"Legitimate rape" is illogical cant

Content warning:  Rants related to rape, victim blaming, rape apologists, and ridiculous sex education that helps no one, all contained within.

"If it is a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down."

So said Republican nominee for the US Senate Todd Akin.  

"That whole thing" refers to pregnancy.  Mr Akin is saying that women don't get pregnant from rape.  And if they do then it wasn't really rape, it wasn't "legitimate rape."

The whole concept of "legitimate rape" appals me.  I believe that Mr Akin is meaning to say "real" or "genuine", when he says legitimate, but I can't help thinking of that other meaning of legitimate, which is "acceptable."  

It is not up to Mr Akin to decide what does and does not constitute rape, or even this bizarre sub-set of rape that he's carved out in his head.  Rape is sex without consent.  There is nothing legitimate, as in acceptable, about rape EVER.  And as for there being illegitimate rape, fake rape; there is NO evidence to suggest that false rape claims are made at any higher rate than any other level of fraudulent reporting, which tends to be about 5%.  

Many of the reactions I've seen to Akin's comments have been focused on the sheer biological illogicality of his claim that rape cannot result in pregnancy.  Yet that's exactly what I was taught in my teens at a school in New Zealand in the early 1990s.  I recall quite clearly during a health class a teacher (who was not a science teacher and I suspect very unsupported to run these discussions) telling us that pregnancy did not result from rape because the woman's body (only women can get raped you see) was simply not receptive, wasn't producing the correct juices, was hostile to the sperm.  This wasn't a biology class I hasten to add.  For a long time I believed her.*  

The point of this discussion was to refute the idea that abortion in cases of rape was even to be considered.  If you were pregnant it couldn't have been rape, "legitimate rape" as Akin would no doubt say, therefore no termination for you, evil slut!

Ellen and Minnie helped to dispel this myth.  You remember Ellen right?  Ellen Crozier?  She was Cheryl West, before there was Cheryl West.  You know who I mean, that Shortie nurse, the one who was Carla's good sister.  The origins of her daughter, Minnie, were shrouded in mystery for many a season on the Great New Zealand Soap, and it eventually turned out that that pregnancy was the result of rape.  

In my own life I've studied biology a fair bit, and I know, now, how untrue the line I was sold all those years ago is.  I know it also second hand from the bitter, horrible, experience of a number of women who have disclosed such stories in their own pasts; resulting in adoption, miscarriage, abortion, and keeping the resultant child and raising them well.  The feeling of being violated over again, in finding out about the pregnancy, and then having to make hard decisions with no correct answer due to the proprietary, selfish, harmful act of another.  

There are, sadly, so many myths about rape, and about reproductive health.  When one that seems so obviously wrong to us pops up let's consider that there will be those who have been taught the lie as truth and who may not yet have had the additional learning, or the life experience, to show them otherwise.  






*  She also helpfully told us, in the same session, that if someone wanted to rape us there was no point lying that we had our periods as the rapist wouldn't care.  It's odd what sticks in the teen brain through to adulthood.

STOP: National Party press release: Vasectomies and limited liability

A new policy to address government spending has been announced, and while it may court controversy in some corners, John Key is personally championing the initiative.

"It's time we stopped irresponsible and violent men from increasing the burden on the taxpayer," said the Prime Minister.  "We've been too timid to go there before, but this government is making available vasectomies to men we believe should no longer be reproducing."

Of course Mr Key has first-hand experience of his reproductive capacity being curtailed, and speaks highly of the choice.  "It's been nothing but wonderful for my sex life," he smiles.

The government plans to offer vasectomies to all men convicted of domestic or sexual violence, and these offers will take place in prison.  "We know those men make poor fathers, and their children are likely to need more support from the state than other children, so let's just cut our costs."

"But we're going beyond that too," Mr Key said winningly.  "We're targetting those deadbeat dads who leave women and children to fend for themselves.  They cost us billions, and it's time we put a stop to them having more children."

These men will be offered the opportunity to control their future reproduction for free by IRD employees as part of the Child Support changes proposed by National.  "It's a win-win.  No more unsupported children, and those guys will get to have as much fun as I do," said the ebullient Mr Key.

