Better late than never

A little while back a certain Mr C Trotter (one of my constituents, I should add) took issue with the sweary muscular blogging of staunch advocates for abortion law reform like Queen of Thorns, Boganette and others. 

Trotter has quite some track-record on misrepresenting the political motivations, characters and aims of feminist bloggers, from this site and elsewhere, so I would ask readers to not necessarily consider his assertions as the rock solid Truth, for example this:

"What QoT and a host of other feminist bloggers objected to so strongly ... is the notion that reforming the abortion laws might take second (or even third) place to other political considerations."

I've said it before and I'll say it again:  we can haz multitasking.

Also:  methinks Mr Trotter needs to learn to read sarcasm a bit better, when it comes to his conclusion that the non-existent Feminist Borg has cooked up all this stuff about abortion just to keep John Key as PM.  Actually, those of us who've been saying pro-choice stuff just want what we said we do - a legal framework around abortion which sees it as a health service primarily, and as such gives the pregnant person the power to choose what happens to their own body.  Personally I'd rather like to see Key et all out of Government too.  I'll be trying for both.

And when Trotter uses me as an example of a feminist pro-choicer who has apparently learnt his lesson about not living my values up front for all to see, well that makes me a fair bit sweary myself:*

I’m thinking of a prominent feminist blogger who was recently elected to public office. In her election propaganda she described herself as a “mother” and declared her commitment to building “strong communities”. Nowhere in any of the material distributed to the electors did she inform them that she was an active left-wing trade unionist and a vehement supporter of abortion on demand.

In the deeply conservative part of New Zealand in which she was standing, keeping these facts from the voting public made perfect political sense. Had she been completely honest with the electors they almost certainly would have rejected her.

I have no idea why being a mother, which I am**, and wanting to build strong communities, which I'm pretty keen on, somehow means I was painting myself as anti-abortion.  I wrote election blurbs about my values, with examples relevant to the position I was running for (and elected to) on the Puketapapa Local Board. I talked about good leftie stuff like strong local democracy, retaining public ownership of community assets, and being inclusive.  I spoke of my concerns about the negative impact of pokies and liquor off-licences in our community, and the need for a public voice on their regulation. None of it contrary to my commitments to collectivity or feminism, which have manifested most recently in my former paid work in the union movement as an organiser in the early childhood education sector.

I realise Local Boards are new and unique beasts in NZ's local body history, but surely no one could possibly imagine that we would have any role to play around primary health care, whether that's abortion services or cancer operations?   Certainly I can say that in the six months since I was elected not a single constituent I've talked to has asked my view on abortion, nor during the election campaign. Is the point of political "propaganda" now to list a host of irrelevancies in the hope that voters will elect you as the one they hate the least?  Should I have put in my blurb that I prefer dogs to cats?  Or perhaps that my favourite colour is blue?  Or, to raise an issue close to Chris' heart, that when I was eight I was very pro-Tour***, but when I got older I changed my mind?

I decided last year to pull back from being a public spokesperson on the abortion issue.  Not because it would result in the good residents of Puketapapa calling for me to be thrown out of office post haste, but because I didn't want there to be any confusion about who I represent when I do media work.  Having been elected by my fellow Roskillians I feel an obligation to not muddy the waters by being an official spokesperson on something unrelated to my public role for them.  I did this when I was on the AUSA Exec too - not joining a political party until I'd finished my terms, to avoid confusion.  It might seem like a silly demarcation to some, but it's how I roll.  Maybe sometime in the future I'll work out how to balance these things better, who knows.

So the question remains;  do you, Christopher Trotter, agree with the ultimate goal of reforming our abortion laws to make them pro-choice?  Strip aside the when and even the how; if it was up to you Chris, your vote alone, how would you cast it, today, on the broad principle of abortion on request/demand/whatever as long as the pregnant person gets to choose?

And then let's go from there.  You can mansplain to us about how we should do this all you like.  You can assume you are way way ahead of us with your strategic thinking (you aren't btw).  You can get the history wrong and get pinged at it by one of my favourite Alisons.  You're probably going to have to accept that this isn't a campaign you can lead, although it is one I'd really love you to support. And maybe, just maybe, you could try to do all that in a way that doesn't undermine those seeking a goal you have said you agree with. 



*Not on here though, because then we get caught in all kinds of Mail Marshall traps which limit access to our wise words.
** From just before I wrote the election blurb until this week coming, mothering has been my main day time job.  I started a part time union job on Monday, and from that point I will be probably be spending marginally more time on the Local Board work than on the mother stuff or the union job.  That's why I put I was a mother, because it was the main thing I was doing with my time.
*** Yes, the 1981 Springbok Tour.  Even though it was long past by then.



Comment direction:  This is not a post about the morality of abortion.  Go here if you want to discuss that.

political activism in the public service

a recent case involving a public servant who is subject to a complaint for comments made on facebook has me thinking about the level of restrictions on our public service.

i don't believe choosing to work in the public sector should lead to a person having to give up the right to political views or political activism. there may be a very few sensitive jobs where it would be entirely inappropriate, but for the vast majority of public servants, i can't see why it should be a problem. the problem would be if they were using work time or work resources to carry out their activism or make their statements

on the whole, i'm particularly concerned that public servants are not able to advocate on issues about which they have knowledge and experience. that is made much harder in an evironment where public service jobs are being cut, and being a vocal activist can make you an easy target for redundancy. [it's another issue that we were promised no cuts, only a cap on the public service; and that the public service is now effectively paying for the bailout of failed finance companies, gifts to warner bros and unaffordable tax cuts].

i've already blogged before about CYFs workers who were prevented from going to a protest during their lunch hour regarding cuts to the pay equity unit. it's funny how those very vocal free speech advocates don't seem to be quite so vocal when it comes to this kind of silencing.

Agreeable disagreement

There's been a bit of a furore lately* which might give the impression that there is some hideous split rending the pro-choicers down the midst.  My observation is that it's more a matter of timing - some say let's start now, some say let's start later - and while I'm in the former camp I tend to think those advocating the latter are still in support of the right to choose, they're just misguided about how we will actually achieve it, how we make "later" the right time ;-)

No two people agree all the time, why would we expect it anyway?   There's a diverse group of individuals and organisations who will be working for a fairer legal framework around access to abortion, and we won't agree all the time, on tactics or strategies, or possibly even on goals beyond the medium term change to the Crimes and CS&A Acts.  And that's ok.

Because a movement is never about just one way of doing things, or achieving only one thing.  One of the strengths of any movement is surely its diversity.  By having a wide range of activities and a breadth of opinion there is something for most people to identify with and get involved with.  Some will want to raise arguments and tactics that others are uncomfortable with, considering them too weak, too strong, side issues, bad timing, possibly even counter-productive. 

Collective strength comes in part from how we handle these disagreements; how we balance our unity of purpose (within its limits) with our diversity of experience, opinion and action. 

When someone put plastic knives in Bob McCoskrie's lawn a few years back I thought about the mythical situation in which the media might ask me for comment on this**.  I disagree very strongly with a lot of what Family First (which is basically McCoskrie) promulgate.  And I also disagreed with this tactic (mainly because I thought it would be pretty awful for his family).  But I could understand the anger that motivated stabbing that grass.  I could understand a bit of the frustration that someone might feel at how McCoskrie misrepresents families, at his judgyness regarding what is a "real" family, and his hypocrisy at frequently supporting policies that actively hurt children and parents while wearing a "family values" mask. 

And I think that's the way to respond, when you disagree with the strategy or tactic but agree with the ultimate goal.  You can say "look I might not have done it that way, but I can understand the depth of feeling that motivated them, especially when so many people are saying hey ladies just cross your legs and wait / thinking McCoskrie speaks for NZ's family when he doesn't speak for mine / etc."

