The Odds & Ends Drawer

In the Drawer this time:

• Megan deals to the boy in aertex who proclaims that women's lib has gone too far.


• Deborah has a great post on the Menspace that is most of the NZ political blogworld.


• Lyn analyses the Maroon 5 & Rhianna video and finds it somewhat wanting.


• Idiot/Savant picks up on Anjum's post here about the Kate Wilkinson-Kiwisaver incident and concludes that it's another case of National blaming the woman when it's their Boys Club culture that is at fault.


• Sophie shares her observations of the changes in farming as more women have become involved in the industry.


• QoT sends a message to the medical profession about the weird way in which they deal with lady bits.


• Helen has a slice of life: mouse catching. Please let me know how you get on as we have our own furry flatmate.


• Make Tea Not War writes about her views of parenting in response to a meme on the subject that LitLove is circulating so that she can gather material for a book she is writing on mothers.

And, a new section of The O&E Drawer, blogs added to the blogroll since last time:

• Mightier Than Any Sword by Anne-Marie
• A Tale of Two Cities by Liz Shaw
• Philipa Bean
• Big Girl's Blouse - potentially NSFW, depending on your workplace!
• Ideologically Impure by QoT

Feel free to link to your own stuff in comments :-)

Friday Feminist - Marilyn Frye (2)

Cross posted on In a Strange Land

... the male door opening ritual. This ritual, which is remarkably widespread across classes and races, puzzles many people, some of whom do and some of who do not find it offensive. Look at the scene of two people approaching a door. The male steps slightly ahead and opens the door. The male holds the door open while the female glides through. Then the male goes through. The door closes after them. "Now how', one innocently asks, "can those crazy womenslibbers say that is oppressive? The guy removed a barrier to the lady's smooth and unruffled progress" But each repetition of this ritual has a place in a pattern, in fact in several patterns. One has to shift the level of one's perception to see the whole picture.

The door-opening pretends to be a helpful service, but the helpfulness is false. This can be seen by nothing [as much as] that it will be done whether or not it makes any practical sense. Infirm men and men burdened with packages will open doors for able-bodied women who are free of physical burdens. Men will impose themselves awkwardly and jostle everyone in order to get to the door first. The act is not determined by convenience or grace. Furthermore, these very numerous acts of unneeded of even noisome "help" occur in counterpoint to a pattern of men not being helpful in many practical ways in which women might welcome help. What women experience is a world in which gallant princes charming commonly make a fuss about being helpful and providing small services when help and services are of little or no use, but in which there are rarely ingenious and adroit princes at hand when substantial assistance is really wanted in either mundane affairs or in situations of threat, assault or terror. There is no help with the (his) laundry; not help with typing a report at 4.00am,; no help in mediating disputes among relatives or children. There is nothing but advice that women should stay indoors after dark, be chaperoned by a man, or when it comes down to it, "lie back and enjoy it."

The gallant gestures have no practical meaning. Their meaning is symbolic. The door-opening and similar services provided are services which really are needed by people who are for one reason or another incapacitated - unwell, burdened with parcels, etc. So the message is that women are incapable. The detachment of the acts from the concrete realities of what women need and do not need is a vehicle for the message that women's actual needs and interests are unimportant or irrelevant. Finally, these gestures imitate the behaviour of servants towards masters and thus mock women, who are in most respects the servants and caretakers of men. The message of the false helpfulness of male gallantry is female dependence, the invisibility or insignificance of women, and contempt for women.

Marilyn Frye, "Oppression," in The Politics of Reality, 1983

Pain in the ASA

Further to yesterday's quick update on the saga of ALAC's Lisa ad, this is what I've emailed to asa@asa.co.nz today, in response to the decision they sent me a copy of. The letter and decision I have received are identical to those Joanna has typed up at Hubris, and you can even view a word document of the decision here (curtsy to Art and My Life for the link). And yes my letter also states "Do not contact me should you have any further queries." (my emphasis, note the absence of the usual please at the beginning!) For this reason I have sent the below to the email listed on their letterhead. Hopefully it will get to the right person/s.

To Whom It May Concern

Re: My complaint to the ASA in regard to ALAC's "Lisa" advert, submitted via the ASA website on 2nd May 2008

1. Concerns in relation to process:
1.1 The decision that my complaint was not to proceed appears to have been taken before I had made the complaint.
My complaint appears to have been addressed along with a number of others regarding the advert in question, in particular the complaint of C Smith, labelled Complaint 08/183. The summary of the decision made by the Chairman is dated 15 April 2008. I did not send my complaint in until 2 May 2008. Therefore it appears that the Chairman, or the Complaints Board, have not in fact even read my complaint prior to dismissing it.

1.2 The decision is based on a complaint quite different in nature from mine.
The basis of my complaint was that it perpetuated a number of rape myths, which I wrote about at some length, including quoting research that debunked the common perceptions that the Lisa advert is reinforcing (namely women are most at risk of stranger rape, that rape happens in dark alleys, etc). In particular I was very concerned that the Lisa ad is blaming the victim for the actions of a rapist. However Complaint 08/183, from C Smith, is quoted in the decision as being:

"...sexual assault (even if it is only inferred) has no place in an advertisement where there is no warning as to content."

This is completely different in nature to my complaint. The decision goes on to state that "Duplicate Complainants raised similar issues." I do not see how my complaint, on the grounds of perpetuating dangerous rape myths, is similar to or duplicates being concerned that a sexual assault is depicted without a warning. I did not mention any complaint of that nature in my submission to the ASA. I am therefore not satisified that the ASA has considered the points raised in my complaint, as the decision used to dismiss my complaint deals with another complaint about a different matter entirely.

1.3. Not all provisions complained under were considered
The decision in relation to Complaint 08/183 mentions that the relevant provisions were Basic Principle 4 and Rules 5, 7 and 11, of the Code of Ethics. My complaint was also made on the grounds of Basic Principle 3, which I consider highly relevant. Basic Principle 3 states:

3. No advertisement should be misleading or deceptive or likely to mislead or deceive the consumer.

While I do consider Basic Principle 4 to be the most important here, as it requires advertisements to "be prepared with a due sense of social responsibility to consumers and society," again the decision does give the impression that the Chairman has not in fact looked at my complaint at all, as it does not mention both principles under which I complained.


2. Concerns in relation to substance:
I will not reiterate my original complaint here, although I have attached a copy of it for your consideration at the next available opportunity. However I do have an additional point to raise which I hope the ASA will also consider, along with my original complaint.

2.1 Impact of the Lisa advert on victims of rape and sexual assault
Since writing to the ASA, and ALAC, with my concerns about the Lisa ad I have been contacted by a number of women who have experienced rape and/or sexual assault. They have mentioned the guilt that they have felt for the violation they suffered, in particular because they had been drinking when it occurred. In some cases their inebriation caused them not to go to the police to report the crime, and as a result the rapist did not face accountability for their actions. These women have told me how difficult it is for them to watch the Lisa ad, and that it merely reinforces the guilt that they have often taken some years to rightfully absolve themselves of. Many of these women have also had to deal with others blaming them for the actions of a rapist, because they were drunk when the assault occurred, and the Lisa advert is only encouraging this unfair blaming to continue in our community. Here are a number of quotes from one of the woman who has contacted me, and who has given me permission to share her story (here I have included some of Anna McM's excellent and courageous post).

I hope this gives you some idea of the impact that the Lisa ad is having on actual real women who have been in this situation.

3. Desired outcome:

I would like the ASA to actually consider my complaint, and the additional point I have raised above in 2.1. Currently the impression I have formed from the letter I received from the Deputy Secretary, and the attached decision in relation to Complaint 08/183, is that ASA has not considered any complaint in relation to the Lisa advert, except that of C Smith which does not raise the same concerns as mine. Until such time as I receive correspondence that indicates otherwise I will be assuming, based on the evidence to date, that the ASA complaints procedure has yet to deal with my complaint of 2 May 2008. I would appreciate it if my complaint could be tabled at the next meeting which deals with these matters.

