fighting sex slavery

i have some great facebook friends, who direct me to some powerful stuff. i had to share this one, about a courageous woman doing some extremely valuable work to fight sex slavery. a very strong TRIGGER WARNING: there are graphic images and stories of abuse in this clip.

having it all

via a friend on facebook, this piece from holly robinson at the huffington post asking whether women can really have it all:

Fast forward 18 years. Husband #1 and I are divorced (but still friends). I have, for the most part, continued to raise our children while he has traveled. He rose through the ranks of his company to become a Really Big Cheese. Meanwhile, I kept freelancing. I took more jobs as the kids got older, but I was still the one on call for snow days and sick days, school vacations and summer, juggling what needs to be juggled by mothers everywhere.

I put motherhood before my career. That was my choice. Little did I know that, just by having a baby, I was jeopardizing my career and putting myself at risk for poverty, as so many studies around the world show....

Husband #2 is a wonderful domestic partner when he's at home. He'd be a better stay-at-home parent than I would be in many ways. However, again the reality is that he makes more money than I do, and he has the health benefits. So, when somebody has to take a day off to meet the appliance repairman or take a kid to sports practices, it's me.

It's me, and it's most working mothers, who -- even before we get to our desks every morning -- have to wake kids and get them dressed, make breakfasts and lunches, throw in loads of laundry, bake for the PTO sale, fill in the permission slips for field trips, schedule haircuts and oil changes, figure out summer camp and daycare and dinner. And, oh yeah, try to get to to our desks on time to meet deadlines. Maybe even while wearing matching socks.

this puts me in mind of blue milk's post that i linked to a while back, and the difficult choices we all have to make. to me, one of the main issues is that, as a society we need women in leadership positions. we will all benefit when that happens. but how much are we prepared to let individual women sacrifice for them to reach those positions? how much as a society are we prepared to support women so that they can get there?

another important point that comes up in comments to the post is the fact that women need to be financially independent if they are to avoid poverty in case of a divorce. i have a friend who works for a budget advisory service, and she is always surprised at the number of women who haven't planned or even thought about how they'd survive if a divorce happens.

Friday Feminist - Mohja Kahf

Cross posted

No Such Thing as a "Muslim Woman"

This variety is why there really is no such creature as "a Muslim woman" - it's an overly general category. There are Afghani Muslim women from impoverished, refugee camps, aristocratic Iranian Muslim women Shakespearean scholars, American Muslim women soccer moms, Klingon Muslim women aboard the Starship Enterprise, and so on. I myself am a Klingon.

Mohja Kahf, "Muslim Women Rule and Other Little-Known Facts" in Fawzia Afzal-Khan (ed), Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out, Moreton-in-Marsh: Arris Books, 2005

A found poem about women and poverty

The new British government has put out a State of the Nation Report: Poverty, Worklessness and Welfare Dependency in the UK. Their statistics are not very different from ours. While it's a bit better than similar reports from our own governments, because it recognises the complexity of 'multiple disadvantage', it still fails completely to display any real understanding of what it's reporting on. Three things stand out.

First, there has been a massive rise in inequality and poverty over the last few decades. The bottom third of people on the wealth distribution range own just 3% of the wealth.

Secondly, as usual, there is a complete absence of any discussion about changes in the UK labour market and in the global economy over the last 30 years. All the emphasis is on 'people not working' and the enormous cost of keeping them and their children alive (though certainly not healthy and well) in the absence of work. One particularly nasty graph compares the cost of 'working-age benefits' to the amounts spent on schools, defence, justice, climate change...

Thirdly, it is clearly women and children who bear the brunt of poverty and "disadvantage".  Here's a 'found poem' I put together, drawn from the report.

One in ten married parents and
one in three parents cohabiting at birth
separate before the child is five years old
Women are 40% more likely
to enter poverty if they divorce

Most at risk of multiple disadvantage:
lone parents, a young mother, a black mother
working-age women without dependent children
manual, sick and disabled, never married
aged 80 years and over, living alone

At the heart of this fight
against poverty must be work
I will work to deliver
radical reforms to the welfare system

The material used in this
publication is constituted from
50% post consumer waste
and 50% virgin fibre

who's making your iphones?

so there's this really small piece in a sidebar in today's herald about protests against the iphone in hong kong:

A group of two dozen demonstrators protested outside the Hong Kong office of Taiwan-based Foxconn yesterday, calling on the technology giant to improve working conditions at its giant plant across the border in the city of Shenzhen.

The group said Foxconn - a manufacturer for Apple and other electronics giants - should investigate the suicides, which have reached 10 this year after a 19-year-old employee fell to his death at the factory yesterday.

now i think this is pretty important news. 10 deaths in four and a half months is a high number, and you'd think it would have more of a headline, especially considering how popular iphones are. i would hope that most people would actually care about the conditions of workers producing the consumer goods they purchase, and would want to be able to make an informed choice about the products they purchase. that's how markets are supposed to work, or so i thought.

hong kong workers are calling for a boycott, and there are some further details from here:

"The reason we're staging the protest is the high death rate due to some workers committing suicide within five months, which we think is abnormal," Debby Chan, spokeswoman for Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour, told AFP.

"Foxconn should evaluate its management style . . . . We strongly urge Foxconn to start a committee to look into the reasons they died."

The deaths, apparent suicides, have raised questions about the conditions for millions of factory workers in China, especially at Foxconn, where labour activists say long hours, low pay and high pressure are the norm.

it's at least good to see this kind of publicity and activism happening around labour rights in china. let's hope it spreads.

ETA: and the response from foxconn is predictable. they're not even looking at working conditions, pay or working hours. instead, they're asking workers to sign letters promising not to kill themselves and even agree[ing] to be institutionalised if they appeared to be in an "abnormal mental or physical state for the protection of myself and others". yeah, i'm sure that will solve the problem.

The market as judge: good for baked beans, not so good for childcare

Cross posted

As has been widely discussed, New Zealand's National government decided that one of the best places to save a bit of money was in Early Childhood Education. Childcare centres would no longer be required to 100% qualified staff (with grandparenting provisions for existing staff who were working towards their degrees); instead, only 80% qualified staff would be required, and centres would be funded at that level.

It's a downgrade. And it's a downgrade that means that parents will have less assurance about the quality of care and education that their children are receiving. We all know that good quality early childhood education is critical for children, and all the more so for children who don't come from privileged middle class homes. There are plenty of children who turn up for their first day of primary school, having never held a book in their hands, having never had a book read to them, not even knowing that in European writing systems, we read the left hand page, and then the right, and then turn the right page over. One way to give these kids at least half a chance, to ensure that in our supposedly egalitarian society there is a minimal semblance of equality of opportunity, is to ensure that they get good quality early childhood care. We need to make sure everyone has a chance, that everyone can get a good education, if we want the children who are in childcare right now, to grow up to become citizens, people who are part of our society, people who have a stake in it, people who want to make a contribution, instead of forever feeling that the bosses and the big important people just don't give a damn.



As a society, we should be deeply concerned about the quality and availability of early childhood education. We rely on having expert and well-qualified teachers and carers in our childcare centres and preschools, because we are concerned about the future of our society. On top of that, most parents want to be sure that their children are in good care. So they rely on having expert and well-qualified teachers in childcare centres and preschools.

But the National government has decided that early childhood education just doesn't matter all that much, so that's where "savings" can be made. As for quality assurance, well, Granny Herald has got a solution.

The market will provide!

It is easy to insist little children deserve nothing but the best. And working parents who place their infants in childcare want to be assured on that score. But "the best" at this level might not require professional training. The best could include people with an aptitude for caring but not for academic study and tests. Checks on their performance can be reliably left to a competitive industry that must constantly satisfy observant parents.

