update on merida makeover

just a quick post to say that activism does work sometimes.  after a successful petition and significant backlash against the proposed makeover of merida (covered in my previous post), disney has decided to pull the sexualised image:

In preparation for her "coronation ceremony" last Saturday, Disney gave the Brave heroine Merida a makeover, redesigning the character as thinner with a bigger bust, more revealing dress, a face full of makeup, less wild hair, and replacing her signature bow and arrows with a sassy sash. People were pissed and turned to the internet to voice their protests—which seems to have worked.

As a response to the public outcry, Disney has quietly pulled the redesigned Merida from its Princesses website and replaced it with the original Pixar version. It seems like petitions actually are useful sometimes!

in a world where we're constantly made to feel that our voice doesn't matter & there is no point in trying to change things, even small wins are meaningful.  anything that can counteract our collective feelings of helplessness can only be good.

disney: being brave is not enough anymore

i first learned about what disney was doing to merida, the main character from "brave", from this post.  i really recommend you go over there to see the pictures & the explanations of why it's so wrong.

i had mixed feelings about the movie itself, which i wrote about at the time.  as i said then, it's not the best film ever, but there were still plenty of positives and i thought it was a huge improvement on many of disney's previous efforts.  now, if only they could keep all those positive characteristics, and have the main character not be a princess. although, mulan was apparently not a princess, so maybe they get a couple of points for that one.

but regardless of what you think of the film, it's not like merida was significantly different to the shape of other disney female characters - she's still pretty slim, lots of hair, big round eyes (ok, again with the exception of mulan).  but her traditional image is less sexualised & more of an action figure.

so why the need to make her skinnier still, with the head tilt, the arched eyebrows & the loss of her bow & arrows?  why change something that was working?

there's now a petition against the change, which you can find here:

The redesign of Merida in advance of her official induction to the Disney Princess collection does a tremendous disservice to the millions of children for whom Merida is an empowering role model who speaks to girls' capacity to be change agents in the world rather than just trophies to be admired. Moreover, by making her skinnier, sexier and more mature in appearance, you are sending a message to girls that the original, realistic, teenage-appearing version of Merida is inferior; that for girls and women to have value -- to be recognized as true princesses -- they must conform to a narrow definition of beauty.

as with the changes that were proposed for dora, it's important to fight back against the constant pressure created by images presented to us of female characters.  we all deserve better.

One film to rule them all

I have no good feminist reasons to love Middle Earth, and plenty to find it problematic.  Tolkien was clearly uninterested in women - Lord of the Rings features powerful women primarily as supplementary love interests to powerful men (Arwen and Eowyn) or as much less important to the storyline than corresponding male characters (Galadriel - cf say, Elrond).

But long before New Zealand was packaged up as the perfect scenic holiday, I was in love with LOTR.  I read both the Hobbit and LOTR for the first time when I was eight, my parents desperate to give me something that would take me longer than Encyclopedia Brown, Nancy Drew and the Famous Five.

Then, what thrilled me were the different creatures, the imagined world of good vs evil, the adventures and bravery and friendships and loyalty.  My favourite character was - and still is - Aragorn, the self-doubting hero who tests himself over and over again.  But I loved the magic of the wizards, the wry humour of Gandalf, the idea of living in trees and travelling over different lands.  I loved the bravery of the hobbits and the sheer genius of the only creature who ever gives up the one ring that rules them all being a short dude with furry feet who likes singing with the Aryans elves.

The problems - apart from no women - were pretty lost on me at eight but have been part of my experience everytime I've read it since.  The obvious racism of the elves (white and fair and pure and true) and the orcs (dark and ugly and nasty and abusive).  The racial essentialism of all the different "races" - undermined slightly by the big man-love between Gimli the Dwarf and Legolas the Elf, but let's face it, that's just so we can reinforce how natural it is usually for different "races" to hate and distrust one another.  The pre-version of the American Superhero narrative - really, we're supposed to believe huge life events like battles between thousands of people hinge on Aragorn and his big sword?

