Stranger danger is strange

Anita has a great post up about stopping rape, which has already turned into an interesting discussion at Kiwipolitico. You may wish to mowsie on over and add your 2c 5c 10c.

Benefits increase, but it's all about the DPB

Somewhat appalled by this article in the Herald this morning, which states:

The numbers receiving the Invalid's Benefit rose 4.3 percent from 80,082 to 83,501 and the number on the Domestic Purposes Benefit jumped 2.2 percent and is now back over 100,000.

So the Invalid's Benefit goes up 4.3%, and "rose", whereas the DPB goes up a little over half of that and it "jumped"?

And then there's the fact that they go to Lindsay Mitchell, well-known and long-time critic of the DPB as well as an Act candidate in the last election, for their quotes. She's predictable, and I suppose at least I should give her props for being consistent:

"Teenage recipients present a particular problem because they stay on welfare the longest and their children experience multiple disadvantages."

Ms Mitchell says while some people genuinely need help, others have just made bad choices and are taking advantage of assistance which is easy to get.

Even if we accept that some people are on the DPB for making "bad choices" (is not getting an abortion a bad choice? not being able to access contraception? being raped? OK, this post is not about that, I'm going to move on) is starving them and their children the best response we can come up with?

Because remember, this is Act's welfare policy, and it's all about the DPB.

But back to being annoyed with the article. They haven't sought a quote from anyone other than Mitchell, whose opposition to the DPB is long established. They've focused the item on the DPB despite the fact the Invalid's Benefit went up by significantly more. There's no mention of any of the other benefits, eg unemployment (which you would expect to be going up, given all the lay-offs, the recession, etc). It's just yet another excuse to bash DPB beneficiaries.

Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised, given the Herald's source for their piece of bile: Newstalk ZB. But it's a sad day when talkback attitudes creep into the newsroom.

Quick hit: Divorces cause women-hating killing sprees in South Korea

From Stuff's international section this morning, one of the worst excuses for murder I've seen in a while:

The suspect had confessed to killing the seven women between 2006 and 2008 after his wife died in 2005, "leaving him in despair that made him wander mindless through the country, developing the urge to kill women on sight," Park quoted the man as saying.

...

The country's worst case of serial killing was the murder of 21 women about five years ago by a man in Seoul who said he was driven by rage after being divorced from his wife.

Very sad. I hope they get the mental health care they clearly need, because rotting in prison without it probably won't make things any better.

Friday Feminist - Margaret Sanger (2)

Cross posted

Given the discussion here last week, I thought it would be interesting to have another piece from Margaret Sanger.

... In an ideal society, no doubt, birth control would become the concern of the man as well as the woman. The hard, inescapable fact which we encounter today is that man has not only refused any such responsibility, but has individually and collectively sought to prevent woman from obtaining knowledge by which she could assume this responsibility for herself. She is still in the position of a dependent today because her mate has refused to consider her as an individual apart from his needs. She is still bound because she has in the past left the solution of the problem to him. Having left it to him, she finds that instead of rights, she has only such privileges as she has gained by petitioning, coaxing and cozening. Having left it to him, she is exploited, driven and enslaved to his desires.

While it is true that he suffers many evils as the consequence of this situation, she suffers vastly more. While it is true that he should be awakened to the cause of these evils, we know that they come home to her with crushing force every day. It is she who has the long burden of carrying, bearing and rearing the unwanted children... It is her heart that the sight of the deformed, the subnormal, the undernourished, the overworked child smites first and oftenest and hardest. It is her love life that dies first in the fear of undesired pregnancy. It is her opportunity for self-expression that perishes first and most hopelessly because of it.

Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race, 1920

Victory for Lilly Ledbetter

So far I've resisted buying into the Obamarama. My distrust of US politics makes me suspect anyone who gets to the presidential nomination stage is a bit dodgy at the least. And Obama's position on Gaza didn't exactly spin my wheels.

But today, Obama got it right as he signed off his first bit of legislation: the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act. The law strengthens the rights of women experiencing pay discrimination to seek redress. It's named after the woman whose twenty-year quest for gender pay parity lead her from a workplace dispute to a political battle, culminating in the passage of the Act.

I can't say I believe this legislation will have huge effects on the gender pay gap in the US. To claim her right to equal pay, a woman must still be willing to pick what may be a long and involved fight with her employer - with all the unpleasantness that entails. And if 1990s New Zealand is anything to go by, recessions narrow the gender pay gap by lowering men's pay and conditions, not raising women's. Unemployment exerts downward pressure on wages, so men are more likely to end up in part-time, casual, poorly paid jobs, like their female counterparts.

But I don't want to look at the hole and miss the doughnut. Today's legislation may not overturn pay discrimination overnight, but its symbolism is important. In the US and far beyond it, gender inequality often slips beneath the radar, somehow less serious than other forms of discrimination. But when Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Act today, saying as he did it 'we are all created equal', that 'we' included women.

Feminist Event: Violence Against Women in Darfur film screening

Silence the weapons of war:
Help end physical and sexual violence against women in Darfur
Wednesday 11 February 2009
One Night: One Voice - around the world people join to take action.

What: Film screening and panel discussion
When: Wednesday 11th February from 6pm - 7pm
Where: Centre for Global Action, 2nd Floor, James Smiths Bldg, 55 Cuba St, Wellington

From the Save Darfur website:

Dev-Zone, a programme of the Development Resource Centre are hosting this event on 11 February, 6-7pm. The event will be held at the Centre for Global Action meeting rooms, 2nd Floor James Smiths Building, 55 Cuba St, Wellington, New Zealand. The screening of the film "Violence Against women in Darfur", (12 mins) will be followed by a panel discussion.

You can find directions and more information, and make an RSVP, here.

Thanks very much to reader Marianne for emailing us about this.

Ice barriers fall

Next week Iceland's going to get not only it's first female Prime Minister, but also the first openly homosexual leader in the world.

And apparently the Icelanders are surprised that other people think this is a big deal. Here's one such Icelander writing at The Huffington Post:

This small North Atlantic nation was the first to elect a female head of state when Vigdis Finnbogadottir became its 4th president in 1980. Although that event was widely publicized at the time, Ms. Sigurdardottir's appointment has been met with general apathy both inside and outside the country.

I guess I still have the attitude of most Icelanders when it comes to matters of sexual issues, because I failed to pick up on the newsworthiness of Sigurdardottir's sexual orientation. "Oh, vow," said an American friend of mine, "that's really something! First openly gay world leader!"

Huh? Why, who cares? Even after living in America all these years, where hounding politicians into surrealistic hell about their private lives is the norm, it didn't really ring bells for me. "I don't see what her sexual orientation has to do with anything," my mother told me yesterday. "It's no one's business but her own."

It's good to celebrate when barriers fall. And I look forward to the day when the walls are so stomped into the ground that we don't even notice them anymore, as a friend of the above writer puts it:

"Johanna is very smart and not afraid to tackle difficult issues, and I think she can unite us," my friend added. "Reasonable, sane people are not going to care about people's gender or color. They just want the best person for the job."

Hat tipped to that onto-it happening cat, Idiot Savant

Get job (or at least a grip on reality)

The New York Times has a lovely piece on the silent victims of the recession, the Girlfriends of Bankers who even have their own blog.

Priceless gems include:

God you are so 24 where a mistress gets pissy that her Banker boyfriend isn't taking her to the Caribbean because has to fire 20 people.

Goodbye city life where a banker finds that his girlfriend is so keen on heading back to the midwest.

But perhaps the best of all is the buy american where the girlfriend of the banker is outsourced to a Russian hooker. Priceless.

My advice for these ladies is the same, get a job to finance the lifestyle to which you wish to become accustomed to but I suppose that would be asking too much.

Quick hit: In which the author finds herself agreeing with Ashlee Simpson

Could this be a sign of the end of the world?

The 24-year-old singer has defended her older sibling - who was photographed wearing unflattering high-waisted jeans at a recent Florida concert with a seemingly fuller figure - insisting the comments about Jessica’s weight are "embarrassing and belittling".

