The lies we tell to get by

I have a boyfriend (please leave me alone)

Yes I am totally mentally distraught about this pregnancy and would get lots worse if I had to continue (please give me an abortion)

No extra flatmates (please give me enough resources to support my whanau)

It's not you, it's me (please let me go)

I'm driving tonight (please don't spike my drink)

Maybe, I'm not sure, but perhaps we could do it this way? (please listen to my excellent idea)

No I don't mind you asking me if I'm having more kids, it's okay (please don't get angry with me)

Sure I can work late (please see my worth)

Oh yes, baby is a great sleeper (please think I'm a good parent)

Thanks, you look great too (please stop talking about my appearance)

---

We live in a society where women often need to lie to get by.  Honesty is often the preserve of those who have a high level of safety and comfort.  May we live in a world where we don't need to lie to get by.  We don't live there yet.

Colin Craig is an abuser

In between the Comey/Trump and British election news this morning was this:  Colin Craig is planning to sue Rachel MacGregor for defamation.

This is yet another way of abusing his former press secretary, who already took him to the Human Rights Commission (HRC) for harassment, resulting in a confidential agreement and a financial settlement in her favour.

MacGregor's agency has been continually stripped by Craig throughout this long saga - first when she was his employee, during the HRC mediation including saying he'd put aside $1M to "destroy" her, then when he did that terrible sauna interview and broke confidentiality,  and later with further media comments along similar lines.  Most recently, as he and other men with resources keep taking each other to court for defamation, MacGregor has been forced to be a witness and to even be cross-examined directly by Craig.  This is abuse.

Because he has resources and money, Craig is able to continue to use the legal system to abuse. Sadly this is all too common, where the court is used by abusive men to control, punish and exhaust former partners, as outlined in a shocking recent Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fire report from The Backbone Collective, including:

Women told us that even though initially they went to the Family Court after separating from an abuser seeking protection and safety they now wish they had never done so. For these women, the Family Court has become the new abuser and many have told us it is worse than the abuser. They have been unable to rebuild their lives as they are trapped in Family Court proceedings for years. During this time they continue to be exposed to violence, abuse and associated trauma and they are unable to ‘move on’ in any way.

And

Women’s harmful experience of the Family Court was made much worse because of the compounding effect of time spent in court proceedings, the increasing financial burden and the multiple health impacts. They identified that there was no logical start or end point in the proceedings; once they got involved in the Family Court they found it impossible to get out. Many said they were just ‘hanging out’ until their child turned 16 and they no longer had to be involved. 

Sound familiar?

The Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fire report refers to "litigation/legal abuse" and I am in no doubt that is what Craig is doing to MacGregor, albeit through defamation proceedings rather than in the Family Court.   No doubt there are many other stories of legal abuse through other legal avenues too, multiplying the original injustice of the abuser's actions.

MacGregor said this at the most recent court appearance:

"To this day my allegations stand concrete strong. I withdrew my complaint because I had no longer time or energy to deal with this very weird man. I withdrew the complaint because I couldn't afford to deal with him any more."

And the next day while Craig cross-examined MacGregor she made this appeal to the judge:

"I don't understand how this is an opportunity for me," MacGregor replied.
"I can't believe I'm being made to stand in front of the man that did this to me.
"I can't believe a man who treated me like this is allowed to question me over and over, it's just so stupid." 

It could not be any clearer - MacGregor DOES NOT WANT ANY OF THIS.

And yet Craig keeps going and going, continuing to put his wants ahead of anyone else's, and continuing to abuse someone who has had less power throughout all of this.  Craig's lack of self-awareness and his seemingly endless financial capacity mean he can keep going too, despite supposed barriers to stop vexatious litigation.

Twitter talk is looking at setting up a way to donate to crowdfund MacGregor's defence, and as long as she is ok with that happening I'll be making a contribution and will share the link.  Her consent to that is vital - we don't help if we do it without her approval when she has already had that stripped away so many times.

With all of this, Craig's abuse and the Family Court report, I'm reminded of the outrage around another case that went on and on, with a rapist allowed to cross-examine the woman he repeatedly raped, after which there were calls to change the law to make sure this travesty could not be repeated.

