Sex workers are people too

In February 2001, Marie Jamieson, a 21 year old Auckland hairdresser, was raped and killed. A few months later, I found an article about her unsolved murder in North and South. I was shocked to read that, when it was revealed that Marie had used drugs, helpful calls from members of the public to the Police hotline shrunk to a third. It seems the death, and therefore the life, of drug-taker didn't matter so much - 'moral' people's lives are worth more than others.*

The horrific murder of Christchurch sex worker Mellory Manning left me bracing for a wave of stupid and callous comments. Amongst the first stories published after her body was found was to do with her having assaulted someone with a syringe - a story which is refuted by Mellory's partner. I saw a woman (who may or may not have been a Christchurch City Councillor) mouthing off on TV about the need to regulate prostitution like other industries. I was sympathetic at first; until I realised that she seemed to be motivated by disapproval of sex workers, not a concern for their safety, and simply wanted to get workers off the streets.

Other than these two items of 'news', I've been pleasantly surprised by the respect which the media has shown Mellory and her family. A picture has been drawn of a woman who was loving and loved, and whose loss will leave a large gap in the lives of grieving family and friends. It's a relief to see Mellory, at least in death, treated as a person, not a scandal.

There may be some cynical reasons for this. It's a slow news time of year, and the media looks to string out any stories available to it - including by reveling in human tragedy. After all, the media - and particularly TV - regards the news as a form of entertainment like any other, packaging it so we will know when to laugh and when to cry and when the story's over, as if we were at the movies.

Whatever the media's motivations, its mostly compassionate response to Mellory's death - in contrast to the voyeuristic 'she was asking for it with her lifestyle' bullshit I was expecting - is extremely welcome. If we're to protect the wellbeing of sex workers, regarding them as people worth caring about is a pretty fundamental first step.

* John Donne, in one of my favourite pieces of writing ever (Meditation XVII), disagrees beautifully. His words are worth a read, particularly in light of the current situation in Palestine.

No man is an island entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were;
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind,
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.

Away, but back now

Forgive me dear readers, I've been away from the keys and when I got back I found all I was up to was sleeping, punctuated by eating, reading, doing crosswords and amusing the baby. What is it about a really good holiday that makes you exhausted when you get home?

Anyway, this is where I was for a week before Xmas, with my two favourite males:


Hope y'all are having lovely breaks, if you are getting them, and if you're not don't forget you are entitled to time and a half and a day off in lieu for working a public holiday. Claim it while you still can!

Time to get those submissions in

The 8th Down Under Feminists Carnival is coming up, so it's time to get those submissions in. The deadline is December 31. Check the Carnival guidelines, and make submissions via the blog carnival page. Roughly, anything feminist, broadly understood, written by anyone from down under, broadly understood, can be submitted for the carnival.

Carnival founder Lauredhel is looking for hosts for 2009. Contact her on her gmail address - lauredhelhoyden at gmail - if you would like to host the carnival.

What's race got to do with it?

Thanks to The Press's rather obtuse reporting, it's difficult to work out what exactly National MP Nicky Wagner is trying to say in this article - but it seems to me that she's on the side of right.

What I think Wagner's trying to do is condemn the racism which affects Christchurch taxi drivers, and which may have had a part in the terrible death of Afghan driver Abdulrahman Ikhtiari. Wagner says, "There are a large number of immigrants working in the taxi industry, bars and restaurants, dairies and service stations. They work at night, generally lowly paid and serving the community, and are getting abused, and it's not good enough."

Couldn't agree more. I'm resisting the urge to point out National's role in said low wages, or complain about the general racist bizarreness of Christchurch. What I will observe is that Wagner's comment marks a significant departure from the National government of the 1990s, which put great faith in the colour- and gender-blindness of the market, to the extent that those groups which did poorly in the socioeconomic stakes were regarded as personally inadequate. You might remember the Hone Carter affair, when John Carter rang up talkback caricaturing an unemployed Maori man and describing himself as a dole bludger.

Wagner's comments seem to suggest a more mature approach to the issues of race and socioeconomic status - one which recognises some of the structural factors affecting non-Pakeha Kiwis. It remains to be seen whether Wagner's comments represent a shift in the view of the National party as a whole, or whether Wagner, like Katherine Rich before her, will find herself ever so slightly marginalised from the party's hub for expressing mildly progressive views.

Sigh

It doesn't pay to be female, even in the Public Service.

Friday Feminist - Cicely Hamilton (2)

Cross posted

There are very few women in whom one cannot, now and again, trace the line of cleavage between real and acquired, natural and class, characteristics. The same thing, of course, holds good of men, but in a far less degree since, many vocations being open to them, they tend naturally and on the whole to fall into the class for which temperament and inclinations fit them. A man with a taste for an open air life does not as a rule become a chartered accountant, a student does not take up deep-sea fishing as a suitable profession. But with women the endeavour to approximate to a single type has always been compulsory. It is ridiculous to suppose that nature, who never makes two blades of grass alike, desired to turn out indefinite millions of women all cut to the regulation pattern of wifehood: that is to say, all home-loving, charming, submissive, industrious, unintelligent, tidy, possessed with a desire to please, well-dressed, jealous of their own sex, self-sacrificing, cowardly, filled with a burning desire for maternity, endowed with a talent for cooking, narrowly uninterested in the world outside their own gates. and capable of sinking their own identity and interests in the interests and identity of a husband. I imagine that very few women naturally unite in their single persons these characteristics of the class wife; but, having been relegated from birth upwards to the class wife, they had to set to work, with or against the grain, to acquire some semblance of those that they knew were lacking.

Cicely Hamilton, Marriage as a trade, 1909

Christmas: a time of cynical self-promotion

Those who caught the news last night might have seen the ghastly footage of Peter Dunne, visiting poor families with either the Salvation Army or Wellington Mission (I didn't catch which one), singing carols and delivering food and gifts.

I don't mind one bit that social services who work with the poor and lonely over Christmas court media attention. They're politicising poverty as well as drumming up support for the work they do.

But seeing Peter Dunne jumping on the bandwagon wasn't so edifying. Until recently, he headed a caucus including various reactionary characters critical of family breakdown - including of solo mums, like the very one Dunne sang carols to yesterday in his Santa hat. Dunne is in government with National who, last time they held the reins of power, intensified poverty with a campaign against beneficiaries and the systematic lowering of wages. In light of this, it was all the more distasteful to see Dunne visiting a solo-mum headed family, who thanked him gratefully for the benefit of the TV audience while he looked awkward.

To be fair to Dunne, I think he probably is concerned with poverty (in a conservative and paternalistic sort of way). And I gather that he's a reasonably diligent electorate MP who likes to keep abreast of what's happening amongst his constituents. But I'm a strong believer in charity being truly charitable when it's not done for an audience. Dunne's Christmas day activities look suspiciously like the efforts of a man who barely retained his seat, to reestablish some local support.

