Disability and Queer Issues Part 1

The following is an edited version of a short talk I gave on disability and queer issues to a queer, mostly studenty, audience. It is limited by the short time I had to speak, as well as my own perspective. At the end I touched on some aspects of movement building and common experiences, however I have ended this post quite abruptly before that as I'd like to explore these in more depth in a later post.

As a queer disabled person, the disadvantages and exclusion you face end up being multiplied. It’s hard to find queer friendly housing, and it’s hard to find accessible - which may mean quiet or dry or wheelchair accessible - housing. If you need both, you get slammed. Queer friendly healthcare isn’t that easily come by - but try finding queer friendly healthcare that is accessible and includes the specialist knowledge you might need. Queer people generally get useless, inappropriate and often outright damaging sex education. Disabled people can get the same, or often don’t get it at all, perhaps because we are assumed to be non-sexual, because we are removed from those classes for extra tuition, because it is not offered in a way we can understand or interpret or because it is not appropriate to our bodies. Again, the effect is multiplied.

Queer spaces are too often inaccessible - even on the most basic level of being wheelchair accessible. It's not acceptable, and constitutes a 'not welcome' sign on the door for many disabled people. And whilst this isn't okay anywhere, I think most of us here know how essential queer spaces can be, and that they're often the place you go after being excluded from anywhere else. Accessibility needs can be quite varied, though - to give one personal example, I struggle with the reliance on bars and clubs as queer spaces because I have problems in noisy environments. I'm happy that more and more alternatives are being offered, but there's a long way to go. Accessibility is often overlooked in event planning, but it needs to become as routine as booking a room or putting up posters.

 
The next thing I want to talk about is family and relationships. The picture above is from the movie Milk in which this young person calls up Harvey Milk for help as his parents are about to send him off to be degayed. He’s advised to run away, and get to a big city. The image then zooms out, revealing he’s a wheelchair user. That story had a happy ending, but many don’t.

It’s hard enough escaping from abusive or bigoted family - but if you have limited mobility, if sleeping on a couch isn’t possible for you, if you need personal care provided by your parents, if they’re the ones who take you to medical appointments, if public transport is inaccessible and your escape can be attributed to your disability then it’s a whole other story. You’ve probably heard about parents of disabled adults fighting to be paid for carework in the news recently. Mostly it’s been fought from the angle of these parents’ rights - which is important. But it’s also important that disabled people are not forced to live with family members longer than they would otherwise choose for financial reasons.

Similarly, there can be pressure for disabled people to stay in relationships longer than they otherwise would if they are meeting support needs - this includes abusive relationships, but also those which have simply run their course. I think this issue is particularly important to the queer community, not just because abuse in queer relationships is under recognised, but because we place a lot of value on the fight to be accepted as in relationships, and we need to understand that for some leaving can be just as much as a struggle.

The sexuality and gender identity of disabled people can be linked to their disabled status in a way which pathologises or dismisses that identity. For example, asexual disabled people are assumed to be examples of the belief that ‘disabled people don’t have sex’ rather than having their identity acknowledged in its own right. Disabled lesbians are assumed to be lesbian because they can’t get a man. Genderqueer disabled people can be assumed to be confused or lack understanding of social appropriateness.

That said, I think queer people can often be unaware of the complex ways sexuality and gender identiy can be linked to disability for some people. To give just one specific example, a lot of autistic people see themselves as outside the gender binary. And a number of them would never identify as genderqueer or join groups catering for queer and gender diverse people (though of course some do!). They might see their gender identity as an extension of their autistic identity, but not talk in the terms or feel welcome in the spaces that other non-binary people do.

Disabled queer people of course experience similar issues to many who experience more than one form of oppression. The more acceptable norms a person fits, the more easily they can get away with breaking others. Sometimes this starts externally, and becomes internal, with people trying to hide one part of themselves because it is all ‘too much’.

Okay, shoe time:

Say (to make it simple) if you were at a queer women’s group, and a woman walked in wearing one of these pairs of shoes. You’d probably assume it related to her identity in some way. If I gave you two stereotype hairstyles, I’m sure you could match them with the shoes - and you might make some assumptions about the type of person she is and what she does with her time.