As it stands our court system seems to allow legal abuse to continue.  MacGregor's case is high profile for a variety of reasons, and is, sadly, but one example.  Our legal system continues to fail women, and those with less power, to secure justice from abusers.




I don't do comments here - you can find me easy peasy on Twitter and Facebook if you really want to let me know what you think @juliefairey

Chris Brown and fairy dust

What to make of Chris Brown being so well supported by a handful of Māori women, some with history of working to prevent family violence, that he's tweeting them to say thank you?

Quite a lot, actually.  It's damn good publicity for Mr Brown to be talking about "strong women" about now, when his ability to tour the world is threatened by his use of violence towards other "strong women."  Some might say his livelihood may depend on his ability to reframe himself, since he's been banned from entering the UK, Canada and most recently, Australia.  While touring isn't the biggest money spinner for musicians these days, it's not looking good for Mr Brown, is it?

So you've beaten up your partner, been caught, hit and run another woman, been caught, beaten up male fans, been caught, threatened to kill a queer man, been caught, beaten up a man on the basketball court, been caught.  These incidents span a period of six years, most recent just last May.

Let's get this straight.  I firmly believe people can stop using abusive behaviour.  That's why I've spent nearly twenty-five years working to end gendered violence.  Violence is social behaviour that people LEARN - it's not inevitable or natural or boys being boys.  It's also not an accident, it's the logical conclusion of all the ways femininity and women are reduced to less than by dominant cultural values.   

Changing violent behaviour - and changing the ways you use power more broadly - is hard work.  It requires honesty, self-reflection, feeling the pain of causing others harm.  Listening to people you've hurt and taking responsibility for never doing that again is about the hardest process I've ever tried to participate in.  Many men who use violence don't seem to have the stomach for it.

The men we look up to matter.  They are part of what stitches together gendered violence, misogyny and sexist oppression.  Does Chris Brown teach young men to treat women, and all other genders with respect or disdain?  Is he the kind of man we want young men in Aotearoa to learn from, emulate, hold up as a role model?

Hell no.

I have no doubt that part of Tariana Turia and other high profile Māori women's support of Chris Brown is disgust at the different ways men of colour and white men are treated when it comes to using violence.  She's right about that, and not just at the immigration border.  I went to a Refuge hui once where Māori women were talking about criminalisation of Māori men, and Pākehā women were talking about not being able to get adequate police responses to white middle class male perpetrators.  I've personally seen the police not charge white men who have knifed their partners, and put their partners in hospital after beatings - even when they knew he was the perpetrator.  The reality is, whiteness is like a magic cloud of fairy dust in all kinds of ways, and when it comes to causing violence, it's the best way to avoid consequences, particularly when combined with middle class belonging. 

 

But the answer's not extending the white fairy dust to Chris Brown.  It's extending the calling out of the use of violence - with associated sanctions - to white entertainers too.  The flip-side of constructing men of colour as scary violent thugs - racist and damaging as this is to Black masculinities - is the invisibility of white men's violence, in all kinds of ways.  So next time the Rolling Stones tour, let's have just as much public discussion of Bill Wyman's acknowledged statutory rape and their lyrics promoting raping Black women as the publicity Mr Brown has attracted this last week or so.  That would be progress around ending gendered violence.

Take Back the Night - AKL - 28th Aug

What:  Take Back the Night

When:  7:00pm, Friday 28 August 2015

Where:  Meet Corner of Symonds St and Alfred St, Auckland Central

https://www.facebook.com/events/1453304644982520/

The march will conclude with a rally in Aotea Square with awesome speakers, poetry and music.

This year as we celebrate our communities coming together to reclaim our right to walk our city at night - indeed all the time - without fear, we are mindful that the Law Commission's report on sexual violence trials is due to be released in September. Let's bring the issue of sexual violence and rape culture to the forefront!

Organised by Auckland Feminist Action.

The evolution of Male Chauvinist Pig to SPERM

Content note: explicit discussion of violence against women, violent misogyny and rape culture.

They call themselves "men's rights activists," and we've let them get away with it.  They have been clever, using language of "rights" and liberal ideas of equality, all the while demonising women and reinforcing sexist oppression.  A Voice for Men, Masculinist Evolution New Zealand (MENZ), the New Zealand Equality Education Foundation and the Union of Fathers have stolen liberatory language while they work on restoring men to their rightful place as top of the heap.