The actions of the government Dunne supports will be the test of his concern for the poor - not his willingness to wear a silly hat one day a year.

A small victory for green-tinged nerds?

I'm a nerd. I like books and documentaries. I also like the environment, and diligently minimise waste and recycle. For these reasons, amongst others, Christmas sends shivers down my geeky earth-loving spine.

As a parent of small children, I find my house inundated with shite over the Christmas season. Kindhearted, well-meaning family and friends send my kids a world of presents, which they open with excitement at first - but after a while, the sheer volume of gifts becomes tiring, even for two gleeful and energetic little ragamuffins high on early morning chocolate.

When the present-opening is over, the detritus is a horrible tribute to the mindless consumption and environmental destruction that is Christmas. The floor of the lounge can't be seen for discarded paper, and even before the unwrapping is done the kids have lost interest in a great many of their presents. This while other kids do without, including in our own suburb. The presents are, as often as not, cheap and junky things manufactured under dubious labour conditions in desperately poor countries - perhaps made by kids little older than my own. It's hard to feel good about it.

It made me feel slightly better to read this article in today's Dom Post. Apparently, the tough financial times are forcing Christmas shoppers to consider their purchases more carefully, choosing gifts with longer-lasting appeal, such as books and plants, over spangly junky stuff. It seems that one of very few upsides to the global recession is a needed change to our consumption habits.

As a nerd, I do get a secret enjoyment from seeing my kids reading or playing educational games - but nerdish elitism isn't the cause of my biggest objection to junky gifts. My kids have a wide range of plastic and electronic rubbish, and watch lots of TV. If that was all they did, I'd be concerned - but I figure that, so long as they get enough exercise and participate in other learning and leisure activities, time spent with junky toys doesn't matter so much. I have noticed that, because they get so much bright and shiny stuff, it's hard to give my kids something which they'll think is special.

I'm more bothered by the sheer waste caused by one-hit-wonder toys that kids lose interest in quickly. I'm thinking of toys like those remote control robotic dinosaurs that were in vogue a couple of years ago. They were fun to play with for half an hour. After that, they were simply a $100 pile of shite cluttering the house.

What to do about all this, I don't know. There's no doubt that kids like elaborate toys with whistles and bells - I was no exception. It's too late for this year, but next year, I'm thinking about doing a Christmas register for my kids - letting those who feel they absolutely must buy stuff for my kids know what it is that they want or need, so at least there's no duplication. I'm going to get together with parents of other young kids (too young to be discerning) and see if we can exchange gifts to avoid buying new shite. And for myself, I'll continue to buy nerdy, environmentally-friendly gifts like books and plants.

I shouldn't let the Maxim Institute get to me

I've been stewing about a Maxim Institute opinion piece all day yesterday, and last night, and telling myself that I shouldn't let it get to me, and I should just let it run off my back like duck's water* because really, it's just not worth paying much attention to such obvious agents of the patriarchy. I give up!

Look after the family and you help the child claim the Maxim-drones, arguing that it's better to merge the Children's Commission into the Families Commission. I disagree - I think children need their own representation, a clear focus on their needs, not just some vague commitment to families. But that's not what has me stewing, 'though it makes me angry enough, and perhaps I will try to write a little about it in the New Year.

It's this doozie.

We know that if a child lives with their two biological parents they are substantially less likely to be abused than if they live in a house where their mum has a string of successive boyfriends.

Spot the mother blaming in that one! Child abuse is not the fault of violent men; it's the mother's fault. And it's certainly not the fault of men who abandon their children, leaving mothers and children to get along as best they may. No, it's all the mother's fault.

When will the Maxim Institute stop blaming women for men's violence?


* Somewhat obscure literary reference - honour and glory and the admiration of your peers for whoever identifies it.

Monday Funday: with seasonally motivated bling purchasing

Sarah Haskin's Target Women does it again.

I like ACC

As Mike Moreu's rather gruesome cartoon suggests, the government's announced increase in employees' ACC levies suggests they're setting out to make the Corporation unpopular - so we won't miss it when it's privatised. The government's use of urgency to pass a range of legislation - just before Xmas, making it harder for the public to make any organised objections - gives me the unsettling feeling that the rug could be pulled out from ACC (and God only knows what else) with very little warning.

Well, I like ACC. It may be an imperfect beast, like the husband who leaves his socks on the floor despite being asked a million times not to, but the prospect of being without its loyal and comforting presence is daunting.

Here's why I like ACC:

- It insures unpaid workers (eg, mums) who have little or no income and might be unable to afford private accident insurance.

- ACC has a brief to protect the public's health. Private insurers don't. ACC runs campaigns telling us how to avoid accidents and injuries. Private insurers don't care.

- Private providers have to create a profit for their shareholders. Profit is maximised by paying out on as few claims as possible.

- ACC doesn't suffer from that paradox of private insurers: competition encourages them to drop their premiums, but the less they collect in premiums the less they can afford to pay out in claims. Competition creates a worse insurance product, not a better one.

- The no-fault compensation offered by ACC replaces our 'right' to sue each other, which sadly includes the right to behave like litigious arses and line the pockets of lawyers.

In the last 25 or so years, privatisation has been justified in the name of enhanced consumer choice. But choice is only as valuable as the options you have to choose from. I'd rather put up with a state monopoly that more or less does the job than be free to choose between a wide range of shit private providers.

Blue Christmas

Blue Christmas is not just a song by Elvis Presley; it's a church service offered in many communities in the week leading up to Jesus' birthday for those who find all the family focus of 25th December hard to take.

I never used to really get it; this whole feeling sad on Xmas Day. But this year I'll be one of those with a jagged hole inside me, a person missing from the dinner table, a gift tag I didn't have to write, a laugh I won't hear. This year I get it. I get it all too well.

Dad's been gone over eight months now, and I still don't entirely believe it. I've caught myself a few times recently, stopping my tongue before I've asked my mother how he is.

Lately I've been thinking about him so much I've started bringing him up in conversation. Not to talk about his death but to note his absence. We had some friends over on Saturday night for a barbeque and I teased my partner that Dad would have come over and helped him finish off the bathroom by now if he was still alive. No one knew what to say and the subject was changed. I genuinely meant it as a wry joke, but I get the sense a lot of people think I'll be falling apart briefly after I mention my father unless we quickly start discussing something else.

I'd like to remember him with my friends. I don't want to forget him. And part of that is recognising when Dad's missing. For me it's kind of a strange little way of maintaining a relationship with him. I read a book recently written by former Governor of Oregon Barbara Roberts, about death and dying and hospice. She wrote about the secrets the grieving keep, the things we do to cope with loss and to honour the lost one, which sometimes other people think are a little bit mad. I found myself nodding as I read. I've loaned the book on to my mother and I hope it will give her permission to grieve in the way she wants, not the way society dictates.

