A Royal Spectacle

I adore the spectacle of weddings.  There's just something about seeing the fruition of all that planning and intricate work that gets me most times.  Few events are more complicated or more brilliantly realised than a royal wedding.

We have but one television in our house, and so in a spirit of compromise we are currently avoiding the royal wedding coverage in the lead-up, with the understanding we will switch stations come 10pm for the ceremony itself. 

Although I like weddings I don't really hold a candle for monarchy, British or otherwise.  How can anyone really justify an approach to human beings that is all about birth determining worth?

So all these media comments about the "progress" the British monarchy has made with this wedding leaves me a bit cold.  Kate Middleton is still referred to, over and over again, as a "commoner".  I thought she was a person, silly me.  Then there's all this faff about whether or not she's a virgin.  NOT OUR BUSINESS.  And finally, the suggestion I heard from one TV3 commentator that as a future queen Kate may have been required to undergo a fertility test.  No one even mentions whether or not William goes to the altar with cherry intact, or has active swimmers.  (Not that I want them to.  Screwed up my face in dismay just typing that.)

One slight plus which warmed my cold dead egalitarian heart when someone pointed it out on twitter;  Elton John can not only go to an event packed to the brim with the powerful of Britain and beyond, he can also take his partner with nary a glance askance.  That is progress, although it's got naught to do with the monarchy imho.

Maybe next time there's a Big Deal royal wedding we'll see a female guest in trousers. 

There's lots of awesome tweeting and live blogging all about the show, so I'll leave it there and go get my wedding fix. Also:  fascinators!!



Looking for a picture for this post I thought I'd just have to go with some regal looking cupcakes, but no there was quite an array of royal wedding cupcakes on offer.  I find cakes iced with pictures of real people a bit creepy myself, but each to their own.

So long

I'm moving on from The Hand Mirror. No particular reason - just a sense that my time here is done. I'm hoping to pop up somewhere else sometime soon, but in the meantime, I can still be found at my own place, A Bee of a Certain Age. Not that there's much going on in that space at present because I am busy settling myself and my family back into Aotearoa New Zealand. But from time to time I put something up there, and my Friday Feminist series will continue there.

As I leave, I would like to acknowledge the tremendous leadership of Julie Fairey. She's a champion, a wonderful wise woman of great integrity. And my grateful thanks to the women I have been blogging with here, who have cheered me and pushed me and helped me to think new thoughts. Katy, Maia, anjum, Anne, and in earlier days, Enid, Stef, and Anna - thank you. Thank you also to the people who read here, and the people who comment here: without you, nothing.

Ka kite ano.

when in rome... do whatever you damn well please!

as a member of a cultural & religious minority group, one of the statement that completely and totally annoys the heck out of me* is the phrase "when in rome, do like the romans". the purpose of this phrase is to try to eliminate all difference, especially difference practiced by persons of colour. it's the cry of the fearful: "be like us, we don't want to have to deal with something we aren't familiar with; we're too lazy to adjust; it's your own fault for being different so you should do all the work required to change; and you're in OUR country, geddit, it's OUR country & you have to do what WE say."

the false premise underlying "when in rome etc" is this: if only you behaved more like us, we would love you and treat you exactly like one of us. when the only difference remaining is your skin colour, which you can't help**, then you will no longer face any kind of discrimination. lose your accent, lose that clothing, lose the smelly food, and YOU WILL BELONG.

this is a false premise because the people who believe in the "when in rome" doctrine have no intention of liking or treating certain people as equals. because people who do everything right & try to fit in still face problems, still get excluded. they are still "them" and "migrants" and other.

more than that, it nicely puts the responsibility for discrimination back on the discriminated. it is one of the most blatant forms of victim blaming i've seen. the people who blithely spit out this line can then comfortably go on being arrogant and hateful while smugly knowing they are completely in the right.

i recognise that one of the reasons behind this attitude is a fear of losing the local culture. but why? it's not like you aren't in the majority. it's not like you don't hold the positions of power and influence. it's not like you don't have the greatest public voice. and if one day you aren't in the majority any more, then according to your own beliefs, you don't have the right to cultural dominance any more. hopefully, when you're in the minority (around 2025 or so?), the new majority will have gone way past the "when in rome" thing, and will be happy for you to live, dress, pray & eat the way you want.

and what happens when the person you are directing the whole "when in rome" thing at is actually one of the romans? like me, for example. i'm one of the romans, so that surely means you're going to change your ways to become more like me? right?? ooohhh, of course not. cos i'm still in the minority therefore i must still be wrong.

in which case, let's break down each one of your cultural beliefs and practices. let's examine them one by one. and if any one of them fails to fall within the definition of what the "majority" does, then you will definitely stop doing that thing, right? right?? we're all going to wear the same types of clothing, and worship in the same way (too bad atheists, christians are in the majority), and eat meat & 2 veg for dinner (no more thai green curry, mate, that's not OUR traditional food) & a mince pie for lunch. majority rules, yippee, and we will live according to the weekly opinion polls on matters cultural, so that we will all know what is the appropriate way to be. it'll be a wonderful life. why don't you believe me?

or maybe you're going to pull the length-of-time-in-nz line. the one which starts with "well, i was BORN here" and keeps going with "and so were my parents and grand-parents [etc etc, as applies to your family situation]. this makes me MORE of a nz'er than you; it's means i have the greater entitlement than you and i get to tell you what to do, because YOU are in MY country. that means YOU'RE still the one that has to change".

i love it when people pull that one. because, people who pull the length-of-time argument do surely forget that there are a brown-skinned people who will totally win that one. so, i say sweetly, if it's length-of-time that makes you more of a nz'er than me, then surely you support the schools all switching to te reo for the full curriculum? you're totally willing to change and adopt tikanga, cos they are surely more nz'er than you could ever be, right?? right??? i thought not.

and finally, if you're really going to invoke romans, have you read about how the romans behaved when they went to other countries? do you know any history at all? because if those who migrate to this country behave like the romans did when they migrated, your goose is surely cooked. be careful what you ask for.


*i had to work really hard not to use swear words there, and only did so because i don't want filters to block the blog for those who are forced to have them. so just imagine a whole lot of f-itty-f words replacing what's there.

**well, actually you could help, if you would only take the time & trouble to invest in bleaching treatments, you lazy lot. michael jackson could do it, why can't you?.

Adventures in currency artwork

Found here, where there are some really amaze things and also some really crap things, all drawn/written on currency.

New to the blogroll

Sas Lockey (eponymous)
Kiwiana (inked) by Kiwiana  - via The Stroppery
In my head by Lena
Pacific Island Dreams by Janine Terese Fiebig

Don't forget, blogs by NZ women, or women in NZ indeed, we're happy to add to the mega-NZ Women in Blogland Blogroll (in the sidebar), just let us know you exist.

Update (by Deborah):

Also, the wonderful tumblr by Coley Tangerina - Tangerina, wherein you will find a wonderful mix of feminism and activism and pretty and shiny and kittens. Coley also posts at new feminist group blog, The Stroppery.

From a comment on this post, Cara's blog Life is a Feminist Issue. Great blog name, Cara.

The Odds & Ends Drawer

In the drawer today:

For a bit of a downer, but none the less a startlingly good read, check out Jill Lepore's NY Times piece on the life of Jane Mecom, Benjamin Franklin's sister. 

indofrenchie struggles with kindness and indebtedness in regards to hetero men.

Annanonymous celebrates five and a bit months of blogging with a retrospective well worth perusing.

The Stroppery hosts a guest post on the forthcoming SlutWalk Aotearoa events in Auckland and Wellington, from Kiwiana

Katie writes about how Riley plays in a way that reflects her experience of her mother's disability.  With delightful pics, and thanks to blue milk for the tip off.

Robyn Heller Gerbush provides a helpful list of things to avoid saying to people with non-visible disabilities. 

andrea grimes calls out Toxic Masculinity over criticism of a US baseball player's decision to take parental leave.

hungrymama considers her answer to the dreaded question "what do you do?"

Libby Copeland examines the history of body-shaming advertising and Dove's questionable claim that 93% of women consider their armpits ugly.  (Hat tipped to harvestbird for this) 

And to finish off, some wonderful rainbow food, I especially heart the pancakes.  And the cheesecake.  Mmmmmm.

As always, feel free to add your own interesting linkys in comments, and self-promotion is encouraged!

Bad news indeed

Found here.

I'm always a bit nervous about calling someone a feminist unless they've chosen to themselves.  And there's always the ol' Fellas Can't Be Feminists argument.  Feel free to indulge on these topics in comments if you so desire.

