Carnival time!

Many thanks to Mary at Hoyden About Town for putting together this month's Down Under Feminist Carnival - now in it's 44th (!!) month. 

A great chance to make with the clicky and read a range of feminist good stuff from across Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia from the last little while.

Many thanks to those who nominated posts from here :-)

MCP Watch: Richard Prosser MP

"Because our society, New Zealand society, Western society in general, has been hijacked by a conspiracy of Silly Little Girls. They’re everywhere; in the schools, in the media, in the public service, in the judiciary, even in Cabinet.

Everywhere we turn, the foundations of masculinity, the pillars of male-ness which have underpinned the construction and development of our very civilisation, are being undermined, by Silly Little Girls. And we are putting up with it."

From Richard Prosser's new book Uncommon Dissent.  (The above extract is via the Wellington Young Feminists' Collective's facebook page.)

Richard Prosser FAQs:

1.  Who is Richard Prosser?
A new NZ First MP, elected via the party list at the November 2011 election.

2.  What other antediluvian views does he hold?
Prosser is also a card-carrying Climate Change Denier, believes we should ban the burqa, and identifies as a "genuine freedom-loving, gonad-equipped, libertarian go-getter[s]".

3.  WTF?
See answer to question 1.

Feel free to discuss Mr Prosser's early attempt at the coveted title of Most Sexist MP in Our Current Parliament in comments, including, if you have access to the PDF ($26 to buy!!) sharing more quotes for our enlightenment and correction.

UPDATE:  Tallulah at The Lady Garden is suggesting a pigtail protest, along with knee socks and lollipops, which sounds like fun.  What say you? 

Guest Post: The R-Word

Thanks to hazel for allowing to crosspost this from The Money Pit where she blogs about home renovation and her life.


Field and I are in a relationship.

We don’t have sex.

It’s a relationship where we split the bills and squabble over what kind of cheese to buy; where I get away with picking the bacon I want, and she has all the salt-and-vinegar chips her little heart desires; where we have long sprawling conversations at eleven o’clock at night about Books We’ve Read and Why Television Is Hard; where we email each other from our respective workplaces about what we want to eat for dinner, what we’ve read on the internet news that day, why four hours sleep is not enough, whether it’s a good idea to buy more wine (yes). But at the end of the day, we go to our separate beds in our separate rooms and close the doors.

And it’s invisible.

*

A few nights ago we had a conversation about how we want to refer to each other: we flatted with each other (and with Nish) for six years, but this is something new. We’re hiring plumbers now. In the end we decided that “co-owner” fit the best, but that’s not quite right either: too much business in the front, not enough party at the back. “Partners” has connotations that I in no way disapprove of, but which just aren’t accurate; it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest if people thought that Field and I were a couple, but we’re not. I toyed with “lady-wife”, mostly as a joke, but while that kind of shit is fun with friends it’s difficult to say with a straight face to your lawyer, your electrician, your bank-manager, your mum.

So co-owners it is for now, and we’ll change it if it stops being the closest match for what we are.

*

But we’re invisible, this thing. When I talk about buying a house with Field, I’m talking about my long-term life plan. I’m talking about planning a garden, about where we’re planting the fuschia (me) and the hebes (me) and the carpet roses (Field) and the agapanthus (over my dead body). I’m talking about the six-month conversation we’ll have about whether we’re going to wallpaper or paint the lounge, and what shade it should be, and what the curtains should be made of. I’m talking about how we run the kitchen, how we cook together, how we make plans to go to the supermarket and what our budget there will be. I’m in charge – always and forever – of making electronics Go; she’s in charge of the alphabet because my god how I hate reshelving books.

I’m talking about the two or three years of planning that went into this. I’m talking about how I researched suburbs and public transport routes; about how grateful I am that Field got her full licence and a car, and how much easier that made the house-hunting process. I’m talking about the gin-and-tonics she made us tonight for dinner, before she went to lie down on her bed in the summer evening sun and I came online to watch comedy routines on youtube and write this post. I’m talking about the expression of my hopes and dreams, my plans and schemes, how I’ve wanted to do up a house for forever (as long as Nish has known me, and that’s a bloody long time).