Editorial: Preschool Budget cuts right move

Oh good grief! Early childhood education, indeed, any education, is not like a can of baked beans. For starters, it's not as though there is a whole shelf full of childcare centres, from which you can pick one. The supply is limited, especially if you are constrained by other factors, such as needing childcare near your home, or your work, so that you don't spend hours every days commuting between one place and another, with tired children in the back seat. But more importantly, it can take time to work out that a child is not thriving, time to work out that for all its glossy brochures a childcare centre doesn't really have the resources to care for your child, time to work out that some of the staff who looked so lovely don't in fact know how to manage children, and have only taken the job because there is nothing else they can do. One of the great guarantees that comes along with demanding degree qualified staff is that you know they are genuinely committed to early childhood education, committed enough to slog their way through a degree, because this is where they want to be.

But the time you have been able to work this out, your child is six months older. Six months is not such a long time for an adult to endure a poor job, but it could 10% or 20% of your child's life. Time enough for a child to lose out, to slip behind developmental guidelines, to miss out on critical early learning experiences. You buy one can of baked beans and it turns out to be not so good? Well, you can always go buy another brand the very next day. But "buy" the wrong type of childcare, and the consequences could be much more severe than a meal that isn't quite as good as you would like it to be.

I know some fabulous women and men who have worked in childcare - my mother, a cousin who is doing her degree, a former male student who was a qualified nanny, the wonderful, gorgeous, Jackie Clark. What distinguishes these people is their commitment to children, exemplified by the qualifications they have worked hard to get. Those are the kind of people I want to see in early childhood education.

I would like to see the National government think a little harder about what it wants to achieve in education, and why, and how, instead of simply thinking that it can be trimmed and cut without anyone much noticing the difference.

As for where the money is going to come from? I hear there's a cycleway that isn't being built. Perhaps that might be a good thing to trim.

Friday Feminist - Christine de Pizan

Cross posted

But recall, nevertheless, dear friend, how it seems that God has deliberately wished to show men that even if women do not possess the great strength and physical daring which men usually have, they should not say nor should they believe that this is because strength and physical daring are excluded from the feminine sex: this is obvious, because in many women God has made manifest enormous courage, strength, and boldness to undertake and execute all kinds of hard tasks, just like those great men - solemn and valorous conquerors - have accomplished...

Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, 1405

Carnival!

The Eleventh Carnival of Feminist Parenting is up at Mothers for Women's Lib. Anji has taken the carnival bi-monthly, so she's got a bumper crop of posts, including our Julie's excellent Women as Womb post.

presenting the new miss usa

i'm not really a fan of beauty contests. in fact i pretty much hate them. just the whole idea of lining women up, and judging their faces and bodies - well, it doesn't sit well with me. my own preference is that, as a society, we focus more on our inner selves - more on our behaviour, our intellectual and spiritual development. and i think that everyone has something beautiful about them, so i don't get the need to compete to prove that you're more beautiful than others. then there are the issues around the "beauty contest" definition of beauty - have to be young, have to be tall, have to be unmarried and unsullied (nude photos tend to lose you the crown). further to that, so much of what is presented to us isn't natural beauty - rather, it seems to be a factor of how much money you can spend to surgically remove all your faults or to cover them with make up.

given that's how i feel about it all, i'm probably not the best person to be doing this post. but never mind, i'll do it anyway.

it appears that the miss usa crown has been taken by a lebanese-american, one rima fakih. not only that, but miss fakih identifies as muslim. now, while i hate beauty pageants, i respect ms fakih's choice to enter one, and certainly don't believe she deserves this:

– Conservative radio host Debbie Schlussel blamed Fakih’s win on a supposed “politically correct, Islamo-pandering climate” in America and labeled her a “Lebanese Muslim Hezbollah supporter with relatives who are top terrorists.” [5/16/10]

– Right wing pundit and Fox contributor Michelle Malkin ranted that “Fakih’s cheerleaders are too busy tooting the identity politics horn to care what comes out of her mouth” and that “the Miss USA pageant didn’t want to risk the wrath of the open-borders mob.” [5/16/10]

– Conservative author Daniel Pipes, who was briefly appointed by former President George W. Bush to the U.S. Institute of Peace, opined that “this surprising frequency of Muslims winning beauty pageants makes me suspect an odd form of affirmative action.” [5/16/10]

– Fox News’s Gretchen Carlson complained that Woolard’s “informed opinion” may have cost her the crown, and said that Fakih may have won because we live in a “PC society.” [5/17/10]

incidentally, the "informed opinion" mentioned above appears to be some kind of support for arizona's new immigration laws, wherein people can be stopped randomly by police if said police think they don't look like they belong there. and no matter how much i hate beauty contests, i certainly wouldn't use the language of ms schlussel:

Trump made a bigger deal with Miss California USA and her bimbo activities, when–hellooooo–it’s a bimbo contest. Now, Hezbollah has the chief USA bimbo.

wow, that's a much deeper level of hate than i could ever aspire to. actually, what am i saying? i don't aspire to it at all. i don't think ms fakih is a bimbo. if it was up to me, i'd rather she hadn't been in the pageant simply because i'd rather that there were no such pageants. but it isn't up to me, and i refuse to denigrate her for her decision.

but the all the comments above are not just denigration for her choice to enter a beauty pageant, they are deeply bigotted comments targetted at her for the temerity of winning it. pretty sick really.

(hat tip shakesville for links)

supporting public libraries

it seems that nothing is seen as a public good anymore. public libraries are supposed to be the means for all people to get information, learn, research or simply to enjoy a good read, regardless of economic status. it's such a pity that these institutions are increasingly adopting a user-pays system in order to survive.

i received the notice below about a public talk in wellington on the subject:

As you may be aware Public Libraries within New Zealand are facing increasing pressure to introduce or increase charges – including charging for borrowing books. The Association of Public Library Managers Inc, whose membership is made up of public library managers though-out New Zealand, believes that charging for book loans will impact those on low incomes, including elderly people and beneficiaries and result in a decrease in the use of library facilities. The Association’s stand is against charging for books because this will contribute to a decline in literacy.

The Association of Public Library Managers and LIANZA (The Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa) invite you to a public presentation on “Why Public Libraries Must Be Free" with international guest speaker, Bob McKee, the Chief Executive of CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) from the UK.

Internationally, Bob is a member of the Governing Board and Executive Committee of IFLA (the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions), and is an advocate for Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression. Please join us for an interesting evening and the opportunity to hear an international speaker on this important topic.

When: Tues 25th of May, 5.30pm for a 6pm start, 7pm finish.

Where: Lecture Theatre 1, Ground Floor, Old Government Buildings, Victoria University Law School, entrance off Stout Street.

Cost: Free

via aotearoa ethnic network

Children are people too

Cross posted

Over at Feministe, there's a monster thread concerned with policing children's behaviour. According to some people on the thread, children shouldn't be allowed. Our public spaces should be free of them for fear of them ruining the grown ups' day.

That's a bit of an exaggeration. But only a bit. Mostly it's about children being kept out of restaurants and movie theatres, and how parents are necessarily bad parents if their children cry, or run about, or create any kind of disturbance. In short, if they behave like children.

There's a lot to not like in the thread, and given that it's now over well over 300 comments long, I wouldn't bother with it. I think the thing that disturbs me most is the assumption that many people make (both in the thread, and in real life), that my children will be noisy, and disruptive, and they need to be KEPT UNDER CONTROL. The effect is to treat children as though they were smelly, slimy bugs that have crawled out from under a log, and are objects of disgust.

It's a commonplace way for children to be treated. Years ago, because another child had cried during a wedding ceremony once, we were told that we could not bring our 13 month old daughter, from whom I had never been apart for more than a few hours, to a wedding ceremony. The assumption was that she would cry, and that I wouldn't have the sense to take her out. One of the local inexpensive family restaurants we go to on occasion serves drinks to children in nasty plastic mugs, not even mock glasses. We have to ask specially for our sensible and careful daughters to be given glasses. When we got onto a plane with the kids, people roll their eyes, and look put out and angry to be seated beside children. Yet our girls are quite capable of managing a few hours in a seat on a plane without creating any more trouble than any other passenger.