As this campaign rolls on there will be bumps in the road.  Sometimes we will want to take different paths.  But while we're still heading in the same direction let's try, whenever we can, to treat each other with solidarity in public, with agreeable disagreement.  

*  So I'm a bit late to this, but that's my life these days, always running late.
**  Yeah, I'm weird like that.

Comment direction:  This post is about abortion campaign strategies, tactics etc, and the general stuff about solidarity and unity while respecting the rights of individuals and groups to campaign in the way they think best NOT about the morality of abortion which you can debate/discuss over here.

teenagers are normal

it's no secret that i'm not a big fan of nigel latta. that would be the reason why i haven't watched any of his programmes on tv, and certainly not the ones on recently about teenagers. there are, however, others who have watched them and aren't too happy:

In his Politically Incorrect Parenting Show on TV One, Latta explained teenagers' behaviour by describing them as "mental" and "not right in the head".

Christopher Banks, 33, who has bipolar disorder, argued Latta was in breach of the TV broadcasting code by encouraging discrimination.

On his blog bipolarbear.co.nz, he accused Latta of damaging public perceptions of mental health.

"It ticks off every stereotype in the book. It's a step too far and ill-considered."

naturally, i had to go backto mr banks' blog to see what he'd written, and it's a pretty fine post. i'd recommend you read all of it. the comments section is another story, as the regular "your views" commenters turn up, don't bother reading the post, and come out with the usual bingo card of comments - get over it, switch channels, socialist nazis, and the like. i have to say that i did love this response from mr banks:

And sorry, but I don’t “switch channels” when something unjust or unfair is happening. I wouldn’t walk past someone being bullied in the street because I found it offensive, so I don’t see any difference when someone does it on television, on a government channel that we all happen to own.

on the whole, he has done extremely well dealing with a whole heap of nastiness. tvnz has not managed to do very well in their response, which is basically "he didn't intend to be offensive" and "it was just a joke":

"The intent of his show is not to denigrate anybody or anything, but to help and to educate using humour and, from time to time, exaggerations for effect."

as to intent, well i'll just steal this link from QoT's post (if swearing bothers you/is blocked by your system, then here's another one). as to it being a joke, mr banks' description of the "uncle jack" sketch included in the programme shows that this was way more than a quick & passing reference to mental illness. furthermore, as mr banks points out, when a qualified clinial psychiatrist thinks it's ok to be making fun of people with mental illness, that has a lot more impact than your average comedian.

one point not picked up by mr banks, but made on a facebook discussion is also very pertinent:

the statement that teenagers are "not right in the head" doesn't just encourage discrimination, to me it's also about reducing a whole group of people (teenagers) to those whose actions/intents and emotions are wrong or not normal. Nigel positions the adults as normal and rational, and I can't help wondering if sometimes teenagers don't wonder to themselves where the heck their parents are coming from! Just because the 'frame of reference' for one group is incomprehensible or not easily understood by another group does not mean that one is more normal or right.

i'll finish with a link to the second post on this subject by mr banks, and second his recommendation that you put in a broadcasting complaint if you have the time.

Friday Feminist - Chally Kacelnik

Cross posted

You’re doing feminism wrong.
You should talk about this. You shouldn’t talk about this.
Not everything can be about your group, you know! Let’s talk about mine.
Let me explain something to you.
I’ve never experienced this so it can’t be.
Respond right now.
I’m leaving.
Get your issues out of my feminism.

This is a short extract from Chally's poem. The whole poem is on-line at Feministe.

Chally Kacelnik, "A Poem for Feministe Commenters", Feministe, 19 March 2011

New laydeez on the blogroll

Rachel Hansen by Rachel Hansen (the shock, it kills!)

Octavia's Spitfire Emporium by Octavia

I am Offended Because by Ally  (I think she may have been added earlier, but not entirely sure as I kind of stuffed it up slightly then had to fix it, so sorry Ally!)

come again? by cjmax02

All explicitly feminist, wohoo!  So I'll shortly be adding them to the Feminist blogs in NZ page also.  Big ups to Deborah for setting it up.

You don't have to be writing a feminist blog to be added to our NZ Women blogroll, just be a woman living in or from Aotearoa who has a blog.  Please don't hesitate to comment on this post if you want to be added. 

And apologies for the delay with these additions, I am finally starting to get on top of blog stuff a little better.

The Grandad Twinkle

Snuffly loves cuddles.  He's quite happy, most of the time, to be cuddled by anyone who is gentle and loving, and everyone is when faced with teh cuteness he brings.  Maybe one day soon he'll start to get that clinginess that sometimes sets in after six months, but Wriggly didn't get it, so maybe not.

I've got quite adept at picking when someone would love to have a cuddle, and offering.  I have no qualms about Snuffly being held by others, even complete strangers, although I know not every parent feels this way and I respect that it's not for everyone.  Often once I've passed him to one person I find he gets shared around a little, as people steal him off each other.  It's nice to share him around like that, for me as well as him, and the cuddlers too.

However I've noticed that men rarely ask.  In fact I can only think of one who has in all this time.  Often they're looking wistfully, with what I call the Grandad Twinkle, and so I'll offer, with no pressure, and hardly anyone says no. 

It makes me a bit sad though that so many men are afraid to show they love babies.  I think they fear judgements that they are perverts, because why would any man want to cuddle a baby that isn't their own?  Probably for the same reasons some women do - because they are lovely joyful things that snuggle into you and make you smile. 

I'll keep looking out for the Grandad Twinkle, and keep offering cuddles, as long as Snuffly's ok with it and small enough to be the right size for those snuggly hugs.  I hope that we build a future where men can cuddle too.

Some vindication

Today the Broadcasting Standards Authority released its report into TVNZ's response to Paul Henry's racist attack on Anand Satanyand back in October last year. 

While the BSA found TVNZ's approach to the problem "slow but sufficient", they also clearly rejected Henry's attempt at an apology at the time as lacking "substance and sincerity."   The Herald reports that the BSA particularly pointed to the unhelpfulness of Andi Brotherston saying, on behalf of TVNZ, that Paul Henry said stuff "we quietly think but are scared to say out loud". 

This is some vindication for the many many complainants from October 2010, when Henry finally crossed some invisible magical line which only the Establishment seem to be able to see.  Anjum put together a useful round-up at the time of the concerns voiced about Henry's racism and arrogant response online.

I'm still disappointed that Paul Henry was allowed, by his employer and by the many supporters who sadly enabled him, to get to this point.  There were plenty of earlier points at which TVNZ could have stepped in and said "hey, stop the racism, the sexism, the general bigotry, because it's not ok." 

There was November 2009, when we and others called for Paul Henry to change or go, after he called Susan Boyle a retard and was nasty about those with intellectual disabilities; October 2009, when Henry's inappropriate faith-based support of Sensing Murder psychics went totally OTT as he asked Deb Webber, live, about where a missing child was (and shame on her for answering too);  April 2009, when Henry drooled over a woman on air and her dance partner called him a dickhead in response; March 2009, when I first bothered complaining about his prejudiced comments after he belittled a Breakfast guest based on her (totally irrelevant) appearance; not to mention dozens of other remarks and his tendency to just say worse things in his (mis-named) apologies for them.

Props to all those who complained about Henry, some multiple times, through all his ridiculousnesses.  If we hadn't done it be assured TVNZ would not have acted as they did, eventually, and Breakfast could still be blighted by his presence.  And we wouldn't have had some useful, if difficult, discussions about how we want our media to be; free from prejudice and seeking to challenge those with power, not denigrate those without.