3. In Summary
At this stage it appears to me that the ASA have found that my complaint has "no grounds to proceed" without actually considering it (see points 1.1 - 1.3 above).

I am aware that the appeal process of the ASA requires that a complainant make such an appeal within 14 days of receiving a decision in regard to their complaint. As I have not yet received a decision in regard to my complaint this letter is not a request for the Appeals Board to consider the matter. I am emailing today to insist that the ASA actually consider my complaint, and those of any other complainants who have been similarly treated.

As the only body which regulates advertising in NZ the ASA has an important public role in aiding citizens to have their say over advertisements that concern them. To date the ASA has not fulfilled its civic duty in regard to my complaint, and a number of others that I am aware of that are on similar grounds (and not the grounds of C Smith's complaint). I hope that this oversight can be addressed quickly and fairly.

I look forward to your response and thank you for your attention to this matter.

Yours etc,

---

Ok, I'm thinking about other ways to raise these concerns, and I'm hoping to write about that in the next few days. I've emailed Rape Crisis (now called Rape Prevention Education) and Auckland Sexual Abuse Help for their thoughts on the whole shemozzle, and I'm going to write to Green MP Sue Bradford and see what she thinks too.

Any ideas please add them in comments. At this point I'm kind of reticient about going to the media directly as it is old news to them and I'm not sure I'm a good person to front this sort of issue, given that I've not suffered a sexual assault and I'm also a teetotaller.

Also, here's a post from Charlotte on the victim-blaming in the ad, which I only just managed to get to reading today. Apologies for not linking to it sooner.

---

If this post confuses you, or you are looking for the back story, you can find all our posts about the Lisa advert so far, and no doubt whatever we write in the future, in our Rape Is Not Ok section.

Quick Update on the "Lisa" ad, ALAC and the ASA decision

I received my response from the ASA in regard to my complaint about the "Lisa" advert ALAC is running, it was in the post on Saturday (I just forgot to clear the letterbox). The ASA response I've had is the same as what Joanna received, and is actually worse than the reply from ALAC. I' using the word "response" here, but in fact it doesn't respond to the points I raised. For one thing, the decision "not to proceed" with my complaint was taken before I actually made it...

I'm going to write more about this soon. I'm going to write back to ALAC, and I'm going to at least write back to the ASA and possibly to the Complaints Appeal Board as I have issues with their process as well as the actual decision made. I want to do it all when I have time to do it properly, preferably in one go. Wriggly hasn't been cooperating with my need for typing time lately (really, he is acting like a total baby) but we are getting back to our vague routine again now. There is something intrinsically wrong with a world where I have to wash sleepy suits before I can blog ;-)

While I've been off blog a number of others have written about this whole situation, and I firmly recommend that you have a gander, if you haven't already.

• Motivated by fury not despair - Joanna at Hubris
• Just fuck you ALAC. Fuck you and fuck the horse you rode in on - QoT at Ideologically Impure
• Nobody likes a smart ALAC - our own Anna McM
• Asking for it - Jill from Jilling Off (sorry I missed this in earlier round-ups)
  What's wrong with this picture, ALAC? - Anna McM uses ALAC's logic on Asians instead of women

And I've just found this approval of the Lisa ad from Family Planning, who seem to ignore the fact that it isn't about drunken sex it's about rape. Presumably this is one of the social agencies that ALAC reckoned they had discussed the ad with before screening. I'd be really angry if I wasn't so sad.

Particularly powerful are the personal stories of women who have been assaulted whilst drunk, and the guilt they felt; guilt ALAC's advertisement is reinforcing and fuelling. It's an angle, an important one, that I hadn't considered until Anna brought it to my attention, and I think it strikes at the heart of the problem with the "Lisa" ad - it encourages women to feel responsible for rape, and it discourages them from going to the police.

Ok, hopefully more tomorrow or the next day. If anyone else is considering going to the Complaints Appeal Board of the ASA then you have to do so within a fortnight of receiving the decision. That's all I know about the process at this stage, but I'll find out more.

I couldn't help but wonder...

Two intelligent, feminist, New Zealand women are waiting at a tram stop in a highly international city. One of them works for NZAID, the other for a UN disaster agency. They have both just seen the Sex and the City movie.

'Um.'
'Am I asleep? I feel like I'm asleep.'
'Hmm.'
'Wouldn't it be great if you had Sarah Jessica Parker's voiceover in your head all the time, telling you exactly what was happening in front of you, so you'd never have to think.'
'That was a long movie. It wasn't as bad as I expected.'
'It was as bad as I expected, but I enjoyed it. I think half my brain has been switched off. It feels good. Numb. It's the top half. The half with the earthquake and the cyclone in it.'
'Do you need a tram ticket?'
'No, I have one of those, um... things. Which mean you don't need a ticket. The name of which. Is French. I can't remember the word. The only words I can bring to mind right now are... like... shoes... handbags...'
'What are you doing on Saturday?'
'Um. Doing. Saturday. Uh... Shoes? Um... handbags? Restaurants?'
'Dior? Chanel?'
'On Saturday, uh... what's the word... Marriage? Apartments? Money? Um... Dresses? Shoes?'
'...'
'...Cake?'
'mmm, cake.'
'I don't even like shoes.'

Let's make the first one a real beauty

The inaugural Down Under Feminists Carnival is coming up soon, and you have until the end of the month to get your submissions in. The criteria are casual and relaxed - the way we like it around here, perhaps. Carnival founder, and opening night host Lauredhel, of Hoyden fame, says that: Anything feminist posted in May from an Australian or New Zealander blogger is fair game.

So have a look though your posts, and send a submission, using the blog carnival form that Lauredhel has set up.

Now is good! Submissions close on 31 May, and the carnival will appear sometime in early June.

The carnival home page is here, and the submission form is here. Be patient with the submission form; I have found that once I have filled in the first box, and clicked on the next, it has a little think, then fills in most of the rest of the form all by itself.

Other things you can do to support the carnival:
- Put the sidebar button on your own blog, and link it to the carnival homepage (ahem... - ah, Julie.... can we do that here?)
- Contact the awesome carnival founder, Lauredhel, and offer to host the carnival. Lauredhel uses gmail, and her user name there is lauredhelhoyden

oops

i saw this small article on the stuff website today, which links back to deborah's piece last week. it seems the young woman who decided to strip in response to wolfwhistles seems to have some deeper problems. i only highlight this to show that her act (of stripping) was perhaps not as strong as it seems. it would be interesting to know what the bar worker might have said (if anything) to provoke such an attack by her - possibly some reference to the recent publicity she had received? the article doesn't tell us if the bar worker was male or female. in any case, it's a sad development for her, and an inexcusable act of violence. there must be a better way of fighting back (hollaback, if you will) than this.


on another note, in all the furore that has resulted from kate wilkinson misspeaking (thank you hilary for a new word!) this morning, there was one aspect that seemed a little odd to me. mr key, in responding to media questions this afternoon, said "she's not involved in designing our kiwisaver scheme".

which is odd. why is she spokesperson in that area, or why was she sent to represent the party at this particular breakfast if she has absolutely no hand in developing policy on this issue, or is not even made aware of developments? what precisely is the role of spokespeople then, in the national party, and who is responsible for developing their policies?

as i was pondering these questions, i thought i'd have a look at the roles national women MPs currently hold. and here they are:

Paula Bennet: Associate Education (early childhood); Associate Welfare, Associate Labour & Industrial Relations

Jackie Blue: Women’s Affairs; Associate Health

Judith Collins: Family Affairs, Pacific Island Affairs, Welfare, Veteran’s Affairs

Jacqui Dean: Archives NZ; Associate Environment & RMA

Jo Goodhew: Associate Health

Sandra Goudie: Internal Affairs, Senior Citizens; Associate Local Government

Katrina Shanks: Associate Commerce, Associate Economic Development

Georgina te Heuheu: Maori Affairs (culture & development); Associate Defence

Anne Tolley: Education; Associate Welfare (CYFS)

Nicky Wagner: Youth Affairs; Associate Arts, Culture & Heritage, Associate Environment & RMA

Kate Wilkinson: Consumer Affairs, Labour & Industrial Relations; Associate Justice

