anatomy of a story

it's taken a bit of work, but we finally have a wonderful piece in the herald on sunday, finally giving a positive narrative about nz muslim women. that is hugely important in itself, but to have it supported by this editorial makes it even more special.

i thought i'd spend a bit of time writing about how this story came about. i know bryce johns from when he was editor of the waikato times. i found him to be incredibly supportive any time i approached him with an op-ed piece or an idea for a story. i'd pretty much lost touch with him since he shifted to HoS, but had occasion to email him about something. his response was prompt as always, and in an email exchange about various bits and pieces, i directed him to this piece i'd written.

he suggested that they could do a feature article, and he'd pass the idea on to the appropriate person. i got contacted by susan pepperell about 10 days ago. we set up an appointment for the friday before last, and i spent about 45 minutes with her. we then met with some of the young women in the mosque on sunday, which took about another hour. in the meantime, susan had also talked to aliya danziesen, who was out of the country at the time, and kate parr at pirongia forest park lodge.

then i got a call on wednesday, asking for a photo shoot involving an action shot. kate had originally organised for a session at the rock-climbing place in hamilton, but what with my work commitments & the young women being busy at university, it took me almost two hours on the phone to set up the shoot out at the lodge on thursday morning. it was another two and half hours driving the young women and the photographer (stephen barker, genuinely nice guy) out to pirongia, having kate set up the abseil and doing the shots. most of this time (friday, wednesday & thursday) had to be made up by me working longer hours at work. radiya had to rearrange a tutorial to be there.

the end result is, needless to say, fantastic. but i just wanted to highlight how much energy it takes to get just one piece in the paper. how much co-operation, and the level of support from the publication itself. i know all stories don't involve so much co-ordination, but they all involve time. a smaller piece in the waikato times last monday (you can find details on my own blog here) also took up a reasonable amount of time. and because contact was initiated by the paper, the focus was on much more negative aspects, though they had the same information that HoS had.

the point is that it's seems so much easier to put out negative stories, to run negative narratives. the burqa-wearing women prevented from using public transport generated a huge level of coverage and comment, dealing with a small minority of the muslim community but impacting on the whole community. it's not so much the stories themselves that were so much the problem, but the commentary it engenders - plenty of it full of hate, misinformation and straight-out bigotry (looking at you there paul holmes).

as a minority community, it's pretty hard to counter that kind of thing. there's so much of it and even one article giving an alternate view takes a significant amount of effort. i have to say that i've been heartened by the people who have been supportive in their own spheres of influence - whether it be facebook, blogs, comments on websites, discussions with friends or family, pieces in more mainstream media.

it means a lot, to me personally and to our community. we're not perfect, there are things that need changing, as is the case with all communities. but as i've always said, it's so much harder to push for those changes when you're feeling under siege in a hostile environment. every little bit of support counts.

so huge big virtual hugs to bryce johns, as well as to susan pepperell and stephen barker. and especially to aliya danziesen and the young muslim women of the waikato, who are amzingly awesome. just a final comment for accuracy: it was aliya who set up the organisation and whose vision & motivation drives the group. i'm very much a support person.

Rape costs money

Rape costs money. It costs money for (depending on your location and your entitlement) medical care for physical injuries, counselling, including multiple wasted sessions with those who fail to help you, other forms of psychological help, medication you may need to help you sleep or help you get up in the morning.

It costs money to care for children or other dependents whilst you attend medical appointments or give statements to the police or are simply not in a fit emotional or physical state to care for them. It costs money to replace clothes which were ripped or taken for evidence or that your burned or kept in the back of a wardrobe because you can't stand to go near them any more. It costs money to leave a partner who raped you and be down one income and probably end up with most of the expenses of raising a child as well.

It costs money for transport to a multitude of appointments. It costs money if the cheapest method of transport now requires walking through an area that gives you panic attacks or if you used to walk everywhere and are now too exhausted. It costs money for taxis if you don't feel safe driving at the moment and your house isn't served by public transport, or you struggle with public transport and can't drive.

It costs money if you were raped by a boss or a co-worker and lose your job or have to leave because everyone sides with the rapist. It costs money, dependent on your contract and how sympathetic your employer is, for time off work. It costs money to miss out on promotions because you don't have the confidence or focus you once did. It costs money if you have to leave your job because of the transport issues above and there's no way you can afford taxis, which on a regular basis is true of most people.

It costs money, in all kinds of ways, to move town. It costs money to leave just temporarily. It costs money to move house within the same town. It costs money to find new places to socialise. It costs money to have to retake university courses. It costs money for phonecalls and photocopying and transport to make claims for any kind of financial help. Pretty much anything you can do to make yourself feel better costs money.

So whilst money is not a primary motivation for most people who've been raped, and of course when statements are made that are completely untrue, they need to be challenged on that basis, I'm wary of that being done in a way that implies seeking money is wrong, or worse that those who do so are fabricating the incident. We have no objection to people seeking compensation for a damaged car, even when it occured simply as a result of carelessness, but at the same time people who have been raped are expected to be pure and noble or something and wanting any kind of rectification for the financial damage done is viewed as casting doubt on character and veracity.

Cherchez la femme, in Norway and New Zealand

Two news items this week that need to be noticed. First, an excellent piece in The Daily Beast by Michelle Goldberg analyses Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik's obsessive hatred of women and feminism. She points out how the "neat rhetorical trick" of coupling "an attack on feminism...with purported concern about Muslim fundamentalist misogyny" is "repeated again and again in Islamophobic literature." It comes up repeatedly in Breivik's manifesto: "Rarely has the connection between sexual anxiety and right-wing nationalism been made quite so clear...A terror of feminization haunts his bizarre document."

