Nominate 2016 - A series of posts encouraging you to run for local government

Hello there folks,
I am intending to write a series of posts about local government politics, with the aim of enlightening and also encouraging people, particularly the kind of people who read this blog, to run for the 2016 local government elections.

Why?  Well it is a great opportunity to work with others to make change in your community and your region.  Yes it can be incredibly frustrating, and not everyone is suited to the work.  I'm hoping that through writing this series you'll get a sense not only of what is possible to achieve in local government if you are elected but also if you don't run but are interested in making local change working alongside those who do.  There should be some helpful bits that will assist with assessing candidates for your own 2016 votes as well.

Why now?  Because even though the voting doesn't happen until September/October 2016 if you are going to run it's a good idea to start thinking about that now.  I don't know a lot about the tickets (groups of candidates usually with common policies) in areas outside Auckland (and even in some parts of Auckland), but I do know that many will be turning their minds to who to ask to run for them next year now and over the next few months.  One ticket in Auckland is selecting their candidates shortly! (the Labour team for the Henderson Massey Local Board).  While you may not need to make a definite decision about running until as late as July 2016, if you want a good shot at getting elected then a bit of time put in now and over the rest of this year is a good idea.  Not a lot of time, mind, just a bit!

Why run?  I'll go into that in more detail in a future post.  At this point what I want to say is that I never imagined I would be a local government politician - this was an accidental career change for me - and I had no idea of the potential of the role and what councils can achieve, alongside the community, if they have elected people who operate with respect, vision and principles rooted in democracy and embracing the possible (rather than the small c conservatism that seems to dominate much local government thinking and makes change really hard).

Put briefly I am a relative rarity in local government (under 50, a woman, with young children, openly feminist and left of centre); I want to see more people like me running, and even more people who aren't a bit like me running.  We desperately need diversity at the table, not least because that will result in better decision-making and new ideas.

This post will serve as an overview of the series and also an index - I'll put links to new posts up here as they go up.

I hope this series turns out to be useful, and I'm very open to suggestions for topics (I have canvassed social media and have a long list of suggestions now but feel free to add more in comments or through my other available means.)

Cheerio
Julie

The 81st Down Under Feminist Carnival

It's a pleasure to host the 81st (!!) Down Under Feminist Carnival at The Hand Mirror this month.  Thanks to all those who sent in submissions, I really appreciate your efforts and it made it a lot easier to put this together.

Sex and Relationships
on the challenge of bisexual identity, reconciling one's own masculinity, grindr racism and off soy chips at schoolforbirds
The strategic penis by an anonymous guest poster
Our silver wedding anniversary by Deborah
Monogamy's police by Jennifer Wilson


Race and Racism
Was #IllRideWithYou worth it?  by Tara Ashford
We must not lose faith in humanity by Yassmin
A Tour of Issues of Appropriation and Racism in Melbourne's Restaurants by Stephanie
I call myself an Australian by Sam Connor
intersectional is more than a three-letter country by Stephanie
miss universe australia and asking permission by Stephanie
Australia: a country of vengeful malcontents by Jennifer Wilson
The Aussie Long Weekend: what awaits by Yassmin
On the subject of David Rankin and his latest outburst by tildebhooks
White. WHITE. White by clarencegirl


Pop Culture and the Media
Media Circus: #JeSuisCharlie Edition by tigtog
Australians remember Captain America by Liz
Media Circus: Gratuitous Knighthood Edition by tigtog
Using social media mindfully and for social good is not graffiti  by Carly Findlay
TV: Catching Up on Women Friendly Media by Scarlett Harris
The Choice to Be a Total Diva by Scarlett Harris


Violence Against Women (content warning on these posts, take care)
Standing Up For Leelah by tigtog
Family Violence. Where's the Minister for Women by Jennifer Wilson
Rape: It's Never About Alcohol by Kate Galloway


Writing and Related Bits
January Update by acbuchanan
What I'm Reading - Andie Fox
Ancillary Conversation by Liz (contains spoilers for Ann Leckie's books)
Dhungur'-yun-nha: a short poem and comment on stuff by Evelyn Enduatta
Page 1 of 365 by Yassmin
2015 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review - Peony by Eileen Chong by Jo Tamar
2015 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review - Too Flash by Melissa Lucashenko by Jo Tamar
2015 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review - MumShirl: an autobiography with the assistance of Bobbi Sykes by Jo Tamar
2015 Australian Women Writers Challenge Review - Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth by Jo Tamar
Minister for Women by Penni Russon


