A cloak of privilege

The other day I was attempting to do some surveying about a local project in the Roskill shops.  The person who gave me the most time of day was a young woman of Pasifika descent, I think she had a bible in her hand and had probably been to the Church of Christ just around the corner.  I asked her a few of my questions and she struggled to answer one so I said "what don't you like about the area?"

The answer was quite shocking to me.  I've lived in this area for 12 years, and spent a lot of my childhood staying with my Nana nearby or visiting her.  My mum grew up here.  She met her first boyfriend at the (then) milk bar across the road from where we were talking.  I know it's a bit scuzzy, and not a great place to hang out these days, and part of the point of the survey is to work out how to fix that.  I catch the 267 or 258 there regularly, at the bus stop we were talking at.

The young woman I was talking to told me that what she didn't like about the area was the random cars driving past trying to pick you up.  And how they have strangers in them, and they won't leave you alone even when you tell them to go away.

Fool that I am, my immediate response was "Wow, that has never happened to me".  Which was when I realised the cloak of privilege I wear within my own community.  Which is why that has never happened to me.  I didn't mean to be denying her experience, and quickly told her I absolutely believed her, and she told me a bit more.

On the one hand I want to share my cloak of privilege, to cut it up into bits that can be shared around as widely as possible.  But on the other wouldn't it be better if no one had or needed one?

We had a bit of a chat about safety - how do you change a culture where that is happening, that sense of entitlement to young women, to harass them, to ignore their own agency?  We didn't talk about it quite like that.  All I could think of was making the town centre a nicer place to be, so that people will be around, will hang around and get to know others, where you can feel that you know some of the people that work in the shops, and go to them for help if you need it.  Where asserting yourself against unwelcome behaviour will mean instant support from those around you, not a blank stare and a scuttle in the opposite direction.

Urban design can help make a place better, more people focused and friendly.  But really the $500,000 we have to spend on the town centre upgrade isn't going to touch the sides of the real problem.

Not what abortion "on demand" looks like, folks

In the recent discussion about abortion (and big ups to the Greens for getting it on the political agenda), several commentators who identify as pro-choice have stated sentiments to the effect that we have abortion on demand now.  Except that we really clearly don't.

Getting an ingrown toe nail cut out is a medical procedure you can get on demand.  You don't need anyone else's permission, you just need to have an ingrown toe nail and find someone who can cut it out to do so for you.  The same with getting moles removed, whether possibly cancerous or not, having most forms of plastic surgery like rhinoplasty (nose job) or breast implants.

But to get an abortion, be it medical (ie by pills at an early stage of pregnancy) or surgical, two different people have to give their permission, after seeing your own doctor.  Those people have to also be certified to give you that permission.  For people with resources who are seeking terminations in Wellington or Auckland this probably isn't a big deal, and I can understand how some might think, from the outside, that it is basically abortion on demand (although to the best of my knowledge no definition of on demand includes requiring permission from other people).  However that is a) not what the law says and b) not what the practice is.

To use a rather silly example, say that getting a can of Coca Cola (Symbol of the Free West) worked the same way as access to abortion.  If Coke is on demand then you can rock up to an appropriate outlet and get one, no one else gets to say yes or no as long as you pay your $2.

If you could only get Coke in the same way as people can access abortion under NZ law then it would look something like this:

1.  Find one of the limited number of dairies that offer Coca Cola cans.  It may be in an out of the way place, there may be protesters outside (with signs reading "Coke promotes a culture of DEATH").

2.  Once you've found a Coke-supplying dairy, seek and gain the permission of a person who works there and has certification.  The certifying dairy worker will need to approve that you can have the Coca Cola for one or more of a small number of reasons that are outlined in law; most likely "thirst relief" which is found to be the reason for 98% of Coke purchases.  You may not be thirsty right now, but you know you are going to be thirsty in the future, but you will need to carefully convince the certifying dairy worker that you should have the Coca Cola for "thirst relief" now.  Other allowable reasons include high risk of diabetic coma without it.

3.  You'll then need to go through Step 2 again with another certifying dairy worker.  Hopefully there is more than one at that dairy, but if there isn't then you will have to go somewhere else.

4.  It's likely you will then be referred to another dairy, which will actually have the can of Coke.  You'll need to get an appointment there.  Again it may be in an out of the way place, there may be protesters outside (with signs reading "Every Coke Kills a Living Thirst").

5.  When you get to the dairy for your can of Coke you'll possibly be required to go through counselling to consider the consequences of drinking a can of Coca Cola and talk through other options, such as water, milk or going through with being thirsty.

6.  You will then have to undergo a dietary examination, to assess precisely how thirsty you are, any other dietary influences that may lead to complications when you drink the Coke, a full history of your drinking history, and examine your suitability for drinking Coca Cola at this time.  You'll be given advice on whether the Coke is a good idea or not.  Likely there will also be a discussion about planning your future liquid intake so that you can avoid thirst again in the future.

7.  Finally you get your can of Coca Cola.  It's possible this will happen on the same day as the counselling and examination, but maybe not.  Enjoy.

Imagine living in a small town with only one dairy, which didn't have Coke.  The nearest bigger town also didn't have Coca Cola, and you'd have to fly or drive quite a way to get some, possibly taking time off work to do so and at some personal expense in regard to travel costs.  That'd suck.

And that would not be availability on demand.

Abortion is NOT available on demand in Aotearoa New Zealand.  In my opinion to continue to claim that it is does not help get the law or the practice changed to make abortion more available.  It's not defacto on demand, it's not almost on demand.  It is only allowed with the permission of two other people, neither of whom is the pregnant person (although their consent gets the ball rolling), and only for a limited list of reasons outlined by a law set over 30 years ago.

In my opinion the best place to get practical information on accessing abortion services in Aotearoa New Zealand is abortion.gen.nz.

Edited to Add:  After I wrote this, but before it was scheduled to post, the Sunday Star Times published this article, including one person recounting her experience of accessing abortion under the current law.

Guestie: On Carrying Patriarchy's Baggage while We Kick its Butt

Thanks Jessie Anne for this contribution. 

Content warning: involves discussion of eating disorders.

I have the pleasure of knowing many amazing feminists; feminists working for social and climate justice, feminists working against racism, transphobia, homophobia. I know feminists who are working in their own way to make their own workplace or industry less patriarchal and misogynistic.  Feminists raising kids to be kick ass feminist warriors. They remind me what strength looks like. They ground me with something healthy to aspire to and be inspired by.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the internalized patriarchy that these women quietly carry around with them every day.  The baggage I don’t know they have which I haven’t had a chance to help carry. I’ve been thinking about how many of us have similar experiences, and if there are things we can do as a movement to help ease that load.

Being a feminist is kind of a tough gig sometimes, and, at least for me, it has meant some pretty high self-imposed expectations that I added to my already hefty list of unobtainable goals; complete with accompanied guilt.

My particular clusterfuck of internalized patriarchal baggage I’m focusing on here is my experience with eating disorders. It’s long and complicated, and not really a story I have time for here. Although I no longer define myself as someone with an eating disorder, in some ways it continues, though less acutely. I think anyone who has experienced an eating disorder know that the lines between ‘recovered’ and not can be blurry at best.  It started with dieting when I was 8, and has at different times involved vomiting multiple times a day for months and years on end; otherwise named Bulimia; the awkward unpopular kid in the class of eating disorders. It has meant a lot of things between that too.

It has meant secrecy, and shame, and often most overwhelmingly, utter mental exhaustion. Sometimes it was so consuming that I had little room for anything else. Sometimes it was less about what was actually going into my body, and more a hatred of my body that was so strong I barely left the house for days. Feeling repulsion and disgust for the skin you live within can be very near debilitating.