Pansy Wong: ACC, Ethnic Affairs; Associate Education (international education), Associate Immigration

the missing woman in katherine rich, who understandably no longer has any portfolios. there aren't too many spokesperson roles for the women, and most of them relate to minor portfolios. the only major ones to go the women are welfare and education, possibly labour & industrial relations. and that's it. all the rest are minor portfolios or associate roles.

i'll concede that there aren't too many women to spread portfolios across. even so, compare this with labour women, who have major portfolios like justice, police, transport, commerce, customs, housing, as well as social development & employment. not to mention a woman prime minister and a woman speaker of the house.

it's sad that women of many years of experience such as pansy wong and georgina te heuheu are so underutilised (i actually have a lot of time for georgina, she's a nice person). the portfolio allocations above also show that national don't seem to be too serious about developing their women MPs to take on more senior roles in the party. there's possibly a health portfolio to come to dr jackie blue if tony ryall ever resigns and she can push aside dr jonathon coleman; i doubt kate wilkinson will be in line to take over justice now nor will simon power be stepping down soon. but that is it. no other major portfolios will be coming to this group of women in the short to medium term (assuming you have to get experience in an associate role before getting to be the main spokesperson). if they do get one or two new women MPs after the election, they certainly won't be in a position to take on major roles.

i don't think this is good enough from one of our major parties. they may very well say that they promote people on merit, not on gender. that seems to imply that their women MPs are not capable enough for promotion, which is not only a slap on the face, but also begs the question: why are they there then?

actually, i do feel sorry for kate wilkinson. we all make mistakes and although this is a major one (in that it involves committing her party to $2.4 billion of expenditure), i hope that her leadership is forgiving. given the line-up above, they can't really afford to be demoting their women MPs.

What's wrong with this picture, ALAC?

Asian people should not go out at night in Christchurch. Christchurch has a high level of racial violence. If Asian people could be kept from going out at night, racial violence would be reduced; therefore, Asian people ought to stay at home to prevent violence. That's just common sense. The Asian person who goes out at night, knowing that racial violence is a possibility, is at best irresponsible. You'd almost have to wonder if such a person actually wants to be assaulted.

If this sounds like crap, that's because it's crap.

ALAC claims that its 'Lisa' ad has had an impact on its target audience, and I've no doubt this is true. The ad's message is that the world is a dangerous, misogynistic place. Individual women must arrange our lives around this fact, hoping that if we stay sober, lock our doors and dress modestly, the inevitable lurking rapist will pass us by - presumably on his way to target some other, less cautious, female. Viewed this way, sexual violence looks like a problem facing unlucky or drunk individual women, not as a societal issue to which everyone has a responsibility to respond.

There are many good reasons to avoid drinking to excess. Trying to curb the criminal actions of others is not one of them.

Feminist Events: Oppose the plan to gut Gender & Women's Studies at Vic

QoT at Ideologically Impure has all the goss on this one, please go have a read, it won't take long.

There is a protest tomorrow (Wednesday 28th May) from 12noon in the courtyard of the Hunter Building, Victoria University of Wellington, which is not just about the proposal to carve up Gender & Women's Studies but also about voicing concern about the tenor of recent restructuring at Vic. Some may remember that Film Studies was the last target, I'm pretty sure I heard an interview about it on National Radio in April sometime. Education is apparently also on the block this time around.

I never took Women's Studies at Auckland (although I once went out with a guy who did), but it seems to me to be an integral part of the critique and conscience role of any major university. And, as QoT ably points out, the Vic department seems to be meeting the financial targets necessary, so what is the point of fixing something that isn't broken?

Monday Funday - In Black and White

This one's for anyone who, like me, gets irritated with those who argue "chairman" is a gender neutral term. It's a 1985 "Person Paper" written by Douglas Hofstadter under the moniker William Safire, and it imagines a world where "black libbers" are challenging the dominance of whiteness in English (eg "one small step for a whitey, a giant step for whitekind"). Hofstadter is not arguing that there is no racism, but is instead punctuating a discussion about racism in a parallel universe with many of the objections faced by those who point out the sexism of the generic terms spokesman and Mankind.

Hofstadter has added a postscript to his essay which includes this observation:

My feeling about nonsexist English is that it is like a foreign language that I am learning. I find that even after years of practice, I still have to translate sometimes from my native language, which is sexist English. I know of no human being who speaks Nonsexist as their native tongue. It will be very interesting to see if such people come to exist. If so, it will have taken a lot of work by a lot of people to reach that point.

Has it really been 23 years already?

(Sorry for the delay in putting this up, I've been getting a lot less online time than I'd anticipated lately, although hopefully I'll be back to normal in the next day or two.)

Cross-post Because women are just baby machines....

Cross-posted at the ex-expat.

Vileness corner

Not to put a finer point on it but both breeders and non-breeders are going to have to rely on someone to change our adult diapers and keep the economy expanding while we are consuming our retirement savings and that someone is going to be those currently not potty trained. Whether this next generation is going to look out for us through the welfare state or because we are individually paying them to do is a moot point and one worthy of political debate.

But what shouldn't be in the political discourse is whether a woman, because apparently men's parental status is never up for discussion, who haven't had children being referred to as selfish. There could medical reasons, there could money reasons, there might be career reasons, their partner may not want to or they hadn't found a partner at all. All reasons that someone might not have had a child and not a crime against humanity for them to so. Because in the end it isn't anyone's business whether a women, or for that matter a man, makes the decision to breed or not to breed.

Talking of people killed by capitalism...

Folole Muliaga's daughter gave evidence at the inquest of her mother last week (see here although the link will break soon). The daughter talked of the way she was treated by hospital staff, who discharged Folole Muliaga because her bed was needed, and didn't tell the family how to care for her.

We were told that we should eat lots of vegetables. I found this lecture difficult to take because we were made to feel like failures and to blame. While I found these lectures very upsetting I was very polite and nodded my head.

The nurse who gave these lectures didn't ask what the Muliaga family ate, before telling them what was wrong with their diet.

The idea that we can all control our own health, if we have the right 'lifestyle' runs strong in our society. The underpinnings of this idea can be challenged in so many ways. But I think we need to reject the underlying ideology and see that the blame that Folole Muliaga's daughter felt isn't incidental to this idea, but it's raison d'etre. We're supposed to be distracted from all the other reasons why poor pacific island immigrants die in South Auckland, and blame the woman herself.

Foloe Muliaga's death is a tragedy for so many reasons, but the hospital system's culpability shouldn't be ignored, just because of the horrific role played by the power company.

Nobody likes a smart ALAC

Watching Julie's correspondence with ALAC over the 'Lisa' ad, I've veered between bemusement, anger and deep sadness. In her post, 'The risk of harm', Julie mentions her experience within an organisation she belonged to, during which a male in the organisation was unmasked as a sexual predator. The occasion of the unmasking was a sexual attack on another woman within the organisation, and that woman was me. It could have been you, and maybe on another occasion it was.

The incident occurred a few years ago. I was away from home attending a conference in Wellington, and at the end of the day a bunch of us from the conference went into town. I no longer drink, but in those days I certainly did, and that night I got really drunk. I could tell you why – alcohol seemed in those days to medicate a lifetime of chronic depression, I was a young mum away from her child for the first time, drinking is fun – but it has no bearing at all on what was to happen. I was drunk and I was acting the goat, loud and happy. The predator was at the pub, and during the night I gave him an exuberant, meaningless, drunken kiss.

At the end of the night, a bunch of us returned to the friend's house we were crashing at. The predator followed us back. Like everyone else, I went to bed. I have a memory which won't be erased of the predator, appearing silhouetted in the door of my room, while I looked at him in confusion. I was drunk and disorientated. I still don't understand why anyone would want to have sex with a person who is crying.

I couldn't report the incident to the Police. I never even gave it serious consideration, although I still agonise over the fact that, by failing to report it, I left the predator free to do the same thing to other women.

