Open thread: The prime minister, the pony tail, and the disturbing sense of entitlement

Very quick post on this breaking news today, here are some links if you have no idea what this is about:

The guest post on The Daily Blog where the waitress explains that the Prime Minister has been pulling her pony tail when he visits the cafe she works at.

Herald article giving Key's apology

Stuff summary

My initial thoughts, after WTF, are:

• There appears to be no dispute about the basic facts
• You don't need to touch other people
• There is a huge power imbalance between the Prime Minister and someone working in hospitality in a junior position 
• When asked to stop he didn't
• Intention isn't magic - harassment should be determined by the person the action is done TO, not the person who is doing it to them
• Who pulls ponytails?  Seriously, why would you do that?

Labour leadership: Too many irrelevant judgements

1.  Why is it only the people who aren't straight white men who have a judgement based on something about their identity, something they can't change?

2.  To take the awful ones in order:

• "Too gay" -  his sexuality is far from the only thing about Grant Robertson.  If this is a reference to the purported concern that New Zealand won't vote for someone who isn't openly heterosexual to be Prime Minister, then the problem is not that Grant is "too gay" but that NZ is too homophobic.  What does "too gay" even mean?  
• "Too passed it" - nice to mix up the sexism and homophobia with a bit of ageism.  And shouldn't it be "past it"?
• "Too many teeth" - because we all know that the most important thing about a woman is her appearance.  ARGH!  

3.  King, Ardern and Mallard have not even expressed any interest in running for the leadership.  Yet they get used to portray Labour as more divided than it actually is (which is, it seems, somewhat divided, but not so divided as to actually have 9 different candidates for leader)

4.  Why not Minnie Mouse? ;-)

"Choose Life" is not about choice; it's about force

There's a new campaign by one of my least favourite lobby groups (Family First in case you were wondering), which is encouraging people to wear special pink and blue ribbons to say "Choose Life," by which they mean don't have abortions.

The use of the word "choose" implies that Family First is asking people to make a choice.  But in fact what they actually want to do is take away the very choice they are supposedly promoting.

Confused?

Me too.

It's like this.

Family First are anti-abortion.  The code they most commonly use for this is something along the lines of supporting the rights of the unborn child, but no make no bones about it, they are opposed to abortion.

Family First are asking people to wear dinky ribbons in boringly gender-referenced colours (never mind that some people aren't girls or boys, or that pink ribbons are already very widely associated with breast cancer support).  Everybody say "awwwwww", cute widdle ribbons in baby colours!

Family First's ribbons are worn as a symbol that you want people to not have abortions.

Family First want to remove the current (flawed, fettered, and not autonomous) right to choose an abortion.

Family First want to take away any ability to "choose life" and instead are keen to force people to continue pregnancies when they don't want to.

In effect what they want to do is force you to choose life.  Not much of a choice is it?



Edited to add:  I've turned off and hidden comments.  I don't have time to moderate these posts and while there are some good comments the bad ones are annoying and I just can't be bothered.  If you particularly want me to know something then you can easily find me on email, twitter or Facebook.

Rape Culture: We're soaking in it

NB:  These points may already have been made, and made well, elsewhere. I've been largely keeping away from the Roast Busters stuff as I have other stuff going on currently that leaves me in a bad place to be dealing with that.  Hopefully this adds to the discussion, and the progress we MUST make, rather than just being a repetition.  Strong content warning for sexual violence.

Roast Busters is not new.  It is not some heinous development in human history.  Human history IS Rape Culture.  Rape Culture is a norm of centuries' duration we are trying to change, to overcome.  Well some of us are, anyway.

Rape Culture seems particularly bad right now because you are all seeing it.  It was there all along, so saturating us that it is the air we breathe.

Rape Culture is a society where the first things many people will consider when they hear of a rape include role of alcohol consumed by victim, role of clothes worn by victim, lack of parental supervision of victim,
instead of the reprehensible actions of the rapist.