Bodies and reproductive rights
On fat in 2014: The year that was by Cat Pause
You've been targeted: suppporting the AMA and RACGP supporting us by Team Oyeniyi
The Educated Eater by SleepyDumpling
The Realities of Fat Activism by SleepyDumpling
Is this the final taboo for women in sports? by Lucia Osborne-Crowley


Miscellaneous and General Feminism
Cardinal Raymond Burke blames "radical feminists" for paedophile priests by Clementine Ford
Not New At All by SleepyDumpling
ecologically responsible beach hang outs by Stephanie
Swimming into trouble by Chally
People at least as deserving of knighthoods as Prince Philip by Liz
The Credlin thing by Jennifer Wilson
When your heroes let you down is it time to wave goodbye? by Scarlett Harris
Why Julia Gillard's experience is putting some women off politics by Juliette Saly
Internet freedom and the EFF's anti-harassment statement by a guest poster at Geek Feminism

Down Under Feminist Carnival 80th & 81st

The Down Under Feminist Carnival has been going monthly now for a really long time!  You can read the 80th edition, from December 2014, here.

We'll be hosting the 81st edition in early February - so if you have any great feminist posts from Australia or Aotearoa NZ from January 2015, including your own, please share the links so I can add them in.  You can put them in comments below or email them to me at julie dot fairey at gmail dot com.

So far I have lots of Australian submissions so come on Kiwi!

They don't have to be from an explicitly feminist site, you may have spotted something else where that is worth sharing.

A Woman's Place: Greens 2014

The Greens have a strongly stated commitment to gender balance both for internal party positions and candidates.  They currently have more women than men in their parliamentary caucus.

Historical representation of women:
The Greens first stood in their own right under MMP in 1999, and in that time they have had 23 MPs of whom 12 have been female (52%).  They have long had gender balance for shared leadership positions both of the caucus and the party.

2008 Green Party List:
Women represented across the whole list: 20 out of 48 (42%), with 50% in the top 10.

2011 Green Party List:
Women represented across the whole list: 16 out of 42 (38%), with 40% in the top 10.
 
Current representation of women:
The Greens currently have 14 MPs in total and 8 are women (Catherine Delahunty, Metiria Turei, Eugenie Sage, Jan Logie, Denise Roche, Holly Walker, Julie Anne Genter, Mojo Mathers), making 62% of the caucus. Turei is co-leader.  There have been some issues in the present term with Turei receiving some quite sexist treatment, in comparison with Russel Norman, the male co-leader.   


2014 Green Party List:
Women represented across the whole list: 19/53 (36%), with 60% in the top 10.

Top 5: Two (Turei at 1, Sage at 4) 2/5 = 40% (Same as 2011)

Top 10: Six (as for Top 5, plus Delahunty at 6, Genter at 8, Mathers at 9, Logie at 10) 6/10 = 60% (Increase on 2011)

Top 20: Ten (as for Top 10, plus Walker at 12, Roche at 14, and non-MPs Marama Davidson at 16, Jeanette Elley at 20) 10/20 = 50% (Same as 2011)

Top 30: Fourteen (as for Top 20, plus Sea Rotmann at 23, Susanne Ruthven at 26, Teresa Moore at 27, Dora Roimata Langsbury at 28) 14/30 = 47% (Increase on 2011)

Top 38:  Sixteen (as for Top 30, plus Rachel Goldsmith at 31, Anne-Elise Smithson at 35) 16/38 = 42%

After 38 the list candidates are unranked, and include only 3 women, out of 15 (20%), which skews their total figures considerably.  The Greens followed a similar practice of unranking after a certain number in 2008 and 2011, which is a practice I still personally support for smaller parties.  


Likely future representation of women:
The Greens did much better than I anticipated when I did this analysis for 2011.  This time they are aiming for 20 MPs, which would require about 17% of the vote. The Greens have had a good term, and are currently polling at about 11% (which would see them return 14 MPs again). They have a history of coming up during the campaign too.  

