnibus Bill #2; 
• Bill C-27 First Nations Financial  Transparency Act; 
• The First Nations Private Property Ownership Act (Proposed); 
• Bill S-2 Family Homes on Reserve and Matrimonial Interests or Right Act; 
• Bill S-6 First Nations Elections Act; 
• Bill S-8 Safe Drinking Water for First  Nations Act; 
• Bill C-428 Indian Act Amendment and Replacement Act; 
• Bill S-207 An Act to amend the Interpretation Act; and
• Bill S-212 First Nations Self-Government  Recognition Bill.

Then there are the residential schools in Canada, boarding schools for kidnapped children.  The last one closed in 1996, and you can see how many existed around the country here.  More than 150,000 First Nations children were forcibly removed from their families and fed into an educational system which told them everything about them was inferior.

The schools were hotbeds for physical, mental and sexual abuse.  Children killed themselves, or died trying to escape.  After going through these schools themselves, First Nations parents then had to watch while the same thing was done to their children.

This is not a radical interpretation.  This is how the members of parliament in Canada described these schools, in 2008, when a cross party apology described this racism of trying to "stamp the Indian out of the child."

So Canada, quite frankly, fuck off.  The arrogance of white supremacy, our colonial inheritance for those of us of British descent, makes me feel sick.  Aotearoa has this too, of course, in spades.  What happened and is happening to Tamil people in Sri Lanka is obscene.  But the impacts of colonisation on Maori, on First Nations Canadians, on Aboriginal peoples in Australia are no less a scar on humanity.   News articles which position us white folk as arbiters of justice, fairness and human rights - ignoring colonisation - just perpetuate that white arrogance and invisibilise that white privilege.

We can't really afford that, if we want to live in a world which respects the human rights of others.  White privilege is so damn slippery anyway.

What's the funniest thing about marriage equality?

So you fancy yourself a bit of a comedian, with your finger dead on the pulse of the zeitgeist.  Marriage equality feels like a rich vein to mine.  You could go for gay crime sprees or legalising incest or big gay rainbows or marrying pets.  There's rich pickings, let's be honest.

Not Colin Craig, obviously, nothing funny to see here, move it along. 

Where do you go?  Back to your roots.

The narrow-minded hate mongering continues.  Boring, unimaginative, vicious.  Someday Tui, your billboards are going to feature in a museum of ridiculous memorabilia of past bigotries.  People will wonder "how on earth did these keep getting made?"  "What were beer drinkers thinking?"

I had a relationship, a long time ago, with a woman with two children.  This is the song those kids played whenever they wanted a way to jump up and down against the homophobia they wrestled with from people around them.  It's the anti-Tui.

I want to hear the All Blacks say It’s Not OK

All Black - and pin up boy for the anti family violence It's Not OK campaign - Julian Savea has just been charged with common assault after the Police went to his house to deal with a domestic violence incident.  He says:

"I will say my partner and I had an argument, I did some things that are wrong, that I shouldn't have done, and I apologise for that."

We don't know what happened yet, but we do know Mr Savea has been ordered by the Judge to have no contact with his partner until the case is settled, including not visiting their home.  Common assault carries a maximum sentence of one year.

Julian Savea is 6 foot 4 and weighs 108 kg, a man trained to be as strong and physically hard as possible.  Someone that size belting you would be terrifying.

We don't know what happened yet, but we do know that physical violence in relationships is often just one aspect of controlling behaviour, and that the impact on children - whether they are the ones being assaulted or not - is significant.  Mr Savea has a one year old baby.  So far, the only conversation about this baby seeing/hearing/being around their mother being assaulted by their father is whether Mr Savea will be able to see them regularly.

We don't know what happened yet, but we've been told quite a bit about this case.  Not from the victim - we know her name and that's all.  But the media have been busy, garnering quotes and background material to help us know what's going on.

Mr Savea's parents, though acknowledging they don't know anything about the incident, are sure it couldn't have been 'particularly violent'.  The incident that "landed the All Black in court would not have been any more serious than a push," they say.

