Howard Zinn 1922-2010: "I Never Died" Says He

The first book I ever read by Howard Zinn was SNCC: The New Abolitionists. I've read a lot of his writing since then, and I think it's his most powerful book.

Howard Zinn wrote an essay The Optimism of Uncertainty. He argued that history should give us hope, not because it guaranteed that the powerless would win (it really doesn't), but because it showed extraordinary, unpredictable change is possible. The Civil Rights Movement, particularly SNCC, is an example of the unpredictability of hope. On the 1st of February 1960, Ezell A. Blair Jr., David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain, sat down at the counter of their local Woolworth's and refused to be served. Nobody could have predicted what would grow out of that action.

There have been so many attempts to hide the history of collective resistance, including the reduction of the the freedom movement SNCC was part of to someone sitting down on a bus and someone else giving a great speech. Howard Zinn wrote history like it mattered, because he wanted to cultivate the hope that history brings.

Bullies and how people enable them

I don't like bullies. I don't like adults who threaten and yell and generally throw their toys to try and get their own way, who belittle others to wield power over them, particularly when it is their default setting in life to operate that way. I guess that's one of the reasons Paul Henry's behaviour bothers me so.

The big problem with bullies is always how to deal with them effectively. When I'm talking to someone else about how to deal with a bully the first step I always suggest is to get together with anyone else who is being bullied, or who may not support the bully. Bullying works on the basis of isolating victims from each other, encouraging people to keep their heads down so that they will avoid the unwelcome attentions of the bullies. If you can overcome the isolation you are halfway to winning. At least you can bitch about the bully with someone else, and acknowledge between you that it is bullying, and take a bit of the power back.

Personally I'm a big fan of naming stuff what it is. I remember pointing out to someone once that they were trying (somewhat ineffectually) to bully me. She was outraged and proceeded to prove that she was not bullying by standing between me and the door, in a small space, hectoring me with her finger, leaning over me and yelling. I believe there may have been spittle. Major not-bullying FAIL.

Right now I have a problem with a bully, and it's got me musing on the theme.

I should start by saying this is not a work-related issue. It's not my workplace and it's not anyone else's either.

The Bully has a long long history of this behaviour. She goes straight to the Yelling Place, and I have literally had to hold the phone away from my ear more than once. She once wrote another target of her bullying a twenty page letter outlining all the times she had been sinned against by this person. Who has time to write a twenty page letter about anything, unless they're being paid to write it, or maybe it's about love. Or like your first novel or something. Anyway, the point is that twenty pages of hate is pretty hard to sustain, for most people.

The Bully in this case has basically burnt off almost everyone else. There's one person staunchly in her corner, two people pretending this is all Someone Else's Problem,* and then me and one other who reckon the bullying sucks. So we have one Bully, one Bully-supporter, two Bully-enablers (by refusing to take any responsibility and looking away), and two Bully opposers. For those yet to be rescued by National's Crusade For (Literacy &) Numeracy, that's four versus two. Not looking good for the Bullying Must Stop camp.

And there is one other person in this equation too, who is in a leadership role, and it's their special brand of enabling that is really getting to me.

To my way of thinking leaders, whatever their actual title, have an obligation to ensure the good running of whatever group they lead. Implicit in that should be to deal with any bullying amongst the group. But too often leaders too get bullied, and to make it worse they don't see that's what's going on, because then they'd have to do something. So they pretend, to themselves and everyone else, that they are just being neutral and rising above a spat between those they lead.

This approach solves precisely Nothing.

It undeniably hard for leaders to deal with bullying, especially when they too are suffering from the Bully's activities. It's even harder when a leader is in denial, and just avoiding confronting the Bully about anything, even when the Bully does stuff that really is beyond acceptable. Contact the Bully makes with the leader only serves to reinforce the Bully's view that they are in the right, because the leader says soothing things to avoid being bullied themselves. Stuff like "of course I can see that you are both coming to this with Good Intentions and think you are doing the right thing" and "it's my role to remain neutral and not get involved in disagreement between you people down there."

So what do you do about a leader who abdicates their responsibility in this crucial area? Who is okay with giving power up to the Bully rather than confront behaviour that is unacceptable and should be dealt with?

Today I'm at a loss.


* Props to the irreplaceable Douglas Noel Adams.

More on AirNZ's cougar rubbish

Further to my post about AirNZ's vile Grabaseat promotion last week, there have now been articles in both the Sunday Star Times yesterday and the Herald today on the matter.

