all inequality matters, mr hazeldine

so, it's new years eve and i'm having a quiet night at home, totally not bothering to reflect on the year past or make any kind of resolutions i'll never keep, or even looking forward to the year ahead. just not even interested really. i have been following up the links on maia's awesome post just below and finding the discussions very interesting.

i have also been looking at various stuff people have been linking to, one of which is this piece in the herald by tim hazeldine about growing inequality. as a lefty, i'd say it's a much needed piece and i'm glad to see it's being run in a major newspaper. very happy that we are talking about this stuff, and heartened by the initial comments (i haven't read all of them though).

but then there is this bit:

So who should care about this? You'd think those on the political left would care, and they do complain, but it was their preoccupation with identity politics and the beneficiary society that left the gates open and undefended when the warriors of privilege roared in and purloined the booty.

what the F**K? i am so incredibly tired of this narrative, and we are seeing it thrown into so many pieces of writing lately. these little snide comments about identity politics and more snide comments about beneficiaries. and guess who are the types of people making these comments? it's not hard. it's the people who tend to be the most privileged in society, the people for whom identity has never been an issue, who haven't had to face marginalisation which often leads to poverty, simply because of their identity.

i don't even know what this "preoccupation with ... the beneficiary society" is supposed to mean. that we're trying to keep people on benefits? because, you know, the actions of every government over the last 2 decades has been to make it harder to get on a benefit, to make it harder to survive on a benefit, and to push people back into work as hard as they can. some did it in a softer way by creating employment programmes and investing in training and education. others have done by creating a culture whereby people have been denied information about their legal entitlements. yet others cut the basic benefit amount. there have been moves to prevent beneficiaries from moving to small towns. if there has been any "preoccupation" with the beneficiary society, it has been a constant attempt to punish beneficiaries for being on a benefit.

if that's what the writer means by this statement ie that we have wasted time trying to punish beneficiaries instead of putting more energy into dealing with inequality, then yes, that's a point i can agree with. but it's not clear from the way he has worded this sentence as to what exactly it does mean.

and the reason i'm suspicious about his meaning is the whole "preoccupation with identity politics". again, we are presented with a zero-sum argument: that you can either do identity politics or you can do class/inequality politics, but you can't do both. and that the latter has been ignored because of the former. which is such complete and utter bullsh*t. where is his evidence for the this statement?

because the evidence i've seen is quite the opposite. at the same time as we had paid parental leave, we also got working for families. the latter being an attempt to deal with income inequality. maybe not a sterling attempt, maybe a flawed attempt, but it was done and has had a huge impact. some of WFF applied to beneficiaries with children, though not all. i'm really glad that one of the labour party policies in the last election dealt specifically with the inequality there, by phasing in the full entitlement to all families regardless of employment status.

could more have been done by the 5th labour government regarding inequality? of course. i would have liked to see a lot more structural change, strengthening of labour laws and so on. but there was plenty done.

and what this writer fails to even acknowledge is that some the so-called identity politics is actually a means to reducing income inequality. i remember being present at some of the policy discussions in 2004 & 2005, particularly around women's issues. one of the major barriers faced by working women in lower socio-economic groups was access to childcare. the high costs of childcare were a barrier for women to get into employment and thereby improve the financial well-being of themselves and their families.

the ECE subsidies and greater investment into childcare was a way to reduce inequality - both for women as part of their identity as carers of children (and the majority of carers still tend to be women, though that is starting to change), but also as part of a class/inequality issue whereby poor women were kept from improving their situation because of a significant barrier.

similarly, the investment in settlement support for migrants and refugees is as much an issue about class/inequality as it is about identity. for this group, a lack of nz work experience and, for some, problems with language were (and continue to be) a barrier to employment. by investing in ESOL programmes, by having induction programmes and other courses that help settlement, the government was solving both an identity issue and a poverty/inequality issue.

it is not an effing either/or situation. and i'm frankly quite sick of privileged men (and a few women) telling those of us who have issues related to identity that our issues don't matter, or that they get in the way of some greater progress. it. is. cr*p. progress for us means progress for everyone. the whole country benefits when identity issues are resolved, and particularly resolved in a way that deals with income inequality as well.

so mr hazeldine, you have grossly missed the point here, and made an invalid assertion without any kind of proof. and i expect better. moreover, i think it's really important that everyone challenges this kind of increasingly prevalent narrative, which i sincerely hope doesn't infiltrate the labour party. it's the kind of narrative that pits groups of people against each other in a divisive, that is extremely productive for those who currently hold the majority of wealth and power in this country.

On Change and Accountability: A response to Clarisse Thorn

Note for those who don't read Feministe.  Clarisse Thorn posted an interview with Hugo Schwyzer.  People objected to Hugo Schwyzer being given this space on a feminist blog as he had, among other things, tried to kill his girlfriend a decade ago. Clarisse Thorn responded by closing comments on the interview thread and writing a post called On Change and Accountability.  This post is primarily in response to that last post of Clarisse's, which attempted to transfer the debate to a theoretical one about change and accountability.  (Feministe has since offered this apology).  This post will focus on the general not the particular - so you don't have to have followed all the links to understand it. If you want to follow the wider discussion La Lubu's post is my favourite (I also think there's been some good stuff on Tumblr, but I can never find stuff there).

*******

Dear Clarisse

Towards the end of your post On Change and Accountability you asked:

Have you thought about these questions in your own life? I don’t mean abstractly, as an intellectual exercise. Concretely, and with intention. What would you do if, tomorrow, you found out that your best friend was a rapist? Your lover? What would you do if your sibling came to you to confess a terrible crime? To request absolution? To request accountability?

Did you expect your readers to answer no?  Sometime this year, it'll be a decade since a man tried to rape a woman in my house.  They knew each other, and me, through left-wing political circles.  Since then I've known more than ten left-wing men who used intimate violence against women.  I've never been central to any collective response, all of which were ad hoc and some of which may have done more good than harm, or been particularly close to the men.  I still have no idea on how to respond to intimate violence on the left in a positive way, but I do have quite a good idea of some of the ways individual and collective responses can do harm.

So yes, I have thought about your questions - my answers and my response to you is deeply intertwined in the experiences I've had, the conversations I've had about those experiences, and the reading I've done.* However, I am being a little bit more focused in my response than you were in your post.  I am very suspicious of attempts to broaden discussions of intimate abuse and abuse of power, to a wider idea of bad things people have done.  Men who use the power that our sexist and misogynist society gives them to hurt women generally find it easy to do so, and get a lot of support when they're challenged.  I believe that that social context is important. I am going to focus this post on responses to men who abuse women, because that was the situation that triggered your post and it's what I have most experience with.

I will provide direct answers to your questions  the end of the post. First, I want to outline the ways I disagree with the premise of your post, and why some parts of it I disagreed with so strongly that I felt driven to spend the last few days planning and writing this reply.  You ask:

How can we create processes for accountability? Feminists often discuss crimes like partner violence and sexual assault. Our focus is on helping survivors of these crimes, just as it should be. I personally have been trained as a rape crisis counselor, and I have volunteered in that capacity (if you’re interested in feminist activism, then I really encourage you to look into doing the same). And the history of feminism includes convincing people to actually care about and recognize the trauma of rape: Rape Trauma Syndrome was first defined and discussed in the 1970s.