Of poppies and pride

This morning Snuffly, his father and I trudged along May Rd in the rain to the Mt Roskill War Memorial.  There was quite a crowd; the hall was full, with many standing at the back or just outside.  The Auckland City Brass Band and a local Tongan choir assisted with the musical episodes, and the wreath-laying was done respectfully.

I wonder sometimes, during these ceremonies, what everyone else is thinking.  We bow our heads, we look grave, we wear our respect for the dead with a kind of pride, like our poppies.  There's a sort of enforced conformity about how solemn we must be on April 25th, as if it's a national funeral that we repeat annually.

I don't want to forget.  And for me, these days, ANZAC Day is about not forgetting the horror of war;  all of the horror, not just the experiences of soldiers, for "our boys over there", but for everyone touched by violent conflict. 

We often seem to have this strange picture of war in our heads, as New Zealanders, where we are always fighting the Nazis, have always been fighting the Nazis, and that's OK because everyone knows they were evil.  This simplification was understandable when I was an eleven year old standing on parade at the Devonport ceremony with my white Mariners' hat freshly coated with toothpaste.  But as an adult, especially since I went to Gallipoli, I know it's not true. 

At ANZAC Cove we were the invaders not the defenders.  I felt embarassed, in the mini bus driving through what is almost a holy place for Kiwis, while the Turkish tour guide told us what we wanted to hear about - the experience of people like us.  They took us to the Turkish memorial too, and it was significantly more packed than any of the antipodean ones, with Turkish flags flying.  To be The Other on that land, on their land, where their blood was shed too, was a bit of an epiphany for me. 

We put these poppies on our breasts, we bear them with pride, but we should not be proud of war, or of New Zealand's war record.  We've fought our own, we've fought alongside dubious allies for foggy reasons, and our people have done terrible terrible things to others in war time.  We shouldn't delude ourselves that no ANZAC every raped or murdered or stole.  Soldiering is not usually an act of self-defence. 

That's what is inside my head as I stand there while we listen to The Last Post.  The importance not only of remembering, but also of remembering as truly as we can.

ANZAC Day Lady Blogging Roundup 2011

In both 2008 and 2009 we put together roundups of NZ women blogging on theme of ANZAC Day on April 25th.  Let's give it a go again this year, in the interest, once again, of promoting the perspectives of women in the NZ blogosphere.

In order of being found - with new links to be added in later in the day:

Remember - ANZAC Day 2011 by Dzeni - interesting graphic created from fatalities lists
"War Brides" by Denny - considering the women who crossed the world after WWII, having married NZ servicemen
Your sons are our sons - Homepaddock shares Ataturk's words.
The poppy:  a symbol of life and death by Clare Curran - reflecting on her own changed attitude to ANZAC Day and Stephen Mulqueen's brass poppy artwork.

New at 11.30am:

Living and learning by Homepaddock - a quote on the experience of living at Gallipoli in WWI
They also served by Homepaddock - remembering the service of women too
For God, Queen and Country.  Or how we kill, torture and contaminate for Gold, oil and drugs by travellerev - expressing some cynicism, I think it's fair to say, about John Key's recent discovery of an ANZAC connection
Of poppies and pride by Julie - what's inside her (my) head during ANZAC ceremonies.

New on Tuesday:

on not commemorating anzac day by anjum - expressing her worries about the current shape of the day
Nostalgia about war is the luxury of those unaffected by war by Annanonymous -  standing in reflection rather than nostalgia
Tuesday Poem - A Gal of the Streets, G A Studdert Kennedy - Janis shares a poem that looks at the effects on both those who go and those who are left behind
The Waiareka Warriors - Homepaddock highlights a relevant book
Tuesday Poem for Anzac Day - Eliot's The Hollow Men - Mary McCullum has a video version of the poem plus some comments
War and Peace: an ANZAC Day memory - Pamela Gordon provides a timely excerpt from Janet Frame
ANZAC - TRIBUTE TO THE MAORI BATTALION by roarprawn


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Please add any posts we've not yet put into the post in comments and we'll slot them in as time allows through the day and on Tuesday.

on Q & A

here is a link to the video of my spot on Q & A. i don't know how to embed it so you'll have to watch on the tvnz site. here's a link to the transcript if you don't have access to broadband or are living outside nz.

these things always go so fast, and i had a whole heap of things i wanted to say but never got a chance to cover. still, it was much, much less hostile than i was expecting even though the questions were challenging. it was helped by the opportunity to chat with graham redding, the prinicipal of the knox centre in otago. he is indeed a lovely man, and we found that we had much more in common than we had differences.

a couple of things i wanted to note. first of all, i wondered if you noticed that i was the only woman on the show. thank goodness for matt mccarten, otherwise they would all have been white males. there's a point to made about how much time is given to women's voices, especially in when it comes to discussing serious issues & political news. i'm not a regular watcher of Q & A, so don't know how much of a balance they usually have, but i'm really hoping it isn't like this all the time.

what is there to say about the wayne mapp interview? the SAS should never have been sent to afghanistan. combat troops were pulled out in 2005, and there was absolutely no reason to send them back. the war in afghanistan is going nowhere and achieving nothing. there is no plan in sight, there's no sense of when it might be over or what needs to happen so that foreign troops can say they've "won".

a couple of important links: the scoop report here is longish but well worth reading. the rolling stone article i referred to in my segment can be found here, but i'll put in a strong trigger warning on the material & especially the photographs (which i haven't looked at). it documents the cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians, and the taking & circulating of trophy photographs.

i wanted to respond to a point made by glyn carpenter, director of the nz christian network. he commented that while christian leaders condemned the qur'an-burning, muslim leaders hadn't condemned the killing of UN workers in afghanistan. well, he's just plain wrong about that. the OIC is the most power international group of muslim nations, and here is their press release. here is a video and a transcript of an interview on CNN with a representative of CAIR, and a press release from another american muslim organisation. i've condemned it on the programme & do so again - it's a tragic and horrific reaction to events in america.

finally, i'd have preferred not to be in the room with dr brash for some time, though we did manage to have a robust debate on a couple of issues. i'm not going to say what it was about, but let's just say that i could not resist the opportunity to take him on. i've actually met him before, though i very much doubt he remembers me, but i have to say that i certainly don't look forward to the possibility of him re-entering parliament.

Two ARGHs in one morning is two too many

ARGH the first, was the news, via Russell Brown on twitter (@publicaddress), that Bronagh Key is down on the royal wedding invite list as "Mrs John Key."  I don't know who is responsible for this but it really bugs me that anyone gets to be differentiated from their partner by only one little "s".

If that's genuinely what Bronagh wants to be referred to then that is her choice, and I'll shut up about it (publicly, no doubt I'll mutter into my cereal about it privately).

But if it's been imposed by anyone, or just assumed, then that sucks.  Russell thought it was better than being John Key's +1, however I'm not so sure.  Both seem to me to indicate she's just an appendage, not a person in her own right.

ARGH the second, totally didn't have to be an ARGH.  The Unnecessary ARGH if you will.  Dr Tiso pointed me to an awesome set of bathroom scales (right) which are not only pink (win), fluffy (extra win) and decorated with a shiny star (ultra mega win), they also don't feature numbers but instead wonderful friendly words like "Perfect", "Hot" and "Ravishing."  The Yay Scale is the work of Marilyn Wann, a body acceptance activist who wrote Fat? So! and has done some great stuff with Healthy At Every Size (aka HAES).

So where's the ARGH in that, pretty awesome right?  Sadly this isn't the order I read about this Cool Thing in.

First I stumbled into a savage "review" (who reviews bathroom scales?) all about how the Yay Scale was apparently not so yay because it was Encouraging Unhealthy Eating Habits.  The reviewer has been put right in comments, although there's no response to the well made points about the positive nature of the scales.

I was particularly galled by the idea that those who wanted to know their weight might inadvertently purchase the Yay Scale and have to live in ignorance of their mass!  ZOMG False Advertising the Like of Which Has Never Been Seen Before!  Except if you count almost the entire fashion and beauty industries, basically.  But I digress.

Now I'm hoping for an ARGH-free Monday.  Might be lucky and get away with a few minor GRRRRRRs.

Couple of boring adminy things you probably ought to know

I really appreciate the free nature of Blogger.  In the five years plus that I've been using it, here and elsewhere, there have been significant improvements and personally I haven't had to pay a cent, or put ads on any sites. html is not even my second language, so a platform that can do a lot of that tricky stuff for me, through widgets and a little bit of coding, is necessary for us to be able to provide a site that can allow posts and pages and pictures and blogrolls and comments and linky loving and so much more.