I am somewhat at peace with the journey around these issues with myself and my body being a lifelong one. This realization has led me to examine the pressure I have put on myself to be free of internalized patriarchy.

I’m not going to wake up one morning to find myself free from being triggered by comments or situations that make me feel the need to make drastic and unhealthy changes to myself. But I think I now know a place where I can calmly reject those thoughts before they take hold for long; a place which I consider a victory and has taken years of hard work to get to.

For many years I thought, sometimes unconsciously, that I could only be a fully-fledged feminist and activist once I got 100% over my eating disorder and my sometimes-general-self-hate.

Unfortunately, through my own interpretation of what it means to be a feminist, I’ve spent years thinking that I had to one day be a ‘fully formed feminist’ without hypocritical thoughts and with a impenetrable shield that deflects all patriarchal nonsense from piercing my external layer.

In some ways, I’ve labeled myself a feminist-in-waiting.

This may have, in part, contributed to my silence around my eating disorder. Maybe if people knew about it, I thought, almost subconsciously, my feminist membership card might be revoked, only to be returned once I got the ‘total-self-love’ stamp. The unobtainable expectation to be the internally perfect feminist has also led to feeling an added layer of unnecessary guilt. Cause if there’s one thing women could do with a bit more of, it’s guilt, right?

This expectation I set for myself for so long was largely self-imposed and the expectations self-created. But I do wonder how many other feminists out there find it difficult to talk about their own internalized patriarchal baggage. Looking back at conversations and dialogue around issues like eating disorders that I’ve observed or been a part of, I do think that there can be a sense of ‘otherness’ attached to them, which can leave you feeling like these things are experienced outside of our feminist and activist communities. This otherness doesn’t encourage inclusive and open dialogue when they might be experienced in the here and now.

A feminist friend and I also recently talked about the internalised patriarchy we carry into relationships with cis males in our lives. We admitted to each other (this after years of chatting about pretty much everything) how much we often are part of creating a patriarchal power dynamic in these relationships. Once it got down to examples it was kind of funny; and relieving! I wasn’t the only one, and she wasn’t either!

It’s just another example of how the reality of our lives as feminists is still affected by internalized patriarchy. Some of it is pretty hard to admit, too. My friend and I were both left shocked at the fact that we’d never been in a space where we could acknowledge these behaviours with others. Are we the only ones?

A very quick glance around the interwebs reveals many blogs and articles by feminists highlighting similar pressures; the pressure to be a beacon of pure post-patriarchal light in the dark and the silencing which comes with that invisible pressure.

Another friend helpfully pointed out, when I raised this topic, that the pressure comes not only from within the movement but from outside of it.  Impossibly high standards are made for us by patriarchy, and it seems by feminism too. But I think these standards are contributed to by the market-friendly co-opted parts of feminism which are at times hard to identify; the smiling and happy feminist front; the ‘feminism for everyone’, buy your happy relatable feminist T-Shirt here!

Maybe we could set up more spaces to discuss what patriarchal baggage we all carry; maybe that would help share the load. A lot of these issues, the internalized patriarchy shit we deal with in private, are sometimes subtle and unclear, even to ourselves. But it’s important we talk about them, or at least talk about whether and how we do. Because whether it’s a secret eating disorder or recreating patriarchal power relations in our relationships, or whatever else, these things can end up affecting not only ourselves, but those around us, and our wider communities.

I’ve come to realize and accept that many of us can carry the worst parts of what we are working to change within us, and that those parts don’t necessarily fall away when we pick up the axe aimed at patriarchy. The axe helped me cope with them; it even empowered me to eventually move beyond my eating disorder, but there are parts of me that remain affected. And that’s ok.

So what I would say to the 17 year old me, and any other young girl feeling so enraged and empowered by this new knowledge of feminism to put to her experience is this:

Being a feminist is a journey. It’s different for everyone. You don’t live in a silo that separates you from the influences of patriarchy. The parts of yourself that will be, at least in part, shaped and defined by patriarchy will come in different forms and will be different for everyone. But you can positively contribute to the dismantling of patriarchy even while having terrible feelings created BY patriarchy.

Patriarchy is fucked, but no matter how it fucks you up, don’t let it also take away your claim to being part of the movement to dismantle it. 

"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.

How Savemart changed my life

Clothes shopping used to be something I was crap at.  Looking, fine, but actually trying stuff on and making a decision?  Not so good.  The stakes just seemed so high, given that I usually didn't have much spare money and I'm very aware that I'm not necessarily a good judge of what suits me; when I look in the mirror, like so many other people, what I see is perforated with body-image baggage, some mine, some my mother's, a fair bit from Barbie, most from the media images I see All. The. Time.  

Not to mention my insidious fear of shop assistants in clothing shops.  Why do they always look so put together, and intriguingly edgy, and effortless, when I had to really think about what to wear and then ended up going for the safe option every time? I completely understand why Tina Fey so often wears a lovely dress in the same shade of blue to awards shows.

The first time I walked into the Onehunga Savemart I was intimidated.  So many clothes!  Then I noticed that the people who worked there were all in red t-shirts and jeans, the changing rooms were pretty beaten up, and the floor was uneven.  There were trolleys to put your finds in, masses of clothes of a million different types (really), books, more jeans than you would get at a Jeans West. My kind of place!  No one was going to judge me for what I picked off the rack or tried on, no one was going to try to sell me something, it was oddly peaceful and restful, because there is so little interaction between any of the people there.  Which is probably a bit sad for some people, but for me was rather nice.  

I think the first time I didn't even try anything on.  I suspect I bought a handbag - I've gone from having two "grown-up" handbags, both given to me by my mother, to rather a lot more, all from Savemart and all cheap as chips.  I vowed to return, with more time (I can never go for less than 2 hours) and an open mind.  

My fledgling op shopping confidence from my student days has returned, now with more faith in my body that has produced two children and I've come to feel more comfortable in.  Sure, there's heaps of dross, but also some amazing gems.  The best thing I've ever seen was a Vera Wang wedding dress for $60.  I didn't buy it, not being in need of a wedding dress, and I guess it might have been a fake, but it was in great condition.  My best buys to date have been wool jackets - I have little shoulders and seem to benefit from the cast offs of others who discover their new jacket is too tight.  

To start with I was still very harsh on myself, rejecting almost everything I tried on.  But the prices were so low (I often look at the "designer" stuff which can sometimes be as much as $60, but most of the rest is $10 or less) that the risk for me in grabbing something and finding out later I didn't have the confidence to wear it was almost eliminated.  I tried on stuff for fun, stuff I couldn't imagine ever having an occasion to wear, but what the hell, I probably wouldn't buy it, and there was always the chance it could be great.  My trolley got fuller, I worked out a system for myself of how to most efficiently try on masses of clothes while respecting the three items in the changing room limit, and I bought more handbags.

I started to take an interest in putting an outfit together (with a handbag of course), rather than only feeling comfortable in an ensemble put together by a shop assistant for me.  I clashed colours, ignored rules ("blue and green shouldn't be seen", whatevs), and started to value my body for what it does for me, not how it looks.  Clothes have become an expression of my personality, rather than a way to hide.  If something doesn't end up looking right after I get it home or wear it a few times, whether it be the fit or the colour or the style, then it goes back in the donation bin, having cost me often less than a hot chocolate.  If I find a better red shirt or green handbag then the lesser one gets handed on too.  

I have found my attitude has changed from "my body's wrong for this" to "that 's too big/tight/bright/dreary"; the blame shifted from me, my body, to the clothing instead.  This may seem like a very simple thing to many, but for me it was a revelation; it's the clothes that don't fit, not my body.