But perhaps because of our focus on helping and protecting survivors, I rarely see feminist discussions of how to deal with people who have committed crimes. In fact, I rarely see any discussions of how to deal with that, aside from sending people to jail. Let me just say that problems with the prison-industrial complex are their own thing—but even aside from those, the vast majority of rapes and assaults and other forms of gender-based violence go unprosecuted.

I think other people have already pointed out whose work you rendered invisible in this section, but I want to take it in a slightly different direction. Here you seem to suggest that responding to perpetrators and responding to survivors are two separate things and that feminists' focus on survivors has left little space for dealing with perpetrators. My experience has been that the best response to perpetrators have been more survivor centred, and the worst have been entirely perpetrator-centred. Why?  Because abuse is about power and control - and centring perpetrators is giving them power and control.

A basic assumption of your in the post is that good responses to perpetrators need to be centred around perpetrators.  You barely mention survivors in your post, let alone other people who may have been hurt by similar behaviour and have boundaries and triggers and want to keep themselves safe.  Men who use the power society gave them to hurt women can do so because their experiences are centred in society.  I think centring perpetrators makes it harder for them to change, not easier.

“Accountability teams” are one way I’ve heard of for dealing with this: whether support groups of perpetrators who share their experiences with making amends and changing their ways, or groups of friends who assist a perpetrator with those processes. I would like to see more and larger discussions about those teams, and more acknowledgement that change is possible.

'Accountability teams' sound great - but I'm pretty sceptical of them.  When I've known support groups set up formally around perpetrators, they have become advocacy groups for those perpetrators.  One man I know, who was part of 'support group' for a perpetrator rang up individual members of a collective who had decided that the perpetrator was not welcome in their space; he attempted to pressure each individual member, and ignored a woman who repeatedly stated "I'm not comfortable with this" and kept trying to pressure her.  Likewise, I'm reasonably familiar with government funded programmes which act broadly like the perpetrator groups you describe above.  From what I know of the research, they're not particularly effective, and there is some suggestion that they actually make people better abusers.

We live in a world with a profound level of ignorance about intimate abuse, and an awful lot of myths that many people believe.  In my experience, perpetrators who don't want to change have found it easy to surround themselves with friends who support their worldview in some way.  This makes sense - if you're someone who doesn't want to be abusive, you are likely to have among your friends people who will support you in meaningful ways, but if you don't want to change, then it's very easy to find people who will act as your apologists.  Those who surround themselves with apologists will generally be happy with presenting themselves as trying to change - and use any support group to bolster that claim.

This doesn't mean that I don't believe in support for perpetrators who are genuinely trying to change.  I just have known far more perpetrators who were trying to persuade people that they were genuinely trying to change, than those who have genuinely tried to change.  And those who are not trying to change have tended to use systems that have been set up to punish women they have abused. 

I can imagine a time, or a circumstance, when I would have been excited about 'accountability teams'.  I think our disagreement there is just a sign about how many layers of abuse apologist bullshit I have found around every abusive man I have known. However, my disagreement to what you said next is more fundamental:    

If we can’t create this kind of process, then how can we expect to create real change around these crimes? How can we expect perpetrators of violence to work on themselves if we can’t give them the space to work? Why should someone work for forgiveness if they know forgiveness can never come?

I want to untangle this, because there are a lot of different ideas here.  First of all, when it comes to feminist blogs, there is no 'we', in fact when it comes to communities (which after all are informal sets of relationships with non-formalised power and decision making) there is no 'we'.  There can be no 'we' without a collective decision making process - just a false 'we' people talking on behalf of others.

I agree that perpetrators need space and resources to change, but the biggest barrier to that is generally that they are surrounded by apologists and cultural narratives that justify their behaviour.  Outsiders can't intentionally clear that away, they can only offer alternatives.

But what I really disagree with is the idea that abusive men should be working for forgiveness, let alone your conclusion that that means people need to forgive.

As others have pointed out forgiveness has a lot of religious overtones and baggage, it's a narrow way to frame responses to abusive men, that will only speak to particular people.  However, even if I translate it to language that resonates more with me, rather than forgiveness I would talk about 'being OK with someone', I still think you are talking about deeply personal decisions and boundaries that people can only draw for themselves.  For example, seven years ago I stayed silent, when a woman with black eyes told me it was an accident, even though I knew that wasn't true.  I have realised, over the years, that I am never going to be OK with what I did.  I also realised that that meant I was never going to be OK with this woman's boyfriend, because I'm not going to hold myself responsible for my inaction around abuse, longer than I'm going to hold the man who did it (who has  changed more than most men I know who have committed intimate violence - although he has behaved in deeply problematic ways much more recently than seven years ago).

Perpetrators should not be working for forgiveness, because forgiveness is deeply personal.  But more than that I'm incredibly wary of the idea that abusers should be working on stopping hurting people, for any kind of reward, including changing the way people think of them.

One group response I saw from a distance used their silence over a rapist (and were generally very good at silencing other people) to try and get him to attend an anti-sexual-violence programme.  They held out that they would keep his abuse from going too public and got him to take certain steps.  It was, obviously, a disaster - change is fucking difficult and people have to really want to do it.  If you try and use leverage you have over someone to make them change (particularly someone manipulative, as most successful abusers are) then you are going to be unsuccessful.

An easy path back to everything being OK, is often what abusive men who don't take their abuse seriously (but don't necessarily deny it) - want.  I've known an abusive man demand this, and punish the survivor because he didn't get it. He used all ll those subtle talking to friend of friends ways that it's so easy for abusers to punish survirors particularly if other people let them.  One group I know set the simple requirement "you tell us when you think you are ready to come back" and never heard from two different men again.  I think it's important not to offer short-cuts or a path to people being OK - learning to live with what you've done and other people's reaction to what you've done is a perpetrator's own messy work.

*********

However, none of that was why your post troubled me so much. You wrote it in response to people who were part of a feminist space and were outraged at the way you had centred in that space a man who had tried to murder his girlfriend. You were explicit both at feministe, and your place, that criticisms of that man bothered you, and shut that criticism down.

Then you wrote a post that is incredibly dismissive of people who disagree with you:

But I hope I can dim the flamewar into a lantern to illuminate issues that actually matter.

I believe that the politics of this situation are mostly a cheap distraction from truth and honor.

You go further, you go into some detail about why you think Hugo has changed and explicitly argue that your view of Hugo should be other's view of Hugo:

Other feminists have been angrily emailing me, Tweeting at me, etc with things like “FUCK YOU FOR PROTECTING THIS WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING.” But I have seen no evidence that Hugo hasn’t made an honest and sustained effort at recovery and accountability. 

Your entire post reads, to me, like an argument that people who who don't agree with you about Hugo's transformation, or the relevance of Hugo's transformation about the way he has treated should not hold or express those views (partly because you don't spend much time trying to persuade people on either of these points).  You are demanding a 'we' without a collective decision making process.

To explain why I think this is the most anti-feminist position that I have ever read on Feministe I have to tell a story.

In 2006, a man named Ira hit his girlfriend when they were breaking up (he did this in a supposedly radical social centre - he was not the first man to assault his girlfriend in that social centre).  After they broke up the girlfriend (who I will call Anne for the purposes of the post, although that's not her name) named the abuse within the relationship.  Ira had been emotionally, physically and sexually abusive.

