Thursday 31 July 2008

Small housekeeping matter

I've finally found a Blogger hack that allows us to do expandable posts (often known as "read more" or "continue reading"). And I've used it, successfully, to put something below the fold in my most recent post.

However it has for some reason inserted the "Continue reading..." label and link at the end of every single post. According to the code it shouldn't be doing this. I tried the obvious thing that might fix it quickly and the code that I expected to see simply isn't there to delete. And I can't quite get my head around html tonight, so it's going to have to go on the Fix Tomorrow list.

So please feel free to ignore the Continue reading... links, as they won't give you any new stuff to read, except on my Thursdays in Black post below. And I'll make this a priority to get sorted in the morning.

Update: Ok I ditched the previous hack, as I couldn't work out how to get rid of the excessive Read Mores, and inserted this one instead, which seems to be working as we would like. Fingers crossed!

Thursdays in Black re-launch

Today I went to a forum organised by AUSA to mark the re-launch of Thursdays in Black, a campaign that was a Big Deal when I was at university at the end of last century.

The catch-phrase of the campaign has long been "demanding a world without rape and violence" and it seems to me that it's as relevant today as it ever was then. Incremental change is happening, and in many ways it was heartening to see so many people say "It's Not OK" when the story about Tony Veitch broke. But if we want that improvement to keep happening we are going to have to keep up with the demands. Thursdays in Black is one way of keeping the issues visible; by wearing black on Thursdays you stand in solidarity with those who have been victims of violence, and with those who are working to end it.

My speech is after the fold, for those who are interested, although it's probably old stuff to those who have been following the Lisa ad saga (which is what I was asked to talk about). Anyone who is present will notice it isn't exactly what I said, but as it's the first time I've actually written a speech rather than just tried to stick to bullet points I'm relieved I didn't wander more! Thanks to Sophia Blair (Education Vice President) for inviting me, to Sophie Klinger (the Women's Rights Officer) for MCing, and to all those involved in organising the forum for their hospitality. They are intending to set up a Thursdays in Black campaign group at the University of Auckland, so I hope we can feature some of their events and activities here in the future.



Kia ora koutou, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. About a decade ago, when I was at university and involved in AUSA, I used to help out a little with Thursdays in Black and I’m really glad to see it is being re-launched.

Sophia, the Education VP, asked me to speak today about ALAC’s Lisa advert, which a number of us blogging at The Hand Mirror have been pretty concerned about.

For those who aren’t familiar with the ad it shows a young woman having a few drinks with workmates to relax, a few drinks turns into a lot, she dances in a rather uncoordinated fashion in a bar, and finally she almost falls out of the door of the bar, into the stereotypical dark alley, where she is bundled up and carted away by a man we’ve seen watching her earlier. We see her struggle and protest and then the ad fades to black, with the message “it’s not the drinking, it’s how we’re drinking.”

I have three major concerns about the Lisa ad:

1. First up, it perpetuates rape myths – it reinforces the erroneous, yet common, stereotypes that rape happens in dark alleys, and that you are most at risk from an opportunistic stranger. In fact we know that rapists usually know their victims, are often already in an intimate relationship with them, and that rape is most likely to happen in the home of the victim or the rapist. Rape myths are one of the key barriers that survivors of sexual violence face when it comes to reporting the assault to the police, and to seeking support from family and friends, particularly when the person they are accusing is within that circle of family and friends.

2. Secondly the ad also continues the incredibly harmful idea that victims of rape bear some responsibility – the slippery slope that has at root the concept “she was asking for it.” The latest way to say this without explicitly stating it seems to be to use the term “sexual vulnerability” or “putting yourself at risk of harm”.

Here’s an example that my co-blogger Anjum Rahman found in the Waikato Times yesterday, in regard to a rape in Hamilton recently:

Mr Hermann said any sexual assault was horrifying, but the pure callousness of the man's actions had stumped police. "It's not as though she has put herself in a vulnerable position by say, walking home late at night after a few drinks, where you could consider your chances (of being attacked) are higher. You would think a staff member working early on a Sunday morning would be okay ... we're just appalled."

Mr Hermann is a CIB detective sergeant. And what I find appalling is that a member of the police would publicly say this, and send the message that some rape victims are more worthy than others.

3. The third area of concern in relation to the Lisa ad is something that’s only become apparent through the correspondence with ALAC. After initially getting a fob off standard response from Gerard Vaughan the CEO, I sent in a list of questions to him, which the readers of The Hand Mirror helped to draft, and after some time I received a lengthy response, which didn’t answer all the questions, but did shed some significant light on ALAC’s thinking around the conception of the ad.

Here is Mr Vaughan’s response to queries about the brief given to the advertising agency by ALAC:

“The objective of the commercial is behaviour change. Research asked women to identify their single biggest fear about binge drinking. The biggest fear to emerge was sexual vulnerability. We could not ignore this finding given that this consequence was the most likely to engage our female audience and had the potential to reduce the incidence of binge drinking among our female target audience. “

Now I tend to think that if you surveyed any group of women about their fears, rape would be pretty high on the list, regardless of their drinking behaviour. Mr Vaughan also stated that “the end goal is that women like Lisa will drink moderately in the future.”

At first I thought my reading of all this was incorrect. I thought I was being a bit paranoid in interpreting this as basically saying “We found that women fear rape, we want to stop a target group of women from binge drinking, therefore let’s use the fear of rape to scare them into complying.” But that’s how many of the readers of The Hand Mirror took it too.

Putting aside the issue of whether ALAC is being a bit wowser-ish, it does seem a bit like they don’t really care about any collateral damage that their advert might cause. That it might be triggering for women who have been sexually assaulted; that the focus groups they ran where they asked people to talk about the ad in groups of three might have been unsafe environments for women who had been raped and felt at fault because they were drunk; that the ad itself could perpetuate harmful myths about rape and sexual violence, and make life harder for victims. The aim of getting the target group to drink moderately in the future seems to trump any of these concerns.

I could go on and on about this, there are a whole lot of other bits and pieces that worry me about ALAC’s response to criticism of the Lisa ad. And I’m going to shamelessly promote our blog for a moment here – we have a whole category on this, titled The Lisa Advert Chronicles, if you are interested in following the whole saga to date. There’s also an online petition that’s been set up, and a Facebook group, and you can find those at thehandmirror.blogspot.com.

I’m glad we’ve raised our concerns with ALAC, and I’m particularly glad that the CEO has stated that they will involve organizations like Rape Crisis at an earlier stage of the process next time (this time they only showed them the completed ad a few days before it went to air, when it was too late to change it). I’m considering what we might do next, and whether to try to get the issue up in the media. It’s been a slow process so far, partly because all of us at The Hand Mirror have day jobs which consume much of our time.

But it’s really important that when we see something like this, something that doesn’t help eliminate rape and violence, but actually harms people, that we speak out. Often we are going to run up against the kind of bureaucratic walls that I’ve struck, and it gets frustrating, and it gets depressing. And that’s where we need to work together and support each other.

Because each time we say to an organization like ALAC, this is not OK, you need to think harder about the way you portray sexual violence, hopefully it does start to wash away that mindset that blames victims for the violence they suffer.

Thanks.


In a village surrounded by pitchforks

Spurred on by Julie's post on the wonderful villager's in her son's life, I thought I'd speak from the perspective of as a member of community supporting a baby born to teenage parents.

My cousin was 18 when he became a father and his daughter's mother was a year or so younger than that. To say my cousin and his partner's parents weren't exactly thrilled that they would becoming grandparents a whole lot sooner than they planned would be an understatement.