"National are more and more interested in limiting reproductive liability for the state.  This proposal should ensure the taxpayer pays only for important things like new roads, maps to facilitate the oil and mining industries making profits, subsidies for industries we support, and contracts for consultants for the public sector.  Alongside our plans for increased tax cuts for the productive members of our country, vasectomies may just be the pick-me-up our economy needs."

The new government policy will be trialled over the next twelve months.  Mr Key says if it's as successful as National hopes "We'll be making vasectomies available to more and more groups of men from communities which cost taxpayer dollars."

PRESS RELEASE ENDS

Expanding and contracting and expanding again

I was so sure it would be the Tuesday.  No particular reason, just a hunch. 

Due date was the first or second of September; the midwife seemed to waggle back and forth between them.  I was full and heavy, the most pregnant I'd ever been before.  Maybe I thought Tuesday because I wanted the pregnant part to be over.  I was very apprehensive about the labour part though, so I just kept pushing it away in my mind. 

Magically this process was going to be:

1. Pregnant
2. ????
3. Baby and mother healthy and well

I hadn't laboured at all with Wriggly, not a single contraction, in a story I told in three parts several years ago.  I was partly looking forward to giving labour a go, but pretty nervous, especially in regard to what I consider one of the scariest medical words in the English language, "crowning".  And I knew if labour didn't come on spontaneously soon it would be off to surgery for another sunroof delivery, with nary a uterus quiver experienced, and no chance of labouring with any future pregnancies either.

By 10.30pm I'd given up waiting to feel my first ever contraction and I headed to bed.

Isabelle Brown is a person

Her name is Isabelle Brown, she's 35. In her picture she is wearing a red t-shirt, with a black longer sleeved top underneath; her hair is cut around her face; she's not looking at the camera. I don't know anything about her. I don't know her as a person.

Neither did her lawyer Tony Bouchier when he decided she wasn't a person, but an incubator.

He was supposed to be defending her against a charge of "possessing instruments for methamphetamine use" - the police were not seeking to remand her in custody - they were happy for her to be out on bail.

He decided this was wrong - not because of her desires - but because she was pregnant. Because she was pregnant, Tony Bouchier thought that rather than act as her lawyer, he'd act as the fetus's social worker. He sought a treatment order, and in the meantime she remains in jail, while the court tries to figure out it if has the facilities to lock up a woman for being pregnant.

None of which is consistent with the following legal obligations he had to her:

• protect and promote your clients interests and act for them free from compromising influences or loyalties
• discuss with your client their objectives and how they should best be achieved
• protect your client's privacy and ensure appropriate confidentiality
• treat your client fairly, respectfully and without discrimination

He justifies himself like this: "I think looking out for Isabelle is looking out for the baby. Isabelle is not concerned with the baby. Isabelle is concerned about Isabelle." He doesn't think she feels like a pregnant woman should, and therefore the best way to 'look out' for her is to lock her up on the assumption that that's good for her fetus.

Over and over again those talking about her in the news describe her as abusing her 'baby'. Their anger is not directed a world where a woman can have so few resources that she is sleeping in a shed. I've no idea what her story is, but I'm far angry that she has had to get by with so little, not that her fetus is exposed to the conditions that she lives in. Because she is a person, not just an incubator.

Tony Bouchier was betting that no-one would see her as a person. She is poor, brown, and addicted to drugs. She is described as having unspecified mental health problems. The newspaper describe the dirt of where she was living in great detail, but don't even try to capture her voice. So far it has paid off, he has been called a hero, and praised by almost all who comment on the case.

Tony Bouchier is not a hero. Tony Bouchier is using his power over Isabelle Brown to incarcerate her, because he does not respect her as a person and the courts are letting him.

Wellington Local Body Elections - a follow-up

So just before the polls closed I posted my endorsements for the Wellington local body elections. A number of candidates posted on replies to my blog - most of which I found pretty amusing. Now that it's all over and Celia Wade-Brown has shown how appalling she is in record time by speaking at the "giving government cover to lower the legal protections of film-workers" rally, I thought I'd respond to two of those comments.

It was awesome to see Kerry go - the day after the announcement a friend of mine drunkenly yelled out "Kerry's gone" in a cheap malaysian restaurant, and everyone cheered back at him. In the days between the election, and the announcement that Kerry had really lost, I got some pointed comments from some friends and family members who knew I hadn't voted for mayor.