But there are some definite downsides to Blogger for those operating in a commenting environment that can at times be hostile and difficult to moderate, in particular:

• No ability to identify IP addresses or similar for any commenter, let alone the anonymous ones
• No facility for banning specific people, whether they are anon or have a profile
• Can't filter which comments go into moderation - meaning it's either every comment into moderation or none, on every single post.  And the same with Anon comments - have to allow everywhere or nowhere.
• No help available for dealing with abusive commenters, even if they are making threats
• Can't edit anyone else's comment (even my own), so disemvowelling and similar are not troll-ridiculing tools we can use here

I don't know if this is a problem for anyone else using Blogger, but I cannot comment or deal with comment moderation from my iPod touch, which is my main means of accessing the internet as it avoids the Wriggly-Related Breakages Phenomenon.*

You probably won't have noticed that we have been getting some troll attention again for the last three weeks or so, because we've been pretty handy with the delete button.  The comments are awful, mainly targeted at myself and Anjum, and quite uninventive so not even worth leaving up to take the mickey out of.   They are not political at all, not on the borderline of "well I can see what they are trying to argue, it's just the way they are saying it is Not Ok."  It's just name-calling and threats, and serves no conversational purpose whatsoever.  This is true true trolling - aimed at shutting people up through those two chief weapons; fear and annoyance. 

They made a stuff up on Saturday and I now know they are someone we had troubles with back in mid 2008.  Emails have been sent to various authorities over the weekend (not Blogger though, only interested in hate speech in actual blog posts, not threats of violence in comments, oh and of course copyright infringements, bah).  I have a couple of other leads out there too.  We shall see what fruit the new week brings.

I'm also interested in bringing this person's various handles to the attention of other feminist blogs who may get targeted too, so if you are a mod or blogger who would like a bit more info so that they can't just reinvent the wheel elsewhere then feel free to email me and I'll let you know what I know.  I can be found at the Mail of G by my firstname dot lastname.

It would be very easy just to turn off anonymous comments or restrict who can comment even more than that.  But I don't think that would be a win.  So many of the valuable conversations that happen here involve people who don't blog, or don't blog with Blogger, and so they don't have a profile, at least when they begin to engage.  There are times when someone needs to share something anonymously, and I'd really like it if we could maintain that facility.

Ultimately though this blog is not run by me.  We are a collective here, in that no one is In Charge of anyone else.  I do a lot of the back-end stuff, but not all, and if I'm not writing blog posts I'm generally not reading the comments in a timely fashion either, as it'll be a paucity of time behind my silence.  We moderate our own threads, although anyone can do some moderating anywhere that there is a clear breach.  As the only moderation tools we have are rather blunt - deletion or a comment by ourselves asking for people to do X or Y or Z - what tends to unfold can sometimes seem strange to the reader.  Some of us get all the comments emailed to us, and Blogger now keeps them too, so nothing is ever totally lost.  This is very handy for emailing abusive comments through to relevant authorities, for example.

Thank you a thousand times and more to all the many awesome peeps who comment here.  Not everyone has the same approach to blogging as me, but for me a big part of it is the conversation that may occur after the post is out there - your thoughts and feedback.  Thanks for sharing that.




*  This is not to be taken lightly.  Current number of laptops wrecked by my three year old = 2.  One screen crunched (on a two day old laptop, luckily quickly replaced by the employer with no questions asked, phew), one totally fried by water spillage (only discovered in the last fortnight and appears irreparable, which is particularly galling given I recently spent $500 getting it fixed to limp through for the next year or so until we can afford a decent new one.)  Yesterday he broke the handle off my favourite mug and the Porridge Making Bowl.  Apparently we have to go get a new one from the Porridge Making Bowl Shop, which is next to the Food Shop where you get the porridge, or so I've been reliably informed.  He's not at all concerned about replacing the handle on my beautiful blue mug though.

Friday Feminist - Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza

Cross posted

Kyriarchy – a neologism coined by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza and derived from the Greek words for “lord” or “master” (kyrios) and “to rule or dominate” (archein) which seeks to redefine the analytic category of patriarchy in terms of multiplicative intersecting structures of domination. Kyriarchy is a socio-political system of domination in which elite educated propertied men hold power over wo/men and other men. Kyriarchy is best theorized as a complex pyramidal system of intersecting multiplicative social structures of superordination and subordination, of ruling and oppression.

Patriarchy – Literally means the rule of the father and is generally understood within feminist discourses in a dualistic sense as asserting the domination of all men over all women in equal terms. The theoretical adequacy of patriarchy has been challenged because, for instance, black men do not have control over white wo/men and some women (slave/mistresses) have power over subaltern women and men (slaves).

From the glossary of Wisdom Ways. The glossary was prepared by Laura Beth Bugg.

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Wisdom Ways, 2001

As far as I can tell, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza first used the term, kyriarchy, in Bread, Not Stone: The Challenge of Feminist Biblical Interpretation, first published in 1985, republished in 1995. I will try to track it down, hopefully for a future Friday Feminist.

cameron on immigration

as per a request from deborah, i'm cross-posting this piece from my own blog. i feel a little nervous about putting up certain issues here, especially around areas where i feel vulnerable. but here it is. on another note, i'll be appearing on Q & A this sunday morning, talking about religious issues which will be linked to the afghanistan situaion and religious violence in general, as well as a couple of other topics.


david cameron has been making a lot of noise about immigration of late. in that it's all bad, of course, and the narrative is the usual stuff we hear from the right: that immigrants are parasites who are a drain on the nation and suck all the nation's resources or steal all "our" jobs while giving nothing back in return.

of course he doesn't attack all immigrants, just the non-integrating kind who won't learn english. nice coded language, with the dog-whistling very thinly disguised. it seems mr cameron is following the john howard policy of out-pauline-hansening pauline hansen. in mr cameron's case, it's the BNP he's emulating, knowing that attacking a particular class of people will guarantee votes and increase popularity.

but it's more than that. mr cameron is using underlying racism and hatred as a cover for massive cuts in welfare. he's trying to soften the electorate for cuts by linking it to hatred of certain types of immigrants. UK wouldn't need these immigrants, he says, if only the welfare system wasn't so generous. by changing this, locals would be forced to do the work currently done by immigrants. more than that, people are apparently immigrating to UK because the welfare system is so good, therefore it should be made less good in order to remove that incentive.

as always, missing from the right-wing narrative are the real benefits that migrants bring to the country. given the way immigrations laws are in most countries, immigrants will be highly educated, but more than that, highly motivated to succeed. i doubt they migrate to end up on welfare. listening to the stories of migrants, and i've heard many, they have dreams of success for themselves and their children and a drive to achieve that success.

also missing is the realisation that these cuts to welfare translate into misery and hunger for a large number of people. people who have often landed up on welfare because of failed economic policies, because of the fraud and gambling of the finance sector, and because of the global recession which resulted. those on welfare are being asked to pay the price for the failure of others, and immigrants are to take the blame.

Dame Margaret Sparrow on RNZ National just after 10am

One of the founders of ALRANZ, standing down as president after many years, and she's written a new book (Abortion: Then & Now).  It's been one of the highlights of my year so far to meet and talk to Dame Margaret Sparrow last month, and hear of her strong commitment to changing our abortion laws and services, and her principled stance on the right of the pregnant person to choose.

Listen in if you can, once it's done I'll add a link to the audio file in here. And now that it's available online, you can listen to it by clicking here.  If that doesn't work then check out the Nine to Noon page for today.

RNZ National (formerly known as National Radio) is generally to be found at around 101 FM on the dial (e.g. 101.4 in Auckland). 

Comment direction:  Not a post about the morality of abortion.  We have a whole entire Abortion & Morality page for that, so go there instead please if that's what you want to comment on.

wages for housework

i was directed to this article by silvia federici, which discusses the concept of paying wages for housework, and other issues around the structure of society. it's quite dated now, and i think feminists have been grappling with some of the issues she accuses them of ignoring for some time now. it's a pretty long piece, but i do like the points she puts in favour of wages for housework.

anyway, here is an excerpt:

We believed that the women’s movement should not set models to which women would have to conform, but rather devise strategies to expand our possibilities. For once getting a job is considered necessary to our liberation the woman who refuses to exchange her work in a kitchen for work in a factory is inevitably branded as backward and, beside being ignored, her problems are turned into her own fault. It is likely that many women who were later mobilized by the New Moral Majority could have been won to the movement if it had addressed their needs. Often when an article appeared about our campaign, or we were invited to talk on a radio program, we received dozens of letters by women who would tell us about their lives or at times would simply write: “Dear Sir, tell me what I have to do to get wages for housework.” Their stories were always the same. They worked like slaves with no time left and no money of their own. And there were older women starving on Supplementary Security Income (SSI) who would ask us whether they could keep a cat, because they were afraid that if the social worker found out their benefits would be cut. What did the women’s movement have to offer to these women? Go out and get a job so that you can join the struggles of the working class? But their problem was that they already worked too much, and eight hours at a cash register or on an assembly line is hardly an enticing proposition when you have to juggle it with a husband and kids at home. As we so often repeated, what we need is more time, more money, not more work. And we need daycare centers, but not just to be liberated for more work, but to be able to take a walk, talk to our friends or go to a women’s meeting.