It's about time feminists called this out.  Second wave feminists in the 1960s and 1970s called sexists male chauvinist pigs.  They didn't let MCPs define the terms.

This international "men's rights" movement includes "activists" celebrating domestic violence murders as men fighting back.

Then there is A Voice for Men and their take on fathering daughters:

The night winds on, with discussion of rape and the smothering of penises, the sorrows of false accusations and the narcissism of young girls. A sore point for Factory, who has two daughters, who, like young women everywhere, he says, compete for the most exaggerated rape claim. It is, he says, a status thing. When one of his daughters came home one night and said she’d been raped, he said, "Are you fucking kidding me?" Sitting with us, he hikes his voice up to a falsetto in imitation: " ’Oh, I just got raped.’ " He laughs. There’s a moment of silence. A bridge too far? "I told her if she pressed charges, I’d disown her."

Elam, whose attention has drifted, grins through his beard. "That’s good fathering," he says."

Here in New Zealand MENZ help men to avoid protection orders for domestic violence and tell you what to do if you're accused of rape.  The face of MENZ is John Potter, convicted child sexual abuser.  Posts and comments on the page are Misogyny 101.

Let's call these male chauvinist pigs, with all-new equality lingo, what they are.  Sexist Protectors of Extra Rights for Men.   

SPERMs have many concerns, what with all the feminism.  Recently they got worried about Mad Max and Hollywood being unfair on men.  I'm just going to leave this here, thanks Human Rights Commission.

Increasingly though, the focus of SPERMs is domestic and sexual violence.  They argue men are just as likely to be victims as women, and women are just as likely to be perpetrators as men. 

This argument is well-advanced in Aotearoa, and while MENZ and John Potter may seem fringe, SPERM academics like David Fergusson and MSD's new Chief Science Advisor Richie Poulton who focus on undermining "ideological" approaches to gendered violence, do not.  Nor do the regular deluge of emails from other SPERMs to policy analysts inside government.

Fergusson and Poulton have been arguing for years - with super approving commentary at MENZ and elsewhere - that women are as violent as men, based on research which uses the Conflict Tactics Scale.  I stab you, you push me away, we've been equally violent.  The CTS has been heavily critiqued for missing self-defense, not addressing context like whether or not you're afraid, and not measuring sexual violence in relationships.

Fergusson and Poulton can't explain the gender differences in hospital admissions, rates of seeking protection orders, rates of reporting to the Police, numbers of families in Refuges.  Even they haven't been able to pretend sexual violence is gender neutral.

I do not wish to pretend that men never experience domestic or sexual violence.  There's good evidence that boys are targeted for sexual abuse at previously unsuspected rates,  if not at the same rates as girls.  And with emerging data showing high rates of victimisation for trans* and intersex people, acknowledging diverse experiences of violence is vital.  

But saying violence is always an awful thing - whatever your gender identity - is not the same as pretending it happens at the same rates across gender.  SPERMs are not happy with acknowledging male victims exist; they need them to exist equally with female victims.  And they need female perpetrators to exist equally with male perpetrators.  Contrary to evidence.

New Zealand's Family Violence Death Review from 2013 tells us that in 55 cases of violence which led to death:

• 51 deaths were of female victims of men's violence; 1 death was of a male victim of women's violence; 3 deaths were new male partners killed by ex-male partners
• 53 murders were committed by abusive men; 2 murders were committed by abusive women, one of a male partner, one of a female partner

It will be very interesting to see whether Richie Poulton's ideological influence at MSD leads to a degendering of domestic and sexual violence.  Will he try to further SPERM positions like encouraging female victims into counselling with men using violence and removing state supports for women leaving violent relationships?  How will funding for groups working with male survivors increase?

One area he's likely to attack - because SPERMs hate it - is the White Ribbon Campaign, which focuses on ending men's violence towards women.  White Ribbon commemorates 14 murders by a male engineering student who killed women on a course he missed out on in Montreal in 1991.  Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse Trust, Family First and MENZ all come out swinging on this one, pretty much every year.  They actively campaign to stop others participating - one comment on the MENZ link above explains how they stopped New Zealand Courts displaying any White Ribbon materials.  They argue the White Ribbon campaign should be about male victims too, despite how insulting that would be to the 14 murdered women the campaign honours.