On my blog I had criticised CWB for being a greener tinged Kerry Prendergast, and not being left wing. She replied:

How about for/against a casino? for/against more road tunnels? for/against Hilton hotel on outer T? All differences between incumbent's and my vote.

So when I suggested that her economic policies were no different from Kerry's and this was all she had. This is her best demonstration of her commitment to redistribution of wealth? Or her commitment to providing services to all regardless of income? I quoted this list to people who gave me shit about not voting for her, while we were waiting for the result - and they had to concede my point.

The other candidate who posted, and the real reason that I'm writing this post(apart from getting in early having a go at our new mayor) was Iona Pannett. One of the things that I expressed lots of frustration with in my blogpost, was council candidates who were more interested in telling us about their family than their policies.

Iona Pannett objected to this:

Your criteria for voting seems a little inconsistently applied to candidates and is an interesting one for a self-declared feminist.

It was after feminist writers and thinkers who have rightly done a great deal to deconstruct the split between the public and the private, a split often upheld by male thinkers and legislators.

I don't think people should have to deny they are parents and think it important that people standing for public office are well rounded people.

Just for the record, feminists who theorised about the public and the private, had more on their mind than the importance of those running for office talking about their family. That was a campaigning trick well before the feminist movement. But I thought I'd talk a little bit more about the serious point I was making behind the jokes.

You only get a few hundred words to convey where you stand to voters in a council blurb. Many of those running throw out inanity after inanity - telling us who they are, not how they'll vote. These blurbs may seem ridiculous, but they have a purpose, a purpose Daran Ponter made clear:

My wife Vickie and I, and our two children, Crystal and Thomas, enjoy all the normal things Wellingtonians love - Saturday morning sports, mountain biking, watching a game at the stadium and occasionally sleeping in!

The purposes of the children, and the heterosexual partner, and the other mentions of family in blurbs is to scream I'M JUST LIKE YOU at the voter. Ponter is particularly specific about the voter he is just like - normal is heterosexual, middle-class and able-bodied, at minimum.

Iona Pannett made this explicit in another way in her suggestion that 'well-rounded' people make good councillors - she was just proving that she was well-rounded when she mentioned her child (I've actually known people of all metaphorical shapes with children). I find this deeply offensive I think those who don't have children, those who can't have children, and those who don't have the resources to raise their children in Lambton ward (another point Iona Pannett made sure to mention) will make just as good councillors as Iona.

If you have only a few hundred words to persuade people to vote for you, and you choose to use it to talk about your family, then what you are saying is screaming your normality is more important than telling people what you believe.

That seems like as good a reason not to vote for someone as any.

Abortion - why it needs to be legal (A Presentation)

Please find below (indeed below the Read More) the presentation I gave today on why abortion needs to be legal, and why we need a pro-choice law change. Many thanks to Kristy, Alana and Soraiya for organising it, and Nicole for pressing buttons, and everyone for coming along. Especially Nikki for being my friendly face in the crowd, and also big thanks to Deborah for proofing it from afar.

As you read please bear in mind that I was writing it to speak to the slides (which I've inserted as pics above the section of the speech that goes with them), and also that I've never done that before.

Here goes...

Nine and a bit months

This is what pregnancy means for me.  Maybe it's different for you.  Maybe it's not.  This is what it's like for me.

To start with there's the waiting.  Waiting, waiting, waiting, followed by peeing.  Then some more waiting.  Sometimes by now there'll also be some nausea, tiredness and general crampiness.  Not long after the waiting is over there will be the vague sense of my world closing around me.  This will come back at various points over the ensuing months.  It's a bittersweet feeling, for me.

The dietary restrictions will come in fully after some half-hearted efforts prior to the appearance of that little blue line.  Feta and salami I shall miss the most, in a pita bread with some spinach leaves and some red onion, a little balsamic vinegar sprinkled in too, and put in my handbag for a nice cold lunch on the move.  I'll give up foods and drinks I like and I'll also stop doing many things I enjoy like going for very long walks in the bush out of cellphone coverage.  And roller-skating.