 I look at those shoes and see one pair I could never ever conceive of wearing anything like them, because I’d fall over, and another that I might manage but would be a struggle. I don’t see identity; I see functionality. But so much of identity in the queer community is assumed to be tied up with what we wear or how we look which excludes those of us who have limited choices in this matter.

Related to this is the label of ‘assimilationist’. To me, an assimilationist position is one in which someone seeks to advance the position of their own group whilst leaving the system intact, someone who (for example) focuses on fighting for rich white gay men to have the same rights as rich white straight men, and thinks that’s as far as it needs to go. But I’ve seen it directed at individuals for focussing on meeting personal needs or living a conventional lifestyle.

The truth is, we all do what we need to survive in this society - but the needs of some disabled people may not be recognised as needs. Having - say - a quiet living space or a car because you need it (or even if you don’t need it) isn’t a problem - assuming that because you have the world isn’t broken is. Disabled queer people can also find themselves in a complicated position when it comes to breaking or conforming to stereotypes. The same action can be viewed as challenging stereotypes in one community, but upholding them in others. And therefore we really need to stop making this about our lifestyles, about how we live and what we own, because those don’t change anything. But what we fight for - and how we fight it, collectively - does.

Language and concepts associated with disability - intellectual disability and mental illness in particular - are often used to oppress queer people. Two particular examples come to mind; some of you may remember Constance McMillen, a young person in Mississippi who was not allowed to take her same sex partner to her school prom. After public pressure, the school seemingly relented, only trick to her into what was dubbed a ‘fake’ prom with her intellectually disabled classmates, whilst the so called ‘real’ prom went on elsewhere. Meanwhile in New Zealand a woman recently received an apology for years of medical abuse - including electro-convulsive therapy - resulting from her sexual orientation.

And I think it’s so important we’re careful how we respond to these. Our response shouldn’t be “this abuse was so bad because she wasn’t really mentally ill” or “it was wrong to segregate her from the rest of her school because she’s not intellectually disabled” but to acknowledge that people are on the receiving end of similar forms of oppression for ostensibly different reasons and we need to fight it together.

Guest Post: The R-Word

Thanks to hazel for allowing to crosspost this from The Money Pit where she blogs about home renovation and her life.


Field and I are in a relationship.

We don’t have sex.

It’s a relationship where we split the bills and squabble over what kind of cheese to buy; where I get away with picking the bacon I want, and she has all the salt-and-vinegar chips her little heart desires; where we have long sprawling conversations at eleven o’clock at night about Books We’ve Read and Why Television Is Hard; where we email each other from our respective workplaces about what we want to eat for dinner, what we’ve read on the internet news that day, why four hours sleep is not enough, whether it’s a good idea to buy more wine (yes). But at the end of the day, we go to our separate beds in our separate rooms and close the doors.

And it’s invisible.

*

A few nights ago we had a conversation about how we want to refer to each other: we flatted with each other (and with Nish) for six years, but this is something new. We’re hiring plumbers now. In the end we decided that “co-owner” fit the best, but that’s not quite right either: too much business in the front, not enough party at the back. “Partners” has connotations that I in no way disapprove of, but which just aren’t accurate; it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest if people thought that Field and I were a couple, but we’re not. I toyed with “lady-wife”, mostly as a joke, but while that kind of shit is fun with friends it’s difficult to say with a straight face to your lawyer, your electrician, your bank-manager, your mum.

So co-owners it is for now, and we’ll change it if it stops being the closest match for what we are.

*

But we’re invisible, this thing. When I talk about buying a house with Field, I’m talking about my long-term life plan. I’m talking about planning a garden, about where we’re planting the fuschia (me) and the hebes (me) and the carpet roses (Field) and the agapanthus (over my dead body). I’m talking about the six-month conversation we’ll have about whether we’re going to wallpaper or paint the lounge, and what shade it should be, and what the curtains should be made of. I’m talking about how we run the kitchen, how we cook together, how we make plans to go to the supermarket and what our budget there will be. I’m in charge – always and forever – of making electronics Go; she’s in charge of the alphabet because my god how I hate reshelving books.