So many people have been telling me how wonderful this Christmas will be, as it is my first as a mother. But the truth is that Wriggly is too little to understand Santa or presents or crackers. He'll be the centre of attention as he always is, he'll get lots of hugs as he always does. He has no concept of private property, so giving him gifts is just like showing him something he already owns.

Wriggly will be a priceless distraction on the 25th, and of course he is a wonder to behold at all times, so I'm sure he'll amuse us all, but there will be more than a tinge of sadness at my parents' house. I know there will be a lot of laughter, but there will be some tears of sorrow too. Dad really wouldn't want us to cry, he hated it when we were upset and wanted so much to protect us from anything that would make us sad. Paternalistic? Yes. He was my father after all.

Christmas musings

I spent the Christmas mornings of my childhood in Mass, somewhat resentfully, bursting to go back home and play with my new toys. At least my siblings and I were allowed to open our presents before we went. You could tell by the ants-in-their-pants behaviour of some children that they had to wait until after church to open theirs. Nowadays, I lure my own kids through the church doors with bribery, sneaking them clandestine chocolates and reading them stories while I assure them that it'll be finished soon.

Since I was a kid, I've been uneasy about the nativity story. Of course, in some ways it's quite lovely. Everyone likes precious new babies, after all. But I always felt that Mary was the true hero of the piece.

Mary is a powerful symbol in the church tradition, representing bravery, compassion, and the beauty of a mother's love for her child. She's also, in my mind at least, a figure representing particularly female kinds of suffering which we're still stuck with two millennia later.

For starters, Mary was fourteen and unwed at the time of Christ's conception, at a time when execution by stoning was the penalty for sex outside marriage. She got married to Joseph - whether she fancied him or not, probably. She was in labour while traveling on a donkey to the strange town of Bethlehem, where she was compelled to go to take part in a census. And there she gave birth, most likely in terror, in a dirty stable and surrounded by animals.

When I ponder the nativity story, I can't help but think of what it must be like to be a pregnant teenager, feeling scared and alone. I think about women in poor countries who give birth without medical help on hand, some of whom die. I can't help but think about women without homes over Christmas, living with their kids in Women's Refuges across the country.

Even though I've spent the last three decades giving the story of the nativity a perverse feminist reading, I can't help but like it. It's a story of suffering, but also a celebration - not just of the birth of a baby, but of the courage under incredible adversity of the woman who brought this baby into the world, and the women who continue to bear and raise children under sometimes terrible conditions. Kia kaha.

Friday Feminist - Cicely Hamilton

Cross posted

Marriage being to them not only a trade, but a necessity, it must follow as the night the day that the acquirement of certain characteristics – the characteristics required by an average man in an average wife – has been rendered inevitable for women in general. There have, of course, always been certain exceptional men who have admired and desired certain exceptional and eccentric qualities in their wives; but in estimating a girl's chances of pleasing – on which depended her chances of success or a comfortable livelihood – these exceptions, naturally, were taken into but small account, and no specialization in their tastes and desires was allowed for in her training. The aim and object of that training was to make her approximate to the standard of womanhood set up by the largest number of men; since the more widely she was admired the better were her chances of striking a satisfactory bargain. The taste and requirements of the average man of her class having been definitely ascertained, her training and education was carried on on the principle of cultivating those qualities which he was likely to admire, and repressing with an iron hand those qualities to which he was likely to take objection; in short, she was fitted for her trade by the discouragement of individuality and eccentricity and the persistent moulding of her whole nature into the form which the ordinary husband would desire it to take. Her education, unlike her brothers', was not directed towards self-development and the bringing out of natural capabilities, but towards pleasing some one else – was not for her own benefit, but for that of another person.

Cicely Hamilton, Marriage as a trade, 1909

It's the cost that counts

When my partner and I were first together we didn't have much money. Imaginative gifts were the order of the day at Xmas and birthdays, and one of the most creative parts of the process was keeping the cost down. For the last few years, while we've both been reasonably well paid and enjoyed a few work-related perks that have kept some other costs down, we have been able to loosen our purse strings a little. Last Xmas I'd just gone on maternity leave, so we figured it was probably out last chances to spoil each other a bit in terms of presents that were a bit pricey. I got him a donkey and a board game, and he got me a massage voucher that's allowed me to go three times this year to get my poor baby-toting muscles pummelled on a heated padded table.

2008 has seen the return of austerity to our modest household. Since March we've been on one income and although it's still well above the average wage we've found it very tight. This year we haven't had to return to the $2 Shop for gifts for our families, as we did the first few years we shared the yuletide, but I did spend a significant amount of time in The Body Shop looking around for the cheapest decent gift pack I could give my niece.*

So I'm quite astonished by the exorbitant presents that are being carpet-advertised at us everywhere the eyes rest for more than ten seconds. Jewellery that costs in excess of $1500 for the ladies, ipods that are $300+ for a teen, massive barbeques that would look more at home in an army mess feeding 600 troops three times a day. There's the heavy gender-stereotyping that gets medown too, and I feel like I'm missing something because I don't really know any people who could afford to buy gifts like this.

Maybe I'm cheap. The most I think I've ever spent on a present for someone was a piece of art that I bought my partner for his 21st. At the time I'd had a bit of financial luck and I was able to put some of that aside to mark that special occasion. It was still under $300.

And this Christmas our presents are well under that. I would have dearly loved to take the Handmade Pledge, but sadly I didn't have time this year to make anything myself and the cost of crafted items here is largely out of my reach these days. I suspect with a bit more effort I could have found handmade gifts that were affordable. Maybe next year.

My observation of the families I watch buy gifts are that when God divided up this labour He gave it mostly to the girlies. The stress of managing the family budget at an expensive time of year and juggling the present expectations of various relatives, not to mention the competing money-sucking experience of a possible trip away, does disproportionately fall on mothers, daughters, wives, girlfriends, and sisters, in my experience.** Factor in the pay gap between the sexes, and the fact that in some households women don't have access to the funds their partner earns, and I think I can fairly say that this is often a more stressful time of year for women than it is for men.

Really I should put this rant in perspective. Our idea of financially tight is that we can still run a car, have broadband internet, feed the cat, take a short holiday, and afford some supermarket baby food. We can afford gifts for each other, for our son, for our families. Maybe not $400 bracelets and $2000 laptops, but thoughtful presents that will be sufficiently socially acceptable that we won't offend and will instead get pleasant smiles from our loved ones as we spend on them that much more precious thing; time.