Second, UN Women has put out its report "In Pursuit of Justice: Progress of the World's Women". You can download a summary and the full report here. This week the New Zealand president of UN Women, Rae Julian, pointed out three remarkably bad rankings for New Zealand:

Maternal mortality: Among the 22 OECD countries, New Zealand ranks 20th - worse than 19 other countries. Only the USA and Luxembourg rank lower. We have 14 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, whcih doesn't sound like many - but it's considerably more than, for example, Canada, with 6, or Ireland, with only 2. We also rank 16th for length of paid maternity leave.

28 July - News just in: The Perinatal and Maternal Mortality Review Committee (PMMRC) has published its fifth annual report on the deaths of babies and their mothers in New Zealand. The maternal mortality rate in 2009 was 22 per 100,000 maternities. The 2009 rate was increased by four pandemic influenza A H1N1 maternal deaths in that year. But the most frequent causes of maternal death in New Zealand from 2006 to 2009 was suicide, followed by pre-existing medical conditions, and amniotic fluid embolism. Teenage mothers (aged under 20) were at higher risk of stillbirth and neonatal death than mothers aged 20 to 39. The Committee is recommending a number of practical measures which it believes will help reduce the number of deaths of babies and mothers.

Right to legal abortion: New Zealand is one of only three countries, alongside Ireland and Spain, which do not allow abortion for economic or social reasons. It is also one of the six which do not allow abortion on request.

Violence against women: Among the 14 countries which reported on the proportion of women who had experienced physical violence from intimate partners over the period 2000-2010, New Zealand ranked the worst, with 30 percent. Among the 12 counries reporting on violence occurring "during the last 12 months", we ranked 11th, with 5 percent. Only Finland was worse.  Sexual violence from intimate partners showed a similar trend. Twelve countries responded to this question. With 14%, New Zealand was again the worst for 2000-2010. The next worst was Norway, with 9%.

Wheels keep turning

I've been a bit poorly for the last few months, nothing major, just bits and pieces exacerbated by doing too much.  When I disappear from here that's often why.  Trying to avoid getting really sick by being slack about whatever I can get away with being slack about.

Someone said something to me about my health a month or so back that's been bouncing around inside my brain, making me alternately angry or worried;  that if I fall over then the whole family will fall over.  And I feel that's not fair.  I'm not actually the primary caregiver for the kids, their father is.  I am the main earner currently, but I have lots of sick leave and work in an environment where taking sick leave when you need to is actively encouraged.  So financially we would be ok if I fell over for a while.

That's the angry part - that lack of recognition of the work my partner does to keep the family and the household wheels turning, and the expectation that somehow I am secretly doing it or something, because I'm the woman.  Recently we've had a few events that both of us have needed to attend, mainly Local Board work, and at every one someone has said to me "where are the children."  No one has asked their father, even though a lot of these people know he is the main caregiver.  It's a way of making conversation with me, but not with him, it seems.  The difference is not what we do, but other people's expectations of our roles, based on our genders.  That makes me a bit grrrrr.

The worried part is that wormy little voice in my head that whispers "what if it's true"?  If I get sick will the wheels fall off me, and the household, and my partner, and the children?  How would we cope if I was down for a week, a fortnight, a month, longer?  The money would be ok in the short term as my income would keep coming, but the costs would increase - not just medical but potentially increased childcare costs on the three days a week I do most of the childcare.  If I had to miss Board stuff that could be disastrous not just for me but also for the other centre-lefty on our Board who won't have anyone to second motions or back him.  Which would in turn create stress in the family, seeing as how that other centre-lefty is also my partner and the stay home dad in our house.


Were I religious I might pray.  As I'm not I just hope.  Hope that nothing goes wrong with this precision vehicle we are driving, which is finely balanced and requires some odd care that other families possibly don't; hope that we can continue to just keep ahead, financially, of the petrol and maintenance costs; hope that none of the tyres gets a puncture and that the fan belt holds together; hope that the wheels will just keep turning, turning and turning, for another week, another month, until things get easier.

mine kondolanser, norway

as with everyone else, i'm absolutely gutted about the news in norway. it's appalling attack and a terrible tragedy for the people of that country. i started writing this post last night, but it's such a difficult one to write. so i'm going to apologise in advance if there's anything here that could possibly imply that the people of norway deserve anything less than our full sympathy and support.

there are some things that are bothering me about the way this issue is being reported. it's hardly an original thought for me to point out that the use of the term "madman" to describe the terrorist who carried out these attack is hugely ablist and damaging to those with a mental illness. the conflating of violence with mental illness is not backed by any research anywhere, and perpetuates harmful stereotypes.

more than that, to imply that the man responsible for these horrendous attacks was not fully sane is to absolve him of some of the responsibility for the attacks. it is to deny the deliberate and calculated nature of these attacks, that were well-planned and so sadly efficient. this is not the work of someone who has lost their mind, but of someone with the full use of their faculties and a full understanding of what he intended to achieve:

Mr. Breivik was also believed to have posted a video on Friday summarizing his arguments. In its closing moments, the video depicts Mr. Breivik in military uniform, holding assault weapons. Rarely has a mass murder suspect left so detailed an account of his activities. The manifesto describes in detail his purchase of chemicals, his sometimes ham-handed experiments making explosives and his first successful test detonation of a bomb in a remote location on June 13.

by failing to call these attacks exactly what they are ie a full-scale act of terrorims directed against people with a shared political ideology, we shift away the focus from where it needs to lie. it needs to lie with those groups that mr breivik was associated with and it needs to lie with the people who are creating an environment where a person can feel justified in carrying out such an action.

there is no doubt that the environment in europe has become increasingly anti-immigrant, with an extremely negative focus on muslims. as the new york times points out, this kind of thinking is not just in the private arena, but has become an increasing part of the political environment:

The success of populist parties appealing to a sense of lost national identity has brought criticism of minorities, immigrants and in particular Muslims out of the beer halls and Internet chat rooms and into mainstream politics. While the parties themselves generally do not condone violence, some experts say a climate of hatred in the political discourse has encouraged violent individuals.