And that's how Savemart has changed my life.  

Once a month or so I try to shoe horn in a few hours to visit the Savemart in Onehunga, New Lynn or Northcote (I hope to venture to Manukau sometime soon) for a fix.  Sometimes I buy nothing (maybe a handbag) but usually I come home with something I'm excited to wear.  It's a long way from my teens when I wore black constantly not because I was a goth (that would require learning how to do make-up and potentially standing out) but because I wanted someone to ask me if I wore black all the time because of Dinky Bossetti (no one ever did).  

And I also own more handbags than I ever thought I could.  

Body love Monday

Good morning, LudditeJourno, this is your first piece of misogyny for the day.  If you're not hating your body when you open your eyes, Facebook is here to help.  Don't be confused, this isn't a picture of someone unwell, or without access to adequate food.  It's aspirational. 

Solidarity to everyone out there struggling with horrific messages about how our bodies "should" look in terms of weight or skin colour or gender cues or.....

I'm off to eat breakfast.  Maybe twice. Right after I try and plait my body hair and enjoy the fact that at 43, my body is distributed differently than it was when I was 23.  Body love Monday to everyone.

Guestie: Babe of the Day

Thanks to Maus for writing and submitting this. Readers may also be interested in an alternative set up just last night:"NZ Misogynist of the Day.".

In the past month or so there have been several ‘Babe of the Day’ facebook pages popping up. The worst offenders seem to be the universities, although some of the more questionable pages such as ‘New Zealand Pair of the day’ and ‘WINZ babe of the day’ have their authors and affiliations hidden. I was recently approached by TV3’s nightline for a feminist opinion on these pages, and although I gave a fairly lengthy and detailed report of the problems associated with the pages, it was boiled down to ‘Angry feminists are killjoys’, and I was subsequently told across various social mediums that I didn’t like them because I was ugly. Of course.

The biggest problem is the lack of consent. These pages are created without the subjects consent; in fact on many of them, you are unable to nominate yourself. So we have pictures of girls, taken from their private facebook pages, and posted for all to see, and for all to ‘appreciate’. In fact, on the most recent ‘New Zealand Pair of the day’ page, out of the eight pictures posted, four have the subjects asking the pictures to be taken down, something the moderators ignored. When I posted under these comments telling the girls that although facebook doesn’t care about sexual harassment, you could report the image as your intellectual property and they would remove it fairly promptly, my comments were deleted and I was banned from posting further. There was even a picture of a woman holding her newborn child on one of the groups pages, which violates several peoples consent.

NOTE:: TVNZ, after interviewing me and listening to me talk about lack of consent, used several images from these pages, WITHOUT GAINING THE GIRLS CONSENT.

There are of course other problems with these pages. The university ones are full of comments like ‘who cares what she studies, shes bangin’, and although some of them have men featured, the sexisim is very apparent; for starters, mostly the guys are ‘Blokes of the Day’, not babes, and the accompanying text reads like a dating profile; ‘Bloke is a great guy, loves puppies and kittens and volunteers at homeless shelter’, and other such harmless banalities. Another interesting thing is that there seems to be a semblance of ethnic diversity in the ‘blokes’, you have many from many races, and the photos are typical headshots. In direct contrast, the women are uniform in their race, invariably skinny, and all wearing not much at all in the full body shots (I want to stress there is nothing wrong with being white and skinny, or dressing however you like. I just wanted to point out the standards of beauty are surprising given the diverse populations of universities).

There are enough reasons to have body image problems, and it is difficult to succeed as a woman in a academic world without being judged solely on how you supposedly look in a bathing costume. The response to my ten second sound bite was enough to show the reactions you get for speaking out from a feminist viewpoint. And I’m sick of it. There are hundreds of articles about there about why we don’t need to be judged for our looks, about the issues we face in the workforce and academic worlds.

I really feel like we should have come further than this, that I shouldn’t have to be typing this, I shouldn’t have to say something as simple as gaining a womans consent before encouraging hundreds of people to jack off to her picture is not a hard or wrong thing. And I certainly shouldn’t be abused for it, or told that I am ugly and therefore worthless. Wake the fuck up people. Consent isn’t hard, and I’m sick of having to shout ‘Yes means Yes’.

C.L.I.T.festing

I've spent a big chunk of the weekend at CLITfest in Wellington, and now I feel fed, not just by the incredible presentations - though I didn't go to one session which didn't stretch my thinking in one way or another - but by the time and space to explore ideas between sessions with other people interested in talking and thinking about oppression and social change.

It's been a long time since I've been to a conference so thought-provoking.  The organisers did a wonderful job of creating a safe place to explore complex, difficult issues, which no doubt were uncomfortable at times for many/most/all of us attending, without that feeling, in my experience at least, overwhelming.  I want to give them a huge thank you, because I know how much work it is to try and create that kind of space.

So this is kinda going to function as a review as well as a pat on the back, for those of you who couldn't get there and were interested.  Bearing in mind I missed some sessions because of other life stuff, so there are holes.

Indigenous feminisms and social movements featured Marama Davidson, Shasha Ali, and Erina Okeroa.  Erina spoke first, examining Māori women's connections to Black feminisms internationally, through kaupapa Māori research and interviews.  Marama presented on the centrality of Māori women to caring for the Earth and kaitiakitanga, given how poor a job we're doing now.  Shasha talked about connecting indigenous struggles from different places, and the disconnect this created when you were not indigenous to where you were living, but identified as indigenous in another colonised land.

Takataapui, Pasifika ways and beyond queer theory included Fetu-ole-moana Tamapeau of BOX events, Maihi Makiha from NZAF and Kim Mcbreen of He Hoaka.  It's hard for me to give a favourite, but if I absolutely had to, it would be this one.  Fetu and Kim focussed on the disruptions colonisation created for Pasifika and Tangata Whenua understandings of sexuality and gender, and why queer theory cannot undo colonisation because it still comes from western understandings.  I've thought a bit before about how good English is at categorising - so lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex - and judging differences.  Disconnecting, some might call it.  And I've noticed that takataapui appears to do the opposite, appears just to connect non-heterosexual people, but Fetu's metaphor of queer being the island, and Pasifika understandings of sexuality being of the ocean is still rocking my wee Pākeha brain.  Work in progress.

Intimate partner violence in queer and gender diverse relationships, hosted by Te Whare Rokiroki Māori Women's Refuge and Wellington Women's Refuge with support from the extraordinary Mani Mitchell was something I was involved in, so can't really "review".  It was amazing to see between 40 and 50 people in the room, and important to think about how this work can progress, given international research is showing lesbians and gay men are experiencing rates of intimate partner and sexual violence comparable to straight women and men; bisexual people are experiencing much higher rates; and intersex and trans* peeps rates, from early indications, are much higher still.

Body politics: food, health, fat, disability, class and moral virtue featured Cat Pause, Ali Nissenbaum, Robyn Kenealy, Esther Woodbury and Grace Millar.  Between them, they took apart body politics and put them back together again, dismantling neo-liberal pushes for individualising responsibility for bodies while they pointed out some of the things the western world at least holds dear just may not be true.  Probably the comment that made me saddest was about needing to not be around women when recovering from anorexia, because of the extraordinary amount of social time women spend policing one another's - and our own - food intake and bodies.  It just rings very true to me, and is something I struggle, constantly, to know how to respond to respectfully.  I'm slimmish, and love food, and constantly deal with people telling me how "lucky" I am I can eat so much.  I haven't yet found a way through that misogynist mess.