* $24. They are very crafty. I'm not sure whether they do this all year around now, but they simply didn't have any smaller size stuff that wasn't in a gift pack already. I'm sure you used to be able to get travel sizes of many of their products a decade ago?
** One Christmas I insisted that my partner get his family's presents and I would have nothing to do with it. He got about three beforehand, and the rest on Christmas Eve, when he disappeared for hours and hours and hours, stuck at the shops and getting more frustrated by the second because he hates malls even when they are empty. The best bit was when on Xmas Day people opened the presents he had sweated for, really liked them, and then thanked me, assuming it was all my doing. My inner feminist smiled sweetly.

Girls toys and boys toys

Courtesy of the Guardian, an educational slide show of girls' toys and boys' toys. (Hat tip: captiver, in comments.)

Be warned - the pink will make you nauseous. It's almost as bad as Stef's pink birthday cake, which you would think would appeal to all the little girls whose rooms look like a flamingo threw up in them.*

*Not my phrase, alas. I stole it from Stef.

Outliers, privilege and gender

Cross posted

Like his previous efforts, Blink and The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers, is an entertaining read, with a serious point. It's a straightforward one too - when you see something that looks like an outlier, such as extraordinary individual success (Bill Gates), or catastrophic and inexplicable disaster (various air crashes), if you look hard enough, you will see that it is the outcome of a particular pattern of events. In particular, individuals may seem to have achieved success and fortune through their own singular and astonishing efforts, but in reality, their success is enabled by the circumstances they encounter as much as by their own hard work. Check out the New York Times review if you want more detail on the book and its message. It's a fair review, and for my own part, should you happen to come across a copy of the book, and you're looking for some engaging, enjoyable, non-fiction holiday reading, then you could do worse than spending a few hours on it.


But it's not perfect, and I don't think it's even all that original. Gladwell's message - "Background matters, background matters, background matters" - sounds awfully like privilege to me, a topic well rehearsed in feminist and anti-racist and GLBTI and PWD circles. (I'm white, able-bodied and straight, so my apologies - up-front - if I'm not getting some of those terms right. Add a comment or send me a message to let me know.) There's a whole great mass of material on privilege, and analytic discussion of it and the way it is constructed. It's a shame that Gladwell didn't even acknowledge the idea of privilege, or use it to unpack some of the empirical data he deploys.

And then there's the surprising gap in his analysis. In one section, Gladwell gives a list of the 75 richest people ever, calculated in current USD. From that list, he draws out what is to him the most astounding sub-group: of the 75, 14 are Americans born within 9 years of each other in the 19th century.

Well, yes, that is amazing. But in a book that is focused on how background really makes a difference, and arguing that circumstances can make all the difference, no matter how much hard work an individual puts in, to me it's astonishing that Gladwell didn't notice the other critical criterion for being wealthy. Of the 75 people on his list, 72 are male. Just three are female, and of those three, two inherited their wealth through position (Cleopatra and Queen Elizabeth I). In other words, if you want to be wealthy, it would be best if you could arrange to be born male. It's almost certainly better if you are white, too, but the list of names isn't race-marked (c/f gender marked).

In fact, women barely feature in Gladwell's book at all, except as wives and mothers who provide suitable conditions for youthful achievement. He doesn't stop to consider the extra barriers that might be placed in a girl's way; as a teenage boy, Bill Gates was able to hang around the university and stay out late nights, programming, using public transport to get there and back. Do you think a teenage girl would have been allowed to do that?

Gladwell does have the great good grace to write about his family history, and in particular, about the grandmother who created the conditions to allow his mother to leave Jamaica and get a superb education at a top flight school and then at University College, London, creating the conditions for his own success. But it would be nice if he could have at least recognised the story that his own statistics tell him - if you want to succeed, outrageously, then your chances are much, much better if you are male.

Quick hit: SPARC's funding cuts for women's sport

SPARC has arranged its funding allocations for our various sports, and have decided to give no funding to the Black Sticks (women's hockey), the Tall Ferns (women's basketball) and badminton. In contrast, men's hockey and men's basketball both receive healthy increases in funding.

But that did little to impress New Zealand Hockey chief executive Ramesh Patel, who labelled Sparc's decision "lop-sided"...

"Our take is the women's team is still on the world stage, they are ranked 11, which is disappointing, but they are still there. To be told they are getting no funding is hard to understand."

Though cuts were expected for the Black Sticks after their poor showing in Beijing, their complete scratching has left Patel dumbstruck.

While men's hockey would have $140,000 of service credits for the Academy of Sport next year, Patel wondered what the 25 women players were supposed to do.

I should also note that women's football has had a significant funding boost. Maybe the women's hockey player should change codes?

Thanks to reader Azlemed who sent this article to me via Facebook.

Re-imagining work - part 3

Cross posted
Part 1
Part 2

My mother spent many years teaching in a Montessori pre-school, and then running it, first as a teaching principal, and then later, when the school was big enough, as a non-teaching principal. I was fascinated by the Montessori method, and my own children went to Montessori pre-schools (although, alas, for reasons - work related ones, of course - we eventually sent our younger daughters to a pre-school in our suburb that offered much better hours for working parents).

Children in Montessori schools complete "works." A work is a task, an exercise, an activity, carefully structured in the Montessori way, so that the child learns the overt lesson, and the implicit lesson, and achieves something that is worth doing. Not worth doing in some trivial way, but worth doing because of its substance.


For many years, my mother concentrated on the children in her classroom, and on becoming a better and better Montessori teacher. The works she achieved were perhaps teaspoons, teaspoons of great merit and worth. In later years, as principal, Mum started to build the school, growing it from two to four classrooms, establishing a primary school classroom, and nurturing a cohort of excellent teachers. All this in a small city in New Zealand, in a province where education is not always all that highly regarded.

My father achieved much the same level of things in his career, leaving the land after he had married and had three children, and training in accountancy. By the end of his career, he had helped to build a highly successful accountancy firm, and had become an expert in his particular area. Other accountants from throughout the country consult him, contact him with issues they can't sort out, and he helps them, freely. That is, most of the time, he doesn't even charge them. He regards it as a service to his profession, and to his colleagues. He also happily talks through the issues with the public servants who develop the policy and laws in his area of expertise, 'tho he has been known to have full and frank exchanges of views with one or two of them from time to time. Again, he regards this as part of what he should do, because it is important to get it right. And by that, he doesn't mean that he gets the policy or the law that suits his clients, but that the policy and the law is right. Then he helps his clients to comply with it.

These are people of substance and achievement. To me, their working lives are part of what creates eudaimonia. I've written about eudaimonia before, and it's something that continues to exercise my thinking.