Henry is gone, from TVNZ, but he's not forgotten.  He seems to pop up in the newspapers on a regular basis, with rumours of his great new career in the States and gossip column coverage of his trips back to Aotearoa.  And I don't think he's genuinely repentant either.  Seems to me he's sad he lost his job but he's not much sad about anything else.  More he's angry, and feels unfairly treated.  Which perhaps is giving him a little taste of what it's like to be the victim of the kind of prejudice he regularly fomented on his show.  Although most who were his targets don't have the kind of resources Henry has to cushion the blows.

I hope we never see his like again.

lessons for julian assange

darren hughes is currently being investigated on charges of "a sexual nature". well that's pretty crap wording right there, based on the way reporters were framing their questions. they could have asked if the charges involved sexual assault, sexual abuse, sexual violence or any more apt descriptors. really, i don't understand the need to tone down the nature of the investigation.

the only positive thing that has so far come out of this is the response to the allegations. to date i haven't seen any attempt to denigrate the person making the allegations, and i really hope that continues. i think of the awful treatment meted out to people like neelam choudary, kristin dunne-powell and so many others, and am thankful that none of that is happening here. it's possible to defend oneself with out without attacking the other person, by simply saying "i have done nothing wrong". or even adding "i intend to defend myself against these charges". julian assange could take some lessons.

there is very little information available, and i don't want to put myself of other blog writers here at risk by putting any defamatory material into this post. as things develop, i'll certainly be keeping an eye on the commentary around this young man. somehow, i don't expect anyone will be asking what he was wearing, how much he was drinking, why he was out so late, why he was alone with another person, and what he did to keep himself safe. aside from the fact that none of these issues may be relevant to this particular case, they are questions that should never be asked but are too often asked of women.

please use discretion in comments. i'll be keeping a close eye, and will close comments if needed. please comment on general issues rather than any specifics.

Open thread: Children's Commissioner's report on education & care of infants & toddlers

Thought people might be interested in discussing this further.

Here are links to both the Summary and the whole of the report Through Their Lens:  an inquiry into non-parental education and care of infants and toddlers.
For those not into reading long stuff *cough* me *cough*, here's an excerpt that jumped out at me:

These findings are made in a context in which many parents feel they do not have a choice about returning early to work, or that their choice is very constrained and determined by factors other than their preference. These findings should not be construed as a criticism of working mothers. Society has changed. Working mothers and consequently non-maternal childcare are part of this change. The inquiry on which this report is based has concluded that formal ECS should be seen as a contribution, in partnership with parents and often extended family members, to a child’s learning and development.

And here's some of the media coverage for quick overviews:

Under-2s best at home, says report - Herald
'Time to take under two's seriously': report - Stuff

Please consider this an open thread to discuss this and related matters.*

One of the things I have really liked about a lot of the media I've seen so far (mainly radio) has been the prevalent use of the word "parent".  Such a relief to not have everybody assuming it's just about mums!



*  I have previously felt quite constrained about discussing early childhood education stuff because of my day job.  However I'm on maternity leave now, and when I return to work soon I'll likely be working in a different sector, so now I feel a bit free-er to talk about the education and care of under 5s.  No one should misconstrue anything I say as being the opinion of my regular employer, NZEI Te Riu Roa.

another type of bullying

i'm just going to link to other people's writing on the case where a jury acquitted who had admitted tying his son to his wrist, shaving his hair off and washing his mouth with soap:

"It is probably the worst thing I have ever done to my child, but I grabbed my tie that I wear for church and I tied his wrist to my wrist beside my bed so he couldn't take off and go and kill himself," the father told the Sunday Star-Times. "Then he did manage to loosen it, so I did tie it around his neck for only about 30 seconds. I admitted to those things in court, but given the circumstances and what I was trying to achieve – trying to stop him killing himself – I was found not guilty."

here is stef, who doesn't think this kind of parenting is typical.

and neither does the queen of thorns (and no, i won't give her a dismissive introduction so that you can take her less seriously).

i don't have much more to add. that we live in a society where a jury can acquit a person on this kind of behaviour is indeed a sad thing. i don't understand how putting a tie around your child's throat in attempt to stop him killing himself is a productive exercise. and the lead juror should be "embarassed to be a new zealander", but not for the reasons she thinks.

seriously, if she doesn't think this was a case that needed to be answered, i don't know what is.

on becoming a hero

a victim fights back and becomes a hero. it's not hard to understand why. i think many of understand what it's like to be picked on, to feel helpless and harassed. or we've been in situations where we've not had the power to stand up to peole who have treated us unfairly, who have put us in a position of fear.

maybe it's that more primal instinct of fight or flight, and when flight isn't a possibility, we love the ones who fight back. is it our collective hatred of wimps, of any sign of weakness? so that when we come across someone who does fight back, we express our contempt of weakness by applauding the fighter.

the latter seems to me to be a stronger possibility, especially given the adjectives used to describe physical weakness or emotional cowardice. most of which seem to be aligned to feminine characteristics, funnily enough, while courage is described as having balls or being a man. [as an aside, i'll just express here how much i hate it when the new nz masterchef judge who keeps using the word "ballsy", even to women. seriously, is it that hard to accept the fact that you can have courage without having balls?]

the reason these questions come to mind is because the applauding of this young hero who has been able to physically fight back puts that much more pressure on those people who aren't able to fight back, for whatever reason. by making him a hero, we say that those who don't fight back are the opposite.

it's an insidious way of making the victim responsible for preventing bullying, and another example of a society that is unable to put responsbility squarely where it belongs: primarily, those who bully. but also those who applaud the bullying though not taking part themselves, those who watch silently but do nothing (unless, of course, they fear for their own safety), those who run institutions where bullying takes place and who cultivate an environment that encourages a lack of empathy, or at the very least haven't set up adequate structures to protect people from bullying. if our young hero was being bullied for three years, as is stated in the article, then surely the school is doing something wrong.

on top of all that, responsibility lies with a society that prizes the fighter and has contempt for the weak.

*thanx to the person who started an excellent facebook discussion which influenced my thinking on this: you know who you are

Baby on the Board

The last six months, since I was somewhat surprisingly elected to the Puketapapa Local Board, have been such a whirlwind that my intended post on what it was like at the start, as a woman and as a mother (not to mention as a centre-leftie) went by the by.  Maybe I'll write it Next Week.

However I can share some observations about Snuffly's involvement as the unofficial seventh member of the Board.  He's been at most things, as he was five weeks' old when both his parents were elected.  Three year old Wriggly struggled quite a bit with his younger brother going to meetings with Mummy and Daddy, but now that often they both stay home for the night events, with a friendly babysitter, he's more relaxed.  Still cries when poor S1 or S2 arrive, which must be quite disconcerting, then he's usually happily playing and forgets to say goodbye or wave at us from the window as promised earlier in the evening. 

Snuffly has been a smiley cuddly dream for anyone looking after him, including me.  I simply couldn't be doing this* if he was sick, had a disability, was a reflux baby or had colic.  I'm very aware that his good health, and our good level of resources, are what enables me to be a Local Board member. 

I've breastfed him in all sorts of odd spots - in the kitchen at Tradeshall during the City Vision results party, while I was on the phone to a mate in Wellington who wanted the goss, and didn't tell me the General Secretary of the Labour Party was listening in; in the old Auckland City Council chambers, with portraits of the Queen and her hubby looking on; at the tech training, as the only woman other than one of the facilitators, with a bunch of mainly older men including George Hawkins MP struggling with the new laptops; in a back room at a public meeting angry residents worried that a "The Warehouse" would radically change their neighbourhood; during a hearing on a resource consent for aforementioned "The Warehouse" proposal; and, most uncomfortably, during our inauguration at the start of November, when Snuffly was just two months old and basically none of my business-y clothes fitted.  While it was nice to have several hundred people turn up to celebrate our election, especially my whanau and friends, it was incredibly daunting to have to sit at the front, side-on to the crowd so I couldn't hide behind the table, and feed my small baby at the start of the night.  . 