If they do reach their 20 MPs they will have a 50/50 caucus, including two new women (Davidson and Elley).  If they get 14 again it will be 8 women (57%), 15 MPs (53%), 16 MPs (56%), 17 MPs (53%), 18 MPs (50%), 19 MPs (47%).  I'd say there was a deliberate intention there to ensure their caucus is likely to be 50%+ female, in the likely range of seats they will win, except that they could have achieved that if Elley was at 19, rather than 20, and they didn't.  Many considerations do go in to the ranking of a list! 

The co-leadership arrangements will continue to ensure a gender balance in the top spot for the forseeable future.  

Other observations on candidate diversity:
As always with this section, I am interested in comment from those with more knowledge than I. Gender is often easy to determine, other aspects of diversity less so.  I would note that there appear to be no candidates who identify as any gender other than male or female, and as far as I know none of the parties which have made it into, or close to, Parliament have put up anyone who identifies outside the binary.

In regard to Maori candidates in the top 20, Turei, Clendon, Roche, and Davidson all identify as such.  The rest of the top 20 are Pakeha though* and there is little evidence of Asian or Pasifika candidates (one Tamil that I could find).  

There's a lot of diversity on age, and some great experience on disability in the candidate pool, not least Mojo Mathers MP (who is deaf), Catherine Delahunty MP (who has personal experience of disability), and long time disability advocate Chris Ford (37) who I remember from my long-ago days in the Alliance.  

The Greens also have a good record on selecting people who identify as LGBTI, returning Kevin Hague last time and adding Jan Logie.  

The final observation I will make on their list is that for a party that many dismiss as Sensitive New Agers there are a lot of people with serious qualifications and experience in actual real science.  I stumbled across this interesting blog post about Green stereotypes that I thought many of you might like :-)

---

In 2011 when I did this analysis I was disappointed the Greens hadn't really lifted their gender balance from 2008, however that was because I vastly underestimated how many MPs they would get!  This time it looks pretty good to me in the higher portions of the list, but becomes troublesome as you get lower.  I wonder if this is a reflection that more men than women have put themselves forward?

Links:
Green Party candidates
Idiot/Savant's analysis, including ups and downs since 2011's list.
A Woman's Place Index for 2014
A Woman's Place Index for 2008 and 2011


*  Jan Logie gives "Tangata Tiriti" as her ethnicity which makes me want to give her a high five.  

A Woman's Place 2014: Internet Party

For 2008 and 2011 I did some analysis of the likely party caucuses after each election, based on list and electorate seat selections, in regard to women's political representation.  I'm hoping to do it again for 2014 but will depend a lot on time, as these can be very time-consuming for the bigger parties.  Here's my first for this time, cos it came up today and was easy to do.


The Internet Party is brand new this election, in fact this year, and released their 15 person list today.  It will be zipped in some fashion with the Mana list, and I'm not sure quite what that will look like yet (Mana have only announced their top 4 so far) so I'll have to do another post on this when that is all out.  

Historical representation of women:
New party so not relevant.

Current representation of women:
No current MPs, or caucus.  Leader (Laila Harre) is a woman.

2014 Internet Party selections:
Women represented across the whole list: 6 out of 15 (40%).  

The top ten are alternated female and male, 11 is a man, 12 a woman, and then 3 men for the lowest 3 spots.
 
Top 5 - Three (Harre at 1, Pierard at 3, Ballantine at5) 3/5 = 60%
Top 10 - Five (As for Top 5 plus Farvid at 7, Sami at 9) 5/10 = 50%
Top 15 - Six (As for Top 10 plus McClintock at 12) 6/15 = 40% 
Women selected for electoral seats: 6 out of 15 (40%)

All of the list candidates are running in electorates.  Realistically the list is far more important, as the Internet Party will be getting MPs from Hone Harawira winning Te Tai Tokerau rather than breaking the 5% threshold (although we shall see!).  They have clearly strategically picked seats where they think there will be wider spread media coverage than the immediate electorate - and it looks to me like the ones where the Alliance used to do well, but that could just be my own past filter* ;-).  Which makes me wonder if the seat Harre will run in may be Epsom?  Another theory is Upper Harbour, which is closer to Harre's roots in West Auckland and her past efforts in Waitakere, plus no worries in that seat of having to talk about coat-tailing more than usual.