Ira had many defenders, and responses to the abuse focused on him (in fact a lot of my caution about ideas like accountability teams, and my firmness that all responses have to be survivor centred come from this experience).  He was exceptionally good at using mutual acquaintances (and there were many) to punish Anne.  He never made amends with Anne, or anyone else.  He did what most abusers who I've known who were seriously challenged do - he left town.

Apparently in this new place, he talked a good game.  He admitted to some of what he'd done, and presented himself as a reformed man.  He didn't need to make meaningful change, he just needed to present himself as someone who had done so.

In 2009, about three years after they broke up he was part of organising climate camp.  This was supposed to bring people from all around the country to Wellington, where Anne was living.  Anne wanted to go to the camp, but she did not want to be around him.  She wrote to various people, including the safer spaces team, outlining the situation and asking if he could not come.  She got nothing back but vagueness and an argument that they could not do anything because the camp did not exist yet.

One of the arguments of the safer spaces team, which included people who claimed that they were feminists, was that they had talked to Ira and were convinced that he had changed.  They believed, or at least acted as if it was true, that it was their belief about him was important.  They ignored the view of one of the people he had abused, and many other women who felt unsafe around him.

It got messy from there.  Ira left, but only after a protest.  A woman who had been part of protesting Ira's actions was kicked out of climate camp by the safer spaces committee for being 'abusive' because she yelled at a man for hugging her when she didn't want to be hugged.  Ira got someone connected with Climate Camp to harass Anne - like I said he was good at getting mutual acquaintances to punish her.

The safer spaces committee had made it clear where they stood when they decided that it was their view on whether or not Ira had changed that mattered.

*********

Your post read to me as taking exactly the same position as the climate camp safer spaces committee.  You appeared to be arguing that your view that Hugo Schwyzer was reformed, and that his reforming mattered was important. Why?

Everything about your post oozes pressure.  When you argue: "Why should someone work for forgiveness if they know forgiveness can never come?" You are arguing that people should forgive abusive men, because it's necessary for them to change.

There is no space in your post for survivors.  Either direct survivors of Hugo's actions, or survivors of similar violence.  There is no space for people to draw their own boundaries around an abusive man.  Indeed nothing appears to matter in your post except the perpetrator, and his path to forgiveness.  There is no way of getting a unified response - of promising survivors' forgiveness - which doesn't involve asking or demanding that some people ignore their own boundaries.

There is nothing new or transformative in arguing that survivors and those who care about their abuse, should not have boundaries because other people believe that the man has changed. Just a month ago I was in a meeting where someone argued that as far as we knew Omar Hamed hadn't tried to rape anyone all year, and therefore it was divisive to argue that he should not be welcome at our political event.

I believe that part of being OK with an abusive man, has to be accepting that other people may not be OK and respecting their boundaries.

To pressure women to be OK, act OK, or pretend to be or act OK around a man who has been abusive towards woman, is a profoundly anti-feminist act. That pressure cannot be part of anything that is truly justice, or truly transformative.  

*********

I don't have a generic answer about how I'd act if someone I cared about had raped someone.  There are too many variables. Obviously if anyone came to me seeking absolution, I would tell them that is not something I can give.   But, if I decided that I was OK continuing the relationship then I would tell him that he needed to respect people's boundaries around him, that some people would never be OK with him, and that he needed to find a way of being that wouldn't pressure other people and their boundaries (and he would have to be on board with that for me to continue the relationship). I would respect other people's boundaries around him, and try to ensure that I didn't put direct or indirect pressure on them.

I feel incredibly lucky, ten years down the track, that I have never had to respond to intimate violence from a man  I cared about.  But I have seen the harm that women do to survivors of violence in defence of men they care about. I've seen manipulative men get women to do their dirty work. I've seen the way 'he's changed' has been used by other women to pressure both direct survivors, and women who are uncomfortable with abusive men more generally.  I hope I have learned enough to recognise those roles and refuse them.

Do we actually believe that people can change? If so, how do we want them to show us they’ve changed? Is absolution possible? Who decides the answers to these questions?

In reverse order, groups that have genuine collective decision making processes can make group answers to these questions.  Otherwise the decisions can only be individual.

Absolution is a religious idea that is not compatible with liberation.  Whatever we have done, we have done. Nothing and no-one can stop us from being the person who has done the worst actions we have taken.

Abusive men show me that they've changed when they stop hurting women and don't use intimediaries to do their dirty work.  If an abusive man was OK with people talking about their abuse, was OK with people not being OK with it, and understood that responses to their abuse cannot be all about them, but about the people they hurt, then I'd probably be willing to believe that he'd changed.

And yes - I do think people can change. I think feminists have to believe in the possibility of abusive men changing otherwise there's no hope but a separatist commune.  

But I won't stake anything on that belief, not anyone's safety, or comfort, or boundaries. I don't like the odds.  Nobody knows how to stop someone from abusing their power, and most attempts to do so are failures (that's from friends who have worked in the field and reviewed the research).

I know this post sounds despairing.  Believe me when I say none of the ways that abusive men I've known have responded to being challenged has given me any reason to hope.  

But still I hope.  And it is that hope that lead me to write this post.  That hope that makes me believe that it is worth writing about my experiences and more and less harmful ways of dealing with abusive men.

In recognition that we are part of the same struggle,

Maia

* I haven't read the book The Revolution Starts at Home yet, but I have read the zine (warning that link is a pdf) and recommend it, even though as this post probably shows I am deeply unsure about any way forward. I should point out that one of the problems with the post I am responding to that other people have discussed is the way it renders invisible the work of WoC dealing with issues that you say feminists don't deal with.

best wishes

well, it's the day before christmas and i'll definitely be taking a short break from blogging. it's not a religious celebration for us, but a welcome holiday time. the waikato times did a nice piece on the various ways people will be celebrating the day, which features yours truly as well. i thought it was great that they

this may well be a difficult time for many people. there are those who have to work through, and will be hopefully take time off another time of the year. there are those who are struggling to deal with a celebration without loved ones. there are those who have suffered from natural disasters, and some of them may be struggling to cope - particularly thinking of those in christchurch and nelson. there are those who aren't able to get to be with family and friends, and others who are but who will not find this an uplifting experience. there are those struggling with poverty and not able to put enough food on the table, let alone think about presents. and then there are those of you who will find the day turns out exactly as you wanted.

whatever shape the celebrations take for you, i wish you all the best. i want to thank those who take the time to read, and to comment. apologies if you've felt that moderation has been harsh or that the space has felt unwelcoming at times for you. we hope that overall the site has given you something of value.

to my fellow bloggers, thank you for sharing being part of the group and for sharing your thoughts. the depth of experience and the perspectives you bring have been really important to me. hope to get back into it in the new year.

but it's not even about us

following on from a facebook discussion, i'm going to explain further why i really don't like this post from john pagani.

first a little context, if you don't want to click over. it's generally about the billboard by st matthew-in-the-city of the virgin mary holding a pregnancy test and looking, well, not overjoyed (mr edwards has an image if you want to see it). it's apparently what they do - put up something controversial to get people talking in a hells pizza kind of way, but not for economic gain and not quite in the same league of offensiveness.

at least not to me, but then i'm not christian so i accept that i might have a different perspective on it. some people did find it extremely offensive for their own reasons, which is fair enough. but they went a step too far and defaced the billboard, instead of using their right to freedom of expression to explain why they were unhappy about it via press release or to put up a billboard of another kind or to have a vocal protest outside the thing to which they could invite the media.