Yet love the Hobbit and LOTR I do, passionately.  I know lots of the dialogue by heart, and had to be politely asked to stop my critique when watching the films, disturbed by what a significant narrative arc loss it was to leave out Tom Bombadil (there were other digressions equally disturbing, for reader interest I'll stop there.)  Alongside the explicit critique Tolkien is making of industrialisation, for me the fascination sits with the wrestling with issues of power.

Which is where I'll try and make a slightly feminist argument.  If there was really one ring to rule them all, liberal feminists would want that ring for themselves, rather than having that horrid patriarch Sauron in charge.  Because women would do absolute power differently, right?

Actually, the solution in LOTR is more anarchist, at least briefly.  Absolute power has to go, and the joys of watching powerful characters (Gandalf, Galadriel, Aragorn) repeatedly choose not to take up this power, knowing it corrupts, is one of my fave ideas to explore.

Of course, Tolkien went a bit established power structures on us then - long before New Zealand's own Sauron Peter Jackson smashed worker power in his quest for the one film to make him rich.

Absolute power went, but all the different races are still led by their king-dudes, and only brave men and true (Pippin, Merry, Sam and Frodo) can free the oppressed.  Power is still operating in traditional, anti-collective or community sharing ways.  And the races are still essentially different, even if Gimli and Legolas have taken up Marriage Equality long before New Zealand parliament.

I can't get excited about seeing the Hobbit, despite my love of all things Middle Earth.  Wellington is covered in merchandise, I can't get the sour taste out of my mouth over the union-busting, and the cynicism of turning a slight story (trip with the boys to a mountain far, far away, a dragon, inter-racial warfare over resources, then home again) into three films just kills it for me.

Capitalism stole my problematic love.  It's not the first time.

in defence of the ridges

seeing as i have been going through some heavy stuff lately, i thought it was time for a lighter pop culture post.  pretty out-of-date, i know, but it's been sitting at the back of my mind waiting to get out & now is as good a time as any.

i remember all the times i've written on this blog about my antipathy towards reality television.  i mostly can't be bothered with it, mostly because there seems to be a lot of hostility & nastiness involved in the competitive aspects of reality tv shows, and i don't have the patience for that.  i did manage to sit through one whole series of american idol, i can't even remember why.  and of course i'm a well known masterchef fan.  but that has generally been it, when it comes to me & reality tv shows.

so you would think that "the ridges" is not a show that would particularly appeal to me.  never watched the osbornes or the kardashians or any other shows that concentrated on the lives of a particular group of families.  it just sounded so boring, i've never even made an attempt to sit through 5 minutes of it.  not that i'm judging people who are into that stuff, just saying that it really doesn't appeal to me.

and i can't say i'm a fan of sally or jamie ridge.  since i avoid women's mags & entertainment sections, i'm blissfully unaware of the gossip.  some of that stuff does spill over into "the news" though, so i can't say i was unaware that sally ridge split up with matthew ridge, and hooked up with adam parore, and then that was all over too.  and i was dimly aware that sonny bill williams had been going out with jaime ridge at some point, but i didn't even know what she looked like until i watched the show.

so why did i bother watching?  the hook for me was that this was a programme centred on women and women's experiences.  sure, many of those experiences come under the category of "first world problems", and essentially the show is yet another one focusing on the lives of people of privilege.  but even so, i think what kept me watching the show was the really strong mother-daughter relationship and the way these two women were so supportive of each other.  i really don't think that we get to see enough of positive female relationships on our screens.

i also found it interesting to see the pressure on jaime ridge to be super-sexy, when it wasn't how she wanted to portray herself.  i thought it was great that she fought back as much as she could, and tried her best to assert her own boundaries, with the support of people around her. i did hate that people were criticising her for being prepared to model underwear while not being prepared to wear skimpy clothing for the fight for life promotions.  as if she doesn't have the right to choose in each instance what she's comfortable with.  it reminds me way too much of women who are deemed to have a bad reputation for one action, which somehow makes them fair game for the rest of their lives.  it's total nonsense.

