Stick and stones may break my bones, but verbal banter haunts me

It's fair to say Andy Haden and I have different views on the world, sharing only an enjoyment of the athletic.  But when he described high levels of fear of homophobia from lesbian, gay and bisexual sportspeople in New Zealand as a problem that "doesn't really exist" because it's just about "verbal banter" I found myself unable to respond until now.

Out in the Fields talked to 9,500 sportspeople in New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, Canada and Australia.  The headline results - that queer people play sport, but find it unwelcoming - is not major news.  The fact that 78% of New Zealand athletes had witnessed or experienced homophobia in sport is also unsurprising.  More gay men in New Zealand (not sure about bisexual men) don't play sports because of early negative experiences than queer men in other places.  And while our homophobic assaults of queer athletes are lower than other places, one in six gay men (again, bi men have disappeared) have been physically assaulted here.

It's taken me a while to write about this, because it's my story too.  Women's sport is easily the site of the most queer-hating set of experiences I've had, and perversely, at times the most queer affirming.

 _______________

When I was 16, I made the Wellington Women's Under 20 Cricket Team.  I chased the ball hard and I was thrilled to make the team since I wasn't very good.  When I came back with my new Wellington jumper on, I was full of pride.

"Did she try and touch you?"  my teammates asked.  I didn't know what they meant.  Gradually it dawned on me, after other questions, that the woman doling out the jumpers was in a relationship with a woman, and the other girls in my team thought she might be trying to grope us.  It didn't make much sense to me; I was tiny, very pre-pubescent, and far more interested in playing the perfect cover drive than being sexual with anyone.  The key protagonists in this questioning have all been in relationships with women as adults.
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When I was 17, I made my first full Wellington team and went away to tournament.  Our coach held a competition every night - we had to vote on the ugliest player in the other team.  He also warned us, repeatedly, about the lezzies who might try and "turn us".  The two things became combined, and most of the team participated.  No one in our team was out, though several players later had relationships with women.  I didn't take part, but nor did I challenge it.
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When I was 18, I came out as bisexual, everywhere.  I'd also by this time, grown a bit, gone through puberty, and was quite a lot better at cricket.  I was in the New Zealand Under 20 team and captained the Wellington Under 20 team to our second year as national champs.

Then I was dropped as captain.  The woman replacing me led us to placing eighth of eight teams.  The gossip on the field was my shaved head was the problem, and not the image Wellington wanted. 
_________________

Aged 19, I'm asked to coach the Wellington Secondary Schoolgirls team.  They play wonderful cricket, beating every team they play.  Their team is full of homophobic abuse, and before the first game I ask the whole team if they want to play for New Zealand.  They all do.  I tell them that if that's the case, they need to change the way they talk about lesbians and bisexual women, since they will have queer teammates and captains.  The (straight) captain and (straight) vice captain take this on, stop the homophobic bullying, and three of the team come out.  One goes on to set up the first queer support group in a secondary school, and many play top representative cricket - including two for New Zealand - for years.
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On tour with the New Zealand Under 23 team.  Our coach is a woman in a relationship with another woman, so there is no homophobic bullying, but I am the only out woman in the team.  In one game, a group of queer fans cheer us on enthusiastically, and when we walk off the field one runs up and kisses me and says "thank you."  Everyone, including our coach, pretends it hasn't happened.  Years later, another four women in that team have come out.
__________________

I'm away with my first-class team, and I'm sharing a room with another player I know is the captain's partner, despite the fact they are not out.  The first night she tells me she might hang out in the captain's room for a bit.  I tell her I don't mind if she wants to stay there, and that I won't tell anyone.  She spends the tournament with her partner at night.  A year later, they tell me they have hidden their relationship for 15 years because they believed it would stop them playing international cricket.  They come out to everyone else in the team that year.
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I'm bowling, in the nets.  The coach of the Wellington team tells me as I run in: "the problem with women's cricket is, too many hairy-legged dykes play it."

I say, "actually, I wish there were more hairy-legged queer women playing."  I bowl another off-spinner. This is the same man, in his late twenties, that I carry a very drunk schoolgirl away from a year later, after he's pulled her into his bedroom at a party.  His teammate who helps agrees with me that we've stopped a rape.
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My first-class team is batting, and we're talking about a high-profile television announcer who has just come out as bisexual.  "She looks bisexual," says our coach.  "What does looking bisexual mean?" I scoff at him.  "Do I look bisexual?"  I'm still shaving my head.

"Yes", he says aggressively.  "Do I look bisexual?" says another teammate, a Māori woman with long hair, who's been bringing her girlfriend to every game.

"Yes", he says, a bit more quietly.  "Do I look bisexual?" says another teammate (the Secondary Schools vice-captain from incident above).  She's blonde, petite, very conventionally femininely attractive.

"No", he says, horrified.  "Are you......?"  She refuses to answer.  He puts away his homophobia and biphobia.  It's after this incident that the couple above come out to the whole team.
___________________

These are some of the highlights, off the top of my head.  The coaches I'm mentioning are different men.  I love sport, and I played serious representative cricket for more than 15 years, both here and in England.  The teams that were safe from homophobia and biphobia were only that way when women in positions of power made them so, by coming out, and by challenging homophobic and biphobic bullying and abuse.  It's not linear progress either - in my last season of senior cricket in Wellington, not that long ago, homophobic abuse from men in the club was ever-present.  At the prizegiving that year, a drunk player grabbed his bits and told many of my teammates they just needed a good fuck.  They were intimidated enough to leave the public event.