I’m talking about how we started having conversations about how we wanted this to work 18 months ago, how we set up a joint savings account over a year ago, how we now have 2 joint accounts plus the mortgage, insurance in both our names and shared household goods. I know where she was born, her date of birth, what her passport photograph looked like when she was thirteen. I chat to her mum sometimes on the phone a bit. She knows these things about me.
And so I have conversations with people about buying a house with Field, and what they hear is of two good friends buying a house together, and what they say is:

That’s sensible.

and

Have you thought about what would happen if you didn’t want to live together anymore?

*

And.

No. No, it isn’t sensible, you utter moron, do you know how much it would devastate me if it all turned to pot, how difficult it would be to disentangle our lives? Our finances are complicated and not wholly governed by standard law, but that’s the least of it when we have mostly shared friends and I can’t remember exactly how to cook dinner on my own anymore, when the kitchen seems strange when she’s not there to navigate around and pass me spoons and pepper.

and

Yes, what, you think we set up a joint savings account and talked to banks and lawyers and looked at houses and put in an offer and went unconditional and settled and moved without ever thinking about what we were doing? Without ever talking to each other about it?

*

This wasn’t an accident, this house in this street. It wasn’t the easy or the simple choice; it wasn’t obvious. It wasn’t a calculated financial decision. My life isn’t good financial planning – single girls without options, women on the shelf looking to get on the property ladder. I may be a spinster with a cat, but by god I have done it with intent.

The Officer Ether

In Councillese the term "officer" actually means "a staff member of the Council".  We democratically elected people (governing body or local board members in Auckland) rely on officers for advice, and to make our decisions into reality.  Officers are essential to our work and without them it would be pretty hard to function meaningfully.

As with any large group of people there are good eggs and bad eggs.  So far my experience is that the good officers far outweigh the bad.  I've been astonished by the number of highly accomplished and truly effective officers I've encountered to date.  For every one person who has frustrated me by going all Sir Humphrey and not really answering my questions, there have been at least 5 who have been flexible, smart, and committed to empowering local board members.

But good eggs or bad there is one thing that no officer seems to be able to overcome:  The Officer Ether.

Here's an example:

Declonise the Mic: Auckland 4 February

Come one come all! Come party with us!

Check out an eclectic mix of sounds, spoken word, performance, poetry and audio visual downloaded lolly-mixes, by coloured and indigenous folk.

Wind, un-wind and celebrate Decolonisation, Feminism, and putting a boot up oppressions’ boring old butt, at Decol the Mic night, part of the Decolonise Your Minds! Hui.

Open to absolutely all genders and ethnicities, allies come and hang! Venue is accessible.

Sat 4 Feb

8-11pm

Trades Hall, 147 Great North Road
Gold coin entry. That’s less than your trim soy mocha caramel frappacino!

Cheap and choice libations available (but not trim soy mocha caramel frappacinos)

And do get in touch if you’d like to strut you stuff at Decol the Mic night decol2012[at]gmail.com.

More Information

How to work out what you really, really want

Let’s start the week with consent. Good phrase that

I blogged some time back about “Yes Means Yes”, an American book about why active desire and skills in learning meaningful consent just might be important in shifting rape culture around how much sexual violence happens (though not rape in institutions, or by soldiers, or towards children, or…). So when impressive co-editor Jaclyn Friedman released her new book, I pre-ordered a copy for a friend as a leaving pressie from a sexual violence agency for survivors.

The book’s been very favourably reviewed by the Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programmes, a charity dedicated to ending sexual violence, who call it “an interactive tool for sexuality exploration”. It’s aimed at young women negotiating being sexual, so unpacking gender scripts which tell young women they are slutty if they are too into sex, and prudish virgins if they don’t like sex. You know, rape culture 101 stuff.

I’ve not read it yet – so I don’t know how much help the book will be in terms of negotiating same, both and all gender attraction, or how applicable the tools will be for men to help unpack the idea they are supposed to always be up for sex, no matter what. But here’s the intro quiz:

1. You're single and you're going to a party where there may be people you'd be attracted to. Do you dress sexy?

a. You know it!

b. If I’m feeling brave.

c. It depends on what you mean by sexy.

d. Probably not. I’d feel too foolish or shy.

e. No way. I don’t want to give anyone the wrong impression.

2. Telling someone what you want to do with them (or what you want them to do with you) sexually is:

a. Hot.

b. Scary.

c. A total buzzkill.

d. Something I wish I could do.

e. My favourite way to spend an evening.

