waitangi day

waitangi day, again.

i started the day with a powhiri at civic square in hamilton, in front of the city council building.  following the powhiri, there were a few speeches, some songs, a prayer and then refreshements.

it was an hour-long event, which is time enough to hear quite a few words.  unfortunately i don't understand maori enough to follow what the speakers in te reo were expressing, though i did catch a few words here and there.

but there were plenty of words in english that i did understand.  speeches about partnership and founding history, and the importance of the treaty.  there were words about multi-culturalism and being one people.  there was talk of celebrating the positive and the nz spirit & identity.  people talked about finding the common and focusing on that.

and for those who did talk about the historical context of the treaty, they talked about the period between 1815 & 1840, they talked about what happened at waitangi, and the next historical point of mention was 1960, when waitangi day was legally established and then 1975 when the treaty of waitangi act was passed.

everyone mentioned the signing, the partnership, but not one single person mentioned the breaches.  it's as if the period between the signing of the treaty and the setting up of the waitangi didn't exist, as if we can't dare to acknowledge the problematic parts of our history.  as if, as part of our national day, we should pretend that injustice and dispossession never happened.  to mention it would somehow put a dampener on the day.

and yet part of celebrating nz and nz'ers, part of celebrating our history and our present is to own all of that history, to acknowledge the bad as well as the good.  because that is all part of what this country is, that is part of our history, and to erase it by refusing to mention that it happened only shows the speakers' shame and embarrassment.  it's certainly not ignorance, because i know all the people who spoke, and i know that they have a good grounding of our history - good enough to speak about it with honesty, had they so chosen.

it's not negative to speak about the bad parts of our history.  it's worse to totally ignore it and pretend it never happened. it's more respectful of all of us to tell the truth of what happened, and that can easily done in ways that aren't in-your-face or confrontational (though it doesn't have to be), even if it does make some people uncomfortable.  but just skipping over it as if it doesn't happened doesn't change the fact that it did.

it's positive to acknowledge our history and to talk about how we can make things better.  and to talk about all the people and institutions who have been working hard to make things better.  and to talk about all the things that still need to happen, all the work that still needs to be done.

the one thing that truly p*sses me off is to write off any mention of that history as "holding grievances" or being divisive.  there is absolutely nothing wrong to be upset about past injustices, and to talk about the impact they have even today.  there is nothing wrong with feeling anger and frustration, and nobody has to get over it just because other people are unable to deal with the expressions of justified emotion on a day when we acknowledge what it is to be a nz'er.

it is more divisive and more negative to stifle those expressions and to enforce a silence on things that we should never be silent about.  so, i expected more from the ceremony this morning.  especially since it was the only formal commemoration of waitangi day in the city.  hamilton used to have a full day celebration by the lake, at innes common, with stalls and food and rides for the children, along with music and performances from a wide range of cultural groups.  but the funding for that got cancelled, and this is all we have left.

i think we can do better.

NZ Speculative Fiction Blogging Week: Women in Power

I'm super happy to be able to kill two birds with one stone and write a post that serves as not only a suffrage day post but also part of NZ Speculative Fiction Blogging Week. It's a snapshot of an honours research essay in progress and all my half formed ideas about the texts, so my apologies for this being so 'bitty' and the lack of conclusions - I'm not even going to make an attempt to have the paragraphs naturally flow into each other.

The topic is looking at two novels written the late nineteenth century which portray a future New Zealand in which women hold political office. I'm looking at how far these matched and related to the reality and the conceptions of gender they explore.

The two main texts (their titles link to free ebooks via the NZETC):

Julius Vogel's ‘Anno Domini 2000: Woman’s Destiny’ imagines the world in the year 2000, in which women, by common though not universal assent, are the primary holders of political office simply because they are believed to be better suited to the task. It primarily follows both the political career and romantic exploits of 23 year old Under Secretary for Home Affairs (later Imperial Prime Minister) Hilda Fitzherbert, but large sections of the novel are devoted to explorations of both political systems and technological developments. Vogel was a prime minister of New Zealand, responsible for introducing an earlier (unsuccessful) suffrage bill, and 'Anno Domini'  is widely - though inaccurately - considered to the the first NZ science fiction novel (though it was certainly one of the earliest). It received a lot of attention in the year 2000 for the accuracy of its prediction, not just in terms of women's place in society - in his introduction to the rereleased version Roger Robinson lists some of these (I would dispute some of his points, but they are still significant).