The Hurricanes Chief Executive, Mr Savea's boss, says:

"Obviously, we are disappointed to have this situation emerge, but we must now let the judicial process run its course."

New Zealand Rugby chief executive Steve Tew is also disappointed:

"We were very disappointed to learn of this incident and Julian's subsequent charge. We appreciate this is a distressing time for all those affected and we are also helping support the family.....
"Without judging the rights or wrongs of this case, we are concerned that this is another incident involving a young player.  We need to find out whether we are doing enough to help these young men cope with the pressures of the professional game."

Precisely no one around Julian Savea is naming what he did as a problem.  It's disappointing the situation emerged, that we learnt about it, that he was charged.  But the common assault itself?  Pah, not particularly violent.

Steve Tew is right to point to some problems with rugby culture.  Julian Savea is not even the only current or recent All Black to have gone to court after being charged with domestic violence.  Sitiveni Sivivatu and Adam Thomson have both faced charges in recent years.  (Thomson was found not guilty because his partner told the court it wasn't as serious as her initial call to the Police and the independent eye-witness accounts suggested.)

I'd like to suggest something the All Blacks could do, if they really want to be seen as taking violence against women seriously.  Stop making excuses and create a serious consequence.

Men found guilty of violence against women should not be able to represent New Zealand in any kind of sport, ever again.

When you play sport for a country, you're representing an imagined community.  You stand for something, a cypher of belonging, creating a solidarity with other people purely on the basis of place.

That's not possible when you commit crimes of violence against others.  Men who bash their partners should be unable to be All Blacks, or Black Caps, or Black Sticks, or Tall Blacks or any other kind of athlete which means they represent people from this place.

Because if you bash women, you don't represent all people from this place.

I don't care if those sportsmen still get to play professional sport.  It's a different argument for me.  But I don't want to see another All Black representing me with a violence conviction for using their huge, muscular bodies to hurt their partners and get what they want.

I doubt I'm alone in that.  So come on All Blacks - is this OK or not?

masterchef fail

i've written many times over the years about masterchef - it's one of the few reality tv programmes i enjoyed watching.  and i tend to like the australian version more than the others, mostly because i really like the way they've done diversity in the past.

however.  i'm suddenly liking masterchef australia a whole lot less, and this promo would be why:



"destroy the joint" have decided to campaign against the ad & i really hope they get some traction.  the poll at the bottom of this article (if we can give any credence to this kind of poll) shows an overwhelming majority of people thinking the ad is sexist, which is probably more a result of the DtJ campaign than anything else.

but what's worrying is that some marketing/advertising people somewhere thought that this campaign was somehow a good idea.  i bet they're related to the people who thought up the latest stupid beer commercial airing on tv, which i'm not going to bother to describe further because it just makes me feel sick.

while it was great to see marvel withdraw their sexist t-shirts, sometimes it seems like a small win in an overwhelming tide of awfulness.  nonetheless, if you have the energy, here is the masterchef facebook page where you can register your views about this particular campaign.  given that they've been so open to diversity, maybe they can get around to stamping out the sexism in this particular ad.

Update: Girls Don't Need Heroes

Another win this week - the Disney Store have withdrawn Marvel's offensive "I need a hero" teeshirt for girls after receiving a stampede of negative feedback on it.

I had a few Hand Mirror readers send me form responses to emails they had sent directly to Marvel after the post earlier in the week, despairing of change.

Great to be reminded that companies that exist to make profit don't like negative feedback on producing sexist crap.

Happy Sunday.

Teaching men not to rape

This is very interesting. Research Blog: Teaching Men Rape Prevention Actually Works

It quotes Zerlina Maxwell, a rape survivor, who appeared on a Fox News segment to discuss the idiotic notion that "the solution to rape is simple - just give women guns". Maxwell said this:

“I think that the entire conversation is wrong. I don’t want anybody to be telling women anything. I don’t want men to be telling me what to wear and how to act, not to drink. And I don’t, honestly, want you to tell me that I needed a gun in order to prevent my rape. … I think we should be telling men not to rape women and start the conversation there with prevention.”

Well ... yes.