Likely future representation of women: 
Depends very much on percentage of the vote for Internet/Mana combination, whether Harawira holds his seat, and how the combined list works after the sixth spot.  At this stage it seems that they might get down as far as the combined 5th spot, which would mean two Internet MPs, Harre and Yong, so 50/50 gender-wise.

Other comments on candidate diversity:
Youth is a big feature, deliberately and highlighted.  The youngest candidate is 23 (Ballantine at 5) and only two are over 40 (Harre at 1 and Keinzley at 11).  Salmon is a "digital Maori" at number 8, while there are a number of candidates who appear to have Asian heritage, and one (Farvid) who is Iranian.  No mention of disabilities or sexuality, that I can see.  


Links:
Internet Party List on their website
Index of A Women's Place posts for 2008 & 2011 - analysis of all the likely caucus outcomes for as many parties as I could a) get and b) give time to look at.  
Index of A Women's Place posts for 2014 


*  I was in the Alliance Party from 2000 to 2007, and ran for them in 2002 and 2005.  

A Woman's Place: Index for 2014

In both 2008 and 2011 I did some analysis of the party lists (and electorate selections to a point) to determine likely future women's representation for each party.  I'm intending to do it again in 2014, as time allows.

Here's what I wrote about doing this series, back in 2008, and it held true in 2011 too:

The idea of this analysis is not to say "you should vote for the party with the most women candidates." The point is to provide some information that may give you some insight to the role of women within the party in question, and to also highlight the women who are standing in this year's General Election.

[In 2008] When we our current and immediate past Prime Minister have both been female, a Queen is our Monarch, a woman sits in the Speaker's Chair, and [laydeez] fill a variety of high profile roles in our democratic institutions it is sometimes easy to forget that our current Parliament has only 40 women MPs, out of 122. That's around 33%, when women are a little over 50% of the general population. Better then most other countries in the world, but still a long way from parity.

And how do women get to be MPs? They need to rise up through party organisations to be nominated for electorates and for list spots, and in order to actually make it into the House they need to be candidates in winnable positions. So it's important to not only consider how many women a party puts up as its representatives, but also whether they are likely to get that opportunity in a practical sense.

Since the 2008 election we have only had a lady Queen and Chief Justice.  The purpose of this series of posts remains the same.

In 2011 this issue finally got some mainstream media coverage, particularly around the poor level of representation for women in the likely National caucus (only 25%), both through the list and safe seat selections.  It will be interesting to see if this happens again (both the media attention and National's low level of women).

The 2014 A Woman's Place series (alphabetical order, added to as I do them): 

• Greens 2014 - 36% over whole list (19/53) - 60% in top ten
• Internet Party 2014 - 40% over whole list (6 out of 15) - 50% in top ten

71st Down Under Feminists Carnival

Blogging goodness galore at the 71st Down Under Feminists Carnival, hosted this month by Rebecca at bluebec.

Many thanks to whoever nominated some of our posts :-)

Make with the clicky!

Crosspost: The Power of Like: Solidarity in a time of social media

Cross-posted from The Daily Blog 

It used to be pretty lonely being a left-wing feminist off-campus.  While I had political friends I was reasonably sure were feminist too, I was surprised enough times by sexist statements from lefties and ardent rejections of the f word by sisters in the movement that I didn’t take it for granted that we were fellow travellers on the Down With Patriarchy journey. 

Slowly but surely I started to identify like-minded individuals, many of them already people I gravitated to for other reasons like simpatico senses of humour.  But still it was a lonely every-day existence sometimes, with energy stored up from those sparse get-togethers to see me through. 

These days my life fair buzzes with feminist left-wingedness and it’s mostly thanks to my friend The Interweb.  Through the internet, blogging at first, then Facebook and now Twitter, I have met so many amazing women; feminists all, left of centre mostly, and each a jewel in their own way.  It seems hard to remember now that five and a bit years ago, before The Hand Mirror existed, I was often nervous about posting a feminist-minded status update; how could I know that my Facebook friends wouldn’t trot out the old tropes “man-hater” or “feminazi” or, perhaps worst of all, silently defriend me. 