I’m talking about the two or three years of planning that went into this. I’m talking about how I researched suburbs and public transport routes; about how grateful I am that Field got her full licence and a car, and how much easier that made the house-hunting process. I’m talking about the gin-and-tonics she made us tonight for dinner, before she went to lie down on her bed in the summer evening sun and I came online to watch comedy routines on youtube and write this post. I’m talking about the expression of my hopes and dreams, my plans and schemes, how I’ve wanted to do up a house for forever (as long as Nish has known me, and that’s a bloody long time).

I’m talking about how we started having conversations about how we wanted this to work 18 months ago, how we set up a joint savings account over a year ago, how we now have 2 joint accounts plus the mortgage, insurance in both our names and shared household goods. I know where she was born, her date of birth, what her passport photograph looked like when she was thirteen. I chat to her mum sometimes on the phone a bit. She knows these things about me.
And so I have conversations with people about buying a house with Field, and what they hear is of two good friends buying a house together, and what they say is:

That’s sensible.

and

Have you thought about what would happen if you didn’t want to live together anymore?

*

And.

No. No, it isn’t sensible, you utter moron, do you know how much it would devastate me if it all turned to pot, how difficult it would be to disentangle our lives? Our finances are complicated and not wholly governed by standard law, but that’s the least of it when we have mostly shared friends and I can’t remember exactly how to cook dinner on my own anymore, when the kitchen seems strange when she’s not there to navigate around and pass me spoons and pepper.

and

Yes, what, you think we set up a joint savings account and talked to banks and lawyers and looked at houses and put in an offer and went unconditional and settled and moved without ever thinking about what we were doing? Without ever talking to each other about it?

*

This wasn’t an accident, this house in this street. It wasn’t the easy or the simple choice; it wasn’t obvious. It wasn’t a calculated financial decision. My life isn’t good financial planning – single girls without options, women on the shelf looking to get on the property ladder. I may be a spinster with a cat, but by god I have done it with intent.

one way to balance the books: reverse the tax cuts

so the government's books are going to show a blowout. what a surprise. not.

the latest cuts in tax & the previous ones, particularly at a time when unemployment was going up, were always going to deliver that result. had the last 2 rounds of cuts been focussed on lower income earners, they would have had a greater impact on economic recovery (as those at the bottom would spend on necessities) and they would have cost a lot less. not only that, businesses would be paying more in tax overall, as they would have been more profitable from the extra consumer spending.

the rise in GST has made the problem worse, as prices have gone up way beyond 2.5%. especially prices at the supermarket, where many items that should have gone up say 13 cents have gone up by a dollar. i know i've cut back on things just in sheer frustration of unfair price rises. i refuse to give unethical companies my custom.

yet there was a piece in the waikato times last week, which i won't bother linking to, by some expert writing about what small business owners wanted. and wouldn't you know it, the first thing he wrote about was the desire for more tax cuts. even while acknowledging that rates had gone down significantly and that even the company tax rate was going down. the latter will have gone down 5% over about 3 years. and the top tax rate has gone down 6% in 2 years.

there are 2 things about this attitude that really annoy me. first, where do these people think the money will come from for the services they want to see - faster internet, better roads, more public transport, support in times of hardship (disease-stricken kiwifruit growers, drought-stricken northland farmers, earthquake-stricken canterbury businesses), and much more? i guess many of them want to see beneficiaries starving, even though there aren't the jobs in the economy for to employ them.

the second thing is that many small businesses don't operate as companies, so they aren't subject to the company tax rate. in which case, they aren't subject to the highest tax rate until they hit $70,000 of income. and if there are 2 of them in partnership, that goes up to $140,000 in income. exactly how many small business owners are earning more than that? not a whole lot.