The Underclass panel was incredible, Nic Dorward, Ruth Amato, and Hana Plant sharing their own personal experiences of class and marginalisation, tied in with colonisation and racism, gender inequalities, class oppression making us unwell, and social institutions responsible for "caring" for vulnerable people being both inadequate and chock-full of classist assumptions about families and people. 

And finally (for me) desire as social currency and how desire is constructed around stigmatised and non-normative bodies focusing on trans* experiences. Dee Dewitt and Wai Ho talked about how difficult it might be to separate personal preferences from socially constructed desires, and the painful fetishising that creates for non-normative bodies.  Beautiful and brave.

Hoping there's another CLITfest on the horizon. And a nod too, to the beautiful artwork on the flier, which is now decorating my room.

Guest post: Abortion access being undermined in NZ

Reproduced from the November ALRANZ newsletter with permission from the really rather awesome author, Alison McCullough.

The Abortion Supervisory Committee’s annual report has been released. The report includes
the abortion stats previously released by Stats New Zealand in June (See ALRANZ’s August
Newsletter for a report on those, downloadable at www.alranz.org), plus a few extras and the ASC’s
commentary. A PDF of the report is available for download at www.alranz.org under “The Latest”
column.

As ALRANZ wrote on their blog, the impression the report gives is of a system that is increasingly unworkable, with fewer certifying consultants who, the ASC reports, are facing distressing amounts of harassment (as are patients and others associated with abortion care), and all this as timeliness of abortion care and uptake of early medical abortion are barely budging. No matter what the situation on the ground is for providers and women, though, you can be sure that Parliament will do nothing to fix any of it.

The ASC report addresses the harassment of certifying consultants and patients in general,
and of Invercargill staff in particular. Here’s what the report says:

 “We are … concerned about the impact of being known as a certifying consultant in some locations.  During the last year the Committee has heard distressing reports from certifying consultants where they, their families, patients and wider public have been the subject of harassment.  Particularly distressing are reports of women seeking fertility assistance who have been harassed when they were mistakenly thought to be seeking pregnancy termination.”
 

It’s important that the ASC is talking about this, though it’s pretty hard not to draw the
conclusion from that last sentence that it’s of less concern to the committee if women seeking
abortions are harassed than, say, women mistaken for those seeking abortion. Way to go to reinforce
abortion stigma ASC!

And here’s what the ASC had to say about Invercargill:

“It has also come to our attention that harassment of medical staff is taking place in Invercargill resulting from services now being offered at Southland Hospital. We are disappointed that this is occurring.”

“Disappointed”! Strong words. Not. And no mention of what the ASC intends to do about
this.

Readers will recall that the seven-year-long Right to Life v ASC case finally ended on 9
August of this year when the Supreme Court dismissed RTL’s appeal. In its decision, the Court ruled
that the ASC did not have the power to scrutinize individual doctors’ decisions regarding approval of
abortion but that the ASC could ask consultants how they were approaching their decision-making in
general. This report is the first comment we’ve had from the ASC on that case, and it writes:

“The Committee notes it already makes regular enquiries of all certifying consultants. At the time of annual reapplication consultants report on qualifications, continuing professional education, peer support, intended years of service and the nature of the practitioner’s practice. Other enquiries will continue to be made as issues arise.”

The ASC is not saying much here, but this seems to suggest that it thinks it’s already doing
what the court said it should do.

The ASC notes the continued downward trend in abortion numbers overall, and points
particularly to the sharpest decline being in child to teenage groups. It expresses concern that there is
no decline in abortions sought by women who have had two or more previous terminations:
“Key to reaching these women will be further increasing the availability of various forms of
long-term contraception as well as increasing access to publicly funded tubal ligation or ablation so
that unwanted pregnancies are avoided. It is concerning to note that the number of publicly funded
tubal ligations performed has been declining.”

Cue the media focus: According to a report in the DomPost, reality TV shows are helping
push a decline in teen pregnancy. The ASC says this is because “extensive reality television
programming depicts the struggle most young people have in attempting to raise a child of their
own…”

It goes on to say, that “the decline is also likely a result of younger New Zealanders
practising safer sex and having less sex overall”. Apparently not watching so much reality TV are
the 20-24 year olds. There’s a new graph this year on “no contraception by age group.” In other
words, what were the ages of the 52% of women who had abortions and said they’d been using no
contraception? According to the report, the biggest group, at 32%, were 20 to 24 year olds; the next
biggest, at 20% each were under-20s and 25-29 year olds.

When it comes to timeliness, Northland and Southland are still coming in last, meaning
women in those districts are accessing abortion care much later than those elsewhere. (The median
gestation in those districts for first trimester abortion is nearly 10 weeks! That is not a good stat, and
that’s the median, meaning access is much later for some women.) Here’s hoping the Invercargill
service will help improve that stat for Southland. But what is going on in Northland?

Finally, there are 170 certifying consultants, down from 175 in the previous year’s report,
and the amount spent on certifying consultants was $4,427,120, also slightly down on the previous
year.

On atheism

On Saturday the 17th February 2001, I realised I had no faith in women's magazines or God. 

I was at the hospital - I wasn't sick - I was visiting my best friend (she'll be known as Betsy for the purposes of this post). I was in the waiting room, and was flicking through a Cosmopolitain with Cameron Diaz on the cover.* I don't think I had ever really believed in Cosmo - but I had got pleasure from reading it. But that day, when as I turned the pages I got angrier and angrier. It wasn't just that I was too young, too fat, too poor, too un-stylish, too un-cordinated, and too apathetic to have that life – none of it was real. There wasn't a word of truth in the scores of glossy pages. 

God was less sudden, maybe more cliched. The argument against God from the existence of evil was covered in my first year philosophy class. However, that day and the ones that followed I knew something I had never really bothered to think about before - that a sort of lazy agnosticism was not enough. I was opposed to the image of God that I knew, a good and powerful God, because a good and powerful God would not have let this happen. 

******** 

I think of myself as a relaxed atheist. A while back following Britain's lead, a group have put billboards up around Wellington "There's probably no God, so Relax and enjoy life." And I don't really understand them. Why bother? Is God that big a deal? Is the idea of God stopping people relaxing and enjoying life? I have never had any bad experiences with organised religion myself (and extremely limited experiences of organised religion at all). So this idea that religion is ruining people's life has little resonance for me. 

I also think it’s important to be careful about the politics of atheism, particularly when you live on colonised land. There are atheists who are perfectly happy with focusing their critical anti-spiritual energy on those with least social power.

And even leaving aside the politics, as a historian I think the ways people have understood and made meaning from the world is incredibly important. I read this article by Douglas Adams when I was quite young, and I have always remembered it.## I don't dismiss the role of religion in the world. Religious and spiritual practices can be a way of storing knowledge, and understanding of the world. I've also studied enough history to know that resistance movements have found strength and solace in organised religion. 

On the smaller scale, I can see that some religious practices can be a useful to some people. I can see the value of meeting with people every week, of marking seasons (albiet in a topsy turvey way down this part of the world), of doing whatever people do in their religious practices (OK I actually don't understand organised religion at all, but this means that I have no problem believing that some of it is useful). 

I can even believe that sometimes spiritual stuff (lack of knowledge again breeds vagueness) is a good survival strategy for people. My aunt is an alcoholic who has found spiritual practice useful for her. I can see that some spiritual rituals can create space that some people need. I also know that the mind is a powerful thing, and beliefs can give us strengths in all sorts of ways (Dr Ben Goldacre is great for that). 