Next comes the nausea.  Followed shortly thereafter by the vomiting.  There's a large amount of both.  Like a really really really large amount.  None of this four football fields malarky, we are talking about so much that I lose weight in the first trimester even if I am eating more than usual.  This also means there are a lot of trips to the toilet, that I need to always know where the nearest toilet is, and that there is a lot of toilet cleaning too.  And probably some throwing up that happens sans toilet, like in a park or into a gutter or over a rubbish bin.

If I'm lucky it'll be predictable vomiting, which allows me to plan around it rather than just have to stay at home as a precaution. If I'm unlucky then workmates will hear me hurling before I'm ready to tell my boss, or I'll be stuck sitting on the toilet floor for prolonged periods, or I won't be able to drive on the motorway where I can't pull over with a few seconds notice.    This bit may go well into the second trimester, and as for only happening in the morning, well that's bunkum.  Although I'll probably be late to work a lot, either because I lost time throwing up as soon as I got up, or if I attempted to have some breakfast, or because I slept in from waking up in the night to vomit.  Did you know you can throw up even when your stomach is empty?  I do, now.

Sterilising the heart and mind

Idiot/Savant has pretty accurately summed up my thoughts on David Garrett's outrageous suggestions about "incentivising" sterilisation. Monstrous indeed.

Apparently it's getting a lot of support in Talkbackland. Not surprising given that's where it started, with Michael Laws on Radio Live.

What's astonished me is how some social liberals and fans of negative freedom have tentatively endorsed the broad idea of promoting sterilisation for Others, in particular David Farrar at Kiwiblog. Here's the guts of his post about the matter on Thursday:

1. Absolutely against any compulsory sterilisation. Apart from the fact no surgeon will operate on a non consenting patient, the state should not have the power to remove someone’s fertility.
2. Not supportive of the proposal to pay child abusers to get sterilised, as it will only target poor child abusers, and may be thin end of wedge.
3. However am open to having a debate on whether one could have it as an early release incentive for people who have been convicted of child abuse and actually gone to prison.

One of the reasons we send people to prison is to protect the community. If someone is sentenced to three years jail for child abuse, then is the community better protected by having them come out at 2.5 years and unable to have more children, or at three years and likely to have more children, whom will grow up abused, and in turn probably becomes abusers themselves.

By not having a monetary incentive, it removes the potential problems of being more attractive to poor child abusers.

Also by limiting it to people in prison, and convicted of child abuse, it means you target the worse of the worse.

I’m sure there are strong arguments against such a policy also, and I am not saying I support it without question. But unless one just wants to wring your hands about the child abuse problem, it may be a more palatable option than monetary incentives which I would not support.

Nice to see Farrar is against "compulsory sterilisation" by the state. To be fair to Garrett, my impression is that wasn't what he was suggesting, so Farrar is creating something of a straw argument here to showcase his (false on this issue imho) liberalism.

What I find appalling about Farrar's post is his total lack of understanding of what it is like to be in prison. I've never been in prison. I've never visited one. I have a good friend who has done a lot of visiting and it sounds absolutely and unreservedly awful. Even if it our prisons did meet the totally untrue stereotype promulgated by some that they are like country clubs, I would still think it was a huge step to take to put someone in a situation they could not leave.

Imagine what it would be like to be locked into your bedroom each night, to have the lights turned off not at a time of your choosing, to have no privacy about any of the possessions you have around you, to be forced to associate with the same people for weeks and months on end, whether you like them or not, to not be able to do the simplest of tasks like go for a walk without permission from someone else. I find it astonishing that people like Farrar, who go on so much about freedom from the state's interference, are incapable of having any empathy for what this would be like. They have totally and utterly Othered those in prison in their minds, and their hearts, as if they were not human at all.

To then say to someone "you can get out of this situation earlier by undergoing sterilisation" is an incredibly powerful incentive. Possibly more powerful than the $5000 Garrett postulated. Yet liberty-loving Farrar puts it forward as if it is somehow a lesser evil.