and even the small businesses who do have a company structure or a trust structure allocate out income to shareholders/beneficiaries by way of a shareholder salary or a beneficiary distribution. which means, again, that they aren't going to be hitting the top tax rate until over $140,000 of income.

so who benefits most from the drop in the company tax rates? large businesses and particularly foreign businesses. we are basically allowing our tax base to be eroded for the benefit of overseas shareholder. we are going to have cuts in services forced on us in the next budget, for the benefit of overseas shareholders. how is this sensible?

what's more, i'm surprised by the number of small business owners who don't even realise that only income they earn over the $70,000 is taxed at the top rate (or over $140,000 if a couple). they seem to think the whole lot is taxed at the top rate. which is, i suppose, why the tax cut message seems to sell so well to this demographic. except that many of them are never going to earn the kind of income that will give them the benefit of tax cuts, while every single one of them will suffer as public services are cut. even with the 6% cut in the top rate, a person earning $80,000 pa will have gained $600, but have lost a lot more than that in things like early childhood cuts, cuts for home help for the elderly, cuts to adult education, etc etc. who knows what will go in the next round of public service cuts.

and yes, these people will also suffere from any cuts to benefits. because when beneficiaries have less money, small businesses get less business and are less profitable. as small businesses reduce in profitability, medium size businesses suffer. and so it goes on. when you expect beneficiaries to starve, the end result can only be that businesses will starve - at least, local small & medium enterprises will.

the best way to balance the books is to raise the top tax rate & the company tax rate back up. it'll have little impact on the vast majority of nz'ers, but will have significant benefits for the country as a whole.

Doing something about ACC counselling funding cuts - Wgtn

Thanks very much to reader Ali for passing this on - I know there has been a bit of interest in doing something in the comments, so hopefully this will be well attended.

Please pass this on to anyone who may be interested:

From October 12 changes to ACC's funding for sexual abuse counseling will mean survivors of abuse will only be eligible for ACC covered counseling if they have been diagnosed with a mental injury under the US Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Version 4 (DSM-IV). This will severely limit survivors' access to counseling.

More info in these two articles.

Meeting to organise against the funding cuts:

Monday, October 5, 5:30 pm at 128 Abel Smith St, Wellington

Any info about stuff happening in the rest of the country would be much appreciated, you can email it to me julie dot fairey at gmail if you prefer not to write a comment.

Quick hit: Suddenly solo

From the Herald today:

Asian migrant men hit by recession are moving overseas to look for work - but are leaving their wives and children in New Zealand.

The situation is developing into a "mental health timebomb" for these "suddenly single mothers" in the Asian community, and stigma and fear of "losing face" are preventing them from reaching out for help or even sharing their problems with friends, says a University of Auckland expert.

Dr Amritha Sobrun-Maharaj, director for the university's Centre for Asian Health Research and Evaluation, says urgent research is needed to understand how widespread the problem is and its impact on New Zealand.

...

"To have a mental health problem is considered shameful in Asian communities, and if sufferers are not reached, and they continue to be unable to interact or integrate it could have huge social and economic repercussions for New Zealand," said Dr Sobrun-Maharaj.

She said her centre needed $400,000 to run the research over two years, but it had been unable to find funding.

Click through for the whole article.

Putting to one side for a moment the whole who-exactly-are-these-"Asians"-of-whom-you-speak thing...

Yesterday I was talking to a relative whose partner was made redundant recently. While he is still looking for work, he's looking after their child while my relative increases her hours at her average wage job. They've taken their daughter out of the early childhood service she was attending, and are tightening their belts, and despite the difficulties they seem pretty happy with how things are working. But without the mother's wage, from a job she started doing when times were rosier, they'd be pretty stuffed about now. As they're already living in Auckland they haven't had to discuss one or all of them moving to find work. They have plenty of family support emotionally and practically, if not financially.

Still it's hard for them, even though they do have some advantages over many others, like those in the article I've linked. I feel very lucky today to be in pretty well paid work, to have enough money to be comfortable, to not have a financial need to work lots of extra hours that take me away from my family, to have a partner who enjoys being at home and has no dented pride about his wife being the breadwinner.