She wrote on her blog: "I am completely disgusted. Since when did a woman's weight become newsworthy? How can we expect teenage girls to love and respect themselves in an environment where we criticise a size two figure?

"A week after the inauguration of US President Barack Obama and with such a feeling of hope in the air for our country, I find it completely embarrassing and belittling to all women to read about a woman's weight or figure."

!!11!!

Carnival coming up

It's almost time for the January edition of the Down Under Feminists Carnival, which we are hosting here at The Hand Mirror. That means we need your submissions, NOW! Look through your own blog, and blogs you read, pick out some excellent posts, and send them in via the carnival submission form. Any feminist (broadly interpreted) post from any down under (broadly interpreted) blogger is eligible for the carnival. You don't need to be a "feminist" blogger to have a post included in the carnival, so even if you blog mostly about cooking or craft or art or books or fashion or parenting or party politics or gardening or mountain biking or science or whatever, if you've written something feminist in the last month, then why not submit it for the carnival? Submissions close on January 31, and we're hoping to have the carnival up by 5 February.

Fill in the gap

Have a look at this item from the Northern Advocate: Pregnant girl, 14, accused of drink driving

Areas of concern mentioned in the article:

• erratic driving
• gave false name which she could not spell
• breath-alcohol reading of 828mcg, when the legal limit for drivers under 20 is 150mcg
• driving aged under 15 and thus without a licence
• possible alcohol-related harm to the fetus
• possible binge drinking (although article says this could have been a one-off binge, ALAC will be relieved)

What's missing?

Thursdays in Black: Auckland Sexual Abuse Help

I'm going to try to do a post most Thursdays about a local initiative aimed at raising awareness and combatting violence against women, inspired by the Thursdays in Black campaign.

What is Thursdays in Black? I'll let StopCampusRape.net explain:

Thursdays in Black is an international event. It began as a grassroots response to rape and violence against women in Argentina in early 1970’s. During that time in Argentina, women were being raped, murdered, and disappearing in alarming numbers. In, response local feminist organizers begin organizing “Thursdays in Black” to raise awareness about the violence that women faced, and to put pressure on governmental officials to do more to stop the violence. Since those beginnings, Thursdays in Black has been taken up by communities in Bosnia, Israel, the Sudan, New Zealand and throughout Europe. It has more recently begun happening in the United States, mostly on college campuses.

Last year I was very fortunate to be asked to speak about our work here on ALAC's Lisa Advert at the AUSA relaunch of Thursdays in Black, which in Aotearoa has been organised historically via NZUSA and local students' associations. It was a very useful panel discussion, and one of the organisations present is the first I'm going to highlight in this series.

Auckland Sexual Abuse Help (aka ASAH or Help) runs a preschool safety education programme known as "We can keep safe", alongside their many other services such as a 24 hour crisis and rape call out service (phone 09 623 1700).

We Can Keep Safe runs in the Auckland area:

Developed in 1995 after extensive consultation with experts in the field of child sexual abuse, the programme is run by two facilitators who use drama, games, songs, role playing, story telling and puppetry to engage children and their caregivers. The curriculum is taught in a logical, lively and engaging manner which encourages consistent messages in the home and classroom.

To find out more about the We Can Keep Safe programme, or to book it for your preschool centre, you can call ASAH on 09 623 1700.

And organisations like ASAH are always in need of support. You can find out more about offering your help, be it a donation, a bequest, voluntary work, or even a job, here.

Quick hit: Some victims of crime are more victimy than others

I heard about this on National Radio this morning (the Tourism Minister was unavailable for comment), and found this in the Herald:

The CEO of campervan rental company Jucy, Tim Alpe, said the negative press on the attack is putting Dutch tourists off travelling to New Zealand and the company has already had three cancellations this week.

"All have been Dutch and all have commented to reservation staff that it has been because of their concerns for security," Mr Alpe said.

He said the Government needed to look at harsher sentences for people who attack tourists because the attacks have an impact on the whole society.

Maybe I have the wrong end of the stick, but I thought one of the points of our justice system and the concept of "crimes" is that they are crimes against society to start with. Hence the state's involvement in prosecution, rather than sueing people privately for assault, murder, rape, etc. Are tourists somehow more innocent, or more important, because they contribute to our economy? And where does a conclusion like that lead next?

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you

Following a relaxation of its information-keeping procedures, the SIS has released files on individuals it has surveilled over the years.

Murray Horton of CAFCA is one such individual, and made the comment, "Some of it is laughable, like a report dedicated to the likely impact of feminism and different gender views on abortion on the marriages of named couples."

It's an interesting reflection on the mindset of the SIS that feminism is considered a threat to state security, alongside communism and terrorism. Go figure.

I'm just not that into self help books

He's just not that into you.

It's a single phrase stretched into 200-page book bestseller book and now according to the advertising a movie boasting a whole heap of a-listers.

In case you missed this pop culture fad circa 2004 the gist of the book goes like this:

He says he's afraid to get hurt? Actually, he's just not that into you. He's madly busy at work? No, he's just not that into you. He's too tired for sex? Get with the programme, honey. Soon, you begin to wonder whether it is worth bothering with men at all. Suppose your S/O says he's going to a rugby game. On the surface of things, this is just another sign of his Y chromosome. Then again, perhaps he is just not that into you. After all, he could be giving you a foot rub.

Apparently the phrase came up during a writers' meeting for Sex and the City. One of the women present was describing how her current object of affection was giving her mixed messages. 'He's scared,' said the others. 'Give him time.' Then apparently the sole male writer piped up 'Sounds like he's just not that into you' and the juggernaut was launched.

I suppose one level the book is liberating insofar that departs from the idea that if a man can't get a woman it's women's fault and if a woman can't get a man it's her fault that is the mainstay of most relationship advice geared at women. Accepting that a man is 'just not that into you' means no more sitting by the phone; no more cancelling evenings out on the off-chance he will be free, and definitely no more making excuses for him when he dishes out lines like: 'I have a problem with intimacy'. Hooray!

But it still overly relies on men do this/women do that dichotomy for dating which really isn't helpful for dealing with actual human beings as opposed to cardboard cut outs. I still don't understand why people are so down on the idea of a woman 'making a move' on a guy if she thinks he's hot. If he digs her he'll be happy that she called, but if he's bummed that she's stolen his thunder, well then perhaps she shouldn't be that into him.

Quick hit: Berlusconi was only joking about the rape jokes

While in general I do get a bit down about having John Key as Prime Minister, it's nice to be reminded once in a while that things could be worse:

But Berlusconi said that, even in a militarised state, crimes like rape can happen.

"You can't consider deploying a force that would be sufficient to prevent the risk," he said.

"We would have to have so many soldiers because our women are so beautiful."

Apparently he made this comments with "levity and good humour" in mind, not sexism and mythology. Well that makes it ok then! /sarcasm

Superpowers

Further to our recent conversations about Rachida Dati, this morning I spotted this cartoon by Mike Moreu from earlier in the month.


Found at Moreu's gallery on Stuff.

Feminist Event: Assertiveness course

The Lower Hutt Women's Centre is hosting the below course in March:

Assertiveness for Women

Assertiveness is the ability to express yourself and your rights without violating the rights of others. It is appropriately direct, open, and honest communication which is self-enhancing and expressive. Acting assertively will give you the opportunity to feel self-confident and will generally gain you the respect of yourself and your peers and friends. It can increase your chances for honest relationships, and help you to feel better about yourself and your self in everyday situations.

Tutor: Ally Andersun
Dates: 6 Weeks March 2009
Time: 7-9pm
Cost: $45
Enrol: WEA 5692 292

Quick hit: Matt Damon hating on Bond

Thanks to reader Azlemed for submitting this one, from today's entertainment section in Stuff:

The Bourne Identity actor - who plays CIA agent Jason Bourne in three hit films - said: "He's repulsive. Bond is an imperialist, misogynist, sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people.