Generally when I'm feeding Snuffly in public I'm keen to be as discreet as possible.  I can't think of a time with this child or the previous one when I've been at all interested in people seeing my breasts in that brief period when baby is going on or coming off the nipple.  And unfortunately I find breastfeeding really hard, and so with Snuffly I'm still using nipple shields which make discretion tricky.  Luckily I've got quite adept at it, I think; working out which clothes are going to give me the flexibility I need and not flash the world, and how to best manoeurve them and Snuffly in the right dance to minimise pain, maximise milk, and eliminate skin shows. 

I've not had a single complaint to date.  Someone did make a somewhat snarky comment that I could have taken a couple of ways, a month or so back, but I can't remember it now so it can't have been that bad.  Staff in particular, as well as other members of the City Vision ticket, have been amazingly supportive.  Snuffly has been very good about cuddles with others, which has been a relief, and of course his father is often around to share the duties which is immeasurably helpful. 

One of the things I've been careful to do is assume that whatever Snuffly and I need is just going to be ok.  I've stopped myself from asking if I can have a room to put the portacot in, near the meeting venue, and just checked that they know I need one.  We've just turned up, and started to feed when necessary, because at this point we are simply a package deal;  it's only recently that he's been having a bottle enough of the time for me to go into the office without him for a significant period.  Oddly I am now less comfortable about feeding him with the bottle at an event than I am about breastfeeding.  I suspect if I hadn't been so tired and overwhelmed when this all started I might have had the energy to be more worried about feeding in public.  Seems the oddest things have a silver lining.

And I've got amazingly good at assessing the wheeled access of a zillion places, along with which venues have bathrooms where you can change nappies and which don't (*cough* Auckland Town Hall *cough*).  All useful knowledge, and not just for those with young babies either.

I'm not doing this to make a point about breastfeeding in public or how when babies are welcome mothers can participate. I'm doing it because it is the only way I can do it. I hope it does break down some barriers around babies (and their parents) being acceptable in public life, and knowing that it might does make it a bit easier for me to keep going. But honestly if I could not be doing it this way I would. Because it is HARD. To be trying to work, trying to have difficult conversations about politics and learning so much new stuff, when I'm jiggling Snuffly to stop him crying, attempting to judge if he needs to go down yet, needs a nappy change or perhaps will have to be fed early, is really tricky. I don't recommend it.






*  By which I mean what is effectively a half time (plus) job.  They're paying elected members on my Board around $35K pa, equipping us with laptops, vodems and Blackberries, so to me that means this is a significant part time commitment that should be approached professionally and not as just something I do on the side of everything else.  As the Local Boards are a unique structure in local government, and operating for the first time, many members are taking different approaches, as we all struggle to work it out, and to fit our old lives around the new commitment.  It's a great privilege to be on the Board.  I just wish Rodney Hide et al hadn't rushed it all in, because it's a bit of a mess as a result.

Mind your language

Cross posted

In the Dominion Post this morning:

MIND THE LINE, IT MIGHT SAVE YOUR LIFE

Blue lines on roads in Island Bay mark the furthest point that a worst-case tsunami has been calculated to reach.

Since the lines were painted in February, after consultation with GNS Science, almost every coastal suburb has expressed an interest in having them.

"If there was a big earthquake in Wellington, and you live on the coast and have seen that line on the street, then hopefully you grab your wife and kids and go to behind where that line is," Wellington emergency management office senior adviser Dan Neely said.

You grab your wife and your kids...

So many possible meanings there. Maybe it's because only men are capable of taking action, or because men are the ones who take responsibility for action, or because when it comes to disaster planning, we plan for men. Also, you will note that we only plan for nuclear families, and families that have a husband and a wife at that.

It's such a small thing, but it's revealing. It shows which people are regarded as being the norm, the average, the ones from whom all others are different.

And it's so easy to fix. All he needed to say was, "... then hopefully you grab the people around you and go to behind where that line is."

Maybe that's what he meant to say. I'm sure he is concerned for the safety of everyone in Wellington. It would just be nice if that thought got out into public discourse too, instead of using language that reinforces notions of men as normative, and women as others who need to be cared for.

Next Week, Next Week, Next Week

Everything is going to happen Next Week.  Next Week will be perfect and filled with plenty of time that I can spend on things other than meetings and childcare.  Next Week, always Next Week.

I don't live in Next Week though, I live in This Week.  And This Week is always packed, filled to the brim, with plenty of commitments for family and community.

Being on a Local Board and having two young kids equals awesome.  The chance to have a positive effect on my community, which sorely needs some local institutions that connect people and build our capacity, is a great privilege.  And to be able to raise children who are funny and bright and happy is a wonder too.

To try to keep track of the busy-ness and avoid childcare calamaties I have been using *cough* Outlook *cough* to colour-code my life.  Purple is for Board stuff, Orange for family, Green for my day job (starting two days a week from March 28th, eeek!), Yellow for childcare by others, Mauve for feministy stuff, Light Blue for me time.  The Light Blue has largely been medical appointments so far.  But today I'm getting my haircut!!ZOMG1!!  I feel so decadent. 

Maybe next week could actually be Next Week.  I could meet a fellow feministy mum for a playdate, do some ironing that isn't focused on just the clothes I need to wear in five minutes' time, even read a book for a while with a hot chocolate and some baking I made myself.   Maybe, just maybe, I could even write a blog post that was about more than whining about how I am too damn busy to write blog posts...

Hmmm, maybe that'll have to keep until the Week After That.

Friday Womanist - bell hooks (5)

Cross posted

Only when we confront the realities of sex, race, and class, the ways they divide us, make us different, stand us in opposition, and work to reconcile and resolve these issues will we be able to participate in the making of feminist revolution, in the transformation of the world. Feminism, as Charlotte Bunch emphasizes again and again in Passionate Politics, is a transformational politics, a struggle against domination wherein the effort is to change ourselves as well as structures. Speaking about the struggle to confront difference, Bunch asserts:

A crucial point of the process is understanding that reality does not look the same from different people's perspective. It is not surprising that one way feminists have come to understand about differences has been through the love of a person from another culture or race. It takes persistence and motivation - which love often engenders - to get beyond one's ethnocentric assumptions and really learn about other perspectives. In this process and while seeking to eliminate oppression, we also discover new possibilities and insights that come from the experience and survival of other peoples.

Embedded in the commitment to feminist revolution is the challenge to love. Love can be and is an important source of empowerment when we struggle to confront issues of sex, race and class. Working together to identify and face our differences - to face the ways we dominate and are dominated - to change our actions, we need a mediating force that can sustain us so that we are not broken in this process, so that we do not despair.

bell hooks, "Feminism: A Transformational Politic" in Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, Toronto: Between the Lines, 1988

Three years of Hand Mirrorness

Today marks three years since The Hand Mirror launched. 

We've cracked two thousand posts, had over 500,000 hits (in fact closing in on 600,000) and I like to think we've had a bit of impact on the general NZ Pol blogosphere, by encouraging more women and more feminists to comment and have their own blogs.

Not bad for a three year old!

Big thanks to everyone who makes this work - those who write, those who read, those who link, those who comment, those who send us stuff behind the scenes, those who think, and those who support those of us who write too.

My observation of the blogosphere is that blogs that make it past three years generally stick around long term.  I hope that's true for The Hand Mirror too. 