SST:

... Victoria University associate professor Delores Janiewski – an expert on gender, culture and media – said the ad was "funny and cheeky" but it was hard to tell whether the ad was encouraging or denigrating single women.

However, Auckland comedian and poet Penny Ashton said the ad was sexist, and painting women as predators and men as their feeble prey "incensed" her.

"Men are not helpless. Surely if you say no a couple of times it should work?"

Social commentator and Sunday Star-Times columnist Rosemary McLeod said the ad was lame.

"I think older women should think very carefully before tackling young men in gay bars, as disappointment is bound to follow."

A Grabaseat spokesperson said the promotion was not intended to be offensive. It would not be shown on TV.

And from the Herald this morning:

The director of Rape Prevention Education [Kim McGregor] has attacked a promotion offering rugby tickets to "cougars" or women aged 35 and over "looking for slabs of meat" as appalling and disgusting, and wants advertisement withdrawn.

But the competition's promoters say they have no plans to stop the advertising campaign, which it says is meant to be light-hearted.

...She said the online advertisement, which shows a mature woman or cougar "starving itself on sparse vegetation during the day then hunting large slabs of meat at night" by stalking a young man at a bar should be withdrawn immediately.

Despite the man's attempts to ward off the woman's advances, the cougar has "not tasted fresh meat for days" and drags her prey to an inner-city apartment.

Ms McGregor said the organisation had heard from Air New Zealand staff who were embarrassed and concerned by the promotion.

"They find it degrading and that it is encouraging potentially harmful behaviour, so my question is why is our national carrier promoting sexually predatory behaviour?"

"We have also had complaints from male survivors who have been raped by women and they are very distressed that their situation is being laughed at and made out to be humorous."

Ms McGregor said a fifth of sexual violence happens in or around licensed premises and figures showed that one in four women and one in eight men would experience some level of sexual violence.

Grabaseat spokesman Sunil Unka said complaints had been laid about the promotion, but it would continue.

"We have certainly received some feedback ...it's mainly from women who are over 35 and have taken a bit of offence to it and felt it was an unfair kind of blanket comment."

"It (sexual violence) certainly is a fairly major issue but this was meant to be light-hearted and not meant to be taken too literally, so we will not be pulling it..."

Playing princesses, Disney style

The Princess and the Frog came out this school holidays, featuring Disney's first black princess, and is perhaps the closest, plot-wise, to feminist that such a tale has got thus far.

Sadly The Princess and the Frog continues the ongoing tradition of princesses with waists so thin they would snap, eyes so big there surely wouldn't be much skull room left for brains, and a suggestion of legs so long that Princess Tiana would struggle to sit without hitting herself in the chin with her own knees:
What on earth would have been wrong with giving her proportions similar to the woman who voiced her? And yes, the Disney prince is pretty ridiculously proportioned too.

Things sure have changed since the first Disney Princess, Snow White, in 1937:

Vileness, and a bit of irony, from Air NZ

Thanks to a reader who sent this through, here's the text of an email Air NZ has been sending out to promote Grabaseat:

Hi XXXXX,

Happy New Year people and I hope yours was as memorable as mine, which must have been particularly memorable as I can’t remember any of it other then waking up in a tent with a bunch of mates who I hadn’t seen for 9 years.

And let me tell you there is no greater joy than seeing people you haven’t seen in ages and realising that you have aged better than all of them. It was a lovely way to start the year, particularly as I hadn’t made any resolutions involving personal vanity. [J: Wait, what are you selling me again? Wasn't it plane tickets? So why would I care about any of this?]

Grabaseat is kicking off the New Year with a promotion for cougars. It’s my boss Duane’s idea and he’s given me a special blurb about it to send out. He wrote it himself. It’s quite good. [No, it's a sexist piece of crap, but please don't let that stop you sending it out and spreading your misogyny around]

JOIN THE GRABASEAT COUGAR PRIDE AT THE SEVENS

Cougars are women 35 and over who prefer their meat rare. [Actually cougars are a member of the cat family, and thus only distantly related to Homo sapiens, although you are no doubt correct about the rare meat, seeing as how cooking facilities are difficult when you lack opposable thumbs.] Their prey are at least 10 years their junior. [Really? Is there a rule book or something?] Grabaseat is looking for 60 of these exquisite creatures to join them at the sold out NZI Sevens in Wellington as our pride of cougar cheerleaders. [Oh joy, so this is about getting free cheerleaders then?]