"The movies have a formula, they stick to it, and it makes them a lot of money. They know what they are doing and they're going to keep doing it."

Wow, why don't you tell us what you really think!

Boy racers

Last night, I woke up to the sound of an almighty crash some 20 metres from my bedroom window. A boy racer had connected with a tree. The tree came through it surprisingly unscathed, but the car - which is sitting plaintively outside my house this morning - did not.

The sound of the impact was closely followed by a bout of yelling on the street. A drunk male passenger clambered out of the car and shouted adminitions at the driver. The driver, who was no older than twenty and utterly pissed, got out of the car, punched the tree, and then subjected the car to a series of kicks while shouting 'Fucking car!'. Fucked car was more like it: the engine was so badly damaged that the car simply smoked when the ignition was turned, and had to be pushed into a parked position. One drunk passenger slipped and nearly went under the car as it was being pushed.

Looking at the scene this morning, I could only feel relief that things didn't turn out so much worse - that no other vehicle or pedestrian was struck, and that no one in the car was injured (or, at least, didn't appear to be). The driver was taken off in handcuffs. Judging by the 'Money Mart' sticker above his registration plate, he had borrowed at some obscene rate of interest to purchase his pride and joy, but no longer has an asset to show for his debt. (And investors wonder why finance companies have been going down the tubes...)

You could speculate about why young people - usually men - behave this way. I was never one for drunken hooning, but at a teenager I rode at times with people who drove irresponsibly. I seemed to have a cheerful inability to link cause and effect. Likewise the young guy taken away by the Police from outside my house last night. He appeared genuinely surprised that an accident had resulted from his drunkenness, his driving way too fast, and the fact that he was (apparently) trying to pull some driving stunt at the time of the accident - probably showing off to his two female passengers. The difference between a pranged car and a manslaughter charge was probably only a matter of luck for this young guy, who had clearly made a number of utterly stupid decisions, but likely didn't intend harm to anyone.

I don't think there's much point attaching ranting moral condemnation to the driver's actions - not because he, and indeed his passengers, don't deserve it, but because I think it's more productive to look at young men's (self)destructive behaviour as the serious public health issue that it is. Whether or not you agree with punitive responses to boyracing, you have to concede that they're having a limited effect. I've got a son of my own, and despite all my efforts to raise him as a sensible being, I know there's every chance he'll have moments of reckless behaviour that may or may not end up causing harm.

Why do young guys behave in ways that pose risks to their own safety and others people's, and what - other than fines and other justice system-admnistered punishments - can the community do about it?

Hitching

I was never one of those little girls who dreamt of their wedding. In fact I’m not sure I’ve ever met any woman who was, but maybe that’s just the circles I move in, rather than indicative of womanhood as a whole. For many years I just never though I’d get married, primarily because, sad-arse that I was, I didn’t think anyone would ever want to marry me. Although I had the excellent example of my parents’ happy marriage, I thought it far more likely that I would end up serially monogamous to a series of cads who treated me badly.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself wondering and wondering when my partner would finally propose, and worrying that he didn’t want to marry me at all. (cough-false consciousness-/cough)

These days there are many ways couples can show their commitment to each other besides walking down an aisle, saying “I do” and having to pash in public. To some purchasing property together may be a bigger leap of faith, or having children, or agreeing to shift to the other side of the world indefinitely. A ceremony, particularly one that has evolved (not very far) from a transfer of ownership, just isn’t that important to many these days.

For me it was. For me it was shorthand, in a language I could understand, for “I’ve thought really hard about this and I reckon you and me we are forever.” To hear that mattered. And, socialized beast that I am, to hear it in the traditional format of a marriage proposal mattered more to me than I expected.

We set a date almost immediately* and it felt like it was a suitable distance from the now. As I found when I was pregnant, it took me quite some time to shift my thinking from being in the preparatory state. Even though I wanted to get engaged I wasn’t entirely convinced I wanted to get married, and part of that concern was wrestling with my inner feminist about the institution of holy matrimony.

As a feminist I reject the idea that marriage has to be about an exchange of property rights; transferring ownership of a woman from her father to her husband. For some it still operates in this fashion, and I wish it didn’t. For me, getting married could be something quite different from that, it could shake off the shackles of its origins just as the word queer has.

I quite understand that for others it simply cannot. Had the Civil Union Act passed a few years earlier I might have opted for that instead. As it was it came in just before we got hitched and so we hadn’t really considered it, although we were both strong supporters of the legislation.

And I support a lot of what Anita wrote about taking marriage, and civil unions, out of our legal framework entirely. Why do we need a law to recognize what are effectively personal and emotional commitments, which have little to do with the state? It’s nice to have a piece of paper to acknowledge a momentous event in your life, the official melding of two lives, however wedding certificates are really dull documents, not even printed on pretty paper, and is protecting them really worth all that institutional bother and bureaucracy?

It’s nice to go to weddings, be they civil unions in churches or traditional services on cliff tops. I enjoyed organizing our big day (weekend actually) to the point where I still find myself sizing up places as possible wedding venues. However that’s more because it was a great event to put together, so intricate and challenging and with quite high stakes. We were able to come up with a vision and then achieve it, and that was rather satisfying. It didn’t have to be for a wedding; it could have been a 30th birthday party, or an International Women’s Day rally, or even a funeral. Generally though it’s hard to source the moolah to put on those events at the same level as a wedding. It’s socially acceptable to be obsessed with organizing your wedding for months beforehand, but start showing an interest in planning your 30th birthday a year ahead and people will think you are self-obsessed and a bit mad.

So I’m a hypocrite, I guess. I value my marriage, but I don’t expect anyone else to really care about it, give it any special status, above the relationship that lies at its core. I love weddings, and talking about them, but I don’t really support the institution behind them. Ah well, we’d be pretty boring if we never contradicted ourselves.





* Actually we set a date about two days after getting engaged, but the next day realized we were looking at the calendar for the wrong year and then it all became complicated.

Quick hit: Whadda ya mean you want to see the actual cars?

This was Stuff's homepage last night at about 6pm.


Sorry it's a bit fuzzy (user error). But I think the point will be clear enough. The photo gallery feature for the day was the Taupo A1GP, which I am given to understand is not a beauty contest but in fact a car race. Yet the picture they chose to put above their link to "all the action on and off the track"? Well, you can see that for yourself.

Maybe it's partly so that those who click through don't form a false expectation, regarding that off the track action caught for their viewing, er, pleasure. Because out of the four shots that aren't of cars, one is of an air display, one is of a stuffed kiwi sitting on a car bonnet, and the other two are the "grid girls" posing. Sigh.

Monday Funday: with my dream job

bad jokes

i've been listening to radio nz national off and on over the summer (more off than on, i must say). in the afternoons, matinee idle tries to do some funny stuff, particular with the songs. they also have a comedic track playing every morning.

as i say, i haven't listened to much of this stuff, but one afternoon not so long ago, simon morris & the other guy played a song called "bad jokes". and sure enough, one of the bad jokes in the song was (i'm paraphrasing): "why do we use the term PMS? because 'mad cow disease' was already taken". there were a couple of others about women that were just as wonderful, and we were supposed to laugh at them because they were bad jokes. except, when they said the one i've quoted, a huge cheer went up from whatever audience they were playing to.

one particular morning, they had the guy who hosts that programme on tv3 with lots of models in gold dresses (something with the word "deal" in the title?). and if he didn't go raving on about the models breasts and how they kept them in their dresses. followed up by some stuff about how stupid they all were.

i remember seeing a stand-up comedy routine by chris rock on tv one night, which was so full of sexist crap that i just had to turn it off. and our own homegrown guys are just as much fun, including what i've seen of mike king & that andrew whoever, when they do stand up.

i am just so sick of being expected to take this all as a joke. i'm sick of being expected to laugh at stuff that is basically degrading. i'm sick of comedy having to be "un-PC" to be funny, when i know it doesn't have to be that way at all. i know it doesn't because i've watched (at about 11pm, when such things are usually broadcast) ellen degeneres do an hour of stand up, and have me in stitches, without being rude about anybody at all. i've seen seinfeld do it, i've heard bill cosby do it. it may be that these people, at some point in their career, have done objectionable stuff (at least, objectionable to me). but the fact is that they can be really funny without hating on women (or black people or whatever). i won't say "it's not hard", because i don't know, maybe it is. but it is possible.

i certainly expect better of our national radio station. i should be able to listen without having to hear such crap. can i just say that i'm so glad that we're getting back to regular programming from this week?

and just when i finish writing this, i see someone else is pissed off about a similar sort of thing.