One final note.  I've trained close to 50 sexual violence prevention practitioners in New Zealand over the last few years, with nearly an even gender split.  The vast majority of the men doing that work understand gendered dynamics well, and are constantly looking for new ways to encourage other men to behave in respectful, playful and equity based ways when they are sexual with other people, and to intervene if they see men around them supporting violence.

Just one SPERM in that time is probably pretty good going, though I still worry about the damage he may be doing with the young people he works with.   Our training included how to facilitate a session on "Blurred Lines" to encourage conversation about gender norms.  The vicious misogyny of this song, when you actually read the lyrics, is difficult to miss.  The SPERM was most concerned about these lyrics:

"So, hit me up when you pass through
I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two"

He was worried that young men who don't have big enough penises to "tear asses in two" would not feel masculine enough.  This SPERM was thinking like a rapist.

"Men's rights activists" are not fighting for rights and equality.  I'm sick of being polite about them, using their language and having to re-prove, over and over again, that sexist oppression exists.  Sexist Protectors of Extra Rights for Men want to always be the centre of attention, setting all the rules, having all their needs met, being the only voices heard.  Enough.  Let's take it back.

____________________________________________________
For the first time, I am closing comments on a post.  I've been the target of SPERMs in New Zealand before, and while I can't control what they write about me on their own sites, I'm choosing not to allow that here, for this post.  Apologies to all our fabulous readers who would no doubt enjoy discussing and debating the issues above.

Everywhere

Recently I've been spending a lot of time on the 9th floor of Auckland City Hospital - Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) is currently the temporary home of my third child, born three weeks ago today.*  Even here, perhaps especially here given the stress of it all, there is violence against women perpetrated by men.

When Early first arrived I was admitted to Ward 96 and he was in nearby Ward 92.  There is a security door between the two wards, which requires a swipe card and only the mothers of babies in Ward 92, who are themselves in Ward 96, are allowed the cards.  Any visitors to my baby were only allowed in, one at a time, with me or the baby's father.  It seemed a bit over the top, until it became apparent that there was a mother and baby in the wards who had a father attempting to visit despite her strong desire for him not to do so.  To keep her safe, and the babies, hers and ours, it was necessary to be super vigilant about that door between Ward 96 and Ward 92, and no doubt at reception for NICU proper, because even here, even in the newborn ward of a hospital, there was a threat of violence.

Then there was this very sad sad story in Whangarei, unfolding at the same time that we were all guarding that door on the 9th floor:

Rachal, 20, died in Whangarei Hospital on June 10 after suffering a severe asthma attack at home. She was eight-and-a-half months pregnant. Her baby was delivered by caesarean section while she was in a coma, but he died in Starship the following day. He was named Robert....Rachal was in the care of the Dingwall Trust, a care and protection facility in Papatoetoe, South Auckland, from nine until she turned 17.The trust's director, Tracie Shipton, says staff had serious concerns about what would happen to Rachal if she returned home. It was also feared she wouldn't get the medical treatment she needed for her asthma and eczema.

The violence is real, the threat is real; it happens everywhere even if we don't see it.  There is a lot of talk about terrorism, focused on the international scene, but it seems to me that so much terror, so much fear and harm, is in everyday lives because of men who hate women, men who abuse women. 

 At the root of most of the recent mass murders we have seen has been a man (or a group of men) who do not see women as full humans; Dylann Roof (Charleston, USA) reckoned he was protecting white women from rape by black men, yet the people he shot dead were mostly black women, and his extreme racism seems to have been coupled with an incredibly patriarchal (at best) attitude to females; Man Haron Monis (Sydney, Australia) had a history of violence against women which, had it been addressed, may have averted the Lindt Cafe siege; Anders Breivik (Norway) blamed feminism for eroding the culture of Europe and advocated for a resurgence of patriarchy; Jody Hunt (West Virginia, USA) killed his ex-girlfriend first; Elliot Rodger (California, USA) specifically drove to a sorority house for his second batch of killings, to punish women in general for rejecting him.  

We cannot properly address and eliminate violence against women until we address and eliminate sexism.  Until we can create a society where women are equal, both in perception and reality, we will not stop all these deaths, assaults and rapes.  And we have to at least try.