I’ve also found the feminist friends I had all along but didn’t recognise as such, or wasn’t sure of; people from my past, before I was actively political, who I knew from school, or sailing, or via family connections.  They’ve been able to show their agreement and support through the really very small, but often highly significant, act of clicking Like.

For me this solidarity has been amazing.  Not only have I been able to make visible my work, I’ve been able to receive feedback, not always positive but generally always well-meant.  The Likes, the comments, the occasional Shares have been like a kind word in my ear, or a thumbs up and a grin from across the room.  Retweets and Favourites are the high fives of the digital world.  They give me a warm glow that helps to keep me going when the world that isn’t in the ether is getting tough.

Here’s a very different example which reached across political boundaries: the solidarity shown by dozens, possibly hundreds, of tweeters and bloggers when Colin Craig of the Conservative Party decided to take on The Civillian’s Ben Uffindell for a mischievious satirical misquote.

The proliferation of hashtaggery poking fun at Colin Craig was not just a chance for people to exhibit their wit (although it was also that).  It was in a very real way a chance to show support for Uffindell and his (often) good works on The Civillian.  Tweeters nailed their colours to the mast, very publicly, and most of them weren’t in Colin Craig’s shade of blue. 

Then there were the solidarity blog posts, from other oft-times satirical bloggers Danyl Maclauchlan and Scott Yorke, and even a newspaper column from Toby Manhire, again standing alongside Uffindell, for satire, for freedom of speech, and for puncturing the pomposity of politicians who act in such a humourless manner.

The Power of Like is now an undeniable part of our political interaction.  Those who are excluded from the internet are excluded too from this solidarity.  I hope we can get better at becoming more effusive with our honest compliments and warm thoughts in real life too

Living Wage opinion piece, and the responses

Last Friday the Herald published an opinion piece I had submitted arguing for a living wage.  It was my 2012 aim to submit an op ed and I finally managed it, albeit two days into 2013 ;-)

TLDR; the main point of my argument is surely no one's labour is worth less than it costs them to produce that labour (i.e. to live).  In the many comments on the article and conversations I've had with people online and off on this matter I have never encountered a proper refutation to this; indeed it's almost always ignored.  Take for example this opposing opinion piece published in the Herald three days after mine. 

It's been an interesting experience, writing for a different audience from The Hand Mirror and watching how the response has been almost completely divorced from the blogosphere.  Not a single murmur on any blog that I've seen about the living wage discussion which has taken place quite heatedly on the Herald website across two opinion pieces now.  I've had people take the effort to ferret out my council email address and send me their thoughts, and contact from people I haven't seen for years except vaguely online telling me their mother told them about it.  Quite a different experience from the often hyper-critical environment online. 

Finally, I want to give a big thank you to Deborah Russell of A Bee of a Certain Age and The Lady Garden, who inspired me to do this.  I will be trying to do it again. 

Carnival!

The Down Under Feminists Carnival (affectionately known as the DUFC), now in it's 56th edition (that's 56 months of feministy goodness!) is up at Zero at the Bone.  You know what to do!

Call me maybe

In a series of posts around the issue of the accountability of pseudonymous bloggers Queen of Thorns wrote this about Brian Edwards' position that not using your real name is cowardly:

You’ve also got privilege.  

You’ve got the privilege of being a person in a career, in a social position, in a financial situation, which mean that stating your personal political biases for the world to see doesn’t pose you any risk.  

You get to get up in the morning and sit at your computer and type whatever you darn well please into the text field.

I'm generally in agreement with QoT on the issue of pseudonymity (and I do love that word).  You build up a reputation under a pseudonym just as you do under the name on your official paperwork, and there is accountability in that.  Quite apart from the the fact that your real name could well be completely fictitious and the reader wouldn't necessarily know (Brett Dale There was once* a salutory lesson for me on this very blog).  I don't really want to rehash all the points about this which have been bouncing around the internet for much of the last decade or more, and are resurrected every time someone with the privilege QoT identifies above gets confused about anons and pseudonyms and how online commentary works.