So, dear Andy, you can dismiss homophobia and biphobia stopping queer athletes playing sport, or making us feel scared when we do as "verbal banter" if you like.  But you're wrong.  Sport is almost like the final frontier - it's ok to be racist, sexist and homophobic there in ways that are legally challengeable if they happen in other places.  It's about time New Zealand sports codes made it clear how much they care about their queer athletes.  We deserve to feel safe while we play.

Undoing rape culture, one sports field at a time

This week we got the chance to see a key plank of rape culture in practice.

Masculinity cultures in men's sports, or rather the dominant men's sports, are without doubt some of the most important ways we learn what it means to be male.  Boys shouldn't "throw like a girl"; you must "toughen up, man up, harden up"; and instead of sports being a contest of skill and athleticism, we are taught to consider them battles, where the toughest of male warriors play on through the pain barrier or they are a "wuss".

So when Australian Rugby superstar David Pocock condemns homophobia he's breaking some masculinity rules and that's a fine thing.  More interestingly though, in this case, is the fact that Mr Pocock broke a key support for rape culture - "what happens on the field stays on the field."

The Sydney Morning Herald says their website comments have been loaded with ugly sentiment: 

"Has sport come to this? I don't agree with comments like that, but neither do I agree with making such an issue of it. Pocock knows the player(s) involved, and he'd be better served having a stern word to them during the game, or after the game. To bring the referee into it is unnecessary, in my view, although I'm sure plenty of the PC crowd will disagree."

Almost immediately, there were people predicting that David Pocock would not captain the Wallabies again.  Pocock was public in his support of Marriage Equality, and recently chained himself to a digger to protest mining in state forests in New South Wales.  He's a man who cares about the world, and isn't afraid to show what he stands for.  This didn't matter to rugby fans or the rugby hierarchy when he wasn't breaking the "what happens on the field stays on the field" rule, because he's a brilliant, brilliant player who wins rugby matches.

Now that he's naming other men's bad behaviour on the field though, he's fair game.  This isn't about the content of the naming - he could have been talking about sexism, racism or homophobia - it's about masculinity and rape culture.

Men consistently overestimate other men's use of and support for gendered violence.  Related to this, men consistently underestimate other men's willingness to stand up to gendered violence, which limits their own willingness to intervene.  Put together, these two planks of what men think masculinity means make it harder for men to stand up to other men when they behave badly.

To end rape culture, that's precisely what we need.  It's not enough, if you're a man who wants to end rape culture, to ensure you actively seek and give consent in your own relationships.  You'll have much better relationships and be a more decent human being, but undermining rape culture means undermining masculinity values which say solidarity with other men is the most important thing.  There are always more men watching than participating in gendered violence.  If those watchers become challengers, gendered violence becomes far more difficult to perpetrate.  "What happens on the field stays on the field" is offensive primarily for the fear it engenders in men challenging other men.

That's why David Pocock should be applauded this week.  He's showing all men that calling out other men's bad behaviour is possible, even in the most sanctified of masculinity shrines, the sports field.  Imagine if other man always did that every time another man made a rape joke; sexually harassed bar staff; groped someone at a gig; put their partner down; threatened or acted out violence towards others for being queer or Black or feminine?  We'd have an end to rape culture before we knew it. 

Labour leadership: Too many irrelevant judgements

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

2.  To take the awful ones in order:

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

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

4.  Why not Minnie Mouse? ;-)

Guestie: We are all human beings that live on the exact same planet

This guest post has been submitted and written by an Auckland high school student, chelsea_makita.  She wrote it for a short essay for school and was encouraged to seek a wider audience for it by her teacher.

Why is it that people who are gay get treated differently? Well I think this is simply because of the fact that people don't understand how much they may be in love with a person. Whether it is someone with the same gender as yourself or different, everyone should be treated fairly and equally. From my point of view,  there is no difference. We are all human beings that live on the exact same planet. I think that people who are glad to be different are the ones that make our world, a proud and beautiful place to be.

Many people don't understand why some people are gay. They’re happy being who they are. They find it hilarious when two people with the same gender walk past holding hands. Do they really find it funny? or is it that they’re just trying to put people down? To be honest, it’s none of their business what is going on through other people’s lives.

This subject is a bit like racism, except it’s not based on coloured skin. People who have dark skin or light skin were born that way. It was god’s gift for them. Yes, they may not look the same, but who cares? The main thing is that they’re happy for who they are and where they come from. I don't think it’s fair that human beings who are different are treated the way they are.

Just imagine, if you were in their shoes, how would you feel getting called names? Don't forget that they have feelings too. Recently, one of my friend’s cousins committed suicide because she was getting bullied for going out with a person who walked like a girl, talked like a girl and even looked like one. I think if you're proud of your relationship and the person you are with, then there’s no reason to be ashamed of who you are.

We human beings are all the same. We choose who we want to be. Just because some people make choices that you may think is weird, that doesn't give you the right to act like a total bully towards them. Finally, I am proud to say that I stand up for people who are gay.

Sour grapes from Family First

On the day that many people are celebrating the first marriages able to be made between same sex partners in Aotearoa New Zealand, Family First have got their grump on.

They've sent out a really odious email, which I'm going to share after the jump because you probably don't really want that kind of hateful lying in your day, but just in case you do,you'll wan to click on the Read More, when you get there.