ACC paid for me to see a counsellor. The counsellor asked me to describe what had happened to me, and I duly did. 'That is very upsetting', she said, then honed in immediately on the drinking. Did I drink regularly? How much? All I'd really wanted from a counsellor – from anyone, really – was to sit with me, without judging, while I cried. That was the moment at which I decided to hide the incident away inside myself, and let it corrode me with guilt and unhappiness.

Five years on, this is the first time I've 'confessed'. I use this word because, in the face of my all my feminist logic, I cannot quell the feeling that I am to blame for my own attack by a guy who was a known danger to women. I'd like to say that it's cathartic to be open about it, but it's really just painful and humiliating. My culpability has been drummed into me by the counsellor, by anyone who equates women's drunkenness with their sexual availability, and now by ALAC. No matter how drunk a woman she is, her chance of rape is zero unless there is a rapist in her vicinity. Rape is not a form of drunken harm (and I do not wish to minimise the impacts of such harm). It is an act carried out by a criminal. The onus of stopping rape lies upon rapists, not victims. And yet the view that women increase their own chances of rape by drinking has damaged me, my integrity and my personhood, in a very profound way which I wouldn't wish on anybody.

And that's why the 'Lisa' ad disturbs me. Lisa will reflect on her attack the next day. She will know full well that she's a silly bitch in the eyes of others. She'd been so drunk she was staggering. She'd been dancing, by herself – provocatively, some might argue. She practically delivered herself into the hands of her rapist. When she considers whether to report the attack, she may wonder whether she has the courage to go to the Police, and from thence perhaps to court, where her drinking behaviour will be scrutinised; and although the words 'silly bitch' won't be uttered, they will be strongly implied. Lisa may choose simply to live, silently and alone, with the pain and the harm done her by her attacker. And if, like me, she lacks the strength to stand up and be judged as a silly drunken bitch, she leaves her attacker free to do it all again to other 'silly bitches'.

Tiny, tiny babies

I want to be really clear that I was relieved when I heard that Chris Kahui was found not guilty.* I've no idea who killed the Kahui twins,** it may have been Chris. But iff someone had gone to jail for their murder that wouldn't have made that person any less likely to be violent towards children in the future, and it won't stop another caregiver of a small child doing violence under stress. It might have served as punishment, but whoever killed two babies of their own family is punishing themselves already. All that's left is vengeance, and no-one has a right to claim vengeance in those babies names.

I do have a point I want to make, now that I've made it clear that I am not calling for a different verdict. From the very beginning, the defence painted Macsyna King as guilty, and they emphasised again and again what a bad mother she was. They talked of her going out with her sister, leaving Chris Kahui alone with the twins. This is from the summing up:

The twins were not victims of a one-off assault but had historic injuries, and it was "suspicious" their mother was not aware of these.

The Crown had accused Kahui's defence of blackening Ms King's reputation, but Mrs Smith said Ms King, through abandoning her other children and her drug use, had done that all by herself.

I don't think this defence would have been used or useful if the genders had been reversed. If hypothetical-Macsyna had been standing trial for their murder, then she would have not been able to use the fact that hypothetical-Chris had gone out partying all night, abandoned previous chidren and not noticed previous injuries to portray him as guilty. What is almost unforgivable in a mother, is almost acceptable in a father.

* I want to remind people that Chris Kahui spent several months in jail, while he was unable to get bail. During this time he was in physical danger, and so was kept in segregation, which would have meant 23 hour lock-down. The prominence, and swiftness, of the 'not guilty' verdict, doesn't seem to have led to a discussion about how he has already been punished.

** That is, which person inflicted the injuries. Because capitalism and colonialism played a large part in those babies deaths.

Friday Feminist - Marilyn Frye

Cross posted on In a Strange Land

Cages. Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around the wire any time it wanted to go somewhere. Furthermore, even if, one day at a time, you myopically inspected each wire, you still could not see why a bird would have trouble going past the wires to get anywhere. There is no physical property of any one wire, nothing that the closest scrutiny could discover, that will reveal how a bird could be inhibited or harmed by it except in the most accidental way. It is only when you step back, stop looking at the wires one by one, microscopically, and take a macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why the bird does not go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment. It will require no great subtlety of mental powers. It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon.

Marilyn Frye, "Oppression," in The Politics of Reality, 1983

The Risk of Harm

No one, man or woman, is ever asking for rape, no matter what they do. In my humble opinion if someone is too drunk to consent then that shouldn’t count as consent. I realize this isn’t the stance our justice system takes, due to issues around evidence, but I just can’t understand why anyone would want to have sex with someone who wasn’t into it, or was too out of it to know what was going on. Why not get yourself a sex doll and avoid the possibility of hideously violating someone? If the sexual stimulation is the very fact that the other person is comatose, powerless, unable to communicate, then actually what is turning you on is rape. And that’s not ok.

In my teens I used to know a guy who would quite often use drinking games at parties to get one young woman drunk. He was a tall solid fella, so it took rather a lot for him to lose his faulties to any significant degree, but not so for some of the women around the table. He would further queer the pitch by changing the rules on people, once they were starting to get too drunk to remember how the game was played. Often he would disappear into a bedroom with his target later in the evening. If she was too out of it to consent, or not into it, would his responsibility for raping her somehow be diminished because she had willingly sat down at that table to play?

Let’s put this another way (and I freely admit that this way is heavily inspired and influenced by an excellent Pat Booth column that was in my local paper a while back [sadly offline].) Is there any other crime someone could commit against me where my sobriety (or lack thereof) would diminish their responsibility, and I would share some of the blame? If I have too many wine coolers and someone mugs me on the way to the toilet at the pub is that partly my fault? If I get all tiddly on shandies, ask a friend to help me get from the taxi to my bedroom, and said friend beats me up and leaves me for dead on the hall floor, was I being reckless with my own safety?

Booth’s column put it far more eloquently than I have, writing the cross-examination of a victim of a mugging as if they were a rape victim, and pointing out the way in which we so often blame the person violated, by virtue of making excuses for the rapist based on the actions (or inactions, or “wrong” actions) of the victim. To my mind using “she was drunk” as an argument that a woman has put herself at risk of harm is on this same slippery slope.*

Why the different standard for rape? Why do we consider women who walk alone at night, or are drunk around men, or get separated from their friends while clubbing, or wear short skirts and FM boots, or who go home with a man but don’t want to have sex, or who get in a taxi with a man who they’ve already let feel their boobs, or who change their mind, somehow responsible for a violation they would never choose, drunk or sober?

In my darker moments, when I despair a bit about human nature, I wonder if the victim blaming is an unholy marriage between sexism and denial. If our society was honest about what constitutes rape then many people might have to also deal with the fact that they have raped, or been raped themselves. I have seen this culture of denial first hand when a sexual predator was unmasked in an organization I was involved in – a woman who I suspect had been one of his victims defended the rapist to the hilt and I believe that was because she could only think of what had happened between them as consensual, otherwise her brain would have to deal with the reality of rape. It’s an understandable response, when faced with the enormity of violation, to seek comfort in denial.

I’m a hypocrite of course. I don’t get drunk, I avoid walking alone at night, I get my keys out in the carpark to ward off an imaginary attacker, I offer to walk with my friends to the bus stop after a late night movie. I fear violence in all the stereotypical situations, and from all the stereotypical sources, despite knowing that I am most likely to be attacked in my own home, and by someone I know. My head has yet to overrule my gut in this matter.

If I wasn’t a “good girl” I wouldn’t be asking for rape. I wouldn’t be responsible, in any way, for the sexual response of anyone else. And I’m yet to be convinced that how much alcohol I have consumed makes me culpable, even just a tiny bit, for someone else choosing to attack me, just because that violence is a sexual violation.

*Hence my extreme disappointment not only with the “Lisa” advert ALAC have run recently, but also with their response. I’ve written enough about that specific campaign already recently, all I can really do now is despair and conclude that they just don’t get it, then take a deep breath and write back to them in hope.

Why I don't want a tax cut

Tax is boring. You could say that tax is to blogging as Weetbix is to cuisine. Still, it's an important matter, especially for women. Bear with me.