The article goes on to describe a rape-prevention class which college freshmen were required to take, and which appeared to be successful in changing their attitudes and behaviour (though of course it's very hard to prove that educating a particular group of men actually prevented them raping someone).

Going to the chapel to educate the congregation

So now we’re beyond Marriage Equality, what next?  The indicators of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia are still all around us.  Who gets bullied at school?  Who disproportionately wrestles with mental health issues, depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide?  Who has hate graffiti on their walls?  Who is targeted for violence on the streets, in their workplaces, from their families?  Who is not able to look at any media, anytime, and see someone who looks a bit like them, wrestling with some of the things they think about?

One of the very difficult issues for queer and trans* people to navigate is connection with others.  What happens when you transition?  Can you keep relationships with people who have known you as one gender?  Will those people treat you with respect?  Will you be safe?  Or do you have to build a completely different social and support network from scratch?

For same and both-sex attracted people, the disconnect from our families can be just as severe.  I’ve supported young people whose families have kicked them out when they learned who their sons or daughters loved.  I’ve talked one parent down from trying to have their daughter institutionalized as mentally unwell – simply because she was lesbian.

But it’s not just young people.  I’ve been out for 24 years.  When I first came out, the homophobia and biphobia of my parents was so vicious I refused to see them for a year.  They told me they could never respect me again, that my sexuality was unnatural and a symptom of being parented poorly.  They tried, at length, to work out if it was my depressed mother’s lack of interest or my father’s fondness for playing cricket with me that was the problem.  They wanted me to be lesbian, because that would be easier for them.

No one in my family would even think of saying such things now.  Yet several years ago, when an aunt was visiting London, my sister could tell me not to make such a big deal about whether or not to come out to her.

“I’m not going to talk about my sexuality,” she said, straightly.  My sister was single.  I’d been with my lover for ten years.  We owned a house together, parented her children together.  To not come out meant not being able to talk about my life with any honesty.  To come out meant the risk of my aunt’s reaction framing the entire night.  We were faced with quite different dilemmas. 

 

Now, when I have a female partner there is no hostility, but no one in my family can bring themselves to ask me anything about her.  When a relationship ends, there is literally nothing to say, because my family have no idea how much she has meant to me, what we may have shared.  These things had shifted markedly with my mother before she died; in her absence, there is a gaping hole where some of the sustaining relationships in my life are ignored and minimised by my family.

I share stories of how my family treats me with other queer people.  Telling them in public, or to straight friends, feels shaming in a way it’s difficult to name.  I’m an out and proud bisexual woman.  How can there still be such bruising homophobia and biphobia in my life?  

That’s the beyond marriage equality I’m interested in talking about.  Moving now into educating our communities.  Gathering information – like say, by using the census – about the kinds of experiences queer and trans* people have based on our sexuality and gender identity.  Gathering information about victimisation – like say, by recording sexuality and gender diversity – in crime stats about street violence.  Expanding the Human Rights Act to protect trans* folk from cis-gender based discrimination.

A good starting point would be a national queer and trans* resource centre, funded to identify exactly what beyond marriage equality might mean.  Able to develop queer and trans* specific materials for schools and our national curriculum.  Able to work with the Human Rights Commission to ensure experiences of queer and trans* discrimination are named, understood, responded to appropriately.  Able to intervene in social institutions which are responding to queer and trans* people – New Zealand Police, mental health systems, healthcare more broadly – and ensure processes are transparent and well-equipped.  Able to develop completely new resources – emergency housing for young queer and trans* people who need somewhere safe to stay; social work and prevention resources around suicide and self-harm, intimate partner and sexual violence which are specific to the queer community.

The kinds of difference Marriage Equality will make to queer and trans* peoples lives are important.  This was a social change moment – and make no mistake, we won it.  The people arguing against equality looked like bigoted hate-mongers.  But we still had to listen to their vitriol, had to protect ourselves from its impact on our sense of self in a world where those things sadly do not just sound ridiculous - which is how they should sound.

It’s time to celebrate – and to work out what else we need to dismantle homophobia, biphobia and transphobia for good. 

