A little bit of luck

Cross posted

Chris Trotter's most recent column is a dispiriting analysis of why cost-cutting, beneficiary-bashing, privilege-defending prime minister John Key somehow remains so popular: it's because he's so ordinary, just another Kiwi bloke who is happy to drink his beer from the bottle and weild the tongs at a barbie Even his extraordinary wealth doesn't upset New Zealanders: being rich is fine provided it's not inherited wealth, and it's not flaunted, not displayed in a way that implies that other people are lesser beings. There's no Remmers snootiness about John Key. He's pragmatic rather than being a thinker, and it's a damned fine thing that he doesn't seem to read great literature, or enjoy Beethoven's string quartets, or heaven forbid, try to engage in any sort of intellectual life. We don't want any smart people around here, thank you very much.

I think Trotter is on the money when he says that New Zealanders prefer modest heroes: one of the reasons New Zealanders admired Sir Edmund Hillary so much was his modesty about his achievements. John Key does seem like the chap next door, just an ordinary bloke getting on with the job. Personally, I'd rather that we had some intellectual heft on the 9th floor of the Beehive, and in ministerial offices, along with the nice chap demeanour, and frankly, I'd prefer a country where being smart and well-educated and prepared to talk about policy and ideas isn't regarded as a social solecism, but evidently, I'm in a minority on that one. (The evidence would be John Key's continuing popularity.)

Where Trotter nails it is with this sentence about the way New Zealanders regard John Key.

Strangely, we don't seem to mind if our leaders are richer than we are. Money, after all, is a wonderfully democratic thing. With sufficient hard work (and just a little bit of luck) just about anybody can become rich.

Just a little bit of luck...

It takes more than just a little bit of luck to become very wealthy. It takes a whole damn truck and semi-trailer of luck to become wealthy. Let's count the little bits of luck that John Key has had.

First of all, there's the luck of being born with a white skin. John Key has never had to experience walking into a shop and being regarded with suspicion just because his skin is the wrong colour. Then there's the luck of being born male - he doesn't have to justify his pursuit of career at the expense of having children, or carefully plan childcare if he wants to do a full-time job. Nor has he constantly had to calculate whether he is phsyically safe when he walks down a street, or has a few too many drinks. He was born able-bodied: no having to negotiate all the barriers that society places in the way of people with physical disabilities, from cars parked over kerbs and pavements, to lack of toilet facilities, to public places that are accessible only through a back door right round the back of the building, to work patterns that demand 10 hours phsyical effort a day, to... the list is endless. He was born with sufficient neural connections across his corpus callosum, so that he is a quick and able thinker, able to grasp difficult concepts quickly and easily. When his family was impoverished during his childhood, because his father died, there was a good quality state house available for him to grow up in, providing him with security. He had the extraordinary good luck to be born to a mother who made it easy for him to get through school and university, who assumed that her children would pursue higher education. He had the good luck to go through university at a time when only a small proportion of New Zealand's population did so, which meant that the government funded virtually all the tuition and living costs for students - no student loans for him. And so it goes. John Key is an extraordinarily lucky man.

Let me be quite clear: it is not John Key's "fault" that he was born lucky, any more than for example, it was Kiri Te Kanawa's "fault" for being born with an extraordinarily beautiful singing voice. It is just a piece of extraordinarily good luck. I do not doubt that John Key has also worked very, very hard. But one person can work hard all his life, putting in extra hours, doing his best to earn a good income and support himself, and still end up at retirement age with not much more than the old age pension to live on. Another will work hard all his life, but because he has been born lucky, because he is in the right place at the right time, he will become incredibly wealthy.

What Trotter points to in this paragraph is the collective delusion that New Zealanders buy into, that being wealthy is a reward for hard work, and that if only the rest of us worked that hard, we too could be wealthy. Far from being a column in praise of John Key (pace the standard cheerleaders on the right), Trotter has given us an exposé of the way we delude ourselves about our prime minister, about the nature of achievement, and about how we regard success in this country. I recommend it.

Friday Christmas Eve beauty

Cross posted

As you probably know, I am not a believer, but I do sing religious music, because so much of it is so very beautiful. Here is a small piece of exquisite singing for Christmas Eve - Gounod's Ave Maria sung by Kiri Te Kanawa.

Ave Maria, a setting by Gounod of Bach's Prelude in C, sung by Kiri Te Kanawa

Mary occupies a difficult place in feminist thought, especially for someone like me who was reared in the Catholic tradition. She is pedastalized, set above women as someone we should aspire to be like, holy and pure and eternally giving, with no thought of herself. Yet these magnificent words of social justice are placed in her mouth in the gospel of Luke, in what we know as the Magnificat.