... Groups are gaining traction from Hungary to Italy, but it is particularly apparent in northern European countries that long have had liberal immigration policies. The rapid arrival of refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants, many of them Muslims, led to a significant backlash in places like Denmark, where the Danish People’s Party has 25 out of 179 seats in Parliament, and the Netherlands, where Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom won 15.5 percent of the vote in the 2010 general election.

... Both the Danish and Dutch right-wing parties are backing precarious minority governments while not directly participating by having ministers, and inching toward mainstream acceptance in the process.

the norwegians were totally undeserving of these attacks. it is a cruel crime against those directly or indirectly affected. what i'm seeing in several comments around the traps is that the norwegians are particularly undeserving victims. i think that's unfair on all those innocent civilians who have suffered from bombings and terrorist attacks around the world. each of those are equally undeserving of the violence that has descended on them. any attempt to mark out degrees of victimhood is repellent. can we not offer our support to the norwegians at this time, without the unnecessary comparisons? they're unhelpful and don't actually indicate any higher degree of concern.

it's hard not to look at this act, in conjunction with other acts of violence happening around the world, and feel a sense of despair at the polarisation of hate groups and their increasing power. how on earth do we counter something like this, and where do we even begin? any attempt to lower the hatred or to encourage a toning down of hate-filled rhetoric is quickly lost in "freedom of speech" arguments. the fact is that hate groups around the world - regardless of religion (or lack thereof), ethnicity, nationality - have always managed to gain a high degree of political success by targetting minorities or some conveniently framed other. despite the incredible violence such a tactic causes, human beings fail to learn from history and we fail to adequately counter this particular tactic.

unfortunately, i don't have any answers in my own mind. if a cure for this kind of political and social illness was possible, then i'm sure it would have been applied by now. all i can do is express my sadness, and ask that people name this act correctly. it's not madness, it is terrorism.

Yucky feelings

Cross posted from my own blog.


I was in my late 20s.
I was articulate.
I had the support of my parents as an equal.
My mother and I have a strong bond of trust.
And it STILL took me two days to say “hey, does X hold you too long when you hug?”
It took me two days to figure out how to verbalise it and get up the courage to say something about this lovely man whom we all respect.
It took me two days to figure out if saying something was worse than not saying something.

And I was strong and powerful and knew my boundaries and legalities and moralities and all the players involved.

The sense of relief when Mum said “yes, and you don’t have to hug him if you don’t want to” was palpable.
Not just from me, but from everyone involved in the conversation.
Because we had all been a bit worried, and no one had said anything.
It is strange to think that even as an adult I needed reassurance that if I didn’t want to hug someone I didn’t have to.

It made me think again about how hard it must be for adults or children who are not in a position of power or trust. Such as those who are in care for mental health or disabilities, or children, who’s’ voices are not heard as clearly because of their age.

Speaking out is HARD. You risk someone else’s reputation as well as your own.
You risk hurting others.
You risk being ignored and not being able to raise it later.

Next time someone's kid doesn’t want to give you a hug or a kiss, don’t let the parents tell them to do it. Let them raise their own boundaries - because how else will they feel confident enough to say no when they need to, if they don’t practice on safe people??

So I just want to say it again.
Because some people who read here are adults. Some are young. Some are people who look after vulnerable/young people.

If you don’t like it, it’s NOT ok.
And the response to “does X make you feel uncomfortable/ touch you funny / hold you too long / creep you out” should always be to supportively listen to the person raising concern, and allow them to choose their own boundaries.

Because we have them for a reason.
And that is ALWAYS ok.

Be the cupcake

I haz no wordz.

What's before 101?

Today I went to the Big Radical Left Fair. It was a fun day - lots of baking, lots of people, and some super cute kids.

If you could get yourself to the venue - the only access was up a flight of stairs.

This is not rare in Wellington. Many people who organise events seem to treat an accessibility as a 'nice to have' - given up when something a group deems more important is under threat.

Every political event is also political statement - over and above anything that is said - the medium is a message. And what organising an event up or down a flight of stairs says is this:

"We have chosen to exclude people from this event on the grounds of their mobility disabilities."

That's not just wrong, because excluding people is wrong, it also weakens the left. Any exclusion of marginalised classes of people make it harder for us to fight for our collective liberation.

So when you're part of a group that is deciding on a venue for something and your struggling (as you probably will in Wellington) and you think "hey what about this community hall/bar/art space that is up a flight of stairs?" Ask yourself "Would I prepared to print - we have chosen to exclude people from this event on the grounds of their mobility disabilities - on every piece of advertising for the event?" And if you wouldn't be prepared to name what you're doing, then don't do it.

Traveling Solo

I'm about to leave the country for a few weeks, and once again I'll be traveling solo. This is something people never seem to react entirely well to; either they don't understand why I would want to go on my own, or they want reassurance about my safety. I get comments like "you're going on a tour, right?" or "are you staying with friends?" (in this particular case I am staying with friends and family for some parts of the trip, but a lot will be on my own. Then they start to tell me about personal alarms that go off when your door is opened (I'm sure that would go down well in a dorm room). If they find out that I often sleep in airports or on trains, I get worried looks. If they find out I usually travel with hand luggage only, they look at me like I'm from another planet.