I do not understand why my children, and any other children, are treated with suspicion. Not all the time, by any means. Not everywhere, by any means. But often enough, instead of making the same basic assumption that applies to adults in public spaces, that is, the assumption that the adult will comport her or himself in a way that makes the space easy for everyone to be in, the reverse assumption is made. People assume that the particular children they see right in front of them will do something that disturbs the adult, before even giving the children a chance. It's a nasty prejudice. And yet it's one that many people (see that thread at Feministe for example), seem to embrace. It seems that it's okay to say, "I hate children."

And even if the children do "misbehave", so what? Lots of adults do that too. They take calls on their mobile phones and sit bellowing at the restaurant table so everyone can hear them, they talk at the tops of their voices full stop, they fart in crowded lifts, they neglect to wash, they abuse the waiting staff. And yet, they are still allowed to go out in public.

Enough with hating children, with treating them with contempt. Children are people too.

a little less conversation, a little more action please

so our minister of women's affairs tells us of a survey showing that sexism is the biggest barrier for women working in the dairy industry:

Speaking at the Dairy Women’s Network Annual Conference in New Plymouth, Mrs Wong said New Zealand’s biggest export earner would do well to look at how women in the industry could contribute more to its future.

“The dairy industry is New Zealand’s largest industry, and women make up one-third of its workforce. I believe there is a real opportunity for women to become more involved at a managerial level,” says Mrs Wong....

“I welcome the Dairy Women's Network decision to make it a top priority to find ways to break down these barriers. Women are critical to the future of New Zealand's dairying industry. They need to be acknowledged as active contributors at all levels.”

well, yes minister, but what are YOU actually going to DO about this? any policy initiatives? and reforms in the pipeline? we already know what needs to happen, what we need are the steps that will help to make it happen. that's what someone in your position is well equipped to provide, given that you have a ministry full of experienced and knowledgable people and a budget that can be put towards policy development. you should be taking the lead, or at least announcing some concrete initiatives that support the work of the dairy women's network.

talking is just not enough any more.

Friday Feminist - Crystal Eastman

Cross posted

A growing number of men admire the woman who has a job, and, especially since the cost of living doubled, rather like the idea of their own wives contributing to the family income by outside work. And of course for generations there have been whole towns full of wives who are forced by the bitterest necessity to spend the same hours at the factory that their husbands spend. But these bread-winning wives have not yet developed homemaking husbands. When the two come home from the factory the man sits down while his wife gets supper, and he does so with exactly the same sense of fore-ordained right as if he were "supporting her." Higher up in the economic scale the same thing is true. The business or professional woman who is married, perhaps engages a cook, but the responsibility is not shifted, it is still hers. She "hires and fires," she orders meals, she does the buying, she meets and resolves all domestic crises, she takes charge of moving, furnishing, settling. She may be, like her husband, a busy executive at her office all day, but unlike him, she is also an executive in a small way every night and morning at home. Her noon hour is spent in planning, and too often her Sundays and holidays are spent in "catching up."

Two business women can "make a home" together without either one being over-burdened or over-bored. It is because they both know how and both feel responsible. But it is a rare man who can marry one of them and continue the homemaking partnership. Yet if there are no children, there is nothing essentially different in the combination. Two self-supporting adults decide to make a home together: if both are women it is a pleasant partnership, more fun than work; if one is a man, it is almost never a partnership -- the woman simply adds running the home to her regular outside job. Unless she is very strong, it is too much for her, she gets tired and bitter over it, and finally perhaps gives up her outside work and condemns herself to the tiresome half-job of housekeeping for two.

Crystal Eastman, "Now we can begin" in The Liberator, 1920

governing and colonising migrant maternity

one of my most favourite people ever, ruth desouza, is giving a presentation next week. here are the details:

Dear friends

I am doing a presentation as part of the Department of Community Health Development lunchtime seminar series on Thursday 20th May from 12- 1pm in Room AB 217 at AUT Akoranga Campus. It is best to park at carpark 7 and walk over Map available here.

It's called Governing and colonising migrant maternity. The abstract is as follows:

The empirical study of migrant maternities offers a unique theoretical vantage point for considering wider issues such as imperialism, nation building and reproduction. Using the white settler context of Aotearoa/New Zealand, I detail an empirical study that explored the discourses used by well child health providers to represent their work with migrant mothers. I argue that migrant maternities are constituted through a repertoire of medical and nursing discourses combined with culturalist and assimilatory discourses that draw on liberal pluralist notions of citizenship. These require the migrant mother to take up normalising or colonising practices that enforce adaptation to dominant cultural norms such as autonomy and independence. These discursive practices or normalising strategies of power are colonising because they involve the re-ordering of space and the surveillance and control of mothers. Health professionals discipline and regulate gendered bodies in racialised ways that reinforce and reproduce colonial power relations and that this has the potential to contribute to health inequalities and ethically and socially unacceptable outcomes. Further development and refinement of cultural safety, an indigenous ethical form of nursing practice is advocated in order to counter dominant beliefs that racism can be ameliorated with moral education and greater cultural knowledge.

You are welcome to attend.
Ruth

hurt and lonely

so here is the link to me on back benches last night, talking about the burqa, again. if you haven't had enough of discussions here over the last couple of weeks, have a look.


i wrote on my own blog a couple of nights ago about the korean family in christchurch who committed suicide, the last tragedy being the father who killed himself hours before the funeral for his wife and children. more details are emerging, with the herald publishing translated excerpts from the last blog post of one of the daughters:

"Even though a person smiles all the time, it doesn't mean the person has no sorrow inside. I am only human too," Holly wrote in her final entry.

"Even if a person doesn't talk much, it doesn't mean this person has no thoughts, and even if a person doesn't make any excuses, it doesn't mean the person is guilty...

"I am scared of people. Just because we never say we are ... hurt or lonely, don't think we ... are not hurt and not lonely."

this speaks so much of the potential isolation faced by migrants, and what the lack of appropriate support systems might lead to. many migrants come to this country with the dream of a better life, and high expectations of what they expect to experience here. after spending so much time, money and effort on migration, it becomes really hard to admit that the move was a failure or that you aren't coping.

i'd be interested in hearing the interaction immigration nz was having with this family, as well as potential difficulties the girls may have been facing at their school. as i've seen others say, there were signals that this family wasn't coping. the question then is how do we, as a society, ensure that people such as this are able to access the help they need.

good to see that the mental health foundation are taking some initial steps, but there needs to be a broader response than that. any solution must include immigration nz, who are one of the biggest sources of stress. and i'd like to see more responsibility being put on schools who rake in good money from international students, but aren't always interested in putting in the level of pastoral care that's required for them to settle successfully.

i said two days ago and reiterate today that there are some really important questions that need to be asked around this incident. i hope that the coroner's office will be taking responsibility for that.

Taking a tea break

Sorry for my blog absence lately - between work, family and some health stuff I've really had no spare time to write, and very little spare mental energy to think about stuff to write either!

Big thanks to my fellow bloggers for keeping things chugging along. Not sure when I'll be back proper-like, but I'm starting to yell at Morning Report interviews again so that's a good sign.

Petition to save the AucklandSuffrage Memorial

Many thanks to Gina for sending this through.

NCW Auckland Branch launches Suffrage Memorial Petition

11.05.10

The National Council of Women Auckland Branch is launching its petition to retain the Auckland Suffrage Memorial at Lower Khartoum Place.