A&E

life feels pretty fragile today. partly i'm feeling on edge about the continuing situation with the nuclear power plant in japan, on top the massive loss of life and the number of people left homeless and struggling. also, someone i know* ended up going to the hospital today in an ambulance, because he was suffering from chest pains. he's ok, and probably got discharged this evening, but hearing about his treatment at the hospital leaves a lot to be desired.

apparently he was assured that the problem wasn't with his heart, but they wouldn't keep him overnight for observation. blood tests were done, but even though there was a possibility of kidney stones or gall stones, they refused to test for that. they basically told him that they would make sure he wasn't at risk of death, and once they had done that, he would have to leave.

is this normal? i haven't been to A&E lately, for myself or to support anyone else so i have no idea. but this seems to me to be a very high level of non-service. surely if someone is presenting with something like that, they'd be held while a full range of tests were done? i would expect that there would be some level of preventative care going on, beyond the emergency treatment.

but perhaps resources are so stretched, and the pressure for quick turnaround times for A&E patients have resulted in the minimum level of care being provided. as well as the fact that the private system stands to make gain from sick people who aren't critically ill, who don't get full or proper treatment in the public system.

i know this is one incident, and perhaps other people are having much different experiences at A&E. i sincerely hope so. i would hate to think that this is the norm.

*not a member of my family

To learn more...

In October of last year, this blog was part of a debate about Te Papa and the tikanga they used for some taonga.

As a follow-up to that I wanted to draw attention to Kim's post The tapu of taonga and wāhine in a colonised land.

Her post discusses lots of different aspects of the collection itself, the tikanga, and the debate about it in the media and on blogs:

And this is the real issue, while Māori must understand a European worldview and law to survive in this land, colonisation has meant that very few people have any understanding of mātauranga Māori, or, in fact, of colonisation. Whenever an issue requires some understanding, whether it be the significance of te reo Māori, or kaitiakitanga, or whatever, the ignorance of most New Zealanders makes dialogue impossible. And thanks again to colonisation, this creates a problem not for those who are ignorant, but for Māori. Māori must repeatedly start from the beginning and attempt to explain their whole culture—this occurs in conversations, the media, court hearings, tribunal hearings. At some point, tauiwi need to take some responsibility for understanding the indigenous culture, and for understanding how their ignorance contributes to cultural imperialism, to Māori perspectives being marginalised and foreign in their own land.

I recommend reading whole post.

women on screen

stratos has finally become available on freeview, and i'm loving it. not only the access to al-jazeera programmes, but the documentaries, and the films. tonight i was totally blown away by the interview with the palestian comedian maysoon zayid. i can't find a clip of it online, but as soon as it's available, i'll put it up.


sent to me by email today was a link to the site "every mother counts", a site devoted to improving maternal health care, so that quality care is accessible to all mothers. i'd really recommend reading the various barriers to adequate health care detailed on the site, including lack of health workers, lack of equipment, lack of transporation, lack of access to family planning, lack of emergency care, and lack of post-partum care.

also on the site is information about a film by christy turlington burns called "no woman, no cry", a documentary sharing the stories of women at risk:




finally, i received by email from the director of "the shape of water", details of her next project. kum-kum bhavani is now working on a documentary called "nothing like chocolate":

NOTHING LIKE CHOCOLATE portrays the intimate story of anarchist chocolate-maker, Mott Green. Mott operates an unusual chocolate factory that turns out delicious creations unknown to a world saturated with industrially produced cocoa, much of it produced by trafficked and enslaved child labour in West Africa. With a rich blend of ingredients missing in the large-scale production of corporate chocolate, Mott utilizes solar power, employee shareholding and small-scale antique equipment to make delicious, organic, and socially conscious chocolate. Each step in the production process, from cocoa pod to candy bar, involves ethical and sustainable methods aimed at empowering the community of farmers involved. An anarchist chocolatier, with his tiny chocolate company challenging the global model of large-scale chocolate production, and undermining the exploitation of child labour...

2011 marks the 10th anniversary of a voluntary protocol agreed to by chocolate manufacturers, including Hersheys and Mars, that all their chocolate would be made without exploited child labour in a very short period. Releasing NOTHING LIKE CHOCOLATE in 2011, perhaps at Sundance, will both show people are making delicious, slave-free chocolate, and put pressure on the large corporations to stick to their word.

kum-kum is seeking funding for this project, and if you are interested in further details, you can find them here.

Jishin

It is heartbreaking to watch the situation unfolding in north-east Japan and it seems now that the death toll is likely to be in the tens of thousands.

Much has been written about the nature of the disaster but I thought I would write a little about the area that has been affected. Tohoku (the north-east) is an area that culturally has long been on the periphery of Japan. It is a very mountainous region with many hot springs and a beautiful and dramatic coastline. It is a relatively poor and sparsely populated area proud of its history and local culture. Along the coast are (were?) many small and isolated fishing villages where most inhabitants were children or older people as young adults tended to leave to study and work in an urban setting. I lived in the region for two years and when I told Tokyoites this they often seemed to feel somewhat romantically about the region as a repository of good solid traditional values of a Japan that is now harder to find in the big cities. Soon after I met my husband I took him on a road trip through Miyagi and Iwate, an area he hadn't visited before, and he loved the slow pace of life and kind and genuine people.

My first thought when hearing of the earthquake was of possible tsunamis as these are common along this north-eastern coastline. I spent a lot of time visiting those beaches and many had concrete sea walls and tsunami observation towers and several towns had been rebuilt after previous tsunamis had been through them. Finding a way to strengthen concrete with steel without it corroding is big business in Japan as I learned when teaching engineers in Tokyo. We now know that much of the coastline has been completely washed away and it is difficult to imagine what might become of these communities which were already struggling to survive losing population to the cities.

Questions will be asked about whether development practices in the region have been good ones, particularly with the threat now of fallout from the nuclear power stations. It is reasonable to have these discussions but I would remind people that Japanese people in general are very aware of nuclear-related issues given the still strong memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It is difficult to imagine whether this region will be able to recover from this. However, Sendai itself was heavily damaged in air raids during World War Two and cities such as Kamaishi on the coastline and throughout the area were also targeted. Images of the devastation from the tsunami reminded me of the war damage and in a perverse way give hope that something may be able to be rebuilt. Obviously other Japanese cities have also suffered in earthquakes with 140 000 people killed in the 1923 Tokyo earthquake and 5000 in the 1995 Kobe earthquake.

Earlier today I came across the following (from here) which very much seems to encapsulate the resilience and stoicism needed to survive in a place where devastation regularly seems to come:

When you study classical Japanese, you memorize the opening of the Hojoki. (It’s like reading Caesar in Latin class.) The Japanese often cite these lines in times of disaster:

The flow of the running river is unceasing, yet the waters are not constant. Where it pools, the foam that floats up, now vanishing, now gathering, at no time lasts for any length. Man and his dwellings in this world are in every way the same.

The Japanese have a very moving tradition of awareness of the impermanence of life and of stoicism in the face of loss, as the above shows. But there’s a balancing tradition of jaw-setting discipline and tough-mindedness when there’s work to be done.

(The picture at the beginning of this post shows a boy being tested for radiation exposure. It is from the Al Jazeera website, which has been the best of the mainstream news sources on this disaster).