Instead of celebrating that more people are now able to enter the institution they claim they value highly, they are making sour aspersions that incest, polygamy and self-marriage (why would it be terrible to love yourself?) are coming, when today's change of forms to inclusive language does nothing of the kind.

If we cannot recognise the changing nature of marriage, and that it is not an institution carved instone on the back of the Ten Commandments, then Family First should also be advocating a return to bans on marriages between different racial groups, different religions,  and the need for the consent of any female parties.

Alright - make with the clicky if you have the resources to be disgusted, otherwise here's a picture of a puppy with a Hello Kitty and a cupcake:

Rugby without the side order of queer-bashing, thanks

Hannah Spyksma cannot expect to go to a rugby game without homophobic abuse, because Eden Park and New Zealand rugby don't want to be the "PC Police."

Quite right too, how on earth could they be expected to challenge men calling players not behaving in manly enough ways for them "homos and faggots"?  What is this, communist fairy land?

We haven't done that anywhere else, after all.  People can be told to stop "acting gay" at work and that's fine, right?  Or be criticised for having "man hands"?

It's not ok for politicians to say or do homophobic things either. 

Let's face it, this list could go on and on.  The point is homophobia, biphobia and transphobia are everywhere, and challenging them is a part of many queer* people's lives, as well as cis-gendered and straight people with integrity and confidence in standing up against oppressions they do not experience first-hand.  And rugby is far from alone in being a safe place for queer* hating.

But my second point is this: being able to go to flagship social events - and in Aotearoa New Zealand, an All Blacks game is a flagship social event - and not be surrounded by abuse should be a right.  We shouldn't have to listen to racist or sexist or gender policing or homophobic or biphobic or transphobic or ableist abuse.  We should be able to expect to enjoy a flagship social event safely.  We should be able to cuddle our same-sex partner or sit in our wheelchair or korero Māori or wear a short skirt or play with our gender presentation or not fit rigid gender norms.......

Without that being terrifying.  Without being scared of being verbally abused.  Without being threatened by people around us. 

So come on sports venues and sports bodies.  Welcome the bravery of Hannah Spyskma.  We shouldn't accept homophobia - or any other kind of oppression, discrimination and hate speech - in our sports grounds or anywhere else.  Other multi-million dollar professional men's sports have taken a stance on homophobia - why not the All Blacks?

Killing us softly, so softly

Suicide.  Frightening, complex, social phenomena which merits sound, evidence based, community responses.

So when this Government announces they have a new plan, it should be great news.  The Plan aims to:

• address the impact of suicide on families, whānau and communities by strengthening support for family, whānau and communities
• build the evidence base, specifically around what works for Māori and Pasifika
• extend existing services, specifically addressing geographical gaps in the coverage of services
• strengthen suicide prevention targeted to high risk populations who are in contact with agencies.

The problem is, every single one of those aims is applicable to the queer* community, and we are not mentioned once.

We are not mentioned once, even though just last year as part of the last suicide prevention plan, the Ministry of Health released a needs assessment of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex people, to provide the Ministry with "information to develop an appropriate policy and funding framework" for mental health promotion. 


Queer* people are much more prone to mental health struggles, much more likely to self-harm, and much more likely to try to or actually kill ourselves.  The reasons are simple - homophobia, biphobia and transphobia teach us to hate ourselves, and the world around us tells us how we live and love is not ok.  Or, as the policy wonks put it:

"It is readily acknowledged in the literature that the mental health of GLBT people is impacted by repeated exposure to a wide range of psychosocial stressors associated with anti-GLBT attitudes and behaviours, which include stigmatisation, discrimination and violence."

Yet we are not mentioned once in the brand spanking new Suicide Prevention Plan.

Young people are mentioned - but not same or both-sex attracted young people, half of whom self-harm, and a fifth of whom will try to kill themselves. 

Māori and Pasifika are mentioned - but not takataapui or fa'afafine.

Addressing gaps is mentioned - but not the lack of queer* support groups, queer* specific mental health services, or training for generic mental health services in the needs of queer* people.  Not the lack of research into the needs of trans* folk, even though international research points to terrifyingly high rates of suicidality which surely merit trans* specific responses.

This silencing, this invisibilisation will literally kill us.  This tangible example of heterosexism and cisgender normativity will literally kill us.  I'm not sure what more there is to say. 

What's the funniest thing about marriage equality?

So you fancy yourself a bit of a comedian, with your finger dead on the pulse of the zeitgeist.  Marriage equality feels like a rich vein to mine.  You could go for gay crime sprees or legalising incest or big gay rainbows or marrying pets.  There's rich pickings, let's be honest.

Not Colin Craig, obviously, nothing funny to see here, move it along. 

Where do you go?  Back to your roots.

The narrow-minded hate mongering continues.  Boring, unimaginative, vicious.  Someday Tui, your billboards are going to feature in a museum of ridiculous memorabilia of past bigotries.  People will wonder "how on earth did these keep getting made?"  "What were beer drinkers thinking?"

I had a relationship, a long time ago, with a woman with two children.  This is the song those kids played whenever they wanted a way to jump up and down against the homophobia they wrestled with from people around them.  It's the anti-Tui.

Going to the chapel to educate the congregation

So now we’re beyond Marriage Equality, what next?  The indicators of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia are still all around us.  Who gets bullied at school?  Who disproportionately wrestles with mental health issues, depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide?  Who has hate graffiti on their walls?  Who is targeted for violence on the streets, in their workplaces, from their families?  Who is not able to look at any media, anytime, and see someone who looks a bit like them, wrestling with some of the things they think about?