We invite all concerned organisations, individuals, community board members, councillors, Members of Parliament, and media to join us at the petition launch on Monday the 17th of May, 5.30pm at the Auckland Suffrage Memorial.

This site was given by the Auckland City Council for the Auckland Suffrage Memorial in 1993 when all of New Zealand was celebrating the centennial of the Votes for Women Legislation passed by the New Zealand Parliament in 1893. The memorial is of national significance to New Zealand women.

NCW Auckland branch is seeking a total commitment from our elected officials that the memorial will be retained. Like Kate Sheppard, who founded the New Zealand National Council of Women, our will to do the right thing by New Zealand Women is strong.

With local body elections in sight, the NCW Auckland branch will be raising this issue with candidates. Elected officials may come and go, but the Memorial will remain forever!

If you would like to assist us in this campaign or obtain more information please contact-

Margaret Wilson, ph. 09-521-1229, E: maggies.mill at xtra.co.nz
representing the National Council of Women of New Zealand, Auckland Branch Social Issues Secretary.

Abortion Access in New Zealand: Maia's Handmirror Reflections

I originally wrote this post nearly four years ago - some of the details of where DHBs send people to obtain abortions may have changed, but the system has not.

*******

As I've said before, abortion law in New Zealand is an awful mess and I have a life-long goal to dance on the grave of every man who voted for it. But abortion practice, at least in the major cities, is better than in many countries that have laws that are based on women's rights. The main reason for this is a public health system which pays for abortions.

But I want to talk about the inequalities in abortion system, and I thought I'd start with the geographical inequalities. This is a map of New Zealand's provision of first-trimester abortion services*:


The black dots are towns where you can get abortion services - the colour blocks are areas where those abortion clinics, or hospitals serve. The way the health system works the if a District Health Board (DHB) doesn't wish to provide a service itself (and there are two DHBs with no hospitals licensed to perform abortion in the area - presumably on general grounds of ickiness) then you purchase it from somewhere else. So unless you're prepared to pay both for the abortion and the trip to Auckland to go to the only private abortion clinic in New Zealand, you go where your DHB sends you. So, despite the fact that the people of Dannivirke are far closer to Hastings than they are to Wellington, they have to make the 4 hour drive to Wellington and back to have terminations (probably twice, because it usually takes two appointments - more on that later).

Incidentally just because these places do provide abortions doesn't mean that you'd necessarily want to go there - New Plymouth hospital only performs abortions under general anesthetic, that sounds like a great starting point for health care.

The white dots are hospitals that are fully liscened to perform abortions, but choose not to (there are other hospitals that could provide abortions and don't, but they're part of the same urban area). There are DHBs that have registered as providers of abortions under the Act, but only want to perform abortions to deserving women (and in some cases, they don't actually want to perform abortions at all). Christchurch is a seven and a half hour drive from Invercargill, but the people who run the Southland DHB think that that's a pefectly reasonable distance to travel for an abortion.

It's not just the DHBs' fault (although there's plenty of blame to spread around), the legislation says that every abortion must be signed off by two certifying consultants. This means that to run a useful abortion service you have to be able to have two certifying consultants on hand.

The current situation is awful, and puts women in a position of real hardship. The West Coast DHB only provides help travelling to Christchurch if a woman has a community services card. If you live with flat-mates and work full-time, even if you're only on the minimum wage, you're not eligible for a community services card. So women with minimum wage jobs have to find the money to make it from the West Coast over to Christchurch (although they should be able to get help from Work and Income).

* This information from this post came from this website.

funny

via facebook, university of oregon acapella group "on the rocks" doing lady gaga's bad romance. i just had to share.

watching the machine at work

so, since i started watching american idol this year, i find that i quickly had a favourite. not that i can manage to concentrate through the whole show on friday night, and i mostly can't bear the follow-up show on saturday night. but still, having a favourite keeps my interest enough to keep following.

and yet i feel a little sad i watch the competition progress. mostly because, in the initial stages, we get to see these people as they really are. unpolished, but charmingly natural. they are people who don't fit the hollywood/music industry standards of beauty, or hotness if you will.

what i like about mr dewyze is that shyness, and the sense of integrity you get from him. there's a total lack of arrogance and cockiness that i find quite sweet. as the weeks go by, he's starting to lose some of that, and while it may be crucial for his success on the show, it's quite sad to watch happening.

i see similar changes with crystal bowersox. i liked her a lot better at the beginning with her unique style and look. but as each week goes by, she slips more and more into conformity, and loses that which makes her unique. it's like idol is a machine that packages and processes natural talent, til it's hardly recognisable. adam lambert is the perfect example.

maybe it's just me, but i prefer the natural talent without all the additives and preservatives. so as a reminder of how he use to be before he was "discovered" by idol, here's a taste of mr dewyze's first two albums, which i thought were quite lovely. enjoy.

A quick note

A quick note to let you know I'm rejoining The Hand Mirror team. I'm very, very pleased that when I asked if there was space for me, the women posting here were happy to have me back. I'll see how my work pressures go, but at the very least, I will re-start the Friday Feminist series.

Cheers!

On being a housewife

Everything a housewife does, she does alone. All the work in the house is for you to do by yourself. The only time you are with other people is when you have visitors or go visiting yourself. People think sometimes that when women go visiting they are just wasting time. But if they didn't go visiting occasionally, they would go mad from boredom and the feeling of not having anyone to talk to. It's so good to get out among people. The work is the same, day in and day out. ''Even if you died the house would still be there in the morning." Sometimes you get so bored that you have to do something. One woman used to change the furniture around about every two weeks. Other women buy something new for the house or for themselves. There are a million schemes to break the monotony. The daytime radio serials help to pass the time away but nothing changes the isolation and the boredom.

The terrible thing that is always there when you are doing housework is the feeling that you're never finished. When a man works in a factory, he may work hard and long hours. But at a certain time, he punches out and for that day at least, he is finished. Come Friday or Saturday night he is through for one or two days. In the house you are never finished. Not only is there always something to be done, but there is always someone to mess up almost before you are finished. After four or six hours of a thorough housecleaning, the kids will come home and in five minutes the house will be a shambles. Or your husband will dirty all the ashtrays there are in the house. Or it will rain right after you wash the windows. You may be able to control your children or get your husband to be more careful, but that doesn't solve much. The way that the house is set up, neither the husband nor the children have any idea how much effort and real hard work and time have gone into cleaning the house. The way that the house is set up you have no control over the hours of work, the kind of work that you will have to do, and how much work you do. These are what women want to control.

The rest of the family is no part of the house. They just live there. You make the home what it is-a place where they can relax. You make it livable. You make it attractive. You make it comfortable. You keep it clean. And you are the only one who can never completely enjoy it. You always have your eye out for what has to be done. And picking up after people seems to be a never-ending job. You can never relax where you spend most of your time, energy and ability.

Selma Jones, "A Woman's Place" in The Power of Women and the Subversion of Community, first published in 1953

more on the UK elections

so while britain waits for a goverment to be formed, it's interesting to consider the make up of parliament. it seems that there has a been a very small rise in the number of women MPs:

The percentage of women MPs has risen by just 2% from 19.5% to 21.5% as a result of the election, according to the Centre for Women and Democracy.

Based on provisional figures, it says the number of Labour women has fallen from 94 to below 80 – about 30% of Labour MPs. The number of Conservative women has risen from 18 to about 48 – about 16% of Conservative MPs and the number of Liberal Democrat women has fallen from 9 to 7 – about 13% of Liberal Democrat MPs.

It acknowledges that its figures do not include the 23 seats still to declare at the time of writing, but says that, statistically, these seats can make little difference to the outcome.

for the first time, there are three muslim women MPs:

Three Labour candidates, Shabana Mahmood in Birmingham Ladywood, Rushanara Ali in Bethnal Green and Bow, and Yasmin Qureshi inBolton South East, became Britain's first female Muslim MPs, with majorities of more than 8,000.

some other firsts:

Helen Grant is the first black woman to represent the Conservatives at Westminster, comfortably retaining Ann Widdecombe's old seat at Maidstone and the Weald.