Quick hit: More on Rachida Dati

Big thanks to reader Kimberley for emailing me to point out this at the Guardian about Dati's shift from Minister of Justice to standing for the European Parliament. Most of the article is about the politics of it all, although it does talk about her controversial approach to working motherhood too:

Dati's lack of maternity leave prompted controversy in France earlier this month. The Socialist politician, and former presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal accused Sarkozy of bullying by giving Dati no option but to return to work for the announcement of a key justice reform, which he had scheduled himself.

The birth put Dati back on the front pages and is likely to boost the public popularity of the 43-year-old single mother, who will not name the father of her child.

Dati is reported to have adapted rooms at the justice ministry for the baby, and her sisters are helping with childcare. Bernadette Chirac, wife of Jacques Chirac, told the press that Dati was breastfeeding.

Readers may recall I got rather het up about Rosemary McLeod's recent column about Dati being a "man-mother".

Spring Mid-summer clean

Over the next couple of days I'm going to be making a few changes to The Hand Mirror, to hopefully spruce things up a bit, update the blogroll, and generally do some housework I've been putting off for ages (just like home then!).

Hopefully I won't stuff anything up, or if I do I'll be able to fix it quick smart. If something isn't working the way you'd hope do feel free to email and let me know (link in my profile).

(Possibly starting out by striking through everything in the blog by failing to close brackets properly is a bad sign!)

Update at 11.53am Sunday - NZ Women portion of Blogroll has been updated and converted to a feedy thing that shows the most recent post and date of last update. There were a few blogs whose feeds I couldn't get to work, so they may have updated more recently then listed (or it may have no update listed at all). If your blog is wrong, or isn't listed, please let me know and hopefully between us we can work out how to get it working.

Update at 1.07pm Sunday - Have now finished tweaking the side-bar. The pictures all now link to a category. Next big job is a layout tweak, but that'll probably happen tomorrow. Sorry if things have been a bit funny, hopefully I'll be able to do the remainder in Preview mode instead of needing to do it live.

Update at 1.28pm Sunday - Ok because I am a saddo, and because the baby is still asleep, I made a start on the layout tweaks. Some of the changes I'm trying to make don't seem to be sticking, so I think it is time to walk away from the keyboard and enjoy the sun! Feedback/suggestions most welcome.

Updated completed, 11.53am Monday - Few things I couldn't get to work, so haven't changed, but here's the full list of changes/updates:

• Blogroll - added numerous new blogs (and removed a few defunct ones) to the Women's section (now title Other NZ Women in Blogland), converted that portion to most recent posts listing, checked and updated Other NZ Blogs, checked and updated Foreign Feminists.
• Tweaked colour scheme, front page presentation, and fonts
• New header, now with pic!
  
• Followers added to the sidebar, feel free to Follow us if you have a Blogger profile
• New pictures inserted in the sidebar, each linked to a category of our blog posts
• Updates to our About stuff - rejigged this section of the sidebar, updated comment policy, blogroll explanation, and The Kindness of Strangers

Do let me know if anything isn't working or annoys you. Particularly if it means you can't read stuff! Thanks for your patience throughout the tweaking.

Jumping to conclusions

We now know that yesterday's shooting on Auckland's Northwestern motorway claimed the life of Halatau Naitoko. The 17 year old worked as a courier, and had the terrible misfortune to be driving past as gunfire was exchanged by police and an unnamed man, shooting from his pursuing vehicle. Police have conceded that the bullet which killed the young bystander was one of their own.

In the next few days, evidence will be reviewed and souls will be searched.* Judith Collins, in a moment of uncharacteristic dignity, offered condolences to the distraught Naitoko family in her capacity as Minister of Police. The Police themselves have been circumspect, responding sensitively and beginning an investigation into their officers' actions. And then, in contrast, there was Greg O'Connor, speaking on behalf of the Police Association.

On tonight's news, O'Connor launched into a spirited defence of the police officers who inadvertently killed Halatau - before the officers had been accused. In fact, his insistence that the officers did nothing wrong and were simply doing their jobs was a little over the top.

The Police Association is a strange beast. On one hand, it's a union, with the obligation to support its members which that entails. On the other, the Association often makes statements supporting the Police force itself - in a way that the New Zealand Nurses' Organisation would not be called on to justify the existence of nursing, for example.

So O'Connor has his work cut out for him. But, whatever the difficulties of his job, he could surely have done better than tonight's rant: he came across as though he was saying, 'Sorry, Naitoko family, but there are bad guys out there - and your son was collateral damage'. It's too soon to say what exactly transpired out there on the motorway on that hot afternoon. It may be that procedures weren't followed. It may be that procedures were followed, but the procedures themselves are inadequate. At this stage, no one knows. It's imperative that neither the Police officers' employer or union hangs them out to dry - whatever they may or may not have done, they're entitled to their union's support - but there are other issues of public welfare and sensitivity to the Naitoko family at stake. I don't expect an elaborate social commentary from O'Connor, but he could have been a little more restrained, offering support for his members in a way that conveyed more compassion for Halatau and his family.

This is the source of a slight unease I have with unions (although I've always been, and will remain, a union member). Their mandate is to protect their members, and other concerns may be overlooked in the process. I belonged for some years to a union, many of whose members were motivated primarily by self-interest. Some members were openly contemptuous of the idea of solidarity with other unions and workers: they were in it for the pay increases only. It was a kind of individualistic collective with little sense of social responsibility.

By jumping to conclusions, defending his members too aggressively and too soon, Greg O'Connor and the Police Association risk portraying this awful event as a moralistic tale of cop good guys versus criminal bad guys in which the ends always justify the means. As a union, even of an unusual sort, the Police Association has some obligation towards social responsibility - and in this case, social responsibility means being open to a mature conversation about the role of Police, the use of firearms, and the place of violence in our society.

* Will we hear a challenge to the Police's actions from Garth McVicar and the Sensible Sentencing Trust?

Quick hit: Stalking rapists

The Herald reports on a woman who intends to stalk a rapist on his release from prison next week:

The woman, who cannot be named because it would identify her daughter, told The Press newspaper, her daughter, now 19, was terrified of accidentally seeing her abuser again.

She had three cars of volunteers ready to "stake out" the prison and follow any vehicles leaving and was also preparing to hand out leaflets where Harris would be released.

The Sensible Sentencing Trust has advised the mother on how to legally go about alerting Harris' neighbours to his presence.

Safe Network chief executive Robert Ford, who works on rehabilitating sex offenders, said leaflet drops placed the offenders under stress, and under stress they were more like to re-offend.

Will this help? Or hinder?

Friday Feminist - Margaret Sanger

Cross posted

The problem of birth control has arisen directly from the effort of the feminine spirit to free itself from bondage. Woman herself has wrought that bondage through her reproductive powers and while enslaving herself has enslaved the world. The physical suffering to be relieved is chiefly woman's. Hers, too, is the love life that dies first under the blight of too prolific breeding. Within her is wrapped up the future of the race--it is hers to make or mar. All of these considerations point unmistakably to one fact--it is woman's duty as well as her privilege to lay hold of the means of freedom. Whatever men may do, she cannot escape the responsibility. For ages she has been deprived of the opportunity to meet this obligation. She is now emerging from her helplessness. Even as no one can share the suffering of the overburdened mother, so no one can do this work for her. Others may help, but she and she alone can free herself.