I've been traveling alone since I was eighteen, for anything from a weekend to close to a year. Even before that, though I was technically with family, I spent large chunks of my teenage years exploring European cities by myself. I learned to navigate trains in languages I didn't speak with relative ease. I spoke to strangers all the time, and though I had a couple of unnerving experiences, I don't regret it at all. In a lot of places you can get a public transport day pass from (say) 9:30am; I'm an early riser so often I'd just walk for hours until it was time. I worked out where to get cheap food and shoes (I'll be in Berlin in a week and I'm already wondering if the noodle place in the Alexanderplatz is still there).

It's not that I don't like traveling with other people; I've had some fantastic journeys with my partner and with friends and wouldn't want to give up one for the other. And it's not that solo travel doesn't have its downsides; even though you talk to heaps of people, you sometimes want someone who knows you. And someone to keep an eye on the bags in the airport or the laundry. But somehow I always come back to traveling by myself.

Flicking through a guidebook recently, I read a caution to not let safety precautions you take at home lapse just because you're on holiday. In some circumstances this is probably fair warning, but for women who are expected to be continually afraid, doing so is a relief. I'm not sure why my fear levels drop when I travel, but though they tend to be high before I go, once the journey's started they're lower than they ever are at home.

But there's far more to it than that. When I travel alone, it's a chance to follow what I feel like doing, without having to discuss it at length or (and I know this sounds horribly selfish) take other people into account. It's also an opportunity to dive in at the deep end and push myself; if I'm not going to eat or sleep unless I take a chance at embarrassing myself by sleeping in French, I'll take the chance. This isn't what I want for my life, on balance, but for what is now the trip or two a year that it happens, it's very important.

Slutwalk: Walk of Shame or McFeminism?

i'm going to reproduce this piece by kamayani sharma, which a facebook friend directed me to. i think it raises an interesting perspective on slutwalk in the indian context, and how well that protest translates from toronto to delhi. the comments on the facebook page are worth reading as well.

i don't agree with everything in the piece (the title of the piece particularly annoys me, though i've reproduced it), but the class issues are particularly relevant. and i 'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that the only way for women's protest to get mass media attention these days is if there is sexualisation involved in some way. would the slutwalk have received so much attention if, as ms sharma points out, women were to wear the actual clothes they were wearing when raped or assaulted? i know that was one of the points underlying slutwalk - that it doesn't actually matter what you wear, because your choice of clothing isn't going to make you safe or put you in danger. what i mean is that the attention these events received was because of the sexualisation, and that same message packaged in a way that didn't have overt sexualisation would probably have been ignored. and it bothers me that the best way for women to get attention is still through sexualisation. but maybe that's just me.

anyway, enough from me. here is ms sharma:

The common Indian slut is a girl who has had the audacity to have had consensual sex and the naiveté to expect nobody to judge her for it. Her natural habitat is some tree-decorated borough in a metropolis, her upbringing privileged and her lifestyle equipped with all the trappings of bourgeois affluence – a good education and considerable freedom and support to do what she wants. The common Indian slut, therefore, is not so common. She is part of a teeny tiny minority of women in this country who can hardly be regarded as representative of the Indian woman and her ordeals. Yet, Slutwalk or Besharmi Morcha is exactly that – an attempt to gloss over the range and depth of oppression that Indian women have to put up with in order to lionize a sudden upper middle-class urge to do something...anything.

It took mass action in Toronto earlier this year to galvanize Delhi’s public into convening and protesting, clearly indicating that the march is really being led by people who are heavily influenced by the “Western” media. Now, I am not suggesting that just because this rally was organised by a certain class or set, it is to be dismissed. It’s because this rally constitutes only that certain class and set, that its political and intellectual commitments appear wobbly. It is not reverse-classism to denounce SlutWalk as the act of well-meaning but ultimately ill-read girls for whom public life is a series of strolls from a metro station to a waiting car, usually in a gaggle. The Facebook group for the event had women saying things such as, “I believe the greatest freedom is the freedom to wear what I want.” The problem with a statement like this is that smacks of a sociocultural advantage that very few women in India can even dream of, much less demand. The freedom to wear what you want is all very well but what about the freedom to even be on the streets wearing what you want?

In an article I recently read, Annie Zaidi touched upon something that I remember saying to a friend when I first read about the SlutWalk. The word ‘slut’ itself is such an endemic term; who uses it and who gets called it? Certainly not sex workers and punters; or blue collar migrant labourers from rural regions stuck in a time warp where women must still behave according to medieval gender roles or risk abuse worse than being called names; or the lower middle class city dwellers who propel their ascent by keeping orthodoxy towards their females well-oiled, if somewhat disguised by a patina of status production activities like ‘education’. So who? It’s rich kids who can be openly promiscuous without any real repercussions that do the slutting and the slut-shaming. Of course, that doesn’t make the term less problematic in this context either since it still targets only the girls and has troubling implications for the potential to construct healthy sex-positive self-images among young ladies. BUT. That is not the point. The point is that the term ‘slut’ has such a supremely restricted role that it cannot be appropriated as a tagline for any truly feminist argument against the status quo. We cannot ‘take back’ a term that was never ours to begin with but is a verbal graft that runs out of meaning beyond the confines of the microscopic group of Indians who would use it.

Women in India are not harassed for being ‘sluts’, they are harassed for being ‘women’. Period.

Their sexual history is irrelevant, their clothes don’t matter. The fact that they dare be in a place that only men should be in – that’s the problem. Sexual crimes are always about power, about who is in charge. Indian men feel increasingly emasculated and threatened when they see women in areas previously dominated by them and in their struggle to re-establish authority, they resort to the violence of sexual assault, whether it’s verbal or physical. In the minds of most Indian men, there is no such thing as ‘slut = sexually free woman’. There is such a thing as ‘free woman = target for sexual assault’.