Wages for housework meant opening a struggle directly on the question of reproduction, and establishing that raising children and taking care of people is a social responsibility. In a future society free from exploitation we will decide how this social responsibility is best absolved and shared among us. In this society where money governs all our relations, to ask for social responsibility is to ask that those who benefit from housework (business and the state as the “collective capitalist”) pay for it. Otherwise we subscribe to the myth-so costly for us women - that raising children and servicing those who work is a private, individual matter and that only “male culture” is to blame for the stifling ways in which we live, love and congregate with each other. Unfortunately the women’s movement has largely ignored the question of reproduction, or offered only individual solutions, like sharing the housework, which do not provide an alternative to the isolated battles many of us have already been waging. Even during the struggle for abortion most feminists fought just for the right not to have children, though this is only one side of control over our bodies and reproductive choice. What if we want to have children but cannot afford to raise them, except at the price of not having any time for ourselves and being continuously plagued by financial worries? For as long as housework goes unpaid, there will be no incentives to provide the social services necessary to reduce our work, as proved by the fact that, despite a strong women’s movement, subsidized day care has been steadily reduced through the 70s.

Support for self-defence courses

Alison Broad chairs the Women's Self Defence Network Wahine Toa. She's asking for any support you can give to the battle to keep the Girls’ Self Defence Project going in the face of the planned funding cuts - see stargazer's 14 April post. The funding at stake is just $377,000 a year.

"It seems to us utterly bizarre that an effective, inexpensive (less than $50 per girl), long-running prevention programme should have its funding axed....it’s a political decision to axe the funding, so it’s a political battle."

That means making sure the relevant Ministers - who are all women - know there is strong support to keep this programme and its funding. They are:
- Hon. Paula Bennett, Minister of Social Development. Particular interest in young women and girls.

- Hon. Tariana Turia, Associate Minister of Social Development. Particular interest in family violence, yet it was her decision to ‘reprioritise’ the funding.
- Hon. Hekia Parata, Minister of Women’s Affairs. Particular interest in violence (esp sexual violence) against girls and women.
- Hon. Judith Collins, Minister of Police. Particular interest in safety of women and girls.
Plus the Prime Minister, who has expressed interest in the safety of girls and women, and in anti-bullying

And there's a Facebook event too. “Save Our Girls Self Defence Project”.
To remind you of some details about the programme

Last year over 8000 girls completed an 8 hour school based programme to learn the fundamentals of protecting themselves from all kinds of violence. Over the last 15 years 77,000 girls have been involved, and 97% of the girls who have completed courses say they now know ways of how to deal with unsafe situations. A similar proportion also indicated they were more likely to talk to a safe adult in future if something happened to them or their friends.

Tears

April 16th is not a good day for me.  Three years ago my Dad died, quite unexpectedly, on that day and frankly it's the worst thing that's ever happened to me.*  Long time readers have no doubt read their fill about it, so I'm not going to go into that in depth here.

What's strange for me is how the grief has become so hidden, with my complicity.  When I cry about Dad now, and I do still cry about him, it's always in private.  I'm a bit ashamed of it, to be honest.  I cry quite easily, really, and was teased a lot about that as a kid, so I squirrel it away from the eyes of others. 

People's reactions to tears are interesting.  Dad was always so heart broken when faced with my crying.  I vividly recall being at a funeral with him, for his dear friend Mary (another one we lost to cancer, oh how I hate cancer); he held my hand while I tried not to cry because I knew he would feel he had to help me fix it and there was no fixing it, and also I wanted him to be able to focus on his own grief, not feel he had to resolve mine.  Another time I fell to soggy pieces at the bedside of a friend who was dying and wanted to leave the room so that my parents could have their time with our friend without the distraction of my needs and tears.  I think there's something pretty hard wired in parents that makes them want to put most other things aside to comfort their children when they cry, even though sometimes the child is an adult and the tears are just a physical expression of the upset inside, and a way for them to cope with it all.

And of course I've experienced time and time again the view that if you cry you have lost it, and lost.  This has been one of my main motivators in learning to control my tears (still imperfectly achieved); that if water starts to come from the eyes there are a great number of people who stop listening to the valid words coming from the mouth.  There's a gender dynamic in that too, imho.  In searching for an image for this post all the teary eyed persons were of the womanly persuasion.  Although there were quite a few results for Tears for Fears too.

While some dismiss the leaker the instant they start leaking, others get angry.  Tears seem to confront them with their own actions and demand that they do something they don't want to do, like dial it down or realise the hurt they've caused or find a solution that's impossible.  Personally, when I'm crying because I miss my Dad there's nothing anyone can do about that except give me a hug.  But if I'm crying because I'm angry then a hug might not be the best idea if it's you I'm angry at ;-)

What I guess I'd like when I cry is for people to keep listening to what I'm saying. And I need to get better at saying what I need, instead of hiding away the tears or waiting for someone to read my mind.

And somewhat appropriately, as I'm about to hit publish, the rain starts falling on the roof of my office.  It's loud, sometimes it gets so loud I get a headache and can't talk on the phone.  Which I guess is a bit like the effect my tears can have on others - something you dearly wish would stop, not least because it can be a barrier to communication.  The chances of stopping my tears are much higher than the chances of stopping the rain.



*  And this is a sign of my privilege - that the worst thing in my life to date has been losing my beloved father, who I had a good relationship with.   I hope my kids are this lucky.

New to the blogroll

Because Feminism - a tumblr by la socialista
Tui Talk by Tui
Ramblings of a BiPolar Crafty Single Mum  by yngmamac
The Stroppery by various feministy awesome types, some of whom may be familiar to you and others brand new

Do let us know if there are other blogs out there we should be adding to our NZ Women Blogroll :-) 

The Odds & Ends Drawer

In the drawer tonight:

• Sarah Seltzer finds some spooky parallels between recent legislative moves in the USA and The Handmaid's Tale. 
• Denny writes about the benefits of botox for spinal cord injuries.  Ta Deborah for this one.
• yngmamac generously shares her experience of bipolar. Many thanks to Lauren on Twitter for this one.
• Emma Hart on trolls and tinks, and an ensuing interesting discussion about a variety of bloggy things.  Several people pointed me to this, thank ye all kindly.
• In other troll-related stuff Ally reports on how one such personage was dealt with recently on the WYFC Facebook page.
• lawthink considers whether the ban on the burqa in France will really enhance women's freedom. Another twitter find, sorry can't remember who to thank.
• Teacher Trainee details her concerns about the proposal to put top grads into NZ schools as teachers after a 6 week course.
• For those still actively worrying our pretty little heads about the gender pay gap here's a timely cartoon from Ampersand on those choices women make to be paid less.
• Morgan Godfrey has some useful observations of Tariana Turia's record on abortion.

Okay, had more, but too many for a single drawer post, so will try to do another one mid-week if other obligations allow.  As always, add your links (including to your own good stuff) in comments.  Self-promotion is encouraged!

A big shout out to The Stroppery

Brilliant. There's a new feminist group blog in town, The Stroppery. They have a fantastic line-up of writers, the prickly and sweary Queen of Thorns, the tattooed lady Boganette, spitty and spatty Octavia, brilliant young feminist Coley Tangerina, and out-there Emma Hart, plus one or two more to come. Their introductory post is up, in which they promise feminism and swearing, in no particular order. They say:

So. Who are we? Well, we’re a bunch of women. All of us have, at some point, been called stroppy. We’re, for want of a better term, liberal feminists. If you’ve been around the blogosphere for a while, you’ll know some of us. Some of us will be new to you.

We like to swear, and no, we don’t take shit. We talk about politics and sex, fashion and abortion, violence and The Patriarchy. Sometimes, we like to talk about them REALLY LOUDLY.

The Stroppery: Tea, crumpets, and fucking the patriarchy

Another police officer on another sexual assault charge

Same old, same old, really. The details are here (NB: may be triggering): Cop on sexual assault charges.

There's a twist in this story.

His occupation was left off his charge sheets in what police called an administrative error.

Riiiiigghhttt.

And I've got a lovely bridge to sell to you.