Less well known, and considerably more bizarre, is Edward Tregear's 'Hedged with Divinities' which follows the journey of a male protagonist who wakes us from a trance to find that all men (globally) have died of a plague which remains unexplained. In their absence, and in the face of the incompetence and shock of the remaining women – the socio-political institutions and the infrastructure of the country have collapsed, and Jack (the protagonist) sets about restoring the country to a functioning society. However the question of repopulation remains, and he reluctantly agrees to a mass marriage, despite his only interest being in his lover, Nelly, and at the end of the novel, as babies (both male and female) are born to his wives, he sets sail for a remote pacific island with her.

Things I am writing about, or that I've noticed, include:

Happy Suffrage Day!

Although as AnneE points out some people seem to have neglected to remember what today means, I've been heartened by the tweets and Facebook status updates expressing Happy Suffrage Day sentiments.  Not just from women either.  Take this example from Idiot/Savant marking the day, and also how far we still have to go to achieve fair political representation for women, even here in Aotearoa New Zealand where women have had the vote for 118 years now.

It's also a timely point to thank our readers, and the blogging team, for the community that we all contribute to here.  There have been some tough times since last Suffrage Day, and The Hand Mirroristas still have some work to do on issues identified by readers, so we thank you for your goodwill and feministy comradeness as we work through those behind the scenes.

And if you're in Auckland on Thursday night we would love love love to see you at this year's Suffrage Eve debate - Women's Choice 2011 - 7pm in LibB10, in the basement of the University of Auckland's main library, on Alfred St in the city.  If you do the Facebook thing you can find lots of info here, and if not then there are links to helpful stuff like maps here.  Oh, and since I wrote that last post we now have a fifth candidate confirmed - Sue Bradford speaking for Mana.  Hope to see you there.

The invisibility of rape in war

Trigger Warning for this post for rape & violence.

I found the three paragraphs below absolutely chilling when I read them last week.  So much is left unsaid, and yet to me the implications are clear.

Excerpt from Ask That Mountain:  The story of Parihaka, by Dick Scott - first published 1975, this is from the 2006 reprint:

The night raids were stepped up to find which houses to destroy and the women were frequently victims of drunken and diseased troopers.  Once the officers got their wires crossed and a unit raided where it was not expected.  The sequel, as the Auckland Herald delicately reported, was the discovery of 'a gentleman who has taken a very prominent part in the recent proceedings under circumstances that recall the earnest terms in which the West Coast Commission deplore the existence of semi-connubial relations between officials and natives.'

The reality behind the indulgent amusement was that syphilis was brought into the town once given a clean bill of health by Taranaki's medical officer, Dr. O'Carroll, and congenital cases, a direct result of the invasion, were reported through the province for years aftewarrds.*

*  Dr EP Ellison, of Manaia, told the writer:  'There was looting and debauchery.  Perhaps I speak too strongly but the truth must be told.  In my work as a young man I saw cases of congenital syphilis in Taranaki that were the result of the occupation of Parihaka.' Not all excesses were condoned.  At one stage of the Taranaki campaign some of the armed constabulary were court-martialled for copulating with dogs...

Even in 1975, and in more recent reprints, it seems that it was not acceptable to call terrible things by their true names.  This was rape.  It was repeated rape, systematic and used to demoralise and exercise power in a shameful exhibition of a piece with the unfair confiscation of the land.  There is mention of the syphilis that affected the population of Parihaka after these rapes, but no mention of the other effects that violence would have had - not only the physical and mental impact but also no doubt pregnancies and possibly children who resulted from these "semi-connubial" encounters, and then the potential shattering of adult relationships too.  Does the "semi" indicate the only the men consented?  

One of the things I find true about the way that George RR Martin portrays war in his A Song Of Ice And Fire series is how he doesn't make rape invisible.  He doesn't make it prurient either, or paint it as titillating - it is more told than shown, if that makes sense - but he acknowledges it as another form of the violence of war.

It's only by naming it, by acknowledging it, that we can fully recognise that rape is there, it is real, and it must be stopped. 

Tribute

It's going to be all abortion-blogging all the time this week (at least)from me. I have a lot to say.

But before I say anything else I just want to pay tribute to the women who fought the battles - who got us here.

The abortion fight in the 1970s was intensely long and gruelling. As I was growing up I knew abortion was an option (although I wasn't aware how ridiculous the laws were). It was only an option because people fought so long and hard both before and after the law changed.

As well as those who pushed the issue forward in the 1970s, there have also been women who have kept the issue alive over the years. Particularly at ALRANZ.