One of the very difficult issues for queer and trans* people to navigate is connection with others.  What happens when you transition?  Can you keep relationships with people who have known you as one gender?  Will those people treat you with respect?  Will you be safe?  Or do you have to build a completely different social and support network from scratch?

For same and both-sex attracted people, the disconnect from our families can be just as severe.  I’ve supported young people whose families have kicked them out when they learned who their sons or daughters loved.  I’ve talked one parent down from trying to have their daughter institutionalized as mentally unwell – simply because she was lesbian.

But it’s not just young people.  I’ve been out for 24 years.  When I first came out, the homophobia and biphobia of my parents was so vicious I refused to see them for a year.  They told me they could never respect me again, that my sexuality was unnatural and a symptom of being parented poorly.  They tried, at length, to work out if it was my depressed mother’s lack of interest or my father’s fondness for playing cricket with me that was the problem.  They wanted me to be lesbian, because that would be easier for them.

No one in my family would even think of saying such things now.  Yet several years ago, when an aunt was visiting London, my sister could tell me not to make such a big deal about whether or not to come out to her.

“I’m not going to talk about my sexuality,” she said, straightly.  My sister was single.  I’d been with my lover for ten years.  We owned a house together, parented her children together.  To not come out meant not being able to talk about my life with any honesty.  To come out meant the risk of my aunt’s reaction framing the entire night.  We were faced with quite different dilemmas. 

 

Now, when I have a female partner there is no hostility, but no one in my family can bring themselves to ask me anything about her.  When a relationship ends, there is literally nothing to say, because my family have no idea how much she has meant to me, what we may have shared.  These things had shifted markedly with my mother before she died; in her absence, there is a gaping hole where some of the sustaining relationships in my life are ignored and minimised by my family.

I share stories of how my family treats me with other queer people.  Telling them in public, or to straight friends, feels shaming in a way it’s difficult to name.  I’m an out and proud bisexual woman.  How can there still be such bruising homophobia and biphobia in my life?  

That’s the beyond marriage equality I’m interested in talking about.  Moving now into educating our communities.  Gathering information – like say, by using the census – about the kinds of experiences queer and trans* people have based on our sexuality and gender identity.  Gathering information about victimisation – like say, by recording sexuality and gender diversity – in crime stats about street violence.  Expanding the Human Rights Act to protect trans* folk from cis-gender based discrimination.

A good starting point would be a national queer and trans* resource centre, funded to identify exactly what beyond marriage equality might mean.  Able to develop queer and trans* specific materials for schools and our national curriculum.  Able to work with the Human Rights Commission to ensure experiences of queer and trans* discrimination are named, understood, responded to appropriately.  Able to intervene in social institutions which are responding to queer and trans* people – New Zealand Police, mental health systems, healthcare more broadly – and ensure processes are transparent and well-equipped.  Able to develop completely new resources – emergency housing for young queer and trans* people who need somewhere safe to stay; social work and prevention resources around suicide and self-harm, intimate partner and sexual violence which are specific to the queer community.

The kinds of difference Marriage Equality will make to queer and trans* peoples lives are important.  This was a social change moment – and make no mistake, we won it.  The people arguing against equality looked like bigoted hate-mongers.  But we still had to listen to their vitriol, had to protect ourselves from its impact on our sense of self in a world where those things sadly do not just sound ridiculous - which is how they should sound.

It’s time to celebrate – and to work out what else we need to dismantle homophobia, biphobia and transphobia for good. 

Garth McVicar and heterosexual camouflage

Funny story.  I once camped on Garth McVicar's land after a friendly chat with him.

I'd just cycled through Te Urewera, in snow, and was feeling pretty damn intrepid.  I'd then cycled to Taupo via some beautiful backroads, and was making my way down to Napier to head home.  About two thirds of the way to Napier I was hunting for somewhere to sleep and biked down a gravel road which promised a campground at the end.  An hour later, no campsite, I was standing at the edge of the road, looking down at a beautiful river framed by stony ravine, eating handfuls of chocolate raisins.  A bloke on a tractor drove up.

Giddays exchanged, I asked him if it would be alright to just camp by the river.  Of course he said, and pointed me upriver a bit, to a better spot. 

A day later, I caught the bus back to Wellington, driven by the same man who I'd taken me up ten days earlier.  He had swapped his shift because he wanted to hear if I'd actually done the trip I'd planned, so we spent several hours talking about land and weather, places he'd fished and I'd cycled through.

I told him the story of the friendly tractor driver, and where it was. 

"Oh, that will have been Garth McVicar.  That's his land, down that road."

When I got home I did a google image search.  Turned out my friendly tractor driver was Mr Hang 'Em himself.  I felt like I'd got away with something, a radical bisexual lefty anti-racist feminist.  I was pretty sure I wasn't Mr McVicar's idea of a pleasant social companion.

And just today, turns out how right I was, because if I get married to a woman lover, Mr McVicar is worried it will lead to crime.

Garth, Garth, Garth.  Such a shame I didn't realise in time.  We could have had such a chat by my portable gas cooker about what really causes domestic violence and child abuse.  I am kinda surprised you didn't immediately recognise my crime-causing potential.  Maybe the dust and grime acted like heterosexual camouflage. 

Defend Family Planning

Back when Christchurch anti-choice activist Andy Moore was still around (he’s gone and left us, and moved to Texas), he and a few others set up a campaign called Stop Family Planning (FP) – a campaign that looked a lot like the one in the U.S. against Planned Parenthood.