The basic freedom of the world is woman's freedom. A free race cannot be born of slave mothers. A woman enchained cannot choose but give a measure of that bondage to her sons and daughters. No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.

It does not greatly alter the case that some women call themselves free because they earn their own livings, while others profess freedom because they defy the conventions of sex relationship. She who earns her own living gains a sort of freedom that is not to be undervalued, but in quality and in quantity it is of little account beside the untrammeled choice of mating or not mating, of being a mother or not being a mother. She gains food and clothing and shelter, at least, without submitting to the charity of her companion, but the earning of her own living does not give her the development of her inner sex urge, far deeper and more powerful in its outworkings than any of these externals. In order to have that development, she must still meet and solve the problem of motherhood.

Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race, 1920

Death and the motorway

Not far away from where I type this, just at the bottom of the hill, there's a motorway which is empty and clogged by turns. Heading west, it's a morass of grumpy drivers, stuck in their hot metal boxes in the sun. The city-bound side is car-less from a point defined by flashing lights and the beginning of a carpark, just at the edge of where I can see to with any clarity. After that the motorway disappears around a bend.

Somewhere out there, assumedly where all the police cars are, someone has been shot dead. We don't know yet who was shot, or who shot them, just that it's a man. And probably not a cop, or the police would have said that by now.

I'm sitting in this windowless office with the sounds of the helicopters overhead as background music, and thinking about how this might have started. Probably a domestic dispute or a custody battle, I think. One of my colleagues suspects it was a traffic infringement. The Herald report indicates it began when a vehicle was stolen, and maybe it is as simple as that.

Whatever was the trigger I don't imagine that anyone thought, five minutes before this all began, that anyone would be dead by mid-afternoon.

Police Orders

I want to write a little bit about the new police orders in the Domestic Violence (enhancing safety) Bill. It has already been widely discussed (No Right Turn twice, Kiwipolitico and by Deborah who all structured it as matter of competing rights between the right to live free of violence and the right to due process (Anita at Kiwipolitico proposed an option that she thinks would balance the rights better). Ludditejourno provided more information about the context of the bill (and how it has changed) and says:

The main difficulties in keeping victims safe from domestic violence according to every major piece of research since the Domestic Violence Act 1995 is however, not legislation at all.

The problem with justice sector responses to domestic violence in Aotearoa New Zealand is implementation, which is inconsistent, and at times, poor. And this has literally cost women and children their lives.

This very important point, and what the definition of poor is (and how to improve it) is one of the key things I want to write about in this series.

One of the comments that has been made in threads about this is: "would you give Clint Rickards this power?" And while clearly worries about how individual police officers might use this power are entirely justified, I think the problem goes much deeper to the way this legislation frames abuse and violence (even when used in the way it is intended).

My understanding about abuse in intimate relationships is that it are fundamentally about power and control. That physical and sexual violence is often part of that power and control, but there are many forms of abuse, and maintaining power and control, which go beyond violence (the power and control wheel is a graphical representation of this). This means that abuse has to be understood in the context of the whole relationship, not just as individual acts. It also means that further taking away power and control from people who have been abused in an intimate relationship even "for their own good" is not helpful.

In this series I will tend to talk about male perpetrators and female victims, not because, but because I believe that in our society men are given power over women in intimate relationships, which is not reversed. That doesn't mean that women can't be abuse perpetrators in relationships, just that women abusing men (or women abusing women) do not represent a wider power dynamic within society.

In order to demonstrate the model of abuse that police orders follow I will compare them with protection orders. This isn't to imply there are no issues with protection orders (I will try and write more about them later in the series).

The police orders are instigated by a police officer, and the law explicitly takes they can be taken against the wishes of those who they're purporting to protect. Protection orders are instigated by those seeking protection. And while the court system means the abused person doesn't have control over the process, it at least means they play a role.

Also, protection orders are usually supported by affadavits by the person who is abused. This allows them to talk about their own experience of abuse and power and control within a relationship (although obviously this must be shaped by the legal requirements). Police orders are based on the views of an outsider to the relationship who may have only been there for a few minutes.

Now this may seem like me putting my theoretical view of domestic violence over the immediate view of women who need protection from police orders. Of course, there are women whose safety would be greatly enhanced if they could get a police order removing the abusive man from their home on the spot (and who seek that now). But those are not the only time police orders will be used.

For example, a woman in an abusive relationship who relies on her partner to take the kids to school in order that she can get to work. With protection orders she gets to make decisions on how best to manage safety and the other needs of her life, and gives her time to make other arrangements. If excluding the abusive person from her life is something that is done to a woman, rather than she does herself, then the consequences of that exclusion are likely to be far greater, because she is not able to plan for or mitigate them.

Or what if a woman in an abusive relationship fought back? What if her partner has marks on him? What if the police exclude her from her home? In terms of power and control excluding the abused person from her home could make things catastrophically worse. Biting Beever (whose blog is no longer on line) had a story about the only time the police came to her house in an abusive relationship which lasted years, they warned her for scratching her abusive partner. She pointed out the power this gave him over her. Imagine how much more power an abusive partner would have if the women was excluded from her home.

While I'll this might not be the most frequent way that police orders are used it will happen. And the women who it will happen to will be the most vulnerable, with partners who are more articulate, who the police identify with.

The model and understanding of domestic violence that the legislation is based on will have real consequences for real women's lives.

I don't really have a 'what should be done instead?' because writing legislation isn't really the point of this series. But I do want to point out one interesting aspect of this legilation - which is it is about excluding abusive people from their homes, rather than helping abused people leave.

But this exclusion is done by force, and is not resourced in anyway (and for all commenters at various places have said that they're sure the police will make sure that people have their wallets before they go out - that's not my experience of how the police work). As a starting point, why stop making abused people the only group who can have somewhere to stay? Why not build sleeping places for abusive men (or any men) who are spending a few nights away from their relationship?

Guess Who II

This one is dedicated to our own wonderful Deborah.

Women have babies and men provide the support. If you don't like the way we're made you've got to take it up with God.

The last noxious quote was from the one and only Pat Buchanan, who also wrote:

The real liberators of American women were not the feminist noise-makers; they were the automobile, the supermarket, the shopping center, the dishwasher, the washer-dryer, the freezer.

What a swell guy.

A retro moment with 21 Jumpstreet

In a desperate and pitiful attempt to recapture my youth, I recently bought series one of 21 Jumpstreet on DVD. People of my age may remember with fondness the 'drama' that propelled Johnny Depp to fame. Jumpstreet was based on the somewhat silly premise of four young-looking police officers, sent undercover into high schools to fight youth crime.

Time has not been kind to 21 Jumpstreet. Twenty years later, the absurdities that passed me by as a youngster are painfully obvious. Crusty dialogue abounds: in episode one, Johnny Depp earnestly tells a young man, 'It's not against the law to be afraid'. Then he plays a moving saxophone solo in his bedroom for no reason I could ascertain (unless it was something to do with the inner pain occasioned by the death of his father). The other young cops make fun of Depp for wanting to debrief and document his police work - procedures are square, apparently.

But the thing that most took me by surprise - something which I didn't fully notice in my early teens - is how utterly, blatantly didactic 21 Jumpstreet is. My memory of eighties TV and movies (and it may be a little jaundiced) is of relentless moralising. Comedies weren't funny. They served to remind us of family values, and always ended with a happy middle class nuclear family happily being happy together. Bad guys were Russian or South American, and motivated by jealousy of the liberty and democracy and freedom which the USA embodies. Jumpstreet was one of the first programmes screened by the fledgling Fox network, and it's every bit as moralising and conservative as you'd expect.