The fight to be out on the streets is really what this protest should be about. Out on the streets whenever we want, wherever we want and yes, wearing whatever the hell we like. This is a tussle for public space – the Indian male’s sense of entitlement and the Indian female’s sense of deprivation – against the interplay of slowly weakening traditions and reactionary backlashes occurring in the conflicts between the urban and the rural, the poor and the rich, the heterosexual and the homosexual, the man and the woman. This is about the patriarchal codes that control our commons and civic spaces. This is a battle for the right to walk unmolested through any strip of land within the Indian border. This is about equality. This is about all women, from prostitutes to rag pickers to factory workers to university students, having the liberty to go about their business when and how they see fit. How is that possible when this spectrum of concerns has been reduced to pseudo-political pageantry meant to appease “good girls from good families”?

SlutWalk is an annoying, antifeminist paradox. It is recreational hacktivism of the kind which topples over the very ideas that it is meant to uphold, by tearing down feminism (from Toronto to Delhi) and pandering to ignorant notions of patriarchy-friendly (!) ‘gender equity’. It packages serious issues that Indian feminism has been dealing with for years into a designer occasion that plays right into all the conventions and clichés that femininity worldwide is expected to conform to, challenging nothing and confirming chauvinist male attitudes by reassuring them that all the ‘sluts’ *giggle* really want is the licence to wear really tiny skirts and won’t they allow that pwetty please?

Something far more sensible and sensitive is Take Back The Night, wherein people stay out all night at a candlelight vigil to talk about their experiences and come up with safety solutions, or to a lesser degree Blank Noise’s ‘I Never Asked For It’ campaign which had women from all over the country send in the clothes they were wearing at the time of assault (unsurprisingly, full sleeved salwar-kameezes made the cut thus proving the concern about ‘wearing what I want’ redundant) and arranged a clothes drive on one of Bangalore’s busiest roads. Both these campaigns are inclusive and interactive; they enable members of communities, castes and classes across a very wide scope of locations to participate in constructive and meaningful dialogue and improve their society’s understanding of feminism and gender violence outside the home.

What does SlutWalk do? Provide weekend entertainment for some advantaged young women like politics in a Happy Meal?

The Odds & Ends Drawer

It's been a while. Soz.

• This is awesomeness in a blog post, at Pickled Think.
• margotmagowan noticed something missing from a whole heap of kids' movie posters this year. (H/T to @bluemilk)
• Author of Big Selling Actual Books Kate Elliott explains why she writes about rape in her stories. (Trigger warning for rape, violence, war)
• Curvaceous Dee determines what makes her a woman.
• Just in case you missed it, here's Lew's excellent post on the strategic comms failures in the Alasdair Thompson Is A Sexist Dinosaur case (written after the TV3 interview but before the sacking).
• The BBC offers the perspective of sponsored children in Ghana. (H/T to @stef_thomp)
• Annanonymous has a two-parter on over-parenting, Part I and Part II.
• rgoodchild asks where are the men's refuges?  (Trigger warning for domestic violence/abusive relationships)

As always, feel free to share links in comments to your own stuff, or someone else's, that you'd like to get out there.

and he's gone

i know i'm a bit late for this post, but never mind. i have to say i'm very glad to see that alisdair thompson is no longer in a position to make public statements for the EMA. of course he can still make public statements, but they won't mean as much.

i am actually an employer in a voluntary capacity, being on the board of a couple of NGOs. one of these is a women's organisation, and i know that we need support as employers. the EMA should be an option for us, but until now, i really haven't felt that they are - given that their public positions and lobbying haven't been consistent with good employment policy. an employer's organisation that advocates the youth wage or that won't take more concrete actions for equality in the work place is not one that i can justify giving money to. especially from an NGO that is working to improve the lives of people in this community. to belong to that organisation in its current state is to betray the very people our organisation serves. i'm pretty sure that the rest of the board agrees with me on this.

the sacking of mr thompson is a big step but still not good enough. if this organisation really wants to represent employers, it needs to make itself accessible to all types of organisations. i don't believe it's accessable to NGOs in the way it currently operates, but NGOs employ a considerable number of staff. chambers of commerce actually do tend to be a lot better, and have managed to do some progressive things. perhaps EMA could look to them for some ideas on how to actually serve the needs of their community.

on another note, there has been some great writing on the whole alisdair thompson thing from various bloggers, but also in the MSM. there was a good piece by denise irvine in the waikato times yesterday, but i can't find it online. this there's also this one from mai chen, which is very good. and not just because it happens to mention my sister!! who is absolutely as awesome as mai chen thinks she is:

My concern is that stereotyping may stop you from hiring the best staff. New Zealand is a small country.

I had a call some years back from a law professor who asked if I would hire her top student. Despite a stellar academic record, and a formidable work ethic, no one would hire this lawyer because she was Muslim, wore a hijab and prayed five times a day facing Mecca. The woman interviewed well, so I hired her and found she was the best law clerk I had ever had.

please ignore my bias and read the whole thing - it's worth it!

then there is this article about the low number of women on nz boards:

Korn/Ferry surveyed the top 100 boards by market capitalisation in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia China, and New Zealand, finding 65% of New Zealand boards had no women directors compared to 29% in Asia-Pacific leader Australia. In Singapore, 59% of boards had no women members, 57% in India, 56% in Malaysia, 43% in Hong Kong and 39% in China.