He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he has remembered his promise of mercy

We know that some of our readers celebrate Christmas as Christians, some as a secular festival of family, some don't celebrate it at all. Whoever you are, wherever you may be, however you mark 25 December, may your day be happy.

and so this is xmas

i don't celebrate xmas. no decorations, no tree, no presents, no family gatherings. it's not part of our tradition and we celebrate our holy days at different times in the year. so i look on at the whole christmas thing as a detached observer, untouched by what's going on but sometimes bemused.

my kids never believed in santa. i didn't ever bother with that particular myth, though for some reason i did go with the tooth fairy. go figure. i still remember when one of my girls was quite young, she was telling me about her day at school. they had had to write letters to santa, telling him what they wanted for xmas. i said to her "you know there's no such thing as santa, don't you?". she gave me that exasperated look the kids give their mothers, and said "yes, of course i know that, but my teacher doesn't!"

when i stopped laughing, i started to get annoyed. not because of the santa thing, but more because of the spirit of this activity. it was all about consumerism, about what you could get for yourself, and these weren't values i wanted my children to be growing up with. i would much rather they had to write a letter about what they would do for others for xmas. and that doing shouldn't about spending money to buy things, unless perhaps for the impoverished. it should be more about helping others, service, a look outwards rather a focus on the self.

it's hard to take the commercialism out of the image of santa. the use of santa at shopping malls to promote consumer spending really doesn't sit well with me. again, we have young children pressed to tell this old fellow what they want, of course with the purpose of pressuring parents into buying more stuff. but what values does it really teach?

it's such a pity because xmas could be about so much more, and i'm sure that for many people it is. for others, it's just a stressful time or a time of sadness eg see QoT on one variation of the subject. the sadness could be due the loss of someone close - thinking especially of the families of the lost pike river miners, those that died in the fox glacier plane crash, and all deaths from illness, accident, abuse or murder. there's the sadness for those who struggle financially and can't make xmas time the perfect time that popular culture tells us it should be, those who have lost their job or can't find one, who struggle on a benefit for any number of reasons, the abandoned, the lonely.

i won't be celebrating on saturday, but i'll be thinking of those of you who are. i know that we've struggled with the posting here over the last few months, because "real" life has taken up the time for many of our writers. but i hope they don't mind if i say, on behalf of all us, that i hope you have a relaxing and rewarding time over the next couple of weeks, or at least that you find some comfort. i'd like to thank all our readers for dropping by and contributing to our space. i'd like to thank and give e-hugs to my fellow writers here, for teaching me so much and for making me think about things in new ways or even think about things that i never bothered to give thought to.

kia kaha. have a good one.

this matters

it's late & i should be getting to bed, but i had to share this - which no doubt many of you will have read already. it's sady doyle writing about her twitter campaign against mike moore (& keith olbermann). if you want some background about it, her earlier post here is probably the best one to read.

on my own blog, i wrote a while back on the concept of slactivism, basically a concept coined to cover those who do their activism through the click of a mouse or pressing a few buttons on their favourite technology & not much more. this is considered a bad thing because the mouse click is in lieu of more concrete actions in the "real" world that would make a difference.

but here is sady making a massive difference, fighting the good fight purely from her phone & her keyboard, and it matters. here she is, challenging all those myths about rape and rape victims, to the utmost of her ability, and of course it matters.

i'm in awe of her determination and courage, of her strength and her ability to draw support from a range of people. of her ability to withstand the kind of harassment that would have me struggling to rise above it.

please go over and read the whole post. and if you feel able, take part in the protest as this comment from one of the authors suggests:

Tweet messages to @MMFlint (This is Michael Moore’s Twitter account) and @KeithOlbermann with the hashtag #MooreandMe. Have a conversation with them. Tell them that publicizing the names of women accusing a powerful man of rape was wrong. Remind them that these women are now receiving death threats, that they are now in jeopardy because of Assange’s supporters. Ask them to apologize, to speak to us, to acknowledge that we even exist. Remind them of the many times they have asked us to stand up to the powerful in the name of people who could not defend themselves. Ask them to donate to a charity that helps rape victims in crisis. Donate if you can and encourage others to do the same.

Latest Women's Studies Journal: More on the "unfortunate experiment"

Volume 24:2 of the Women's Studies Journal is now available. It's free online here.
This issue focuses on the "unfortunate experiment", the Cartwright Inquiry and cervical cancer.
Contents include:
Anne Else, "The 'unfortunate experiment' and the Cartwright Inquiry, twenty years on: why getting it right matters"
Phillida Bunkle, "Patient centred ethics, the Cartwright Inquiry and feminism: Identifying the central fallacy in Linda Bryder, A History of the ‘Unfortunate Experiment’ at National Women’s Hospital"
Christy Parker, One for the girls?: Cervical cancer prevention and the introduction of the HPV vaccine in Aotearoa New Zealand"
Rhonda Shaw and Christine Donovan, "Cultural safety: Nurses’ accounts of negotiating the order of things"

There's also an editorial by Sue Jackson and Ann Weatherall, articles on autism and on older women managing their resources, and reviews of new books on sex work and on Amy Bock.