The first two episodes of Jumpstreet were about saying no to drugs. Two rap-music-listening, sneering caricatures of black youths were harassing a well-mannered white, clarinet-playing schoolmate called Kenny. Under pressure, Kenny eventually turned to the dark side, taking a drug overdose. Depp's character visited Kenny in his hospital sickbed, inexplicably hitting the incapacitated Kenny in the face to show viewers the sort of treatment that bad, drug-taking people deserve. (Don't panic, though - Kenny came through OK. He denounced drugs, and his sister explained to him that their parents nagged him for his own good. Happy families.)

Episode three featured a Polish exchange student. Her American teacher mocked her country of origin in front of the class, and by the end of the episode she'd come to agree with him, conceding that America is sensational and communism is 'boring' for young people. Other highlights included a homophobic remark made for no reason but 'comic' effect, and the xenophobic, classist mockery of an Eastern European janitor. Top stuff.

Something else which struck me was the low-key but ever-present misogyny of 21 Jumpstreet. I've now watched four episodes, and not one single woman - not even Holly Robinson's character - has been portrayed with an iota of respect. Women have been scatterbrained comic figures or sex objects. Certainly, the male characters are two dimensional, but the ladies have had to content themselves with one dimension or less. Holly Robinson, the female role model of this quality drama, is referred to by her boss as 'peaches' and - wait for it 'sweet britches'. While her colleagues are fighting crime, her assignments thus far have been a) taking Johnny Depp clothes shopping to make him look cooler; and b) taking the aforementioned exchange student to the mall.

Maybe, as I get further through series one of 21 Jumpstreet, a quality drama will unfold. Its shortcomings don't seem to have affected me too much, since I've turned out a raving feminist and have managed to say no to all drugs except the ones offered to me. And twenty years on, Johnny Depp still spins my wheels. Some things never change.

Quick hit: Michelle Obama is a person too

When Barack Obama became president of the United States, and along with our first black president, American also got their first black first family.

But with progress comes inevitable regress, and in the dash to fit this family of darker hue into tidy boxes, the news media has fallen back into other, far too familiar, cultural traps: you know, like forgetting everything we've learned in recent decades about female achievement and identity.

So how about instead of focusing on what she is wearing how about we hear about her thorough and very polished education, her commitment to the community in which she grew up, her challenging and rigorous career choices, her good, strong, fiercely held views on America, race and politics, her protection of an identity outside of her husband's and how damn pretty she is.

Would that be just a little too much to ask?

Hoping for a change

Watching Obama’s inauguration as the 44th President of the United States of America it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that this event would have been radically different had McCain, or Hillary Clinton, won on November 4th 2008.

It’s hard to imagine two million people turning up to flood the Mall, to surround the new President, to enwrap him and his administration in their hopes, had it been someone else. Barack Obama has come to embody something for the American people that I find difficult to understand in whole.

Partly the acclamation must be influenced by the nature of the person Obama succeeds in the Oval Office. George W Bush has been a monumentally unpopular and incompetent president, and the sense of relief at his departure is palpable even from far away on the other side of the world, on the other side of the day.

But that’s not the entirety of the faith and belief that so many Americans seem to have in their first African American leader. Obama stands as a symbol of the social evolution of the USA since the Civil Rights movement, which is still well within living memory for so many of his fellow citizens. Activists of every hue fought for that equality, and to see that outcome personified in a man who is such a great orator, must be immensely satisfying to so many.

Clinton would not have embodied the feminist struggle in the same way, had she ascended to head her state this year. Feminism as a movement is quite divided, and many still deny that there is a need for feminism at all, whereas racial equality in the US is widely accepted as desirable. There is still racism, and there is still a great deal of subtle discrimination that is less overt but racist none the less. Those who deny it exists are much more fringe-dwellers than those who routinely deny the difficulties women still face.

One day a woman will win the presidency, and it will be in our lifetimes. I hope she’s someone whose politics I can support, and that I can have another bouncy morning of hope like I did today.

Quick hit: Bikini tops - togs or undies?

The Weekend Herald does it again. Must be a slow news month or something.

New Zealanders appear to be more liberal than the Caribbeans when it comes to showing off a bit of skin.

Following a ban on Speedos and bikinis away from the beach on the island of Grenada in the southeastern Caribbean Sea, the Weekend Herald tried an experiment in Mt Maunganui.

We couldn't find any men donning budgie smugglers to take part but we did get bikini-clad 16-year-olds Laura Schmitt and Clare McMahon to walk down the the main drag, Maunganui Rd - about 300m from the beach on one side and 200m from the harbour side - at lunchtime to gauge public reaction.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there wasn't actually a story here until the reporter (or more likely the editor) created one, was there? Sigh.

The Odds & Ends Drawer

Trying to get a bit more regular with these again, after the spasmodicness of the last few months:

• Make Tea Not War considers an online discussion of which is the harder job: wife or mother.
• And Emma Hart responds with her own thoughts on the matter.
• Maia begins her consideration of the nexus of her own politics, between her views on violence against women and the prison system.
• Lita has the yummiest stationery I've ever seen.
• Russell Brown eviscerates Bill Ralston's inaccurate column on domestic violence.
• Anita looks at how the politics around s59 got so damn murky.
  
• Lauredhel has some really quite simply absurd shoes.
• The F-Word offers a guest blog spot on the experience of a woman protester (one of only two) at the Israeli embassy recently.
  
• Anne Else has a magic fridge.
• Queen of Thorns discovers the existence of the Magical Sexual Assault Pixies.
• sas has a great farewell cartoon to George W Bush.
• Pablo writes about Hillary Clinton's appointment as Secretary of State.
  

Don't forget to let me know if you're aware of a blog (including your own) that should be on our blogroll!

Provocation and rape and Shortland Street

Here's the scenario:

1. Kane is a psychotic gang leader.
2. Kingi is a police informant who has been undercover in the gang.
3. Tania is a nurse who has had an on-off relationship with Kingi.
4. Kane and some cohorts kidnap Kingi and Tania.
5. Our subjects end up at a deserted quarry.
6. Much mucking around with failed escape attempts ensues.
7. Kane attempts to kill Kingi.
8. Kane makes it clear he intends to rape* Tania before killing her too.
9. Of course the good guys somehow escape death (and rape).
10. Kane ends up bleeding and semi-conscious on the ground with Tania standing over him.
11. Kingi wants to leave Kane behind to die or whatever.
12. Tania insists that she try to help Kane.
13. Kane tells Tania again that he intends to rape her.
14. Tania kicks Kane savagely, and repeatedly.

Now ordinarily I don't hold much truck with the defence of provocation. It's part of being a person, a human being, that you control yourself and don't use violence unless in self-defence.

This clearly wasn't self-defence, unless you can be defending yourself after the fact (even the noise the keys make while I type that sounds absurd). Tania was not at any risk from Kane at that moment or in the near future.

I can comprehend the desire to hurt Kane in that situation. I can understand where someone is coming from when they pick a fight with a rapist who hurt someone they love. I can see the rationale of the sexual assault victim who attacks the person who abused them, years after the fact.

I've wanted to hit people, but I haven't. I had a chance once to run over someone I loathed, who at that time I felt was ruining my life and the lives of some of my closest friends, but I didn't push down the accelerator. Afterwards I wondered why, but the truth was I never really considered it, despite my rage against that particular man machine.

I've been very very angry in my life. I was pretty angry this afternoon but I managed not to "lash out" or "lose control". Although I must admit there was a lot of swearing.

Ultimately I don't think violence is the right response, to any provocation. If we make it ok to hit people for some reason then surely we end up going down a slippery slope; trying to work out where the line is between justifiable and not.

Is violence justice? Does retribution work? I think our prisons are full of people who prove the answer is no on both counts.


* I could be wrong, as I didn't watch every tiny bit, but I'm pretty sure the word rape, or any allusion to sex, is absent from the dialogue. It's 7pm family viewing time after all. This is a pretty clear intention, as there are a number of times when a character says something like "And before he killed me he was going to ... (meaningful pause for adult viewers to fill in the gap) it doesn't bear thinking about."