the whole weight-loss thing was pretty bad as well.  although i can see it was a requirement for a fair fight in the fight for life thing, it was still handled badly by the people responsible for her training.

clearly these are not perfect people (but who is?), and they deliberately put their lives into the public arena where they knew they would be judged.  that's beyond celebrities being photographed without their consent, or having their personal stuff splashed across the tabloids.  this was a case of informed consent, and so there is a much stronger case of saying that we have every right to be judgmental about this duo.

but even so, some of the judginess sounds incredibly misogynistic to me.  i really couldn't believe that 7 days were willing to run a clip of some random guy calling them "skanks", and it seems to me that there has been too much criticism of that nature ie criticising the show because it focuses on women's lives and centres on the things that concern women. i'm not saying the show doesn't deserve criticism, as there were a few things that made me feel uncomfortable, but they don't deserve to be criticised just for being women who live their lives, and pretty successfully by the looks of it.

if there's going to be a season two, i'm not sure that i'll watch it.  but i certainly don't regret watching season 1, and i think there was some use in seeing the kinds of pressures that women are subjected to.  and while i still can't say i'm a fan, i can say that i wish both of them well.

What the world needs now is Buffy

Finally, the proof I've been waiting for.

Watching Buffy is not just my fave dvd retreat, it actually makes women feel less anxious about sexual violence, and challenges men's negative ideas about women.

Interesting study.  The researchers chose sexually violent material from shows with either subordinate women characters, or strong female characters (this is an interesting subject in itself.  What makes someone "strong"?  Do you have to be able to kick vampire ass?)  And they compared both genres with some shows without sexually violent content, by asking their research subjects to view the shows and then comparing reactions across groups.

The sexually violent shows with subordinate women characters were The Tudors and Masters of Horror.  The sexually violent shows with strong women characters were SVU and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  The control shows without sexually violent content were 7th Heaven and Gilmore Girls.

The findings, in the words of the researchers:

Women who watched sexually violent media were more anxious, and males who watched sexually violent media had more negative attitudes toward women, but only when female characters were subordinate. Sexual and violent content had no influence on viewer attitudes when strong female characters were present, suggesting these are not the crucial influence variables.

Women were actually less anxious watching SVU or Buffy than the control group shows.  The inverse was true for men, who reported least anxiety watching the Tudors or Masters of Horror.

Now, where is my Season 1?

Sing it.

Some music loving feminists put together their fave 16 songs about violence against women last year, and while it has some definite highlights (Tracey Chapman, Aretha Franklin and Suzanne Vega would make my playlist too) there are so many songs missing I thought I'd add a few. 

Lucinda Williams changes the locks, her phone number, her car, her clothes, the train tracks and the name of her town to get away from an abusive man.  It's easier, after all, than him stopping his violence.

Ani DiFranco makes sure she has control over her sexuality as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and has plans to get away from it all.

The extraordinarily talented Ms Dynamite calls out domestic violence big time and asks for better relationships for our daughters.

But the next runaway hit, I'm pretty sure, is by Taylor Ferrera, explaining what "legitimate rape" looks like for all those American politicians who are not quite sure.

More in comments, please.

Rape Crisis, brought to you by Hell's Pizza

So now we have Rape Crisis, brought to you by Hell's Pizza.  Fantastic.  What next?  McDonald's Women's Refuge?  Coca Cola Save the Children?

Hell, why stop there?  Why not invite companies that make fast food in to fund our state agencies too?  KFC could come to mean Keystone Fcuking Cops if we only open our minds to the beauty of public-private partnerships.

I'm not going to bother with why posting a "joke" about a man sexually assaulting another man and giving the person disclosing they are in fact a perpetrator of unlawful sexual connection (highest penalty 20 years in jail) an actual PRIZE for being a rapist is a problem.  Hell's Pizza launched this revolting little piece of excusing sexual assault on Facebook, where people are still letting them know in spades that this was not ok.  But predictably - because this is Rape Culture© we're living in - lots of people are also making comments about the funny, either because the victim is a man, or because, Hell, all sexual assault is funny, right?