Labour's Chi Onwurah is the first African woman to win a parliamentary seat, in Newcastle Central, and Priti Patel became the Tories' first Asian female MP, winning Witham in Essex to become one of 19 Asian MPs.

more good news is that the number of ethnic minority MPs has almost doubled, from 14 to 27. this had an impact in encouraging more minority voters to get out and vote.

i really hope that the lib-dems hold out for proportional representation as a bottom line in coalition negotiations. if they manage to get it through, these numbers will be significantly better next time around. and just because i love it, i'll end with this picture of the victorious shabana mahmood:













ETA: in other good news, the british national party have lost their one seat in parliament, and also every seat they held in the barking council. yay!

I've never voted Tory

Like many people, I've spent the last day following the British election. Indeed Victoria University's internet almost broke under the strain of the sheer number of people streaming BBC on the Guardian website. When I stopped to think about it couldn't figure out what I wanted to happen - except the spontaneous combustion of all present candidates for British Prime Minister and their predecessors. But I couldn't stop watching.

There have been many words spilt over the British election results and what they mean, with more to come. It seems a little arrogant to stake a claim to that process. But what is important to me is that the Tories could not get a majority. It's been 13 years since they were last in power, Labour has nothing to even pretend to offer, and is widely loathed. Despite this the Tories could not make it happen.



One of the things I respect most about the place I was born is its long memory and deep hatred for Margaret Thatcher and the Tories. Gary Younge summed it up brilliantly:

I don't have a phobia about Tories. That would suggest an irrational response. I hate them for a reason. For lots of reasons, actually. For the miners, apartheid, Bobby Sands, Greenham Common, selling council houses, Section 28, lining the pockets of the rich and hammering the poor – to name but a few. I hate them because they hate people I care about. As a young man Cameron looked out on the social carnage of pit closures and mass unemployment, looked at Margaret Thatcher's government and thought, these are my people. When all the debating is done, that is really all I need to know.

Coming from New Zealand where the collective political memory is goldfish like I think Britain's burning hatred is worth celebrating.

Cake is not the opposite of diet - and no diet day thoughts

This week I have felt the irritation at International No Diet Day rise slowly (mostly fueled by the facebook group), and I wanted to write a post about why it annoyed me so much. Then I realised that I've already written that post so I decided to repost it instead (i've edited quite a bit, to finish the sentances and elaborate on the ideas).

In my experience No Diet Day's are most commonly observed at Universities, and usually by eating cake, chocolate and ice-cream at a dessert evening or some such event. Sometimes, when you have an anti-feminist women's rights officer, they're observed by giving away diet coke and fruit (because International No Diet Day becomes Love Your Body day and what better way to love your body than fruit, diet coke and yoga - I really wish I was making this up, but I'm not).

My superficial criticism of No Diet Day is how easy co-opted and perverted it is. An article from ABC in Australia:

In the 936 office Drive Producer, the lovely Lynn, got up especially early to spend most of her morning baking, in order to provide her colleagues with the most delectable Pavlova and cake.

Annie Warburton and the team from Mornings spoke with Stephen Dimsey, State Manger of Life Be In It Tasmania, to get some sensible tips for those who enjoy their food but want to stay in shape.

Then later on Stephen says: "What we're saying is that whatever body shape you are, make sure you're a healthy body shape," Talk about making the kind of sense that's not; I don't think I could translate that into English if you paid me.

But I have just as much problem with the dessert based versions International No Diet Day, which are organised on campus by people who are actually feminist.

I don't think dessert is the opposite of dieting. I think to suggest that it is is to perpetuate a shallow, unhelpful understanding of the role of food in our society. Food and control are so tightly linked that the only other alternative to controlling your food intake is losing control of your food intake. You can't just 'not diet' for a day - because the gremlins in your head about food and your body will still be there - interrogating every food choice, everything you do. To suggest anything can be achieved in a day is too hide how deeply people are affected.

The opposite of dieting is actually making food about food. I know that's an uphill battle. I know the vast majority of women students are nowhere near there. But I don't think having one day a year where you're 'allowed' to eat chocolate is a step in that direction.

In the end kicking those grelins to death is an uphill battle. Whatever the state your personal set are in I don't think it makes any difference whether you eat dessert or don't eat dessert on a particular day. And I think the suggestion that you should or shouldn't deal in any particular way actually makes it harder.

What is ultimately frustrating is that my experience of dessert evenings is that after a certain point people will start talking about how gross they feel and how someone should take the food away so they'll stop eating it - it's not an anti-diet dessert evening without people completely reinforcing ideas about food and control and food and power.

If I had a time machine, and could go back in time to when International No Diet Day was invented (my mind says 1989, but I'm too lazy to look it up on Wikipedia), I would make a suggestion that rather than make it 'no diet day' - how about 'no diet-talk day?" I don't know if it would actually help (and not being so easily commodified it would be less popular). But at least it presents the response to eating disorder culture and body hatred as something that involves many steps, rather than something you can just turn off.

Banning face-covering veils: one form of oppression turns into two more

As soon as I read that some countries were considering banning the burqa or niqab, I was pretty sure I knew what would happen to the women concerned if such a ban went ahead. Sure enough, a news item in today's Dom-Post confirmed my fears. A Google search showed that this incident was reported around the world, and some of these reports gave additional information.

An Italian law that bans people from covering their face in public - whether it be with a veil or motorcycle helmet - has been in place since 1975. In January a statute under this law banned clothing preventing identification of the wearer near "sensitive" public buildings in Novara, Italy.

On Friday a Tunisian-born woman was stopped by police outside a Novara post office. She was walking with her husband to prayers wearing a black niqab, which covers the wearer's face but leaves the eyes exposed. She was fined 500 euros.

We don't know what the woman thought - she was not quoted in any of the news items. But in some of them, her husband was. He has lived in Italy for ten years. He said he would respect the regulation, "but would now confine his wife at home because the Koran forbade other men from seeing her face." ((The Al-Jazeera report did not include this response.)

Where such convictions hold sway, women can't win, and a ban will mean they simply pay twice - once for transgressing the new law, and again for being caught in a religious catch-22. If they can't go out with their faces covered, they won't be permitted to go out at all. As far as the law and the neighbours are concerned, the problem will be solved.  The burqa will no longer offend European sensibiliities, feminist or otherwise. Don't get me wrong - it certainly offends mine. But in terms of actually helping the women concerned lead a less constrained life, a ban like this is worse than useless.

24th down under feminist carnival now up

the 24th down under feminist carnival (2 years, yay!!) is now up at the phd research blog belonging to frankie, and it's a great round-up of posts.

mother's day report

from the "time to appreciate what we have" files, the herald informs us that nz is the 6th best place to be a mother:

Save the Children's annual Mother's Day report says the average Kiwi woman will have 20 years of formal education and live to age 82, with almost all having health professionals present when they give birth.

By contrast in the worst place in the world for mothers, Afghanistan, a typical woman will have only four years of formal schooling and die by age 44, and only one in seven has a health professional present in childbirth....

The rankings are based on a weighted average of children's wellbeing and women's status in health, education, income and politics.

which, of course, means that we are doing well compared to others. but should we comparing our status in comparison to other countries, where women have fewer opportunities and lower healthcare? or with our male counterpart in this country, with whom we have something more in common ie theoretically at least, the same opportunities and the same access to health and education?

sometimes these articles seem to have a tone of "you're doing well here, so stop complaining". however, it is interesting to see who we're doing better than. the united states doesn't feature in the top 9, surprisingly. on the other hand, australia rates at number 2. also interesting is that the countries with higher taxes seem to do a lot better than countries with lower taxes. norway, sitting at the top, would be the country our minister of women's affairs quoted in a press release as the one which "requires companies to have a 40 percent quota of women directors".