62nd Carnival Against Sexual Violence

The January edition of the Carnival Against Sexual Violence is up (sorry, it has been for some time, I only just picked it up). An awesome bunch of blog posts to read, great work yet again abyss2hope.

Mixed messages

Spotted this ad in an NZ Women's Weekly (I think, one of those mags) on the weekend.

So on the one hand NZ Women's Health says it's good to be you, but on the other hand NZ Women's Health will help you get your fittest body (presumably not the body you have now). The "Get-Back-In-Shape" issue pre-supposes that there's something wrong with the shape you're in now. I guess the 'Secret Weight Loss Weapons' will help with that?

Don't even start me on the rather unrealistic cover shot.

The message I'm getting? Changing your body by plastic surgery or botox is bad, but changing your body by diet and exercise is good. And yes, you do need to change your body.

Quick hit: Taleban targeting girls' schools

Further to this quick hit The ex-expat put up last week, this is in the Herald's World section today:

Thousands of young women living in a part of Pakistan once considered the country's most idyllic tourist destination have been prevented from going to school after an order from Taleban forces which have seized control of much of the area...

Muslim Khan, a Taleban spokesman, told the Associated Press they had closed the girls' schools because "they are run under a system introduced by the British and promote obscenity and vulgarity in society".

It makes me sad, and a little angry, but mostly sad. I'm reminded of Shamsia's quote in the last article, which Lucy pointed out in comments:

They want women to be stupid things.

An Experiment

So I haven't posted much. That much is obvious. I think of posts occasionally. My friend texted me 'if we can't trust celebrities to fight the class war, who can we trust?' and it'd make a great title for a post about the Screen Actors Guild negotiations.* I have ideas about the politics of Battlestar Galactica and The Wire that I'd like to write. I still have a draft somewhere about the evils of National's legislation to introduce mandatory standards testing. These ideas never make it onto the blog.

But a fear of being trivial had never stopped me before. This blog, after all, has more posts on 'Joss' than 'colonialism'. There must be other reasons I am not writing.

My posting slowed down considerably after the raids of October the 15th 2007. It's changed the focus of my politics, and I haven't quite known how to deal with that. One of the things I have managed to write about has been prison. Most of the posts I've started and not finished over the last year, have been around the parole of Brad Shipton, Bob Schollum and Peter McNamara. I am no longer satisfied with the pat answers I would have given 18 months ago. I would have said "I wanted Clint Rickards convicted" because I wanted Louise Nicholas to be believed, which isn't inconsistent with believing in the abolition of prisons. I maintained two sets of politics on parallel tracks, and wasn't particularly interested in exploring the blurry space between them. But now I want to write about that space constantly, it crowds out everything else I might be interested in. But I never start because the task seems too huge.

I also think there's an even deeper problem. After three years I've written out most of what I think. There are people who see the first role of their blogs as organising tools, or soapboxes. I've done both of these things, but I don't see that as the purpose of this blog. I write to explore and clarify what I think. And after 3 years I've done that with most blog-sized thoughts in my head. So I can't get in the habit of writing, because I don't have the right sized things to say.

I don't want to stop writing so I've decided to try and experiment, which addresses both these problems. Starting tomorrow everyday for at least two weeks, I'm going to write a post about the intersection between my ideas about violence against women and the ideas about prison at my blog. I'll particularly be trying to write about what I don't know, and don't understand. I'll probably cross post some, but not all those posts here.


If this works, then I've got some other ideas that I might write about for a concentrated . I'll try and write out some of my ideas that are longer than a single blog post. And maybe in between these concentrated bursts I'll write that post about the Screen Actors Guild.

* I sometimes have some strange text message conversations. Particularly when I'm watching a new television show. You'd be amazed at how much political analysis of a TV you can get into 140 characters, or perhaps my messages don't make any sense.

Crime tax?

To my surprise, my first reaction to National's proposed crime tax wasn't entirely negative, although I've certainly got some concerns. It's suggested that all those convicted of crimes will be fined $50 to go towards a victim compensation scheme. The scheme will help victims with crime-related costs not currently met by the state, such as the costs of funerals or traveling to court.

Victims deserve support, and someone's got to pay for it - sounds fair enough so far. But, as with all policies, the devil will be in the detail. My questions/concerns include:

- Perhaps the most dodgy aspect - it is proposed that compensation awarded to prisoners for human rights abuses suffered in prison will be immediately confiscated and put into the scheme. This makes a mockery of the concept of 'compensation', suggests that prisoners shouldn't have the same human rights as the rest of us, and reduces the deterrent against prisons treating inmates inhumanely.

- People who get heavy sentences are unlikely to be able to pay the fines, meaning minor criminals (whose actions cause less hardship to victims) will end up carrying the can. Although it's called a tax, what's being proposed is really a punitive measure - and it doesn't seem fair that the young guy who gets done for possessing a bit of cannabis pays as much, or more reparation than the person who commits murder.

- Could such a scheme be administered without descending into absurdity or poor taste? Could it result in WINZ-like situations where claimants had to show three quotes for the funeral costs of someone who'd died as the result of a crime?

- All sentences impose hardship on the families of the people sentenced - that's a given, and a whole different issue. But if a man is convicted of domestic violence and has to pay an additional $50 in crime tax, his wife/partner/kids end up sharing the added financial burden. They end up being victimised twice.

If the more objectionable parts of this scheme - like the confiscation of prisoners' compensation - were taken out, would it be a good thing? Is there a better way to support victims of crime? What do you lovely THM readers think?

A smidgen of help please dear readers

I desperately need to update our NZ Women bloggers' portion of the blogroll. If you are not on it and you should be then please leave a comment and I will fix it by the end of the week. I'm aware that I need to add Kiwipolitico and Schroedinger's Tabby, and fix Harvest Bird's link as she has moved, any other suggestions are very welcome indeed.

Here's the criteria for inclusion in the NZ Women Blogging bit:

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

By “NZ women” I mean women who either openly identify as New Zealanders and are based in Aotearoa or overseas, or are immigrants to NZ from another country. There is no intention to list only feminists, or to label all of these bloggers feminist. The idea is to promote the blogging of NZ women, regardless of subject matter or politics.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Chicken pox and moral dilemmas

I have a special ability to turn every small life event into an angst-ridden ethically complex personal drama. I can hardly check the mailbox without lengthy speculation on the moral implications of my actions. That's the kind of absurd thing that consumes me every day. I'm an over-sensitive nerd - that's how we roll.

When the kids of friends got chicken pox before Xmas, a new moral dilemma presented itself. I cast my mind back to when I got the pox at age 14. It was bloody awful. As a general rule, the older you are when you get it, the sicker you'll be. I was almost my adult height - probably about 5"6 - and after two weeks of misery my weight had dropped to an extraordinary 38kg.

First of all, I found myself wondering whether I should get my son immunised against chicken pox. I decided against the $80 injection - partly because it doesn't protect recipients against shingles (a related and far worse condition), but mostly out of some half-arsed psuedo-scientific fear that by trying to stamp out common childhood illnesses I would ultimately be weakening the human race.

Not wanting to be responsible for hastening the end of humankind, I was left with two options: to let Nature take Her course, inflicting the pox on my boy if and when She got around to it; or to speed things along by arranging a playdate between my kid and the bepoxed offspring of my chums.

My partner and I debated these options, and he remained uncomfortable with the deliberate exposure idea. It just seems icky, and kind of cruel. I argued that by orchestrating chicken pox now, we'd save the little guy much more unpleasantness in the future - but that still doesn't square well with the principle of 'first do no harm', and neither of us felt particularly reassured.

I ultimately won out with the argument that it was better for the lad to be sick while we have one parent at home full-time with the kids. This is at once sensible and horribly cynical - kids, we'd like you to get sick when it suits our career plans - and seems to suggest something faintly unpleasant about the sort of society we live in. But the playdate of pestilence went ahead, culminating in the poxed boy hugging the non-poxed boy at their parents' suggestion.