so what does any of this have to do with muslims? nothing, right? no muslim organisation or individual has publicly commented, nothing islamic is involved. it's two christian groups having a disagreement, which they are perfectly entitled to do. so you would think muslims could keep a low profile and stay well away from this one.

but no. mr richard boock decides, in his need to berate the catholic church (or at least the "fanatics among" them) for these acts, to bring muslims into the picture. it seems that the group doing the vandalising hasn't been condemned enough, and if they had been muslims they would have been condemned from all quarters. hence this group should be treated the same as muslim fanatics and be condemned from all quarters. or something. i think he's making that point more in relation to what they were saying (some apparently vitriolic stuff) than what they were doing (ie vandalising).

while it's a minor point in mr boock's piece, mr pagani picks up that little paragraph in his post and highlights it with the title. and i object. i object to the gratuitous use of muslims in this argument at all. it's not like we're starving for media attention. it's not like we need focus directed towards us on a matter that is completely and totally unrelated. it's not about us, so why do the authors need to make it about us?

and yes, i do get the point that they are, in their own way, trying to be nice about muslims by pointing out some unfair treatment. but really, this whole issue isn't about unfair treatment of muslims. it's about some people committing vandalism, then saying some things you disagree with. so stick to that topic - tell us why you disagree with what they did and what they said, but please don't use us muslims as a tool to drive your point home.

furthermore i really, sincerely don't think that muslims have been brought into these two pieces because the authors have a deep well of caring and concern about us. at least it doesn't come across that way. so i don't see that they should be getting some kind of brownie points for being all progressive and inclusive, when i don't think that's what they were trying to be. especially when mr pagani hasn't yet figured out (as was nicely pointed out on facebook) that people can't be islamic, they are muslim.

and yes, of course they are free to say what they want. but then i'm free to say i don't like it. that's how freedom of expression works. people have the right to take offence and to express why a certain thing offends them. (they don't have the right to go vandalising stuff, but that's a different issue.) it's up to others whether they want to take on board those issues or not.

Strange adventures in Christmas icing

IMAGE:  A group of chocolate cupcakes with white icing on top, then reindeer heads, with pretzels to each side of the head to represent antlers.

I'm not sure about mixing pretzels with the sweet sweet goodness of cupcakes...  Has anyone tried it, or a similar arrangement? 

christmas with Dolly and Kenny

I bought my mother a Christmas present in February this year. Closing down of Real Groovy records, Dolly Parton and Kenny Roger's Christmas collection, on CD. Mum wore out her vinyl copy years ago, hellish hours of the grinning twosome singing saccharine drivel. Hours I'll never get back.

Anyway, my mother loves this album, so I buy it, and tell the salesperson why because I'm that pretentious, and I keep it for her, sitting on my dresser.

Until she's dying in hospital. I tell Mum what her christmas present is one afternoon when we're alone, because I want to give her the pleasure of receiving, even though we both know she won't get to unwrap it under the tree. She coughs and says "I'm not surprised that album is still being made, it's so good." I hope this is ironic, but I fear it was earnest.

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We're doing christmas differently this year. Today's my last day at work, before being picked up by my father and brother to go across on the ferry and drive to Nelson - obviously we booked a while back - for a week.

We've never gone away as a family at christmas.

We're eating our christmas lunch out, at some posh place near Mapua, which has promised to cook me special vegetarian food since their menu is pure animal.

We've never not spent the day at home, cooking and eating and drinking and hanging out with friends and each other.

We've never not been with Mum.

Yet so much will be the same. I've made two of Mum's fudges and her strawberry ice cream. Dad's made Mum's christmas cake. My sister's made her biscuits and truffles. We will play board games and listen to Christmas carols. I'll give Dolly and Kenny to the whole family, and we'll have a laugh and, for some of us, probably a cry too. My brother and I will be the ones who cry.

So we'll have presents, and every one of us will cook something delicious for the others, and we'll play backyard cricket and compete over sudoku and Dad will pick at least one fight about politics per day, mostly with me, and my brother will obsess about the weather and my sister will read ten books and I will need to go off for a walk or do some yoga to stay sane (ish), even though I love my family.

In a way, this year is about our family now, and how we re-form together, since we're no longer the family we were this time last year, with my mother. I will miss her horribly, but I'm excited about the new stuff too, and looking forward to the familiar. I'm even kinda keen to hear Dolly and Kenny.

Just the once mind.

I hope everyone gets the chance to spend some time with people they love this christmas, and celebrate the time or enjoy some peace. Ciao for now.

Christmas conversations with Wriggly

Saturday morning
Wriggly:  Why aren't there any presents under our Christmas tree?
Me:  What would you do if I put presents under the tree?
Wriggly:  Unwrap them!
Me:  That's why there aren't any presents under the tree.
Wriggly:  *big grin*

Monday morning
Wriggly:  Mummy look!  *points at presents under the tree*
Me:  What are those?
Wriggly:  Presents!
Me:  Who are they for?
Wriggly:  Me!
Me:  Not all of them.
Wriggly:  Oh?
Me:  Who is this one for?
Wriggly:  Me!
Me:  No.
Wriggly:  Snuffly!
Me:  No.
Wriggly:  Daddy!
Me:  No.
Wriggly:  Mummy!
Me:  No.
Wriggly:  Um...
Me:  Who else lives here?
Wriggly:  Cat!
Me:  That's right, it's for Cat.
Wriggly:  Can I open it?
Me:  Is it Christmas yet?
Wriggly:  No.
Me:  You can help her open it on Christmas Day though.
Wriggly:  Ok.
*pause*
Wriggly:  How come there are presents under the tree?
Me:  Because we decided that you could help by being our Christmas Present Guard.  It's your job to make sure that no one opens any of these presents until Christmas Day.  Not you, not Snuffly, not Daddy, not Mummy, not Cat.
Wriggly:  And not Neighbour!
Me:  That's right.
Wriggly:  And not Neighbour's Son!
Me:  Errr, yes.
Wriggly:  OK!!!!
Me:  So you understand there will be no opening presents until Christmas Day?
Wriggly:  YES!!!!!!
*pause*
Wriggly:  Is that present for me?
Me:  No, but this one is.  *points to long cylinder-shaped present*
Wriggly:  It's a green clock!!!
Me:  Probably not. 

I am curious to see how many presents remain intact when I return home this evening.

Auckland Sexual Abuse Help gets interim Govt funding

Therefore tonight's rally is cancelled. Just in time! More info over the coming days, thanks to all for your excellent support.

Guest Post: Abortion as Society's Mirror

Many thanks to Alison McCulloch for permission to cross-post her recent guest post at the ALRANZ blog, and my apologies for tardiness.

The discussion sparked by Richard Boock’s blog posts (“A Woman’s Right to Choose” and “Defending Your Right to An Opinion”) got me thinking about the how so many moral debates wind up with abortion as their end point. It’s not breaking news that societies tend to act out so many of their moral fears and panics by restricting sexual expression and reproductive rights. That they use contraception and abortion as tools to try to control what they fear or disapprove of. New Zealand has its own long history of doing this, be it trying to get white women to have children in order to avoid “race suicide” to keeping contraceptive information away from teenagers for fear of runaway teen sex – or something.

In a society that devalues certain groups, like those with Down syndrome or others who don’t fit a particular mold, as ours does, again we find the sharp end of the debate being focused on abortion. As if this, and so many other problems, could be solved if only women would stop having abortions for the “wrong” reasons.