Domestic Violence and Economic Abuse

There is an interesting piece over at TomDispatch about the economic crisis and women in New York city. In particular, the piece highlights the pressure wider economic insecurity is placing on women to remain in situations characterised by partner violence.

When "domestic violence" is mentioned, people usually think of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, but experts say that another form of domestic violence has been on the increase since the global financial meltdown hit. They call it "economic abuse." It not only goes largely unnoticed by most Americans, according to Shugrue dos Santos, but is "not sufficiently explored in the press." Namey concurs, adding, "Financial abuse is something that may not be on the radar for most people, but it is a serious problem."

Sanctuary for Families points to "Jen," a battered client who came to them in the fall of 2008 just as the financial crisis was beginning to sweep the country. According to its staff, she represents an ever more typical case. Speaking of her partner, she put her dilemma this way:

"Sometimes I think it would be easier just to go back to him. I know that he could possibly kill me but... when we lived with him he always had the refrigerator full and I never had to worry about what my baby was going to eat or what we were going to wear. It's just really hard to watch my baby live like this. Sometimes I don't think it's worth it."

The article points out that the vast majority (75%) of those who have lost their jobs in US private sector since December 2007 have been men, and this has put additional pressure on women in the household who are already working. In fact, women now make up the majority of the employed in the US due to the extreme job loss in male-dominated industries. However, the wider economic situation and insecurity means that the prospect for those who consider leaving an abusive partner is additionally grim:

Tyrie's situation highlights the terrible bind that affects so many victims of domestic violence. Her husband was a danger to her and yet, even with only irregular work, a second source of income in the family provided a small protection against the abyss. Now he's gone, as is the abuse -- and the income. Gone as well is Tyrie's immigration security and with it her other job -- and now there are three more mouths in the house to feed.

Tyrie understandably chose to trade increased economic insecurity for personal safety, and as a result, her life threatens to crumble at any moment. For many domestic violence survivors, however, the prospect of economic ruin is more terrifying than physical, emotional, or sexual abuse.

Read the article here.

Mt Albert musings

So fixated has the media become on Melissa Lee's oopsies - waiting like vultures for her next fuck up, and ignoring the competent things she must surely have said and done on the campaign trail - that political issues have become rather secondary in the Mount Albert by-election.

In an attempt to bring some balance to its shallowness, the media recently focused on criticism copped by David Shearer, for a remark linking unemployment to crime. Sign of the times, I thought to myself in a curmudgeonly way. Shearer was simply suggesting that unemployment produces poverty, which can drive crime. He was alluding to a point that the Keynesian welfare state was founded on - the opportunity for paid work is a basic right, a social good, and important to human wellbeing. When people who want work can't find it, they are effectively being told that they are a redundant part of their society - and this isn't conducive to their psychological or material welfare. That's why, until twenty or so years ago, the state believed it had moral duties to strive towards full employment, and to support those who couldn't find work to live with some measure of dignity.

Shearer's comments have been construed as an attack on the dignity of the unemployed - as if unemployment is simply a different, if less lucrative, lifestyle choice to working, and something which must be put up with. Unemployment is an attack on the dignity of the unemployed. Encouraging the unemployed to feel more comfortable with the injustice of unemployment is a pretty poor substitute for jobs.

Kiwibank cracks a funny

Wandering through the train station, I saw a billboard advertising Kiwibank's new debit card. It read:

"Mine won't let me spend what I haven't got... (unlike my girlfriend)"

It's not entirely clear, but I take this to mean that women are prone to be a bit frivolous and self-indulgent with money - or at worst, gold-diggers. And I was kind of surprised. That's not a stereotype you see much these days, outside of sitcoms.

I tried to reverse the genders in my head, to see if the joke still worked. Nope. There's no equivalent comic stereotype around men being daft with money. I assume this is because women have traditionally been non-earners, caring for homes and children. Because that sort of work isn't paid, it's regarded as a kind of dependence or - at worst - a form of economic exploitation of blokes, who have to work for a living while their wives muck about at home.