I'm also not going to bother with why Wellington Rape Crisis is accepting their money.  Why the Hell shouldn't they?  Doing so is the only thing that makes sense in a world where you cannot pay your staff and you have people calling you asking for help to not kill themselves, to get out of bed in the morning, to help you stop the gut-wrenching, sweat-inducing, madness-inducing flashbacks you are having of being sexually abused or assaulted.  It's not letting Hell's Pizza off the hook for promoting Rape Culture© to take their money and train their staff to understand and prevent sexual violence.  It's making sure your agency is open as often as it can be, to help as many survivors as possible.  If you want Hell to pay, go donate to WRC, and the pizza company will match you, dollar for dollar.

It's the context I'm interested in, the reason we've got to hoping enough people order take-aways to make sure rape survivors get the phone answered if they need to cry with someone.

I'm not down with pretending the problem is this Government.  Sure, National have slashed funding for survivor counselling, down to 3.6% of those who apply.  And sure, even though the Law Commission website tells us the work that's been going on since 2007 to improve the justice system for survivors is still on track, Minister Judith Collins has started being a little more honest in her correspondence.   Her letters responding to queries indicate she might be wanting to shelve this, because the changes proposed are "significant," and need "careful consideration."  (Was the Law Commission's year-long research not careful enough?)

But underfunding the agencies which provide life-saving and enhancing services to survivors of sexual and domestic violence is not just at the door of this government.  In the 1980s, we had more than ten specialist Te Kākano agencies funded by government to work with Māori rape survivors and whanau, more than twenty specialist Rape Crisis groups, four Sexual Abuse HELP groups, and a Rape Crisis National Office which could represent the needs of survivors to the Government.

By 2004, both Te Kākano and Rape Crisis had seen their funding slashed, with fewer than half the agencies able to stay open.  And Rape Crisis National Office was gone, while the numbers of survivors trying to get help went up and up and up.

Agencies with support survivors have to run on the goodwill of volunteers, all over the country.  This continues to be one of the most terrifying aspects of Rape Culture© - that successive New Zealand governments care so little for survivors of sexual violence, we don't even pay the most skilled people we have - for both female and male survivors - to help them be safer.  We pay Police Officers and Child Youth and Family social workers of course - who are working with the same people - we just don't pay those workers who get up at 3am to listen to a survivor's nightmares, or sit in court with a survivor for days, helping them deal with the indignity of having their life picked apart while the man (in 99% of cases reported to the Police, it's a man) who raped them sits smugly in silence.

Because we don't pay our survivor agencies, we need takeaway companies to step in.  That's what a fcuked up mess our last thirty years worth of governments have presided over.  So Hell's Pizza - I'm not a fan and doubt I ever will be - but members of parliament, it's about time you listened to your communities.  More and more people are reporting sexual violence to the Police.  More and more people are trying to go to services which are running on the goodwill of volunteers.

Don't leave it to Hell to pay.  Fund survivor agencies properly, for all the work they do, NOW.

It's just a joke

Occupational hazard of wanting to end rape culture: you spend lots of time designing training and education packages for people around the ways alcohol facilitates sexual violence which try very hard to avoid traditional victim blaming ideas.

The simplest way to do this is to remind people that drinking (unless you're underage, or in the wrong place) isn't a crime, but sexual violence is.

Another way I've done this in the past is by asking people to think about the messages alcohol manufacturers and sellers give us around alcohol. What's going to happen when we drink?

Well, if we drink beer:

Or how about this one?

These are real advertisements, and hopefully I don't need to explain why they are deeply problematic in terms of messages around sex, consent, masculinity and femininity. Hint: if I do, you're less media literate than young people going to VIBE Youth Health Service in Lower Hutt, where I first focus grouped these images. They were pretty clear in what they thought the key messages were "girls who are drinking are up for it."

(And you know what, we just might be. But to find that out, you'll have to talk to us, and listen to what we say, even when that's different to what you want to hear.)