The view of the 1977 Royal Commission report on Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion, on which our current abortion laws are based, is stuffed full of moral fears and prejudices that quite neatly reflected 1970s society (and, I’d argue, 2011 society, too.) Here, I’ll just offer an excerpt that’s closely related to the issue at hand, from page 200 of the report.

(5) It is not immoral to terminate a pregnancy where the fetus is likely to be born with a severe physical or mental handicap, because the burden of the handicapped person to himself and to his parents may be greater than the sum total of their happiness.

(6) The termination of unborn life for reasons of social convenience is morally wrong.

One could make a good case that (6) and (5) are at odds, that the utilitarian rule used in (5) is completely bizarre and that the use of “fetus” in one case and “unborn life” in the other displays a clear agenda. But aside from all that, look at what this says about societal attitudes.

Then, as now, there’s a desire to condemn abortions that take place for “social convenience” (a nicely loaded phrase the Commission used frequently to conjure up images of women rushing off to the clinic because that pregnancy was going to interfere with their party plans). At the same time, the Commission gave a hearty thumbs up to aborting fetuses that were likely to be a “burden” because society did, and largely still does, both devalue the disabled and approve of such abortions

So the cry goes up: let’s clamp down on the abortions. Let’s ban abortions for X or Y reason to fix X or Y problem. Let’s ban abortions for reasons that we find offensive or trivial or discriminatory or “socially convenient”. That will resolve the difficulty and absolve us. Of course it won’t. Women’s choices cannot but be influenced by the society they live in, the pressures they face, the judgments made by those around them. In a society that devalues women and girls, there’s pressure to abort females, just as in this society, there’s pressure to abort fetuses with certain conditions.

The next step is to make abortion-seeking women (and those who support and facilitate their choice) the culprits for wider society’s perceived failings. It is she who is the root cause of a particular moral problem or a particular group’s being devalued if she has an abortion for the “wrong” reason. It is she who is the cause of promiscuity or moral decline or the breakdown of the family (which hasn’t actually broken down yet). It is she who is the cause of child abuse or our inability to fund superannuation. (A shout-out to Garth George on these last two.)

While we still live under laws that try to pick and choose who should and who should not be able to access abortion care, campaigns to ban abortion for X and Y reason, reflecting X and Y societal failing, will continue. Which is why abortion should be, as of right, up to the individual, its availability not contingent on your having a “worthy” reason, where that reason is dictated and enforced by the state. No, it won’t be a choice made in a vacuum, so campaigns to eliminate, or at least reduce, the kind of pressure to abort that some women say they’ve felt on receiving certain fetal diagnoses, are crucial. Just as important are efforts to stop dumping society’s short-comings at the door of pregnant women and calling them names for choosing to have an abortion.

Abortion restrictions should not be used as a tool to try to deal with wider problems – be they real or imaginary. The social goal might be just, but enforced pregnancy cannot be an answer.

Alison McCulloch is on the National Executive of ALRANZ. The opinions in this post are her own.

this won't fix it

i'm sure plenty of people will have watched the campbell live story on the boy with buck teeth*. i didn't watch myself, but saw the ads both yesterday and today.

i know they're patting themselves on the back for a successful story and a very positive outcome for this child - the positive outcome being something along the lines of some kind of dental treatment to fix the problem. and sure, that's great for the child and it gives us all such a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling when we think about how generous we are as a nation in coming to the rescue of the this child.

the reason given for the surgery - at least the only reason i saw on the promos - was that the boy was being bullied and teased at school, and this surgery would stop that. i'd be interested to hear from anyone who's watched the show (i don't really feel that i can bear to watch at this point) whether they actually addressed the aspect of bullying and teasing? in other words, did the show make the point that bullying and teasing someone for their physical appearance is wrong, and needs to be addressed by the school and by the adults responsible for the children who interact with this boy?

because i'm feeling really uncomfortable with the notion that the answer to bullying and teasing is spending money to change your appearance. [as an aside, i make no judgement of people who choose to so spend their money, particularly in a culture such as the one we currently live in]. because that isn't the answer. the answer is to edcuate people in our society to be more accepting of physical difference - or emotional difference, or racial difference, or religious difference.

campbell live can't spend every episode highlighting a person suffering from bullying and asking for money so that they can change their appearance. there are so many, many kids and adults out there without the funds or the ability to change the way they are. if anything needs to change, it's the culture they live in, that we live in, where casual cruelty is seen by some people to be acceptable.

so while this sounds, on the face of it, to be a fairy tale - like the waving of a magic wand, this young boy's troubles will suddenly disappear - it doesn't deal with the actual problem. the actual problem is not the boy and his teeth. and there is absolutely no guarantee, once his teeth are "fixed"** that the bullying won't continue. once you're a marked person in the eyes of bullies, you often stay that way regardless of the changes you make. because the problem is not with you, it's with the bullies.

in any case, i wish this child well and hope his life gets better. i hope it wasn't too embarassing to have his "problem" publicised on national television, but i suspect he doesn't mind given that he can now have it fixed. and i really wish that this feeling of goodwill expressed by the nation would extend to all of those who live in poverty or with any other difficulty in their lives.

______________________________________________________

* is there a better way to say this? i really hate that phrase but it was the one the programme used and i can't think of an alternative at this time of night.

** i use the quote marks because i personally don't believe there is anything really wrong with them, unless they are causing some kind of health problem.

Call to Action: supporting Auckland Sexual Abuse Help

Luddite Journo has written several excellent posts on the urgent funding plight of Auckland's 24/7 phoneline for those affected by sexual violence, run by Auckland Sexual Abuse Help.  You can still sign the petition, currently over 5000 sigs in less than a week.

Tomorrow (Friday 16th December) those in Auckland have two chances to show your support for this absolutely vital service, and pressure the Government to come through with the vital money, as follows:

Crisis Cake Stall
WHEN:  11am, Friday 16th December
WHERE:  Outside Nikki Kaye's electorate office, 82 College Hill, Freemans Bay.
WHO:  Anyone really who wants to show support for the service, and the organisation in general.  I'll be there, with Snuffly and cupcakes.
I'll add a link to the media release on this once it is up.

Public Rally
WHEN:  6.30pm, Friday 16th December
WHERE:  QE2 Square, opposite the Britomart Train Station
WHO:  All welcome, bring your ranty voices!
Facebook event with more info is here.

If you can only make one and are trying to pick then I recommend the evening event, as that's where numbers will be most important.  Although, if the funding from Government is pledged before 6.30pm then it may be cancelled (in which case I'll try my best to put an update on the blog).

Funding cuts no HELP

The potential loss of the 24 hour crisis line for sexual violence survivors run by Auckland Sexual Abuse Help has been all over the media this week, and the petition asking government to step in and save the service is steadily climbing - and you can still sign it.

I want to look at context here, specifically the context of the last few years and specialist funding for counselling for survivors of sexual violence from ACC.

In October 2009, ACC changed the way it funded counselling for survivors of sexual violence, introducing a number of constraints and barriers they called the "Clinical Pathway." This Pathway was essentially ripped up after a six month review by an independent review team, because it was causing harm without any "legislative or clinical reason." The review came back in September 2010.