Sometimes, we win

Tonight I've had two live streams playing on my computer. One was of Margaret Thatcher's funeral. The other was of the third reading of the marriage equality bill in the New Zealand parliament - a bill which passed.

The timing was almost too beautiful to be true. I grew up with the homophobic hell Thatcher's Section 28 caused. There could not have been a more symbolic end, one era buried, another beginning.

Over the past week, I've seen arguments that those of us who celebrated Thatcher's death should be focused on the collective, not the individual, on empathy and love rather than hate.  I have rarely seen more empathy, more love, more solidarity. 

Utah Phillips said "Yes, the long memory is the most radical idea in this country. It is the loss of that long memory which deprives our people of that connective flow of thoughts and events that clarifies our vision, not of where we're going, but where we want to go." That is an idea that transcends national boundaries. A friend - born several years later - has been learning with growing horror about the 1981 Hunger Strike. A colleague was good enough to put up with me ranting about S28 to her on the bus this morning, and she responded with stories of supporting her queer whanau. People have been remembering those they knew - and those they didn't - who did not survive those years. In this symbolic occasion, we have been remembering, sharing, and knowing we can fight together.

It's not that Thatcher's legacy is over. On the contrary, the systematic destruction of the welfare state is in full and vicious swing. I'm not so naive as to think that the death of an elderly woman, however evil she was, is going to make much of a direct impact on the world.

It's not that marriage equality is the be-all and end-all. I don't believe this is the most important issue where sexual and gender diversity are concerned, not with the levels of youth homelessness, not with the violence trans women face in male-designated prisons. I hope the energy directed towards marriage equality will continue in other struggles.

It's not that the world has dramatically changed in this one evening, even though it has on a personal level for me. It's that it can, and will, change. It's that even when something is so pervasive that there seems no way of fighting it, we can, and we will, and one day it will crumble.

And sometimes, just sometimes, we win.

Guestie: Who is Kristine Bartlett?

Many thanks to Rebecca Matthews of the Pay Equity Challenge Coalition for permission to re-post this from their blog:

An important legal case can put a previously unknown individual into the spotlight and maybe even make them a household name. It can also be a way for one person to symbolise the experience of hundreds of thousands of others.

Get to know the name Kristine Bartlett. Because this brave and hard-working Lower Hutt caregiver is the new face of the campaign for fair pay for low-paid women and for women’s work to be paid fairly when compared to jobs men do.

The Service and Food Workers Union Nga Ringa Tota is taking a case that aged care employers and the Government that funds them are in breach of the Equal Pay Act 1972 because of their failure to address the very low pay rates in the sector.

The union member at the centre of the case, Kristine Bartlett, is a long-term caregiver at Terranova Homes and Care. She says her hourly wage of $14.46 is less than what would be paid to male employees with the same, or substantially similar skills. Only six of Terranova’s  117 carers are men.

The new case is an historic opportunity to prove that female dominated care work is undervalued and underpaid as was so convincingly demonstrated in the Caring Counts Report.

This case heralds a new approach in the fight for equal pay and pay and employment equity in New Zealand.

The case has been referred to the Employment Court from the Employment Relations Authority. The Pay Equity Challenge Coalition has been accepted as an intervener by the Court. The status of interveners is a watching brief and they may possibly make extra submissions to those of the claimants.

Five years

Five years is a long time.  It's the length of time for a child to grow from baby to school age.  It's a seventh of my life, so far, it's five rotations of the earth around the sun, five winters, autumns, springs and summers, five birthdays and Christmases.  Five years for the families of the Mangatepopo tragedy, yesterday, and five years today for me since my father died.    And with the events in Boston will be the start of another cycle of tragedy for those touched.  This stuff is happening around us everyday, people carrying their own personal losses, or dealing with the public ones.  Everyday will be five years for someone, I guess.

It's a continual journey, this path of grief.  It strikes me at odd moments.  I wrote several years back about the hole inside me and how I hoped the edges would be less raw with time.  I think most have smoothed, but there are still the odd jagged bits that catch from time to time on the spikey parts of life.