What can be harder to unpack is humour. When we make something a funny, any criticism risks the defence of bigots everywhere "can't you take a joke?" That's why the Tui beer ads have run so long, despite continued real offensiveness. Because they are funny. Yeah, right.

I'm not able to comment on Tui television adverts, I hardly ever watch tv, and I don't think I've ever seen one. But Tui billboards - there's the homophobic one, the transphobic one, the one about children lying about sexual abuse, and far, far, far too many to mention that have been about treating women like we are stupid barriers to men drinking and having fun.

There's been several explicitly supporting male violence against women - the sexual harassment one, the one bemoaning Tony Veitch's inability to pay his way out of assaulting his then partner, and this little gem from 2005:

I'm going out on a limb here and saying making fun of violence against women, and queer people, and transpeople, and childhood sexual abuse, is part of creating a tolerance for violence and hate. It is part of victim blaming when violence is perpetrated against those groups. It makes us see domestic violence from the role of the perpetrator, as a bit of a laugh. It makes us look at people who say they have been sexually abused, or assaulted because they were queer/trans, with cynicism rather than compassion.

It is part of sustaining a culture which puts a particular kind of straight men at the top of the pile, where, with irony of course, some might think they belong.

It's time to put Tui billboards where they belong - on the scrapheap - by supporting Feminist Action. Watch this space.

Auckland Feminist Action takes on Tui's sexism

Media release from Auckland Feminist Action, up on Scoop earlier today.

Campaign launched against Tui beer ads
Auckland group Feminist Action has launched a campaign to get Tui to withdraw sexist beer ads featuring its all-female brewery. 

“These ads are retro-sexist”, says Feminist Action spokeswoman Leonie Morris. “They mimic tired old sexist attitudes in an ironic way. They are funny only to people who are happy to laugh at put-downs of women.” 

The Tui brewery ads feature women in skimpy clothes and sexualised poses, who are relentlessly depicted as more stupid than the dorky group of men who try to infiltrate the brewery. 

 “The ads say that men should judge women just on how they look, that women are stupid and that it’s okay to laugh at them,” says Ms Morris. 

Retro-sexist beer ads promote a form of mateship that dismisses women’s concerns and trivialises relationships with women. “Demeaning women in these ads is harmful whether the ads are funny or not. Valuing women only for how they look has a corrosive effect on women’s sense of self-worth. Men who demean women like this are more likely to be violent to them, and we have a huge problem with violence against women in New Zealand.”

“Women have been protesting against these kinds of ads for decades, and a lot of women feel silenced because they’re now so common,” she says. Young members of Feminist Action particularly wanted to campaign against them. “It’s not okay to make sexist, racist or homophobic jokes.” 

The campaign will use Facebook, an online petition and other social media to gain support and put pressure on Tui owner, DB Breweries, to drop the ads. 

Auckland Feminist Action is a new group acting on persistent inequalities between women and men in New Zealand.

This sounds like a campaign to watch, and will sadly probably attract a fair bit of backlash too.

Feel free to discuss the campaign idea here, keeping in mind, as always, that as this is a feminist blog we're probably more interested in comments that are rational, on topic, and don't draw on misogynist rubbish.  If you want to rant about how Tui's ads aren't sexist and how feminists don't have a sense of humour and wah wah wah I'm sure there are plenty of other places to go do that so best you go to There soonest.

Sweet dreams

Adventures in gingerbread

Really enjoying this season of Doctor Who (watching it as it shows up on Prime so please no spoilers from beyond A Good Man Goes To War aka the episode when we find out who Riversong is)

Here, in honour of Amy and Rory and Riversong and oh yeah, that doctor guy, is a gingerbread tardis.  You can read the story of it's manufacture, along with pics of the process, here.

There may be SPOILERS in comments, depending on where you are up to yourself, so please indulge with suitable caution.  I certainly intend to discuss in a bit more detail the Riversong identity revelation.

Cupcaking across the universe

Nom nom nom nom.

(Space) Adventures in Icing

Nom nom nom. 