I've always loved the metaphor that those of us who are fighting for a better world are each a link in the chain - and I think as we make more chain we should appreciate that which already exists.

Clelia Duel Mosher

The Stanford University magazine has a really fascinating article about Dr Clelia Duel Mosher, a woman who taught in the Hygiene Department of that university in the early 20th century. Dr Mosher undertook extensive research regarding the attitude of women to sex and relationships that predated work by Kinsey, as well as groundbreaking work in the area of female biology. The article also talks about the rediscovery in the 1970s of surveys Dr Mosher conducted of women regarding sex and relationships.

The survey's genesis—like its rediscovery—was a fortuitous accident. Mosher started it in 1892 as a 28-year-old biology undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin; she had been asked to address a local Mother's Club on "the marital relation" and as a single, childless woman seems to have used data collection to fill gaps in her knowledge. Afterward, Mosher continued conducting surveys until 1920, using variations on the same form and amassing 45 profiles in all. Yet Mosher never published or drew more than cursory observations from her data. She died in 1940, and the survey was entirely forgotten when Degler unearthed it.

It is the earliest known study of its type, long preceding, for example, the 1947 and 1953 Kinsey Reports, whose oldest female respondents were born in the 1890s. The Mosher Survey recorded not only women's sexual habits and appetites, but also their thinking about spousal relationships, children and contraception. Perhaps, it hinted, Victorian women weren't so Victorian after all.

Indeed, many of the surveyed women were decidedly unshrinking. One, born in 1844, called sex "a normal desire" and observed that "a rational use of it tends to keep people healthier." Offered another, born in 1862, "The highest devotion is based upon it, a very beautiful thing, and I am glad nature gave it to us."

Of those surveyed, 34 had attended a university or teachers' college. Nine were Stanford alumnae, six from Cornell; other alma maters included Wellesley, Vassar and the University of California. Thirty respondents had worked before marriage, mostly as teachers.
...

Slightly more than half of these educated women claimed to have known nothing of sex prior to marriage; the better informed said they'd gotten their information from books, talks with older women and natural observations like "watching farm animals." Yet no matter how sheltered they'd initially been, these women had—and enjoyed—sex. Of the 45 women, 35 said they desired sex; 34 said they had experienced orgasms; 24 felt that pleasure for both sexes was a reason for intercourse; and about three-quarters of them engaged in it at least once a week.

Unlike Mosher's other work, the survey is more qualitative than quantitative, featuring open-ended questions probing feelings and experiences. "She's actually asking these questions not about physiology or mechanics—she's really asking about sexual subjectivity and the meaning of sex to women," Freedman says. Their responses were often mixed. Some enjoyed sex but worried that they shouldn't. One slept apart from her husband "to avoid temptation of too frequent intercourse." Some didn't enjoy sex but faulted their partner. Mosher writes: [She] "Thinks men have not been properly trained."

Their responses reflected the cultural shifts of the late 19th century, as marriage became viewed as a romantic union, not just an economic one, and as people began to dissociate sex from procreation, says Freedman. One woman, born in 1867, wrote that before marriage she believed sex to be only for reproduction, but later changed her mind: "In my experience the habitual bodily expression of love has a deep psychological effect in making possible complete mental sympathy & perfecting the spiritual union that must be the lasting 'marriage' after the passion of love has passed away with the years." Wrote another, born in 1863, "It seems to me to be a natural and physical sign of a spiritual union, a renewal of the marriage vows."

Anxieties about unwanted pregnancies are also clear. This was a hot topic during the 19th century, when the marital fertility rate fell by half despite the criminalization of abortion and contraception, Freedman says. At least 30 respondents reported attempting birth control anyway. Many mentioned using douching, withdrawal or the rhythm method; a few had tried a "womb veil" or male condoms.

Mosher herself was born in 1863 and had an interesting life. In terms of her work:

Thanks to a steady supply of young female research subjects, Mosher's scholarly aim soon became clear: to prove that women were not inferior to men, and that frailties chalked up to sex were really the effects of binding garments, insufficient exercise and mental conditioning. Her master's thesis, for example, showed that women breathe from the diaphragm, as men do, rather than from the chest, as was believed at the time. She concluded that this so-called biological difference was really due to tight corsetry.