Two weeks later, my poor little boy began to come up in horrible sores. He got off lightly compared to many kids, but his sheer unhappiness at times made me feel like the crappiest mother in the world. So I hope my kids will continue to be blessed with good health - if chicken pox gives me an emotional crisis, I don't know how I'd cope with the serious illnesses that other, less lucky families are forced to live with.

Quick hit: Here we go again - no drinkeez for the ladeez

From the Herald website, women are attacked in Dunedin and apparently their alcohol intake is the culprit, not the people who assaulted them:

[Senior Sergeant] Aitken said woman needed to take care when out drinking in town.

"All we can do is warn people, and advise people, to look after their personal safety.

"To be aware of what they are drinking, or how much they are drinking, and be able to look after themselves...

"Be aware of where you are and what you are doing at all times," he said.

At least he said "people" not girlies I guess?

Not a big fan of the Herald's title for this article either:

Alcohol warnings after women attacked in Dunedin

Monday Funday: with dishes

Because of this and this.

Quick hit: Pregnant drunk-driver going to jail?

Readers may remember a while back that a pregnant woman was found to be over twice the legal limit whilst driving in Rotorua. She's up for sentencing shortly.

"This is her eighth conviction for drink driving. It speaks for itself."

Judge McGuire remanded Brown remanded on bail but said that was only because she was the sole caregiver of her two children and those of her partner, who was in jail.

"You are on bail purely on account of your children. If not for them, you would be remanded in custody," the judge said.

From reading the article it sounds like Brown has a major problem about drinking and driving, quite apart from whether she is pregnant or not. Should her pregnancy at the time be considered an aggravating factor during sentencing?

Are John Key's 90 days up yet?

You can make your own rip off of Shepard Fairey's iconic Obama poster series at Obamicon.Me.

Quick hit: Parenting programmes for all!

Who knew the University of Auckland has a Professor of Parenting Studies and Family Psychology? Here's the column he's written for the NZ Herald on the role of parenting classes.

A whole-of-community approach to supporting parenting can be contrasted with the traditional "clinical" approach of targeting only the most troubled parents with the most difficult children. We stand a better chance of reducing child abuse and preventing behavioural or emotional problems if parenting programmes known to work are available to all parents.

I was particular struck by Saunders' inclusiveness - he refers to "parents" throughout, which makes a refreshing change from "mothers should do this, that and the other."

I did a parenting course through Plunket when Wriggly was four months old and it was very useful indeed, not least for helping me realise that parenting is hard work for everyone, not just for me.

Women like me embrace hijabs

Anjum has written an opinion piece for the Sydney Daily Telegraph (go Anjum!), which is now on-line: Women like me embrace hijabs. She has written about the lead-up to the opinion piece here.

Sexy?

It's a very loaded word 'sexy'. And I've been thinking about it since reading a post on Yes Means Yes, about striptease aerobics (admittedly a topic I know nothing about). Jacinda, who wrote the post, enjoys the classes, they make her feel sexy, and she's trying to unpack that.

To be seen as sexy by someone else is something that can happen regardless of gender. And any one can feel sexy as in horny. But it is women's role that means that being desired (or desireable) is something that you feel. Women's sexuality or our own desiring, is deliberately muddled with being desired.

Which isn't to say that I think it's anti-feminist to go to a pole dancing class. Because my politics are not about individual's actions, and if people enjoy pole dancing classes they enjoy pole dancing classes. But I think feminists should be extremely critical of institutions that reinforce this dynamic of women as desired rather than desiring. It underpins so much of our ideas about sex and rape.

But that's not what motivated me to post (for the second time in a week). What I wanted to respond to was her conclusion:

What I do struggle with, though, is the idea of sexiness. When we say these classes make women feel sexy how exactly are we defining that word? Does sexy simply mean men want me or does sexy mean I love my body because it’s healthy and strong and because I can have fun with it doing things like these over-the-top dances.

I find the first option much much less problematic than the second. Because in attempt to re-frame 'sexy' she's actually reinforcing really narrow views of acceptable (let alone sexy) bodies. Because not everyone's body is healthy and strong, and not everyone can do any particular dance move.

That's not a better way of understanding the meaning of 'sexy', it's a worse one. Firstly because it's dishonest, as it hides the actual dynamic of the way women are framed as sex. And secondly because society has already slammed the door on many sorts of bodies being sexy, and this idea sits with the back to the door and tries to keep it shut.

There is no shame in feeling good because you feel desired, and there's no shame in loving your body for what it can do. But the second is no more a liberatory political position than the first.

Friday Feminist - Christine Delphy

Cross posted

My proposition is that marriage is the institution by which unpaid work is extorted from a particular category of the population, women-wives. This work is unpaid for it does not give rise to a wage but simply to upkeep. These very peculiar relations of production in a society that is defined by the sale of work (wage-labour) and products, are not determined by the type of work accomplished. Indeed they are not even limited to the production of household work and raising children, but extend to include all the things women (and also children) produce within the home, and in small-scale manufacturing, shopkeeping or farming, if the husband is a craftsman, tradesman or farmer, or various professional services if the husband is a doctor or lawyer, etc. The fact that domestic work is unpaid is not inherent to the particular type of work done, since when the same tasks are done outside the family they are paid for. The work acquires value - is remunerated - as long as the woman furnishes it to people to whom she is not related or married.

The valuelessness of domestic work performed by married women derives institutionally from the marriage contract, which is in fact a work contract. To be more precise, it is a contract by which the head of the family - the husband - appropriates all the work done in the family by his children, his younger siblings and especially by his wife, since he can sell it on the market as his own if he is, for example, a crafstmand or farmer or doctor. Conversely, the wife's labour has no value because it cannot be put on the market, and it cannot be put on the market because of the contract by which her labour power is appropriated by her husband. Since the production intended for exchange - on the market - is accomplished outside the family in the wage-earning system, and since a married man sells his work and not a product in the system, the unpaid work of women cannot be incorporated in the production intended for exchange. It has therefore become limited to producing things which are intended for the family's internal use: domestic services and the raising of children.

Christine Delphy, Close to Home, 1976

offensive?

i have the radio on, in my office at work. when i heard this item from ABC (aussie) played on radio nz at lunchtime, it sent my blood boiling. not at the comments by mr michael smith, but by the fact that this was even news.

mr smith is a talkback host in australia, and decided that the burqa is offensive. i won't elaborate further, you can read the rest from the link. i just couldn't believe that radio nz was playing this - what is newsworthy about this in any way? leighton smith makes comments like this, if not once a week, then pretty regularly. so do plenty of others, to the extent that you can find them in any pub or talkback show around the country.

i hate it when people like this are given any kind of publicity, thereby spreading the nastiness to a much wider audience. i remember when bob clarkson made similar comments a while back to (as i recall, i can't be bothered checking just now) about 10 men in wellington, and it ended up in every news outlet in the country. to what end, i still can't figure out.

giving publicity to stuff like this gives the speaker more of a public voice, as he gets interviewed across tv, radio and the papers. if anyone dares criticise what they've said, they get to play the victim and complain how the PC brigade won't even let them talk any more. it's a cheap way to get free publicity, and is ideal for low-level politicians or others seeking a media profile.

so, i'm sitting there fuming away silently, when i get a call from the sydney daily telegraph. i'm on their books because i did a piece* for them after certain comments about raw meat by one sheikh taj al-din al-hilaly. they wanted me to do a piece about this latest incident, providing a muslim woman's view. the woman was quite apologetic about the fact that they were covering this at all, but felt they had to once the retail association got involved.

i could have refused i suppose, on the basis of not adding fuel to the fire. but i'm loathe to give up any opportunity to get an alternative view out into the media, especially when this guy and his supporters have been getting maximum coverage. so i've written the piece which will be going into saturday's paper (ie tomorrow). i'll put up the link on sunday evening (i'm away from the internet most of the weekend) if it goes online.

*i can't find the one that the telegraph published, but this is a longer version that russell brown kindly agreed to put up on public address.