3. You do things sexually that feel okay at the time, but you feel bad about it afterward.

a. Often.

b. Never.

c. On rare occasions.

d. Only when I’m drunk.

e. Doesn’t everybody?

4. You find out that your fifteen-year old daughter (sister, niece, friend) is thinking of having sex for the first time. You:

a. Panic.

b. Ground her/tell on her.

c. Sit her down for a heart-to-heart to make sure she’s really ready and knows how to have safer sex.

d. Sit her down for a stern lecture.

e. All of the above.

5. You’re leaving a party, club or event late at night. The friends you came with have all left. Your car is parked several long, dark blocks away. You:

a. Just calmly walk to your car, taking the most lighted path available.

b. Walk to your car as fast as you can, with your keys fanned out between your fingers and your heart pounding.

c. Ask that guy at the party who might have been flirting with you to walk to your car.

d. Call a cab to take you to your car.

e. You would never let yourself get into that situation in the first place.

6. Women who dress and act like sluts:

a. Worry me. Don’t they know the kind of attention they’ll attract?

b. Make me angry. They give women a bad name and teach men they can disrespect us. They deserve whatever they get.

c. Are no better or worse than anyone else. It’s not my place to judge.

d. Are powerful feminist role models. Rejecting shame about our sexuality is an act of resistance.

e. Are some of my best friends.

7. When it comes to your own sex life, you:

a. Don’t have one.

b. Get exactly what you want and are totally satisfied.

c. Wish you could change a few things, but you haven’t found a way to talk to your partner(s) about what you need.

d. Wish you could change a few things, but when you try to talk with your partner(s) about it, they don’t respond the ways you want.

e. You’re not really happy with it, but you don’t know what you want or how to change it.

8. Men have a harder time controlling themselves sexually and therefore can’t be held to the same standards as women.

a. That’s just biologically true

b. I’m really not sure about this one

c. That’s a load of crap

d. That’s true in our culture, because of the different ways we raise boys and girls

e. There may be some biological truth to that, but we’re not animals – men should be expected to overcome their biological urges and control themselves.

9. Sexual acts you do (or want to do) make you feel ashamed or bad about yourself.

a. All the time

b. Only one or two of them, but definitely

c. A little, maybe

d. Never

e. Almost never, but every once in a while it sneaks up on me

10. Your friends and family share your values about sex and sexuality

a. Yes

b. My friends do, but my family really doesn’t get it

c. I have no idea, I don’t talk about sex with my friends or family, and they don’t talk about it with me

d. Uh, no. They think I’m a total slut/prude/freak/weirdo etc

e. Not yet, but I’m working on them

This quiz kept my household talking to the wee hours on Sunday morning. Answers in comments if you’re keen :-)

not quite so funny?

some anonymous person just posted a link to this clip on my blog, which i thought deserved to be shared more widely. it an interview with josie long about the discrimination she faces as a woman comedian:



i always find the "women aren't as funny as men" line quite telling. it's possibly because men are quite happy to laugh at male comics denigrating women, talking about their wives as irrational jailers who stop men from enjoying life at all. or any of the other sexist stuff that is supposed to be hilarious. but suddenly it isn't funny if a woman is doing something similar about men. they're not laughing so hard when it's their own foibles pushed out in nasty stereotypes for the entertainment of everyone.

surely if they find the one funny, they should find the other just as hilarious? but watching the audience reactions to female comics, the men are still laughing when the women talk about weight issues or how bitchy/slutty other women are, but quite a few barely manage a smile when she dares to turn her attention on to men.

so perhaps it isn't that the women aren't as funny, it's just that the man making that complaint just doesn't know how to laugh at jokes about his own demographic? could it be that this guy just needs to get a sense of humour?? or the better option is that they stop tolerating nasting shit about women that isn't actually all that funny either.

out of uniform

a school that forces kids to wear roman sandals is a school that hates children. seriously? these are the ugliest and most uncomfortable footwear ever designed. what torturer designed them i don't know or care, but i don't see why our kids should be lumped with. for goodness sake, i had to wear these monstrosities when i went to school. have there been no acceptable innovations in footwear design in 30 years that would be acceptable to persons in charge of deciding on school uniform?