(Title edited because I realised that some browsers won't be able to display the Japanese characters and that will be annoying. Japanese text also removed from the body of the post for the same reason. "Jishin" means earthquake in Japanese).

commercial surrogacy

on international women's day, radio nz ran a piece about commercial surrogacy (nine to noon, 8 march 2011, 9.36am). apparently, there's a move to ban it in new south wales.

the had on a man who had paid a woman in india to be a surrogate for his son. this man kept reiterating that he wasn't exploiting the woman, that he had taken particular care in selecting the agency he used, he had spoken to the woman several times himself. what he actually meant was that he had made sure that the woman wasn't being forced to go through this process.

i'm not sure that he could ever be entirely sure of that. if she was under any kind of threat, it would obviously be in her best interest to assure him that no force was involved, and she would, of course, do that repeatedly. with a smile on her face.

but even if he was right, her poverty was very clearly being exploited. the man made it clear that he was helping her financially, the money given to her was the equivalent of ten years of income and would allow her to educate her other children and buy a house. in other words, there was economic pressure and the woman felt this was something she had to do to improve the condition of her family.

again, we come back to the question of choice. yes, it was her choice to be a surrogate, but to have to make that choice under such circumstances is a pretty crappy kind of choice. it's exactly the same "choice" argument that was being used by the supporters of the win-a-wife campaign: that the ukranian women were choosing to undertake their involvement with an agency, and were choosing to better their circumstances by entering a marraige with a (comparatively) rich foreigner.

in both cases, it is a clear exploitation of poverty and i was really disappointed that kathryn ryan only touched on this lightly, as did the medical-legal specialist. it was pretty much brushed over. when the man was asked why he didn't choose an australian surrogate, he brushed over the issue by saying there were no appropriate avenues for him to have a family, but he only talked about adoption and foster parenting. he didn't say why he didn't look for an australian surrogate, or if he did, why he couldn't come to an arrangement with one.

again, similar to the evasiveness of the win-a-wife supporters when asked why the competition hadn't involved a woman from an economically prosperous western country. i would also have liked ms ryan to have found out the difference in cost of getting a surrogate mother in australia or america as opposed to one in a developing country. and i'd like to know the demographics of the women in western countries who choose to do this, in places where it is legal.

to me commercial surrogacy is absolutely akin to the sale of human organs, which is against the law. similar reasons could be put forward for the sale of organs: the donor knows he/she is saving a life, and the money will improve the lives of his/her family. in the case of surrogacy, a woman is selling use of her womb and the rest of her body, she is going through a process that can have a significant impact on her health.

she shouldn't have to make that choice because the world is ordered in such a way that she doesn't have enough money to house and educate her children. good quality education is the right of every child, and shouldn't have to be bought with a pregnancy. ditto for good quality housing.

if this man really cared about the welfare of the surrogate mother, if he was really interested in improving her life, he would give her the money without requiring her to go through a pregnancy and give up her child. if he was really interested in making sure he wasn't exploiting a woman in a developing country, he could have made sure that he selected an upper class woman who already had a house and whose children were already going to the best school. but i bet the agencies who organise this kind of thing don't approach those women.

i don't mind the law in nz, where a woman can be a surrogate for family or friends, but without any commercial payment for the pregnancy. and i think it's extremely important that the birth mother lives in the same country as the child, so that she can be a part of the child's life if she so chooses. but the commercialisation of this process is wrong, on so many levels.

Is there anything left to us but to organise and fight?

(Wisconsin protesters singing Solidarity Forever)

They've changed the laws in Wisconsin, but we only lose if people stop fighting. And it is a we. 'An injury to one is an injury to all' is not just a slogan, but a statement of fact. If people stop fighting, if Walker wins, then gains that organised workers are a bit less secure, not just in the US, but anywhere where past struggles have won us anything, but the reverse is also true. Already the Wisconsin protesters have shown us that a fightback much stronger than anyone imagined is possible.

I don't live in near an American state capital, but if you do there will be a rally at your capitol buildings at midday Thursday 12 of March, and more action to come. I'll try and keep a little more up to date of solidarity action, and maybe even write a bit more about the fight itself, and why they're so very important.

But I think this video explains it well enough:



(The Pickers' Local 608 perform Billy Bragg's There is power in a union)

Take it easy, but take it Wisconsin.

poverty - the solution is political

following on from my post of yesterday, below is the speech i gave at an international women's day event yesterday:

I’m going to talk about politics today, and I make no apology for it. Because the solution to poverty is political. Poverty will not be solved by NGOs, not by charity groups, not by fundraising drives by well-meaning groups. Live Aid didn’t solve the poverty problem. Bill Gates & Warren Buffett donating half their fortunes haven’t solved it.

Why? Because poverty is not the result of a lack of resources. It is a result of uneven distribution of resources. It is about power structures, trading structures. An example is a clip I saw on Al-Jazeera last week, which showed the effect of speculation on food prices. The way our commodity markets are structured serves to pushes up basic food prices, as those with money stockpile when demand is high. One hedge fund based in Mayfair, London bought 200,000 tonnes of cocoa on the commodities market. This is 7% of the world’s supply. Having cornered the market, they stored all the cocoa in warehouses, which lead to the price of chocolate reaching highest level in 30 years. Deregulation of the commodities markets mean that the same firms that caused the stock market crash are now trading in staple foods. Whenever there’s a disaster like a flood or a drought, traders bet on prices going up or down. They are systematically distorting prices to make money. Every economic decision has a moral consequence. Food is a fundamental human right, not a commodity. Speculation turns crises into disasters.*

Or another example: subsidies that allow farmers in western countries to sell at lower than cost on the open market. While their income is secure due to subsidies from their own government, it reduces the prices earned by those in poor countries, to below subsistence levels.

These problems can only be solved through political means. Through political resolve and the willingness of governments to stand up to capital, to regulate and to stand firm against the threats of capital flight. It requires a global response and a rethinking of the way we run economies. We have been fed the mantra of neo-liberalism, free markets and individual responsibility. We have had any attempts at collective action demonised, the most recent example of which is the union- breaking legislation in Wisconsin, USA, with other states trying to follow.
We had the employment contract act here, which has served to push down wages, and heralded the start of the wage gap with Australia. With the mantra of free choice, compulsory membership was removed, and inequality is the result. NZ used to be in the top 6 OECD countries when it came to the gap between rich and poor. We are now in the bottom six of the OECD countries.

Not only have wage rates dropped, but in the last few years there has been a push to treat workers as self-employed contractors, meaning they don’t even have to be paid minimum wage, they don’t get sick leave or guaranteed holidays. Here are the causes of poverty, and they require a political solution.

Which leads me to another point. When we think of poverty, we tend to think of people of colour. All the ads for aid agencies on television show poor brown people. Saturday’s Waikato Times, in discussing social welfare, had only one picture on the front page, of a brown man. Poverty is associated with colour, and what that serves to do is to alienate the majority of the population from those who are poor. They are “over there” and “not like us”. Combine this with the fact that the poor are blamed for their own condition, as if society doesn’t exist, as if government policy doesn’t exist, as if there was no economic recession and loss of jobs, as if employers never threw away a CV when they saw a foreign-sounding name. This narrative around poverty makes invisible any societal and collective responsibility for the conditions that allow poverty to exist. This mix of racism and vitriol allows us to treat the poor as unworthy and undeserving. Lazy. Bludgers. Sucking off the public tit. All these narratives allow us to unburden ourselves from the responsibility to help them, to work towards bettering their condition.

It means we don’t have to think about paying more taxes so that there will be enough all around. Tax is seen as theft rather than the economic means to create a stable and healthy community. It means we don’t have to think about paying decent wages, and taking less of a profit so that everyone can have a fair share in the fruits of their labour. It means we don’t have to think about the cheap goods we get to buy from countries that have weak labour laws, where workers work long hours for poor pay in unsafe conditions. We don’t have to think about how we contribute to poverty every single day of our lives, in almost every economic, social or political decision we make. It means we can avoid taking responsibility and pretend that it isn’t our fault.

But it is. If there are people dying of hunger today, it is my fault. If there are people dying of cold, because they have no home, it is my fault. If there are people dying from water-borne diseases because they don’t have access to clean drinking water, it is entirely, 100% my fault.