And here's another fascinating article about gender and archaeology, from Archnews (UK). (It's a little difficult to read - the writer is Francesca Bouaoun, so English is probably not her first language.)

one way to balance the books: reverse the tax cuts

so the government's books are going to show a blowout. what a surprise. not.

the latest cuts in tax & the previous ones, particularly at a time when unemployment was going up, were always going to deliver that result. had the last 2 rounds of cuts been focussed on lower income earners, they would have had a greater impact on economic recovery (as those at the bottom would spend on necessities) and they would have cost a lot less. not only that, businesses would be paying more in tax overall, as they would have been more profitable from the extra consumer spending.

the rise in GST has made the problem worse, as prices have gone up way beyond 2.5%. especially prices at the supermarket, where many items that should have gone up say 13 cents have gone up by a dollar. i know i've cut back on things just in sheer frustration of unfair price rises. i refuse to give unethical companies my custom.

yet there was a piece in the waikato times last week, which i won't bother linking to, by some expert writing about what small business owners wanted. and wouldn't you know it, the first thing he wrote about was the desire for more tax cuts. even while acknowledging that rates had gone down significantly and that even the company tax rate was going down. the latter will have gone down 5% over about 3 years. and the top tax rate has gone down 6% in 2 years.

there are 2 things about this attitude that really annoy me. first, where do these people think the money will come from for the services they want to see - faster internet, better roads, more public transport, support in times of hardship (disease-stricken kiwifruit growers, drought-stricken northland farmers, earthquake-stricken canterbury businesses), and much more? i guess many of them want to see beneficiaries starving, even though there aren't the jobs in the economy for to employ them.

the second thing is that many small businesses don't operate as companies, so they aren't subject to the company tax rate. in which case, they aren't subject to the highest tax rate until they hit $70,000 of income. and if there are 2 of them in partnership, that goes up to $140,000 in income. exactly how many small business owners are earning more than that? not a whole lot.

and even the small businesses who do have a company structure or a trust structure allocate out income to shareholders/beneficiaries by way of a shareholder salary or a beneficiary distribution. which means, again, that they aren't going to be hitting the top tax rate until over $140,000 of income.

so who benefits most from the drop in the company tax rates? large businesses and particularly foreign businesses. we are basically allowing our tax base to be eroded for the benefit of overseas shareholder. we are going to have cuts in services forced on us in the next budget, for the benefit of overseas shareholders. how is this sensible?

what's more, i'm surprised by the number of small business owners who don't even realise that only income they earn over the $70,000 is taxed at the top rate (or over $140,000 if a couple). they seem to think the whole lot is taxed at the top rate. which is, i suppose, why the tax cut message seems to sell so well to this demographic. except that many of them are never going to earn the kind of income that will give them the benefit of tax cuts, while every single one of them will suffer as public services are cut. even with the 6% cut in the top rate, a person earning $80,000 pa will have gained $600, but have lost a lot more than that in things like early childhood cuts, cuts for home help for the elderly, cuts to adult education, etc etc. who knows what will go in the next round of public service cuts.

and yes, these people will also suffere from any cuts to benefits. because when beneficiaries have less money, small businesses get less business and are less profitable. as small businesses reduce in profitability, medium size businesses suffer. and so it goes on. when you expect beneficiaries to starve, the end result can only be that businesses will starve - at least, local small & medium enterprises will.

the best way to balance the books is to raise the top tax rate & the company tax rate back up. it'll have little impact on the vast majority of nz'ers, but will have significant benefits for the country as a whole.

In Auckland? Join the People's Panel

A good opportunity to get some women's views, and in particular some feminist ones, into the Auckland Council cogs, is to sign up for the People's Panel.  It's an online survey process the Council is using to bounce ideas around, kind of like a big online focus group.  I'm generally pretty sceptical about these kinds of things, and I'm not totally sold on this one either, but I figure it can't be a bad thing to get more diversity in this group and I suspect our readers would provide some!

Here's the media statement from Auckland Council:

Do you want to make a difference and have your opinion heard when Auckland Council is planning ahead, proposing changes or making decisions?

The Auckland Council People's Panel is looking for Aucklanders who want to have a say on issues and be a sounding board for future plans, policies, innovative new services and service improvements.

Shelley Watson, Manager Communications and Public Affairs says the People's Panel gives Aucklanders an opportunity to provide feedback on the things that are important to them.

"We want to know what Aucklanders think about our services, policies and plans, and to hear new ideas about how Auckland can become the world's most liveable city."

Joining the People's Panel is easy. Simply log on to http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/peoplespanel , complete your details and we'll invite you to complete your first survey or feedback form.

Participants will be asked to provide feedback on at least three topics a year via a monthly email. In return, we will share the results and feedback so that residents can see how their views are impacting and shaping council policies, plans and services.