All you have to do is register and upload a photo of your hunting pack (no more than 4 cougars) to be in to win tickets to the NZI Sevens. You and your pack will need to make your own way to Wellington [irony much?] and if you plan on sleeping you will need to find your own den. [Oh this hilarious lion metaphor is a source of boundless puntastic fun. Not.]

Grabaseat will be giving the winners cougar costumes [Any guesses what they will look like? I'm guessing they will feature leopard skin and not much of it] and the equipment to make enough noise to attract the attention of young males [To be the "prey", I suppose]. And to make sure the pride doesn’t go hungry, 10 brave young men recruited by ZM will be thrown in as fresh meat to the winners in Wellington. [Now that's just awful.]

So if you’re more roar than meow, check out our video about the mating habits of cougars and sign up here.

Yuck, yuck, yuck. Haven't watched the video as I'm at work, but if any reader wants to explain what's in it please do so after the beep (i.e. in comments).

Of bra colours, and Facebook, and breast cancer

If, like me, you caved in to the Changing Your Facebook Status Update Could Help Cure Breast Cancer pressure and put the colour of your bra up for all your fb friends to see, you will probably feel stink, like me, after reading this excellent post at The F Word.

A FB friend which a penchant for radical cross-stitching also pointed out to me that Breast Cancer Awareness Week was initiated by a major drug company. Shades of Herceptin Heroes.

It makes me sad.

Carnivals!

Both the Down Under Feminist Carnival (now in it's 20th month!) and the 11th Carnival of Feminists (global edition) went up recently.

Thanks to Deborah at In a Strange Land for the tip off :-)

Cameron Slater please stop

Recently there have been four high-profile people charged with serious assault/sexual assault crimes, who have all received name suppression:

1. "Well-known entertainer", who pushed a woman's face into his crotch - he pled guilty and has permanent name suppression. We decided not to name this person back in November.
   
2. "Olympian", who is alleged to have raped and assaulted a woman - case yet to be heard
   
3. "Well-known comedian", who is alleged to have sexually assaulted a girl - case yet to be heard
   
4. "Ex-MP", who is alleged to have sexually assaulted a girl - case yet to be heard

Cameron Slater has now publicly breached, using not so cryptic methods, three out of four of the suppression orders suppressing the identity of the accuseds.

Now in cases Two, Three and Four the facts released by the court make it clear that the victims have a familial relationship with the accused. And that the reason for the name suppression for the accused is to protect the identity of the victim, not the accused. These are not victimless crimes. They are crimes of the most heinous variety, and if the allegations are true* then the victims have faced significant violation and no doubt feelings of shame and blame already. I'll quote what Maia wrote on that subject a couple of weeks ago:

As a feminist one of the things I'm fighting for is a world where victims of sexual violence don't need automatic name suppression. Where there is no shame in being abused, just being abusive. But we are so far from being there.

If the rumours I have heard about the identity of the comedian who sexually assaulted a girl (who also has name suppression because of the identity of his victim) and the identity of the Olympian are true then there are political points to be made about both of them. There are points to be made about the nature of rape culture, and the way women's lives are prioritised. But the only way to make those points is to name the abuser, and therefore out the person they abused. Political arguments about rape must never be made if you have to tread on victims of abuse to do so.

How much worse will they feel with the knowledge that their private hell is now public, and that while you or I might not be able to work out who the victims are, because we don't know those families, certainly everyone who actually knows them will.

To illustrate I was thinking about what would happen if I was accused of sexually abusing Wriggly. I would get automatic name suppression because of the close relationship and the fact that if I was named as facing these charges everyone who knows our family, even just a little bit, would be able to establish that the victim was indeed the Wriggly One.** What would life then be like for him, and for his father who would no doubt have to deal with all the questions, with people taking sides without knowing the facts, with the pitying looks in the street, with offers of support, with interminable calls from the media, with the possibility of photographers following you around? What would it be like, dealing with the fall out of a serious accusation within a family, and with the actuality of that violation, and then to feel that everyone around you knows, every time you walk into a room and people go quiet it's about you?

Cameron Slater seems to think that he is somehow striking a blow for victims' rights by breaching these suppression orders. He claims that victims of sexual abuse have contacted him in support of his actions. He does not say whether any of the victims in these cases have done so, but I suspect if they had he would have told us that too.