Out of all the choices for an unplanned teenage pregnancy, teens taking on the role of parent is often the least palatable particularly for the pitchfork brigade. For all the talk of how the community is prepared to provide an understanding and supportive role for teenage parents if they do decide to 'choose life,' more often than not, teens find criticism and ridicule for having got themselves into that predicament. If you want any proof of this scorn, you need look no further that the vicious comments that were written about Keisha Castle-Hughes's pregnancy online. While some who rail against teen parenthood are supportive of abortion as an option, adoption is usually seen as being the best course of action for ensuring that these unexpected babies are raised in the 'right environment.'*

And certainly in many respects my cousin and his former girlfriend tick many of the boxes that would conjure up images of an 'unsuitable environment' for child-rearing amongst many people. Young? Check. No qualifications? Check. Not married? Check. Patchy work history? Check. Time on the DPB? Check. Identifies as Maori? Check. Quick call in CYPS! These people are unfit to be parents and won't somebody please think of the welfare of the child?

Don't worry, I did.

And much like wriggly, this child and her parents also have their own village that ensures that she is fed, clothed, housed and most importantly loved. The child's mum is caring and loving and she has a supportive home environment with four sisters who love her kid to bits. My cousin pays child support and tries to stay involved as much as he can especially when it comes to schooling. My cousin's parents absolutely dot on their granddaughter and they usually look after her on the weekends that her mum works if my cousin is unavailable. My parents love to have the youngster come visit their house so much so that I get badgered about providing grandkids. That's not to mention all the friends and members of the community that Julie mentioned are all present in this child's life too.

The point of my post is not to gloss over the dark side of teenage parenthood, because that is well-canvassed when we try to scare the bejesus out of teenagers in order to stop them having sex,** but rather to demonstrate that there is life after teenage pregnancy and it isn't always terrible. I know of at least two women who became mums in high school who have gone onto graduate with professional degrees and one is currently studying for her masters at a highly prestigious university overseas.

I realize that these two cases are an exception. Most teen pregnancies occur among teenagers in families living in deprived areas. According to research from the United States branch of family planning, young women in this income group are less likely to use contraception the first time than other women, less likely to use it on an ongoing basis and more likely to view a young pregnancy as a good thing. However tut-tutting pre-martial sex and using these girls as handmaidens for infertile middle class couples is not the answer if wish to change these attitudes. A decent and compulsory sex education curriculum would be a nice start. But we need to work out how to convince these girls (and more broadly our community at large***) that they are capable of taking other important roles on before becoming a mother in order for sex education to be really effective in reducing the number of teenage pregnancies. Though it will take a lot longer than a menstrual, or for that matter electoral, cycle for that to happen.

In this case I don't think my cousin and nor the child's mother are heading for nice-middle class jobs but they do seem to be doing their bit to get back on their feet in order to scrape enough cash together so that their daughter can have the best life possible. Which aside from their age, doesn't make this child's parents much different from the people that the pitchforkers assume are the 'right' kind of parents.

* Adoption is a great option if that is what the teens want to do rather than what they are pressured or manipulated into doing.
**This seems to be an ineffectual strategy given our high teenage pregnancy.
*** As a fifth former, I remember my manager at the supermarket I worked at looking at two of my friends and wondering out loud 'I wonder which one of those girls will get up the duff first.'

Wednesday 30 July 2008

look at that, it's catching...

well, while are still not getting over the alac ads (for good reason), there is this little gem from the police today, in relation to a vicious sexual assault that happened at a hamilton service station:


Mr Hermann said any sexual assault was horrifying, but the pure callousness of the man's actions had stumped police.
"It's not as though she has put herself in a vulnerable position by say, walking home late at night after a few drinks, where you could consider your chances (of being attacked) are higher. You would think a staff member working early on a Sunday morning would be okay ... we're just appalled."


so, "put herself in a vulnerable position" is the new way of saying she "asked for it". note that the mr hermann in question is a hamilton CIB detective sergeant. i don't want to pick on him in particular, as i suspect this may be a common way of thinking where he works. But there is so much wrong with this statement, and the source it's coming from is pretty scary.

presumably the police know that a significan number of sexual attacks happen to women in their own homes, and are committed by persons known to them. you would think? and a lot of them happen in hotel rooms and and other places that can't be classified as "walking home at night". that information would be available to them, right?? wouldn't it???

but the way he has framed his words makes it sound like walking home late at night is now a crime. putting yourself in a vulnerable position, and thereby wasting valuable police time by pretty much asking to be attacked. naughty women. i wonder if mr hermann has seen the alac ads. i wonder if they have influenced his thinking. because it seriously does sound like it.

so, um, do we make some kind of formal complaint to the police? would it be worth the effort? or maybe it would be better to call mr hermann and have a quiet chat about things. i'd really appreciate some guidance here.

Gay for a day


A few weeks ago, I looked after a friend's two preschool kids while she was at work. During the day, the kids' colds turned into something more sinister, and when my friend got home we took the kids to the doctor. In the consultation room, my friend and I cuddled a child each, and together answered the doctor's questions. It became clear as we spoke that the doctor thought my friend and I were a couple.

To our pleasant surprise, the doctor was nothing but accepting and kind to us. He didn't look askance at us - in fact, he didn't skip a beat. He was supportive of our assumed joint parenting, involving us both in the conversation about the kids' health, and advising us both on how to care for them.

I'm not naive enough to think the lives of gay and lesbian parents are all smiles and rainbows. Still, I felt buoyed by my experience at the doctor's. I can't help but compare it to twenty-odd years ago, when the Homosexual Law Reform Bill was the topic de jour. I was a kid living in Southland, and I still find it unsettling to think back on the dreadful homophobia expressed at this time.

My dad once told me an anecdote from the controversy surrounding the Bill. He'd been listening to talkback radio, and had been stunned by the announcer's ignorance. According to this guy, decriminalising homosexual acts was going to lead to hordes of leering paedophiles at school gates around the country. To illustrate that the announcer wasn't well informed on the issues, my father rang in and asked on air, 'My young daughter is being taught by an openly heterosexual teacher - what should I do?'. Pull her out of school immediately for her own safety, advised the announcer.

Dear oh dear. Homophobia is of course still with us, and is as hurtful as ever for those who are its targets. But to get acceptance and support from a doctor - an authority figure in our society - seems to indicate that, in some quarters at least, social progress has been made. If I'd been a 'real' lesbian, I think it would have made my day.

The villagers, sans pitchforks

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, and Hannah's post about her search for a solution to her childcare problems just spurred me to stop procrastinating and start tip tapping away at the little black keys.*

Back in the mists of time, when Hilary Clinton was "just" the American President's wife, she wrote a book about child-rearing called It Takes A Village to Raise a Child. The very phrase has become a bit of naffness and I've never read the book, but since Wriggly's arrival it's run through my head not in the sarcastic tones it used to, but as a reflection of the reality I am living in; I'm not the only person raising this baby, and I'm not the only person he is vitally important to.

First and foremost there is Wriggly's other parent, his father. He's actively involved; he changes nappies, he plays with him, and when I go out of an evening it's Daddy who tries to convince Wriggly that the formula from the bottle is yummy, yummy, yummy. In the night we tend to alternate who gets up, regardless of the fact that one of us has to head off to paid employment most mornings. Wriggly's dad makes time in his work schedule to be there, whenever possible, for jabs and Plunket visits, and in a couple of months' time, when I go back to work, it'll be his turn to be at home as the primary care-giver.

Then there's the broader whanau - grandparents in particular, but also aunts and uncles, great-grandparents, cousins (first and removed and all that guff that I can never get my head around). Wriggly and I usually spend at least a day a week with my Mum (and my Dad too, before he passed away), and the help that they offered during the pregnancy and since has been overwhelming in its generosity. Practical aid, like coming around to clear-out and decorate Wriggly's room, cooking us meals, offering to help financially with some of the bigger items like the cot, and the emotional support that has kept me going so many times when this mothering thing just seemed unbelievably hard. Wriggly's paternal grandparents have been great too, particularly since the total number of grandparents went down by one, and they lovingly babysit whenever we ask. Wriggly's Grandma is a Plunket nurse and I've really appreciated the perfect balance she has found between being my mother-in-law and being an expert on child care and development. Her supportive advice has been a great tonic for the worrier in me.