The campaign here was prompted by FP’s proposal, which began in 2009, to provide early medication abortion at its Hamilton clinic – which was to be a sort of a test clinic for possibly offering this option elsewhere. FP waited two long years for a decision from the Abortion Supervisory Committee, while the anti-choicers got busy whipping up a frenzy. Eventually, in 2011, FP withdrew the application, and last time I checked, women from the Waikato who wanted an early medication rather than a surgical abortion had to travel to Auckland for it. You can thank, in part, our backward laws for that – and for the fact that we’re way behind comparable nations in providing this early abortion option. But not helping the situation of course were the sterling efforts by Right to Life and Voice for Life and ProLife NZ and all those charities like Family First and Family Life International, who are only doing this because they care so much about the health and well-being of (certain) women.

Things had died down on the Stop Family Planning front since then. So much, in fact, that when I looked this past week, their old Web site (www.stopfamilyplanning.org.nz) was gone and the domain name was available. (If you feel brave, you can still look at the site using the Web archive/Wayback Machine.)

Family Planning has always been vulnerable to attack from conservatives, and the attacks always come. So I suppose it’s not surprising that the new year has brought a fresh round of invective being directed at FP, this time from Ken Orr of Right to Life. (The others will no doubt pile on at some point.) RTL just ended a 7-year-court case which it mostly lost aimed at ending abortion in New Zealand, so I suppose they have some time on their hands.

The latest attacks, which so far include a complaint to the Charities Commission about FP’s (and Women’s Health Action’s) charitable status (here’s Red Queen on that), a letter to the Minister of Health demanding FP be defunded (yes, following the U.S. ‘Defund Planned Parenthood’ playbook to the letter), and, on Saturday, one of the most – I don’t think I have the words – vile screeds I’ve had the misfortune to read in a long time. (I’m not linking to all this for various reasons, including its offensive nature, but if you want, you can hop over to the site. Just search “Right to Life New Zealand”. Don’t say you weren’t warned…)

That latest effort is titled, wait for it, “Family Planning Declares War on Women”.

Aside from the usual attacks on abortion and the “culture of death” etc. etc., this piece contains a lot of stuff that, as one person has already suggested, is quite likely defamatory and is most definitely highly offensive and insulting to, well, pretty much everyone. Everyone who isn’t in a heterosexual marriage and only having sex for procreative purposes, which means most straight men and women, and definitely all lesbians, gays, transgender people, questioning, queer… (trigger warning for misogyny, homophobia, transphobia over the jump)

Consent at the Ivy Bar

Rape culture is all around us, right?  Excuses for sexual behaviour in which one person's desires are constructed as all important and the point of view from which an encounter is judged, and the other person's ability to name what happened as unacceptable are undermined.

Setting rape up as something people "deserve" when they behave badly.  Blaming, women in particular, the person who is raped because they drank something/wore something/said something/did something that made it inevitable that someone else would choose to force them to do sexual things they didn't want.

Making fun of consent as something that is "for pussies".

The Facebook page of Wellington's under reconstruction "gay" venue, the Ivy Bar, offered up taking photos of "tradies" to their Facebook fans.  When one fan suggested that if they were going to take photos of "tradies" and put them online they needed to have said "tradies" consent, another made the comment above - not only unchallenged by Ivy as hosts, but liked by them.

Consent is certainly for women.  And for men.  And for transpeople.  And for intersex people.  And for those for whom those categories do not feel quite right.

Making fun of consent anywhere is concerning, and it happens far too often.  Making fun of consent in a venue seeking queer custom, part of the queer community, shows a devastating lack of attention to one of the saddest outcomes of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia - sexual violence.

Queer people experience sexual violence because we are queer, as hate crime.  And we experience sexual violence, just like straight people, within relationships and hook-ups, because some of us choose to over-ride consent.  The reasons for this are complex - to do with gender rules which say that men always want sex, so how can they say no?  Gender rules which tell women that asking for the sex we want makes us sluts.  Rigid gender policing which constructs some kinds of bodies as deviant and wrong, invoking shame and lack of entitlement around being treated with respect and care.  Homophobia, biphobia and transphobia teaching us that there is something wrong with how we desire.

Trans* people experience higher rates of sexual violence than anyone else, at 50%.  Indications are that other queer people also have high rates of unwanted, coerced and forced sex - sexual violence.  For non-heterosexual secondary school students in New Zealand, one in three have been touched in a sexual way, or made to do sexual things they do not want to do - again, higher than rates for heterosexual students.

So Ivy Bar - epic fail.  Treating consent as optional in a queer space dismisses many of your patrons' experiences.  Describing consent as "for pussies" has the delightful added bonus of denigrating women's bodies to support your very own brand of rape culture.

It's hard enough to name queer experiences of sexual violence, and that work, world-wide, is only just beginning.  We could do with insiders in the queer community not shutting it down.  I'll be avoiding Ivy, when they re-open, until they can do better.  Feel free to let them know what you think.

UPDATE (the next day):  Comment about consent being "for pussies" has been deleted and Ivy Bar have this to say on their Facebook page:

We have deleted ****s comment. *****s comment I believe was regarding consent for a photo to be taken. Regardless, I can see how his comment can be mis- interpreted the wrong way and we have removed his comment. We certainly do NOT endorse rape of violence against anyone. Thanks for your comments. We will certainly look closer at future comments from here. Regards Greig Wilson

Queering Twitter

So language, I'm all down with reclaiming you, in that incredibly hip, post-modern type way, a lot of the time.  Only for words that describe me or a group I belong to - so queer say, rather than nigger - but often reclaiming and reimbuing langugage with new meanings is part of significant challenges to existing power relations in my opinion.