Rape Culture is a society where victim blaming happens constantly.  Where female friends of the rapists speak out in the media to deny the accusations on their behalf.  Where those female friends may have been raped too, in the same circumstances as those they deny, and they can't face that they were raped too, because that is just too hard to deal with.*

Rape Culture is a society where a public health promotion agency deliberately uses fear of rape to scare women into drinking less alcohol, in the process promulgating a number of really really super unhelpful myths about rape and passing them off as truth.

Most women (and I suspect many men) have rape stories; their own, or those of others who have shared with them, things they have seen, things they themselves have done.  For me they are the stories of others, or near misses, but the chance that I will be raped at some point in my life is really very high - 1 in 4 women and girls in New Zealand have had that awful dehumanising experience.  I read once that 1 in 5 New Zealanders have asthma.  Amongst women being a victim of rape is more common than being asthmatic.

And we don't need more research actually.  There is a whole lot.  I'm not well placed to link, but Scube did, and I'm sure others have heaps of good links they can provide in comments.

What we need is more action.  More action by the State.  NGOs, individuals, groups formal and informal all do what they can, but they do not having the resources, the status or the longevity of central government.  We know enough to act; act effectively, efficiently and make a real difference.  Yet we don't.

We don't when we are the Government.  We don't when we are the Police.  We don't when we are people of high profile with significant media platforms.  Denial is a way of coping, I guess, because otherwise we have to accept that what we did to others could have been rape, what others did to us was rape, what we didn't stop happening to someone we love was rape.  What we allow and even encourage is Rape Culture.

We're soaking in Rape Culture, and it makes it hard to see.  When these moments come we must examine our complicity while we still can, so that once this case has faded we can still see the edges of our own enabling, and stop.



*  I have seen this happen first hand, and have no knowledge that this is at all the case in the Roast Busters situation.

Grrrrrrr!

Anger, oh how often you have visited me lately, let me count some of the ways:

• The frequently women-hating reaction to Labour daring to suggest that they make take some deliberate, transparent and necessary structural steps towards lifting their number of women MPs.  
• Trevor Mallard baiting another MP in the House by calling him "cougar bait."
• People who don't lay out their arguments properly and then don't come to the meeting to discuss the issue so you never really know where they stand before you make the decision.
• Changing a law because some state agencies broke it and the solution to that problem is somehow to make it legal, with the consequence that a whole heap of people who should have privacy no longer will.
• Promulgation by supposed lefties of the antiquated idea that women are precious flowers who should not be sullied by the putrid compost of politics and the stale water of being politicians or something like that, this metaphor is tortured enough already without actually trying to get it to make sense.
• Reflecting on how unfair and wrong and conservative New Zealand's abortion laws and provision actually are, yet again.
• Cancer.  Always.  
• The increasingly dirty SkyCity pokies for convention centre deal.  
• Doctors who want to be GPs but don't want to prescribe contraception.  It's your JOB, yo.

Ok, enough ragey bullet points from me - what's angrifying you?

Not a good day for women in politics, or indeed women

Things that have riled me today:

1.  Mis-reporting of Julia Gillard's speech calling out Tony Abbott's misogyny - The speech did not begin with "I will not be lectured by this man..." at all, it began with "I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny."  Reinvention to turn it into a personal attack on Abbott, as opposed to a statement opposing the systematic marginalisation and covert hatred of women in the Australian political environment is NOT HELPFUL.

2.  John Key forgetting that the Greens have two leaders.  Guess which one he forgot?  

3.  Invisible women at the Labour Party Conference too it seems, at least according to the vox pop TV3 News undertook on Saturday night (all Labour party fellas, not online) and the photos of Saturday from the Listener (which I must say are very good pics).

4.  No resolution to the funding crisis threatening Auckland's 24 Hour rape crisis helpline, despite repeated promises from this Government, year after year, that they will sort it.  I've had an Official Information Act request in for further info on how they have been working on this, made October 15th, but as yet haven't received any actual information as it bumps around between Government departments.  Unacceptable that yet again essential services that primarily assist women are cut.  I'm very very tempted to suggest we divert some men's sports funding to cover this one.  

Ok, that's enough of my grumpiness - what's getting your goat today?

"The only winner out of this will be [Greens leader] Russel Norman."