So far, so ho hum. You'd expect family to support a newborn and their parents, or at least you'd hope they would. I'm very aware of the advantages we have; the closeness of our families (geographically and emotionally) means that support is offered and asked for with ease. We are lucky.

What makes us even luckier is the broader network of friends who have been stellar. A few days after we came home from hospital Apathy Jack dropped around some DVDs cos he'd heard new parents didn't get out much.** Homemade meals turned up from all over the place, including from members of my partner's church, mostly people who had never met me. We didn't have to buy much clothing for Wriggly because of the kind donations of those whose children were older now, and due to the amazing mountain of baby clothes we were given as presents. The same with books and toys. All of those presents, whether pre-loved or brand new, made the financial stress of a new baby that little bit easier to cope with, and meant that from the very first day he was carried into the house our son has been surrounded by objects that show how loved he is, and reflect the huge number of people who are so pleased to know him.

Many friends have offered to baby-sit, not least our amazing neighbours, who lend us their lawnmower whenever we ask, and look after the cat too. Sometimes I try to repay their kindness a little by letting Mr S have a rant at me about the 5-star softness of our prisons, but mostly I try to balance the favour ledger a tiny bit by letting them have lots of cuddles with Wriggly. Apparently that's a currency that is valued higher than black gold.

And the mothers of friends have been great support too, telling me about their own experiences and reinforcing my sense of belief in my approach to parenting. So many mums, and early childhood teachers, have instilled a confidence in me that I had feared would elude me for some time. They have helped me realise, just through the osmosis of being around them and hearing them talk about the children they have cared for and educated, that my son will develop in his own time, and at his own pace, and that the most important thing is to care for him, love him, and encourage him as he discovers.

I haven't even mentioned yet the numerous people involved in the health system who have looked after Wriggly in various ways - everyone at Waitakere Hospital back in January (more on this another time), the two independent midwives who looked after us for the first six weeks, the two Plunket nurses at the Plunket Family Centre who rescued me from mastitis and helped both of us learn to breastfeed, the regular Plunket nurse who I suspect is visiting us a few extra times,*** our GP and the nurses there who have given Wriggly his jabs, two paedeatricians at Starship who checked his heart murmur, the ECG operators, the radiographer who x-rayed his chest, the two cardiologists who further checked his heart murmur, I'm sure I've forgotten someone. And that's without listing all the people behind the scenes who we maybe never saw, but whose work is so crucial to keeping the wheels of our health system going - the cleaners, the orderlies, the receptionists, the admin staff, the cooks.

Other new mums truly have kept me sane, with their admissions of their divergence from perfect motherhood. Deborah (who isn't a new mum of course) revealed to me several things by email which relaxed me a great deal, in particular the news that at this point in time Wriggly can learn much from simply watching me have a snack. This might seem pretty straightforward to you, but that one comment from my co-blogger has been instrumental in helping me keep making breastmilk for my baby, by keeping my food intake up. And you too, dear bloggers, with your writings about how it was for you and how it is now, be it by comment, email or on your own blog. Plus there are the other mums I've met at the Plunket parenting class (with yet another very helpful Plunket nurse presiding) - we're trying to keep in touch, attend a playgroup together, have coffees from time to time, and email about milestones.

This post probably only scratches the surface. I could mention the people who are supporting us too, by giving Wriggly's dad leave at the time of the birth, by helping my family to cope when Dad died, by doing a million things for us and with us that give us the strength to be parents, and those who run the free or donation based activities we head along to, like Mainly Music and the Greyfriars playgroup. Typing it all out now it just seems to be this never-ending list of those who surround us and support us, with the aim of giving Wriggly the best childhood possible.

We are talking about a community of support that far exceeds the bounds of a village. Some people will leave, as their time to help passes, and new folk will arrive as we go out into the world more and more. I'm sure that our village will grow just as Wriggly does.

And writing this all I'm aware of our good fortune. That we have these people, these opportunities, in our lives is in part a reflection of our Pakeha middle-class-ness. I wish all babies, and all parents, had it this good.



* Although to be honest I actually had to stop at this point and go feed Wriggly, organise his bath, clean-out the cupboard in his room while his father bathed him, etc etc.
** We still haven't finished watching them, but we're trying!
*** I think this is probably because I am at pretty high risk of Post Natal Depression.

Tuesday 29 July 2008

Facebooking across the universe

The Hand Mirror now has a group for writers and readers (that includes you, lurkers and commenters) to join and thus keep in touch.

We've done this as a precursor to an idea we have for doing something else a bit later on in the year. If you're the joining type then please feel free to add yourself. We haven't tinkered with it much yet, just set the group up, but as time allows things may get a bit more interesting.

That is all.

The Odds & Ends Drawer

Ulp, full again!
Righto, click or not as you choose. And do have a nice day.

Why do I do it?

Cross posted

You would think I'd learn. But seemingly, I don't, because I keep on doing it. Getting into paid employment, that is.

I've taken on a temporary, part-time job, doing some interesting policy work. But with the work comes the attendant problems for me, notably insomnia (which is however, very good for blogging) and stress-related back-aches. The back-ache is a beauty. I get a sharp pain that starts in my upper back, then translates into my chest, and can leave me breathless with pain. In a good attack, the pain can spread up into my jaw, and in the very best attacks, from there into a band over my head. I haven't had one of those attacks (yet) this time around, and hopefully, I will avoid them. And yes, before you leap in with helpful advice, I do sit correctly, I have had my desk and chair properly assessed, I do take micro-breaks, I do stop and stretch, I periodically swap my mouse hand, I swap between working with pen and paper and working with a screen, I do all the right things. I'm fairly sure that the back attacks come on because when I am stressed, like many other people, I tense all the muscles in my back.

It's not the work itself that's stressing me - it's well within my capacities, given my education and my previous experience. I learned how to do policy in a hard school - a very rigorous policy shop. It's the juggle that's doing me in. Get up early, have something to eat, get the girls fed and dressed, get their lunches made, get a load of washing through the washing machine and into the drier (no time to hang it on the line), get myself flossied up for work (not very flossy, BTW - just standard business wear), get everyone organised and out the door. All with Mr Strange Land of course - I'm not in this alone. Work hard until 3pm, taking a brief lunch break, then leave the office in a frantic rush in order to get to the girls' school on time. Come home, more washing-cleaning-cooking, help the girls with their homework, make beds, fold clothes, pay bills, all that rigmarole. Do my best to make sure the girls don't miss out because I am working, so make time to read to them. If things go well, they will be in bed by about 8pm, and I will have some time to sing, to read, to watch a little TV, before heading to bed and hoping that this night, I will sleep all night. (Not tonight though.)

I could make some different choices, such as putting the girls into after-school care two afternoons a week instead of one, but that means they would have only one afternoon at home a week (the other two afternoons are taken out by ballet and drama lessons - one set of lessons per child, but in order to get one child to her lesson, the others must come with me, because they are far, far too young to be left at home alone). I think the girls need down-time at home, just space in which to rattle about and be kids. I could pay for someone to clean the house, but the job only lasts for a few weeks, so that seems silly. I could drop the tutoring work I will be doing this semester, but that's on-going employment, and it will probably lead to more tutoring and maybe more lecturing work next year. Or I could drop my own singing lessons, which I am enjoying enormously, and which have been one of the things which have kept me going this year as we settle into this new country.

The money of course, is very nice. It pays for the extra things we like to have, such as the aforesaid lessons, and it contributes to our household, and it will help us to afford a trip home at the end of the year. But we could probably manage all those things anyway, with a bit of juggling and very careful budgeting.