Eudaimonia can be translated as "happiness" but that's a bit vacuous, and it can be translated as "flourishing" but that doesn't quite capture the sense of joy that goes with it. When in doubt, I go with "flourishing." A eudaimonic life is one lived to the full, with friends and family and connection with people. It's a life which expresses the virtues, of courage and generosity and friendship and justice and so on. It's one where a person develops and exercises her capacities, and becomes a well-rounded and flourishing person.

(The ancients - Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, et al, write about eudaimonia. Famously, however, some of them thought that the best life was the life of philosophical contemplation. I have issues with that, like who does the dishes?)

Here's the thing. We construct our work current practices in such a way that some people are cut off from meaningful work, work in which they can develop and exercise their faculties, and flourish. Of course, there's more to life than work, and more to flourishing than work, but work occupies a huge proportion of the preoccupations of the society we live in, and working matters to us. We define ourselves by our work, and those of us who call ourselves housewives feel that we have to do so ironically, or defensively. "That's Dr Housewife to you!"

Ideally, we would be able to do both - care for children and partners and family, and engage in meaningful work that allows us to flourish. Yet if we nurture our children and partners and family and friends, then necessarily, we can't devote as much time to work. We end up in part time work, where it can be hard to access the meaningful work of substance that enables a person to flourish. Yes, rearing children and nurturing family are important, and of substance, and worth doing, but you wouldn't know that, would you, given the subsistence wages paid to those who do it, and the complete lack of recognition of the value of the work.

Before he got all bible based and fundamentalist and homophobic, Orson Scott Card wrote some fascinating and beautiful books. Of his works, the most lyrical one that I have read is Songmaster. It's a complicated story, but at the end of his life, the lead character, Ansset, comes back to the Songhouse where he grew up. The masters and mistresses of the Songhouse have a room that each has used in turn, the High Room, and at the end of their lives, they may choose the time of their death by exposing themselves to the elements in the High Room. They have done the great Work of leading and guiding the Songhouse, and so they have this honour and privilege. Ansset has never been master of the Songhouse, but at the end of his life, he asks the mistress of the house, "Have I done a Work?" Meaning, am I worthy of dying in this High Room?

As I go through my life, I want, like my parents, and like so many of the people I admire, to be able to say of myself, that I have done a Work. Something of substance and meaning, that is worth doing, that counts, that contributes, that enables me to flourish.

So that's the challenge. How can we structure work alongside and with family and friends and community so that work is a Work?

More to come, one day soon... and yes, I do have some concrete suggestions!

Monday Funday: with Hello Kitty

'Cos it takes all kinds of people to make a galaxy.

Quick hit: (Dis)arranged marriage foiled

I have no problem with arranged marriages where both parties are keen on it. People get married for all sorts of reasons all the time, not just Twue Love, and frankly if they're happy it's their business, and not mine.

Fooling someone into flying to their home country then holding them against their will so you can marry them to a stranger because you've heard they have a Hindu boyfriend? Not cool.

Friday Feminist - Mary Wollstonecraft

Cross posted

It has long since occurred to me, that advice respecting behaviour, and all the various modes of preserving a good reputation, which have been so strenuously inculcated on the female world, were specious poisons, that incrusting morality eat away the substance. And, that this measuring of shadows produced a false calculation, because their length depends so much on the height of the sun, and other adventitious circumstances.

From whence arises the easy fallacious behaviour of a courtier? From this situation, undoubtedly: for standing in need of dependents, he is obliged to learn the art of denying without giving offence, and, of evasively feeding hope with the chameleon's food; thus does politeness sport with truth, and eating away the sincerity and humanity natural to man, produce the fine gentleman.

Women in the same way acquire, from a supposed necessity, an equally artificial mode of behaviour. Yet truth is not with impunity to be sported with, for the practised dissembler, at last, becomes the dupe of his own arts, loses that sagacity which has been justly termed common sense; namely, a quick perception of common truths: which are constantly received as such by the unsophisticated mind, though it might not have had sufficient energy to discover them itself, when obscured by local prejudices. The greater number of people take their opinions on trust, to avoid the trouble of exercising their own minds, and these indolent beings naturally adhere to the letter, rather than the spirit of a law, divine or human. "Women," says some author, I cannot recollect who, "mind not what only heaven sees." Why, indeed should they? it is the eye of man that they have been taught to dread - and if they can lull their Argus to sleep, they seldom think of heaven or themselves, because their reputation is safe; and it is reputation not chastity and all its fair train, that they are employed to keep free from spot, not as a virtue, but to preserve their station in the world.

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792

Since we're on the topic of workers' rights....

National's 90 day probationary period bill has drawn a lot of flack or support around the blogosphere (depending on which side of the political spectrum the blog lies) so rather than rehash arguments that have already been made I thought I'd mention two employment stories that caught my eye.

The first is a blog by an employment law specialist lamenting two cases of women being fired for being pregnant. In both cases the employers tried to disguise the real reasons for the dismissal. It is sad that after decades of fighting for employment protection for pregnant workers this sort of shit is still going on. What is interesting is that Employment Relations Authority allowed one woman to apply for lost maternity pay while the other was denied. An inconsistent loophole that needs be closed.

The other story that bothered me recently was the reaction to Barack Obama's appointment of Janet Napolitano as Secretary of Homeland Security (sheesh talk about an Orwellian title) where the chairman of the National Governors Association Ed Rendell was caught on an open mike saying:

"Janet's perfect for that job. Because for that job, you have to have no life. Janet has no family. Perfect. She can devote, literally, 19-20 hours a day to it."

Holy fuck.

CNN's lovely Campbell Brown takes the Democratic Governor to task over these matters with a wonderful three-pronged attack:

1. If a man had been Obama's choice for the job, would having a family or not having a family ever even have been an issue? Would it have ever prompted a comment? Probably not. We all know the assumption tends to be that with a man, there is almost always a wife in the wings managing those family concerns.

2. As a woman, hearing this, it is hard not to wonder if we are counted out for certain jobs, certain opportunities, because we do have a family or because we are in our child-bearing years. Are we? It is a fair question.

3. If you are a childless, single woman with suspicions that you get stuck working holidays, weekends and the more burdensome shifts more often than your colleagues with families, are those suspicions well-founded? Probably so. Is there an assumption that if you're family-free then you have no life? By some, yes.

Girlfruit

Me: These dresses with scratch and sniff fruit are great. Are there any scratch and sniff clothes for boys?
Shop Assistant: No, I'm not sure what you'd do scratch and sniff for a boy.
Me: ...
Shop Assistant: Hmmmm, maybe apples? They might be gender neutral.
Me: Ah, yeah, apples. I'll just take the dress thanks.

This is not a story in which I come up with an undeniably witty, yet subtly consciousness-raising, retort. I thought about writing it that way, but that would be lying. Like most mortals, I think of the right thing to say several hours after the right time to say it has passed.