We've heard a great many arguments for tax cuts. Increasing petrol and food costs are placing pressure on families, and it's easier for politicians to put more cash in our pockets through cutting taxes than by raising wages.

There have been fewer arguments raised against tax cuts. The most important of these is surely the underfunding of our public services and infrastructure. Sure, everyone wants more take-home pay; but we also want an assurance that, if we need medical treatment, an adequate health system will be there to provide it. The $16 per week tax cut my family can expect will buy us very little, but combined with everyone else's cut it represents a large loss from the public purse. Beneficiaries, who most need extra money, get nothing from tax cuts – and increasing redundancies means more beneficiaries.

Tax and public spending have different consequences for women and men. The state isn't always a girl's best friend – it's easy to point to countries with repressive policies in areas like reproductive rights and divorce laws – but, by and large, states offer women protections and opportunities we would otherwise lack.

The state is a large employer of women: nurses, teachers and social workers are predominantly female. In the public sector, women have at least a nominal claim to pay parity. The large majority of solo parents are women, and a great number of these rely on tax-funded benefits to survive. As mothers and caregivers, women do most of the interacting with state institutions that keeps our families and society ticking. We liaise with schools, sit in Accident and Emergency waiting rooms with our kids, help run kindergartens and so on.

Women have a large stake in maintaining public institutions and the tax take which funds them. Calling for tax cuts may prove to be the equivalent of biting the hand that feeds.

One helluva hollaback

Cross posted on In a Strange Land

I'm not sure what to say about this. A woman in New Zealand was so fed-up with wolf whistles that when she was faced with yet another barrage of them while she was waiting to use an ATM, she stripped naked, completed her bank transaction, put her clothes back on and calmly walked off.

It's an amazing hollaback, but I really would like to know a little more about what happened. I would love to know how the workmen reacted when their bluff was called. It's such an assertion of power on the part of wolf whistlers, claiming the right to comment on a woman's appearance, and viewing her only as an object available for their 'appreciation'. So it's great to see a woman responding in such a strong fashion - "It's my body and I'll do what I damn well want with it and my body is NOT available to you!"

The police spoke to her. She's a tourist, and apparently they explained to her that her behaviour was not acceptable in New Zealand.

Did they speak to the workmen too?

Update: It seems that the woman involved might have some health issues. See Anjum's post about it.

I'd still like to know if the police spoke to the workmen.

Baby Blog Fodder

So I had a baby and I write about him a bit. You’d think I was the first woman ever to give birth and raise a child, the way I go on about it. Some days I’d dearly love to let a picture be worth a thousand words, not least because it would save on the finger leather. But I feel nervous about putting snaps of dear Wriggly on this here blog. I don’t use his real name, why should I use his true image?

Several of the bloggers I really respect, in particular bluemilk, put up pics of their children, and I guess this post is really a non-critical question to them:

If I share photos of my child am I just using them as blog fodder, particularly when they are too young to even understand that the shiny box with the red light is being used to record their embarrassing moments for humiliating enlargement later in life?

I am truly undecided on this matter and would appreciate some feedback – what say y’all, be you blogger, commenteer or lurker?

waikato "people"

i subscribe to the waikato times because i feel i have to rather than because i want to. as a politcal activist, i have to keep up to date with what's happening locally, as well as being aware of what everyone else is reading, especially around the political news. and what they're saying via the letters to the editor and opinion pieces. i know i should be subscribing to the herald, the dom & a couple of the sunday papers as well, but one has to draw the line somewhere. and surely, that's what the internet's for!

anyway, today i'm looking at the business section of the waikato times (3 pages in all). pretty much the whole front page of this section is taken up with what "waikato people" are wanting from the budget. there are nine people's photographs on this page. one is dr cullen. guess what the other eight of them look like. go on, before reading further, take a guess.

there is not one coloured person. there is not one person under forty. and there is not one single female. "waikato people" are apparently all white older males. the persons photographed and whose opinion has been sought are: roy crawford (uni of waikato vice-chancellor); bill gallagher (chair and CEO, gallagher group); stew wadey (president, waikato federated farmers); theo de leeuw (managing director, CB richard ellis ltd - real estate agents); allan webb (owner/operator, regent theatre, te awamutu); kevin geraghty (owner, judge valley wine); murray gutry (CEO, perry group ltd); and andy west (CEO, agresearch).

then there are people not photographed whose opinion has also been reported. these are: stuart mills (vice-president, nz police association); bill noble (principal, fairfield intermediate); russell sinclair (regional manager, retail association northern); wayne walford (CEO, waikato chamber of commerce); jos koopman (CEO, ambreed); tim mackle (CEO, dairynz); derek fairweather (CEO, waikato innovation park); craig climo (CEO, waikato district health board); and yippee, a coloured person, suresh chimanlal (owner, new world rototuna). for those unfamiliar with indian names, suresh is definitely a male.

so 17 waikato people consulted, and they couldn't find a single woman with an opinion? not even a female school principal? no female business-owner/operator? they didn't bother also to ask tainui holdings, a pretty big player in the waikato.

incidentally, there are actually 2 female names on the story. 2 of the 3 reporters who compiled this report were female: nikki preston and kathy graham. i wonder if it didn't bother them that no women were interviewed, or just that they didn't even notice.

it's bizarre. and it proves that women have much less of a public voice than males. maybe the women would all have said the same or similar things. that's not important. it's the invisibility that really bothers me. it's not good enough. "people" means males and females. the paper should at least be honest and have the tag line read "what are waikato men wanting from the budget tomorrow?"

ALAC Responds to Complaint About "Lisa" Ad

I’ve been away from the keys most of the last week* and just before I waved a fond farewell to my hapless PC on Friday I received an email from ALAC. I scanned it, noted its amazing similarity to their online response to comments Joanna and I made at the ALAC blog, and then put it on my to do list for when I was back in Blogland.

Background to this can be found here (Maia's post about the victim blaming), here (my post on how to make a complaint), here (my official complaint) and here (an update on the issue). And here is ALAC's reply:

Subject: FW: Official Complaint "Lisa" advert response I am intending sending. Cheers Lynne

Message:
Kia ora Julie

Thank you for your email outlining your concern. I understand you see one of our recently launched advertisements as blaming women who are victims of crimes that occur when they have been binge drinking.

The message in all three of our advertisements is that binge drinking increases the risks of harm to yourself or harm to others. The advertisements however are not about blame. We have conducted a lot of focus group testing (including with young women who drink) to ensure that the take out message from these adverts is about increased risks from binge drinking. At ALAC we are very clear that while binge drinking does increase your risk of harm, this does not mean that if you are a victim of a crime while drunk that you are to blame. This point did test positively with our target audiences, that the advertisement was about highlighting real risks from drinking and not about apportioning blame.

However given the strong messages in the advertisements we did expect a range of responses from the general public. The feedback that we have received has reflected this broad range of responses. As well as receiving a considerable amount of support for tackling the difficult issue of the real impacts and costs of our binge drinking culture, we have also received some complaints that we have gone too far in the use of "shock tactics" and in particular that the ad showing harm to a child should not be viewed during the day. We have also received two complaints (as well as your phone call) about the ad showing a young women binge drinking. One of the complaints raised the same issue you did, while the other objected to the advertisement portraying men as predators. The Advertising Standards Authority has also received some complaints on our advertising, and we are expecting them to consider these complaints and make their decision at their meeting in May.

We have thought long and hard about our decision to develop such strong messages as seen in all three of our latest advertisements. There is a very real urgency to do something about changing New Zealand's binge drinking culture as it is creating an enormous amount of preventable harm. Research statistics from Police, Ministry of
Transport and hospital emergency services show that harms for women are
increasing and that if the trend continues they will start to outstrip males in terms of harms from alcohol use. These statistics are also supported by anecdotal information on trends from many of our partner organisations in health and social services who we shared the advertisements with prior to going to air.

Kind Regards

Gerard Vaughan
CEO ALAC

Their main arguments appear to be:

• The intended message of the advert is not to blame but to minimize harm.
• In focus groups, which included young women,** this main message was clearly absorbed.
• They have had very few complaints about the Lisa advert, both in absolute terms and in comparison to the Mark advert (which includes a child being thrown against a wall).
• The shock ad campaign is necessary due to the large amount of serious harm being done by binge drinking.