So why take on paid employment?

It's partly about not just living off my husband's income, and expecting him to provide for us. The provider-pressure that many men experience is real, and if I am to believe that my feminism creates chocies and a better way of living for me, then I also want to do my best to ensure that Mr Strange Land doesn't have to wear this aspect of the patriarchy. (NB: I'm not about to worry about him being oppressed - read this interesting post about patterns of oppression at Feminist Philosophers for more on the difference between experiencing one sort of oppression, and being subject to oppression.)

It's partly about being able to support myself, and my children, in good times and in bad. I don't know what chances of fate may befall us, and I know that even if something rather bad happened, our families would help. Nevertheless, I want to be able to provide for my children if necessary. And that means that I need to keep my hand in at work, keep myself match-fit, ready and able and willing to earn a living.

And it's partly about modelling how women can live for my daughters. I want them to grow up seeing that women can and do support themselves, that they can and do live independently, that if they do, then relationships with other adults, male or female, are a matter of choice, not a financial necessity.

On the other hand, given the stress this is creating at present, I think six weeks will do for the current bout of employment, and I will look to spend the remainder of the year nurturing family and partner and myself and home, before trying to find a less juggle-intensive job in the New Year. That could be a very good thing to model too.

Monday 28 July 2008




A reminder - the 3rd Down Under Feminists Carnival is coming up soon, hosted by Audrey at Audrey and the Bad Apples. Closing date for submissions is the end of the month. So look through feminist blogs that you read, and your own blog, and submit some posts to the carnival. To submit, go to the carnival submission page, and fill in the form.

And yes, this is the second DUFC in a row hosted by an Adelaide based blogger.

Official Responses - Part II

It's taken me ages to write about the ASA decision on ALAC's Lisa ad. I guess because I find it depressing, to be honest. And when I did make a start today I looked up to see if the decision was online yet, and it isn't, and I'm not supposed to blog it until it is.

So at this point I'm just going to say that the ASA found that there was no case to proceed, and I'll write more when they release the decision to the media (at which point it will also be online).

In the meantime I need to decide whether or not to make an appeal. I've got a couple of days to do that, and ultimately whether or not I do write to them for a fourth time will depend mostly on how much time I have to pen something before the deadline. Who knew having a baby would interfere so much with blogging?!

---

In regard to the most recent response from Gerard Vaughan (CEO of ALAC) which I blogged about last week, my initial response was very similar to commenter tussock, who wrote:
So, their logic is as follows.

1: Some women binge drink, particularly single women from 25-40. They're being paid to reduce the incidence of that.

2: Women fear being raped.

3: If they make the entirely false connection that binge drinking women are natural targets for rapists, women will fear binge drinking.

4: It worked, so they fulfilled the terms of their contract.
To whit; ALAC are using women's fear of rape, which it's pretty safe to assume is not a fear only found in the target demographic, in a cynical and calculated manner, regardless of how it might impact on women who have been raped who are viewing the ad, or indeed societal attitudes towards women who are raped when they have been drinking. Either that or ALAC just don't get the simple research principles about correlation and causation.

I found this thought so repugnant and so wrong that I thought I must surely be reading Vaughan's response incorrectly, in some paranoid hyper-feminist manner. I turned my mind away from it because it is a bit too hard to think that an agency charged with educating people about safer drinking behaviour could be so oblivious to the harm they might do in other areas with their social advertising. So to have tussock pick up on it too, well I'm starting to wonder if maybe I was overly paranoid about being paranoid.

What do you think, dear readers?

---

Finally, a post from Lita on this whole fandango, which I'm pretty sure I hadn't linked earlier (sorry Lita).

Monday Funday - with Ukelele



Hat tipped to the Hoydens.

In memory of Lauren

There's a spectrum of feminist responses to the beauty myth. At one end, there's the dour ladies who feel that any concession to the idea of beauty compromises women. And at the other end, there's the idea that women should be able to do with our bodies whatever we wish - whether that be wearing lip gloss and labels or having hairy legs and jackboots.

I have to admit that I'm much closer to the dour end of the spectrum than the do-as-you-please end, although I mean no disrespect to those feminists with other beliefs. It's not that I don't support women's right to autonomy over our bodies. Rather, it's because women and men alike can use our individual rights and autonomy in ways which cause harm to others. I feel that if we as feminists focus too much on securing women's personal freedoms, we might lose sight of the collective issue - in this case, how our individual actions feed a beauty culture which is unhealthy for women.

Case in point. In my early twenties, the chronic despression which has been a permanent feature of my life landed me in the acute psychiatric ward of the local hospital (another post for another day, perhaps). I shared my ward room with three other women; each of us had a quarter of the room surrounded by a curtain. One of my roommates was a woman in her mid-twenties called Lauren.

Lauren was terribly ill with anorexia. She had deprived her body until she was pencil-thin and shapeless like a twelve-year-old boy. During mealtimes, she and the other patients with eating disorders - all of them young women - sat in their own segregated area, where their eating was scrutinised by a nurse. Each of these women had a tray containing the sort of lunch you might feed a preschooler: tiny sandwiches, a miniature package of fruit juice. Eating was a source of anguish and humilation for these women. They sat hunched miserably over their children's servings, with their bony spines and ribcages protruding, hoping I think that the nurse might relent and leave them be. They looked like they felt they were being tortured.

I had an altercation with Lauren one day. I'd decided that I needed to add orange hairdye to the greyness of my life, and left a godawful mess in our shared bathroom. Lauren told me angrily to clean it up. Later, she tried to apologise. This wasn't easy for her, not for reasons for pride or anything like that, but because she was so consumed by the pain of her illness that communicating coherently with others was truly difficult for her. I knew what she meant, though, and she gave me the only smile I ever saw from her.

From that point, Lauren and I had the closest thing to a friendship which I believe a person as ill as her could possibly have. One night, as each person was in bed in their curtained quarters, Lauren asked me calmly if I would call her a nurse. I knew something was horribly, terribly wrong. After fetching the nurse, I listened fearfully from behind my curtain. The nurse attending Lauren called out to another, 'It's in almost three inches - call surgery'.

I later found out that Lauren had taken a pair of scissors and silently tried to cut away the 'fat' from her emaciated stomach. That's how much she hated her own body. Miraculously, she had missed her internal organs.

It's too simplistic to say that the beauty industry causes eating disorders, but I don't believe it helped Lauren to live in a culture in which dissastisfaction with ourselves is mandatory for women. Feeling beautiful and sexy can be fun, an aesthetic thing to be enjoyed and celebrated. But I feel strongly that beauty is harmful when it sets women in competition with one another, or with ourselves, in a race towards goals which stay ever out of reach. Who hasn't said to themselves or others, 'If I just lose a couple more kilos I'll be happy with the way I look', 'Oh my God - look at her hair', or 'I may be a bit chubby, but at least I'm not as fat as her'. Because, as Lauren's story shows, every competition must have a loser.

A couple of years ago, I opened a newspaper to find a story about Lauren. She had succeeded in starving herself to death in her mid-thirties. The sadness I felt was not for her death, but for the unhappiness and self-hatred of her life. Mostly, I felt relief that her suffering was over.