Obviously, I'm aware of the harm that organised religion can do as well: the homophobia, the misogyny and the extortion just for starters. But I don't see any of those as necessary features of organised religions - just common ones. Most of what happens in the name of religion doesn't bother me because it happens in the name of religion - most of what happen in the name of religion happens with other justifications - and it bothers me just as much. 

******** 

Someone I used to know has turned towards faith of a sort, and wrote about it here in a zine called "Radicle". This was the passage I couldn’t forget: 

Fortunately, the world is not a generally shitty place. There are amazing people, and forces for good deeper than I can make sense of, that often reward our faith. I want to defend faith, define it and make it less threatening, but the whole point that it cannot be fully explained or logically justified. It requires a leap into the unknown 

I don't know if other readers will catch the bit I object to. The bit where I stop being a relaxed atheist and start being an angry materialist atheist. 

Betsy (now out of hopsital) ran into Tracey - someone we both went to school with. After that awkward chit-chat with someone you don't actually know, Betsy turned to leave. Tracey said "can I pray for you?" Betsy said "Uh sure" to facilitate the leaving process. 

Tracey grabbed Betsy, would not go, and shouted: "Jesus Christ, please show Betsy your love and strength so she can let you into her heart and you can heal her." 

Forces for good that reward our faith. 

******* 

In form, Tracey's statement about the non-material forces in the world couldn't be more different from the article in Radicle. It's in a zine that you don't have to read if you don't want to, it's generalised and it even contains a qualifier. Tracey’s statement of faith was a full on assault, directed at an individual that targeted the ways she was already marginalised. 

But in content the statements were disturbingly familiar. Each present a view in the world that contains spiritual forces with some kind of agency. There is a huge difference with "faith is often rewarding" (which I don't disagree with - I would say there is a prima facie case that anything that large numbers of people do on a regular basis is often rewarding in some sense of the world) and "forces for good often reward our faith". In the second, the forces for good are rewarding faith - therefore they're not rewarding not faith.** Like Tracey's God, these forces are selective about what they reward. 

But to me the most grotesque idea, in both formulations, is that a God, or spiritual forces, that are so selective in their rewards are good, or loving. The Greek and Roman Gods (as far as I'm familiar with them) with their limited powers, petty feuds, and complete lack of morality - I can actually see them mapping on to the way I understand the world. I can understand appeasing a God, or spiritual forces, that reward faith, but not believing they are good. 

******** 

Another friend of mine was thinking about sending her child to Catholic school (she's not Catholic). She was talking about why she didn't mind the religion part of Catholic school: "When I went to school there was Religious Education and it terrified me. The God I learned about there was an angry smiting God, and I was scared he was going to smite me. But this is different - they're all about how God loves you and looks after you." 

And what happens when God doesn't look after him? Horrible things happen, and a belief in a loving caring God in the face of the world we live in is as scary as a smiting one.

******** 

On the macro level there are reasons why things happen - why some people get cancer and others don't, and some live in poverty and others don't. As a historian, nothing interests me more than the reasons things happen. 

But on the micro level, that's not how the world works - there is no answer to why. We can talk about all the explanations that explain the prevalence of say meningitis - poverty, exchange of fluids, age-based vulnerability. But we will always reach the limit to our understanding. A point where the only answer is luck. And at that point we will be unable to answer Why me? Why not her? Why not me? Why him?***

At this point, the point of ignorance, and randomness, some people place an interventionist God or other spiritual power. A God who heals those who believe, or forces that reward faith. This allows them to control the uncontrollable and to give meaning to that which is meaningless. 

I understand that urge, and religion is certainly not the only way people in our society try and feel like they can control the uncontrollable. When Rod Donald died a friend said that he found it really scary if Rod Donald, cyclist, Greenie could of a disease that is so often associated with 'lifestyle' then anyone could die - which is, of course, the truth. 

But what I cannot understand is embracing a belief system that creates meaning from randomness by arguing that virtue is rewarded. We live in a bitterly unfair world, to claim that there are mysterious forces, or a God that produces your luck - I cannot understand how anyone who looks at the world with their eyes open can believe that. 

******** 

I was ranting about all this at a friend of mine, and she asked if it really mattered (beware I am probably caricaturing her beliefs to make a point of my own).  People say they believe in moral spiritual forces, but surely no-one actually believes that. Betsy’s chronic disease would be cured if she accepted Jesus into her heart. Why bother engaging with people who say things that imply that they do?

But Tracey was not the first person to harass my friend Betsy in that way, and has not been the last.  I’m not going to be harassed by people who believe that my body is a problem that God needs to solve.  I don’t have to deal with more polite people who aren’t rude enough to say that my body is a problem that God can solve, but obviously believe it.   The people who are most likely to suffer at the pointy end of belief – are people who are already facing massive amounts of unluck and calling bullshit is a way of standing in solidarity with them.

But I also think it’s more respectful to respond to people who say things that I believe are damaging and wrong with “I think that’s damaging and wrong” than with “I’m going to ignore that because I don’t believe you mean what you say.”  To me – the second response is patronising.

I don’t assume that religious people hold the sorts of spiritual beliefs I have criticised in this post.  I don’t assume that because someone has some sort of faith they give moral meaning to the luck and unluck that people experience.  But when people say things that imply that some sort of spiritual force could intervene to improve people’s lives if they behaved or believed in a certain way – I think there is a political value in challenging and unpacking the implications of those statements.

*********

This is from a major news service’s**** coverage of the shootings in Aurora during the batman screenings:

[name redacted] told NBC television that when the carnage began she shouted at her friend: "We've got to get out of here." But when they started to move she saw people fall around her as the gunman began silently making his way up the aisle, shooting anyone who was trying to escape ahead of him.

"He shot people trying to go out the exits," she said.

At that moment, [name redacted] stared her own imminent death in the face. The shooter came towards her, saying nothing. The barrel of the gun was pointing directly at her face. "I was just a deer in headlights. I didn't know what to do."

A shot rang out, but it was aimed at the person sitting right behind her. "I have no idea why he didn't shoot me," [named redacted] said.

Later, when she was safe,  [named redacted]  told her mother: "Mom, God saved me. God still loves me."

Imagine if this were true.  Imagine if there was a God who had some power in that movie theatre, and he saved the lives of the people he loved. 

I was hesitant about commenting on this. The woman was speaking immediately after surviving horrific trauma. I have thought terrible things, under far less pressure.  This woman was dealing with her situation as best she could.  I don't want to draw attention to her as an individual who made those statements.

Religious beliefs that connect luck with morality are so normalised in our society that even their most horrific expressions stand without comment.

********

Turns out I am not a relaxed atheist, just a protected one. When people who win awards, reality shows, or sporting events thank God, I just find it amusing, because I don’t think winning awards, reality shows or sporting events really matters. And in my everyday life I very rarely run into people thanking God, or attributing their luck to any spiritual force that is rewarding their faith. But I don't think you can call yourself a relaxed athiest if you're OK as long as religion stays well away from spiritual explanations that involve virtue.

I am in fact, passionate about materialism,***** and think there's huge power and strength in understanding what we can about the world. I think it's even more important to accept the randomness of the universe; not to project meaning onto the unknown, but to acknowledge the role that luck and unluck play in our lives. 

********

I was taking a 10 year old for a walk with his dog. 

“Are you religious?” Later he would ask me who I voted for, he was obviously thinking about things a lot. 

“I’m an athiest.” 

“So’s Mum. Mum and Grandma had big argument over religion. Mum asked Grandma what she believed and Grandma said when she’d been little she had been really poor and had no school bag and everyone teased her. So she prayed for a new school bag. And then the next day someone from her church gave her one, so God listened to her prayers. And then Mum said that what about all the other children? why doesn’t God answer their prayers?” 