She also began tracking students' menstrual periods, hoping to upend "functional periodicity," the idea that menstruation debilitated women. It was a canny subject choice for an ambitious female investigator. "That was not research that men could do easily, so she definitely claimed an area that was not accessible to men for her own research," says Elizabeth Griego, who wrote her 1983 dissertation on Mosher for an education doctorate at UC-Berkeley and spent most of the early 1980s in the Stanford archives sifting through Mosher's papers. (Griego is now vice president for student life at the University of the Pacific.)

But it wasn't until after 1896, when Mosher had moved on to Johns Hopkins to obtain her MD, that she analyzed her data. Again, she blamed nurture over nature: Painful menstruation, she concluded, was in most cases caused by inactivity, poor muscular development and the very idea of "inevitable illness." Sending girls to bed to dwell upon their discomfort, Mosher wrote, "produce[s] a morbid attitude and favor[s] the development and exaggeration of whatever symptoms there may be." Mosher was not subtle about her motivation for seeking to discredit functional periodicity. "Equal pay for women means equal work; unnecessary menstrual absences mean less than full work," she wrote. Convinced that women should stay active throughout their periods, Mosher even invented abdominal exercises—dubbed "moshers"—to counteract menstrual pain.

‘The skirt, as modified by the vagaries of fashion, has a direct bearing on the health, development and efficiency of the woman. In 1893-96 I made a series of observations on the clothing of ninety-eight young women. The average width of skirt was then 13.5 feet. The weight of the skirt alone was often as much as the entire weight of the clothing worn by the modern girl.’
–Clelia Mosher, Strength of Women (c. 1920)

By the time Mosher received her MD in 1900, there were approximately 7,000 female doctors and surgeons in the United States (almost 6 percent of the total), but they still faced discrimination. Mosher turned down a job as an assistant to a gynecological surgeon when told that men would refuse to work under her. She returned to Palo Alto and opened a private practice, but struggled to get patient referrals from male colleagues or win grants to fund her menstruation studies. In 1910, Stanford offered her an assistant professorship in personal hygiene as the medical adviser for women, and Mosher eagerly returned to academic life. "I think she started out thinking she would like to be a doctor and perhaps a surgeon, but she found the doors closed to her very quickly," muses Griego.

Instead, Griego says, Mosher found what mattered to her: a living wage, intellectual freedom and access to research subjects. Mosher restarted her menstruation research and completed a study showing that the average height of Stanford's entering female students had increased 1.5 inches in 20 years, a change she attributed to better exercise and comfortable clothing. Mosher became a full professor in 1928, one year before she retired.

The full article is an interesting read and can be found here.

Suffrage Memorial update

Readers may recall that one of Auckland City Council's committees was meeting yesterday to consider the fate of the Suffrage Memorial in Khartoum Place.

Article in the Herald this morning:

The National Council of Women has failed in its bid to get an assurance that a memorial commemorating 100 years since women could vote will stay in the CBD's Khartoum Place.

Councillors on the Auckland City Council's arts, culture and recreation Committee voted 6 to 2 against committing to keep the tiled mural, celebrating the success of New Zealand's early suffragettes, in its location off Lorne St.

Click through for the whole thing. And for an excellent backgrounder on the issue check out Councillor Cathy Casey's guest post on the matter from last week.

Guest post: Women want Suffrage Memorial to stay

Further to yesterday's post on the threat to Auckland's Suffrage Memorial, here's a guest post from Councillor Cathy Casey who will be fighting for the Memorial to stay at the Arts, Culture & Recreation Committee of Auckland City Council on Tuesday 20th April. Details on how to show support for the retention of the Suffrage Memorial can be found here. Many thanks to Cathy and the many many other women who have been fighting hard to retain this important piece of our feminist story.

It struck me as significant that on International Women’s Day (8 March) I should hear so many capable women make eloquent and stirring speeches about New Zealand women’s achievements, especially those of the suffragists who helped us become the first country to obtain the vote for women. The speakers were equally passionate that the suffragists’ hard-won achievements are given the recognition they deserve within the public domain. As each woman finished speaking, the applause was deafening.

Was I listening to a radical student feminist action group on the university campus? No, I had been invited to spend the evening with the Auckland Branch of the National Council of Women at its meeting in a church hall in Remuera. I must admit I hadn’t expected such radicalism from the good matrons of the NCW, but that was before I realised that the1993 Women’s Suffrage Centenary Memorial in Khartoum Place was on the agenda. The turnout was huge and so was the outrage.

While there were a fair few white heads in the room, these are no armchair feminists. All are strong campaigners who, only four years ago, organised Auckland women to oppose the last threat to remove the Memorial from Khartoum Place. They fought the Council and won the right to keep this valuable piece of feminist history there permanently - or so they thought.