Friday Feminists - Ann E. Cudd and Leslie E. Jones

Cross posted

It is a pervasive, long-standing, and deeply disturbing fact that, by many ways of measuring well-being, women around the globe live lesser lives than men. In much of the world they are less well nourished, less healthy, and less well educated (UNIFEM, 2000). Everywhere they are vulnerable to violence and abuse by men. It has been estimated that as a result of these facts, and because in many places girl babies are disproportionately aborted or killed, there are one billion missing women (Dreze and Sen, 1989). Many more women in the world lack access to education and many more are illiterate. Jobs that are high paying are much less likely to be held by women. Tedious and menial work is much more likely to be done by women. Women in the workforce are paid less than their male counterparts, are more often harassed and intimidated in work, and are far more often responsible for childcare and housework “after work.” Independently of their participation in the paying workforce, women suffer from domestic violence at much greater rates, bear primary responsibility for childrearing and housework, and are much more likely to be sick and poor in their old age. In much of the world women do not have access to safe abortion, or sometimes even to contraception, further putting women's health and well-being at risk. Women everywhere bear almost the full burden of unplanned pregnancies. Women in many nations of the world lack full formal equality under the law. Where they have it, they are less likely to be able to access the judicial system, and so still lack substantive equality. And almost nowhere in teh world do woemn hold high government offices at anywhere near the rates of men. In short, when we compare the life prospects of women and men, we find that a woman is far more likely to be poor, unhealthy, abused, and politically disenfranchised, even while she works longer hours and is largely responsible for the primary care of future generations.

Two general explanations could account for this remarkable disparity in life prospects: (1) women are by nature inferior to men, and so less worthy of concern or less able to benefit from equal concern, or (2) women are systematically disadvantaged by society.

Ann E. Cudd and Leslie E. Jones, "Sexism", in R. G. Frey and C. H. Wellman (eds), A Companion to Applied Ethics, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003

this is the front line, minister

excellent work by jacinda ardern & carol beaumont today in questioning tariana turia on the cutting of funds from self-defence programmes for girls. here's the clip (hat tip):



i can't find a transcript online yet, but basically there has been a full cut of government funding to the "girls self-defence project", which amounts to $377,000. the project has reached 77,000 girls. jacinda quoted one principal who said:

each time it has been delivered the girls self defence programme has given at least one of the girls the courage to speak out about an inappropriate and, in a number of instances, unlawful act that involves them. i truly believe that if a programme like this is cut, there will be girls who don't find the confidence to speak out about abuse that they are having to endure.

in a question from carol, we find out that this is "a course where ... evaluation results showing over 90% of the girls felt stronger, more confident, knew ways to deal with unsafe situations and feel that they can talk to safe people."

the minister's response was that the ministry wanted more money going to frontline services (with the implication that this project somehow isn't one). she also says several times that the organisation can apply to the "innovation fund", but that fund is for families not frontline services delivered through schools, minister wouldn't answer as to their chances of success.

of course this is appalling. i'm really glad that these questions have been raised and this particular cut has been highlighted. but there's something missing here - the usual something. we're teaching our girls about safety (as we need to) but we're not teaching our boys to (a) also keep themselves safe, since boys suffer from childhood sexual abuse too and (b) how to conduct safe relationships that respect consent and the personhood of the other person. i'm hoping that the girls self-defence project covers consent and boundaries as well.

basically we need all round better education on matters of sex, sexuality and relationships. and that education will require funding. it may be preventative, but there can be no better frontline funding than this.

Quick! Tune into National Radio to hear Hand Mirror and Elsewoman blogger, Anne Else

Anne Else, who writes Elsewoman and also posts here at The Hand Mirror, is appearing on None to Noon on National Radio this morning, talking to Kathryn Ryan about her Elsewoman blog. She'll be on after the 10am news. You can pick up the live stream here: http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon.

I'll update this later with a link to the on-line recording (I know there's some fancy word or phrase for this, but it has momentarily escaped me).

Update: Audio available here. 32 minutes.

Something to go to in Wellington: Dress for Success movie night

In their own words, Dress for Success:

solves the catch-22 that confronts disadvantaged women trying to enter the workforce: without a job, how can you afford a suit? But without a suit, how can you get a job?

Dress for Success started in New York, and has spread worldwide. In New Zealand, there are affiliates in Northland, Auckland, Wellington, Hamilton, Rotorua and Christchurch.

The Wellington branch of Dress for Success helps women with finding an appropriate outfit for job interviews, and then once each client has landed a job, they help her to find another work outfit. The outfits are free, and they are for keeps. Clients are referred to Dress for Success (Wellington) by various agencies. The main criterion for getting assistance with clothing is that the woman is work-ready, and keen, and just needing that extra bit of help to land a job.

Dress for Success Wellington is running a movie fundraiser on 28 April 2011.

Movie: "Another Year" (trailer here)
Date: 5pm for movie starting at 6pm, Thursday 28 April
Venue: Penthouse Cinema and Cafe, Brooklyn
Tickets: $25 (includes a glass of wine or bubbly and light snacks), available from Dash Tickets.

Plus there will be raffles and spot prizes and goody bags.

More details on the Dress for Success Wellington events page.

Many thanks to Boganette for letting me know about this event.

Oh won't someone bring me some cupcakes?

I would very much like to have a cupcake to stick this note on.  Nom nom nom.

Internet Blackout Bill going through under urgency tonight

Extreme sadface.

Yes it's not as bad as it originally was.  But it still sucks.

For those interested in following the Parliamentary debate tonight on Twitter, follow #blackout

Sounds like the Greens in particular are mounting some spirited opposition, but the Government has said they have the numbers.

#thingsfatpeoplearetold

Sometime on the weekend I started seeing tweets like this (summary from Brian:

@mymilkspilt: Your body sends a bad message to your children. #thingsfatpeoplearetold @red3blog
Apr 9, 2011 10:20 PM GMT

@TheRotund: @mymilkspilt Your chronic illness would disappear if you lost weight. #thingsfatpeoplearetold
Apr 9, 2011 10:31 PM GMT

@MargitteLeah: "no one will ever love you." actual #thingsfatpeoplearetold
Apr 9, 2011 10:34 PM GMT

@BookMD: Fat people are stupid. If they were smart, they wouldn't be fat. #thingsfatpeoplearetold
Apr 9, 2011 11:58 PM GMT

@Fatheffalump: Telling anyone that it's ok to be fat makes you personally responsible for their death #thingsfatpeoplearetold
Apr 10, 2011 12:45 AM GMT

@elizabethgallo: You have such a pretty face... #thingsfatpeoplearetold
Apr 10, 2011 12:56 AM GMT

You can see what's been posted recently over on twitter. There have been thousands of tweets in the last few days.

They just flick up 1 new tweet, 5 new tweets, 46 new tweets and so on depending how long I've been away from the computer. Telling the truth about oppression is a radical act. And one of the most important truths about oppression is that it happens and it matters.

I'm sure different people have got different things out of reading that hashtag. Some statements made me uncomfortable with their resonance, because there are many things people have said around me that I'd rather forget for the sake of my relationships with those people.

But my overwhelming feeling one was one of deep recognition. Not just of things people have said to me, but what I'm afraid of hearing. To see this endless row of statements scrolling down that contain everything that anyone's projected on to my body since I was ten, everything that I've run away from hearing. And it's made clear to me not just the various elaborate things I have done to avoid hearing #thingsfatpeoplearetold - but my ways of avoiding hearing these things are valid and important survival strategies, not things wrong with me. It's incredibly legitimising to read all this and think "actually yeah that's really hard to deal with."

What #thingsfatpeoplearetold has done, for me, is to take the toxic fumes of fat stigma and made them concrete and in this form they lose their power.* In this form thhey are not about us as individuals, but about the culture that we live in, and in this form we can fight them.

It's a reminder that we are stronger together than we are alone. Individually they're just 140 characters, but together it's so much more.

************

Every so often, over the last few days, someone will tweet in astonishment about how awful people can be. Fat Heffalump has a great http://fatheffalump.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/on-expressions-of-dismay-and-disbelief/ response to these tweets:

So I want to say this to all of the people who are horrified at the things they read in these tweets. Don’t just shake your head, gasp in horror, and cluck your tongue at how terrible people are to the poor fatties. Stand the fuck up. Say something when you hear fat hate. Speak up when you see someone being treated badly because of the size of their body. Challenge those articles you see in magazines, newspapers and on television that perpetuate myths about fat people. Ask questions of the “facts” you see spouted that shame fat people, think about who might just benefit from fat phobia. After all, fat activists have been doing just this for decades.

But I want to go further. Yes a lot of the people who say #thingsfatpeoplearetold are actual assholes and some of them are much worse.

But assholes are not the problem here. The problem is systemic. Fat hatred is promoted by fashion, 'beauty products' and weight loss industries, built into the medical system, and officially endorsed by the government.