Everyone knows a woman or two who's poor at managing her money, and relies on her partner. Everyone knows a man or two who does the same. I'd say that financial scatterbrains are distributed pretty equally between the sexes. For every closet full of unworn clothing and impractical shoes, there's a huge screen TV and a garage full of under-used power tools.

I wasn't particularly offended by the billboard - I just thought it was a bit dumb. If Kiwibank wants to attract a female clientele, making us out to be financially useless isn't the best tactic.

what's it worth?

as a chartered accountant, i'm required to complete at least 20 hours of structured professional development every year. which means that i attend courses put on by various tax specialists, by the institute of chartered accountants and sometimes by lawyers - accountants are dealing with various aspects of the law after all.

today i spent a few hours getting a refresher on property relationship laws, particularly where they intersect with the setting up of trusts. i particularly hate going to these types of courses, because the underlying theme always seem to be that women are bloodsucking leeches (sorry, my girls have twilight fever & it must be catching!) from whom wealthy men must protect their property.

sometimes it's pretty overt, other times covert. but it tends to be pretty consistent, particularly in the way that case law is presented. today we had a woman presenter, so it wasn't as bad as usual, but still...

for example, we had a case of a man who loved antique cars, and bought a rundown old dump for some small amount (say $500) and spent another small amount on parts. the bulk of his input was the time he spent doing the thing up. lo and behold, when he had completed the task, the car ended up being worth $80,000.

and he had to pay half of this amount to his ex as part of the divorce settlement. and pretty much everyone in the room (even the women) shook their heads at how unfair this was. me, totally annoyed on the inside, said lightly "well, she was probably spending all her time raising the kids while he just mucked around in the garage", which got a couple of chuckles.

but i hate it. i hate the way these things are presented all. the. time. i hate the way that women's contributions are so undervalued because they happened to be unpaid, and that any large settlements they get are seen as undeserved. i don't have time to do the research now, but from what i recall, divorce settlements in the country are hardly generous towards women. it's one reason why single mothers feature so highly in our poverty statistics.

Dutch, split, one or other; Who pays these days?

In the interest of helping my dear mother with a query she has, and given that she's been out of the dating game for nigh on forty years, and me for close to nine, readers I appeal to you for help.

Our question is simple:

When you go out on a date who pays?

Particularly in consideration of these factors:

1. Who initiated the date?
2. Is it a one-off date or is the relationship of some duration?
3. Is there a significant difference in incomes (and/or financial obligations) between those involved?

Thanks in advance for your assistance in this matter.

Quick hit: Money woes become relationship woes

From this morning's NZ Herald:

But relationship problems often worsened when people suffered major financial blows such as redundancy.

"Obviously, then there is a lot of uncertainty - often for both partners - around how they are going to sustain themselves, what it means for the mortgage, what it means for the family and kids," Mr Hayward said.

"That has a big effect on people's levels of anxiety, their levels of depression, hopelessness and so on.

"Unfortunately, our experience is that the rate of domestic violence also goes up when couples are under financial pressure. The research indicates that it's young couples with new children who are financially stressed who are the most prone as a group to family violence."

I remember reading a book about a young girl growing up in Thatcher's Britain, during high levels of unemployment, and the impact that financial stress had on her family. The frustration for the father figure, who could not legitimately earn enough to support them, and his conviction that he was less of a man if he wasn't the breadwinner, combined with the futile efforts of the mother to keep them clothed, fed and housed on insufficient funds, were heartbreaking. Some days I feel very lucky indeed.

It's the cost that counts

When my partner and I were first together we didn't have much money. Imaginative gifts were the order of the day at Xmas and birthdays, and one of the most creative parts of the process was keeping the cost down. For the last few years, while we've both been reasonably well paid and enjoyed a few work-related perks that have kept some other costs down, we have been able to loosen our purse strings a little. Last Xmas I'd just gone on maternity leave, so we figured it was probably out last chances to spoil each other a bit in terms of presents that were a bit pricey. I got him a donkey and a board game, and he got me a massage voucher that's allowed me to go three times this year to get my poor baby-toting muscles pummelled on a heated padded table.