Over two hours, woman after woman stood tall to express indignation at the attempts to remove the Suffrage Memorial and consign it to Myers Park or some other city backwater.

There were wonderful reminiscences from attendees at the memorial’s unveiling ceremony by Irish Prime Minister Mary Robinson and Governor-General Dame Cath Tizard in 1993. There was recollection of the celebratory march on that day and the overwhelming joy of the hundreds of women who swept down Queen Street singing and waving banners.

Then came the war stories from the women who faced the last attempt to have the memorial re-sited. In 2006, the Auckland art fraternity claimed the memorial lacked artistic merit and tried to have it removed. The NCW urged the women of Auckland to respond and a dazzle of four dames led the feisty fight back: Dame Cath Tizard, Dame Georgina Kirby, Dame Dorothy Winstone and Dame Thea Muldoon. The Auckland City Council backed off and resolved to keep the Memorial in Khartoum Place. $2.2 million was budgeted for its upgrade. It was a great feminist victory.

Speakers expressed shock and anger that another attempt is currently being made to re-site the Memorial. The attack this time is being spearheaded by the Advisory Panel for Public Art (APPA) - a group of architects, art consultants and artists appointed to advise the Auckland City Council.

Women questioned why Council would seek advice from the APPA on removing the Memorial after spending $2.2 million on a revamp of lower Khartoum Place which includes the memorial?

Many speakers suggested that the same arguments for the memorial’s removal are being presented as last time, but they are now dressed up in the language of urban design. In 2006, the arguments were put by the arts fraternity and Dame Jenny Gibbs. This time it is Trish Clark of the APPA, the arts fraternity and Dame Jenny Gibbs.

At the end of my evening with the NCW women I was left with several lasting impressions. First, there is a clear bond between the NCW women of today and the suffragists of yesterday. Second, the NCW’s belief that the Suffrage Memorial should remain in Khartoum Place is unshakeable. Theirs is a clear feminist argument that has nothing to do with art or urban design.

The Memorial, designed by artists Jan Morrison and Claudia Pond Eyley celebrates the suffragists’ achievements using symbols that women can relate to – for example the suffrage petition and the white camellia. The petition, a central feature of the staircase, represents the 30,000 signatures that were presented in a petition to Parliament in 1893. Kate Sheppard pasted together the sheets of names and wrapped it around a broom handle. The white camellias which adorn the memorial are important because during the 1893 campaign for women’s suffrage those MPs who supported the Electoral Bill were presented with a white camellia to wear in their buttonhole. Red camellias were sent to those MPs who opposed it.

In addition to the symbols, the Memorial also bears the names and the images of the suffragist women themselves. It is these women and their histories that the NCW is prepared once again to fight for. As one articulate woman put it:

“Brian Rudman the Herald columnist is right. They wouldn’t dare move a memorial to an ANZAC hero like Lord Freyberg so what makes them think they can drive out heroic women like Kate Sheppard, Elizabeth Caradus, Amey Daldy, Meri Te Tai Mangakahia, Lizzie Rattray, Annie Jane Schnackberg, Anne Ward, Elizabeth Yates and Mary Anne Colclough?”

If the arts fraternity in Auckland think that they can remove the Suffrage Memorial from Khartoum Place, they better think again. They might find a red camellia in their mailbox.

The photos (top to bottom) show: View of the Suffrage Memorial from the square in front of it; detail of the artwork with the main logo; picture from the revamp plan that keeps the Suffrage Memorial where it is. Thanks to Cathy for the pics too.

Howard Zinn 1922-2010: "I Never Died" Says He

The first book I ever read by Howard Zinn was SNCC: The New Abolitionists. I've read a lot of his writing since then, and I think it's his most powerful book.

Howard Zinn wrote an essay The Optimism of Uncertainty. He argued that history should give us hope, not because it guaranteed that the powerless would win (it really doesn't), but because it showed extraordinary, unpredictable change is possible. The Civil Rights Movement, particularly SNCC, is an example of the unpredictability of hope. On the 1st of February 1960, Ezell A. Blair Jr., David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain, sat down at the counter of their local Woolworth's and refused to be served. Nobody could have predicted what would grow out of that action.

There have been so many attempts to hide the history of collective resistance, including the reduction of the the freedom movement SNCC was part of to someone sitting down on a bus and someone else giving a great speech. Howard Zinn wrote history like it mattered, because he wanted to cultivate the hope that history brings.