What I do want to do is expand some more on the theme of real-name privilege.  I write under my real-name, although I have shortened it to just my first name on my Blogger profile.  My real name is easily discovered, is in some of the posts I have written, and is mentioned by other bloggers here in posts they have written.  I'm open about the fact that I am "Julie from THM" on my Facebook and twitter accounts, and in personal interactions.

For a long time, in the first few years of this blog, I operated much as if I had a kind of real-name privilege that was almost the reverse of what QoT outlines.  It was more that I was such a minor player in the Game of Life that no one would care what I wrote really.  However that more and more became an impossible position, particularly amongst the feminist community where I was starting to find that things I might write flippantly were being taken more seriously than I intended.  The fault was with my writing, not the reading of others, and I took stock and reviewed that.  What I write does matter, and that's one of the reasons I write less now, because I feel a sense of responsibility to craft my posts very carefully, and that takes time and effort that I often don't have to spare these days.

I've avoided blogging about the area covered by my day job (education unionism, particularly early childhood and primary school until about two years ago, now special education).  It's not that I don't care about it, don't see these subjects as relevant to feminism, or have no thoughts.  I don't write about them because I don't want anyone to erroneously think that my witterings here are constructed under instruction from my employer. 

But politics, oh beautiful wondrous politics, of the New Zealand national and local variety, I thought I could write about those beloved topics without anyone deciding my thoughts, blogged here, were in fact those of another.  They've got my real name on them after all, how could anyone give the credit to anyone else!  Then this happened (TL;DR Herald on Sunday journo assumes I am my husband's appendage).  And now I write even less than I did before, certainly far less frequently than I would like to and about far less than I would like to. 

There is definitely a gendered element to this, for me, which is why I chose the Groucho Marx glasses, nose and moustache picture to illustrate this post.  It's a disguise many women would struggle to carry off, yet it is the first Google image result for "disguise".  As a woman with Views I face more difficulties than many of my male peers. I am more likely to have them ascribed to other people in my life ("that must be what her husband thinks", "she's just writing that because her boss told her to", "that'll be what Labour wants her to say").  I am more likely to suffer abuse as a result of sharing my Views.  I have many male friends who blog.  None have had threats of rape, threats against their children, or many of the other not so lovely comments I've had here.  The phrase "Uppity Man" doesn't parse. 

Writing under my real name has also opened up new opportunities that a pseudonym couldn't have; in particular the chance to be on Citizen A, spread my ideas about feminist issues in other media, and make friends with other feministy types without fear if we meet up. 

And writing under my real name has curtailed what I write about significantly, as outlined above, in a way that is a major chilling effect for me.  Maybe one day I'll have the level of privilege that Brian Edwards has, when I use my real name.  But I doubt it. 





*  Brett Dale comments on this blog frequently, often somewhat tangentially to the actual post.  This doesn't bother me.  I was quite stunned to find out in a debate a while back though that "Brett Dale" is a pseudonym. 
  Apologies to Brett, I have him confused with someone else whose pseudonym escapes me.  If I remember I'll rewrite this to accurately reflect that.  Oops!

Farewells and welcomes

We've got some exciting new bloggers, four in fact, coming soon to The Hand Mirror. 

Some are still working out what to call themselves and how to do their introductions, and we are all stoked to have them on board.  There will be some interesting and challenging reading ahead I'm sure! 

And we also farewell, fondly, three who haven't written for us in a long while, Enid, Lil'E and Undomestic Goddess.  They may pop up as guesties we hope.

53rd Down Under Feminist Carnival

Up now at Bluebec - make with the clicky!

Each month I am so pleased to see this carnival continue and grow and share really good stuff.

52nd Down Under Feminist Carnival out now!

And hosted graciously at Lip Magazine:

52nd Down Under Feminist Carnival.

Make with the clicky, and thanks to those who put it together and submitted :-)

Carnival!

The Forty-Sixth Down Under Feminist Carnival is now up for your perusing pleasure at Zero At The Bone. 

Many thanks to those who submitted posts from us here at The Hand Mirror. 

Carnival!

The Forty Fifth Down Under Feminist Carnival is now up at Maybe it means nothing.  

Many thanks to Jshoep for putting it together this time around, and to those who nominated Hand Mirror posts too. 

Make with the clicky!

Carnival time!