He's still a police officer

It never ends:

The woman, whose name is suppressed, argued in a civil case that she had felt obliged to fulfil Mr Govers' sexual requests because of his position.

The woman had helped police spy on a methamphetamine ring in 2005. Shortly afterwards, Mr Govers took a bottle of wine to her home.

She said he told her he could help if she was in trouble, and that he knew her children were in care and her violent partner had just gone to jail.

The woman said he asked her to perform a sex act on him, but court documents show Mr Govers denies this took place.

The woman was suing Peter Govers in civil court, arguing that their relationship was a fiduciary relationship - that he had a duty to act in her best interests. The Judge ruled that no such relationship existed - but she did say that she believed that the woman's story was more likely than not correct. I'm really glad that the woman involved was told that someone believed her.

The police culture in Rotorua in the 1980s was one that enabled police officers to rape women with impunity. That's pretty much a matter of record at this point.

We're supposed to believe that it's all changed now. It's all clean - the bad apples in Rotorua rotted the whole barrel - but bad apples aren't a problem anymore.

But a police officer can have sex with someone who did not feel able to say no and remain a police officer. Govers was demoted from detective Sergeant to Senior Constable. He still has the power of arrest, the badge, the baton, and the mates.

Years ago I asked this:

For me this shows one of the fundamental problem with the police. Abuse, including rape, appears to be an inevitable result of the sort of power we give police. I know people have different analyses about how much good the police do (I come down on the side of 'none'). But even if you believe that the police do improve society, do you really believe that what happened to Louise Nicholas, Judith Garrett and countless other women is an acceptable side effect of that good?

It's not just Rotorua and it's not just the 80s.

Budget Time Coming Up - Two Breakfast Events

Two post-Budget breakfast events:

WELLINGTON: The Annual Wellington Post-Budget Breakfast
Co-hosted by the Public Health Association and Child Poverty Action Group
Friday 21 May, 7:15 – 8.45 am, St John’s Conference Centre (cnr Willis and Dixon Streets).

Come and hear how local commentators score the 2010 Budget, with a focus on health, work and children. Speakers include Brenda Pilott, National Secretary, Public Service Association; Riripeti Haretuku, Background in Māori Community Development, Māori SIDS; Jonathan Boston, Director of the Institute of Policy Studies, Victoria University; David Grimmond Senior Economist and Director, Infometrics.

Please register by email to postbudget@paradise.net.nz (for catering purposes) and pay on the day by cash or cheque. $15 for PHA members and unwaged, $20 otherwise.

AUCKLAND: Child Poverty Action Group Aotearoa NZ, with the University of Auckland's Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, Department of Paediatrics: Child and Youth Health and Department of General Practice & Primary Health Care, invite you to:
BUDGET 2010: Accounting for Children? Auckland's 10th annual Child Poverty Action Group Post-Budget Breakfast
Friday 21 May, 7.30 - 8.45 am, at School of Population Health, Tamaki Campus, University of Auckland. Gate 1, 261 Morrin Rd, (Bldg 730, Function Room 220 on level 2), Glen Innes, Auckland. Parking: Visitors section.

Speakers include Dr Susan St John, Associate Professor of Economics, Business School, University of Auckland; Alan Johnson, Salvation Army Policy Analyst, CPAG Executive.

$30 waged, $15 unwaged. To register and get payment details, contact Julie Timmins at admin@cpag.org.nz or phone (09) 303 9260.

Louise Nicholas: My Story - Maia's Hand Mirror Reflections

This is a repost - I originally posted it on the 14th October 2007.

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Louise Nicholas: My Story is a very good book. I feel I should start by making that clear, because I would have read it - I would have recommended it - even if it hadn't been very good. The book's strength comes because Louise Nicholas has something to say, and her voice, her experiences, her reality, comes through in every paragraph.

The book is written in alternating sections Louise Nicholas's and Phil Kitchin. Louise Nicholas tells her story, from going up in Murapara to hearing John Dewar's guilty verdict. Phil Kitchin provides all sorts of information about the trials and investigations, but he also tells us how his story intersected with Louise Nicholas's from an anonymous tip-off in the 1990s.

I'm going to concentrate on Louise Nicholas's chapters in this review, but Phil Kitchin's material adds hugely to the book. The two voices only work together because Phil Kitichin doesn't just stick to the facts, but allows himself to come through as a person. We learn about his reactions, we get snippets of his life, and are right there when he gets fired. Because both stories are personal they mesh well together.

Both voices contain a lot of information, that you didn't already know. I learnt a lot about what had happened, and I'd followed the cases obsessively. The book really demonstrates how poor the reporting on the police trials was. Some of those flaws have been apparent for a while - there are people out there who believe Louise Nicholas's flatmate gave evidence. But some flaws I hadn't realised. For the first time I was angry at the jury - the book lays out the crown's case in a way the media of the time didn't* - and the jury had more than enough evidence to convict, on some of the charges.

But the strongest part of the book isn't the information, for all everyone should know it - it's Louise Nicholas's voice which comes through powerfully and beautifully. More than that, her voice comes through because she knows what's important. It is so easy for non-fiction narratives to be lost in a sea of irrelevant statements. Louise Nicholas, and possibly her editors, have done a very good job of selecting the telling details, and leaving out the rest.

I'll give just one example of this sort of selection. I've had a lot of respect for Ross Nicholas for a long time, although I don't think it was based on anything, but a vague optimism. In this book he comes through as a person, and rather an awesome one. When she told him about Phil Kitchin's evidence about John Dewar she writes of him responding:

'I told you, didn't I?' he crowed. 'I said to you lots of times I didn't trust him that bastard! That there was something screwy about him. But would you believe me? Nooooo! Eh missus? So there you go! Once again, I'm right and you were wrong, eh missus?'

That one exchange not just convinced me that I wasn't wrong about Ross Nicholas, but also conveyed so much about his character and their relationship.

The book works best when it's focused on the main narrative, but because we don't live our lives in compartments this story tells us about much more than sexual violence.

The realities of reproduction: pregnancy, breast-feeding and caring for small children, are a constant thread. For those who don't know, or don't think, about the work involved in raising kids, this book is very telling.

We learn, as Grace Paley would say, not just about her blood, but about her money - what provincial working class people need to do to continue existing on this world. People get laid off, they get fired. The dangers of working life in her story outraged, but did not surprise, me.

Her story has depth, because she includes the things that matter and talks about them in her own voice.

I do have two criticisms of the book, one is that I think the design does the book a disservice. While I think Random House did a fantastic job of the editing (according to Louise Nicholas it was Random House that choose how the two parts of the story would intersect), the design crew were not so skilled. Phil's and Louise's sections are in different fonts, which is understandable, but both fonts are hard to read (and I'm not normally someone who notices that sort of thing). More importantly the cover makes it look like a standard biography of a celebrity, rather than a well-written book with something to say.

The other is some of Phil Kitichin's sections. Evelyn Waugh criticised Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death by saying that she lacked a clearly stated attitude towards death (to which she replied "Do tell him I'm against it"). I feel that Phil Kitichin lacks a clearly stated attitude towards consent. Particularly when talking about raping with a police baton, he falls back on the idea that the act itself is depraved, and therefore no-one would consent to it. I think that is a very weak position to be arguing from. Indeed it enables people like Kathryn Ryan to ask Louise Nicholas, 'other women consented to these acts, can you see why that makes people doubt your story?'. Phil Kitchin also discusses Louise Nicholas's sexual history completely unnecessarily.

I as able to over-look Phil Kitchin's statements, because the book is so good. But it is not an easy book to read.