i've never been a supporter of uniforms. hated them when i had to wear them, hate that my own kids have to wear them. i hate the loss of individuality, the conformity of it all. to me, it teaches kids that they have to lose anything which makes them different, individual and their own person. they lose their personal identity to the identity of the institution forcing the uniform on them.

i understand the arguments for them, especially for school age children, around the peer pressure to dress in fashionable and expensive clothes. uniforms are apparently the cheaper option. but given that kids need clothes for after school and socialising anyway, i don't know that there is that much saving. maybe uniforms are the better option for some people, but no, i still hate them.

our uniforms were so uncomfortable. disgusting drab brown tunics. and for PE, we had to wear rompers. rompers are truly worse than roman sandals, if that's at all possible. thank goodness sports uniforms have evolved to something more decent. i think the only way to ensure our kids have decent uniforms (if they must have uniforms at all) is to force all the adults in the institution to wear it as well. let's watch the principals and teachers being forced to push their feet into roman sandals, and i bet that rule would be gone in a day.

to add insult to injury, our teachers are being forced to spend their time policing these uniforms, when they really should be spending that energy on teaching our kids. ok, with the basic uniform, i can accept that they have to enforce it otherwise there would be no point. but to police the roman sandals, and to punish kids if they aren't wearing them? that is just a total waste of time. it's certainly not how i want my tax dollars being spent.

Transphobia stole my social event

It's rare - but not unheard of, thank you Audre Lorde - that I completely agree with everything I know about someone's political analysis. Sometimes I feel in complete agreement, and then I meet them and realise they deliberately use power and control in their interactions, or they are only interested in people they think are important, or they treat waiting staff like lackeys, or they talk to their partner without respect.

I often learn from the ideas or concepts or experiences or political analysis of people with whom I disagree, sometimes vehemently, about other things.

When I went to see the leader of the Black Panther Party in London a few years ago, he was fascinating on race, and much more thoughtful about gender in terms of African American women's experiences than I'd expected. But he called anyone he didn't agree with a faggot. Repeatedly. This was unchallenged by everyone there, including me and my straight but not homophobic Black British friend. The reasons I didn't challenge were complex - partly I didn't think I was going to change his mind, partly I was very aware of being nearly the only white person in the room, partly I was there to learn about a struggle I was less familiar with than battling homophobia.

So in theory I could go and see Germaine Greer, second wave feminist legend, author of one of the most important feminist texts in the 1970s, exponent of women's liberation rather than just equality with men (which men?), the butt of much misogynist hatred.

Oh, and a raving, offensive, hateful transphobe.

Who deliberately outed transwomen in the 1980s and 1990s. Knowing that there were no protections for those transwoman from reactions like being fired, or losing their homes, or facing transphobic violence and rejection from their communities.

I could forgive Germaine this if it was a view she held thirty years ago, and after listening to transpeople and those for whom the gender binary just does not fit, she could re-examine those views. After all, we're all capable of getting things wrong and changing our minds. But some of this transphobia is recent, and even though I abhor the way Germaine is criticised on the basis of her age, the fact is this is hate speech.

I've loved being a girl since I knew I was one, I've loved messing with gender in terms of what I wear or how I cut my hair since I had control over these things. I love that I can throw seventy metres, like a girl, and do many, many other things which traditional gender roles told me I shouldn't.

Despite my gender play, I'm comfortable in the gender I was assigned at birth. This means going to see Germaine would feel like treachery to those experiencing an oppression I'm privileged around. A very different thing, for me, than listening to an expert in challenging racism express homophobia.

Protest anyone?

Guest Post: #transphobictampons: It’s Not Offensive, It’s Oppressive

This post was originally posted on the Workers Party blog.  It's by Kassie Hartendorp, Workers Party member and Queer Avenger.  Thanks Kassie for letting us repost it.

At the end of 2011, an advertisement for Libra tampons was pulled from air after members from the queer community called out the company for its transphobia. Many argued that the company was sending a strong message to those who did not identify as the gender they were assigned at birth, that they were not as ‘authentic’ as their biological counterparts.

The issue was framed as being problematic for only a small amount of ‘oversensitive’ members of the trans community but the advertisement can be linked back to the way that negative images work to oppress many on the gender and sexuality spectrum.