"Auckland is a culturally diverse region. The People's Panel needs volunteers from all communities across the region to join in and take part. We want to ensure that results and feedback represent the views of all Aucklanders."

"We particularly want residents from the West, South and North Shore areas. The former Auckland City and Rodney District areas are represented from previous panels whose membership has transferred from the former councils."

Men and porn

Now here's a really interesting article - I found it through an email from Spinifex, the Australian feminist publishing house, which put out Pornland by  Gail Dines earlier this year. The article originally appeared in the Guardian under the title "The men who believe porn is wrong". It was reprinted in the Melbourne Age with a different headline: "Men who hate porn". Here are some quotes:

'[Matt] McCormack Evans, now 22, has just co-founded an online project to get men talking about their use of porn. Other such projects have often come from a religious, conservative standpoint, but the Anti-Porn Men Project is grounded in feminist principles, in the notion that pornography is an important social issue, and has a bearing on violence perpetrated against women and wider inequalities. There are, so far, 10 other people who will be writing on the site, and the idea is to create a community, he says, "where people can share their experiences and problems, and find an alternative voice".

In setting up the site, McCormack Evans is one of the few men worldwide to publicly discuss pornography from a feminist perspective – positive about sex itself, open to the idea of people engaging in the widest range of consensual sex acts, but concerned about the industrialisation of sex and where this leads....'

'While an enormous amount has been written about how pornography affects women – particularly the terrible way in which they are sometimes treated within the industry – less has been written about how it affects men, which seems odd given that, as McCormack Evans says, pornography is a product predominantly "made by men, marketed by men, and consumed by a massive male majority".


One obvious problem for many porn users is the conflict between their stated belief in equality and respect for women, and the material they're watching in private. McCormack Evans says he used to exist in a "kind of double consciousness. For that half hour when I was watching porn I thought, 'This is separate from my life, it won't affect how I view the world.' But then I realised it did."

a call to men

trigger warning for sexual violence.



a must watch. hat tip to shakesville, who have a full transcript.

Friday Aboriginal Rights Activist - Jackie Huggins

Cross posted

White liberation leaders are also fond of pointing to the analogy between blacks and women as second-class citizens in a white, male chauvinist society. One of the clearest points of similarity between the situation of blacks and women is that they have both been brainwashed into the same ‘low self-image’; they are not supposed to use their minds, they are incapable of making decisions. They are both second-class members of the society who should be kept in their place.

If white women in the women’s movement needed to make use of a black experience to emphasize women’s oppression, it would only seem logical that they focus on the black female experience – but they have not. Had white women desired to bond with black women on the basis of common oppression, they could have done so by demonstrating an awareness of the impact of sexism on the status of black women. Unfortunately, despite all the rhetoric about sisterhood and bonding, white women are not sincerely committed to bonding with black women to fight sexism. They are primarily interested in drawing attention to the oppression they consider they experience as white upper- or middle-class women.

Jackie Huggins, "Black women and women's liberation", Hecate, 13(1), 1987

Rape myths and Julian Assange

I don't want to write about Julian Assange or the rape charges he is facing. I don't speak Swedish, a lot of the material in English misrepresents the Swedish legal system and. I don't have time to unpack all that.

However, I need to write about the way people have been talking about these rape charges. A facebook friend (who is political enough to know better) quoted from a a Daily Mail article* "The prosecution's case has several puzzling flaws, and there is scant public evidence of rape or sexual molestation."

Most women who have been raped had little public evidence of their experience. By repeating these rape myths in defence of Julian Assanger people are attacking not just the women involved, but other women who have been raped and had their experiences dismissed. They are also contributing to a culture where rape is denied, minimised, and distorted.

Left-wing defenders of Julian Assanger have been using rape-myths over and over again (as have his right-wing defenders, although they will not be the focus of this post). I think it's both disgusting and unnecessary to uphold rape-culture to defend Julian Assanger. I want to explain why.

"There is scant public evidence of rape or sexual molestation." As opposed to what? Is the person who stated this really arguing that usually there is an abundance of public evidence of rape? It's a ludicrous statement, but a damaging one. Because while the antithesis of 'scant public evidence' sounds ridiculous when it is spelled out, it has a lot of power when it's implied: women's statements about their experiences cannot be public evidence and cannot be relied upon. "No-one will believe you" - rapists say that to women and women say that to themselves. So many of the repsonses to Assange's case give that statement more weight, more power - they tell women all over the world "No-one will believe you."

Then there's the idea that some women are unrapeable. People uphold this rape myth if they describe some characteristic of a woman - most often, but not only, that she's a sex worker - as evidence that she wasn't raped, and can't be raped. The left-wing version of this du jour appears to be that one of the accusers had connections with the CIA. But there's a problem with this women who have had contact with the CIA, even CIA agents, can be raped.