Sigh. More to come later on the guts of this disappointing response, in particular how they completely ignore my points about rape myths.

In regard to the number of complaints, the statement in their response is just plain wrong, as you can see in the comment thread to my last update on this issue. It’s a petty thing to focus on, and it isn’t my main point, but I do feel like they could put sufficient effort into their response to a) not so obviously cut and paste; b) respond to the arguments actually raised in the complaint (and that would also deal with point a); and c) not seek to incorrectly minimize the negative correspondence they’ve received on the issue. Is a little bit of savvy too much to ask for?

Anyway, I’m going to write back with a number of questions and additional points, but I need to take a few days to consider my response. In the meantime I’ve written a post on this concept of “the risk of harm” that ALAC seem so keen on (and it also covers the dilemma Anjum raised), and I’ll put it up once I finish proof-reading. I hope any feedback from readers on that post (and this one!) will help me to further crystallize my arguments before I write to ALAC again.

Please feel free to add your thoughts in comments, I will be very interested to read them. Have any of the others who wrote complaints had responses? Are they any different from the form response I’ve had?

Oh, and I haven’t heard anything from the ASA yet.


* Thank goodness for Blogger’s new scheduling tool, foiling burglars and garden arsonists since 2008.
** I’m not sure why “young women” are specifically mentioned. After all it isn’t only young women who get raped, in fact it isn’t even only women who get raped. And not everyone who has expressed their concern about the Lisa advert fits into the “young woman” demographic. I’m not sure I do myself these days.

Accentuate the positive?

Recently I shared some links to a few online campaigns, including the Positive Women network, which aims to challenge the assumptions made about women with HIV and AIDS as well as providing practical support.

My partner had a look at the campaign and pointed out to me that it could be taken as dividing those women who have contracted HIV/AIDS into two camps; slappers & drug users versus wholesome Kiwi women. His thesis is that by focusing the campaign on women who have been infected by having hetero sex with their husbands, or through an accidental prick with a contaminated needle in the course of their nursing work, Positive Women is in fact saying that there are some people who don’t deserve to have HIV/AIDS, and some others who, well, were reckless and therefore less deserving of support.

Frankly I don’t see the campaign this way, perhaps because I have recently read Bryce Courtenay’s book April Fool’s Day and so a non-judgemental approach was in my mind at the time Positive Women came to my attention. To me challenging the stereotypes about those who have HIV/AIDS, or indeed any illness to which stigma is attached, is good for all of those with the disease as it encourages people not to judge at all.

But what do readers think? Is my interpretation overly generous?

Spreading the word - the Down Under Feminists Carnival

Cross posted on In a Strange Land

Oh my! Sisters-in-ANZACs, this is what we have been waiting for. Lauredhel, of the inimitable Hoydens, has announced the first Down Under Feminists Carnival, and she's asking for submissions. The carnival will be held every month, with submissions closing at the end of the month, and the carnival appearing sometime in the first week of the following month.

The submission form is here.

Submit!

My guess is that Lauredhel is looking for volunteers to host the carnival too. Should you feel so inclined, and I certainly do, you could let her know, even just by a comment thread in the post announcing the first ever Down Under Feminists Carnival.

Bewdy!

Monday Funday - Maths Can Be Fun

Found at this intriguing site, indexed.

FemmoStroppo awards

The Hoydens sent out a call for the best feminist posts of 2007, for the FemmoStroppo awards. The list of fab posts is out, and there is some fantastic reading there. So should you be feeling a little dull, in need of a dose of feistiness and fun, may I recommend a cup of coffee, or a glass of wine, and an hour or so reading the best blog-feminism of 2007.

About Our Blogroll

Probably this is the kind of post you write when you first establish a blog, but I guess better late than never.

Currently there are five sections to our Blogroll:

1. Other places we write
Some of The Hand Mirror’s writers also blog elsewhere. These are the other blogs their work appears on, as well as here. There is original content by our writers (i.e. stuff that hasn’t been posted here) on each of these blogs and they are well worth a good looksie.

2. Other NZ women in Blogland
This is a list of all the blogs I can find that have NZ women writing on them, either on their own or as part of a team.

By “NZ women” I mean women who either openly identify as New Zealanders and are based in Aotearoa or overseas, or are immigrants to NZ from another country. There is no intention to list only feminists, or to label all of these bloggers feminist. The idea is to promote the blogging of NZ women, regardless of subject matter or politics. To this end please do let me know if your blog, or another you are aware of that meets the criteria, is missing and I will add it in.

Most of these blogs have come to my attention through the blogrolls of others. I am also sporadically working through the blog listings at the excellent site Kiwiology to pick up any women I have missed, although this is taking a long long time.

This portion of the blogroll was converted to a most recent post listing in January 2009. A few of the feeds may not be working properly - if your blog is one of those please get in touch so we can work out how to fix it.

3. Other NZ Blogs
These are NZ blogs who don’t have any women writing on them but are generally progressive in their outlook. These are left-of-centre/progressive bloggers who have, at least sometimes, been supportive of feminism and women's participation in public life.

4. Foreign Feminists
This only scratches the surface of the vast array of overseas bloggers writing from a feminist perspective. At the moment this list is dominated by American and Australian blogs, and if you have some from another part of the world to suggest feel free to do so in comments or by email.

5. Carnivals
Here we have a list of blog carnivals which make a point of featuring women, and/or are explicitly feminist. If you are aware of a carnival that should be added to this list please let me know.


So there you go, now you know!

Last updated January 26th 2009

Looking and Seeing Revisited

Ages ago I put up a link to a clever advertisement about our inability to notice something really obvious, when we are focused on something else. It was made to point out the difficulty of spotting cyclists when you are driving your car and looking for larger moving objects, and it has since been circulated widely through the internets.

While the ad was created to make us think about traffic it also made me think about politics. Specifically the (many) times that I have noticed absences that haven’t always been apparent to others; a forum panel that lacks women, or coloured faces, or anyone under fifty; a television discussion about immigration that bats the subject back and forth between only those whose families immigrated a few generations ago, not recently; advertisements for nappies that never show a man with a child; a lecture where the MC is a woman, the speaker is a woman, but all the questions are asked by men; political blogs where white right-wing* men (mostly heterosexual) dominate and some come over all troll when faced with someone from outside their demographic.

Lyn has written recently about the impact of exemplars on encouraging those absent to become present. When you see someone like you doing something it becomes more feasible to see yourself in that role too. I read a Joanne Black column in the Listener a month or two back in which she bemoaned the announcement that NZ had its first female motorcycle cop. She felt that now that we were all equal this kind of thing was ridiculous and unnecessary – we should only mark firsts when it is the first person, regardless of gender. Yet this denies that actually there are many areas of life where women, and Maori, and the young, and Asians, and indeed men, are rare or non-existent.

If we want to have more women plumbers, or more male kindergarten teachers, or more Maori surgeons, or more young politicians, if we want to have a society that isn’t about putting people in a little box based on the Lotto of birth, then we need to notice when there are people missing. To see the absences we need to start looking for diversity. And then hopefully we will start seeing the barriers to participation too.



* There seems to be a particular type of right-wing in the NZ political blogosphere that is not actually all that representative of the vast majority of those who vote right-of-centre. It’s as if the right wingers who have hearts and souls (and some would add brains) haven’t discovered this part of Internet City, but their climate-change-denying, taxation-equals-theft-touting brethren have moved into the locality in droves. For evidence of this skewing of the Right you need only look at the results from some of Kiwiblog’s online polls.