The news gets even worse, with the Asia-Pacific region lagging Europe and America, an imbalance report author Alicia Yi describes as "stark".

the difference in figures for asia can be explained by the low wages there, making it much more affordable to hire domestic staff for housework & child-rearing. also the cheaper & greater variety of food, making takeaways and eating out a much more affordable option. these are not things that we want to be emulating.

however, there is no reason we should be lagging behind australia, europe & america. many of these countries have government policies that help to improve equality, particularly in europe. as usual, our government is not prepared to look at these. although i will be impressed if they do something about removing secrecy re wages as was mentioned not too long ago. or even ask companies to report on gender payrates within their organisations.

finally, i'm currently awaiting brian edwards' defense of john ansell. based on past form, i'm sure it will be forthcoming.

Of Ansell, ACT & general multipurpose bigotry

Apparently one of the several significant brains behind the ACT party thinks it is a party for men who think like men, not men who think like women or women who think like women. It's also not a party for Maori, or indeed anyone who isn't "white".

The surprising thing about this bigotry is more that Ansell's said it so publicly than that he thinks it to start with.

As a woman who thinks like a human being I can only conclude that ACT isn't a party for human beings.

10 things i want to say to a black woman

via facebook, this brought tears to my eyes:

25 years

A few weeks ago, there were so many people at the meeting I was at that we ended up sitting on the floor and on the stairs and out into the doorway. Someone who had been involved in the movement for homosexual law reform remarked that changing the law was probably the least important part of what happened then. From the chair I was sitting on (being obsessively early to things sometimes pays off) I looked across at everyone there; gay and bisexual women and men, trans* people, genderqueer people, straight people, people I didn't know how they identify, and probably people who don't know themselves. There were kids in school uniform and people older than my parents. I became suddenly, randomly, tearful. Of course it wasn't.

Unlike most of my friends my age, I remember living in a country (not New Zealand) when male homosexuality was illegal, and I remember a law reform with a crucial difference; there was no movement. That is not to say that there weren't some incredibly brave activists who put their lives on the line, but the arguments in favour of reform - at least that I heard - were legalistic and fatalistic. There was nothing I could have dreamed of being a part of.

The law change was important, of course it was. I'm really fucking glad that none of my friends here fear arrest for their sexuality. And even though it does not directly affect me, it paved the way for a whole heap of changes that make a difference to how I live my life every single day. But earlier this afternoon someone posted on Twitter:

One of my happiest memories is the campaign for Homosexual Law Reform. It taught me, at 15, that if you stand up things can change.

Because we have a long fucking way to go on all fronts. Many of things things I could cite as examples of how different things are - the fact that bank did not give a shit that when my partner and I applied for a mortgage we are both female, for example - rely on an already advantaged position. But thanks to those who stood up then, we have a space to make those changes and an example - even for those, like myself, who were just small children at the time, of how important collective action is, not just in making changes to the law, but in connecting people, transforming attitudes and giving us the confidence that can be so badly needed.

I often cite the example of these two law reforms - and the campaign for the civil union bill which I was actively involved in, and in many ways gave me the courage to come out - to underline the importance of collective action, that mass movements are about so much more than putting pressure on a handful of people in parliament. But I also know from experience that activism is often difficult, even more so when you are defending your right to exist.

So to all those who were there twenty five years ago, thank you. Thank you for the times you were scared as hell but kept going anyway, the times you pushed on past pain you should never have had to experience. Thank you for every time you got splinters in your hands from placards or the Wellington wind blew the glue covered poster right back in your face. To those who didn't make it and to those who are still fighting today, from this twenty something queergirl with a life she never used to think possible, thank you.

Why I'm okay with Goff et al speaking at the Family First conference

A reminder:  Each of the bloggers here at The Hand Mirror have their own opinions.  Unless we've explicitly said something like "we've talked about this and decided X" then kindly do not automatically assume we agree.  I have no idea if any of the other writers here agree with the substance of this post and am prepared for possible counter-posts or comments to ensue.  Also please do not assume silence means agreement.  For me silence usually means no resources to respond right then.

When Hone, Pita, Tau and Shane went to speak at Destiny's conference I ended up in a twitter scrap* about it with many people I usually agree with. 

I suspect this post is going to put me in the same position again, because I think it's okay for John Key and Phil Goff (and indeed any other politician) to speak at the Family First conference.

Politicians have a duty to engage.  I'm one of Them now, thanks to my election to local government, and it's sharpened my focus on these issues considerably.  If Family First or Destiny invited me to speak at one of their events would I?  Probably yes.

If we don't speak to the groups we disagree with, even the ones that preach hate that we oppose, we cede that ground to the haters.  We leave them unchallenged in their safe spaces, continuing to validate their own views in an echo chamber.  We abandon any silent allies we might have in those rooms.

Sometimes the bigots will blurt out those hateful views in a forum where they get the feedback they deserve.  Alasdair Thompson's widespread condemnation for his antiquated and inaccurate attitude about women's productivity is a recent example of this.  But if there was someone on the EMA Board, a high-powered CEO, or even more than one, who Thompson circulated with who told him how wrong he was when he was spouting off at The Northern Club or in the Koru Lounge, wouldn't that have been useful too?

I believe politicians should try to accept every invitation they get, particularly the ones where they are being asked clear transparent questions about their policies and views in public.  To oppose politicians speaking at the Family First or Destiny conferences is akin** to believing they shouldn't speak at the Gay Auckland Business Association pre-election debates, or indeed the Suffrage Eve Debate the team here organised in 2008. 