So when someone sent me this real time counting of the times "faggot", "so gay", "dyke" and "no homo" crop up on Twitter, I was kinda hoping that for faggot and dyke at least, some of the thousands of tweets would be affirming banter between queer people.  "Dykey" is often a compliment in my circle of queer friends at least, and I know "fag" is similarly used by queer men at times.

Nope, back to modernist reality.  These tweets are about all that's wrong with the world in terms of homophobia.  Depressing - and do something queer positive after you check it out - to remember we can and are changing this world every time we challenge homophobia, biphobia and transphobia.  Including counting how many times it appears.

That awkward moment when someone asks me to sign the Family First Protect Marriage petition

I spied her clipboard from across the room, as she drew it slowly from her bag.   Noting the image across the top of the petition sheet, my heart sank.  It was the Family First Protect Marriage petition and it had no good purpose being anywhere near me.

"You'll sign this won't you?  To protect marriage!"

"Ah no, I've already signed the other one, the opposite one, in fact."

Shocked look.

"But, but, but, you're MARRIED!"

"Yes, and I think any two people who love each other should be able to marry.  Let's make it open to more people, and share the love."

"Oh."

We both found something else important to do elsewhere.

---

Opposite sex marriage is simply not under attack.  It doesn't need to be protected from same sex marriage at all.  Marriage is about a commitment between people* which has meaning for them.  What I might think about their marriage is irrelevant.  What happens in my marriage doesn't impact on anyone else's marriage, or civil union, in any way.  What does Family First think they are protecting marriage from?

Tonight a friend of mine, who happens to be gay, mentioned to me how he appreciated my support because this doesn't affect me.  In a way it is easier for me to be out there about my views, precisely because it is not about me;  there is no criticism of the way I live my life, of the person I am, in all the many awful arguments against marriage equality that I have seen.  I really feel for those out there who are on the frontlines of this in a way I am not; many of whom will not want to be even having a battle, and shouldn't have to be, to justify who they are.

There are many many people who support marriage equality, for reasons of justice and fairness, and just down right treating everyone as a full human being.  We should be making the world better than it was when we arrived, for those who come after, and marriage equality is one little way to help.

---

For those interested in the debate and vote on the first reading, estimates so far is that it is likely to occur at around 8pm Wednesday night.  There is a celebration rally going from Civic Square to Parliament tomorrow also, from 12noon.   There is a great deal of activity on Facebook in support of Louisa Wall's Bill too, not least longstanding group LegaliseLove, the adorable Can these otters holding hands get more fans than Protect Marriage NZ? (the answer is YES THEY CAN), and a range of pages showing that support is definitely not restricted to Pakeha queer atheists, but is rather more widespread than that: Tagata Pasifika for Marriage Equality, Christians for Marriage Equality Aotearoa NZ  and Straights for Marriage Equality in Aotearoa NZ (SMEANZ).

Currently the Bill looks likely to pass its first reading tomorrow night.  The process from there is that it goes to Select Committee for public submissions.  After that it gets a second and then a third and final reading in Parliament.  After the third reading it is officially law.



*  I'm pretty open-minded on the issue of polyamorous marriage.  I think it has had a bad reputation because it has most commonly been seen in societies where women do not have high status and has thus been a tool for oppressing women, but it doesn't have to be that way imho.  This is not really a post about that though.


Comment direction:  No hate in the comments thanks, plenty of other places on the interweb for that, sadly.  There have been a lot of amazing posts about this issue over the last few weeks, not least from my co-bloggers, so you may wish to share the ones that particularly appealed to you in comments :-)

Marrying for social change

Homosexual law reform in the mid 1980s was hugely formative for me.  In my mid-early teens, it was the first time I realised I wasn't always going to agree with my brilliant father.

I was convinced consensual sexual activity between men should not be criminal.  Dad broadly agreed, but, like households all over Aotearoa, debate raged.  He "didn't know any gay men" and "didn't want to see New Zealand go too far."

I was yet to think about my (hetero)sexuality, or have any attractions to women that I called sexual.  But my out gay chemistry teacher was repeatedly verbally abused for "taking it up the arse" by some of my classmates, and his classroom defaced with spray-painted graffiti hate.

The pinnacle of the arguments between my father and I involved my asking him how he would feel if a male couple moved in next door, and we could see them kissing one another good-bye in the morning, in the same way my parents kissed each other good-bye, every morning.

Dad said that wouldn't be ok with him.  When I told him he was homophobic, he laughed and said "no, I'm not.  We wouldn't move."  My relationship with him changed, because I thought he was wrong and I found his views truly offensive.  Much as I continued (and continue) to love him.

The debate Aotearoa is about to have about Marriage Equality (and yes, that phrase is deliberate - everytime it gets called "gay marriage" we leave out trans people, lesbians and bisexual people) is going to be heated, make no mistake.

Queer people will have to listen to homophobes telling us there is something wrong with loving someone of the same gender, that "homosexual relationships" are not normal.  This will be painful and horrifying and dangerous for queer people in ways it will be difficult to describe to our straight friends.

I don't want to get married.  I don't want the state to have anything to do with who I share my bed with, or my life with.  I don't believe monogamous long-term relationships are "better" than other ways of loving.  For me, a relationship's worth comes from how the people involved treat one another, the room there is to grow and explore together and independently, the joy that comes from connection.