The hardest section to read is her description of what happened at Corbett St. For four vivid pages she takes us inside her head while those men raped her. It's the worst, but it's certainly not the only; I decided I needed to steel myself for the worst parts so I read forward from the trial, before I read the earlier chapters. But the book is full of horrific details, as other women tell their stories. Rape is horrific and they don't step back from that.

Not everyone will be able to read this book. Although I think it should be compulsory for anyone who doesn't believe her, and any man who doesn't know that all the sex he's had is consensual. But I think if you can you should try and read it. Because for all it's sad and horrifying its not a book about despair, it's a book about hope.

There's hope in her survival.

There's the very personal hope of a family that believed her and stood by her. Her eldest daughter was 13 when Phil Kitichin's story came out, the same age Louise Nicholas had been when she was raped by police in Murapara. And her reaction is particularly powerful

There's hope because she was believed by so many people.

There's hope because by standing up she has given strength to other women. An 86 year old woman told Louise Nicholas that she had been raped when she was 16, and never told anyone, but after she heard Louise Nicholas's story she told her family for the first time.

There's hope because she has already made a difference, and if we stand together we can do so much more.

Please read this book. Please take it as a call to arms.

* There were suppression orders in place which stopped the media reporting a lot of the most important evidence for the crown. But what is so frustrating is that they didn't let people know that the holes existed. They could have made it clear that they were painting a fragmented picture and they didn't.

Maia's Hand Mirror Reflections: Introduction

As you may have noticed I don't post that often. There are lots of reasons for this, but it does mean that I'm not contributing much over here on the hand mirror. To make up for this I'm starting a new series: "Maia's Hand Mirror Reflections" which will be reposts of things that I wrote over on my blog before the hand mirror started. After the post I wrote yesterday, I'm going to start with some posts about police rape trials.

I wrote this post on the 12th of October 2006.

***********

Tomorrow I will have been writing at this blog for a year. I think the hardest thing has been the search for something to write about - it means you have to listen. I used to kind of shut it all out, and I think it's been a bad year to be listening, particularly as a New Zealand feminist blogger (maybe any year is a bad year). I wrote this, when I was waiting for a verdict when Clint Rickards, Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton were standing trial for raping Louise Nicholas: police rape trial:

The pattern last two days for me has been dominated by making sure I was listening to the radio every hour, on the hour. National radio marks the hour with their six pips, and I listen to the news, I'm waiting for a verdict. I'm not alone; there are other women listening as intently as me. During a meeting today I popped into someone else's office to listen to the one o'clock news - another woman came in "is there a verdict?"

We're reading entrails. I got a text message saying "Jury came out to ask judge as question - good sign i reckon'. I agree and the question they asked was a good one. Each hour the jury's deliberations stretch on (they've spent 8 hours yesterday, and 12 hours today) I wonder if it's a good sign. "At least someone believes Louise Nicholas" I say, "I hope they stay staunch" whoever I happen to be talking to at the moment replies.

We listen and wait and worry because we believe Louise Nicholas.

I'd been keeping half an ear on the trial of a New Plymouth doctor charged with multiple counts of sexual assault on many different women. I hadn't been listening to the news every hour on the hour, but I had been waiting since the jury went out on Tuesday. I'd been anticipating that he'd be acquitted. He wasn't; he was found guilty on most of the charges. Presumably there were so many complainants that the weight of their evidence gave the jury conviction beyond reasonable doubt.*

It's not that I particularly want him to go to jail. I'm a big Jessica Mitford fan - Cruel and Usual Punishment will turn anyone off jail. The only person I want to go to jail is Clint Rickards. I don't think jail helps the situation, indeed the believe the only protection we have is speaking the name of rapists loud and clear.

What I want for women who are raped, is that people say to them 'we believe you and what happened to you was not ok'. In our society the only way to do that is to get a guilty verdict. While I'm sure those not guilty verdicts are hard for the jurors to come to, while I know that some people on those juries believed Louise Nicholas, and the other women, whose names are suppressed. I know that others didn't believe them. I want to live in a where everyone agrees that getting drunk isn't consent and sharing a bed isn't consent, and you don't automatically consent to boyfriends, police officers, and doctors.

Every conviction is a relief - not just for me but all the women I know and love, and the many more I don't know. It's a little bit of hope that our bodies belong to us.

*It's lucky for certain police officers that any trials that they stand seem to be treated as individual incidents, and the fact that there was a pattern of behaviour is kept from the jury.

saturday night at the movies...

on saturday night i went to see "the blind side", which is the movie sandra bullock won an oscar for, in case the name is not immediately familiar to you. i hadn't intended to see it after reading a couple of posts on blogs written by african-americans. they were mostly upset that gabourey sidibe hadn't won the best actress oscar for precious, but also concerned that ms bullock had won it for yet another role where white person saves person(s) of colour (looking at you, james cameron).

however, i'm glad an american friend persuaded me to see it and sent me this link to a new york times story about michael oher, published back in 2006. and i have to say that i really enjoyed the film, more than i enjoyed "precious" in fact, even though i wouldn't say that it was a better film.

partly, it was because i had a crappy week and it was exactly the pick-me-up i needed. but it's more than that. there are several key differences between the two films. they are similar to the extent that they bring out the reality of life for african-americans who live in poverty. they create a consciousness of the struggles of what it is like to grow up without the loving support of a cohesive family unit, without access to decent education and in the midst of extreme violence and crime. in both cases, i think the films succeed very well.

the key difference to me is that precious is the story of an african-american, told from the point of view of an african-american. we see the world through her eyes, and share her experiences as she felt them. blind side, on the other hand, is not actually michael oher's story even though that is how it's promoted. it is actually the story of leigh ann tuohy, in which mr oher features prominently. the story is told from her point of view, how she sees michael oher, what she understands of his situation, how she helps and supports him to become the successful person we know today.

and because blind side is her story, we actually don't get any graphic details of what mr oher's childhood was actually like. we get brief flashbacks, and a couple of scenes where he's back in the old neighbourhood. but not too much, not enough to seriously disturb. compare this with precious, where we get much more of the full force of her experience - the violence she suffered from her mother, the scene of her father raping her, the abuse from kids on the street because she was fat, the violation of her privacy by her social worker, the abuse of the system that punished her for her situation.

precious was so much more accurate and honest as a portrayal of a person's suffering. it gave us the full picture, and hence was so much more difficult to watch. so, while there's no doubt that it was a much better film than blind side, in a way it's less accessible. what i mean is that it's harder for someone who isn't poor or a person of colour or overweight to identify with precious. it's much easier to identify with leigh ann tuohy, because most of us have some experience of donating money or time, and of trying to help others who are less fortunate than us.

it seems to me that this is a pity, because really, precious is the story we should be watching and learning from. precious and michael oher are the ones who need our understanding the most, because it is people like them, and particularly those who didn't get the happy ending, who need for us to be on their side. it's only when we're on their side that we will advocate for better public policy that provides proper support and opportunities for people in similar situations. it's only when we understand their experiences with the full tragedy and horror this involves that we shake the notion that poor people deserve to be poor, or are lazy bludgers who could get out of their situation if only they tried hard enough.

in that sense, i thought "pursuit of happyness" (which i also loved) failed a little. [**spoiler alert**] the film itself did a great job of showing how wrong it is to judge people when they find themselves in a situation where they depend on the charity of others. but the ending could be interpreted to show that anyone in that situation would succeed if they only tried hard enough. the reality is, of course, that the majority of people in that situation will fail, and it is only through an extraordinary combination of opportunities and luck that a person might succeed.

so, to end a longish post, i'd actually recommend all three films i've mentioned here. i think they all give us something valuable, in different ways.