There's a huge difference between stating "She has X Y and Z connections with the CIA. If she was working for them then this may be a set up." and "She has CIA connections you know." One is making the argument - the other is constructing some women as unrapeable.

Added to this we get a re-run of the Polanski trial and an argument that what happened to these women isn't 'rape-rape'. People were running these lines, before they even knew what the charges are. The charges are actually really clear cut: he had sex with one woman while she was asleep, and he didn't stop when another woman said stop. It doesn't require a very in depth and complex understanding of consent to understand that that is rape. But there is a constant narrative that anything other than stranger rape where force is used is somehow a lesser form of rape. That narrative is really damaging to rape survivors.

But I think that defenders of Julian Assanger do the most damage when they construct a way that rape victims behave and imply that the woman involved isn't acting like a rape victim: she tweeted about him, or she seemed happy, or she saw him again.

I lose it at this point. There is no way that rape victims act - there is no way that rape victims don't act. Seriously. If you don't know this then you have no right to say a word about rape.

It does so much harm to so many women, the idea that there's a way that rape victims act. It's not just some idea that you're spinning off into cyber-space. It's something that women who are going through trauma have to struggle through - their own, and other people's expectations of how they should be behaving. And it doesn't stop - the idea of the acceptable behaviour of a rape victim gets used as a weapon again and again.

Most rape myths are about women, about attacking suvivors of rape, discrediting them trashing them - and there's been a lot of that. But some are about men John Pilger said that he had a very high regard for Julian Assange. And? The rhetorical rapist - the scary man, who no-one holds in high regard - is a weapon that is used against actual victims of rape all the time.

And what is most ridiculous about this spreading of rape myths by left-wing supporters of wikileaks is that these myths are completely unnecessary to stand in solidarity with the wikileaks project.

It is states and companies that are attacking Wikileaks and Julian Assange, not two women. It is perfectly possible to criticise the actions of prosecuters, interpol, judges and government's without invoking rape myths.

Believing the women, or at least not disbelieving the women, does not mean that you have to stop criticising the way the (in)justice system operates or decide that that wikileaks is a bad project.**

The rape myths are unnecessary, and damaging. By repeating rape myths, you give them power. Doing so doesn't just hurt the women involved, but strengthens rape culture, and makes it harder for many, many, many other rape survivors.

Stop it.

* If you must look at it yourself the link is here - but no good ever came of reading the Daily Mail.

** On the other side of this, having a feminist analysis of rape does not necessitate accepting that the (in)justice system prosecuting rape is a victory for rape culture. I think these are actually flip sides of hte same argument, and brownfemipower has made some really interesting points about the limits of posts like this one.

31st Down Under Feminists Carnival

The 31st Down Under Feminists Carnival is up at Hoyden about Town. Tigtog has put together a magnificent carnival. Head on over there for some excellent reading.

31st Down Under Feminists Carnival

it's more than unfortunate, it's criminal

i'm glad this sort of thing has led to a conviction, though i would have thought it deserved a bigger penalty:

The man, who has permanent name suppression, used a laptop webcam and cellphone camera to make intimate recordings of his wife.

His antics ended only when his wife found a video camera, hidden under a towel, filming her in the bath.

The 39-year-old was ordered to pay $200 reparation when he appeared for sentencing in the Hamilton District Court yesterday.

Judge Peter Spiller said the facts of the case were "very unfortunate" and declined an application to discharge the man without conviction on the charges of making and possessing an intimate visual recording.

this man got permanent name suppression, though it's hard to argue against that when making his name public would also result in unfair publicity for the woman who was filmed without consent. also, the convicted man put up one of the weakest defences i've seen, claiming that his actions would somehow help a troubled marriage. oh yes, what a way to win your wife's trust.

still, on the positive side, a lack of victim blaming and a recognition that this kind of action is abusive and criminal.

is it ideal?

i've been meaning to link to this post by pablo at kiwipolitico for some days now. it deals with the depiction of men in advertising on certain types of commercial radio stations:

But three things stand out about the depiction of ideal NZ men in these ads.

[...]

The third and perhaps most interesting aspect of the depiction is its representation of “manly” values. Men are mates; hard drinking, carousing, happy go lucky, staunch (especially when drinking), fast driving, opportunistic and impulsive horn dogs working hard on the ladies. Nowhere in the depiction are there notions of honour, valour, courage, sacrifice, sincerity, solidarity (except with mates), humility, basic intelligence and knowledge of current global affairs, or interest in the needs of women, children and the family. That is a bit odd simply because the early 20 to 35 male demographic is the one that is reproducing the most (presumably a manly trait), has young families, is starting careers and otherwise has the burdens of post-adolescence crashing down on it. Yet the values being reified appear adolescent.

you'll need to read the whole post to find out what the other two aspects are, and i'd strongly encourage you to do that (if you haven't already). i thought it extremely well-written.