Saturday 26 July 2008

powerful woman

well there's nothing much in the news today but dr condoleeza rice. of course a visit from an american secretary of state after so many years would be a huge deal, no matter who it was. but dr rice represents something more. she represents an ethnic minority made good, a black woman overcoming prejudice of various kinds. a woman who coped with structural and institutional systems that have made it difficult for people like her to achieve as she has.

we should celebrate her for her success. not only for what she represents (a woman of colour in power/with power), but also the skills, determination and talent she brings to the job. here is someone i'd like to be proud of, but somehow i'm not.

maybe it's because, in succeeding within that system, she has taken on some of the worst aspects of the system. she hasn't changed anything of note, rather she has moulded herself to fit into what is already there.

i guess i'm thinking back to the arguments of the christian women's temperance movement who argued that giving women the vote would increase the levels of morality (particularly around drinking laws), and were pretty successful with that argument at the time. ok, i see that there are a lot of issues with putting the burden of morality on women. it's totally unfair, leads to all sorts of misogyny. at its worst, that burden leads to women having operations to repair their lost virginity, or to purity balls.

and yet there is part of me that wants the end result of women being part of the political system to actually lead to better outcomes, fairer policies. not just for women, but overall. it should lead to some improvement in the way things are run. otherwise what's the point? if dr rice is going to put in place the same policies and facilitate the same excesses as the existing system does, then what is the point of having women in positions of power. if nothing changes, we may as well just leave it to the men.

i feel towards dr rice much as i do towards margaret thatcher or madeliene allbright (she of the "oh yes, we think the price is worth it" in response to hearing about the half a million iraqi children who died as a result of sanctions in the 1990's). these women are not the reason why i fight for equal opportunity, why i fight for change and the increasing involvement in decision-making.

on the other hand, i guess equality means that women have just as much right to cock-up as men do. they have just as much right to be heartless or corrupt or whatever other qualities bad male leaders have. maybe it's just me who's wrong, in expecting more.

Let's hear it for the boys

When the news broke that Winston Peters had accepted a donation from Bob Jones via the dubious Spencer Trust, I wondered aloud at work, 'Why would Bob Jones give money to Winston?'. Jones is a hard core idealogue of the right. Winston, by comparison, flits cheerfully about the political spectrum, advocating when it suits him interventionist policies of a sort that Bob Jones must despise.

My workmate answered my question, 'They're both blokey'.

Jones' subsequent media statements have shown just how right my workmate was. Jones described the circumstances of his donation on Campbell Live last night. Both Jones and Peters were a bit pissed, so Jones couldn't quite remember the amount he'd given Peters, but he knew it was over $100,000. They'd disagreed over the issue of Asian immigration: the donation was a 'no hard feelings' sort of thing. They clapped one another on the back.

The glibness of this - two drunken arses exchanging a sum of money well in excess of my annual household income - really offends me. And I'm stunned that for both men, serious differences of political principle seem less important than their allegiance to the boys' club. My principles, political and otherwise, are actually important to me. Given the idealogical song and dance Bob Jones has make over the last three decades or so, I would have thought that he, at least, would feel the same way.

It doesn't reflect too well on NZ politics, does it?

Friday 25 July 2008

Friday Feminist - Naomi Wolf

Cross posted on In a Strange Land

A woman wins by giving herself and other women permission - to eat; to be sexual; to age; to wear overalls, a paste tiara, a Balenciaga gown, a second-hand opera cloak or combat boots; to cover up or to go practically naked; to do whatever we choose in following - or ignoring - our own aesthetic. A woman wins when she feels that what each woman does with her own body - unenforced, uncoerced - is her own business. ...

Can there be a pro-woman definition of beauty? Absolutely. What has been missing is play. The beauty myth is harmful and pompous and grave because so much, too much, depends upon it. The pleasure of playfulness is that it doesn't matter. Once you play for stakes of any amount, the game becomes a war game, or compulsive gambling. In the myth, it has been a game for life, for questionable love, for desperate and dishonest sexuality, and without the choice not to play by alien rules. No choice, no free will; no levity, no real game.

But we can imagine, to save ourselves, a life in the body that is not value-laden; a masquerade, a voluntary theatricality that emerges from abundant self-love. A pro-woman redefinition of beauty reflects our redefinitions of what power is. Who says we need a bierarchy? Where I see beauty may not be where you do. Some people look more desirable to me than they do to you. So what? My perception has no authority over yours. Why should beauty be exclusive? Admiration can include so much. Why is rareness impressive? The high value of rareness is a masculine concept, having more to do with capitalism than with lust. What is the fun in wanting the most what cannot be found? Children, in contrast, are common as dirt, but they are highly valued and regarded as beautiful.


Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth, 1990

Eggs

According to today's Dom Post, the parents of little girls suffering from cancer are having the girls' eggs harvested before they undergo cancer treatment. Treatment may damage girls' fertility, so parents are trying to ensure their daughters will have the choice to one day have kids of their own.

I feel fraught about this; and then I feel hypocritical for feeling fraught about it. I'm lucky to have no fertility issues: I wanted babies, so I went ahead and made some. If I'd been unable to have kids, I would probably have been devastated.

But the harvesting of little girls' eggs makes me feel yucky for a host of reasons. Here are some:

- It makes an implicit value judgement on the lives of women, suggesting that having kids is - or ought to be - a key life goal.

- It exposes children to the discomfort of what I've heard is an unpleasant procedure. Sometimes, as a parent, you've got to make your kids go through nasty stuff for their own good (vaccinations, for example), but the gain should outweigh the pain. In this case, I'm not sure it does.

- To me, egg harvesting seems at the very edge of what a parent can reasonably determine is in his or her child's interests. I don't like the view that kids are property of parents, and that parents therefore get to call all the shots regarding their kids lives. Sure, there are times when I make decisions about my kids' lives, but I'm reluctant to go too far down the road of deciding what is or isn't right for them. I'll make them wear jackets when it's cold, but I don't force them to go to church or learn ballet, for example. I don't feel I have the 'authority' to call the shots about some aspects of their lives (eg, their spiritual development, interests, future life choices about fertility, etc).

What do you lot think?

Thursday 24 July 2008

The Odds & Ends Drawer

Chockablock again, so here's a peek:
New to the blogroll:
Wahine Toa by Hannah
kate5kiwis
You bet I get what I deserve by ghetsuhm

Apologies for the scarcity of livejournal hosted blogs on the Blogroll. I struggled for a little while to get my head around which URL is the actual blog, how to subscribe to the feed, etc, and I think I've worked it out now, but I'm playing catch-up on adding bloggers. If you are an NZ woman blogger who uses livejournal, and you're not already on the blogroll, you might want to add your blog in comments, or email me, and I'll sort it.

The anti-chick

I once attended a Pride Week function where the speaker talked about how each of us 'acts out' feminity, masculinity, or some other gender identity of our choosing. She was expressing the idea that our gender identity isn't something unchangeable that we're born with, or even something that's so completely bludgeoned into us by society that we have no choice in how we look or act. There's heaps of social pressure surrounding how we should be masculine or feminine, but we still have some say in the matter. A woman in the audience piped up, 'I know what you mean. Look at women from Southland - they look more like dykes than we do!'.

It made me chuckle. I grew up in rural Southland, and the woman's comment gave me a strong memory of the sort of women I grew up with: standard issue bowl haircuts, no-nonsense corduroy trousers. These women raised families, worked on farms and, as often as not, had paid jobs too. They were relentlessly practical because they had to be, doing everything from feeding out hay to doing the farm books to whipping up a batch of scones.

Like my rural foremothers, I don't quite get the point of girl stuff. I do enjoy mucking about with make up, clothes and hair dye from time to time; but these are leisure activities, not an oppressive uniform, and certainly not things that my life feels incomplete without. I had kids quite young, so I've never had the disposable income to get fancy. And I've never much cared. To me, elaborate clothes/hair/makeup/shoes are a barrier. If I can't run about with my kids, do stuff in the garden, carry out my dubious home improvements, I don't feel like me.

Consequently, I don't see the point of Sex and the City. I don't see the point of clothes that look great but make you feel cold. I don't see the point of fabrics which kids' snot doesn't wash out of easily. I don't see the point of trying to have nice fingernails when I'll only get dirt underneath them. I make some concession to the sartorial demands of the workplace, but most of the time I'm a savage. And it's not just that I subscribe to rather old school, second wave views of the beauty industry (although, by and large, I do) - I really enjoy wearing trackpants and doing messy stuff. Nor do I consider myself a tomboy; I just have my own way of being female.