Adventures in currency artwork

Found here, where there are some really amaze things and also some really crap things, all drawn/written on currency.

what i'd like to see on tv

i've decided i'm a fan of jo frost. it's only happened recently. and it's not like i agree with every bit of advice she gives. and it's certainly that i watch her supernanny stuff religiously - i've only watched a few episodes really. and i caught that extreme parenting thing that was on tv1 recently.

no, what decided me was on an online survey i did for the channel recently. i wish i had thought to save some of the questions & answers. they were pretty wierd, asking which people you identified with the channel & the like. there were more standard questions about what kind of people you would like to see more of.

sorry that my memory is so vague, all i recall is giving answers about how i'd like to see a lot more diversity in the types of people we got to see. so i remember clicking judy dench, helen mirren & the like a few times. there were actually some women of colour in the choices as well, and i remember clicking on them as well.

when i then had to justify some of my choices, it got me thinking what i want to see more of. and jo frost (who i had also chosen a few times) really was the symbol of what i'd like to see. here is a strong character, with strong ethics, not conventionally attractive, not young & not thin. just a natural, normal person doing (mostly) good stuff. she's someone who commands respect, is assertive without being nasty, has compassion and is just herself. of course her field of work is pretty traditional for women, but that's really the only thing traditional about her.

she actually reminds me how much of a fan i am of cher (as an actress rather than a singer). the thing i loved about her so much was that she always played strong characters that took no nonsense, wouldn't allow themselves to be pushed around, and she just had a commanding presence. yup, i really would like to see more of that on tv.

which makes me think i should probably watch the new show with jada pinkett-smith, hawthorne. looks like it might deliver something similar. here's hoping.

Adventures in icing plus ewok cupcakes!

Found here, which is worth a visit for a close-up shot of Akbar and Leia down on the ice, and links to more pics of the Star Wars themed wedding the cakes were created for.

Some midweek My Little Pony silliness

From here (and there's many many more) and via Amanda's FB feed.

On being believed

The similarity between a current Shortland St storyline and the Clayton Weatherston case didn't occur to me until I read the LadyNews post on the weekend. Steph's right of course, there has been far too much focus on Sophie Elliot's appearance, as if it was at all relevant to the harassment, stalking and murder she suffered.

I guess I missed the stark resemblance because I was too wrapped up in the astonishing sight of Sophie McKay (the Shortie character being stalked by her ex-boyfriend and tutor) being believed.

Every character that I've seen Sophie interact with about her issues with Ash (the tutor) has told her to trust her instincts that there is something wrong, and has supported her to protect herself.  Which is great.  I hope that it continues this way as the storyline plays out.

And I wish it was how this stuff plays out in real life. I'm really glad Shortie is portraying this in such an aspirational way; making it seem like it is the default position to believe a woman when she says she feels unsafe. Because sadly that isn't what happens for many.

My own experiences (two of them, neither involving tutors I should say) were that it took months for anyone to take my worries seriously. It didn't help that I started to think I was the one in the wrong, not the guys, and that figures of authority in one case completely ignored something really obviously happening right in front of them.

I started to wonder where the lines were. If I didn't kick up a fuss about this thing on this occasion then was I tacitly consenting to it happening again? I was so frightened and confused and felt guilty, as if it was my fault, and it would never have occurred to me to be as assertive about it as Sophie McKay has been to date. Perhaps if people around me had supported me I might have, instead of questioning myself constantly.

My observation of people under stress, and some reading on the topic, has led me to agree with the conclusion that when stressed we tend to revert back to flight, fight or fright (aka freeze).  I have seen it in my work;  when faced with a disciplinary meeting with no prep or support a worker will usually either freeze and not say anything or absent themselves, often by taking sick leave for stress-related troubles.  Fight is a response I've seen more rarely in my work, and I think that's partly a gendered thing, as I've mainly dealt with women workers.  Certainly my own response, when faced with the stress of harassment, was to freeze most of the time, flee most of the rest of the time, and fight very rarely (and usually with such a bad outcome that I didn't try it again for a long time, if at all). 