Featured on Australian and NZ television, as well as the Libra website and Youtube, the advertisement featured two women applying their make-up in a bathroom at a club. One appears to be a cis-woman[1] and the other appears to be a drag queen. The two embark on a competition to see who the ‘real woman’ is by both putting on mascara, lipgloss and adjusting their breasts. The contest is ‘won’ when the cis-woman pulls out her Libra tampon causing the drag queen to storm off defeated, due to her apparent biological deficiency – the fact that she cannot menstruate like her cis counterpart.

Comments flowed in on the Libra Facebook page and various news, blog and social networking sites accusing Libra of being, at best ignorant, at worst, blatantly transphobic and misogynist. Those who spoke out were labelled as being ‘too sensitive’ and disregarded the issue as ‘political correctness gone wild.’ The main discourse being used, or ways of talking about the advertisement were framed around the idea of ‘personal offence.’ Some gender variant people made the argument that they were not offended, which implied that the whole issue was moot. The drag queen appearing in the advertisement made the public announcement that she saw no need to apologise and saw the problem as coming from a ‘small portion of the trans community’ who have ‘chosen to view the ad as a personal attack.’

Aside from the fact that most gender variant people do not ‘choose’ to feel attacked by advertisements that use their often difficult lives as the butt of a joke by a multimillion dollar corporation, the entire framing of the discussion should be readjusted. Advertisements such as this one should be seen as having an oppressive effect, rather than an offensive one.

Labelling a comment, slur or stereotype as offensive, lowers the problem to that of the individual rather than identifying it as a structural problem. Someone could be offended by loud music or bright coloured clothing. An old co-worker of mine felt personally offended every time she saw someone wearing pyjama pants tucked into Ugg boots to a shopping mall. At the same time, someone can be offended by a woman who strongly speaks out in a male-dominated environment, or a queer couple holding hands down the street. A corporation could be offended when a marginalised community protests against their transphobic advertisement – a CEO could feel personally attacked in much the same way as those being degraded or insulted by their media campaign.

The point here, is that while offence is an important component in this debate, it cannot be the only way in which we describe and discuss how media and oppression works. As one blogger puts it: “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can mobilize an entire society in violent hate against me.” Depicting a gender variant person as being ‘less woman’ than a cisgendered woman due to the fact she does not menstruate is oppressive. Reinforcing a gender binary that assumes and expects that you fit into one gender category or the other is oppressive. Profiting off the fear of someone not being able to fit into one of these gender categories is oppressive. These are not personal attacks on individual members of the trans community; they are the product of an oppressive system.

Issues of oppression need to be understood at a material basis – that is, not just social phenomena that happen to random individuals, which only make sense through a lens of personal experience. Transgender people are the subjects of discrimination when it comes to basic rights such as employment, housing and medical care, as well as being threatened by verbal and physical harassment in their daily lives. This oppression is at its very core, structural as it is reproduced within institutions such as workplaces, hospitals, schools and governmental agencies. While, these oppressive forces can be clearly felt on a personal basis, the way of articulating the problem and arming against its destructive effects must be done on a wider level that takes our economic and social system into account.

Capitalism is often thought of as just an economic system but it should also be understood as a social relation. How we relate to each other as individuals, groups and identities is shaped by capitalist logic. These social relations, such as the gender binary, are reproduced through the capitalist media.

While gains have most certainly been made, trans people are often stigmatised, insulted and ridiculed within the mainstream media. The Libra advertisement is just another message that reinforces the oppressive idea that gender variant people are second class citizens. If you ask any transgender person, they will feel the very real effects of this at some point in their lives, if not on a daily basis. Furthermore, it cannot be forgotten that a company is profiting off these very messages because of an advertising industry that uses fear and division as a tool to sell products.

Many members of the queer community failed to recognise the oppressive nature of the message the advertisement sent. If we are going to combat queer oppression that has negative effects on both same-sex attracted people and the gender variant population, there needs to be a recognition that an attack on the trans community is an attack on us all. We need to shift away from the mode of thinking that blames the individual for taking a ‘personal offence’ at an oppressive act.

An advertisement may seem small, but it is one building block of many that have over history, built a mighty wall of structural oppression. Unfortunately that one brick isn’t going to cause the whole wall to crumble, but if we can together get a foothold, and find the right tools to start chiselling away at those ruptures, then maybe we can tear it down and build a world in which no-one is treated as second class.