This bolt-from-nowhere was introduced without consultation to a sector which we know from the "comprehensive road-map" was already struggling to meet community need. It led to survivors deciding not to even try to go through what ASAH called at the time an "outrageously inhumane" process to access help. It also meant the sexual violence intervention sector, including ASAH, had to mobilise to prove what we already knew - that appropriate, skilled, specialist support and counselling is critical to recovery after sexual violence for many survivors.

Recent information released from ACC under the Official Information Act demonstrates just how disastrous the Clinical Pathway has been - for both survivors and the dangerously underfunded specialist sector which tries to supports them on their way past surviving to thriving.


Numbers of clients dropping from the moment the new Pathway was introduced, continuing after ACC recognised the Pathway was inappropriate and were instructed to make changes to address the problems.

Maybe more relevant to what is happening now for ASAH - and for every agency working in the specialist sexual violence intervention sector - let's look at ACC funding for specialist counselling over the last few years:


Does this bear repeating? In 2009, the Report for the Taskforce for Action on Sexual Violence said the sexual violence intervention sector needed "urgent and immediate" funding. In 2009, one of the most major funders of this specialist work began slashing funding to that very same sector, and the slashing hasn't stopped even after an independent review order.

So what will our new government do about it? Time to step up and use your mandate for good, Mr Key.

Phillip Cottrell and the stories we tell

New Zealand, like anywhere else, has its grand narratives, the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what coming from this place means.

These stories do not belong to everyone equally, because like all stories they are written from particular points of view, but they have power to both create and obscure social relationships in Aotearoa.

So there's lots of historical evidence colonisers coming to New Zealand post 1840 wanted to create a "better Britain" in which the rigid and vicious class hierarchy of England was absent, Pakeha and Maori would have the "best race relations in the world" and in the words of politician William Pember Reeves, women were able to vote for the first time in the world because “they simply asked for the vote, and we simply gave it to them.”

All of these stories are contested. Because simply believing you are more egalitarian, less racist and more valuing of equality for women does make these things true. In fact, it can make it even harder, for those of us living within the story of an equal society, to recognise discrimination.

This troubles me in the case of Phillip Cottrell, a man viciously attacked in the street in Wellington, who died in hospital this week. The Police don't know why he was attacked, who he was attacked by, or which weapon was used to kill him. In fact, the Police did not even realise he was gay until asked in a press conference if sexuality could be a factor.

Yet Detective Senior Sergeant Scott Miller can say, in a press statement doing the rounds of the queer community:

"We do not believe Mr Cottrell's sexual orientation was a factor in his death. Any member of the glbti community who has serious safety concerns or has any relevant information in relation to this investigation, should contact Wellington Police on (04) 381 2000 or phone Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111."

Was Phillip Cottrell attacked on a Wellington street because he was queer? I don't know, but it wouldn't be the first time in the city I love that a beautiful queer man was hurt, simply for looking like he loved men. When I talk with young people about sexual violence, queer men in Wellington report repeated experiences of being attacked in the street because they break masculinity rules.

The Police should not be ruling out hate crime yet. They should not be ruling out hate crime until they catch who killed Phillip Cottrell, and find out why. Telling us sexual orientation was not a motivator does not "allay the fears" of the queer community - it tells us the Police have decided to ignore sexuality before they know what happened - and, as importantly, it does nothing to honour the memory of Phillip Cottrell.

"beautification of mosques for women"

baby steps, but steps nonetheless. it was nice to read this piece (via facebook) about turkey making mosques more women-friendly:

"This is about mosques being a space for women," declared Kadriye Avci Erdemli, Istanbul's deputy mufti, the city's second most powerful administrator of the Islamic faith. "When a woman enters a mosque, she is entering the house of God and she should experience the same sacred treatment. In front of God, men and women are equal; they have the same rights to practice their religion."

As part of the "Beautification of Mosques for Women" project, Erdemli sent 30 teams to visit all of Istanbul's mosques and report back on the facilities for women. What the teams found was shocking, she claimed. "Many of the mosques have no toilets for women, no place for women to wash before praying," Erdemli recounted. "Most of the places allocated for women were used as storage places, and those that weren't were usually filthy and freezing cold in winter."

Istanbul's mosques are now under strict instructions to clean up and provide equal facilities for both men and women by February 2012. But it's not only a push for cleanliness and improved sanitation that is underway. The way mosques are arranged is also being changed, according to Erdemli. "In most mosques, the women's area was divided by a curtain or a wall, and this is not fair," she elaborated. "They are sacred places and women have the right to take advantage of their spiritual feeling as well.

the thing is that originally, mosques were open to men and women alike, and there were no physical barriers at all. this idea of having curtains or walls separating the women is a more recent phenomenon - i don't know where it started or how it caught on, but it's against the spirit of the mosque.

mosques were social centres as much as they were places of worship. they were places where foreign delegations would visit and would stay, sometimes for months. they were places where physical contests such as wrestling or foot races were held. they were places of education, where lectures were given. the mosque was the hub of the community, and open to all people at all times.

it would actually be good to have a review of mosques in nz as well. they vary in the quality of space, but all bar one mosque does have space for women, and they have separate toilet and washing facilities for women as well. some have plenty of space as well as other rooms available for use, others have spaces that are just too cramped.

internationally, women's space in mosques tends to depend on geographic location. so in the indian subcontinent, women going to the mosque has traditionally been frowned on, and very few mosques will accommodate women. from what i hear, this is starting to change, particularly in the cities. malaysian and indonesian mosques, on the other hand, tend to all have women's spaces that are roomy and comfortable. and women from this part of the world are very used to being in the mosque.

the other thing about the very early mosques is that they were simple. the first one had a dirt floor and palm leaves for a roof. no fancy calligraphy, no expensive floor coverings or elaborate decorations. of course this reflected the state of the community, which was quite impoverished at the time, so couldn't afford more. but even so, i don't believe in pouring money into elaborate buildings, be they places of worship or something else. i think it's much more important to spend money on people - on ensuring that they are fed, clothed, housed and have opportunies for education and work.

i totally understand the desire for people to create beautiful places to aid in spiritual contemplation. i just disagree with it. the opportunity cost is too high, and in a world where people are dying of starvation and preventable diseases in such high numbers, i know i'd much rather have that money spent elsewhere, and let the spiritual reward of saving lives uplift us more than the aesthetic beauty of a building.

however, the turkish project is more than just beautification. it's about claiming women's spaces, and through that, their places in society. equality in the mosque will slowly lead to equality outside the mosque, so it's a good place to start.

The road-map to nowhere

Once upon a time, the New Zealand government received from ministries and experts in the sexual violence intervention sector what then Justice Minister Simon Power called:

"the most comprehensive roadmap on sexual violence prevention and services that any New Zealand government has ever received. There are no quick-fix solutions when it comes to sexual violence and the Government is grateful for the guidance this report provides."

The Report for the Taskforce for Action on Sexual Violence started life under the last Labour Government and revealed decades of under-funding of services for survivors, family/whanau, and those with sexually harmful behaviour.

The 2009 comprehensive roadmap called for "urgent and immediate" funding to ensure services in the community could continue, let alone develop. Did you know most crisis line services in Aotearoa are run by volunteers? And that many services have wait lists to see clients, just because there are not enough paid staff?

Most survivors cannot contain their needs to nine to five. Firstly because that's not when most rapes happen. And secondly because it's not when many survivors need to talk about flashbacks and terror, receive help to cope - that's at night, or on the weekend, or when something reminds them of what happened to them, or when they feel unsafe.