How can we make informed decisions about who to vote for if politicians are not upfront about their intentions?  Even when we don't like or agree with the people asking the questions?  I agree wholeheartedly with this quote from George's thought-provoking post at Public Address:

I don’t begrudge the PM or Leader of the opposition meeting with their constituents. Everybody has the right to participate in politics, no matter how disturbing we find their ideas. Unfortunately, Russel Norman seemed unable to make this distinction. I hate the Exclusive Brethren with an absolute vengeance – my own grandfather was blocked from entering his brother’s funeral, but I do not think this disqualifies their right to act politically. The same goes for Family First and the Australian Christian Lobby. What is a problem is hiding that contact, and leveraging one group while pretending your views and positions are different. [my emphasis added]

Personally I will consider the answers that Key and Goff give in their so-called interviews with Bob McCoskrie helpful in determining where I'll put my ticks on November 26th.  Possibly in a diametrically opposed fashion from what His Bobness might like, but still it'll be useful for me and for others who support marriage equality, pro-choice abortion law reform, and other trendy socially progressive Good Stuff.

I judged the politicians who spoke at Destiny not for going, but for what they said when they were there.  I was disappointed not to hear any media reports of any of the four seriously challenging Destiny's views.  I'll be doing the same as the news comes out from the Family First forum too.  I'll judge Key, Goff and other pollies not on where they say things, but on what they say, how they say it, how they plan to do what they say, and then how they follow through. 

Destiny and Family First may be giving politicians platforms at their grand events to sway them, to encourage them to agree with their views, but that doesn't mean those who accept that platform accept those rules.  They can play to their own needs, speak to their own base.  They can act with integrity, even when it might mean some boos or slow claps.  I have several times said clearly that I am pro-choice at election debates held in churches, including at least one quite fundamentalist one***, and while it hasn't been popular I've yet to have anyone even be rude to me as a result.  If anything there has been a grudging respect for being upfront and clear about my views.  Which I think is the basic responsibility of any politician, really.

Challenging people is hard, especially when you are challenging them about their hate, and in their space.  It doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but you do need to think carefully about how to do it.  Prompt people to think, to question, to reassess what they thought they knew for sure; that's what progressive politicians who speak at regressive forums should be doing imho.

The performances of Rudd and Howard at the Australian Christian Lobby in 2007 were not that.  They did not challenge, they capitulated.  It remains to be seen (at the time of writing) if Goff and/or Key will nod and agree or politely yet firmly critique the prejudices of their hosts .



* A twap maybe?
**  Cousins rather than siblings - Destiny and Family First do promote hate imho, whereas GABA certainly do not to the best of my knowledge.
***  The question, which was a written one supplied by the organisers ahead of time, although I hadn't received them in advance like everyone else, was very similar to "In NZ 16,000 unborn children are killed every year.  What does your party intend to do to end this?"  It was in 2002, hence the lower figure for the abortion rate than currently. 

yet another burqa post

so i've been away overseas while the news about the burqa-wearing women being refused entry on buses happened. so i wasn't able to return the calls from close-up & breakfast to speak on the issue. as it happens, this turned out to be a good thing, because we got to hear from burqa-wearing women instead. probably a first for a nz television news programme, and you could see the women were extremely nervous. this is not surprising, given the general nasty commentary that comes to the surface every time a burqa-related story hits the local news.

i know one of these women very well, she has grown up in nz & is a fully qualified lawyer. which doesn't make her comments any more valid than the other woman, whose history i don't know. what does bother me is the fact that these women should have to defend what they wear, in a way that no-one else really does. it bothers me that every time something comes up, we have to go through all the same arguments, deal with the same ignorant comments and the same belittling of women who have caused no harm. which is why i'm not going to go through it all again in this post. i've done plenty of burqa-related posts already.

i also hate that the public discourse of muslim women in this country centres around the burqa, especially when the vast majority of muslim women don't even wear them. yet we are all defined by it. stories that have the word muslim in them, if they are accompanied by a picture, inevitably have a picture of burqa-clad women. even when the story hasn't got anything to do with the burqa or even with women.

it's an image that is being forcibly associated in the public mind with muslim women, and one that is really very hard to counter. in hamilton, we tried to counter it when a social service organisation produced a pamphlet depicting a burqa-clad woman (who was simply a model), which we felt unfairly stereotyped all muslim women. there was mediation, the organisation agreed to pull the pamphlet but has failed to do so. they agreed not to speak to the media but did. so the mediation, to this date, has been unsuccessful. and this was just one case, which takes a reasonable amount of time & effort to follow through.

i know a lot of muslim women are frustrated by this image and want to change it, and i'd be really interested in hearing about some manageable steps we could make in that direction. muslim women have tried to get positive stories into print media, based on events or visits, but we've been stonewalled. and yes, we've done media training, we've heard about angles and hooks and what makes a good story. we see significant non-stories (or at least ones that have much less basis to them) getting covered when our own stories are ignored.

we are so much more than a piece of cloth covering the face.

note: i'm pretty jet-lagged & probably not going to be in a particularly good mood at the time this post goes up. so expect moderation to be tough on this post.

Commenting Changes

Those who read this blog, or many other NZ feminist blogs, will know that people have raised the issue of transphobia and this blog being an unsafe space for some transpeople. These are concerns that we want to address. We are discussing different options for improving The Hand Mirror, this post is about the first step we are going to take, not all we are intending to do.

One of the things we know we need to do is change our comment section. We're likely to make a number of changes and experiments to improve it - some in reasonably direct response to the issues people have raised, and others to address our experiences as moderators. Addressing the comment section is just part of the changes we want to make. We are also talking about ways to directly address transphobia.

We want to do two things now, before we make other changes. The first is make it easier for people to report out of line comments. We have set up a contact address specifically reporting comments (thehandmirrorblog@gmail.com). This will appear on the commenting page and so should be easily accessible. We will aim to act on e-mails or reply within a day, but need to make clear that sometimes that won't be possible.