Read more: http://www.3news.co.nz/Keys-weighs-in-on-Labour-leadership-row/tabid/1607/articleID/277255/Default.aspx#ixzz2CdNAKwjN

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.

The upsides of Minister John Banks

This post contains sarcasm.

Now now lefties and assorted progressive types, John Banks becoming Minister of Regulatory Reform, for Small Business, and Associate Minister for Education and Commerce isn't all bad.

You just need to stretch your thinking muscles a bit and I'm sure you can see the upsides of this dandy new arrangement that involves ACT and National agreeing to implement policy that wasn't in either of their election manifestos.  Really, everyone is totally overreacting.

Sure Banks has a long history of homophobia, misogyny, racism and general all purpose bigotry, not to mention being of the Drowning Government in the Bathtub frame of mind, but he's just a man, man.  Chillax.

Here's a list of the upsides to help you be as relaxed as our fabled Prime Minister:

1. Key will have another multimillionaire called John to drink tea with.
2. Adolf won't be the only person regularly using the third person to talk about themselves.
3. Everyone will be able to spell transmogrification.
4. John may be able to afford to buy another pair of glasses so we don't have to always look at those hipster ones that constantly remind me of Paul Goldsmith.
5. Banks will be too busy to put any serious time into re-building ACT, even if he wants to
6. He may have to duel with the Ministers for Medium and Large Business for Budget funding.
7. Banks will probably be in Auckland less, and when he is he'll be in meetings, lots and lots of meetings.  So a significantly reduced chance of bumping into him in Newmarket.
8. At least he's not Minister of Corrections.
9. Or Minister of Pacific Island Affairs, Maori Affairs, Women's Affairs, or Local Government.
10. We'll now get lots of use for our Outrage Faces.

This was all I could think of.  And I thought really really hard.

Feel free to add your contributions in comments.

In honour of the Vice Chancellor's Debate at Vic

Public meeting, stage has panel with five men in suits, audience is mixed gender.  Chair of panel:  "The subject of tonight's discussion is:  Why are there no women on this panel?"

For all those taking part in election debates by attending or speaking, when you are faced with an all male line-up please consider pointing it out publicly, and that it is not ok.  I find it highly unlikely that there are many electorates which have no female candidates in the contest, and when it is a forum not run along strict electorate lines then there is even less excuse.

If it wasn't for those pesky women leaders we would have won the World Cup

Circulating on Twitter last night was a spectacularly absurd conclusion of a highly erroneous nature;  namely that no country with a female leader has ever won the Rugby World Cup.

The All Black's lost in 1999, 2003 and 2007 because we had Jenny Shipley and then Helen Clark as Prime Minister.  Nevermind that we also lost in 1991 and 1995 under male leadership.  The Wallabies lost last night because Julia Gillard is their current PM.  Ireland lost in 1987 because Mary Robinson was their President.  England lost in 1987 because Thatcher was in power.  There are no other stats to examine because of the 12 teams that have made the quarter finals or above in the entire history of the RWC, these are the only female leaders of these countries, since 1987.  So the vast vast majority of rugby teams who have failed to win the Rugby World Cup have done so under male political leadership.

Correlation is not causation.  And actually it's not good enough to play anti-feminist bingo and say you are joking when what you are doing is perpetuating misogyny.

How to lose your own political identity in one easy step

When I was 16 I worked in a take-away store that sold fried chicken, and on Saturdays things were invariably slow and quiet during the day.  The manager would usually get stuff done in the office, while the main cook and the cashier (me) would mainly do prep for the evening shift when things were busier.*  For a while the main cook was a guy called Peter and we used to have quite interesting discussions about politics.  I remember the specifics of none of what we talked about, except for the time when Peter told me I should be a Cabinet Minister's wife someday.  I asked why I couldn't be a Cabinet Minister myself.

That discussion, nearly two decades ago, has come back to me in the last few days.  On Thursday I rang back a journalist at the Herald on Sunday who had left a message saying he wanted to discuss my take on the marginal seats.  To put this in context, I generally do a couple of media interviews a month since I was elected to the Puketapapa Local Board, mostly about local issues, but sometimes about feministy political things as a result of work on this very blog you're reading.  I've been asked to be on TV panels for political shows (invitations I haven't been able to take up) to add a feminist perspective.  All of these media contacts, and ones I've experienced in the past for other hats I've worn, have been to me, as a person in my own right, a politician or a blogger or a spokesperson on an issue.