“Yeah, that’s what I would have said” 

Then we throw another stick for the dog. Apparently that’s all the questions for today. 

******* 

* There were two magazines with Cameron Diaz on the cover on the ward that month. Both had the same picture, but her top was a different colour. This was long before features exposing photoshop were common-place and seeing those two photos side by side with a different colour was disconcerting in a world that didn't feel particularly safe or stable. 

** I've said it before, and I'll probably say it again, understanding the difference between the active and the passive voice is a fundamental prerequistite for useful political thinking.

*** Somewhere around here Schroedinger's Cat and Quantum Physics comes in. 

**** I have not included the name of the person being quoted, or the site the quote is from (although google will verify my sources).   As I said, my point is not about her, but that such views are seen as normal.

***** I can't read that sentence without hearing 'passionate about materialism' in David Mitchell's voice - but it is true.

## I had a quote from the article here.  I've removed it as someone pointed out (and I agree) that the I used it was racist in exactly the kind of way I was trying to problematise and avoid.

It is rapists who are responsible for rape

Trigger warnings for rape, substance abuse and addiction, general enragingness.  Also excessive use of CAPS LOCK.


I heard a little bit about Lindsay Mitchell's latest Truth column on Twitter on Friday, but no one could provide me an online copy.  Today someone rectified that in comments here (thank you, kind of).


Now Lindsay and I disagree on many things.  We often have those agreements online, through the medium of blogging, but normally we manage to be remarkably civil for two people who disagree so fundamentally.


I really struggle though finding civil responses to this incredibly harmful rape apologist Truth column from Mitchell.  


1.  It is not necessary to put rapes in scare-quotes, especially when you are already using alleged in front anyway.  Quote marks are for quotes, and here are some examples:  Calling rape a "sex 'accident'" is so incredibly awful that it should be erased from the english language and never ever used again except to point out how awful it is.  Ditto for "retrospectively unwanted sex".  


2.  If a friend came to me and told me she'd been raped while she was drunk (or a male friend for that matter) then my first response would not be to have questions, but to offer support and love and whatever else they needed BECAUSE THEY ARE MY FRIEND.  


3.  The legal standard may be guilt beyond reasonable doubt, but when I'm not a judge or a jury member I am quite at liberty to make up my own mind to believe the person who was raped, which is what I intend to do, especially if they are my friend, but also as a point of principle to somehow slightly re-balance the constant disbelief that rape victims face at every turn.  Hurtful, harmful, unnecessary disbelief that Lindsay is perpetuating with this column.


4.  No one asks for rape.  It is rapists who are responsible for rape.  Being incapable of giving consent means you have NOT GIVEN CONSENT.  Sex without consent is rape.  It's really quite simply.  I thought former ACT candidate's were generally big on people having free will and giving informed consent and all that jazz?  


5.  "I’d talk it out and insist she mentally take some responsibility for what happened, learn from it and move on. And I’d forgive her, so she could do the same. "  This HORRIFIES ME.  If anyone has had that conversation with anyone I know who has been raped you better not ever tell me because I will explode with anger.  All over you in a hideous mess of brain matter and internal organ-ness.  I am not entirely sure I am exaggerating.


6.  Suggesting that the best response is to totally sweep any such incidents away from any examination whatsoever is just so irresponsible that I cannot believe Truth even published it.

I'm going to stop at 6 points.  I have to because otherwise I could write and delete and write and delete and write all night and still not be any further on with saying what I want to than just saying this:

It is rapists who are responsible for rape; minimising, excusing or denying this is unacceptable to me.

That Sam Judd Article - A Dissection

Does it ever make you cringe when you see someone who is overweight gouging themselves on takeaways?

No, no it doesn't actually. I rarely take any notice of what people I don't know are eating - and if I do it's usually because it looks good and I wonder where they got it or how they made it. If they're someone I know, I'm probably more interested in them. Odd how I have better things to do with my time than hanging round judging random people on the street. (Look at me not focusing on the word 'gouging' because there's so much else to rant about.)

It is not just the health problems that irk me 

Oh, you're concerned. How caring of you.

many environmental problems stem from an unhealthy diet also. 

You know, I'll be expecting some pretty significant evidence for this, and a definition of that 'unhealthy diet'.

Just take a walk in the central city early on a Saturday morning and count how many fast food wrappers you see in the drains.

Oh! So it's about rubbish on the streets!  Well there's a detailed macro analysis of the environmental problems we face.

I believe there is an inextricable link between people who don't look after their own health and those who damage our environment.

That would be... governments and multi national corporations, right? No? Oh, you're talking about individuals? Mysterious fat individuals who drop rubbish, despite the fact you don't appear to have seen this actually happen, only surveyed the streets on a Saturday morning. See, you keep talking about fat people and you talk about there being excess packaging on food you perceive as unhealthy, but you fail to make any actual connection between the two, other than the fact that the two together make you cringe. I'd suggest the problem might be one of your perception. 

Single use convenience food packaging and sugary pre-mixed bourbon and cola drink containers are constantly proving to be the biggest source of rubbish on our streets and beaches. 

Bourbon and cola? Really? Not lime baccardi breezers or vodka fuse? I'm happy you can be this specific. Clearly bourbon's the problem - and if we all switched to other drinks the problem would be solved.

New Zealand has the 7th worst obesity rate in the world.

You do realise that obesity is a meaningless construct, right? Oh...

[...]

Can our terrible eating habits be blamed on urbanisation? 

Well, you might want to establish what our eating habits actually are first.

As more people flock to newly developed apartment dwellings in cities, they give up the opportunity to have a garden and teach their kids how to grow food. 

Yeah, where you live is entirely a choice and has nothing whatsoever to do with money, availability, transport, access or anything else.

But Statistics New Zealand figures say that, although the percentage is rapidly rising only around 20,000 of our 4,000,000-odd people lived in apartments in 2006.
Most kiwis want to have their own slice of outdoor space...
So it seems that most of us have the space to grow food, but we are too lazy to do it. It is easier to pile yourself into a car and burn fuel to visit a shop where unhealthy food (likely to be wrapped in single use plastic packaging) awaits our lazy bellies.

Here's the thing. Even when there genuinely is the space - and a lot of residences that aren't apartments don't have it -you may be working long hours. Your landlord may forbid you from modifying the garden. You may not have the startup cash. You may have the startup cash but not be able to take the risk that if you fail you won't have any food to eat. You may be disabled in ways that make this impossible. You may work long hours and have childcare issues and just be plain exhausted. You may have to move between rentals every year and there's never chance to get anything going.
But thanks for making people feel bad for doing what they need to survive, demeaning them and making broad assumptions about their resources. I hope that makes you feel really awesome.
And I still have no fucking idea what this has to do with fat people.

[...]
It is healthier, cheaper and better for the environment to eat fresh food that can be grown at home. 

Not... necessarily. Healthy depends on how well it's grown and what your dietry needs are. Cheaper depends on your resources, economies of scale and what it is you need to grow. And better for the environment really depends on the policies of those growing food on a wider scale - perhaps you should talk to them. Nevertheless...

When we are educating school students about using less waste, one of the best examples that we can use is growing it yourself.
And it really isn't that hard to start. If you don't have the space, or wouldn't know the difference between clay and topsoil- there are many community gardens out there, where people can usually learn essential gardening skills and share a space. You can check out this handy guide here.
Some school students are lucky enough to be getting gardening skills already through the Enviroschools network and other fantastic organisations like The Garden to Table Trust, which is working with Waterfront Auckland on an edible garden by the sea on the north wharf.