Friday Feminist - bell hooks

Cross posted on In a Strange Land

Feminism in the United States has never emerged from the women who are most victimized by sexist oppression; women who are daily beaten down, mentally, physically, and spiritually - women who are powerless to change their condition in life. They are a silent majority. A mark of their victimization is that they accept their lot in life without visible question, without organized protest, without collective anger or rage. Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique is still heralded as having paved the way for the contemporary feminist movement - it was written as if these women did not exist. Friedan's famous phrase, "the problem that has no name," often quoted to describe the condition of women in this society, actually referred to the plight of a select group of college-educated, middle and upper class, married white women - housewives bored with leisure, with the home, with children, with buying products, who wanted more out of life. Friedan concludes her first chapter by stating: "We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: 'I want something more than my husband and my children and my house' " That "more" she defined as careers. She did not discuss who would be called in to take care of the children and maintain the home if more women like herself were freed from their house labor and given equal access with white men to the professions. She did not speak of the needs of women without men, without children, without homes. She ignored the existence of non-white women and poor white women. She did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute, than to be a leisure class housewife.

bell hooks, "Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory", 1984

Single sex schooling: friend or foe?

I'm new to this business but, as far as I can see, blogging is usually about offering an informed opinion, well argued, to readers. On the topic of single-sex schooling, I have no informed opinions whatsoever – but I'd like to express some ideas and concerns in the hope that better informed people will be prompted to also share theirs!

Recent media discussions of boys' academic 'under-achievement' have led to renewed defences of boys' school. Boys are portrayed as victims of a feminised education system which tries to suppress their maleness: loud, physical, competitive, boisterous and reluctant to express their emotions verbally, boys should be allowed to be boys.

My problems with this reasoning are so numerous that I hardly know where to begin. What of the boys who don't fit this profile – the quiet ones; the ones who would rather read a book or play a musical instrument; the ones who don't mind talking or working cooperatively; the ones who are, heaven forbid, gay? Are these boys somehow defective? Do we want to turn out young men into the workforce, and into family and other relationships, telling them that blokes are competitive – read: individualistic – and not inclined to collaborate with or be concerned about others? (The principal of a boys' school recently argued both that boys are more competitive than girls, but should be schooled separately because they get demoralised when girls do better than them. Was he saying that boys like to compete only when they're assured of 'winning'?) And in a society in which young men may resort to violence, alcohol abuse and self-harm more readily than admitting to depression, is it smart to remind boys that talking and emotions are for chicks?

Celebrating immature, potentially self-harming stereotypical behaviour as essentially masculine does boys and men a great disservice. Imagine encouraging the equivalent stereotypical female behaviour. Let's not discriminate against girls by encouraging them to learn mature social conduct. The curriculum should allow them to giggle, form divisive social cliques, gossip about their less fashionably dressed peers and solve disputes by scratching one another's eyes out. It's only natural, after all.

Clearly, I've got some reservations about boys' schools. When it comes to girls' schools, however, I'm not so sure. My immediate reaction is one of unease: life isn't segregated by sex (most of the time, at least), so why should schools be? We've all got to get along with one another, and schools ought to promote the skills we need to do this. And yet, for many women, girls' schools seem to have provided an environment in which feminist ideas were promoted, and pupils were encouraged to take pride in their identities as young women. One friend of mine recalled her time at a girls' school as one of fierce academic competition and segregation between high achievers and others; but most women I've spoken to on the subject have had few negative comments about their girls' school experiences.

My own secondary school was a co-educational Catholic college in Invercargill. Even allowing for the Church's less than progressive teachings on issues affecting women, there was scant attention paid to offering girls positive role models or teaching empowering ideas. I can't hold the school entirely responsible for it, but I left school with few personal ambitions, and a vague idea that I would kill time at university until finding a husband. Yet there were also many positive aspects to my Catholic co-educational experience, and these contributed to my later feminist beliefs. Social justice was a strong theme of my secondary schooling: anti-poverty and anti-racist themes were often repeated, and girls and boys alike were called on and expected to show moral courage and concern for others.

In this educational environment, boys were unremarkable things which made noise but were more or less harmless. I didn't see why one would be sufficiently concerned about boys to try to avoid them through girls' only schooling. I imagined girls' schools as a sort of elite environment where young women with loud voices and irritatingly high levels of self-confidence blathered on about Kate Shepherd.

In the hindsight I've gained during several years and a chronic bout of feminism, I've come to see the point of women's-only forums. Women's political gains have been instigated by women's own consciousness raising and political activity. But it seems that the reasons girls might choose to be educated apart from boys differ from the reasons boys might wish to be schooled separately from girls.

Girls' and boys' schools have different relationships to the status quo. At its best, girls' schooling equips pupils with consciousness of gender inequality, and perhaps some of the skills and gumption to stand up to it. Boys' schooling, at its worst, seems to be a sort of Enid Blyton-style adventure where social change can be resisted just a little longer. Compromises with those demanding schools inclusive of girls, safe for queer pupils, and embracing of diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds can be avoided.

Perhaps, irrespective of the benefits to girls of single sex schooling, the best thing girls can do for themselves and their male counterparts is to go to school alongside the boys. After all, women have a stake in the social learning boys experience during their schooling. As feminists, we surely must want boys to take humane attitudes into their adult lives as partners, co-workers, friends and dads.

Cross-post: Pregnancy lasts 9 months not 90 minutes

Cross-posted at the ex-expat.

I loved the movie Juno, it was funny and intelligent tale of the trials and tribulations of teenage pregnancy. I also respected that the writer and director didn't gloss over the painful and negative aspects of adoption and that the film also highlighted the character's network of family and friends who loved and supported her through the tough process. However after I finished watching Juno, I began to worry that the movie might be used as an excuse to promote adoption as an option to young woman.

Sadly I was right.

Of course the herald piece doesn't mention this but a quick glance of the Adoption Trust's website shows a piece from tearway that does just that along with an advertisement from the trust for a free DVD and information about adoption.

I want to be clear as that my criticism is not of adoption process itself, what I am concerned about both from the herald piece and the adoption trust's DVD is that it is putting pressure on women, in particular young women, to pursue a highly painful physical and emotion option that may not be in their best interests.

And sure enough the reasons given for the promotion of the adoption option in the Herald piece seem to have little to do with the rights of the women making the decision but more on the desires of childless couples to create a family. I wouldn't wish infertility on my worst enemy. I am sure it must cut those who are not physically able to become parents to the core when they get the probing questions as to their lack of children or when yet another horrific case of child abuse hits the headlines. However their desire to become parents should not have any influence on a woman's decision to continue with an unplanned pregnancy.

Because as Juno brilliantly demonstrates pursuing the adoption particularly for a teenager is not easy. Aside from the tough physical process of pregnancy and giving birth, dealing with judgments and condescension of others is just as difficult. The movie also doesn't gloss over the emotional ramifications of giving a baby up for adoption just after birth. We know that despite all the support she receives, that the process still cuts Juno to the core. Thus any decision to adopt needs to serve the interests of the mother first and foremost.

However despite the negatives surrounding adoption and my own personal experience with an unplanned pregnancy, I still think adoption can be a great thing. One of my close friends is a brilliant mother to her two adopted sons while another one became a 'birth mother' in her mid twenties. However my point is that just like the other alternatives to unplanned pregnancy, abortion and unplanned parenthood, there are positive and negative aspects to both.

And it shouldn't be anybody's right to overly promote and pressure women to pursue one option nor to make judgments over her decision.* However we should all be there to support her with whatever decision she makes makes because pregnancy lasts 9 months not 90 minutes.

* The Adoption trust's birth mum's checklist shows a lot about their priorities. It places explaining the decision to a potential child ahead of making the informed decision and the consideration of a support network for the process is right near the bottom of the page.

What’s a mother to do?

When my partner and I first moved in together we infected each other with two particularly virulent and long lasting maladies. I caught Coronation Street off him and, for his sins, he now suffers a strange spasm most week nights from 7pm, for half an hour or so. We have sat in front of the goggle-box through Mike Barlow’s decline, Huia Samuels’s explosive end, Sarah Platt’s aborted wedding, and Chris Warner’s return. Neither of us go in for Home and Away, Neighbours or Eastenders, but Coro and Shortie are our guilty pleasures.