Back to my conversation with the HoS journo.  To start with I thought we were just talking about my take on the marginals.  I thought this was a bit strange, as I don't profess to have any particular expertise on the marginals, and had only made some loose predictions a couple of weeks back to aid my calculations for the projected Labour and National caucuses (and the gender analysis of the parties I've been doing for two elections now).  Indeed I declined to comment on the Hamilton seats at all because I just don't know enough about them.  I would have done the same for most of the other seats on my marginal list, but he really only asked me about Auckland Central and Maungakiekie, which I do know a little about.  I said I thought the door-knocking Nikki Kaye had done for six months before election day in 2008 had been key for her victory and that I had heard Jacinda Ardern's team had been canvassing there for ages already, making it difficult to predict.  I talked at length about what a good job Carol Beaumont was doing as a local MP in Maungakiekie, and how impressed I had been when we worked on the Pah Rd Warehouse issue together.

Then the penny dropped, when I was asked if I thought it would be demoralising to Labour to have the wife of a candidate saying they would lose some marginals.

Was it naive to think that a reporter might actually want to talk to me about some political analysis I'd written?

Farrar disingenuous over lack of women on National list

In an attempt to innoculate about concerns over the lack of women on National's list, released yesterday, David Farrar points to the three biggest movers on the list:

So who are the big moves.
The three biggest promotions are:
1.  Paula Bennett +27
2.  Amy Adams+24
3.  Nikki Kaye +24 A big vote of confidence in all three

Now it's interesting that Farrar chose the top three movers upwards.  Because the next two are:

4.  Simon Bridges +21
5.  Jonathan Young +21

These are the five who have moved up more than 20 places, which are really very large promotions.  But to point all of them out would involve showing two men's names when the focus is on minimising the appearance that the National list is male-dominated.  Good strategy to try and distract from the 72% maleness of the top 50.


And then there's this assessment from Farrar, which has been repeated elsewhere by a number of centre-right and right bloggers:

In terms of caucus diversity, and assuming a 48% party vote, National would have 15 female MPs out of 60, or 25%. A lot better than the old days when you could count the number on one hand, but not as high as it could be. The percentage women would increase to 28% if National gets 52%.

When Farrar refers to "the old days" I'm assuming he doesn't mean the current day, because right now the National caucus has 28% female MPs (16 out of 58).  I know I'm just a girl and girls can't do maths, but 25% is LESS THAN 28% and 15 projected female MPs is LESS THAN 16 current female MPs.

Key said yesterday that National still has the most female MPs in the House.  As previously mentioned, they have 16.  Labour have 15 female MPs.  Coincidentally, National have 16 more MPs than Labour overall.  Makes you wonder how many women National would have in the House if they had fewer MPs total, doesn't it?

Hooton has reportedly been on the radio this morning saying we live in a post-feminist world and 50% women's representation isn't a big deal anymore.  As Megan succintly tweeted:

if 50% of women would be no big deal, why don't we have it? And why are we going backwards?

Shame on National for continuing to entrench a lack of political representation for women in New Zealand.



Graphic shamelessly stolen lovingly reproduced from this guest post at The Standard.   See also a post by Labour's women's affairs spokesperson Carol Beaumont at Red Alert, looking beyond just the lack of women on the list to also list some of the funding cuts that programmes on women's issues have faced under National.

Sometimes a red scarf is just a red scarf

Lately there's been a daily misunderstanding I've been striving to overcome.  Most days someone will assume I am in the NZ Labour Party.

I've signed people up to Labour (three at last count) and I've done stuff to help out (mainly by releasing my partner to do the masses of voluntary work he does for the party, or helping him to learn how to do vaguely technical online campaigning things).  I'm a member of a union (SFWU) which is affiliated to Labour, so some people reckon this makes me a member, but it doesn't really unless I choose to be active, which I don't.