Many thanks to Mary at Hoyden About Town for putting together this month's Down Under Feminist Carnival - now in it's 44th (!!) month. 

A great chance to make with the clicky and read a range of feminist good stuff from across Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia from the last little while.

Many thanks to those who nominated posts from here :-)

Feminism 101 - Spoons.

Cross posted from my usual place.

Before we start, head over to Christine Miserandino’s piece from which the “spoon theory” has stemmed. It’s a brilliant piece, and the depth of understanding about what it is to have a disability that she managed to convey with her explanation is wonderful.



When I first started reading feminist blogs it wasn’t long before I started hearing about “spoons”
“I haven’t got the spoons”
“Urgh, I’m getting low on spoons”
“Anyone got the spoons to help me out with this jerk?”
And so-on.
I ended up asking a feminist friend to find out WTF people were talking about, because when you Google “spoon theory” you are more likely to read about the “silver spoon” sort of thing.
The overwhelming understanding in feminist circles appears to be that we only have limited resources to deal with our daily battles, whether they are personal, professional, or online. At times when there are heated debates on topics which may trigger us, those resources get depleted at a higher rate than usual.
Christine’s writing equated resources with spoons in relation to her Lupus, and the fact that those who live with Lupus have a constant struggle to maintain their lives while their condition deteriorates.
When people on the feminist blogs talk about “not having enough spoons” it may mean that they feel like they can’t deal with whatever it is that has been happening, do not have the energy to continue to debate, or just cannot find it in themselves to explain for what feels like the millionth time a concept to someone who may or may not actually want to learn.
Sometimes it is used among friends to ask for help. i.e. “I’m running out of spoons – can you come help deal with this troll?”
Sometimes to display distain at someone asking stupid questions, or repeating the same points. i.e. “I really don’t have the spoons to deal with you anymore.”

What is important to realise is that the Spoons concept was driven by someone with a long term debilitating illness. It is much loved by squillions of people who also struggle with limited spoons.
Go to twitter and use the hash tag #spoonies and you will find a reel of men and women all trying to cope with a myriad of disabilities daily and nightly. Their spoons are so much more valued than mine, just simply because I have more to start with, and do (usually) not have to truly economise with them.
It is for this reason that I don’t use the term “spoons”, because I feel like it isn’t really mine to use. I like the phrase, and I sure as hell think that it is relevant to everyone at some point in time, but it just feels a little like I’m undermining the original meaning now that I am in the fullness of health.

Tea-spoons is another phrasing that is less commonly used (as I have noticed), and the origions of this seem to be Florynce Kennedy. Check out the lovely Melissa McEwan over at Shakesville who uses the term regularly.

Just by nobody doing nothing the old bullshit mountain just grows and grows. Chocolate-covered, of course. We must take our little teaspoons and get to work. We can't wait for shovels."

I hope that this helps out people looking to find out what the heck is being talked about on the blogs when someone refers to “spoons”. Let's grab our tea-spoons and start shoveling hey?

Below I have included what spoons mean to other people, because there seems to be a slightly wider range than just what I thought.

“spoons” is just such a nice, succinct way of expressing “a finite, slowly-renewable resource I have to consciously think about allocating.”


I think it isn’t just good for understanding Lupus, but anyone dealing with any disability or illness.


Maya of “capitalism bad”
“Something that you might like to be aware of is that the person who wrote it, and others who have similar health issues (she has Lupus) are very critical of the way that it has been used much more broadly than originally intended...
There is an argument that the wide adoption of the metaphor for the lives of people under very different circumstances is a form of appropriation."


@Rageaholic_
I always thought it referred to having the patience to spoon-feed information in small and easily digestible chunks. But I think that was an assumption or I made it up-recently read the spoon-theory some1 linked to on THM & it's very different.
I should've made it "patience, time & ability" I realise it's more than just about getting frustrated with newbies sometimes.