At the moment one of the many marvellous helplines open 24 hours a day, seven days a week for survivors to call is Auckland Sexual Abuse Help. They run the only helpline in Auckland (there are others in South Auckland) which can respond if someone is raped and needs help going to the Police or medical services.

While Refuge services in Auckland are cutting back their hours because they are too poorly funded, it's even worse at ASAH, which has been working with survivors for
29 years. In January 2012, unless some "urgent and immediate" funding materialises, ASAH will no longer be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

You can sign a petition asking the government to sort this out before Auckland survivors lose their only 24 hour resource. Or you could email the new Minister for Women's Affairs, Jo Goodhew, and the new Minister of Justice, Judith Collins, or how about the seasoned Minister for Social Development, Paula Bennett.

Perhaps remind them of the comprehensive road-map, and the distance we still have to travel before our services responding to sexual violence are available to all who need them, whenever they need them. This will not be the only service closing, unless we start following that road-map pretty damn soon.

Open thread on new Cabinet announced today

No time to write an actual post, but please do feel free to discuss it here.  This is currently the only linkable thing that comes close to a list that I can find.  If you come across a proper list please do share!  UPDATE:  Here it is in PDF on the National party website.  I did look there earlier with no luck, shouldn't this kind of thing, as a Government announcement, go up at DPMC first/simultaneously??

Haven't done any numbers yet but looks to me like there is possibly a slight increase in the number of women - lost Georgina Te Heu Heu (retired), but gained Jo Goodhew and Amy Adams.

Also massive promotion for Hekia Parata, who now has Education and is ranked higher than Paula Bennett, but loses Women's Affairs, now gone to Cabinet newbie Jo Goodhew.   Anne Tolley has been shifted from Education to Corrections and Police, while, in a problem for pro-choice peeps, Judith Collins gets Justice and ACC.

Further comment in comments (funny that) please!

Scarlet Road

I have seen this trailer posted on tumblr and blogs a few times:



Scarlet Road Video from Paradigm Pictures on Vimeo.

Something about the way it was posted as an awesome exciting and sex positive feminist trailer bothered me, but I hadn't figured out just what it was.  The post on Jezebel reminded me of the sort of comment that I've seen in a few places (and I expect nothing from Jezebel, but they're not the only people who have written about it like this).

A post on the The F-Word responded to Jezebel directly:

I then read in Jezebel about a sex worker who is awesome because she works with disabled clients, which apparently makes her intriguing.

And I started to wonder, what do you think of us? Of me? In these three stages, the mainstream, and the left-wing, tell me that I am inferior, and I am other. So very, very other.

I share Philippa's concern with the way people who celebrate this trailer present disabled people and their sexuality, and I want to unpack why I was so troubled by the many people who posed this with the idea that it was awesome, exciting and amazing.

********

At this movie's centre is a paradox.  It's argument is that men with disability need to express their sexuality just like everyone else.  However, the existence of the movie posits sex with people with disabilities as different.  This trailer, and the people posting it, appear to believe that sex work with men with disabilities is in some important way different from other sex work.  The Jezebel post described her as 'awesome' based on nothing but the trailer.  None of this makes sense if you genuinely believe what the trailer is presenting as the central premise of the documentary.

Of course the reality is that disabled people are de-sexualised by society, there sexuality is denied, and the very limited idea of sex, sexuality and desire that is promoted in our society has no room for them.  That's the social model of disability - disabled people's sexuality is not different because of their bodies, but because of how society responds to their bodies.

The paradox could be undone with media that centres the experiences of people with disabilities.  A story which starts from them could show that there is nothing intrinsically different between disabled people's sexuality and non-disabled people's sexuality - but there is a profound difference in how their bodies and sexuality is treated.

However, by centring this documentary around an able-bodied women, all that happens is the paradox is reinforced, she is awesome because of what she does.

********

The trailer talks about 'people with disabilities' - but it portrays and focuses on men with disabilities.  Obviously as a feminist I have a problem anytime that happens, but rendering women with disabilities invisible in this context reinforces damaging and pervasive ideas about women's sexuality and about disability.

This is not the first piece of media, which has discussed men with disabilities' sexuality and sex work in a way that makes women with disabilities invisible.   I've been keeping an eye on these stories for at least ten years, and there is a pattern.  Every so often some media outlet puts out a story about men with disabilities and sex work, often crass and offensive, sometimes in a faux 'it makes you think' kind of way about the welfare state's interaction with legal sex work.  This trailer is less awful on those grounds - but it should also be seen as part of an existing tradition.

Why is the media always the same? Why is it unthinkable and unprintable that women with disabilities have sexual desire.  To understand that we have to look at the intersection between dominant ideas about disability and dominant ideas about women's sexuality.

One of the most fundamental (and damaging) ideas in our existing understanding of sexuality is that men desire and women are desired.  This is reflected in a lot of our language about sexuality (think about how the phrase 'sexy' is used by and about women) and the way sexuality is understood in public discourses.

An identical video where the genders which switched, would not have the same feel good response.  Because viewers would assume that the women with disabilities portrayed wanted to be desired as well as have their desires met. In reality of course, most people want both to desire and to be desired. That people with disabilities might desire requires a much smaller change to our understanding of sexuality than that people of disabilities might be desirable.

Therefore the invisibility of women with disabilities in discussions about disability and sexuality, is about the sexual double standard and is based on accepting that women don't desire.  But it is also about bounding and limiting the discussion of disability and sexuality to desire, not desirability, and cutting off the possibility that we might challenge our idea of desirability.

Ultimately it's a failure of imagination.  When I say I believe another world is possible, I mean one where women desire and men are desired, and where disability is not constructed as antithetical to either.

how is that my fault exactly?

one of the most common things i hear, which is the flipside to "this is MY country, so you have to do everything MY way", is the old "but in THEIR countries we're not allowed to do XYZ, so why should THEY get to do ABC here".

the most offensive thing about the second statement: is the pretty strong implication that nz can never be the country of someone who has chosen to live here. if someone talking to me starts a sentence with "but in your country (countries)", i'm very likely to interrupt them with "listen f**ckface, your next sentence better be about nz, because that's the ONLY country i belong to". well no, i won't say exactly that, it'll probably be a politer variant.

but there's a deeper injustice going on here. just because some random country has some horrific sh*t happening to some of its citizens is not a reason to deny me rights in this country. it's likely i've never been in that country, i certainly don't have voting rights in that country and it might be a country that doesn't even have democracy. it's also likely that i totally disagree with what's happening in that country in the same way that you do. in fact, it's also very likely that a good number of the population of said country also object to the stuff happening there, hence arab spring for example.

so given all of that, why should i be denied any of the rights available to any other citizen in nz, when i have absolutely no connection to nor responsibility for stuff that's happening somewhere else in the world? and yet you hear it on talkback radio, in letters to the editor, on facebook and most other forums you could name.

there's yet another layer of nastiness involved in this kind statement. lets say i do come from one of those countries where some particular human rights abuse is happening. aside from the fact that this may be exactly why i've chosen to leave that country, there's a strong element of revenge involved here. in other words, what the speaker is effectively saying is "some people i identify with are being treated badly in your country of origin. therefore, i seek revenge by at least denying you some basic rights in this country". it's a tit-for-tat type sentiment that is not only unjust, but is plain ugly.

it's without any kind of sense or logic, and yet adult people are using this argument all the time. i don't get how they can't immediately see the sheer stupidity of it.