*****
[1] Cisgendered or cis-woman: Identifying as the gender assigned at birth. Equivalent term to “trans,” identifying differently to the gender assigned at birth.

Benchmarking masculinity with Sam Orchard

Awesome resource I got from the Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programmes on negotiating consent if you're a transman or want to be sexual with a transman, featuring local cartoonist Sam Orchard:

Guest Post: Review Colonising Myths—Māori Realities: He Rukuruku Whakaaro

I’ve been struggling with this review for a couple of weeks now.  Do I start with a disclaimer?  I was formally a student of Ani’s for three years, she is now my immediate boss, and I am part of Te Tākupu who jointly published her book (with Huia Publishers).  But I admit no bias—the first time I read Ani’s writing I was stunned.  Her writing is passionate, intelligent, brave and clear.  She doesn’t disguise her emotions with academic disinterest—she speaks honestly about what drives her, be it despair, frustration or wonder.  She doesn’t hide her assumptions and logic behind jargon or convoluted arguments—her writing is so clear that her thoughts are exposed for the reader to judge.  Often, she takes a topic that is supposed to be complicated, and strips it back to simple truths and lies.  It is for all these reasons that I choose to continue to learn from her, and why I am so excited by this book.

”It is crucial that Māori continue to think and to imagine beyond the intellectual imprisonment of what our colonisers deem to be realistic.  So long as we do, and so long as we do so in concert with our Indigenous sisters and brothers in our common struggle for self-determination, who can predict where the relation of forces may lead us” (p 204)

The book is arranged into five sections (twelve essays in total, most previously published, two written for this book), which together form a trajectory hinting at where those forces may first take us.

• Stories of survival: working inside the imposter legal system



• Talking back: a Māori view of Pākehā hopes and misconceptions



• The relationship between tangata whenua and the Crown



• Tikanga Māori and Western values



• Tikanga at the centre

Starting within Pākehā law schools, where Māoriness was so marginalised that Ani’s priority was her and her students’ survival, the first three essays are revealing, upsetting, and strangely affirming.  Pākehā may find them uncomfortably familiar.  They should be compulsory reading for anyone teaching in a Pākehā dominated school, and everyone at university (if only I had the power to make it so).  By focusing on her experience, these essays show the strain that Pākehā ignorance of their monoculturalism/ cultural imperialism puts on Māori.  Māori staff and students are always expected to be gracious and generous in supporting the learning of Pākehā, despite the racism and cowardliness that those Pākehā may show.  Ani talks of dissatisfaction, despair, hopelessness and despondency.  Whilst caught up in the day-to-day grind of striving to create a space for Māori within the confines of Pākehā law... it was extraordinarily difficult to achieve any true clarity of analysis with respect to my objectives or my actions. (p xix)

In the second section, Ani moves from the Pākehā law school environment to working at Te Wānanga o Raukawa, where Māoriness is at the centre.  This gives her freedom to react against the system she had been trapped in, to explore her frustration with the “misconceptions” that many Pākehā have about their history and place in the world, and the cynical way this ignorance is used against Māori.  The irony of being lectured by Trevor Mallard on the necessity for Māori to trust the perpetrators of our oppression is, quite frankly, breathtaking. (p 117)

“As a first step, Pākehā need to own up to the truth about how they have come to occupy their position of dominance in our country – and to deal with it...  The ease with which Pākehā cast themselves as victims of their own past never fails to amaze me.” (p 91)

The two articles in this section were written with a Pākehā audience in mind, but there is a lot here for Māori readers.


By the third section, Ani is focused on the relationship tangata whenua have with the Crown, a relationship that she argues should be based on tikanga.  She tears apart Treaty jurisprudence, exposing Treaty principles as a lie.  She challenges Māori to address social harm by first rejecting the Crown legal system.  She breaks down the Crown’s criminality towards Māori.

”The Crown has been responsible for a relentless campaign of criminal violence against us.  Every day that it continues to assert its authority in this land, it demonstrates that violence carries its reward and that crime pays.  It has vicously attacked our physical, social, emotional and spiritual well-being over a long period of time, thus setting in train a crippling cycle of violence from which some of us, unsurprisingly, have struggled to escape.”