For the most part, I get away with my slight lack of conformity, including in the workplace. I have a sense, though, that this is because I'm a good worker, and I can hold my own against people who might otherwise look down their noses at me. Despite my generally cheerful, self-actualised disposition, I do feel inferior from time to time when I compare myself to women with more money to spend on beautification than I have, and more knowledge of how to look good. I have bleak moments of not feeling like a 'proper' woman.

It's not all doom and gloom, of course. My partner of almost twelve years once told me the reason he was first attracted to me. It was because I had boots and a shabby green jersey and plenty of unladylike left wing opinions on everything. It's a description which most women would rather not have made of them, but I kind of like it!

Daddy sez, no bois in ur bed til u wed

I like to think of myself as reasonably liberal when it comes to the subject of sex. I believe that people to should be able to have sex with as many or as few people as they want, the should be free to have sex with people of either gender or any sort of prop they desire, they can even choose to not have sex at all if that is their thing. Quite frankly what goes in other peoples' bedrooms is none of my damn business. But every so often I see something on the internet that makes me think 'eewwh that's so weird and wrong and actually really creepy.'


Before I get accused of spending far too much time in the seedier parts of the internet, I first saw the story about Purity Balls in the New York Times a few months ago and have been meaning to write about it. But after Time magazine published their take on this weird phenomena I decided it was time to rant.

So what's a purity ball? Here's the basic gist of it: girls aged between about 4 and 18 get dressed up and attend a ball with their fathers.* They talk, they eat, and then the fathers read a vow "before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity." But wait there's more! After dinner comes a ballet performance, where ballerinas clad in white tutus drag in a large wooden cross, which they they then drape in white material and a crown of thorns. This is the point where the fathers and daughters process under crossed swords to kneel while the girls place a white rose, representing their purity, at the base of the cross.

There are many things I despise about the concept of purity balls but here's the worst one, the idea that a little girl is a delicate flower who needs male protection from the big bad world. WTF? I thought that feminism had flushed out the idea that fathers have ownership of daughter's bodies or has the Christian community been overrun by so many erect teenage penises that fathers feel they must shield their daughters from them?

Or could the actual problem not be with teenage boys or in fact teenage girls but with their fathers? In the articles the founder of the purity ball concept was not so much about daughters but about fathers who 'didn't know what their place was in the lives of their daughters.' I suppose on some level I can actually appreciate the sentiment of the fathers. As misguided as it seems, a big part of the evening is acknowledging that some fathers (for reasons that are sometimes beyond their control) often fail to have any meaningful involvement in their daughters' lives.

But the answer to this lack of involvement can't be found through trying to reassert patriarchal control over their daughters' sexuality? Surely there are other aspects of their daughters identity that fathers could use to connect with their daughters. Taking an interest in her ballet classes, rugby games or the books she is currently reading is a far more conducive to establishing the bonds needed to raise girls with the confidence, self-worth and street smarts to only go as far as she's ready to when her brain starts getting jolts of teenage hormones and huge helpings of peer pressure.

And what if she fails to remain pure? While the NYT article at least states that many teenagers who say they will remain abstinent will end up having sex before marriage, and they are far less likely to use condoms than their peers, Time seems relatively unconcerned since the girls are twice as likely to graduate from college albeit with a nasty case of herpes. Moreover what if girls 'purity' is sullied through rape? Doesn't the usage of the term 'purity' (as opposed to abstinence) with its associated stigma of the 'unpure' make that horrific experience so much worse?

But the biggest question I have in this process is where the hell are the mothers and sons? If staying a virgin until marriage is seen as being so important why is it only promoted to little girls? Oh that's right. Despite the whole she-bang being symbolically centered on the daughter's body, it's so clearly the men who are unable to keep it in their pants. As one of the dad attendees of the ball said,

"It inspires me to be spiritual and moral in turn. If I'm holding them to such high standards, you can be sure I won't be cheating on their mother."

It must be such a sacrifice for you to not cheat on your wife. So glad you're on top of that now despite all the other indiscretions you might have had before.

* Or step-fathers or even more freaky, their future fathers-in-law. Don't worry son, I got you a virgin!

Wednesday 23 July 2008

Carnivalia

Bigger, fuller, bouncier: Ginger hosts the 61st Carnival of Feminists on Diary of a Freak Magnet.

And the 16th Carnival of Radical Feminists is up on Allecto's blog,

Hodgepodge

This post is a mosaic of bits and pieces that I wanted to mention but I don't have the time for a whole post on any of them. I am going to shamelessly imitate Martha's winning bullet point style...
  • Is any body else feeling a bit, well, icky, about TVNZ's Burying Brian? Seems to me if it was a man murdering his spouse and covering it up it would never have made it to air, or at least not as an attempt at comedy.
  • Particularly given the whole Veitch thing, which Lita has a fantastic post on, dealing to Holmes' latest advert for the Veitchy Is The Victim Association (VITVA) column.
  • Babies are bad for your back.
  • Tonight is July's regular Drinking Liberally event for Auckland - London Bar (cnr Queen and Wellesley Sts), 7.30pm, Wed 23rd July. The guest speaker fell over (not literally) so it is a mix and mingle, and a fab opportunity to meet new people who share your politics.
Ok, that is all.

Tuesday 22 July 2008

policing policy

and in news just in, the human rights commission has come up with an answer thanx to a loophole for charitable benefits. so any of you rich women out there wanting to set up a scholarship fund in your will are free to have that scholarship available to women only. this nicely gets around the whole debate about whether or not women are a marginalised minority, especially when it comes to university education. hmm.

and for those of you into redemption and forgiveness, i guess the police association policy wishlist (aka "what cops want") is not for you:
* Adequate funding of the Government's new Organised and Financial Crime Agency;
* urgent passage of the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Bill;
* investigation of the effectiveness of British-style anti-social behaviour orders;
* allowing police to issue temporary "on-the-spot" domestic violence protection orders;
* lowering the age of criminal responsibility to bring 12 and 13-year-olds within the jurisdiction of the Youth Court;
* keeping 17-year-olds in adult courts;
* introducing mandatory third-party vehicle insurance;
* raising police numbers to match Queensland's police to population ratio by 2015;
* introducing changes to discourage vexatious private prosecutions of officers;
* giving police automatic name suppression in cases where they are being prosecuted for the use of lethal force.

all of the above, plus tasers, a reversal of the new bail laws, and more.

actually, there are a couple there that i could agree with - funding for the organised-crime agency, temporary "on-the-spot" protection orders. there are others i could live with, like third-party vehicle insurance (although it will make it more difficult for young people to own cars) and name-suppression during cases against police officers using lethal force (i'm generally not into trial-by-media).

but on the increase in overall police numbers, not for me. looking at the figures, nz has about 504 police per 10,000 people. the comparable figure for the UK is around 493 per 10,000 people. yet, there were 52 murders* in london alone in the six month period between april and september last year. so i'd say that numbers of police officers in itself is not a solution to crime-reduction, although there is a case for greater numbers in particular parts of the country. i'd think more community policing, with stronger community involvement, would be a much more effective approach to crime-reduction.

i'm not at all convinced about tasers, and ASBO's "have the potential ... to overtly criminalize poverty and homelessness", so definitely not a good idea. and hardline stances on youth criminal offending seem to be a recipe for creating more hardened adult criminals. i remember hearing a youth court judge saying that the worst thing you could do with teenage offenders was put them into an institution with other teenage offenders.

as for bail laws, while i can understand the frustration when those on bail commit a crime, i still can't agree to the overall notion that someone should spend months in jail when they may or may not have committed a crime. how can you jail someone for several months simply for being a suspect, unless you have a damn good reason?

all in all, sounds like what the police association wants is a police state. hardly surprising. i can appreciate the difficulty of the work they do, and am all for providing police the support they need to do their job, but the wishlist is just a little too much for me.