We've had a bit of a discussion recently about the keeping of secrets about abuse, and who has rights about disclosure. I wrote in comments there:

By keeping such secrets we often allow abuse to continue, or happen again, yet to disclose the abuse of another is perhaps to further violate them by taking even that power from them.

I don't believe that Cameron Slater is giving power to the victims in these cases, nor do I believe that is his intention, although it might be a justification he is using now. I think he is trying to build power for himself. And that's a cynical abuse of very real situtations for actual real people.

Readers may also be interested in this post at The Standard.

* I know we have a presumption of innocence in our legal system, and I broadly support that. However when a woman or girl, or man or boy for that matter, are prepared to take allegations of this nature to a police force that doesn't have the best track record itself, in a society where the reaction to accusations of sexual abuse and rape is too often "He wouldn't do that, he's a nice guy, you're lying", then my personal opinion tends towards giving the benefit of the doubt to the victim.
** Slater has argued that breaking the suppression order on Case Four, which he did yesterday, does not identify the victim because they have a different last name from the accused. That's just crap. Wriggly has a different last name from me, but that wouldn't stop anyone who knew our family from working it out.

Happy New Year!

So it's the time of New Year's resolutions (and if you live in Wellington grumbling about the weather).* The newspapers didn't have much copy over the last couple of weeks, so they were full of: "50 ways to be healthier in 2010."

So I was delighted to see this post on The Fat Nutritionist calledDon't be Poor (and other New Year's Resolutions):

The traditional 10 Tips for Better Health
* 1. Don’t smoke. If you can, stop. If you can’t, cut down.
* 2. Follow a balanced diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables.
* 3. Keep physically active.
* 4. Manage stress by, for example, talking things through and making time to relax.
* 5. If you drink alcohol, do so in moderation.
* 6. Cover up in the sun, and protect children from sunburn.
* 7. Practice safer sex.
* 8. Take up cancer-screening opportunities.
* 9. Be safe on the roads: follow the Highway Code.
* 10. Learn the First Aid ABCs: airways, breathing, circulation.

The social determinants 10 Tips for Better Health
* 1. Don’t be poor. If you can, stop. If you can’t, try not to be poor for long.
* 2. Don’t have poor parents.
* 3. Own a car.
* 4. Don’t work in a stressful, low-paid manual job.
* 5. Don’t live in damp, low-quality housing.
* 6. Be able to afford to go on a foreign holiday and sunbathe.
* 7. Practice not losing your job and don’t become unemployed.
* 8. Take up all benefits you are entitled to, if you are unemployed, retired or sick or disabled.
* 9. Don’t live next to a busy major road or near a polluting factory.
* 10. Learn how to fill in the complex housing benefit/asylum application forms before you become homeless and destitute.** [these are quoted from a wikipedia article]

There's a visual illustration of the same idea at the food for thought pyramid. I disagree with the proportions, but I think it's kind of beautiful. I particularly appreciate the large space given over to luck.

Oh and if you obsess over what you eat and exercise and still get cancer - it must be your attitude. "Healthy living" has to be a goal that is always out of reach, a set of behaviours that can always be added to.

The endless health tips and New Year's advice are about policing, and making people feel bad so they will buy products (if you stop drinking one soda a day I will gratitously link to a Sarah Haskins Video). But that's not the only purpose they serve.

The reason for repeating over and over again that we can individually control our own health, is to hide the fact that we can't. It is to hide the fact that collectively, societally we could do heaps to improve people's longevity and quality of life and we don't.

I'd make a New Year's resolution to write more about that, but I probably wouldn't keep it.

* For the record my New Year's resolution is to keep up with what Joss Whedon is doing. I'm setting myself up for success.

** It's a great, but obviously incomplete list - don't have ancestors who were colonised, be selective about the country you were born in... we could go on and on.

Name Suppression

So Whale Oil is the first blogger to be charged with breaking name suppression in relation to a rape case.

It's strange. It's almost 4 years ago that this post broke name suppression orders around the police rape cases. I didn't write that post to get attention, or to make a point. I wrote it because I was furious - I was politically furious. Throughout the trial Louise Nicholas's past had been brought up, under cross examination and in every paper while the men who raped her were being protected.

I still don't know what I think of name suppression, or of breaking it. I think, in balance, the breaking of name suppression that went on around the cop rape case was useful. I think it disrupted the image of poor hard done by cops and it was a way of getting a really public message of support and solidarity out there, not just to Louise Nicholas and the other women who had been raped by Clint Rickard, Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton, but to the many women for whom the attacks on Louise Nicholas felt very personal.