1. We, the community of people with invisible chronic illnesses, need a terminology that describes just our experiences to use amongst each other and with the outside world.
2. That terminology, so far, is mostly The Spoon Theory.
3. The spoon theory has been great in getting the message across that our pain and fatigue and other symptoms make our daily lives very different from people who don't have invisible chronic illnesses.
4. People have taken the terminology and run with it.
5. This is great when it's being used to describe the experiences of people with invisible chronic illnesses.
6. This is problematic when it gets used for other things.
7. PLEASE STOP USING THE SPOON THEORY TO TALK ABOUT THINGS THAT AREN'T ABOUT BEING CHRONICALLY ILL.
8. Thank you.


@GraveyDice
I think of #spoons as an inverse of harmful culture, which is created by millions of small actions, each on their own trivial but collectively add up to something monstrous. #Spoons is the neutralizing of harmful culture in the same way - in tiny steps.
And the great benefit of #spoons is that the big problem is too big to comprehend fully, or to try to address. Whereas #spoons allows us to deal with small actions, one isn't overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem.


@TSpankhead
there's this, though it doesn't add anything. :)

@MeganWegan
Can't find the post, but short answer: pick the fights that are worth winning, and self-care is really important. No point trying to be any kind of activist if you're too tired for the fight.


Deborah.
There's another spoon concept, of using a teaspoon to empty an ocean, of misogyny usually. A huge and impossible task for one person, but little bit by little bit, as feminists from all over the world work on a issue, each wielding a teaspoon, the ocean is lowered.

NB: I have found Christine Miserandino very approachable and there may well be a response from her updated to this page in the next few days... fingers and toes crossed :)

Guestie: Of cupcakes and feminism

Many thanks to Rachel Rayner for this guest post, resulting from a conversation we were having on twitter about just this very topic.

"Thank you all for coming to this very important feminist debate. We have a panel of female politicians, discussing very important women's issues before the upcoming election. And we made CUPCAKES!"

When did this happen? The cupcake, a symbol of the Sex In The City brand of feminism has been fully embraced by the more sincere, unshaven, blog-reading feminist public. What was once a delight, an excuse to eat calories (calories!) guilt free because it's a cupcake and you deserve it has become a mandatory part of any feminist event.

Part of this is simply good hospitality. Breaking bread with friends is truly a wonderful thing, and a cuppa tea and something sweet makes any event flow more smoothly. The problem is that cupcakes are a faff. They're more labour-intensive than asparagus rolls, and more difficult to transport than biscuits. They're not fairy-cakes, those simple, rock hard little things, smeared with icing and splattered with sprinkles: a cupcake is an immense wodge of cake, topped with a swirl of pastel icing. The icing is sickly sweet, the cake is bland and dry. The paper casing flakes off in skin-like clumps as the still apron-clad baker watches closely. Do you like it? It’s a new recipe. I bought the edible glitter specially.

Cupcakes are representative of privilege in ways that barely need explaining. Even the simplest recipes take hours to pull together, and assumes access to ingredients and money to buy them; some level of skill; tolerance to gluten; and an environment rich with mixing bowls, muffin tins and those little paper cases. While this is arguably a pretty low hurdle (thrifty recipes which don’t call for butter or eggs! No-fail cake mixes! Just buy some damn cupcakes and call it a day!), any privilege creates cliques and excludes those outside it.

There's sometimes a fine line between sincerity and irony. We can ironically embrace cupcakes and high heels and foofy skirts and all the rest - it's when heels become mandatory and cupcakes a chore that it's a problem. Spending hours and hours in the kitchen can be a delight, it’s true, but when cupcakes are baked not out of choice, but to meet the expectations of others, we’ve circled around to a place I thought we’d left behind.

It's the pervasiveness of cupcakes that irritates me. Your discourse is still valid without sprinkles. If baking is your thing, by all means, bake. It can be relaxing, meditative, and delicious baked goods are a wonderfully concrete way to express affection. But let’s leave behind cupcakes for cupcakes sake. Put the jug on, and open a packet of biscuits.

Election night live-blogging 2011 - Index

Live-blogging from different bloggers here:

•  Julie - at Labour HQ in Mt Roskill
•  Luddite Journo - at the Greens HQ in Wellington
•  Maia - in front of the telly and the interwebs

If you click on the links above you'll go straight to that person's live-blogging post, which they will update through-out the night. (The links will be going as soon as people have started putting their post up).

Comments will be off moderation, for all posts, from 7pm-ish, unless we find we need to turn them back on cos people aren't playing nice.