The other day I was getting my photo taken by the Central Leader outside the future site of a Warehouse store in my constituency, which I've been assisting locals to oppose (on the grounds that it's a stupid place to put any big box retail, but that's a whole other blog post).   It was first thing in the morning and chilly with it, so I was wearing my black wool coat and a warm red scarf.  The photographer and journalist asked me if the red scarf was "because it is the Warehouse or because of the Labour Party."  I explained that I hadn't even thought of the Warehouse's colours, that I wasn't in the Labour party, and that actually it was because black next to my face makes me look really washed out in photos.  We all laughed about it. 

I've had this scarf since before I met my Labour partner, I think; it was a present from my Mum years and years ago.*  Twice in the last fortnight other people have assumed I'm Labour** based on said scarf.  On other occasions the nominal reason for the assumption is a red jumper or hand-bag or shoes.

Two things:

1. The colour red does not belong to the Labour party.  In other contexts it might be assumed I'm in the Bloods, or supporting the Dragons.  How come when I wear green no one assumes I'm Green?***
2. Because really the assumption is not about the scarf, or the jumper or the shoes or the handbag.  It's about who my partner is; i.e. a prominent Labour person.  

Interestingly, when I was very active in the Alliance, including being on the National Council, co-convenor of the youth wing, and an election candidate, no one ever assumed my partner (the same person as now) was a fellow party member.  Partly because it was commonly known he was in Labour, but also, I think, because there was a respect and assumption that he might have different political affiliations from me.

I don't entirely mind the Labour assumption.  I spend a lot of time with Labour people,**** and I have to say my local government electoral success was in large part a result of a lot of hard work from Labour supporters and members, who campaigned for me even though I wasn't one of their own.

But I do find the gender difference intriguing.  As is the label that I'm a "politician's wife".  I've been involved in politics since well before I met my partner.  If you want to get technical, I was a politician before he was by some measures, and started at the same time by others.  For several years now it's been clear that his political future, in terms of limelight, may be more significant than mine, but that doesn't reduce me to an appendage clutching my pearls on the sideline while my man does the real work. He definitely doesn't see me that way and neither do I.


*  Thinking back I suspect she gave it to me to get me to stop wearing my North Harbour scarf incessantly. 

**  I'm not Labour but I am definitely in the labour movement.  The difference is very clear in my mind.
***  Although someone did say I was "looking very National Party today" last week because I was wearing blue tights.  And here I thought I was looking like a Blue Stocking.  
****  Yes some of my best friends are in the Labour party.

Observations

Observation the First - If kids are going without breakfast their mums probably are too
I get really fed up with the narrative that seems to go with child poverty, as exhibited by the number of kids going to school without breakfast, that seeks to blame the parents.  When food is short in a household often mum is the first to cut her rations.  This is not a situation where there are gluttonous parents hoovering up all the food and not caring that their kids are hungry.  It is a situation where there are families in our society who cannot afford to buy food.  By framing it as the former we can Otherize it - it's Their fault, they are not like me/us, and it's therefore Someone Else's Problem.  To accept it's actually the latter I guess we may need to step up and recognise that our society is something that we can have some say over - we make choices, particularly political choices, that have consequences for others.  To change society is daunting, but shouldn't the systems we live in serve rather than hinder?

Observation the Second - There are not enough jobs
There's been multi-purpose whining about how the youth unemployment rate is a direct result of the abolition of youth rates.  Employers are supposedly giving jobs to older people instead of youf because they can't get away with paying less than the adult minimum wage for young workers.  Older people are competing for places that traditionally went to the young uns because they are losing their own jobs, or their financial situations have changed resulting in the need for second and third incomes.  I really noticed over the weekend the high number of shops shutting, empty commercial spaces for lease, and a large number of retail sales that looked like the immediate precursor to closing down (shelves emptying out, no new stock coming in, quite big discounts on everything).  I also spotted a lot of older workers in the kind of retail jobs that used to be predominantly filled by those in their teens or early twenties.  The layoffs, public and private, don't seem to be getting much media but they are real, and it's definitely a buyer's labour market at the moment.