Other worrying points in Farrar's post:

• "If someone is sentenced to three years jail for child abuse, then is the community better protected by having them come out at 2.5 years and unable to have more children, or at three years and likely to have more children, whom will grow up abused, and in turn probably becomes abusers themselves." Implicit in this statement is an expectation that during the time in jail the prisoner gets no (re)habilitation, no support to address the issues that led to the child abuse in the first place. What is the point of putting someone in prison if we don't assist them to succeed once they are released? Talk about writing people off. Also I understand there is some research that shows that some people who physically or even sexually abuse their own children sometimes do much better with later children than with earlier ones, particularly if they have had effective intervention to support their parenting. (I read this somewhere recently, or heard it on the radio, readers may be able to point me to where?)
• "But unless one just wants to wring your hands about the child abuse problem, it may be a more palatable option than monetary incentives which I would not support." Another straw argument. Farrar presents it as only two options - make sterilisation somehow attractive to people he doesn't want to breed, or you won't be doing anything to really address child abuse. Actually how about we put in place (or in some cases re-establish) social and economic policies that support children and their families? Poverty is one of the key drivers of child abuse. We could do quite a lot of effective work on that without ever once looking in the despicable direction of giving the vulnerable in our society incentives to curtail their fertility.

Anyway, I look forward to the doctors concerned about having to tell women about abortion speaking out against this latest outrage against Catholic doctrine. Won't be holding by breath, but.

Quick hit: Barnett on bushes, beavers and belittling

Brought to you by the letter B:

Is it me or has modern womanhood suddenly become the university exam question from hell this week? Compare and contrast the following.

There is a commercial now on television that features a woman going to the beach, a hairdresser, and a manicurist with a beaver. The ad is for tampons. Mm-hmm.

Tricky euphemisms aside, the advertising agency said the fury friend was chosen because it was "catchy, visual and unique". This is a family newspaper. I will not insert a joke here, though it's killing me.

Although it was the most complained about commercial in Australia last year, so far only 30 Kiwis have contacted the Advertising Standards Authority. I believe 29 of them were Inuit fur trappers phoning in their distain from Beaverton, Oregon.

The last one was probably my mother, worried that the beaver suffered mistreatment by having to pose on a hot Australian beach. One gentle viewer thought it was a wombat.

The truth is I laughed at that commercial because in comparison to an ad for a woman's shaver now running in Britain, the menstruation-beaver combo is a delight.

Click through for the rest, which is well worth reading. I couldn't really find an excerpt that worked alone, because the whole thing is quite interlocking, covering a British ad involving lawnmowers, the latest legal outrages in Afghanistan and something called iGirl which sounds icky. Tracey Barnett; I heart you.

I thought the beaver ad was a bit of a refreshing change from mysterious blue liquids. Maybe I'm being (somewhat characteristically) naive and optimistic, but it seemed like an advertising message which was saying "love your body, including your lady bits". Mind you I did have to watch the ad three times before I actually got the point of the beaver.

A woman imprisoned

A woman who gives birth alone, and then abandons the baby is a woman who is out of options. A woman who does this on a plane, on her way to take up low-paying migrant work, is out of options and resources. Whatever your political analysis of the woman who gave birth in a plane last month, it does not take much empathy to understand that her situation was not one of her own choosing, and that what she did was an act of desperation and powerlessness.

I had wanted to write something, but hadn't known what to write. A polemic seems almost grotesque when you think what she has been through. But then I heard on National Radio, that she had been remanded in custody.*

She has been in prison for ten days now, and was arrested six days after she gave birth. I know I'm a radical when it comes to prison, and so what I have to say about how much people don't belong in prison sounds slightly hollow. But I don't understand what possible good comes from locking this woman up under any logic at all.

I believe that Karolaine Maika's situation, and her incarceration are a feminist issue, and that feminist solidarity is most important when it comes to women who are most marginalised by society. I would encourage feminists to to support Karolaine Maika in jail. The most simple thing you could do is write to her:

Karolaine Maika
C/O Auckland Region Womens Corrections Facility
Private Bag 76908
South Auckland Mail Centre
Manukau 2240

You can send phones cards and money to people in prison with your letter. Money goes into the prison account, and can be used to buy things from the prison shop once a week. Phone cards are useful as a way of contacting people outside of prison, and are sometimes used as trade for other items. If you send either of these things, then mention them in the letter to make sure they get to her (if you want to do more, then leave a comment on the thread - if there's one thing I'm not short on it's information on how to support people in prison).

Mostly when I talk about feminism I talk about collective resistance. But I think support plays an important role in feminism as well. It doesn't take much to write a letter.