But I'm intrigued by this attitude that there is girlfruit. Strawberries and grapes are apparently sternly in the girlfruit camp, as they were the two options for the scratch and sniff dresses, all of which came in girly pastel shades (a mid purple was the manliest option).

Apples, as already mentioned, may be gender neutral. I'm not sure whether all apples are androgynous, or just the green ones, seeing as how on a previous occasion, at a different children's clothing store, I was informed that red socks were without doubt girlclothes.

Perhaps I'm thinking about this all wrong. Maybe all fruit is girlfruit, but all vegetables are boyveg? I mean really, when you consider it; courgettes, celery, carrots, parsnips, marrows and silverbeet are all a little, well, phallic, don't you think?

women's voices

some good news today: asoka basnayake who produces the "women's voices" programme has won an award at the Annual Micies awards by Planet FM for an election special programme she produced. they station appreciated her initiative of interviewing ethnic candidates from most parties and her show was apprently one of a kind during this election campaign. this is asoka's third award since she started broadcasting

it's great that the programme is now available on line via livestreaming, and there are some archived programmes on the site as well (click on the "support services" tab). it's always great to see ethnic women doing well, and knowing the work asoka puts into this programme, i know the award is very well deserved.

Diversity Deficit: UOA's "Leading the Way" campaign

My partner pointed this out to me; I think he is starting to be influenced by all the times I comment on the mostly white, mostly male, mostly older than 40, mostly hetero, alleged representations of our society.

Like its American counterparts, the University of Auckland is now sourcing more and more of its funding from philanthropic sources, and they've now launched a major campaign called "Leading the Way" to encourage contributions. And there's a committee coordinating this effort, of course. It's quite large. You can see a picture of them all on the staircase inside the Registry:


Notice anything? Anything at all?

The Odds and Ends Drawer

In the Drawer today:

• Anjum responds to accusations of siding with terrorists.
• tigtog considers the reaction to the likelihood of a Doctor of Colour in the TARDIS.
• Queen of Thorns disagrees with Garth George.
• Cactus Kate advises on Office Xmas Party Flings.
• blue milk and her daughter discuss child birth.
• sas has some fact that is funnier than fiction.
• The ex-expat makes some fast-food related confessions.
• Art and My Life turns the big One! (Hoorah!)
• Make Tea Not War writes insightfully about the suicide of her cousin.
• Luddite journo loves Movember.
• Deborah points out an apposite juxtaposition.
• Chris Trotter muses on the "anguished masculinity" of the NZ electorate.
  

Feel free to add links to posts by yourself or others in comments.

Monday Funday - with MRA blog-titles

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

The Roundtable on Violence Against Women

Nikki emailed me a little while ago about the launch of a new organisation bringing together those campaigning to end violence against women in all its forms. This Roundtable on Violence Against Women had its debut in November, and sadly I've only just caught up with life enough to blog about it.

As part of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, the Roundtable in Aotearoa NZ is encouraging supporters to email a Cabinet minister a day from November 25th to December 10th. It's not too late to start now, I'm a bit late to the party too but I'm going to give it a go. It's a great way to let the new Government know that they have a lot of work to do around violence against women and that there will be many out there scrutinising their policies through that filter.

Pitiful Britney

I'm increasingly disturbed by the awful spectacle that is Britney Spears' life, and the effects of this type of 'role model' on the girls who admire her. I just now caught a newsflash about Brits on a kids' programme, which mocked her junk food diet, her habit of throwing up after meals, and her frequent visits to the wharepaku caused by her laxative habit. I'm sorry - is this funny? I'm missing the joke.

My partner and I had a conversation about this very thing a couple of days ago. He feels disinclined to be sympathetic towards Britney, or indeed anyone other multi-millionaire who courts the paparazzi for a living then complains about lack of privacy. Fair enough, I said. Then I tritely pointed out that money doesn't buy happiness (although the lack of finances will buy you a great deal of unhappiness).

I mused, 'Britney reminds me of Marilyn'.

'Marilyn Monroe?', my partner asked.

'No, Marilyn Waring, you dick', I responded.

The basis of the Marilyn Monroe comparison was that both she and Britney are passive spectacles, always on display in a way that is ultimately dehumanising and damaging to themselves, and living lives that they don't control. It's a kind of violation, or even violence, of an insidious sort.

Britney spent her childhood as a children's entertainer. As a teenager (and still a minor, depending on the jurisdiction) she danced about wearing a schoolgirl's uniform in a video clip that males young and older masturbated over. As an adult, she veers between being a sex symbol and 'too fat', a bad mother, an exploited and duped wife, a lunatic in a psychiatric bed, a joke. Every undignified moment of it appears on TV and in women's magazines for our voyeuristic pleasure. Her degradation is seemingly more entertaining than her musical efforts.

While she continues to sell magazines, there's not much hope that the media will leave Britney alone. And it's not just her welfare that's affected. Young girls look at her and see ideas of attractiveness - what it is to be a successful woman - tied up with self-abuse and unhappiness. The more out of control Britney Spears' life gets, the more the public feels compelled to watch, like we're egging her on to damage herself further for our amusement. It's a bit like taunting an animal in a cage.

Do some men just never grow up?

From the ODT

Central Otago hostel owner Phillip Anderson filmed his female guests for a year through a two-way mirror he installed in their bathroom, a court has been told.

When he finally felt remorseful about what he was doing, he ripped the camera out and destroyed the tapes -- except for a two-hour highlights package which he watched during pornography evenings with a friend.

Seriously eww.

There are times when I really don't understand men. Why the fuck they do such things? It's the sort of shit I expect from teenage boys who really don't have a clue a girls but these are grown men who should have gotten the memo that secretly filming women in the shower is not only weird and wrong but also isn't going to get you laid.

Should justice be blind, or more insightful?

The shortcomings of our justice system in dealing with sexual violence has been a frequent topic of discussion at THM, and an article in yesterday's Dom Post provides more food for thought.

Unbeknownst to me - and probably many of us - it's common practice for Police to provide Crown prosecutors with info on potential jurors before a trial. Jurors can be vetted on the basis of this information, which includes their criminal convictions, acquittals, withdrawn charges, jurors' criminal associations and which jurors had been crime victims.

Lawyers are petitioning the Supreme Court, claiming the practice of vetting is a miscarriage of justice. The Solicitor-General has defended the practice, arguing that it would be inappropriate to have a convicted sex offender on the jury of a sexual violence trial.

But what should be the limits of this vetting, and what checks and balances govern (or ought to govern) the information which Police can provide? What's the threshold for deciding someone's not suitable to be on a jury? What crimes should disqualify a person from being a juror, and under what circumstances? What's the rationale for removing victims of crime from juries - do we think they'll be hysterical and irrational? And what does it mean to be judged by one's peers anyway?