Aside from another assumption about difficulty levels, there's actually some good stuff in here.  If your aim was to encourage people to grow their own food, you could have provided these resources and some people may well have used them. But instead you've fuelled fat hate and made people feel like crap for their limited resources. I'm sure this has made people (particularly fat people) who would like to grow their own food more (incidentally I'm one of them) but don't find it easy really receptive to your message. Go you!

Jennifer Lee on the case for Fat Activism

Great piece by Melbourne academic Jennifer Lee: A big fat fight: the case for fat activism 

My left-wing, friendly and kind GP says, “You’re bigger than you were last time so it’s harder for me to get this in place,” as an apology for groping around during a pap smear – an apology that blames my body for her less-than-perfect technique. 

That’s a subtle example, because I try to choose my medical professionals carefully to avoid the standard fat prejudice. It demonstrates that sometimes we are hit with fat prejudice in the most vulnerable or intimate situations. Why aren’t medical students trained to deal with fat bodies? Why isn’t medical equipment generally made for different kinds of bodies – fat ones included? Fat people are sent constant messages that they are wrong, that they need to change, that the world around them is fine and doesn’t need to cater for them.

...

Still, in some moments I do find myself wishing I were thin. But I catch myself and think, “Why do you want to be thin in this moment?” The answer is inevitably about thin privilege. If fat was the sought-after attractive body in the media, if doctors separated fat from disease, if big clothes sizes were available everywhere, would I ever want to be thin?

When I speak about thin privilege, I am talking about the advantages that thin people in Western culture experience, such as being assumed healthy and having a wide array of clothes available, as well as a body that aligns with dominant ideas of what is attractive. It’s time to acknowledge thin privilege the way the Left has acknowledged white privilege, class privilege or straight privilege.

Yes, this happened in Aotearoa New Zealand

Thanks to Women's Health Action Trust for allowing me to re-publish this media release here.  It refers to this case in the media last week.


Criminisalising pregnancy no solution

‘Jailing women in the interests of foetal protection cannot be justified on either human rights nor public health grounds and sets a dangerous precedent’ says Christy Parker, Senior Policy Analyst of Women’s Health Action Trust.

Ms Parker was responding to reports this morning of the jailing of a New Plymouth woman in the interests of protecting her ‘unborn baby’ from harm.

‘Women’s Health Action strongly supports steps being taken to ensure good outcomes for women and their babies when they are risk of harm. However the criminalisation of conduct during pregnancy has not been shown to improve outcomes and has been condemned within international human rights forums’ Ms Parker states.

‘Making women fear prosecution for various types of behaviour during pregnancy has been shown
to be a barrier to accessing health and social services that support women to improve outcomes for
themselves and their families. This has recently been highlighted by the Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Anand Grover, in his report to the United Nations. Mr Grover states in his report, ‘it has been well documented that the public health goals are not realised through criminalistion; rather they are often undermined by it’. In addition, States are obligated to ensure that interests in protecting prenatal life are consistent with the fundamental human rights of women and do not perpetuate discrimination against women’ states Ms Parker.

‘The issue here is not about the details of this particular case but rather a trend towards foetal
protection and the criminalisation of pregnancy in Aotearoa New Zealand. As interest grows in the
outcomes of the Green Paper for Vulnerable Children, we need to be thinking carefully about how
to best support good outcomes for women and their babies. Punitive measures that further isolate
women and that risk undermining their human rights should be treated with caution’.

More on Women's Health Action Trust can be found at their website.

The tale of a billboard - part 1

Stella Artois beer advertisement, glamourous woman drinking beer, man gazing on, "She is a thing of beauty".  Someone has scrawled across the bottom of the billboard "She is not a thing."

Many thanks to Cathy Casey for this snap. 

I walk and drive past this billboard regularly, as I cross through the intersection of New North Rd and Sandringham Rd in Kingsland.

The above addition had been painted over but I noted yesterday that there was a new viewer comment (two in fact) which I will hopefully get a picture of to share before it gets painted over too.  If anyone has an image already do feel free to send it to me julie dot fairey at gmail dot com.

Abortion stats out today - UPDATED

The raw statistics will be released today for abortions in the year to December 2011.  The full commentary and data doesn't come out until the Abortion Supervisory Committee report towards the end of this year.

The bits I'll be watching for are the abortions by duration of pregnancy (anecdotal evidence lately suggests there are real problems getting early abortions at some services), and by previous live births (I think it's always helpful to bust the stereotype that those having abortions are never parents already).

Will hopefully update when they come out, although if it's after 2pm I probably won't be able to until tonight.


UPDATED:

Here's the info on the Statistics website.  The headline points, from the Stats NZ release are below:

In the year ended December 2011:

• 15,863 abortions were performed in New Zealand, the lowest number since 1999 (15,501).
• The general abortion rate was 17.3 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years, down from 18.1 per 1,000 in 2010.
• Women aged 20–24 years had the highest abortion rate (33 abortions per 1,000 women aged 20–24 years).
• The median age of women having an abortion was 25 years.
• Most abortions (62 percent) were a woman's first abortion.
• 55 percent of abortions were performed before the 10th week of the pregnancy.

/update

Please consider this an open thread for discussion of the stats and the general state of access to abortion in Aotearoa New Zealand.

This is NOT a thread for discussing the morality of abortion, which you can do over here.

Problem solved

As you have probably heard, and raged about , the government's current plan is to target young women who are on benefits (or whose parents are on benefits) for long-term contraception.

Colin Craig objects for the following reasons: 

"Why should, say, a 70-year-old who's had one partner all their life be paying for a young woman to sleep around? "We are the country with the most promiscuous young women in the world. This does nothing to help us at all."

Meanwhile Right to Life is really concerned about women getting tubal ligations.  They're worried for the following reasons:

It undermines the nature and purpose of marriage and sexuality. It goes against the dignity of sexual relations as intended by our Creator. It prevents the total gift of self because it excludes the potential for fertility.

Tubal ligation is the mutilation of a woman’s body and a violation of her human rights. Women have a right to the protection of the State.

Tubal ligation is an assault on the integrity of a woman’s body.

It is bad medicine, pregnancy is not a disease. There is no disease for which ligation would be a treatment. It is a medical procedure which is intended to destroy healthy organs.

I have the perfect solution to this:

A cage fight.

We lock all the people who think that certain women should have contraception forced on them and those who think women can't consent to sterilization or don't really know what contraception is, but know they're against it.

While they're fighting it out with each other those of us who believe that all people should have control of their bodies, and be able to select whatever contraception, or non-contraception, best works for them, without any financial obstacles, can take over the world.

Is there choice hair?

When we discussed women's pubic hair a while back, there were lots of interesting comments from people with very diverse views on the subject.  So you can just imagine my excitement when someone sent me research which asked female students to grow their body hair - legs and underarm - for 10 weeks and record reactions from others and their own feelings in diary format. 

The 34 participating students were all under thirty, mixed racially (41% non-white) and mixed in terms of sexual orientation (70% opposite sex attracted; 18% both sex attracted; 12% same sex attracted). They did not have to disclose that they were growing their body hair to anyone else, or discuss it if they did not wish.

"Choice" is such a contentious term in feminism.  I am not down with giving women a hard time about any choice we make about how we present ourselves or live our gender, whether that means rebelling, subverting or conforming to traditional ideas of femininity.  But finding ways to consider how our choices are constrained and enabled I find endlessly fascinating, and I'm often frustrated when attempts to discuss this turn into "all choices are equally fine."  Because while they might be equally fine in the choosing, they are certainly not equally fine in the consequences for women.  Which is why, of course, we all pick our battles around rebellion, subversion and conformity, based on energy, desire, analysis, capacity, access to resources etc etc etc.