People need to stop saying these things, and start challenging people who do. But that's not going to be enough. A fair number of tweets, particularly from women, were said by their mothers (people often mention it - and anyway things that come from people's Mum's have a certain feel to them). My Mum is a feminist, and very loving and caring, and I'm not even going to write down the things she said to me while I was growing up, because they were too awful. The job of mothers is to bring up their daughters to survive in society, and that involves a lot of acclimatising to sexism. In a world where the government, the health system, and various industries are working to pathologise, then trying to stop your girl entering this hated category is a rational survival strategy (albiet a futile one). I'm not excusing what mothers do to their daughters, at all (It makes me so angry that my mother, her friends, and my friend's mothers, all feminist women, were prepared to police their daughters in this way). What I'm saying is that it won't change, people won't stop telling fat people this shit, if we think of fat stigma as an individual problem. I know a lot of people know that, but the repsponses to #thingsfatpeoplearetold means I feel I need to repeat it.

People may be assholes, but systemic change does not come from individuals being better. It comes from attacking the structures which give them the power to be assholes.

**************

So thank you everyone who added to #thingsfatpeoplearetold, and the people who are still adding to it. You can see the power of what they've done by reading #thingsfatpeoplearetold and reading Brian's summary, then pass it on, add your own. Understand that fat hatred is real and important, but in doing so realise that it can be fought.

* Yes I am thinking of the Labyrinth "YOU HAVE NO POWER OVER ME" I say. And it's not quite true - but it's more true than it was last week.

helen kelly on the hobbit dispute

if you haven't read it yet, i strongly recommend that you read helen kelly's account of the hobbit dispute, which is detailed and well-referenced. one advantage of the internet is that traditional media can be bypassed, there are no word limits & the facts can be placed on the table.

she includes a part of the transcript of the radio nz interview, which i remember listening to in outrage as it was happening. peter jackson and his "camp" have been responsible for a huge attack on workers rights and got another massive handout out from nz taxpayers on top of that. i'm not sure how these people sleep at night, but i guess an additional $30 million would help quite a bit.

the whole saga included not only an attack on unions, but also some very misogynistic attacks on women. ms kelly leaves out this aspect of the situation as the story she tells is not a personal one. not only her but robyn malcolm and jennifer ward-lealand. this nastiness was all over the internet, and involved some pretty nasty personal correspondence as well. it was not enough for some to simply to disagree with their position but to attack these women for being women.

i'll finish with an excerpt from ms kelly's conclusion, but please do take the time to read the whole thing:

Basically the story runs like this – and I am simplifying it. Work is a benefit, business is the benefactor and workers are merely the beneficiaries. Workers should be grateful for a job; a job is a privilege; employers should be lauded for the contribution they make to growing economic wealth. This narrative not only devalues the contribution of labour and fails to recognise the exchange of labour for wages that is taking place, but it also provides the justification for the removal of work rights, insufficient pay rates, government subsidies to business and the like. It paints anyone who joins or seeks to organise a union as disloyal, a wrecker or an ingrate, throwing charity back in the face of the giver.

It paints the union as an outsider, an interferer in a relationship based on charity. The employer is to be revered – deference is the name of the game. Employers have bought into this narrative and you hear it regularly in the commentary of their advocacy groups. It is also used here and internationally to justify unsatisfactory and unfair trade arrangement, environmental degradation etc. It is being resisted but is overpowering in many situations. It is similar to the so-called ‘trickle down’ approach – where, if everything is done to make business profitable, the benefits will flow down to the deserving poor. We saw that in the 1990s – but the benefits only trickled up.

The Hobbit dispute is simply an example Actors were portrayed as ungrateful, biting the hand that feeds them, contributing nothing compared to the great Warners that were donating 2000 jobs to the economy. The beneficiaries were ungrateful. No discussion on rights was possible. Absolute deference was to be shown to business and this employer regardless of any other possible approach (e.g. that they should be expected to negotiate with performers here, as they do all over the world). The union was demonised and a change to employment law, at the request of Warners, was New Zealand’s way of apologising for some of our citizens’ bad behaviour.

A second example is Pike River ¬ a mine that, after only 1 year in operation, exploded late last year killing 29 miners. Immediately the narrative began to protect the company. The company CEO was grief stricken – as you would be. The media wanted grief not accountability. The families were not going to share their grief with the nation in those immediate days after the blast. Shocked and desperate for a rescue that was never going to happen, they mainly stayed out of the limelight. So the media focussed on the CEO. Pike River was painted as the company that saved the Coast (the West Coast of NZ where it operated is a mining area and the mine, being new, had provided new employment). It had gone in there and provided jobs and the biggest hope was that it would reopen. NZ media asked nothing of the company in those first few weeks. Some cheeky Aussie journalists flew here and asked some hard questions of the company – and were demonised for being insensitive intruders. The mine owners were given prime place in a state run memorial service without family representation. Miners were depicted as war heroes that went to work every day facing danger but prepared to accept it as part of the necessity of mining. It was bizarre. The site was unionised, the delegate was killed. Unions were anxious, as were many others, about speaking out, expressing anger or asking questions in this climate. They were concerned about being painted as ungrateful for the benefits bestowed by this company on the economy.

This is Not OK, Australia

Heard about this on National Radio this morning, horrified:

"She was held in the cells at the Sydney Police Centre in Surry Hills for five days before being transferred to the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Centre, a male facility at Silverwater.

Two days later, the 34-year-old pre-operative transgender male-to-female used a bed sheet to hang herself from a top bunk bed in her cell while awaiting classification."

I really struggled to find an article I was comfortable linking to about this, not least because most of them were just repeats of the AAP story I've chosen in the end. It's far from ideal imho, although it does at least respect Ms Baxter's identification as a woman. I really really don't like the title at all "Transgender inmate suicide not preventable". Sounds to me from reading the article that it was entirely preventable. Not Ok, Australia.

loving nz films

one of the results of attending the office of ethnic affairs ethnica conference ten days ago was going to watch "my wedding & other secrets" on friday night. the reason i was so inspired was because i listened to roseanne liang talk about her film on the friday before that, as well as her showing clips of her film.

she's an amazing young woman, and i already thought so having watched the documentary which the film is based on. it's called "banana in a nutshell", and i saw it a couple of years ago. even if you see the film (and if you haven't seen it, i strongly recommend you do), the documentary is worth watching as well.

i guess it resonates with me because i have that experience of growing up in nz, caught between two cultures but not really belonging to either one. i lived in some kind of strange in-between space, being misunderstood and doing a lot of misunderstanding. the people i got on best with (and that continues until now) were those who also occupied that in-between space. this could be other child migrants, or it could be people who married into another culture, or even those who converted to another religion.

i can't say that i had the boyfriend issues that are the heart of this film, but i know what it's like to be struggling to keep everyone happy and mostly failing, for various reasons. one was that i couldn't really get a grasp of what each particular group wanted, i didn't understand the nuances of either culture so would end up putting my foot in it more often than not. but more than that, in trying to keep others happy, i couldn't be true to myself. i couldn't be who i wanted or needed to be, and that is more soul-destroying than anything else.

these days, i've gone beyond keeping anyone happy, and pretty much expect people to take me as i am or to just p*ss off and leave me alone. those are the only two options, as far as i'm concerned, i'm done with compromising who i am and what i believe just to keep the peace. well, most of the time. there are days when keeping quiet is the easiest option & i don't have energy to take on yet another battle, but i guess that's true for all of us.

i really watching emily battle her way through her issues. and my goodness, i could so totally understand her fears and her courage. the film was beautifully done and so... authentic, true to life, absolutely real and realistic.

i'm loving that we're getting access to stories like this one and "boy", from local film-makers. i love the diversity, the look into cultures that are all part of nz now. i want our government dollars to be going towards stories like these. that $33 million which warner bros absolutely did not need could make such a huge difference to emerging film-makers. peter jackson has already made it (with a whole heap of government support along the way), he didn't need more.

i'm really looking forward to seeing more from these and other nz film makers. i'm really sorry to have missed "currymunchers" because it was only on for a very short while, but am really heartened by the quality and quantity of films being made.

Something to go to in Wellington: the Wellington Young Feminists Collective launch party

Wow!

There's a fantastic group of women in Wellington, the Wellington Young Feminists Collective. They are:

A social group of self-identified feminists who enjoy casually smashing the patriarchy over wine and cheese. All ages and genders welcome. We're a fun bunch.

Check out their Facebook page: Wellington Young Feminists Collective, and their blog: The Wellington Young Feminists Collective.

From their Facebook page:

The Wellington Young Feminists’ Collective has three functions:
- Social – We are first and foremost a social group for feminists.
- Learning – We are a place for feminists to share ideas, knowledge and encourage discussions.
- Activism – We support a variety of activism on feminist issues.

Especially check out their launch party, coming up this Friday, 15 April, at Good Luck, 126 Cuba St, Wellington, starting at 8pm and going until very, very late.