Having argued that tikanga Māori is the only legitimate way forward, in the fourth section, Ani shows how colonisation has affected our understanding of tikanga.  She includes two essays confronting patriarchy head on, powerfully and beautifully.  This is the work she is most famous for.  She concludes this section with a discussion of the way Crown law has incorporated or co-opted aspects of tikanga.

By this point, Ani has shown how destructive a Pākehā dominated environment is for Māori.  She has established that Pākehā need to face the future with an honest understanding of the past, and willingness to engage with Māori to heal that past.  She has exposed the abusive, victim-blaming relationship that the Crown forces on Māori.  And she has shown that colonisation has even infected our understanding of tikanga.  Even so, she has consistently argued that tikanga Māori holds the only appropriate solution.  In the final section, Ani explores tikanga Māori.  The two papers in this section are wide-ranging and inspirational.  Ani places whakapapa at the centre of all tikanga.  Whakapapa dictates that relationships are of paramount importance: relationships between past, present and future generations – which include, by necessity, relationships between humans and atua and, therefore, between humans and all other living things –must be nurtured. (p 289)  She speaks of a whakapapa imperative behind the drive to save our reo or repatriate our taonga.  This is an inclusive, non-hierarchical and practical philosophy, always striving for balance.

Ani’s examination of the implications of a worldview based on whakapapa is an uplifting end to a book which has laid many challenges.  This is the final stage, returning to the past to secure the future.

Kia ū ki tōu kāwai tupuna

Kia mātauria ai, i ahu mai koe i hea
E anga ana koe ki hea

Trace out your ancestral stem
So that it may be known where you come fromAnd in which direction you are going.

Details
Colonising Myths—Māori Realities: He Rukuruku Whakaaro
Ani Mikaere 2011
Preface by Moana Jackson
Published by Huia Publishers and Te Tākupu, Te Wānanga-o-Raukawa
339 pages plus index

When I grow up I want to be an old woman

I don't know much about Age Concern, though I respect their work identifying elder abuse in New Zealand, where we have four referrals each day, and like most other kinds of intimate violence, women are over-represented at 65-70% of those referrals.

I do know I hate the poster I walk past in their national office every morning, which, irritatingly enough I can't seem to find online. All I can find is this, part of one of their Annual Reports:


This is some of the poster adorning their national office, but not all. The rest of it features more white men. In fact, it ends up with men outnumbering women (despite there being 122 women to every 100 men after age 65) and with no one recognisably Pacifica or Maori. I don't think the woman second from the left on the bottom features either, I think the sole representative of people of colour is the man on the right at the bottom.

Obviously there's dangers in judging ethnicity or cultural identity by just looking at people, but I think it should be possible for Age Concern to have recognisably Maori and Pacifica symbols and people on their main poster, just like the rest of the Annual Report cover.

Then there's what people are doing. In this version, and in the national office poster, the women are smiling. The men are pointing or playing sport and I think there might be another white man doing something important, but we don't want women to be worrying our pretty heads with such things, do we?

I'm going to one cantankerous old woman, let me tell you, if all I get to do is smile after I turn 65. Best I start wearing purple now.

Uncomfortable Overlaps

A few years ago, I sought counselling from a feminist organisation. I had effectively untreated and quite serious PTSD from events earlier in my life, and there were a couple of other smaller stresses on me at that time. I've never had a good time with counselors; my previous experiences had ranged from outright homophobia and pretty significant verbal abuse to my pissing them off for reasons I simply couldn't identify. Suffice it to say that I didn't try again until I really needed to.

Said feminist organisation was the only option - at least that I was aware of - that was possible given my budget. I wasn't comfortable with it from the start; I knew people whose employment or voluntary work brought them into contact with it in a professional capacity. Rationally, most of the people I had in mind were caring and supportive - or at least capable of acting so. But every week I sat in the waiting room on the verge of throwing up from the fear that I would meet someone I knew and explain that I was not there in my usual activist role. However much I believed there was no shame in being there, I was utterly ashamed.

This post is an attempt to untangle, both from personal experience and a more theoretical standpoint some of the issues around the uncomfortable intersection between the activist community and the provisions and receipt of services (none of these are ideal terms, but I lack better ones). And the first point is criticism. Because my experience wasn't good. It involved - and I won't go into the details - significant amounts of implied victim blaming, repeated dismissal of my disabilities, telling me to do things I'd explicitly identified as triggering and ultimately - when the counselor left the service -  dropping me when I was in an obviously incredibly vulnerable state without any kind of follow up.