what i'm just a little disappointed about is the number of comments, which is not too many. but this is only because i'd like to have seen more of a discussion, especially from the male readers, about how they feel about this kind of portrayal, and how it affects them (if at all). it's not often that we see this kind of discussion (or maybe i'm looking in the wrong places!), so i was really glad to see it come up.

facilitating human rights

well, i've got an interesting opportunity coming up next year. i'm going to be doing a human rights facilitators course, which will take 7 days. i'm actually really looking forward to this, not only because i get to meet some interesting people, but because i'm really looking forward to developing some skills to become a human rights facilitator.

i see the need for advocacy in various ways. there's the aspect relating to religion, and the need to work on increasing understanding & reducing discrimination, particularly for muslim women & particularly in the area of employment. but also in terms of their ability to go about their day-to-day lives, and the normal interactions they have with the health system, the education system, the local shopping centre staff & so on.

there are the gender aspects as well. the need to teach young women the skills to negotiate better outcomes for themselves from within the family and within the community, especially when they face barriers that prevent them from taking up opportunities. it's a difficult situation, because on the one hand she doesn't want to be alienated from her family but on the other hand she shouldn't have to give up on her dreams. so much activism happens at the personal level, in the every day battles we face in the home. things like negotiating the sharing of unpaid work & child-rearing, or ensuring that there is enough support at home so that she can take up a promotion. i'm hoping that the course will give me something in that area which i can pass on to others.

then there is the whole area of institutional power structures, and how to negotiate to ensure women have access to those and have the ability to effectively participate in making decisions that effect the whole community. this is the toughest battle ground, where people with entrenched views resist any attempt at change and have the power to ensure their resistance is pretty effective. i'm not sure that the course will help in this area, but i'm definitely hoping.

it's only 7 days, so can only cover so much. and as for me, i hate studying & assignments and the like. i somehow managed to complete a masters degree but hated every single minute of it. even the fourth year of my bachelor's degree was a struggle. so, even though i know the answer is to take some longer-term training to really gain the skills i need. i'm just not ready for that. i can, however, cope with 7 days and whatever i learn won't go to waste. i totally want to thank those who have given me the opportunity to do this.

here are some priorities, minister

we now have a new minister of women's affairs in hekia parata, also the minister of ethnic affairs. i don't know much about her, other than that she was on back benches when i was on, & her comments were pretty supportive. she brought in a respectable result in mana, and is doing well enough for a first term MP.

but this is precisely the problem with her appointment - she is a very junior MP and will have little effective power within the cabinet. under the previous government, both ministries (women's & ethnic affairs) were held by senior cabinet ministers, which meant that they were given serious attention. it also signalled the level of importance placed on these ministries. this government has placed them as low as they can go, without being scrapped altogether.

in any case, ms parata was speaking on checkpoint tonight (18:16 pm). she said that she would be meeting the CEO of the ministry of women's affairs in a couple of days to find out what the priorities and main issues in the sector are. i thought we might help her out by suggesting some areas she could focus on:

• re-establishing the pay equity unit within the department of labour, and continuing the work they were doing around social work wages
• working on actually improving women's leadership in the business sector (and not just talking about it as her predecessor did)
• pushing to reverse the cuts to early childhood education
• increasing paid parental leave to at least 6 months
• putting back the legislation that mandated regular work breaks
• pushing for changes to the justice system to ensure better results for victims of rape and sexual abuse
• developing and implementing policies that would reduce the gender pay gap
• putting back in place the training incentive allowance for sole parents on a benefit
• valuing parenting by not forcing sole-parents into work, especially in a time of high unemployment

those are just a few off the top of my head. perhaps you could think of some others. feel free to share in comments.

Friday Feminist - Elaine Morgan (2)

Cross posted

The longer I went on reading his own books about himself, the more I longed to find a volume that would begin: ‘When the first ancestor of the human race descended from the trees, she had not yet developed the mighty brain that was to distinguish her so sharply from all other species…'

Of course, she was no more the first ancestor than he was — but she was no less the first ancestor, either. She was there all along, contributing half the genes to each succeeding generation. Most of the books forget about her for most of the time. They drag her onstage rather suddenly for the obligatory chapter on Sex and Reproduction, and then say: ‘All right, love, you can go now,’ while they get on with the real meaty stuff about the Mighty Hunter with his lovely new weapons and his lovely new straight legs racing across the Pleistocene plains. Any modifications in her morphology are taken to be imitations of the Hunter’s evolution, or else designed solely for his delectation.