This last year has been less about the absence of Dad and more about how things would have been different if he was here.  There was the dispute between two of his old friends which my father would have sorted, but he isn't here so it festered and one of the parties died too so now it will never be resolved.  In a selfish sense, there's stuff around my house that needs fixing which I know Dad would have helped with.  And there's the discovery that my father had another daughter, adopted out at birth and now living on the other side of the planet, a disclosure that came to me instead of him because he wasn't here to get that letter.

Am I still angry?  Yes.  The injustice is still palpable.   I still hate cancer with a burning  intensity.  But most days I can get on without raging against the dying of that light.  Sadness is more where I'm at, and frustration now too, that there are things he should be part of that he isn't here for, through no fault of anyone's really.

We remembered Dad as a family on Saturday night, and I'm hoping that by writing this now I'll be able to put this aside for a few hours at least to be a productive worker bee in the workforce.    And then I'm going to take a break and buy myself a new dress I think.    To cover up the hole.

Moving beyond Marriage Equality

Three events in Wellington this week of interest to the queer and trans* communities in moving beyond Marriage Equality.

Firstly, tonight, Wellington Gay Welfare Group is hosting an event exploring "Suicidality, Our Communities and Authorities Response".  More details here.  We know the rates of self-harm and suicide are higher for queer and gender diverse people, and it's time our systems of response both paid attention to that, and set about demanding a social environment which would prevent it in the first place.  Which means queering our schools, which means removing discrimination, which means representations of queer and gender diverse people everywhere, which means a whole bunch of education.  Ending homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, embedded in systems of sexism and cis-sexism which promote harmful, unrealistic gender norms.

Second event on Thursday 18th April, post Marriage Equality passing (and yep, I'll be partying) is hosted by the Human Rights Commission, "Human Rights priorities for intersex, trans and queer people."  Details for the Wellington event here but you can join in from other parts of the country too.  This event will discuss key issues for our communities, with a view to bringing them forward to the UN Universal Periodic Review.

And finally, from Wednesday 17th April, if you'd like the chance to become street theatre while dressed in a donated wedding dress, come be part of Brides - particularly open to queer and gender diverse peeps.  This is a Barbarian Productions event which the organisers describe as:

Bearing in mind the current passage of the Marriage Equality Bill through parliament, Brides asks visitors to come inside and watch / speak / sing / share in a free-wheeling public discussion on the meaning, relevance, and experience of marriage: the ritual, the institution, the dress.

It's going to be a queer old week in Wellie :-)

Marvellous heroes

I've been away at a feminist retreat for the weekend, recharging my energy for gender equity fights with some feminist sheroes.  We don't have to fight about some things anymore, right?  The world has moved on...

Sure, there's still that small matter of objectification.  Despite capitalism finding new ways to exploit men's bodies, when we pay attention to the typical ways women's bodies are positioned in mass media, it's pretty obvious we're encouraged to view the feminine in ways masculinity is never portrayed.

But somehow, despite the cultural scaffolding which treats women as window dressing for the real world concerns of men, despite the fact I wilfully avoid much media to help myself stay sane and centred, I am still shocked when brand new products are created to reinforce traditional gender roles.  Just out from Marvel:


We all need heroes.  People that inspire us, help us feel brave enough to honour ourselves in tough situations, brave enough to stand up to other people who are behaving badly.  Boys need heroes in quite specific ways - while the majority of men don't hold rape supportive attitudes for example, the majority of men do not challenge other men when those attitudes are expressed, because they are scared of failing the dude test. 

Sadly I don't think Marvel are quite that nuanced, and this is just pure sexist crap.  Girls are being encouraged, again (and again, and again, and again....) to wait around for some bloke to keep us safe, decide what needs doing and help us with our lives with his big strong muscles and his masculine brain.  Boys are being encouraged, again (and again, and again, and again....) to suppress any feelings they may have of wanting to be cuddled or comforted, of being able to cry when they are sad, or not knowing how to do something.

If I needed more of a reminder of why I need feminist space than a joyful weekend with other feminists talking about our bodies, our work, self-care and play, I got it, first thing this morning when this jumped into my inbox. 

If it bugs you as much as it bugs me, let Marvel know.