The current water cooler conversation at Soap Watchers Anonymous, at least in our shaky isles, is Tracy Barlow’s murder trial. For those unfamiliar with the plot line here’s a quick summary:

1. Charlie is an emotionally abusive arsehole who almost ruins the life of the very nice Shelley.
2. Sometime after Shelley leaves Charlie at the altar, he and long-time Coro troublemaker Tracy start a relationship that could be made for the cliché “they deserve each other.”
3. The two nasties basically play games with each other, until Charlie has an affair and Tracy breaks it off in outrage.
4. Surprisingly, Tracy quickly goes back to Charlie. In fact, she has decided to exact her revenge by the long-winded route of creating the (mostly false) impression that he is abusing her and eventually killing him. Her intention all along is to plead not guilty on the grounds of self-defence, by virtue of being a battered spouse.
5. Tracy puts her plan into action, manipulating her neighbour Clare and her mother Deidre, amongst other unwitting Coro St residents, to create witnesses to Charlie’s supposed abuse.
6. Eventually Tracy tries to goad Charlie into physically attacking her so that she can kill him in the process of a fight. When he refuses to rise to the bait she scones him one with a statuette anyway. After some suspense he dies and she is arrested for murder.
7. Tracy sets about giving herself the best possible chance of getting away with it through a sex-for-eye-witness-testimony deal with the Teen From Hell David. She also guilts her parents into funding an expensive legal team, including a lawyer who specializes in helping abused women to escape their violent partners.
8. Deirdre, Tracy’s mother, works it all out and confronts her daughter, who rather remorselessly confesses all.

This last happens a few days before Deirdre is due to testify as the final witness in Tracy’s defence case, backing up her daughter’s accusations of abuse by Charlie. As a woman who has done jail time herself, Deirdre cannot stand the thought of losing her daughter to prison. She also knows that if she doesn’t lie on the stand she will lose her anyway, as Tracy will excise her mother from her life, and take Deirdre’s grand daughter away too.

As a mum, Deirdre feels extreme guilt for her part in raising a daughter who could murder, and also has a parent’s natural inclination to want to do anything to save her child. Plus, Charlie was genuinely a horrible abusive man, although his manipulation wasn’t particularly effective on the woman who actually killed him. All up it’s a twisted situation, fraught with moral dilemna.

What would you do in Deirdre’s brogues? Would you do anything to save your child from many years in prison? If your offspring committed a heinous crime, and you knew all about it, would you shop them? And is Coro St being irresponsible by promulgating the idea that a woman would make up a serious case of abuse to get away with murder?

Thoughts, dear readers, in comments, or if you prefer to write a post on your own blog about this matter please do share a link.

14th Carnival of Radical Feminists

The 14th Carnival of Radical Feminists is up at Meta Watershed. I haven't made my way through many of the pieces yet, but Maggie, who put the carnival together this month, has selected favourite lines from each post that's in the carnival. In a moment of meta-meta-ness, here are my two favourite lines from the lines she has picked out.

"...As rapacious and lascivious as some of the patriarchs who founded this here nation were, I’m pretty sure none of them intended that the very first amendment they added to the republic’s founding sheet of parchment would be used as a pretext for defending the 'right' of motherfuckers with morals lower than whale shit in the Marianas Trench to create videos simulating the gang rape and sexualized murder of women, and the simulated rape of children."

Nine Deuce, at Rage Against The Man-chine,The First Amendment is only sort of cool

"The next time somebody tries to tell you that men have to deal with just as many unhealthy stereotypes about their appearances as women do . . . just walk them over to the magazine aisle."

LaDoctorita, at unconventional beauty, cover girls, take 2

a failed example of cross-cultural parenting

i came across this bit of news trawling through the blogosphere today. it's about an assyrian christian man convicted of hitting his 20-year old daughter because she was dating a muslim. the standard goes off on a bit of a tangent, relating it to the repeal of s59 and what might have happened had the girl been 15. not to say that it's not an important discussion, but there are other issues that this incident raised for me.

foremost is the control issue. the father in this situation wanted to control his daughter's behaviour, in that he didn't want her seeing a muslim boy. [i can think of several muslim fathers who would react in a similar fashion in a vice versa situation, as well as fathers of other religious persuasion; so the particular religion is not at issue here.] under a western construct, this is extremely unacceptable behaviour in that she is deemed to be an adult and has the right to see who she pleases. after a certain age, parents lose authority and their children gain freedom. that seems to happen somewhere between 16 and 18.

under more eastern values, the honour of the family is vitally important. also important is that all members stay within their religious boundaries, and maintain the value system inherent in that religion. which usually means you don't marry (or date) anyone out of it.

also, under an eastern construct, parents don't lose authority over or responsiblity for their children at any given age. parental authority lasts until the death or incapacity of the parent. respect for elders, and especially parents and grandparents, is an ingrained and deeply rooted value that is common across most of asia, africa and the middle east. [of course i generalise. individual families or regions may behave differently, but on the whole this is a common way of thinking.]

looking through a western lens, i can see how dictatorial and restrictive this kind of culture seems. it's supposed to work because parents will always want what's best for their children. no parent wants to see her/his child unhappy. also, parents have the benefit of a few more years of experience, hence are better placed to make the right decisions. or so the conventional wisdom goes.

this particular parent was not simply concerned with the family honour. he also had concerns about his child and grandchildren being brought up outside their faith. the article mentions excommunication, which would indicate that he would fear an eternity in hell for his daughter. i'm sure if this man chose to speak publicly, he would say that he was acting in the best interests of his daughter. and he would genuinely believe it too.

i know i've ignored, uptil now, the violence. let me say it's totally unacceptable, and get that out of the way. not because it's unimportant, but because it's the attitudes behind the violence that i'm trying to get a handle on.

i think of my own children. people often ask me what i'd do if they decided to go out with a non-muslim. of course i'd be disappointed, there's no doubt about that. probably upset as well. but i know there are things i definitely wouldn't do. i would never hit them. i'd explain how i felt, but i would never cut them off or refuse to see them. i wouldn't stop loving them.

then there would be the issue of dating. it's just not something i'm comfortable with. i know i'd be worried about things like teen pregnacy, sexual abuse or just pressure to do things they weren't ready to do. i'd be worried about them being taken advantage of; of being used and discarded. a firm proposal of marriage i can deal with, but dating is something alien and scary; not of my world.

i guess as a parent, you always fear the worst and want to protect your children from it. but it's very easy to shift from protection to stifling control. on the other hand, it's hard to sit back and do nothing, when you see your child do something that you personally think will lead to disaster.

it's all so difficult. and it's very difficult for migrant parents to let go of all the values, the culture, the family structures and methods of parenting they bring with them from their countries of origin. for some, it's a seismic shift in thinking, and they don't manage it well. if you don't believe me and you're not a migrant, imagine having to change your way of thinking so that you fit into the eastern paradigm i've outlined above.

so how do we protect the children and the young women? how do we make that transition easier, so that there is less friction, and hence less violence? we could take the extreme option and restrict immigration to those countries with similar cultural values to ours. let's call it the nz first option, for simplicity. it's an option that is simple, and involves very little cost and effort on our part, other than tightening the laws and policies around immigration and border control.

another option is to require migrants to undertake some education around nz culture, either before they arrive or as soon as they get here. i'm not talking about those stupid, simplistic tests that australia and some european countries have implemented. people just memorise the answers, but the test doesn't deepen understanding, it doesn't help to shift ingrained attitudes. i can't think of anything positive that is achieved.

i'm talking of something like the kiwi ora programme, which used to be run by te wananga o aotearoa. say a course that involved 6-8 sessions, one a week, with a bit of homework thrown in. at least that would help migrants to better understand the country they're coming into. it would make them aware of the kinds of problems that arise. and it might present them with some strategies to deal with those problems. non-violent strategies.

more important though, is interaction between migrants and residents. the kids get the interaction when they're at school. the parents may get some interaction at work, but how meaningful that is depends on the place of work. it's only by interacting, by discussing and debating, through stories and shared experiences, that cultural change can be made a less stressful process. it means people have to take the trouble to get to know each other.

do we want to put that effort? if we don't, then i'd have to concur with paul morris when he said "the rapidly increasing religious and cultural diversity in New Zealand meant such cases were bound to increase."