In the end in each of the two cases I've experienced myself it was the support of others that shifted things for me.  In the first instance I was unable to get support from the person who would have been my natural ally until they started doing to her what they had been doing to me for months.  Suddenly she saw the light and things started to change.  Part of the reason I'd thought I must be in the wrong was her lack of support in the past.

In the second situation a group of friends suddenly changed their view from "oh look, it's cute that he has a crush on her, it's so never going to happen, but it's so cute" to "ok this shit is getting freaky and she's terrified, how did I not notice this before".  Once they realised, the behaviour stopped very quickly, as the person in question got told in no uncertain terms, by people he respected, to leave me alone entirely.

Good on Shortie St for showing how it should be. I hope life imitates art very soon indeed.

war & peace

is it just me, or are there a whole lot more war dramas and programmes on tv than their used to be? i've avoided pretty much all of them, i think.

it's not that i don't like war stuff per se - i watched stuff like the manchurian candidate (denzel washington version), enemy at the gates and other stuff i'm sure, that i thought were good. but what concerns me is that there are so many more stories being told about war than there are stories about peace.

i'm also concerned that many of the war stories are told in a way that don't glamorise war as such, but glamorise aspects of it. i'm finding it difficult to word this the right way. it's not a bad thing thing to show stories of courage under fire, and of people committing noble acts in absolutely awful situations. but unless those stories also show the horror and suffering of war, the impact on civilians not just from loss of life but also loss of infrastructure, and the severe trauma on combat personnel, i'm afraid that those stories tend to make war sound a little bit like a good thing, a noble thing even.

tie this in with the increasingly jingoistic nature of anzac day, and it becomes a development that i'm a little uncomfortable with. i've often said that if we spent as much on peace as we do on war, then the world would be an infinitely better place. but it would also be helpful if we could have more stories about peace, and if we could celebrate those stories a lot more. i'm thinking about stories that show tense situations solved by negotiation and compromise. i'm pretty sure those can be pretty intense and interesting viewing - i'm thinking for example of those hostage-type dramas where a kick-ass negotiating team saves the day.

the thing is that unless we have a greater focus on peace and celebrate peace, we're less likely to achieve it. in order for that to happen, peace making needs to become a part of our popular culture. it needs to be a greater part of our public discourse. it should be part of a public holiday where we spend time sharing stories about and commemorating peace and peace-keeping initiatives.

fortunately, there are other people in the country who think like i do, and who have been actively doing something about it. the aotearoa nz peace & conflict studies centre trust (yes, quite a mouthful) have successful in setting up the national peace & conflict centre at otago university. their july 2010 newsletter isn't online yet, but you can read previous newsletters here. they're currently looking for "an experienced fundraiser to help us generate
more support from individuals, businesses, and charitable trusts". another initiative is:

... a workshop on Peace Education in New Zealand early childhood, primary and secondary schools on the 29th and 30th October in Dunedin. The aim is to bring together teachers, providers, and the Ministry of Education to discuss what has happened in the field of Peace Education in NZ, what is happening now, and what needs to happen.

all good stuff. i'd also love to see nz on air and the film commission providing specified funding for film and programme makers to develop peace-related material - documentary or fiction. and wouldn't it be nice if we actually had a ministry of peace with funding equal to that of the ministry of defence. ah well, dreams are free.

Whose body?

From Echidne of the Snakes:

The sexual liberation of women can be a great thing, a wonderful thing. But it also can be subverted and turned into the sexual liberation of the female body, almost absent its owner, or perhaps owned by others. It is that body which has become a signifier of sexuality for everyone, including heterosexual women, and the shape of that generalized sexy body is now more stringently controlled than ever before. Hence the need to shave the pubic area and the need to have large and perky breasts. The Female Body in that detached sense is now a mythical body, an impossible body, with fixed labia and enhanced breasts. At the same time many view it as an achievable body. A normative body type, if you like.

Taken from Echidne's review of Susan J. Douglas' book about American pop culture and its negotiations or wars with feminism: Enlightened Sexism. The Seductive Message That Feminism's Work Is Done