This situation exists because we allow it to exist. Because we fail to act. And there is only one way to act: collectively and politically. If we want to end poverty, it starts with the policies of our government. It starts with public action, organisation, collective voices, collective protest. It starts with all of us seeing ourselves as a community and working as a community, rather than as individuals who are here simply to look after ourselves and our own immediate families. We have to see every person as part of our human family.

Let’s not wait for the destruction of a city and the loss of so many lives before we develop that community spirit. Let’s demand more of our politicians – let’s expect them to have the courage to stand up to big business. Let’s push them to make decisions that benefit the whole community, not just the proportion of it that votes for them. We’ve seen in the Middle East the power of the collective voice. It is only when we have a collective voice, shouting one message and demanding change in the fundamental structures of society and of the world, that we will have any hope of tackling poverty.

* the second half of this paragraph, starting from the words "one hedge fund" is pretty much a direct quote from the al-jazeerah clip.

poverty - why should we give a damn

it's international women's day today, and i attended an event in garden place where a number of women addressed the question posed in the title to this post. below is one of the speeches, given by rachel simon-kumar, a senior lecturer at the university of waikato. i am putting it up here with her permission.

If I were to ask you why we should give a damn about poverty, it is likely that your answers may go something like this:

• It is a matter of principle, of social justice
• In our [democratic] society we CANNOT allow such poverty
• The poor are also citizens

We might even go on to say that “if we don’t care for our poor, it will affect the rest of our society” – we show up in negative statistics as a nation. We are paraded internationally as failing to do our duty to our more vulnerable members. The very existence of poverty would also show up our values as a society – about how we value, or rightly undervalue, women, the care of children, our elderly and sick – OUR NON-PRODUCTIVE segments, and our ability to tolerate these.

THESE are called Morality arguments MADE ON BEHALF OF THE POOR, arguments that are based on the principles of social justice and fairness. The problem with Morality arguments is that they can easily become arguments of CHARITY. What we are really saying is that The poor don’t really deserve welfare and support but because WE have our values, we can choose to support and change their conditions. We must be charitable to those who are in need. They are also very different from the arguments made in favour of “productive” segments of society. The productive segments make any claims on the basis of RIGHTS because they earners and contributor, not Morality or CHARITY. [as you can imagine] Morality or charity arguments are weaker than the arguments of rightful demands

There is another – less widely discussed – reason why we should think and care about poverty. And another principle that should be the basis for our arguments when we make a case on behalf of the poor.

Let me do that by drawing your attention to the recession we are in now. Started in 2008 with the collapse of the big banks, insurance companies and credit companies, especially in the United States, but which soon spread around the world. We now know [and there is still a lot we DON’T know about the recession] that these banks made their money lending easy credit at exorbitant rates to low and middle income people who could not, in reality, afford the over inflated, bloated house prices. And when the poor could no longer afford their mortgages, they lost their houses; they were repossessed by the banks. It was when the majority could not keep up this cycle of repayment, that the financial bubble collapsed. They didn’t do anything illegal – law and policy actually supported this process - it is called de-regulation.

There is an important lesson we should learn from the recession – first of all, isn’t it ironic? THE POOR HELPED CREATE WEALTH. In other words, the dispossessed actually creates prosperity. And this is not unique to the United States. We now know that there are retail companies make money because of sweat shops, or by displacing indigenous peoples and destroying valuable natural resources. And here in New Zealand, we know that tax cuts and GST increase is experienced differently by high income and low income households.

The “poor” contributes to wealth. And just as the poor contributes to wealth, in turn, that wealth creates poverty. There is something very wrong with this picture. And there is something even more wrong with the poor having to make MORALITY or charity arguments when they are actually contributing to wealth creation.

And here is the reason why we should care about poverty – because it is a window to deeper inequalities and distortions in our society. Poverty doesn’t just happen, it happens because we have systems that allow it to happen. That inequality is not something that affects only the poor, but all of us. It reminds us that the rules that make up our society are often not transparent or fair and that we do not all have the same knowledge or understanding of how things work. It’s amazing what we did not know about the financial sector until it went belly up. It was only when the crash came that we learnt about how our money was being used and how ordinary people were being set up in the financial bubble. In the same way, we don’t know or have a say when services are removed or taxes are imposed or when basics of life are harder to reach or when people are branded and labelled.

And we should give a damn about poverty because it is not the problem but a symptom of something wrong at a deeper level. The lessons of poverty are that if we don’t all share an equal voice in our society, we can all become indispensable.

violence is not an adequate response

surely i'm not the only one who had never heard of benji marshall until his appearing in the news for allegedly [just for you, graeme] assaulting someone outside a macdonalds in sydney. normally, this is not the kind of thing i'm remotely interested in, but mr marshall is claiming that he was provoked through the use of racial slurs being hurled at him.

while mr marshall is being defended by some, while others think he needs to develop a better response to such a situation, one of the worst pieces i've read would have to be this one by steve deane:

That Kiwis captain Benji Marshall would put himself in a position to end up in a punch-up at McDonald's at 3am a week before the NRL season begins is a major surprise.

seriously? "put himself in a position"?? mr marshall isn't actually the victim here, although he is allegedly the victim of verbal abuse. he should not put in himself in a position to be abused? presumably this means he should not go out anywhere where he might come across a racist. i wonder how one could be sure of finding such a place. mr deane no doubt means that he just shouldn't go out. he certainly shouldn't go out onto a field of play, because from what i've heard, there's a lot of racist sledging that happens in sports matches, and he wouldn't want to put himself in a position to end up in a punch-up, right?

surely the proposition that anyone should be able to go anywhere at any time without being subjected to racial harassment is not a difficult or unreasonable one. it can't be so difficult to understand that mr marshall didn't put himself in any kind of position. it was the people who allegedly abused him who are fully responsible for their actions and who should be held responsible for them.

having said that, i don't actually have any time for mr marshall's response, being to allegedly punch someone in the face. i don't accept mr devlin's views (linked to above) that:

In the world where us boys live, Benji Marshall "being baited by a group of up to 10 people (allegedly) calling him a black cee and telling him to eff off back to NZ" would appear to have simply introduced some drunk thug to an age-old masculine concept called "got what you deserved".

If you'd prefer an attitude a little less caveman, then BM was acting in self-defence, protecting himself (and probably his friends) from a bunch of bullying cowards in circumstances that could've so easily spiralled into something way more serious.

this kind attitude really worries me. we already see a relatively large amount of (off-field) violence from male sportspeople. often this violence is targetted against women, and often we see the victim being blamed for provoking the violence against her. i totally agreed with the move in nz to remove provocation as a defence for violence, and i don't believe it's any kind of excuse here.

it could be said that the violent culture around support, and especially around various codes of rugby, provoked the racial outburst. plenty has been written about the need to have a strong, aggressive attitude in top-level competitive sport. image is crucial and the image cultivated by many in these sports is a tough and confrontational one.

i totally understand the dynamics of racism and bigotry. i know how it can wear a person down, when they have to suffer countless small incidents. i appreciate that tolerance levels can be stretched, and at some point a person will snap. there is a power structure around mr marshall which makes it almost impossible for him to deal effectively with racism within his sports code, on the field and in the locker room. trying to expose that culture and hold racists to account comes with significant consequences and could lead to him having to leave the sport if he persisited. i understand the feelings of powerlessness which would lead to him having a violent response in a particular situation where he did actually have some power to respond.

but the fact is that violence from our top-level athletes is too often excused, and not dealt with seriously. to excuse it in this case makes it so much easier to excuse it in others. to say that violence in this case is ok is to undermine other non-violent responses. it also encourages violence as a reasonable response to verbal abuse, which can only lead to an escalation in violence over the longer term.

mr marshall should not have to suffer racial abuse. the answer to that lies outside of his hands. until the leadership in his sports code takes a much stronger stance, until society and societal structures take a much stronger stance, it is very difficult for mr marshall to change the environment in which he lives as an individual. but it does need to be changed, both for the racism and the violence.

to deal with the latter, it is right that mr marshall be charged and if found guilty, face the consequences of his action. the question then remains: how to effectively deal with racial abuse and hold those who dish it out accountable for their actions? it needs to happen at all levels, within the sport and outside of it.