The other thing we need to do now is make it clearer about what sort of space we are. We will probably revise the comment policy substantially over the next few months, but in the meantime we have just added material to reflect both reality, as our current. You can see the revised post here. We're not accepting the current situation, and we are working to change it, but in the meantime we think it's important to be honest.

I want to be really clear that we don't know how to create the sort of comment section we want to have. As we make changes some may not work, so we welcome on going feedback and ideas.

Note about comments: Julie's apology thread remains open if you want to discuss anything that happened previously. This is about commenting sections, moderating tools, and policy, please stay on-topic.

Down Under Feminist Carnival time again!

The 38th Down Under Feminists' Carnival is up at bluebec and is absolutely chock-full of feministy wondrousness. 

If you find yourself with some procrastinating to be doing then I suggest you make with the clicky ;-)

And many thanks to Rebecca for putting it together and including links to posts here, much appreciated!

In Wellington next Tuesday? Come see Bob Kerr

One of the things that has given me great joy as an adult is discovering that some of my favourite children's authors were lefties. Bob Kerr is a New Zealand example, I read his awesome graphic novels as a child, and as an adult I am awed by his illustrations of labour struggles and conscientious objectors.

Next Tuesday he's giving a talk "Putting Visuals to History" illustrated with examples from his book “After the War” and from exhibitions on Archibald Baxter, Rua Kenana and others.

When: Tuesday 12 July, 6pm
Where: Sandwiches, corner of Kent and Marjoriebanks st*
There will be a cash-bar and refreshments will be provided.



After the War is one of my favourite books to read to kids. It doesn't have many words (and if you've said you're going to read three books that's a definate plus), but it is beautiful and meaningful in a very few pages. If you have never read it then check it out when you're next in the library(or buy it for a small child you know).

If you haven't seen any of his art since you read "Terry and the Gunrunners" you can check it out on his blog.


This is part of the Labour History Project's AGM (more info about them here)

* The entrance on Marjoriebanks St is more accessible - no stairs - I don't know how wide the door is.

Quick bits & pieces

The pay equity discussion continues, with the Prime Minister saying there shouldn't be pay discrimination on the basis of pay and he's unaware of any evidence that there is, despite all the evidence that there is.

Hannah Tamaki has been disqualified from running for the leadership of the Maori Women's Welfare League.  More at Maui Street on this.

I did an interview for an article on feminism that was in the Herald on Sunday on the weekend but it isn't online yet.  They also talked to other online feministy types Alana and Coley.

Lots of discussion about the issue of bus drivers turning away women in burqa.  

There's a new (historic) rape complaint being laid against Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

All the help that we can get

Every time I read news stories like these, I think of this poem. There isn't enough information on this particular case to make any useful comment at this stage, but an open mindedness about the circumstances in which things we may consider unthinkable happen is never a bad starting point.



[The video is a reading of Adrian Mitchell's translation of Brecht's 'About the child murderer Marie Farrar. A text version is available here - you'll need to scroll down a little.]

Are we there yet? No not yet

Just a quick post to let you know our behind the scenes discussions about changes to the make-up, commenting, moderation, and other aspects of the culture here at The Hand Mirror are still going on.  Criticisms raised last month (and before) are being considered carefully and there is a shared commitment to make this a better place.

We've made some interim decisions for a few short-term changes we hope will help while we do more thinking and work for the medium and longer term stuff that is needed.

We're just having a small technical hitch with a key part of the first bit (which is mostly around moderation and commenting), hence the delay.  Hopefully there will be something up later this week letting you know about the first step in more detail once we have that sorted. 

Thanks for your patience while we work through this.  And for your generosity in helping us learn and grow.

Adventures in gingerbread

Really enjoying this season of Doctor Who (watching it as it shows up on Prime so please no spoilers from beyond A Good Man Goes To War aka the episode when we find out who Riversong is)

Here, in honour of Amy and Rory and Riversong and oh yeah, that doctor guy, is a gingerbread tardis.  You can read the story of it's manufacture, along with pics of the process, here.

There may be SPOILERS in comments, depending on where you are up to yourself, so please indulge with suitable caution.  I certainly intend to discuss in a bit more detail the Riversong identity revelation.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Women with boyfriends in jail can be raped.

Women with multiple cell phones can be raped.

Women who need money can be raped.

Women who can't read or write the language of the country they are in can be raped.

Sex workers can be raped.

Women who lie on their tax forms can be raped.

Women who've lied about rape in the past can be raped.

Women who launder money can be raped.

Women who have told that their actual oppression is not enough to get them asylum, and so have to learn a story that will can be raped.

Women who have many truths they cannot tell to authorities can be raped.

With our brothers and our sisters in many far off lands

I don't really use twitter, but every so often I get mesmerized by a hash tag. Tonight it was #J30 and #isupportthestrikes (with an occasional check out @Ed_Milliband - just to enjoy the many ways to say "fuck off"). A large chunk of British teachers and public servants are out on strike. Schools, courts and benefit centres are shut all over the place, and there are rallies and marches across the country. There are really awesome connections between struggles, with those protesting benefit cuts, joining the picket lines of the people who work in job centres.

Everytime people chant "The Workers United Will Never Be Defeated" in Wellington there are about 25 people there. I always make the same joke: "I agree with the general principle, but don't see it's application here. But when you've got more than half a million people out I think it's fully justified (although the workers aren't quite united, who is on strike and who isn't seems super complicated and doesn't make any sense to me).



The picture is from Elephant the best site I've found for live reports.

Of course Britain is not the only far off land in upheaval (The Daily Telegraph had a headline "Strikers Should Learn From Greece" - a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with, although I suspect we mean slightly different things). It is the easiest one to find good info in a language that I speak though. I'd welcome links in the comments. libcom did have good info from Greece, but it hasn't been updated in a while.