Minor news

The paper had sat on our kitchen table for a few days. The Dominion Post is given away for free at campus and one of my flatmates brings it back to do the crossword. The headline caught my eye:

I never raped anyone, former officer tells the jury

I read stories like that, but I take a breath first:

A former Rotorua police officer denied raping a 17-year-old Rotorua teen in her flat 21 years ago but could not rule out a brief sexual encounter, a court has been told. Iosefa Fiaola told a jury in Tauranga District Court yesterday that he did not know the woman who alleged she was raped in her flat in 1989.

Then today I searched Stuff for 'Rotorua' 'Police' 'Rape'. There were lots of hits.

The jury had come back on Thursday. They had found him not guilty.

Another woman had gone to the police about being raped by Iosefa Fiaola, this article strongly implies this was the reason he left the police force.

The article I read was on page 5 or 6. When Rotorua cops stand trial for rape in the 1980s, it's barely news anymore.

I keep looking for the words, but I have so many jumbled things I could say to that. And I've said them all before, more than once.

How many people knew? Obviously lots of women knew, women who were raped, women who structured their lives around avoiding cops, women who had been warned. But none of them had the power to stop these rapists. How many police officers knew? How many lawyers? How about other men who could have stopped it? Or just men who could draw a line and say "I'm against raping women, even when my buddies do it?"

It's too big for me to comprehend, even now, even after thinking about it for years.

So I'm just going to say, again, that I believe this woman.

only human

i've been wanting to respond to a couple of comments about burqas that have been made in the last few days, but i needed to let my thoughts settle in my head a little. the particular comments i'm thinking of (and i'm sorry to single you two out, it's just that you started my current train of thought) are:

For me supporting Boobquake is part of the same thinking as supporting Muslim women who want to wear their traditional head coverings. People need to have the freedom to dress in whichever manner is right for them without fear of other people's reaction.

and this:

Anjum, what is your position on the wearing of the burqa ? I'm at a loss to understand it any terms other than that it is archly patriarchical.

and i think i'll start with the second one first. the fact is that i don't actually support the burqa. i'd be happy to challenge anyone to find me actually supporting the burqa itself in any of my public comments. i have supported the women wearing them, mostly by default. i just became the go-to person for a little while on matters pertaining to muslim women, and often felt uncomfortable with being put in a position of supporting something i didn't personally believe in.

on the other hand, i had something that many people in this country didn't have, and that is the chance to interact with burqa-wearing women, and to debate with them about the rights and wrongs of wearing one. you might want to think of these women as brainwashed, but i found many of them to well-educated, articulate, some of them born and brought up in the west (and usually deciding to take on the burqa as an adult), and pretty passionate about their beliefs. i've had some pretty in-depth debates, and have yet to convince a burqa-wearing woman that she shouldn't wear one. maybe that just means i'm a poor debater...

but getting back to what they said on the subject, i've heard one woman make a pretty feminist argument about wearing a burqa. her point was that it was her body and no male had any inherent right to view any part of her that she didn't wish to reveal. to her, it was a matter of empowerment that she was getting to decide what to reveal and what to conceal.

i can see her point of view. i can appreciate that, as an individual, she feels empowered and that she sees it as a feminist decision. but i can't agree with her. as an individual, it may well be that way. but at a societal level, it creates too many restrictions on women's full participation in society - in the ability to access many kinds of employment, to partake in politics and leadership, and so on. i accept that a society could theoretically be structured where a woman wearing a burqa could do all those things, but i haven't seen one, at least in our modern world. i've seen burqa-wearing women engaging in a variety of tasks, from driving to being a school principal, but on the whole i don't think it's possible to be a fully engaged member of society while wearing one.

which leads me to conclude that it isn't a feminist choice to wear a burqa, even though the individual woman wearing it may feel that way about it. the societal negatives outweigh the individual empowerment.

so why do i so often defend burqa-wearing women? the main reason is that i don't think forcing women out of the burqa is going to achieve anything positive for them, and it certainly won't change what they believe or how they view the world. if they are oppressed, it won't stop the oppression. the other reason is that i don't believe they deserve the sometimes pretty harsh harassment they received for dressing the way they do. i pretty much covered this ground a couple of days ago.

i have no problem with people criticising the burqa, as long as they actually know what they're talking about. so for example, all of the people who use the "but criminals could be under that burqa and could get away" obviously haven't got a clue. even for the burqa wearers, when it is a matter of public security, they can lift their covering and show their faces for identification purposes. it's really not an issue. nor do i accept the "they're all oppressed" argument, because clearly some of them are not, and have come to this decision through their own reasoning.

which then leads me to the first comment i quoted at the beginning. when it comes to the whole "boobquake" thing, i feel pretty much the same. i can understand why individual women would see this event as empowering and i don't believe they deserve criticism, or "slut-shaming" if you will, for simply taking part in something they believe in. but i disagree that the event as a whole is a feminist event, given the societal context it's happening in. a society where increasingly, the prevalent view we get of women is as dehumanised, sexualised beings rather than whole humans with their own sexuality.

again, i think the ground has pretty much been covered, and i don't need to go into the detailed arguments. but i do feel that we need to have the space to talk about our misgivings about events or the way female sexuality is presented, without it being seen as an attack on the women who want to present themselves that way.

i guess that's what i was trying to do with the post on the v8 coverage in the waikato times. i had no beef with the girls who chose to be grid girls or hood st hotties or whatever else was happening. my problem twofold: the coverage of women in relation to the v8s which gave them such limited roles, and the very narrow definition of what constituted "hot" in terms of the photographs presented. i assumed that it would be understood that i wasn't attacking the girls themselves so didn't articulate it clearly in the post. possibly a mistake on my part.

with boobquake, i know that a lot of people see it differently to me. that's fine, and if they believe it's a feminist event, that's fine. but i don't have to agree with that, and to disagree doesn't mean that i think the person making the argument is a bad feminist. it just means i disagree with their point of view on the issue.

and, yes, i tend to disagree pretty forcefully. i guess that's as a result of some pretty agressive and sometimes nasty comments that come through whenever a post goes up that discusses issues around female sexuality. and i don't react well to people accusing me of saying things i didn't say or didn't mean. but i do try my best to avoid making personal attacks. it's not up to me to judge who is a good feminist any more than it is up to me to judge who is a good muslim or a good whatever.

that i may fall short of the mark on occasion is to be expected. i'm only human after all. but i intend to continue to put my own arguments forward or to say why i disagree with someone else's point of view, even when i know my own position is going to be pretty unpopular. that's nothing new for me, i'm pretty used to being a misfit or the odd one out in a variety of situations.

walking while brown

via a friend on facebook, i wanted to share this piece on the new immigration laws in arizona:

Many are calling this law racist and calling the people who authorized it and support it racist as well. Debates under the theme “is it racist or not” are spreading like wildfire all over the nation. Debating racist intent is a waste of time and puts the focus in the wrong place. Am I disturbed that there are racist lawmakers, political leaders, and lobbyists? Do I wish we could be rid of all racist individuals in power? Of course. However, it does not really matter if the authors and supporters of this law are racist; it doesn’t matter if their intent was racist or not. Focusing attention there is a distraction to the issue and a no-win strategy. There is no way anyone can prove that these lawmakers are racist; engaging in that debate only polarizes communities and distracts us from the real issues of concern with this law and limit our strategies to successfully intervene.

What matters most is not the intent of this law or the intentions of the lawmakers, but the impact it will have. Our focus and our attention should be on the impact. Our debates, analysis, and decisions as to whether or not to support such a law should be based on impact. When focusing here, there is no doubt in my mind that the impact of this law will be racial profiling of brown people and the violation of civil and constitutional rights. Just ask any black man about the existence of racial profiling and you will know that “driving while black” is real, meaning all a black man has to do to get pulled over by the police is drive. Now, at least in Arizona, we will have not only driving while brown but also standing while brown, nodding while brown, and walking while brown.

read the rest of the whole piece to find out why.