Observation the Third - A lot of people are moving to Australia for better prospects
In the 90s most of my friends were people I met through university, where we were studying together, and so hardly anyone I knew shifted to Australia.  Then in the 00s a lot of my peers did the OE thing, and some have not come back, but very very few actively moved across the Tasman as a result of a failure to find work here.  Lately week after week I feel I'm hearing of a new acquaintance, relative or friend who is making the shift.  Then there was the woman on Nat Rad from Christchurch last week who sounded very bitter about the lack of support for her family to stay.

What is this Government actually doing about job creation?  Whatever happened to whatever mysterious wondrousness came out of the Jobs Summit?  The Market is not providing; for kids, for their parents, for young, for old, for inbetween.  When do we start asking questions about the system we live in, not the individuals caught in it?

Bob McCoskrie missing the point of Slut Walk when he says Slut Walk is missing the point

Newstalk ZB has interviewed Family First's fax machine spokesperson Bob McCoskrie on the Slut Walk events coming up in Auckland and Wellington:*

'Family First's Bob McCoskrie supports the protestors' message, but thinks the rally's shock-value title is taking away from the real issue.

' "I think their cause is a completely justified one," he told Newstalk ZB. "I'd just like them to do it in a family friendly way so that the message gets across rather than with a negative connotation."

'Bob McCoskrie says the way women dress is irrelevant, as there's no justification for rape.'

Having got over my astonishment that I totally agree with that last thing there that Bob said, it seems to me that Mr McCoskrie is totally missing the point of Slut Walk.

Slut Walk by its very nature rejects the notion that the way women (or indeed men) dress is relevant.  It's been very clear to me, from all that I've read and seen about Slut Walk, that the idea is that you come along to walk in solidarity on the issue, and that what you wear on the Slut Walk itself is irrelevant too.  If you want to dress in a revealing manner that would disconcert Mr McCoskrie then you can do so, and you should feel safe.  Equally if you want to wear full burka, or a demure Victorian outfit buttoned up to the neck with full-length sleeves, a skirt down to your ankles and no waist, or a sweatshirt and jeans, you will be welcome.  

I'm not sure if I'll be able to make the Auckland event, but I will be trying to.  Not sure what I'll wear.  And it doesn't matter what I wear.  What matters is that I agree with the cause, as McCoskrie says he does too, and that I act in a way that doesn't undermine the issue by raising irrelevant objections.

*  If anyone can direct me to a Facebook event listing for the Welly one I'll ETA.  Ta.  Many thanks to Caitlin in comments.

Two ARGHs in one morning is two too many

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Asking the wrong questions

The Welfare Working Group has a discussion document out today (links to what they've released) and it shows they are still asking the wrong questions.

Paula Rebstock and co are very concerned, as the Government asked them to be when the WWG was established, about long term welfare dependency.  They've found, unsurprisingly given their brief and the backgrounds of WWG members, that the welfare system as it stands is out-dated and unsustainable.

Seems to me that they are looking at this the wrong way around.  All of the effort is going in to looking at the supply side of welfare - how people access benefits - as opposed to examining the more useful demand side - why do people need benefits in the first place.

If we look at the why then surely we will find that what is in fact out-dated and unsustainable is our approach to paid work, in particular the way we structure our society to make part time work impractical for many individuals and employers.

Sadly it seems the WWG will continue down the wrong path, and possibly enable this Government to make changes that take us in the wrong direction to resolving these issues.

Update:  For more nuanced analysis, rather than just my grumpiness, Idiot/Savant has excellence. 

ACC's new approach to sensitive claims not working

From the Herald this morning:

A review of new rules for sexual abuse counselling has come too late to save a South Auckland mother who died four days after her claim for ACC-funded counselling was rejected.

Counselling Services Centre manager Emma Castle said the mother-of-three's claim for counselling for sexual abuse she had suffered as a child was rejected by ACC two months ago on the grounds that she had not suffered "a significant mental injury".

"The counsellor who submitted the claim made it very clear that sexual abuse was the reason why she had suicidal ideation and was self-harming," Ms Castle said. "It took them six months to make that decision. Four days after receiving notification that the ACC claim was denied, the client passed away."