For me, feminism is about a whole heap more than getting to do whatever I want because "it's my choice."

Back to body hair.  Women participating in this research talked about a cluster of concerns the researchers call "heteronormative social control" and "gendered anxiety" while watching their leg hair lengthen.  They were worried about receiving homophobia; being seen to be queer; or if queer, being outed when they did not wish to be.  For many women, this included being scared about physical violence:

I keep worrying that it’s not just fun and games having body hair. Maybe some guy at a bar will see my armpit hair and think I’m a lesbian and he’ll round up a group of guys and attack me. I have heard about it happening to women who are perceived as dykes. I’ve seen guys harass women who don’t want anything to do with men.

Lots of women also talked about the social controls they experienced around suddenly not being seen as "real women" or male.  One woman's mother told her that her legs looked like men's legs now; others had people in their lives asking if they were wanting to become men.

 I was asked a question by a male coworker if my husband and I have sex during my body hair growth. I replied by saying yes. He asked if my husband thought he was having sex with a “dude.” I told him, “Why would he think that, the rest of my body is still there, I still have boobs and a vagina. I’m still the same person as before, I just have some hair.” I have really enjoyed making the guys at work cringe.

More than half the women talked about feeling "on display" during the assignment, having their underarm hair paraded by others as a "tourist attraction" or "circus act."  There was no question they were breaking gender rules.

The final cluster of concerns women shared in this research was to do with women's bodies and male possession.  Nearly all partnered heterosexual women were asked if their male partner approved of them growing their body hair.  Many women also talked about ongoing social expectations that they should get their body hair under control in order to be attractive to men.

My fiancée told his father about the body hair thing I’m doing. He was very offended by it. The first thing he asked was, “Did she ask for your permission first?” I was so offended by this. As if my fiancée is in control of what I do to my body! I don’t need anyone’s permission for anything I want to do with my body. And if my fiancée said absolutely not, I would do it anyways and probably wouldn’t be marrying him right now. I guess his dad went on and on about how women need to have smooth bodies, that he couldn’t be with his own wife if she didn’t shave. “Women with hairy legs, it’s just not right!” Guys like him are the reason why I was so obsessed with shaving my entire body. Those guys ruined my self-esteem, my self-worth, and my confidence. Body hair isn’t gross. Men like him are!

This research is interesting because it questions the idea of choice explicitly.  Can we "choose" not to shave body hair?  Without punishment?  Or when we call some things "choosing" are we glossing over social controls and constraints which are ultimately harmful to all genders?

I stopped shaving my legs when I was 18, and my underarms when I was 21.  Both were feminist decisions about wanting to explore why body hair on women was unacceptable, and how my body would feel and look if I broke those rules. 

My lovers have only ever expressed support and desire around these choices; no doubt potential lovers who haven't approved have gone elsewhere.  There's also no doubt I'm not interested in being sexual with anyone who doesn't like my body. 

None of my family have ever commented, except for my mother who despite shaving herself explicitly supported me choosing to abstain and said many times she wished she had never started shaving.  But as with the women in this research, there have been a multitude of ways I've been reminded over the years that this "choice" is deviant by others - that, I'm afraid, is another post entirely.

Guestie: I am not a suitcase

Very happy to bring you another guest post by hazel. Her flatmate reacted to this rant with a concerned "have you been reading the comments on Stuff again?".

On being told that fairness in air travel would consist of everyone paying one fare for person + packages, so that fatties like me don't get more than my fair share of the space:

I am not a suitcase. I am not the floral bouquet you take to your mother when you visit on her birthday. I am not the box of illegal copies of movies you bought from a street vendor in Bangkok. I am not your luggage; I am not your third-best pair of jeans or your stained underwear or the pair of shoes you just couldn't pass by. I can't leave bits of me behind in the hotel room when I check out; I can't abandon myself in a convenient rubbish bin outside the airport. When I go I take all of me (and frankly I'd rather not have you either, but I put up with it). I do not fit into a test compartment by the check-in counter; and unlike your box of condoms and your shampoo I care about whether or not I am weighed in public. The span of my hips is not for public consumption.

And your grand plan for social equity won't solve the dilemma of you being pressed up against my thigh; I can't put my left calf above your head shut away for three hours as we cross the Tasman. The seats aren't bigger because I've paid for my tits, lady, for my nose and my size 10 feet and my wide wide shoulders level with your eyes.

I know you are angry. I know you suffer, crushed up against the thickness of my waist for this trip we share. I know it is very hard for you, trapped in a claustrophobic tube eight miles high floating above the clouds and caught between the screaming baby three rows back and the air hostess asking if you want milk in your tea; and me, my shoulders (level with your eyes) and my fatness and the bright pink of my dress and the way the seatbelt presses into my flesh: it offends.

I just don't give a shit.

That's a lie - I totally do, because then you talk at me in newspaper columns wide-eyed and earnest as though you have solved the world's problems with your perfect logic and stellar pragmatism. Because you want to take your mother a floral bouquet on her birthday; and you do not see why I cannot put my left calf above your head shut away for three hours as we cross the Tasman. And if I question your perfect logic and stellar pragmatism you ask me if I am not maybe just a little bit it only seems the sensible thing concerned about my health.

A likely feminist

I don't think Tulisa Contostavlos is a household name in New Zealand.  Certainly the only reason that I'd heard of her is because I spent last winter developing a my knowledge of British comedians, discovered the awesomeness that is Simon Amstell and watched a lot of Never Mind the Buzzcocks.  For those who don't know she was part of a British group called N-Dubz, she judged British X-factor, and she's about to release a solo album.

And it turns out that she's awesome. Recently, a scum-bag ex-boyfriend of hers released a sex-tape.  Horrifically, this is an occupational hazard for women like Tulisa.  And if they have a scumbag ex-boyfriend prepared to release a sex-tape, young female celebrities are trapped in a web of victim-blaming, slut-shaming, judgement.  Women in her position have had their careers threatened, and been forced to offer ridiculous 'apologies' to keep their job.  It is very difficult for the young women caught in this web of judgement to respond to it without reinforcing some of the ideas they're being attacked with.

Tulisa didn't respond with a press statement forced by her management or employers, but with another video - where she is straight up, direct and refuses to be shamed by toxic ideas about women's sexuality:



Transcript

Just go watch the whole thing.

***********

My appreciation for this awesome video was slightly marred because I learned about it in this article from the guardian website.  Because the author is not content in celebrating Tulisa's response.  She also emphasises how 'unlikely' it is that Tulisa would provide a feminist response.

Tulisa  has talked really explicitly about being in an abusive relationship as a teenager and the effect that had on her well-being.  I'm just looking at interviews linked on wikipedia and she is very explicit about misogyny and the effect that it has had on her life.  And yet the article doesn't even feel the need to explain or justify why she thinks Tulisa is an 'unlikely' feminist.

Because when a commissioning editor at the Observer describes Tulisa as an 'unlikely' feminist - the subtext is pretty close to being text. It would be uncouth to be explicit about the class-differences which underly the author's supposed surprise.  After all this is Britain and you can hear Tulisa's voice - and on the guardian website no more explanation than that is needed.

I think it's really important to make the subterranean explicit.  That's the only way to recognise these off hand lines  as an effort to claim feminism as the exclusive property of middle-class women. This is both an assumption of what feminism is, an expression of what the author wants it to be, and act of maintaining those borders; for the author feminism is a movement that only recognises middle-class women's expression of their experiences, and allows people to be shocked when working-class women express themselves at all.

The best refutation of course, is to watch Tulisa's video again and say that there's nothing unlikely or surprising about it.