What do women want?

Frog has initiated an interesting discussion at the Greens' blog about what women want, politically. Not just in terms of policies (eg Paid Parental Leave) or positions (eg a Minister of Women's Affairs) but also in terms of the kind of political discourse we have. Should what women want be separated out from what everyone wants? Is there progress to be gained from that or not? Frog points out the male dominance of NZ politics is still in place, if reduced, and that most online political dialogue in relation to Aotearoa is also saturated with XYers.

My personal experiences in politics have taught me that even in left wing organisations women's participation is still at times restricted by stereotypical approaches to gender roles. For example I can think of a woman I know who is lovely and considers herself quite feminist, however when it comes to mid-winter Xmas dinners she insists on finding a man to carve the meat because it just isn't women's work. A frivolous story, to be sure, but it does illustrate my point - when it comes to gender equality (parity, fairness, whatever word you want to use) we just aren't there yet.

Back to Frogblog - please go have a look at the discussion evolving there (it looks like Frog could do with a bit of a hand wresting it back to the point) and put your two five cents in about what you'd like to see in this election, in relation to political dialogue that addresses issues of importance to women, and regarding women's participation in the democratic processes themselves.

That bizarre event in Sydney

Cross posted on In a Strange Land

Mostly I have tried to ignore World Youth Day, vaguely thinking that if I clap my hands over my ears and my ears, then I will hear no evil, see no evil and do no evil. The good people at Larvatus Prodeo have been doing a jolly fine job of analysing World Youth Day anyway, which is a good thing, because you certainly won't get any analysis from the sycophants at the Sydney Morning Herald. It hasn't occurred to them to ask difficult questions when people say things like this?
Sister Catherina, a nun from Tonga who was seated well back in the throng, said: “We see Jesus when we see the Pope.” [link]
There's simple faith, and then there's sheer idiocy.

Tigtog Hoyden has a lovely take on Benedict's alleged charm and other failings.

As for what I think about it all, well... take a look at this.
The Pope, in a specially embellished WYD08 gown, was flanked by 420 bishops and 26 cardinals in the sanctuary of the altar, while 3000 priests were seated at the front of the sanctuary. [link]
The mind-blowing, obvious problem with this picture?

Not only are the "most important" people wearing silly hats, but absolutely every single one of the people who get to be right up front, marked out as special and important, somehow closer to holiness than anyone else, is male.

Monday 21 July 2008

The old girls' club

The knives are out.

A few years ago an acquaintance of mine relayed a rather interesting conversation with a partner in a Shortland Street law firm who was rather incredulous that the majority of the top graduates from law school were *gasp* women. My acquaintance wondered what the big deal, was but the partner of the law firm seemed to think it was the end of the legal establishment as we know it.

So now that there are far too many women graduating university, it was only a matter of time before the small number (both in number and financial value) of scholarships available to women were put on the chopping block by a male hand. Just for fun, I looked on the University of Auckland scholarships website and found a grand total of 8 scholarships specifically for women of which seven are the result of bequests, hardly a huge number.

Of course the scholarships themselves aren't usually the result of state-sponsorship but rather are the result of the private generosity of organisations or individuals that have decided that they want to financially encourage students to pursue certain fields of study or make it financially easier for certain members of society to study at university like Christians, Koreans and that the most oppressed member of academia, former Grammar Boys. I don't know about Christians, but there are plenty of Koreans and Grammar boys running around most university campuses these days but there isn't a huge outcry about scholarships available to these groups.

I only wish that rather than trying to destroy the few scholarships open to women, that the energy would go into looking at the reasons why boys aren't enrolling in tertiary education. Perhaps someone should set up a scholarship?

Monday Funday - I tell myself it's just a poo day

First there was Russell Brown writing about a grad diploma essay titled Clark Vader and the Helengrad Labour Lesbians, which it transpires is all about the poo labels* that Lindsey Perigo and John Banks flung around with ah, gay, abandon on their radio shows. Some hilarity ensues in the Hard News comment section (amongst the usual earnestness about Marx, Starship Troopers and internecine Objectivist warfare).

Then I stumbled across this post on the 25 Most Baffling Toys From Around the World, which, I warn you dear reader, features some things that really probably shouldn't look like poo, but, well, let's just say they bear a remarkable resemblance. Oh and penises too. Not usually at the same time though.

Time to go read Wriggly The Mole Who Knew it was None of his Business, surely?


* Does that mean we can subtitle Investigate Magazine "all the poos that's fit to print"?

Victim Blaming

It appears New Zealand is having a victim blaming weekend. I was hoping to write something a little more complex as I got back into the swing of blogging - the limits of an analysis of prejudice maybe, or just more about Joss Whedon. But no

Stuff headlines the article about a double murder in Auckland with Crime of passion at Auckland apartment leaves two dead. The article includes the following quote:
Sources said a 30-year-old Iraqi man walked in on "something he shouldn't" yesterday morning which led to a 2½ hour standoff with police.
I'm not even linking to the article on the inside page, which is describing how Kristin Dunne-Powell behaved before and after having her back broken by Tony Veitch. Guess what? It's not relevant.

Then Ethical Martini (whose ethics appears not to be above a little victim blaming) asks the vital questions, such as was Tony Veitch being blackmailed (nope not linking to that either). Got to love the passive voice, it's easier to hide the fact that you're victim blaming when you don't mention the name.

All this is, of course, sending a message. The same message that the woman who was raped by the English rugby players received. If you are abused by a famous man, do everything you can to keep it quiet, otherwise your every move will be evaluated and dissected, and you will be blamed for the abuse.

Can I make this absolutely clear:

It is never women's fault or responsibility when men abuse them.

Never.

Ever.

Not even if she's drunk.

Nope.

Not even then.

Never.

Sunday 20 July 2008

Official Responses - Part I

It's been a bit quiet on the Lisa advert front in recent weeks. I'd been waiting, waiting, waiting, for replies from both ALAC (to this) and the ASA (to this), and was starting to think I'd have to send some polite reminders. Certainly the focus here has been elsewhere in the last month, with first the abortion stuff, then the Veitch stuff, and of course all the other bits and pieces that are of interest to us all on an ongoing basis.

Then on Monday this week I received an email from Gerard Vaughan. Gerard Vaughan I thought to myself, who is that, name rings a vague bell... I was about to consign it to the spam folder (and curse Xtra yet again for failing to eficiently weed out those annoyances) but luckily I didn't, and thus I can bring you the CEO of ALAC's response to the email I sent back in June with a whole host of questions for the organisation who brought us the Lisa advert:

Dear Julie,*
I apologise for the delay in answering your questions. I have been out of the office for much of June. I hope the following answers your questions.

1. Conception
The advertising agency ALAC used was Clemenger BBDO in Wellington.

The brief they were given was to:
  • Get adult New Zealanders (in this case women aged 25 - 40 no kids)
  • Who binge drink and think it's harmless fun
  • To realise what it could cost them
  • By understanding that drinking past the point of no return, could take me somewhere ugly
  • Like this: not judgemental but direct, honest, gritty.
The objective of the commercial is behaviour change. Research asked women to identify their single biggest fear about binge drinking. The biggest fear to emerge was sexual vulnerability. We could not ignore this finding given that this consequence was most likely to engage our female audience and had the potential to reduce the incidence of binge drinking among our female target audience.

2. Content
The target audience for this particular commercial was women without children 25 - 40 years. They are a group which fetures heavily in binge drinking statistics (both in NZ and globally). To get the message across to this audience requires relevance, therefore the story needed to be told from a woman's perspective. At no stage was it considered to tell the "man's story" with regard to his drinking.