If only those poor people would stop breeding

Cross posted

The Welfare Working Group was established by Cabinet:

... to undertake an expansive and fundamental review of New Zealand’s welfare system. The Group’s primary task was to identify how to reduce long-term welfare dependency.

In the midst of the Welfare Working Group's final report (downloadable from the Group's homepage), there is a nasty jibe about poor people breeding.

For some people the idea that it is not appropriate to have further children while receiving welfare is a significant change in expectation and will require a very different pattern of welfare use. ...We have found this issue difficult and have given careful consideration to our response. In the long term, the most positive measures to reduce the number of children born to parents relying on welfare payments is to provide more positive alternatives, especially for teen sole parents. The Working Group considers that a component of addressing this issue is providing all parents within the welfare system ready access to free long-acting reversible contraception. ... A majority of members of the Working Group are also in favour of strong signals to parents that a welfare payment is intended to provide temporary support while they get back on their feet and into employment. ... In practice, for most this means taking active steps to avoid pregnancy while receiving Jobseeker Support.

Welfare Working Group final report, p. 77

And if you do have the temerity to have another child while you are already on the benefit, then:

The Working Group suggests that if the changes to the work test requirements do not address the incentives to have additional children while receiving welfare assistance, then the Government may need to consider financial disincentives, say by withholding part or all of the extra payments that come with having an additional child.

Welfare Working Group final report, p. 78

By the way, that 'contraception" is going to be "long-acting reversible contraception" (p. 77, plus footnote 65 on p. 77).

In other words, if you are on the benefit, the government is going to control your fertility.

Wealthy white people have always had a problem with poor people breeding. Many years ago, I watched a documentary by Deepa Dhanraj, "The Legacy of Malthus", in which she argued that the (alleged) problem with the world's population is not the number of children being born, but the distribution of resources. The documentary contained a couple of video clips that revolted me. Two movie stars, both well-fed are white, both with no particular concerns about how to feed and clothe themselves and their children, appeared in commercials urging people to donate to the Population Institute. The Population Institute:

is an international non-profit that educates policymakers and the public about population, and seeks to promote universal access to family planning information, education, and services. Through voluntary family planning, we strive to achieve a world population in balance with a healthy global environment and resource base.

The donations were to enable the Population Institute to provide contraceptives to women in third world countries. A fine and noble purpose, on the surface, perhaps. But the subtext that I heard, loud and clear, was that wealthy white people who were already consuming far more than their share of the world's resources, wanted all those poor brown people to stop breeding. The world would be a much better place for everyone, that is, for the wealthy white people, if poor brown people would stop causing all the problems.

And I am revolted by the wealthly, well-educated, well-resourced people who wrote the Welfare Working Group's final report suggesting that all would be well in this country if only the poor people stopped breeding.

It turns out that the key to decreasing the size of the world's population is not forcing people to use contraceptives, or to have just one child, but to educate and empower women. Ensure that women are educated, ensure that they have the resources and capability to build lives for themselves, and can sustain themselves and their children, and in time, the population will drop. The process is so well known that we have a name for it: "demographic transition."

Educating women is the critical factor in reducing the birth rate. Providing contraceptives turns out to be neither here nor there:

While the bomb has been largely defused, the implication remains that to bring growth down more rapidly we should do the only thing we can do now: fund and promote family planning programs among fast-growing populations. The rest is pie in the sky.

Our response is twofold. First, demographers will tell you that even if average family size in a fast-growing society were cut by half tomorrow, its population would not stop growing until well into the next century. So every solution, including family planning programs, is a long-term one; there are no quick fixes. The second part of our answer is more surprising: simply providing birth control technology through family planning programs doesn't affect population growth all that much.

Individual women on the Domestic Purposes Benefit are not the same as populations. There is no 'demographic transition' for an individual. But 'demographic transition' does provide some clues. The key is to empower women, to ensure that they have the resources the need to obtain and retain a job. That means investing in education and training and childcare. It means pouring far more resources into schools for teenage parents, where young mothers can be sure that their children are being cared for while they finish their secondary education. It means enabling sole parents to access training grants, such as the grant that our Minister of Social Development used herself when she was a sole parent on the DPB. It means truly focusing on giving sole parents a helping hand. And that will be a complex and expensive solution.

Or we could just put all sole parents on the pill. Cheap, simple, and with that nice overtone of punishment.

And there's a final sting in the tail. I know of no 'long-acting, reversible contraception' for men. The Welfare Working Group is making women into gatekeepers of the nation's domestic purposes benefit bill. Except that last time I enquired into the matter, except in very unusual circumstances, it still took two people to make a baby. Why is is only women who are required to take responsibility for keeping the cost of the domestic purposes benefit down?

Friday Feminist - Patricia J Williams

Cross posted

... I was reminded of a case I worked on when I was working for the Western Center on Law and Poverty about eight years earlier. Ten black Hispanic women had been sterilized by the University of Southern California - Los Angeles County General Medical Center, allegedly without proper consent, and in most instances without even their knowledge. Most of them found out what was done to them upon inquiry, after a much-publicized news story in which an intern charged that the chief of obstetrics at the hospital pursued a policy of recommending Caesarian delivery and simultaneous sterilization for any pregnant woman with three or more children and who was on welfare. In the course of researching the appeal in that case, I remember learning that one-quarter of all Navajo women of childbearing age - literally all thsoe of childbearing age ever admitted to a hospital - have been sterilized.

Patricia J Williams, "On being the object of property", Signs (1988), pp. 5 - 24.

books & television

yesterday i went to the launch of nz book month. i managed to get an invite because, out of the blue, i was asked by them to write about a book that had "changed my life", which i duly did. it was a lovely event, hosted by tvnz7, with a debate featuring c k stead, emily perkins, finlay macdonald, steve braunias, and a couple of other people whose names escape me just now. it was a pretty good debate on whether nz books deserved "special treatment". i'll leave you to watch "the good word" to see how it went.

i always feel a little anxious about events like this, because i'm not sure that i'll know anyone there and am always afraid that i'll be standing in a corner alone looking sad and friendless. but i was lucky enough to come across some cool labour peeps, who kept me entertained (especially you, david parker!). i also got stopped by the lovely jolisa gracewood, who recognised me even though we'd never met. it was really nice chatting to her, and i also got the chance to pester david slack to start writing again, which he took with customary good grace.

but it would be fair to say that the tvnz people there were worried about the government decision to stop funding channel 7. a decision that hasn't been publicly announced anywhere that i'm aware of, nor has it been put up for public discussion. just done quietly at about the time that civil defence in christchurch were announcing that the rescue operation had moved into recovery phase. a time at which we were all filled with sadness and sympathy for those families who had been hoping against hope for any chance of survivors.

i can't understand this decision. at a time when the country is again in recession, it surely can't help to cut more jobs. since the actual money saved won't happen until the middle of next year, and since that spending could easily be covered by an earthquake levy, and since (in relative terms) it's not a whole lot of money anyway, the decision can only be ideological. it is also destructive, and leaves maori television as the only properly funded public service television channel.

i feel for all the people who are involved in providing us with excellent programming, and i'm angry that these choices are being taken away from us without any chance for us to have a say.