There are a lot of questions to be asked here, and trade offs to be made between seem ethical values and others. I look forward to the insightful comments of THM readers...

Oh my!

What a fantastic carnival! The wonderful Queen of Thorns, who blogs at Ideologically Impure, has put together the 7th Down Under Feminists Carnival, and it is a joy to read, and that's without even starting on the posts she has included in the carnival. There's a great range of posts, and a joyous embrace of feminism. Thank you, QoT.

For the love of God...

An Invercargill man is currently on trial for rape. He broke into the house of his victim, beating her partner and forcing him into a closet, before attacking her.

The man's lawyer defended him thus:

He had not raped the woman, Mr Eagles said. She had invited Hird to have sex with her because she thought it would mean he would then leave the house.

In other words, she 'agreed' to have sex because she was afraid of the violent intruder in her home. That's a definition of consent worthy of Clint Rickards.

Depressing Facts about Abortion

From the Herald (who has taken a break from lambasting pregnant women for wearing toxic make up ( because apparently women wearing toxic chemicals is fine if they aren't knocked up) and the list of food pregnant women will be bitched out about enjoying now includes coffee)

First up I hate the term pro-abortion. Pro-choice is very different from being pro-abortion. So let me spell out the pro-choice position. Just because we think it should be an option doesn’t mean we advocate that anyone should go along that path because actually we would prefer that there were no unplanned pregnancies through better use of contraception. We merely believed that abortion should be there as an option for those who want it.

Hence why Pro-choicers find China’s state enforced-abortions just as abhorrent as the situation in El Salvador where women are subjected to enforced vaginal examinations and incarceration if an underground abortion is suspected and where the well-off still exercise their choice via a plane ticket to the States or a discreet doctor. For pro-choicers it is an issue of body autonomy as well as choice. We believe that the person best placed to make the decision as whether or not to have a child or adopt it or abort it is the woman who will carry the baby with (ideally but not always practical) her partner in consultation with health professionals.

While abortion may have mental health consequences, none of the choices regarding an unplanned pregnancy are entirely physically and mentally risk free nor are they always pleasant. That's the thing about freedom, sometimes you are going to make decisions that have bad consequences. Like women who might delay having kids until it is 'too late' or teens who become mums 'too early,' these are decisions that have huge impacts on their physical and mental well-being but that this is their decision to make. Thus I'm not going to dictate which decision is right for a woman who just got an unexpected positive pregnancy test. If they want a child, that's great babies and kiddies are awesome. If they are keen on doing a Juno, that's awesome too. If they want an abortion, then I say right on for making the decision that's right for them.

This study is being used as further fuel to actually enforce or regress New Zealand's abortion laws. Like many pro-life activists, I actually agree that the current legislation is a farce. Where we differ is that I believe that abortion in New Zealand should be fully decriminalized. Perhaps something along the lines of what was recently passed in Victoria. Where it is on demand until 12 weeks and then requires two doctors to sign off after 20.

The problem with abortion is that it isn’t an issue where we can say "let’s agree to disagree." It fucks around with real people’s lives; their futures, their sense of security and happiness on the basis of a question (when does life begin) that hasn’t been answered fully by science nor for that matter philosophy. For some people life with full rights begins at conception, others around the start of the second trimester others around the time that the fetus can live without the assistance of the mother. I respect that some segments of society have very different views on abortion from my own and would never undergo one due to their beliefs.

The problem I have with their position is when they enforce their beliefs about when life starts upon me and labeling my decisions as being evil or murderous it's enough to make me very depressed.

The very definition of a perverse outcome

Something I find really frustrating about about Garth McVicar and other advocates of tougher sentencing is that they present justice as an either/or issue. Either you're 'on the side' of the victims, or on the side of the criminals. If you raise concerns about the treatment of criminals, it shows your lack of empathy for those affected by crime. Obviously, this is a false dichotomy: we can and should care about both.

There are humane reasons to be concerned about how our society treats criminals; and, as today's Dom Post article makes clear, there are also some very practical ones. National's 'tough on crime' policies are set to have a host of perverse outcomes which no one has really considered. Crowding of prisons means inmates may have to share cells - a situation which leads to increased violence and bullying, requiring more prison staff to keep order.

To those like Garth McVicar, violence inflicted on inmates isn't a problem. Once you enter the prison walls, you're fair game - any abuse or degradation dealt out to you serves you right. More crime - the likely outcome of tougher sentencing - doesn't matter when it takes place amongst people who don't matter.

Leaving aside the ethical dimension of this, increased violence amongst prisoners may produce a range of flow-on problems. The need for more prisons and staff requires more state spending. More importantly, it's hard to imagine that taking people already disconnected from mainstream society - as shown by their anti-social behaviour - then brutalising them is going to make them feel more committed to playing a positive role in the community. And what will an upsurge in prison violence do to recidivism?

Maybe our new government needs to learn something from the short life of Liam Ashley, the seventeen-year-old child beaten to death in a prison van. He didn't live long enough to learn the lesson that tougher sentencing is supposed to teach.

White Ribbon campaign in 1935

A White Ribbon campaign against domestic violence was running back in 1935. The Southland Times has the story.

H/T: Pauline - thank you!

Byte-counting

November was a pretty big month for us - we had our biggest day ever (November 9th, the day after the election) when we cracked 1000 page loads in a day for the first time.

Anyway, a few stats for those who pretend to be interested...

November 2008:
Posts: 91 (average of 21 a week)

Comments: 562 (average of four most commented posts: [32+31+27+29]/4 = 30)

Most commented on post: My post on Silver Linings (32 comments) the day after the election just pipped Anna's (Mis)using the haka (31 comments), although the most commented on post should really be one that went up on the last day of October - Anna's Halloween: some musings got 37 comments, 35 of which were made in November.

Guest posts: 2 (The Womanly Art of giving birth by Pauline, and The Not-So-Secret ballot by katy)

Page loads: 16,970 (566 a day)

Biggest day: November 9th, 1102 page loads

Unique visitors: 10,393 (346 a day)

Thanks to all those who are reading, linking, and writing here, long may it continue!

Re-imagining work - part 2

Cross posted
Part 1

The way is shut, his voice said. It was made by those who are Dead, and the Dead keep it, until the time comes. The way is shut.*

That's how I feel about re-imagining work. I run up against a blank wall, and the way is shut. Perhaps I'm just too trapped in that 9 to 5 mentality. The best I can do is to turn to the imaginations of sci-fi, and especially, to Ursula Le Guin.

In particular, I turn to her novel, The Dispossessed, about which I have written before. In Le Guin's utopian anarchic society, people work for about six hours a day. The hero, Shevek, becomes ill when he starts working extraordinarily long, eight hour days.