Elaine Morgan, The Descent of Woman, 1972

problem free? maybe not

as many of you will know, high school exams have been on for the last couple of weeks, with our teens going through the ritual torture that measures their learning over the year.

talking to a teacher in the last couple of days, i found out that (at least) one exam paper had some serious flaws. this was not something that was noticed by only one teacher, but by many. but it appears that NZQA has shut down the formal complaints process for teachers to raise issues about NCEA exams. there is now no mechanism to address major errors in exam papers.

i don't think exams are a particularly good way to assess learning, but an exam paper that has significant errors is not any kind of way to assess learning. surely there should be some way to deal with such a situation, instead of just letting students suffer because of poor work by someone else.

i'd be interested in hearing from other teachers if this is the case. a quick check of the website gives this diagram about the exam setting process, which stops at the "publish & distribute" stage.

this report on radio nz (morning report 1/12/10, 8.48am) states that NCEA exams have been problem-free this year. well that's hardly surprising, if there is no way to lodge a formal complaint!

Feminist blogging in Aotearoa New Zealand

I thought it might be useful to have a record of feminist blogging in Aoteaoroa New Zealand, as at December 2010. If there's something happening that you think might have a feminist / gender angle, then chances are that one of these wonderful women might have written something about it.

Of course, many other women in New Zealand write feminist posts from time to time, on craft blogs and on mummy blogs, on political blogs and business blogs and rural blogs and cooking blogs and gardening blogs and fashion blogs and... all over the place. My list here is of currently active blogs that are primarily feminist in their focus.

Boganette
Bogan. Feminist. Atheist. Bleeding Heart Liberal.

I am offended because...
Ally: An oft-offended lady in Wellington. Likes sex positive feminism, fat activism, collecting lipsticks, theatre and the active consumption of dessert wine.

Ideologically Impure
Queen of Thorns: one-woman ginger group

LadyNews
Steph: Information in bite-sized pieces for the feeble ladybrain

Pickled Think
Amanda: Writing. Voice. Geek stuff. Random lady-brain musings. The odd bit of hulk smash.

Well behaved women rarely make history
ScubaNurse: Enjoy the ramblings of a woman with a passion for music, people, adventure, the ocean, theatre, and well, life really!

And of course, there's The Hand Mirror team! Some of us have our own blogs as well as writing at The Hand Mirror. You'll find links to our blogs in the sidebar, under "Other Places We Write". Of our other blogs, here the ones that have a strong feminist / activist focus:

Capitalism Bad: Tree Pretty by Maia

Elsewoman by Anne Else

In a Strange Land by Deborah

stargazer by anjum

Let me know if there are other blogs that should be included in this list. I'll try to update it from time to time, so that should you be looking for feminist comment on a particular issue, you can try these blogs for starters.

Guest Post: Compassion FAIL

A new low in breast cancer marketing

Having now reached my 30s I am obviously too old for NZGirl which seems to be an online version of the Cosmos and Cleos I used to read in my 20s. For a start, I am comfortable calling myself a woman. But I also wonder what the hell they are putting in the water in the online magazine's office to think that 'post your pictures so that everyone can vote on them' does anything to celebrate women's health nor celebrate women's bodies of all shapes and sizes.

Because what I do see is multiple pairs of breasts (which happen to be the same size and belong to 20-something women form whom gravity and hasn't yet worked its magic) used to sell all manner of things: clothes, sports teams, cars and yes even online magazines

But as I said, I am just not hip and cool and down with the 'girls' these days.

Did the editorial staff of this site stop to think sufferers of breast cancer facing of mastectomy, lumpectomy, radiation or chemo might feel as women with two breasts in presumably in perfect health 'raise awareness' about breast health by posting pictures of their breasts on their website. I am thinking not.

Because if they did, the experience of actual women with cancer would have not been lost amongst the dozens of pictures of twenty-something breasts vying to be best boobs on the site. How to do a breast exam and where to go for help would get as much bandwidth as this competition and most importantly the stories of 50 women lost to this cancer, the daughters, sisters, mothers, grandmothers and aunts would be there.

But they aren't. In fact this company didn't even bother to speak to any suffers, survivors or their family let alone decide which charity they were going to donate $5000 to before launching this campaign.

Think before you pink and American-based NGO has come up with a list of 5 critical Questions to Ask Before You Buy Pink. I think they should be compulsory for anyone trying to run a breast cancer 'promotion.'

1. How much money from your purchase actually goes toward breast cancer? Is the amount clearly stated on the package?

2. What is the maximum amount that will be donated?

3. How are the funds being raised?

4. To what breast cancer organization does the money go, and what types of programs does it support?

5. What is the company doing to assure that its products are not actually contributing to the breast cancer epidemic?

I am sure I will be called a grumpy old feminist for pissing on the younger 'girl's' fun. Quite the contrary. If women want to flash their breasts in public, more power to them. But if the women posting their breasts think they are doing it in order to improve women's health and celebrate acceptance of breasts in all their shapes and sizes, then they are sadly deluded.