Yet I really hesitated about writing this post. It's been brewing in my head for a while, and I'm still not sure if I'll actually click 'publish'. And one of the reasons is I feel uncomfortable criticising this organisation when I know many people who do important work to support it. I don't think I personally know anyone who works or volunteers there, but I could. They're the sort of people I organise events alongside, go to meetings with, march with. It goes against a lot of instinct - even though the only place my criticism gets personal is against that one counsellor - to criticise when we should be standing together against some scary common enemy, or something like that. Moreover, I know this organisation and others like it are horribly underfunded and need support - and they do help a lot of people and I really don't want to undermine that in any way. It's not a new, or an unusual quandry - how to criticise from within a marginalised group or perspective without reinforcing that coming from without, but I think it has a particularly concerning place here.

The second point is about supporting people who are within activist groups. This is a much bigger topic than I have the scope for here, and a lot has been written about it. But all I've found is centred on two things; one is when someone is being supported with an issue that relates to the group (for example abuse by another group member) or short term support - such as someone being triggered within a meeting. I don't necessarily consider this a bad thing, or that activist groups should be taking on long term support roles - in fact, I think often the danger is taking on too much and it is better to draw a clear line around what can and can't be done well. But where activism and service provision are mixed, things can become problematic, and I'm not sure a lot of people involved even note this as an issue.

Part of this relates to heirarchy. This is not to discount the hierarchy present within activist organisations, and part of this is personal - I really struggle with interacting with medical and related services and I tend to thrive in environments where I get to talk loudly, organise things and play with websites and mailing lists. I appreciate this isn't universal. But the movement of the same people, involving the same issues, between the fuzzy, ill defined and informal roles and heirarchy of informal activist groups and the really clear cut roles of (say) counsellor and client is not necessarily an easy one. And then - more simply but perhaps hard to resolve - simpler issues like confidentiality and how relationships change between spaces.

I think also, there are different stories told in service provision and activist groups. I'm sure there are a lot of exceptions to these, as there are people about whom they are true, but as much as anything it's the assumptions that are made that's relevant. One, by (generally charitable) service providers, is of the client who comes to them with a problem; usually there are multiple things wrong in their life. They are helped by the organisation, they grow in confidence. They volunteer for the group and become a campaigner on the issue they experienced. The other story is - well I've found it most common in socialist groups, particularly around sexual orientation, but I think it's wider than that - of people who participate in activism for a cause, perhaps defending people they care about, perhaps because it relates to something else they're involved in, perhaps seeing it in pretty abstract terms initially. It's that involvement that gives them the knowledge and confidence to address it in their own lives.

And there are problems - probably for both groups - in reconciling these two stories. It was really hard to explain that yes, I'd organised a reclaim the night march (hey look, there's the poster for it on the wall right there), yes, I'd blogged for the best part of the year on victim blaming, but that doesn't mean that I haven't internalised a whole lot of these ideas.

The third angle I wanted to talk about was exclusion. Whilst the counselor crossed some very clear lines with me, as others have done, I'm increasingly seeing my general negative interactions in terms of my disability status. I didn't fit into the typical mold of people they catered for, and they didn't cater for me. The lack of acknowledgement or understanding of this is what makes it particularly problematic, but even with that, it's exclusionary.

I'm reasonably confident in my response to groups that deliberately discriminate against groups of people (it ain't positive). I also recognise that they cannot provide services to all people, and that there are legitimate limits to what they can and can't do. But this indirect exclusion becomes more difficult when there are discrepancies between a funded service provider that may well have a mandate to meet the more typical needs of the majority, versus a dynamic where questioning such exclusions is a discussion that comes naturally to some of the members.

On a personal level, I found options that worked for me and I am doing much better now. Options that required having someone to help me research them, and a disposable income, both of which I had, neither of which should be expected. On a more general level... once again, I feel only that I have a whole heap of issues to raise and no solutions to offer, but it's a start.

Comment direction: no speculation about the identities of individuals and organisations involved please. It makes me really uncomfortable and isn't relevant. I ask you to remember that this post represents my thoughts and experiences and not necessarily those of anyone else at THM.