Abortion, Eugenics, and Big Things like that

I feel a bit icky criticising a pro-choice article in the local media; it's not like there's a lot of them and Richard Boock's written some good stuff lately. I have time for much of 'A Woman's Right to Choose'; not least the unashamed, no apologies, pro-choice stand. But this, this I struggle with:

But to compare pre-natal Down syndrome testing (and associated terminations) with eugenics only reminds us how bat-shit crazy so many of them are.

I doubt the motives of the anti-abortion groups at least as much as Boock does. But issues around pre-natal testing are things we should be discussing. I wouldn't compare them to eugenics (and if it's not clear, I support the right of a woman to have an abortion for any reason) but I also don't see any way we can have a clear discussion about this without referring to eugenics.

Abortion and disability is a really complicated subject. I'm far - oh so far - from having all the answers. But if we characterise such concerns - concerns which have very real importance - as the territory of "bat-shit crazy" (which probably wasn't the best wording under the circumstances) anti-choice advocates we're not only alienating people within or potentially supportive of, pro-choice networks, we're also avoiding an important discussion.

Getting serious about sexual violence

The convicted rapist who moved next door to the woman he was imprisoned for raping seven years ago has been all over the news today.

He served a four year jail term for this offence. Last year, he served another year jail term for stealing another woman's underwear, ripping it, and returning it to her house. The judge who sentenced him for the second sexual offence called him a "high-risk recidivist offender". What this means is that it's unlikely he has accessed a full sexual offending programme while in prison, as these programmes have low - 5% in the last NZ study - recidivism rates.

What this also means, of course, is that a woman is now living next to a man who raped her. Apparently he can see into rooms of her house. She reported the rape, went to court, answered all the questions put to her, and took out a protection order to protect herself from him.

Most of the media coverage has focused on how awful it is that the law can do nothing.

Southern District police area commander Inspector Lane Todd confirmed that police had no legislative power to prevent Crofts from living next door to his victim unless he committed another offence.

This is absolute nonsense, and it infuriates me that the media has swallowed it. Let's look at the legislation, specifically the standard conditions for a protection order which state that the respondent (person the order is against) cannot:

watch, loiter near, or prevent or hinder access to or from, the protected person’s place of residence, business, employment, educational institution, or any other place that the protected person visits often;

And then there are the special conditions - which, if I was supporting this woman and this was what she wanted, I'd be going back to Family Court with her to access:

Where the court makes a protection order, it may impose any conditions that are reasonably necessary, in the opinion of the court, to protect the protected person from further domestic violence by the respondent, or the associated respondent, or both.

Living next door to the man who raped you, who knew you lived there when he chose his new home, is not a reasonable expectation in a country which takes sexual and domestic violence seriously. The Police have the tools to deal with this situation, and they are choosing not to use them. Yet again, the state is failing to protect survivors of sexual or domestic violence.

That's the real story here. Our legislation, in this instance, is fine. It's the failure of the state to implement our legislation which is the problem.

On Big Decisions and Hysterical Ladybrains

Good friends of mine - I'll call them Hazel* and Catherine - are buying a house together. They're both women in their twenties; this is their first owned home and whilst they're not exactly poor, as the whole house buying thing would indicate, their incomes are sufficiently limited that they don't have a lot of choice.

Anyway, they have more or less completed a purchase; it's a doer upper, that will need significant work both inside and outside, and it's a commute out of the city, but it's both closer and more convenient to transport than most others in their price range, and it has the right number and configuration of rooms for their needs and whilst compromises have been made they're pretty happy about it. It's happened in a rush, and there is So Much To Do, but both of them seem excited, in amongst the terror.

But through the process, there have been Concerns. Doubts raised by people I shall amalgamate into the character of  'Concerned of Titahi Bay'**. Concerned of Titahi Bay thinks that the project they are taking on is too much work. Concerned of Titahi Bay thinks they should have bought in Kelburn or Petone or Mount Victoria or something (for those of you not familiar with Wellington, these are not remotely realistic places for them to buy a house on their budget). Concerned of Titahi Bay is very, very concerned that they are letting their hearts get in the way of their heads, that they are making emotional rather than rational decisions.

Hazel and Catherine are close friends, who have lived together a number of years. They are not in a sexual or romantic relationship, but this is not simply a matter of pooling resources for a few years in order to get on the property ladder before going their separate ways; they are a family and a household and intend to be so indefinitely.

Yup, you've guessed it. Concerned of Titahi Bay is very concerned. Have you thought, Concerned of Titahi Bay wants to know, of what's going to happen if you fall out! If one of you goes overseas! If one of you gets married! If you have different views on decisions about the property!

Yes, yes they have thought about that a lot. They've thought about what would happen if their lives took them in various directions. Or if they fell out. They're intelligent people, one of them has substantial legal knowledge. They've talked about this extensively, drawn up an agreement and each engaged a (separate) lawyer. These are sensible things to think about before making any major life decision, particularly one where your property is intertwined with that of someone else. It's sad - and infuriating - though, that had they been an engaged couple buying their first home, these issues may have come up but they likely wouldn't be at the forefront of people's minds.

They've also thought about the building work required. They've made provisional budgets and weighed the stress and time and money involved against the compromises - chiefly location - they would have to make if they bought another property within their budget. They've set a price range they can afford - not just in terms of the bank signing off, but someone that will reasonably fit into their day to day budget.

My partner and I bought a house about eighteen months ago. It's out of the city - significantly further out than Hazel and Catherine's new house. We don't have a car - aside from not being able to afford that and a house deposit at that time, I can't drive, primarily for disability reasons, and my partner chooses not to. I was shocked by the number of people who decide to tell me I was making a Very Bad Decision living where I do without a car. Leaving aside the limited amount of choice without making significant sacrifices in other areas, they were acting like I had never thought about this before. Like I didn't know that my life would be easier if I could drive. Like looking at transport options hadn't been top of our priority list. Like we hadn't been managing with public transport all our adult lives.

And then there's the whole emotional decision problem. Emotions are absolutely a valid part of any big life decision. They're not on the level of 'will attempting to meet the repayments be a recipe for bankruptcy', but if you're buying a house to live in, and you haven't thought about how you'll feel living in it, you're probably not going to end up that happy. It's not that advice isn't helpful. I've benefited a lot, when making Big Decisions (and I'm sure my friends have too) from people sharing stories, giving local or technical knowledge, or simply being a sounding board to talk things through with. But I wish people would do that with the assumption that the people they are talking to - even if they are women in their twenties! - are both intelligent people who are capable of thinking about the major issues and have priorities which may not be your own, but are no less legitimate for that.

I'll leave the last (edited) word to Hazel:

We've got the "you need to not make emotional decisions" thing from almost every guy we've talked to. Most of the women I've spoken to about house buying have (a) accepted that an emotional reaction to the place is totally okay and (b) assumed that we've, like, thought about that shit. I just really feel that if we were two dudes buying a fixer-upper in [suburb], the things we're getting told would be different and we wouldn't be being accused of having been MAKING STUPID DECISIONS BECAUSE OF OUR HYSTERICAL LADYBRAINS.

* I asked Hazel tonight what I should blog about and she ranted for a bit, and I said "so basically about you and your lifedrama". "Yes," she said. So here it is.