Backhanded police defence of cougar ad?

In this morning's Sunday Star-Times there's a report about the notorious "cougar" police recruiting ad (see Maia's post on 6 February). Headline: "Police 'cougar' ad gets the recruits". First sentence: "A sexist police recruitment advertisement which was quickly axed has been wildly successful - attracting record numbers of potential recruits." Notice the addition of the word "potential" - not quite the same thing as actual recruits.

Near the end of the report it turns out that this "success" claim is based on a briefing from police public affairs general manager Michael Player to Judith Collins.

There are no details about how many actual recruits, let alone suitable recruits, the police got as a result. Instead the claim seems to be based solely on the fact that in the week before the ad was dropped, the recruiting site received "the largest single number of weekly hits ever".

Nowhere does this news report explain that police were pushed into dropping the ad after a flood of public protests about it. Nor does it mention that the increase in hits was at least as likely to have come from people having a look to see what the protest was about as from a sudden surge in eager potential recruits.

The Odds and Ends Drawer

I've started gathering these through Twitter, so feel free to send them that way, or through email or the traditional comments on the post.

• The New York Times examines the cultural change at MIT (the US one) 12 years after a damning report on the pervasive sexist discrimination shown to female professors.
• Ally went to a movie about a fat person but didn't know that until the very end. 
• Rachel McCarthy James points out Kirsten Stewart is not obliged to smile. (via Tui Talk)
• Charlotte Bellis of TVNZ writes about the mental health aspect of the Christchurch earthquake (via Pickled Think)
• Rosalind Gill wrote about the re-sexualisation of women's bodies in the Monthly Review back in 2009, and it's well worth checking out.
• Marty G at The Standard rebuts that good ol' myth that the poor just waste their money on booze and smokes.
• Sophia dissects the language used by Celia Lashlie to support Shaun Metcalf's second chance with the Warriors.
• Christina H debunks six famous supposedly frivilous lawsuits.  Despite the fact they are all from the USA I'd heard of most of them too, with the incorrect details.
• Amanda Marcotte thinks the attempt by Republicans to purge that scary word "uterus" from the Florida legislature's chambers reveals a great deal about anti-choicers

Thanks for all the positive feedback about this feature - I'll try to get them up more often, indeed I already have lots of saved links for the next one!

Friday Feminist - Samantha Sacks

Cross posted

After a thousand different questions from me regarding the role of feminism in Honduras, the relevancy of academics, and who they would or would not accept money from, and under which circumstances, the group's leader, Gloria Reina Santos Montes, asked me with a cold stare why I am a feminist.

And this is what I said ....

Feminism is about change, about a redistribution of power. It is about challenging the status quo. It is call for the redefinition of the family, the mosque, the temple, the church, the synagogue, and of love. Change is threatening to those of us who wield power and those who do not. And because it is threatening, it is electric and alive and powerful and I want to touch it.

And Gloria Reina Santos Montes stared at me, from her world that looked like Eden fixed between a garbage dump and a Coca-Cola billboard, and said (and I paraphrase) ...

"I don't care what you call it. I just want to feed my babies and maybe someday shit in a toilet."

India's disappearing girls

The Economist and New Internationalist are both currently running articles about the skewed gender ratios that are being seen in India. While I have seen a lot written about this issue in China I haven't read about it in the Indian context before. If anyone out there knows more about the situation in India it would be good to know if you think these articles are fair.

The Economist has both a leader and an article about this issue.

The article talks about the downward spiral that is being seen for women as the ratios become skewed:

The impact on Indian society is grim. You might have thought that scarcity would lead to girls being valued more highly, but this is not happening. One measure is the practice of giving dowries. Almost no one, rich or poor, urban or rural, dreams of dispensing with these. Rather, as Indians grow wealthier, dowries are getting more lavish and are spreading to places where they were once rare, such as in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, in the south. In Kotla women huddled around Sakina shake their heads when asked to imagine life without dowries: “then nobody would find a husband”, they say.

A skewed sex ratio may instead be making the lot of women worse. Sociologists say it encourages abuse, notably in the trafficking of the sort that Sakina first suffered from but is now ready to pay for. Reports circulate of unknown numbers of girls who are drugged, beaten and sometimes killed by traffickers. Others, willingly or not, are brought across India’s borders, notably from Bangladesh and Myanmar. “Put bluntly, it’s a competition over scarce women”, says Ravinder Kaur of the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi.

The New Internationalist article focuses a bit more on the situation of young women who are forced or choose to move to other parts of India to marry.

Men from Haryana and Punjab are being forced to go in search of brides to distant West Bengal and Bihar. The language is different, the customs are different, the food is different. But the brides, poor girls, travel to these distant states because they are poor. Their parents can’t afford the dowry demands in their home states. Now for a Bengali or Keralite girl to marry a Haryanvi groom is like a Sicilian girl being dispatched to Siberia. Everything is different. It’s a whole new country.

But for the girls, apparently, it’s not all gloom and doom. If you ask people questions without a preconceived agenda, the answers will often surprise you. They certainly stunned me.

A group of girls from Kerala, where dowry demands are huge, decided ‘to screw Keralite men and their avaricious families. Why allow your parents to be humiliated and pauperized with dowry and wedding demands when there are families desperate for girls elsewhere? These North Indian families are willing to give our parents money to take us into their families as brides. First of all, that was unbelievable. We thought, why go through the degrading, shaming practice of parading yourself before arrogant Kerala grooms and their revolting parents.’

So these girls opted to be daring. To fly away, over a thousand kilometres north, and settle in a new land. And although the food is different and the language and customs strange, they’ve adapted. They’ve decided this is definitely not worse than a dog’s life with no dowry back home. What’s more, they write home and tell others it’s not such a bad deal, come join us.

Comment direction: The problems identified in these articles are directly related to the role and status of women in Indian society. Comments should broadly address this topic. I have also edited the original post so that it is more focused on this.

A Friday frivolity

What could be more wonderfully delightfully frivolous than cupcake nail polish?!  Hope it doesn't encourage anyone to bite their nails.

Hat tipped to Octavia's twitter feed.

Abortion: it's a health issue not a crime - World Health Day Blogswarm

Index of all the #prochoicenz posts made for the World Health Day Blogswarm on the theme: Abortion: it's a health issue not a crime.

Today, April 7th, is World Health Day. There is one health procedure in New Zealand that is treated not as a medical matter, but as a criminal one: abortion. It's still in the Crimes Act, and the law makes it clear the most appropriate person to decide whether or not a pregnancy should be terminated is not the person who is pregnant. This needs to change. And there are many people in Aotearoa keen to work to achieve that change. This Blogswarm is one of a variety of activities pro-choice people hope will contribute to putting abortion provision where it needs to be in our legal and medical system: as a health issue, not a crime.

Posts in chronological order of discovery (by me), most recent posts at the bottom:

Abortion Law: No Going Back. Going Forward Instead - excerpt: '"Better than then" is not good enough. It means abortion access is just one judge’s ruling away from being severely limited, if not ended outright. Because our abortion laws are out of date and still located in the Crimes Act, we could be "back then" all too easily.' - by ALRANZ

Hate abortion, love choice - excerpt: "...some argue that we should prioritise the life of the foetus; others say that the liberty or privacy of the mother is paramount. Both explanations are genuinely defensible — the answer is different for everyone, and has to be found in each person’s personal morality. And given this genuine disagreement, we can’t use the coercive power of law to limit the liberty of the definitely-alive mother for the benefit of the maybe-alive child." - by Matt

Abortion - Why NZ's laws need to change - excerpt: "Plenty of vocal anti-choice elements exist here and continue to threaten the precarious system through legal action. These elements talk a lot about the sanctity of life and the moral responsibility that comes with being pregnant, but what if the most responsible decision is to not bring an unwanted child into the world. Isn’t it more important that we trust women to make these life changing decision for themselves?" - by womenchoose

Abortion is not a crime. It is a health issue - excerpt: "...if I get pregnant tomorrow, the embryo inside me holds priority in the pro-lifers eyes. The government has put the issue of my RIGHT to an abortion under the category of a crime, not health."- by scuba nurse

Abortion: it's a crime - excerpt: "...what I want to focus on here is the placement of the rules about abortion in the Crimes Act. It seems that it’s a crime for women to have authority over their own bodies. " - by Deborah

What an abortion! - excerpt: "My first thought on reading this [part of the Crimes Act] is “Holy crap – it is an offence to procure miscarriage when you’re not pregnant???”" - by Gravey Dice aka goodgravey

New this morning:


Respect lives: be pro-choice - excerpt: "[Abortion is] A health issue affecting over half of our population. It should be treated as such, just like quality dental care or the right to other surgical treatments, and should be freely and totally available to those who need it. No exceptions. The right to bodily autonomy is the most fundamental human right and throughout human history millions have died fighting for it in various forms." - by Octavia