As an action, it wasn't without risks, some of which were not mine to take. Most importantly, the trial that took place the year after that (when they were again acquitted) could have been thrown out.

I don't really have simple thoughts about name suppression, or short answers. I certainly don't oppose name suppression on principle, except insofar as I oppose everything about the criminal justice system.

But breaking name suppression just to do it? Without any political point? As part of some kind of guessing game (as Whale Oil apparently did)? That's juvenile.

One of the people Whale Oil is supposed to have named is the Olympian who raped his wife. He has name suppression not because he is famous, but because she has automatic name suppression.

As a feminist one of the things I'm fighting for is a world where victims of sexual violence don't need automatic name suppression. Where there is no shame in being abused, just being abusive. But we are so far from being there.

If the rumours I have heard about the identity of the comedian who sexually assaulted a girl (who also has name suppression because of the identity of his victim) and the identity of the Olympian are true then there are political points to be made about both of them. There are points to be made about the nature of rape culture, and the way women's lives are prioritised. But the only way to make those points is to name the abuser, and therefore out the person they abused. Political arguments about rape must never be made if you have to tread on victims of abuse to do so.

In the end it's not surprising that it is a right-wing anti-feminist man who has been the first blogger to be charged for breaking name suppression relating to sexual abuse cases. For me, the fight was never about name suppresison, it was always about rape.

A short response

I've been meaning to write a bit about Phil Goff's 'nationhood' and the response on the left (as usual most of what people are saying is infuriating me). Bryce over at liberation is writing a very long series of posts, and I disagree with most of his premises and conclusions, so I was planning to respond to that, when he finished it.

I don't know when he's going to finish it, but there are parts of the latest section that I want to respond to while the series is still going. I am particularly interested in the latest section where he argues that during the fourth labour government a socially liberal concensus was built alongside the neo-liberal concensus. More than that he's arguing that this happened because there was a trade off where people.

I think this is problematic on many levels. For example, he argues there was a feminist trade-off he lists the Ministry of Women's Affairs and Pay Equity as what the feminists gained. But these gains were paltry compared to what feminists were demanding. Even those who supported the Ministry of Women's Affairs were disillusioned within a short time of it being set up.* Pay Equity legislation wasn't introduced until everyone knew it was too late to do any good.** The repeal of the appalling 1977 abortion laws didn't even get off the ground (and still hasn't - despite there being a supposed social liberal concensus).

Edwards really isn't clear on who he sees as making this trade-off. If he is talking entirely about those in positions of power within the labour party, which he appears to be in the feminist section, then he may be right, I don't know a lot about that. However, if he is trying to describe the response of the movements that had grown up over the 1970s, then his analysis is very very limited, and does not acknowledge the resistance to the fourth labour government's economic policies. That opposition may not have been effective, but it existed.

But my point in this post is even simpler. Edwards quotes Bruce Jesson:

They couldn't affect economic policy, but they could gain a trade-off – the anti-nuclear position for economics, in many cases. In the case of the unions, the trade-off was compulsory unionism.

I haven't done enough study of the New Zealand left in the 1980s to provide detail information about how the many strands of orgnaised opposition that had been present in the Muldoon day responded. However, here Edwards demonstrates the limited usefulness of his own argument. Whether trade-offs were made, whether people pushed where they thought they were most likely to win, whether people fought on more than one front, winning some battles, but losing the big ones - 'identity politics' or 'social liberalism' is not a useful explanatory framework, particular if set as an alternative to class politics. Unions took exactly the same trade-offs that Bryce Edwards was talking about (actually from what I've heard they were far, far worse, because they were more powerful within the labour party, and hte trade-off process was more explicit).

The New Zealand left was ineffectual in responding to the fourth labour government that is a fact. But to lay blame on that ineffectualness at the feet of 'identity politics' is only possible if you are selective with your evidence. Bryce Edwards talks about the feminist trade-off within the party, but ignores the feminist organising against the reforms. But more importantly, he ignores the role of the labour movement in propping up and supporting the fourth labour government. As I said in my response to John Minto" "It wasn't the lack of class analysis which stopped people fighting back, it was a really bad class analysis."

I will try to respond to the arguments Bryce Edwards makes more fully at some point.

* I can't give you the exact time line sorry - although I can visualise the article in broadsheet.

** Although the importance of pay equity to feminists does undermine another part of Bryce's argument - that what he calls identity politics comes at the expense of a focus on economic inequality.