2008 has seen the return of austerity to our modest household. Since March we've been on one income and although it's still well above the average wage we've found it very tight. This year we haven't had to return to the $2 Shop for gifts for our families, as we did the first few years we shared the yuletide, but I did spend a significant amount of time in The Body Shop looking around for the cheapest decent gift pack I could give my niece.*

So I'm quite astonished by the exorbitant presents that are being carpet-advertised at us everywhere the eyes rest for more than ten seconds. Jewellery that costs in excess of $1500 for the ladies, ipods that are $300+ for a teen, massive barbeques that would look more at home in an army mess feeding 600 troops three times a day. There's the heavy gender-stereotyping that gets medown too, and I feel like I'm missing something because I don't really know any people who could afford to buy gifts like this.

Maybe I'm cheap. The most I think I've ever spent on a present for someone was a piece of art that I bought my partner for his 21st. At the time I'd had a bit of financial luck and I was able to put some of that aside to mark that special occasion. It was still under $300.

And this Christmas our presents are well under that. I would have dearly loved to take the Handmade Pledge, but sadly I didn't have time this year to make anything myself and the cost of crafted items here is largely out of my reach these days. I suspect with a bit more effort I could have found handmade gifts that were affordable. Maybe next year.

My observation of the families I watch buy gifts are that when God divided up this labour He gave it mostly to the girlies. The stress of managing the family budget at an expensive time of year and juggling the present expectations of various relatives, not to mention the competing money-sucking experience of a possible trip away, does disproportionately fall on mothers, daughters, wives, girlfriends, and sisters, in my experience.** Factor in the pay gap between the sexes, and the fact that in some households women don't have access to the funds their partner earns, and I think I can fairly say that this is often a more stressful time of year for women than it is for men.

Really I should put this rant in perspective. Our idea of financially tight is that we can still run a car, have broadband internet, feed the cat, take a short holiday, and afford some supermarket baby food. We can afford gifts for each other, for our son, for our families. Maybe not $400 bracelets and $2000 laptops, but thoughtful presents that will be sufficiently socially acceptable that we won't offend and will instead get pleasant smiles from our loved ones as we spend on them that much more precious thing; time.


* $24. They are very crafty. I'm not sure whether they do this all year around now, but they simply didn't have any smaller size stuff that wasn't in a gift pack already. I'm sure you used to be able to get travel sizes of many of their products a decade ago?
** One Christmas I insisted that my partner get his family's presents and I would have nothing to do with it. He got about three beforehand, and the rest on Christmas Eve, when he disappeared for hours and hours and hours, stuck at the shops and getting more frustrated by the second because he hates malls even when they are empty. The best bit was when on Xmas Day people opened the presents he had sweated for, really liked them, and then thanked me, assuming it was all my doing. My inner feminist smiled sweetly.

A chat over smoko: school camps and related matters

A couple of workmates and I - all three of us mums - were lamenting the cost of living at morning tea time. The issue of school camps came up. It's the best part of twenty years since I've been to one, and oh how the times have changed.

M's son has just turned 21, so it's three or four years since he went to camp. At his school, the kids were given options - depending on what activity they wanted to do, they were put into different groups and went to different locations. To M's relief, her son chose the 'cheap' option: a $500 fishing trip. The other options included a skiing holiday to Queenstown, priced in the thousands.

M's son had a waif-like friend from a poor family. M offered to give him a lift to the gathering point from which the kids set out on their fishing trip. All this kid's provisions fit into the supermarket bag he carried. Needless to say, he didn't have state of the art camping or fishing equipment. In fact, he didn't have a sleeping bag. A small quantity of clothing, a packet of biscuits and a thin duvet were all this kid's family could equip him with for his days away.

V's story wasn't much better. She's raising two girls alone. When the elder wanted to go to camp, V simply had to say no. To the huge disappointment of her daughter, an expensive camp wasn't a viable financial proposition for the family.