World Health Day - excerpt: "I am pro-choice, but I doubt I would ever have an abortion myself, due largely to the effect I think it would have on my already unstable mental health, but I still would like to know that if I did want to have an abortion, I would be able to access one quickly and safely." - by Lena

Trash writing, with a point, damnit. It's World Health Day - excerpt: 'The policeman took his seat and presented the papers he'd been holding by his side. The bold text emblazoned on the top of the page caught Nat's eye. It read "COURT SUMMONS". As Nat took the papers, the policeman began his explanation, "We have been led to believe that you underwent a... procedure... at the women's clinic at Wellington hospital on February 15th."' - by Nikki

La Ranita has dedicated her tumblr activity to pro-choice goodness on the blogswarm theme today.

world health day: autonomy over our own bodies - excerpt: "To force someone to have an abortion is a particularly cruel act and when we are talking about the very people charged to care for a teenage child performing this ugly coercion, the abusive element magnifies in my mind." - by Sandra

A sincere thanks - excerpt: "In the battleground between women's bodies and fetuses, so often centred on the womb, we sometimes forget about the people who provide the vital health service of terminating pregnancies." by Julie

World Health Day: Abortion is a health issue not a crime - excerpt: "Abortion is in the Crimes Act in New Zealand. It shouldn't be. An abortion is a choice made by a woman about her own body. Having an abortion can save a woman's life: abortions are quite a bit safer than pregnancy, if they're performed legally. Women need to be able to make that choice for themselves - with their doctors: because abortion is a health issue" - by labellementeuse

Abortion: just another frakken issue that I need to jump through hoops for! - excerpt: "At the beginning of last year I had to visit the doctor because there was something seriously wrong. I had become pregnant and there was no way that I could bear the child to term. I hold the view that a fetus becomes a child when the woman in question decides that it’s a child and, well to me, it’s always been a child as soon as that little stick changes colour. So, I couldn’t have this child." - by beyondgender

Evening update

I had a miscarriage and yes, I am still pro-choice - Excerpt: "We all like to the think that abortion is something that child-free teenage girls and swinging twentysomethings do. But from the statistics we know that it isn’t true, the largest group having abortions are from the 20-24 age group and almost half the abortions are for women who already have mothers.

But what about the not-quite mothers?" - by Steph

The pro-choice club at the Auckland Uni Campus Feminist Collective - excerpt: "The Campus Feminist collective at Auckland Uni have recently started a pro choice club. Last night we showed “The Coathanger project”, and will be doing events throughout the year. We need to change these laws, it is so beyond fucked up that abortion is still a bloody crime." - by Mouse

A bunch of straw-ladies got straw-abortions after changing their silly little lady-minds about straw-babies - excerpt: "We need to be as loud as possible – including you mansplainy ‘liberal’ men, because, surprisingly enough, playing nice and sucking cock is not how civil rights are won." - by Priya

Get yr laws outta of my drawers!! - excerpt: "It sure seems to me like it’s time the legislature realises abortion as what it is– a medical procedure– and ends the implied assumption in the Crimes Act that every person carrying a foetus is under a duty to carry it to term." - by Dorothy V Dentata



Equal rights means you take ownership TOO! - excerpt:  "Even if you are a purist, and you don’t use condoms... who can afford 9 kids in this expensive world? So what do you do?
I won’t expect you to explain to me how you don’t have a gazillion children right now, but short of you killing some future life off I’m lost for ideas." - by Scuba Nurse


Abortion:  it's a health issue not a crime - excerpt:  "As a practicing Catholic for most of my life, something about abortion always seemed to bother me but as I moved away from my parents and my Filipino upbringing, I came to realise that putting stock in the words of men from 2000 years ago, without questioning their validity or applicability to MY life was actually kind of stupid. My eyes opened in my late teens. Things aren't right or wrong because scripture tells you so, rather, as you learn and grow, your individual sense of morality learns and grows and you figure out what things are wrong and right for you" - by padgp

pro choice blogswarm - excerpt:  "I am pro choice, I personally though would not choose to have an abortion, its not something that I would do, but I do not want to project my own moral stance on to every woman that may need to have one. Its about choice, its about our bodies, and about us making the decision that suits us at the time we are making that decision." - by Demelza

A health issue - but how? - excerpt:  "As a woman, a fat woman, a queer fat woman, a disabled, queer fat woman, I simply do not feel safe approaching a doctor or entrusting myself to the whims of the medical system. Taking abortion out of the crimes act would help – but not by much." by Anna Caro

Parliament and abortion - excerpt:  "The present law is fundamentally demeaning. It creates real problems around access. And its currently being challenged in court. If that challenge is successful, we may find that abortion is - overnight - illegal in New Zealand, or subject to such tight restrictions as to make it inaccessible in practice. That outcome is possible because we continue to rely on an outdated law." by Idiot/Savant

Abortion Supervisory Committee: the vote - Idiot/Savant gives the details on who voted which way in Parliament today, on a last minute amendment seeking to appoint an anti-abortion advocate to the Abortion Supervisory Committee.  (Ayes are for the anti-abortion person, Noes are against them)

Let's play a game that isn't fun:  decide my pregnancy options for me!  - excerpt:  "So, if I got pregnant, what should I do? No really, I'm interested. Be forced to continue the pregnancy at the expense of my own health or even life, with a foetus that would likely die after a few months in utero (but a D&C to remove it in that case would obviously not be ok: abortion is wrong! I should get blood poisoning and die, much preferable) or be born to die painfully and shortly after birth? I should suffer that horror? My husband should suffer that and possibly lose me? (Slipping in the cis-dude perspective to add legitimacy again.) Our cats? (I don't know, maybe you like other animals more than humans.) The baby you apparently care about so much should suffer that?" - by Octavia

I am a grown ass woman dammit - excerpt:  "Why would I be trusted to carry a foetus for up to 40 weeks, give birth, then raise a child and provide for that child’s needs until he or she reaches adulthood (or longer), but I am not trusted to decide that, for whatever reason, I do not want to do any of that?" by La Ranita

Pro-Choice Isn't an Option - excerpt: "Lots of things are amazing.

The first crunchy leaf of Autumn.
Perfectly cooked chocolate mudcake.
John Key‘s lack of touch with the Kiwi reality.
Magnets, I mean how do they even work?
Huge dragonflies.
That abortion falls under the Crimes Act in New Zealand." by [Head/Desk]

New today (8th April):

The personal is political:  I have had an abortion and I no longer care who knows if I did - excerpt:  "This is a hard note to write, but I have decided to write it to break the silence and shame pushed on to women by a society that, for the most part, condemns abortion and judges women for making an impossible choice that affects the rest of their lives.  The more woman that speak out about their experiences with abortion, the more “normalised” it becomes.  It makes it more difficult it is for the old white men to make laws regulating our reproduction." by The Surly Mermaid


Would you look at that? - excerpt:  "The basic take-home is that 70 MPs are sufficiently pro-choice that they won’t support appointing an avowed antichoicer to the Abortion Supervisory Committee.  It’s hardly an overwhelming statement of support of women’s right to make their own health decisions, but it’s also a pretty obvious sign that the majority of MPs, whether for personal or political-sensitivity reasons, will not erode the status quo." by Queen of Thorns

Yesterday was World Health Day, today we are still talking about abortion rights - excerpt:  "That this medical procedure is in the Crimes Act is unacceptable. The law has remained unchanged since the 1970s. Most of the public is unaware because clinicians work hard to ensure the process is as free of red-tape as possible.  Open up discussions with the people around you. We need to be debating this and raising awareness of it. And, in election year more than ever, we must let our politicians know that this will not go away." by Bel

Tariana Turia and abortion - excerpt: "I do not think abortion undermines the notion of whakapapa. Cultural values are fluid and change over time in response to changing circumstances. Maori inhabit a vastly different world and the notion of whakapapa has not remained static. Turia is allowing a very narrow interpretation of whakapapa to inform her views on what is essentially a health issue." by Morgan Godfrey

Anymore, please do let us know through comments or elsewise.  Thanks everyone, this is an amazing number, I never would have guessed we would get so many from just a few tweets and a single blog notice.  Gives great heart for the campaign ahead to change this unfair law!


Comment direction: Please add your post links in comments if I haven't picked them up yet, and/or tweet them with the #prochoicenz hashtag. I'll add them to the index when I get a chance, but it may take a while. Please don't suggest anti-abortion posts - if you're an anti you can organise your own Blogswarm, that's freedom of speech in action. And this is not the place to comment on the morality of abortion, as we have a whole page for that, and it's even called Abortion and Morality so there can be no confusion!