But I know that this Bill will make a difference for queer people in Aotearoa.  Just as Homosexual Law Reform did in 1986, the Human Rights Act in 1993, the Civil Union Bill in 2004.  We would not even be able to have this discussion, in 2012, about marriage equality without the activism that set the context for those earlier legislative changes.  Every time we have these debates and voices for increased equality win, the world becomes a little safer for queer people. 

But the debate itself won't be safe for us, which scares me.  Not for myself - I have a privileged - which should be an ordinary - existence as an out queer cis woman.  I have control over where I live, and who I live with.  My employers know my sexuality, so does my family and everywhere I volunteer and participate in activist work, and I am surrounded by beautiful, loving friends with all kinds of identities.

For that gay kid coming out in Te Awamutu, this debate will be terrifying.  For that closeted bisexual public servant, this debate will be painful.  For that lesbian who wants to leave the church and her husband with her children, this debate will be life-threatening.  For all of us who don't look like the gender norms we're supposed to, this debate will be dangerous.

Social change comes at a cost.  Activism isn't always easy, or safe.  Let's look after each other while conservative New Zealand tries to argue we're not the same as everyone else.  And let's remember this is just one step to respect, justice and equality - not the step.  We have more work to do yet.

Family First and Lily Allen

When Family First made it clear Rainbow Youth was in it's sights, it took precisely seven days for a story to appear in mainstream media about a parent not liking Rainbow Youth.  If that wasn't enough to make you wonder, how about the fact that the story appeared on Stuff, rather than the Herald?  Rainbow Youth deliver services in schools in Auckland, not the lower North Island which is Stuff's domain. This reporter didn't find the story in her local beat, someone fed it to her.

Let's deconstruct.  After a brief introduction about a father being concerned his son is being exposed to material he doesn't like, we get:

The teenage boy said two of the presenters introduced themselves to the class as lesbians, one who was attracted to transsexual girls, while the third said he had been a woman attracted to women but became a man "with a vagina".
The teenager said the first lesson was "OK" and the message was that there were multiple gender identities. But he felt the second lesson was "quite weird". It looked at homophobia and how society treated people labelled as "other".

It's fortunate we have the last sentence.  Because let's try this another way:

The student said two presenters introduced themselves as heterosexuals, one who was attracted to girls, while the other said he was a man "with a penis".

None of the Stuff paragraph works unless we're quite excited about lesbians and trans men, and really not sure if they should be in our classrooms.

But of course, both queer and trans identified people are already in our classrooms.  Studying, teaching and stuff.  There's other queer and trans identified people on television, making music, writing blogs, playing sport, having huge followings on social media, in our families.  Because we are everywhere.

And talking about people's genitals?  So brave for the Rainbow Youth presenter to put himself out there to help kids who are not sure why their body doesn't fit their sense of self realise there are a whole heap of gender fluid options available - but since when is talking about people's genitals in a newspaper article "in quotation marks" anything less than "othering"?

Then Stuff say:

"I think they were trying to say that being gay is all good but to me and quite a few of the people in my class, it came across like they were saying 'it's great and you guys should follow on with it'."
His father assumed, "rightly or wrongly", that sex education would be more generic and mainstream not "the weird and wonderful of the world's sexuality".
"I don't think that is the right thing to be exposing 14 and 15-year-old kids to."

Lesbians, gay men, bisexual people, transpeople and intersex people are not "weird and wonderful".  We are just people.  Rainbow Youth are helping queer and trans teenagers be safer and less likely to hate themselves by modelling our existence.  Rainbow Youth are helping heterosexual cis-gendered young people learn the world isn't as simple as homophobic and gender policing people would have you believe - and when that's your parents, the learning might take a little longer.

The father who's worried about "exposure" to queer narratives needs to get out more.  But the dog-whistling here is all about the fragility of heterosexuality and traditional gender norms.  What happens if our kids start wanting to change genders, or kiss genders other than the ones we want them to?  Is Rainbow Youth teaching our kids to be queer?

This is hatred, endorsed by a sleeping media.  Why is Stuff printing these views without investigating where they come from?  Why are they printing these views without pointing out what we know about queer youth experience - that it's hard being queer?

Family First have nothing to do with my beautiful queer and logical family, or my beautiful straight and biological family - and I wish they would stay the hell away from young New Zealanders learning how to make our world a more humane, caring and joyful place.

I'm not into dog whistling, I'm a little more, well, out there, so Family First this is for you:

It's time

Well actually, it's past time.  But now is still good.

If you want to vote on this poll, (screenshot above taken at 11am) it's at this Stuff article.

Phillip Cottrell and the stories we tell

New Zealand, like anywhere else, has its grand narratives, the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what coming from this place means.

These stories do not belong to everyone equally, because like all stories they are written from particular points of view, but they have power to both create and obscure social relationships in Aotearoa.

So there's lots of historical evidence colonisers coming to New Zealand post 1840 wanted to create a "better Britain" in which the rigid and vicious class hierarchy of England was absent, Pakeha and Maori would have the "best race relations in the world" and in the words of politician William Pember Reeves, women were able to vote for the first time in the world because “they simply asked for the vote, and we simply gave it to them.”

All of these stories are contested. Because simply believing you are more egalitarian, less racist and more valuing of equality for women does make these things true. In fact, it can make it even harder, for those of us living within the story of an equal society, to recognise discrimination.