...[Speaking on the issue of the panel announced to review the policy] "None of our specialist experts that work day to day with survivors of sexual violence, and have done for decades, have been chosen to be part of this review," Dr McGregor [Head of Rape Prevention Education aka Rape Crisis] said.

She said the rules had caused a virtual "collapse" of sexual abuse counselling, with cases approved by ACC down from 472 in the first two months of last year to just 32 in the same period this year.

The Association of Counsellors' representative on the ACC's sensitive claims advisory group, Elayne Johnston, said a 15-year-old girl who was raped over Christmas had still not received counselling because ACC required her to be assessed by a psychologist to see whether she had suffered a "mental injury".

Dr McGregor said almost all of the 600 to 700 private counsellors who were registered for ACC-funded work had stopped taking applicants for ACC subsidies since the new rules took effect because of an ethical objection to labelling assault victims as mentally ill.

Survivors were now going to rape crisis agencies instead, but the agencies could not cope because they had also lost funding...

Click through for the whole article.

This whole thing just makes me so sad. The sector warned the Minister that this would happen if he changed the rules in this way. He did it anyway. And now that it's happening, with real consequences for real people in awful situations, he's announced a review that doesn't include anyone from the frontline. This is starting to be a standard MO for this Govt. It reminds me of the 1990s when anyone who was an expert or practitioner in X was written off as having a vested interest in X and therefore their views were biased and not worth consideration.

What's offensive is subjective

The Kiwi Party want a law against "offensive behavior." They're primarily concerned about the Boobs on Bikes parades that Steve Crow runs and which we've had quite a few discussions about here before.

And they've jumped on the bandwagon that gets hauled out every year around this time, of determining precisely what our war fallen fought for (or didn't). The Kiwi Party reckons "The ‘Steve Crow type anything goes sexual freedom’ is not what they sacrificed and often gave their lives for!" (Their exclamation mark)

Here's another snippet from their release:

Kiwi Party leader Larry Baldock said they see no reason why the Summary Offences Act and Crimes Act should not be amended to clearly define what is offensive public behaviour rather than leaving it to subjective judicial interpretation. Why not have the law simply state that the 'private parts' that have been traditionally covered (boobs, bums and fronts!!) should not be publicly displayed?

Now let me tell you what I find the most offensive behaviour in a public place. Anti-abortion protesters who parade around with their misleading fetus pictures and their incredibly emotive slogans, harassing women outside clinics that offer terminations. But somehow I don't think the Kiwi Party would want a law that banned that.

As for "traditionally covered", whose traditions are we talking about?

I've written before about my ambivalence about the Boobs on Bikes stuff, although Anjum is not so conflicted. I'm just sick of morality crusades by the likes of the Kiwi Party. Their basis for opposing Boobs on Bikes is about a paternalistic attitude towards women that to my mind only seeks to reinforce the idea that our bodies can be viewed as property - just not property that we should be devaluing by flaunting. Grrr!

Today is not a good day

Oh I had such plans for today. There would be some nice things in the morning with Wriggly and my Mum, and some blogging this afternoon while the toddler slept, maybe some baking, certainly a decent dinner prepared. I thought I was so over it all, moving on and feeling good again.

But I'm not over it and I'm not feeling good and I'm not managing to do much to plan today. It's been two years since my Dad died, and although it's not constantly at the forefront of my mind, it's undeniably making me sad, grumpy and not that great to be around. I got frustrated at some work colleagues (yes I have the day off, I usually do schedule difficult Dad-related anniversaries as days off if I can, but apparently something was urgent), was uninspired company for my mother, yelled at my son when he was naughty, was largely unexcited by one of the really very nice things I did this morning, and am generally feeling worn down by everything that I hear on the radio or see on the interwebz.

So I am going to bed. Maybe when I wake up I can pretend it's not today anymore. Sorry about the lack of quality blogging, particularly the post(s) I've been hoping to write on women's representation on boards and the like. I can't make any promises for the weekend, as this funk may last several days, but one day I will get around to it I'm sure.

And it just goes to show, even when you think you're through, even when you think you're over it, sometimes you just aren't.