ALAC based the Lisa ad on research. Discussions took place within 60 mini focus groups (three participants plus facilitator) in a sample of locations - Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Gisborne. Participants were 25 - 60 years old, gender balanced, and a mixture of socio-economic groupings, with/without children, single or living in a permanent relationship. The mini focus groups seperately comprised NZ Europeans, Maori, Pacific Peoples and Asians. Filtering at recruitment identified Binge Drinkers and Moderate Drinkers.

The take-out message of the ad is not around the man's drinking behaviour. This commerical needs to get women who binge drink and think its harmless fun, to realise that drinking past the point of no return can make someone vulnerable to serious harms.

For a commerical to be effective it needs to be single-minded in nature. The commercial is intended to make women like Lisa think "I recognise that type of drinking - oh my God, that could happen to me." The end goal is that women like Lisa will drink moderately in future.

After development of the ad a further round of focus groups was to ensure the take out of the ad was to do with the drinking behaviour and that alcohol is responsible for her change in demeanour - it is not victim-blaming. It is crucial to the commercial's success that women can identify strongly with Lisa's drinking behaviour. Our research testing of the ad has shown this to be the case.

3. Focus Groups
During the development process we went back to groups of women at two different stages to test both the concepts and to ensure that the out take of the advertisement was that it was about the drinking behaviour and not blaming the person.

Focus groups conducted with the completed ad clearly demonstrated that:
  • It has a very high personal relevance and the scenario is recognisable and believable. "I could see myself in that ad. Been there, done that, so many times before!" "This reminds me of me and my mates. Horrible. Makes me think I want all my friends to watch this." "Made me concerned, because I get like her."
  • Drinking with workmates and gulping a few backto feel comfortable and a part of the group, is a scenario women like Lisa totally can relate to. "Drinks after work... trying to fit in... I can relate to that."
  • "Hooking up with guys" when drinking was talked about as commonplace, and seeing it in this context was a reminder of the inherent dangers of this behaviour. "Hooking up with strangers. I do that a lot after [drinking.] You don't know what they are capable of..."
4. Consultation
ALAC communicated with various social agencies in relation to the new ad campaign in the two weeks before ads went to air. Agencies included ACC, Land Transport NZ, Ministry of Women's Affairs, the Families Commission, Police, Jigsaw Family Services, Rape Crisis, the Family Planning Association and the Children's Commissioner. The ads were also played prior to screenings on television at stakeholder meetings held in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch the week prior to the launch. ALAC also attended a Ministry of Women's Affairs staff meeting where there was debate over whether the Lisa ad blamed women.

In the future ALAC will consult with agencies working with rape and sexual assault at an earlier stage of developing any campaign that raises issues of sexual vulnerability for women.

5. Complaints
In the first two weeks after the ads played ALAC received three complaints about the Lisa ad. Two of the complaints concerned blaming women for rape. The other was concerned at the male was portrayed. Since then there have been three further complaints about the Lisa ad and whether it is blaming women. Some complaints have also been made to the Advertising Standards Authority.

6. Promotion
There have been approximately 300 spots from the launch of the campaign until the end of last week. They have run on TV1, TV2, TV3, Prime and Sky channels. The ad is likely to run for the foreseeable future. The campaign appears on television only and is aired after 8.30pm.

7. Finally
ALAC funds an 0800 number which is staffed by trained counsellors who qualified to deal with any issues that arise from viewing the ads. We would encourage anyone who wants to talk about any issues that result from viewing this ad or the other two in the series to ring the 0800 number displayed on all three ads.

Yours etc,

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My initial thoughts are these:
  • Vaughan has made a significant effort here, but hasn't answered all of my questions, particularly in regard to part 7, where I asked if ALAC would be prepared to meet with women who had been victims of sexual assaults to talk with them about the impact that the ads had on them personally. This has not even been addressed. As Vaughan has also failed to mention my question about whether they considered the impact this ad might have on those who had been victims of sexual assault I guess that means an answer in the negative to that one. Similarly with the lack of response to the query about the wisdom of asking people to consider and discuss an ad featuring a sexual assault in a group setting.
  • The focus group work is clearly extensive, but seems to have missed any research on possible unintended consequences from the ad, i.e that the "take out" isn't just about binge drinking, but also about policing women's behaviour more generally and may serve to reinforce the "she was asking for it" trope.
  • I find it interesting mental origami that Vaughan states that the message they wanted to get across, and which he claims was absorbed, was that it was the alcohol was responsible for the change in Lisa's demeanour, yet this is somehow in line with the campaign tag "it's not the drinking, it's how we're drinking"? Again this misses the fundamental point - the ad makes the link between Lisa's demeanour and the negative outcome for her, ie rape.
  • The "hooking up with guys" point I just find quite disturbing and objectionable. Yet again, a crucial disconnect with our concerns. This is not Dennis from accounts, this is a sexual assault.
  • In regard to the consultation stuff my reading of this is that they stuffed up a little and they know it. It really is very good indeed that they are going to involve groups like Rape Crisis (presumably) in developing any future ads that feature issues of sexual assault. Now if we could just get ALAC to stop thinking of it as "sexual vulnerability"...
Coincidentally I also received a response this week, in Friday's snail mail, from the ASA. More on that in a second post as time allows. I don't think you are going to like it much.

In the meantime here's Eleanor Bishop's column in Salient on this issue earlier this month, and also if you want to peruse all the posts on this issue so far I've tagged them with their own category, "The Lisa Advert Chronicles". And there's the online petition (over 340 sigs as I write) and the Facebook group (nearly 200 members) on the matter too.



* I've squished up the paragraphs a little to make this not quite such a massive post, and I had to type the letter in over the course of a few hours broken up by a baby who seems to have forgotten how to sleep so there may be some typos. Hopefully I'll get a chance to proof and correct tomorrow (Monday). So in the first instance please assume any errors with Mr Vaughan's letter are mine until I've had a chance to do that.

Feminist Events: Auckland book stuff in late July & early August

Found via the Auckland Women's Bookshop:

What: Juliet Batten and Midwives in Mali
When:
Thursday 24 July 6pm
Where:
Women's Bookshop, 105 Ponsonby Rd, Ponsonby, Auckland
This double event features Juliet Batten (Auckland artist, author & pysychotherapist) with her autobiography Touching Snow: A Taranaki Memoir, and American Kris Holloway who worked for two years in a remote, impoverished West African village where she assisted a remarkable midwife. Her book, Monique and the Mango Rains, captures the true story of women's friendship reaching beyond borders.
Authors reading & talking 6.30pm; entry by donation at the door.

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What: Celebrating Survivors of Sexual Assault
When:
Tuesday 5 August 6pm
Where: Women's Bookshop, 105 Ponsonby Rd, Ponsonby, Auckland
Join Kim McGregor for the launch of Surviving and Moving On (originally published as Warriors of Truth) and Jan Jordan from Wellington with Serial Survivors: Women's Narratives of Surviving Rape, to celebrate two profoundly important New Zealand books for and about women survivors.
Authors reading & talking 6.30pm; entry by donation at the door.

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What: What's happening to our girls? with Maggie Hamilton
When:
Thursday 7 August 8pm
Where:
Dorothy Winstone Theatre, Auckland Girls' Grammar, Howe St, off K'Rd
Too much, too soon! How our kids are overstimulated, oversold & oversexed.
New Zealander Maggie Hamilton, an author & educator who lives in Australia, takes a comprehensive & compassionate look at the pressures our girls face with technology, marketing, early sexualisation, binge drinking; often accompanied by low self-esteem.

Tickets $12 adults, $5 students from the bookshop.
Visa & Mastercard bookings accepted by phone, email & website (see the Women's Bookshop website for more on this.)

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If you have any events to promote that may be of interest to NZ feminists please feel free to email us with details, via my profile.