Because all goods are shared communally, there's no point in working harder, or longer, to get greater rewards. Each person is fed and clothed and housed as needed, in egalitarian fashion. There are communal dining rooms, so people who work their six hours or so at a job do not need to turn around and do more work when they get home. Children are cared for in community nurseries, where the childcare workers earn just the same wages as everyone else (food and clothing and lodging and so on). The scut work is done by everyone, on their tenth-day rotation, when they take a break from their ordinary work, and take out the rubbish or sweep the communal floors or clean the sewage system instead.

The downsides of this utopia: children can be 'abandoned' by their parents; left in the community nurseries to make their own way, although they will be well cared for. And as ever, some people break the rules. Shevek is shocked to find some people who are "propertarian", owning actual property, and coveting other people's possessions (a rug, an artwork, a room in the community house).

So let's transfer this to modern work.


What say everyone works just six hours a day, and some of those work hours must be devoted to community work, the work that no one really wants to do. What say parents can be confident that their children are being lovingly cared for, and that when their work day is done, then that's it. No more second shifts, because the meals have been prepared, the housework done, by members of the community who choose to do that work, or by people doing their 10th day work.

The trouble is, this is a classic collective action problem, maybe even a tragedy of the commons, where the "commons" is a reasonable working day. If one individual can gain greater rewards (prestige, more possessions) by working just a little bit longer, then she can break the tacit restraint, and stay on late, or get in early, and get the extra work done. With the extra work comes rewards, promotions, greater standing, whatever. Then another individual might choose to work longer, and then another and another. Pretty soon, in order to get those rewards, most people end up working longer, and anyone who wants to work a bit less is left behind.

(Long ago, when I was an undergraduate student at the University of Otago, the students trying to get into medical school used to suggest that they should form a pact whereby no one would do any study, and they would all just have a good time doing what students do. Come the end of the year, they would all sit their exams, and their results would all fall into much the same order as would have been the case had they all worked hard all year. So the top 150 or 200 students would still get into medical school, and they would all have had a fantastic year. Alas, they knew that some miserable person would break the pact, and study, and that meant that all of them had to work hard, all year.)

Even if all of us agree to work less, I can't see that the agreement will last. As a matter of fact, it hasn't. Every October, in both Australia and New Zealand, we have a Labour Day holiday, which is supposed to mark the advent of the 40-hour work week. 40 hours was thought to be a reasonable time to work, leaving enough hours in the day to spend with your partner and children, allowing you leisure in the weekends, and yet giving you enough time to earn a decent wage. Even then, the 40-hour-week worker depended on having someone else to run their home and look after their children.

I genuinely can't see a way through this problem of balancing work and life. Some people have suggested that it's only 10 or so years out of my working life, and that I have pelnty of time to race ahead doing worthwhile work when the children are grown. However I expect it will take more than 10 years; my experience so far is that my children need me more as they get older, and even if they don't need me to take part directly in what they are doing, they need me, or their dad, around, as a solid, tangible, centre to their home lives. I recall this getting worse (or better!) with teenage years, when on nine days out of ten, a teenager doesn't really care if Mum or Dad is there or not, but on that tenth day, they need time and talk, for whatever reason. And no matter what their emotional needs, younger teenagers (say 15 and under) really do need to be supervised, most of the time, even if just in an "I can hear what you're doing" fashion, or you get the meth-lab in the backyard problem. So, given that I have three children, and there's a three year gap between Miss Ten and the Misses Seven, and that I think that the girls will need on-going parental presence in their day-to-day lives until they are about 15, then that's 18 years where Mr Strange Land and I have to allow someone's career to be back-burnered, or where we have to take turns with stepping out of the full time work force for a time, with the consequent hit on our incomes and our retirement savings and all of that.

And it's not just the money. There's a whole social dimension to work and career that suffers when you aren't in paid employment. I'll write about that next. In the meantime, have you noticed that that I have proposed a social solution, via Ursula Le Guin's work, but I think that it will be scuppered by individuals, and that the solutions that my women friends have come up with are individual solutions, for what seems to me to be a systemic problem. But... for a more cheerful look at the possibility of a systemic solution, try Helen's excellent post about the shortened work year, which I have linked to a couple of times already.

More to come, in a day or two....

*Honour and glory, and the admiration of your peers, if you can identify where this quote comes from.

Monday Funday - with open letters

From McSweeney's cache of Open Letters to People or Entities Who Are Unlikely to Respond:

Dear Totally Impractical Size Chart for Women's Clothing,

I've been dealing with you for nearly 12 years, since that summer in junior high when I skyrocketed to atmospheric heights, head and shoulders above my classmates, and the clothing in the kids' section of the department store no longer fit my long legs and gangly arms. My mother took me to your side of the store, and, for a moment, I felt mature, womanly, the kind of mystical feminine that one only sees in movies. I was one step closer to being an adult. I was happy. And then I tried on your clothes.

Everything I tried on I had to try on in threes. For years, I've been carting trilogies of skirts and pants into the dressing room, armfuls at a time, because I have no idea what size I wear. I can make an approximation, but that "size" ranges between three of your numbers, depending on the store, because these sizes don't actually mean anything. I'm an 8, but an 8 of what? Inches? Feet? Joules, the numeric value describing the relation between heat and mechanical work that I used in my high-school physics class and then never again? Is that it?

Why can't you just use inches, like the male size chart? Why is that too hard? Do you think women will feel paranoid if we suddenly go from single- to double-digit numbers? We already have to convert in our heads whenever we buy clothes that come from any other country except America.

You have wasted hours of my life, Totally Impractical Size Chart for Women's Clothing. Women spend days each year standing in dressing rooms, one hand on the mirror, the other tugging on a pair of jeans, trying to force them up because, damn it, the label says they're their size. And don't think that women are the only ones hassled. Men spend a good amount of time dealing with your repercussions, too. If we have to buy a pair of pants that are a size larger than what we normally wear, you can bet we're going to go home cranky. When the men watch television with us that evening, we will notice them staring a little too longingly at Courtney Cox or Jessica Alba, and we will pick a fight. "You think she's pretty?" we will say. "Yeah," the men will reply. "Is she prettier than me?" The men will take a split second too long to respond, and we will say "Oh! I see how it is!" When the men finally get the words out, when they finally say, "No, honey. You're pretty, too. And besides, Jessica Alba looks nothing like you," we will interpret that to mean "because you're a fat cow," and then we will cry.

See the pain and suffering you have caused? If only you were a sensible size chart, one using inches, or even centimeters, the world would be a better place. Women wouldn't have to carry pant triplets into the dressing rooms, and couples wouldn't fight over Jessica Alba on television. We could direct our attention to more important things, like world peace. But because of you, we still have war and violence. I hope you're happy.

Claire Suddath
Nashville, Tennessee