Because it's not the societal acceptance of twenty-something breasts that is the problem, it's that the society doesn't value the lives and bodies of the women whose bodies are no longer deemed useful to sell things. Hell the fact that NZGirl probably just had its biggest day ever on the basis 50 pairs of boobs shows that society doesn't really give a stuff about the 'perfect ones' either, we don't see their hands, their faces, their legs. Just the breasts, because hey sex sells.

thanx to stef for contributing this post. see also boganette's excellent post on this issue, as well as scubanurse (and this one with trigger warning for the pictures), queen of thorns, and rachel hansen.

Update: Read this post from Kylie at A Lump at the Road: Insensitive.

My real beef with it is that it doesn’t help those of us that are currently battling, or who have battled this disease. It is hard enough trying to feel good about yourself with a giant scar in place of a boob, and only enough hair on your hair for a very bad combover, without having lovely perfect pairs of titties on display.

Yes, we do need gender studies - please vote

You may have read in this morning's Dom-Post about the axing of gender studies at Victoria University. The university claims that other faculties will offer similar courses instead, and that "The university has developed considerable strength in gender studies across a number of faculties and programmes." Well, the last list I saw, put out in the earliest round of socalled "consultation" on gender and women's studies to prove that the programme wasn't needed, included anything that even mentioned "male" and "female" - for example, courses in tourism, because they gathered tourism statistics by gender. That is not gender studies.

Vic has been trying to get rid of gender and women's studies for a long time, and now it has succeeded.

The online article includes a vote on whether there is still a place for gender studies at universities. So far votes are running strongly against, and the associated comments include some very nasty stuff.

Gender and women's studies programmes are the only programmes in any university which focus explicitly on the operation, meaning and significance of gender as such, not simply as an aspect of something else, such as the history of labour. In other words, they deal with an absolutely central facet of human society, but one which was, until very recently, completely ignored in university curricula, save in the form of deeply rooted and sometimes explicitly voiced assumptions about women's inferiority, whether in science, maths, literature, art...or simply their physiology.

While a number of papers offered in various other programmes at Victoria do use gender as a category of analysis, none of them are able to provide the intellectual framework that enables students to “make sense” of gender in the way that a dedicated gender studies programme does. Without such a programme, of course, it also becomes impossible to major in gender studies and make further contributions to this field – an effective way of removing a much-needed New Zealand perspective from the international academic conversation.


Yet as we are reminded every day, gender is a complex, contentious, constantly shifting aspect of human society which must be made sense of in order to understand what is happening today and what has happened in the past. The study of gender is not an interesting optional extra, to be dealt with only as and when individual staff in other disciplines wish to consider it as part of what they teach.

I keep imagining young women, 20 years in the future, coming across dusty shelves deep in the library stackroom full of late twentieth and early twenty-first century books about women and gender, and being astonished to discover all this knowledge and analysis that they had no idea had ever existed. So then they start a new feminist movement - what would it be, the third wave? the fourth? And they start delving into the history and significance of gender, which has completely vanished from the university curriculum, now devoted solely to employment-related training courses....

campaigning for MMP

i attended a meeting in hamilton this evening, which was to start some movement on the campaign to keep MMP. it's a crucial issue in terms of keeping the type of diverse representation we currently have in parliament. all the alternatives to MMP that will be included in the vote at the next election are less proportional than MMP.

some key points bought up at the meeting:

- while there are issues with MMP, it's possible (in fact desirable) for us to tweak the MMP system in order to sort those out. some examples are fixing the anomaly that saw rodney hide bring in 4 other MPs when his party had a lower level of the vote than NZ first; or creating more transparency around the list selection process for all parties.

- more education is required about the role of list MPs, who are working for constituents & are democratically elected. jeannette fitzsimmons gave a good response to this issue. she said when people questioned whether or not she had been properly elected, she said that as an MP for the coromandel electorate she had received 13,000 votes. but as a list candidate, she had received around 150,000 votes for a list with her name at the top. the latter was just as legitimate as the former, possibly more so. also, list MPs are valuable for those constituents who believe that their local MP is not adequately representing their views (eg not pushing for increased access to early childhood education). list MPs provide alternative representation for these people. because of this, they also ensure that electorate MPs provide a better service.

- women's representation in parliament went up markedly as a result of MMP (from 21% to 33%) as did representation for ethnic minorities. diversity in representation actually leads to better decision-making, because it ensures different types of issues are put on the agenda & different perspectives are brought to the table. also, having minority parties in parliament ensures that debates aren't just "for or against", but have a greater depth and breadth of coverage.

- a proper proportional system will mean that every vote counts. unlike FPP, where votes in safe seats don't count for much. any attempt to reduce proportionality will reduce the value of some people's votes.

it was a good meeting with a lot of positive interest. the campaign for MMP has a website with suggestions for positive action. they could definitely use donations, as those opposed to MMP will have some very big funders. if you have the time & energy, i hope you'll be able to contribute to the campaign.