This troubles me in the case of Phillip Cottrell, a man viciously attacked in the street in Wellington, who died in hospital this week. The Police don't know why he was attacked, who he was attacked by, or which weapon was used to kill him. In fact, the Police did not even realise he was gay until asked in a press conference if sexuality could be a factor.

Yet Detective Senior Sergeant Scott Miller can say, in a press statement doing the rounds of the queer community:

"We do not believe Mr Cottrell's sexual orientation was a factor in his death. Any member of the glbti community who has serious safety concerns or has any relevant information in relation to this investigation, should contact Wellington Police on (04) 381 2000 or phone Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111."

Was Phillip Cottrell attacked on a Wellington street because he was queer? I don't know, but it wouldn't be the first time in the city I love that a beautiful queer man was hurt, simply for looking like he loved men. When I talk with young people about sexual violence, queer men in Wellington report repeated experiences of being attacked in the street because they break masculinity rules.

The Police should not be ruling out hate crime yet. They should not be ruling out hate crime until they catch who killed Phillip Cottrell, and find out why. Telling us sexual orientation was not a motivator does not "allay the fears" of the queer community - it tells us the Police have decided to ignore sexuality before they know what happened - and, as importantly, it does nothing to honour the memory of Phillip Cottrell.

Come out, come out, wherever you are

This was going to be a post about assumptions about sexuality, based on my last couple of days. But then one of my beautiful lesbian friends sent me the always brilliant Richard Boock's rage about homophobia. Richard is sharing his grief and pain about the loss of a friend he clearly loved:

Another closet gay who, condemned to living a lie, eventually found himself in such a desperate and lonely place that he thought suicide the only viable escape. Unable to face the stigma we apply to homosexuality, convinced he was a hypocrite, he died a terrified man.

It's an awful, awful story. As is the list he gives, of people hurt or killed in Aotearoa recently because they were queer. It's a partial list - let's not forget the reason queer people marched earlier this year in Wellington - because there had been several violent attacks on us as we walked the streets.

Coming out is frequently terrifying. And I'm out, everywhere in my life, all the time. At work, at sports, where I live, in my extended family, with medical professionals, with old schoolmates. I blog about being queer, have appeared in a television documentary about being queer, written in queer anthologies, been profiled in articles. Hell, today I came out in the bank, when the woman talking me through my new account assumed I had been married. (Strange, strange day.) "Actually, my ex-partner's a woman."

Sometimes when I come out, people apologise for the assumptions they've made. Politely, just because they've got it wrong, like a work acquaintance yesterday who assumed I was lesbian. Sometimes when people apologise because they have assumed I'm lesbian they say they are sorry for "insulting" me. I usually try to confront this piece of bi-privilege - straight people thinking it's better to be bisexual than lesbian - head on and say "how could it be an insult to be a woman-loving-woman? Lesbian is just not accurate for me." Sometimes this is enough to call out the homophobia, and people apologise again. Sometimes they still don't get it.

Bisexual people have to come out even more often than lesbians and gay men. I have to come out when I'm in a relationship with a woman. Not because I want to be sexual with men at that time - though I have no judgment for bisexual people who negotiate consensual relationships which allow them to explore both-sex attraction all the time - but because I believe being out changes our world for the better. I believe every time we come out, we change a world a little, make a bit more space, create a little more acceptance.

Being in the closet is soul destroying. It makes us lie about who we are, who we love. It makes us feel ashamed of the connections to the people we adore. The occasions when I've wanted to run back into the closet because I've been frightened, mostly I've been talked down by lovers, women who've made sure I felt safe and loved, despite whatever has just happened.

I know many people living closeted lives now. And I know lots of bisexual woman, who pretend they are lesbian so the queer community will accept them, or heterosexual, so they can avoid homophobic violence and abuse. It's tragic and sad and ultimately terribly, terribly lonely.

I agree with Richard Boock, coming out isn't easy. It's a choice, every time you do it. A choice to sit with who you really are, to claim who you really are, to be who you really are, for the world to see. The more the world does see, the safer place it becomes for all of us to live and love.

Odd Future, Stuff and Freedom of Speech

I know, I know, criticising Stuff polls goes very well with the words 'fish' and 'barrel', but something's got to ease me back into blogging after my mostly study induced hiatus.

Background: hip hop (or possibly rap according to another source; I'm too musically clueless to attempt to settle this) group Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All was booked to perform at the Auckland Big Day Out. A Wellington man wrote a letter objecting to the homophobia and misogyny of their lyrics which resulted in their invitation being rescinded.

Which brings us on to Stuff. Stuff has a poll on the issue which gives three options:

• Yes, their lyrics are homophobic and misogynistic
• No, I love the band
• No, I don't really like the band but I'm for Freedom of Speech

Which, seriously. It is entirely possible to object to the band playing at BDO, believe their lyrics are homophobic and misogynistic and still believe in the helpfully capitalised concept of 'Freedom of Speech'. No Platform is not a new concept (that link goes to a specific example of an anti racist policy, but it's the best general explanation I've can find easily). It's not new to state that limiting someone's freedom of speech is not uninviting them to perform at a music festival, but imprisoning people or executing them. But I think sometimes we miss just how much how giving a platform to some people limits the ability of others to speak.


Comment direction: I won't accept queerphobia  in the comments, but feel free to discuss this issue generally from a feminist/queer rights perspective. There have been a few interesting points made, including a possible racial dimension, whether the banning will actually cause more problems for the queer community and the subtleties of the musical genre (of which I admit to being rather ignorant).