V does her best, paying her daughters' sundry fees for equipment and activities. What she can't manage is what her younger daughter's school calls a 'donation'. For those who haven't heard of school donations of this sort, there is nothing voluntary about them - they are invoiced to parents. V's younger daughter recently came home upset. She explained to her mother what the kids had been told: that the school's Board of Trustees had decided people who hadn't paid their 'donations' would be named and shamed, and debt collectors set on them. V hasn't yet queried this with the school (partly out of embarassment), but it doesn't matter anyhow - she simply can't afford to 'donate'.

Denying kids opportunities because of their parents' socioeconomic status is bad enough. What is surely worse is actively rubbing poor families' noses in it. School camps may have changed since I last went, but one thing hasn't: kids can be relentlessly cruel to one another. Kids who are seen by their peers as being poor feel self-conscious and may be picked on. The segregation of kids by what their parents can afford - the conspicuous dividing of kids between those who can afford a skiing holiday and those who don't have a sleeping bag - is a recipe for humilation. Why would a school actively facilitate this behaviour amongst kids?

I'm not sure what educational goals school camps are supposed to achieve, but I assume they're about the personal development that comes from taking on new challenges and building camaraderie. The ones I went to were kind of dreadful but kind of fun. We all got dumped in the bush together, and had to work out how to cooperate, live closely with diverse others we might not usually associate with, collaborate to learn new skills like river crossings and campfire cooking, and accept the interdependent nature of life. The good old days weren't perfect, of course - old-style camps would still have been prohibitively expensive for some. But what is a four figure ski trip with an elite group of wealthy kids supposed to teach? How to sneer at others from behind your Raybans?

suddenly alone

i've been meaning to write over the past couple of weeks about the effects of widowhood, particularly after a sudden death that happened a few weeks ago. we don't often spend much time thinking about how our lives will be if we suddenly lose a partner. there is the grief and the lonliness to cope with. but the practicalities are not quite so bad in our comfortable little corner of the world.

we know, after all, that the government will provide. not very well, but it will provide an income of sorts. and if we're lucky, there will be life insurance to cover some or all of the mortgage. if you're a woman brought up in nz, you'll be used to doing your own shopping. you're not likely to be fazed by the thought of having to manage your own bank account and pay the bills. there's no doubt that you'll feel the strain of being on your own, but it's likely that you'll mangae to get things done.

but what if you live in a country without a social welfare system? what if your partner dealt with the outside world, and you led a sheltered life, concerning yourself with domestic matters and with raising your children? what if you're partner didn't leave you with a source of income? what then?

hopefully, you have extended family to support you. hopefully one of your children will take you in and make you part of the household. hopefully they'll do that without making you feel like a burden. hopefully you don't have to ask for day-to-day spending money. being dependent on your partner is one thing. being dependent on your children or other family members is something else altogether. in the case of the former, it's a partnership. you provided something of value to the partnership and in return, your partner took care of your financial needs. this was your basic right, and you had no problem with asking for money when you needed it. but in the latter case, it's not quite the same.

it's not often that we take the time to appreciate the social security system we have in this country. in fact, i know someone who works for a budget advisory service, who did a speech to young mothers. she talked to them about being prepared to cope financially if their partner suddenly decided to leave and they had to cope with living on a benefit. she wasn't surprised that none of the women had prepared for such a situation. but it could happen to the best of us, and there are too many people who don't realise how difficult living on a benefit really is.

none of the parties in this year's campaign are talking about raising benefit levels. it's not a vote-winner, and the resulting backlash against beneficiaries is likely to be pretty nasty (the lazy bludgers, breeding-for-a-business, blowing the money on smokes and booze, etc etc ad nauseum). like when the abortion decision came out earlier this year, it's one of those topics people hope to avoid.

i know benefits are now inflation adjusted, and working for families (excluding the in-work payment) and other supplements are available to make things easier. but it would still be nice to have a rise in the minimum rate for all benefits. it would be nice to know that if there is a sudden catastrophe, there's one less source of grief.