*  Baby and I are both doing well thanks, just arrived v early for no discernable reason. 

A cloak of privilege

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Afraid of the darkness

Content warning:  This is about violence against women.

Tonight as I left work someone said to me to take care, and I knew what she meant.  She meant take care because it is dark.

But it's not the dark that hurts us.  It's not the dark that killed Blessie.

It's the darkness; the hate of women, the drive to possess us, to control us.  The dehumanising of women, who are, after all, just other people, to the point where killing us, hurting us is somehow justifiable.

The vast vast majority of people who are murdered in Aotearoa New Zealand are killed by people they know.  For women the most dangerous person in their life, statistically, is a male partner.  There is no data on this, but I imagine most of those killings happen in light, artificial or natural.

Blessie didn't die because she caught the bus, she didn't die because she was out alone at night; both of those things are normal ordinary things to do, things most men can do without question, things we all should be able to do without fear and without a bad outcome.  Blessie died because someone killed her.  

We can fear the dark, and what's in the dark, but it won't keep us safe to do so.

starting a conversation

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her name was reeva steenkamp

late last night (nz time) news broke that oscar pistorius had been charged with murdering his girlfriend.  the tv news item was pretty sketchy, so i immediately went on to twitter to find out what was going on.  like countless millions around the world, i'd found him inspiring at the olympics (though i only managed to put in 1 line about him in this post).  hence, again like countless others, i wanted to find out what was going on.

my own reaction was mixed - yes, i thought about yet another fallen sports hero, immediately connected him in my mind to lance armstrong, but mostly i thought about the young woman who had just had her life cut short, who had died an awful death.  and given that an act of violence like that doesn't happen in isolation, i wondered what she might have been through prior that.

the one thought that didn't cross my mind was "poor oscar".  of course he may be found innocent, and regardless of whether he is or not, there is no doubt he is suffering because of this incident.  but really, his suffering is totally secondary to the fact that an innocent woman lost her life, (allegedly) at the hands of a person she was close to.

yet on twitter, there was a constant stream of "poor oscar" tweets.  it's not that i have a problem with people feeling sorry for mr pistorius per se - particularly when some people were believing that he shot her by mistake thinking she was an intruder.  but it was more that was a serious shortage of tweets of "poor girlfriend who just died".  it was almost she didn't exist, or if she did, it's only in relation to the great tragedy that mr pistorius' life had just become.

i read a couple of article by sports writers, and yup, the main focus was on fallen heroes and "how much can we really know our sportpeople" and "but what he achieved as a sportsperson is still inspiring".  all of which is true, but what about her who died?  what about her right to be safe, to be alive?  you're writing a piece within hours of her death, and yet you have nothing to say about her other than to passingly mention her name?  and yes, i get that you're sportswriters, but that doesn't mean you're not allowed to mention domestic violence in piece about someone who just been involved in a fatal incident of domestic violence.

some of the news reports today have been better.  we are at least getting to hear about reeva steenkamp and from her family.  but the majority are still like this one.  because he's the more famous one, he gets to be the one reported about, the main focus.  it's taken a "gratuitous" picture by a british newspaper for the hashtag #HerNameWasReevaSteenkamp for her to become, at least for one aspect, the centre of coverage.

until she becomes the focus of coverage across the board, we won't be talking about the issues that are most important here.  not the loss of a sporting hero, but the need to deal with domestic violence, to focus on the causes and to work a lot harder to prevent the loss of life.  given that we so recently had the 1 billion rising initiative designed to raise awareness about domestic violence, you would think that would influence some of the coverage.  but clearly not.

this tweet says it all:

@piersmorgan tragic for #hernamewasReevaSteenkamp. Just because he was a sportsman doesn't mean he wasn't a domestic violence perpetrator
— Claire (@Claireyj99) February 15, 2013

ETA: i had to include this one as well:

@jentuds @theipaper #hernamewasReevaSteenkamp He took her life; don't take away her name. She wasn't an adjunct of the man that killed her.

— Aliki misses the sea (@amaenad) February 15, 2013

targetting young women

here's another story of a young person who is now dead, believed to have committed suicide, as a result of internet bullying.  if you haven't heard the full story of amanda todd, it's best you hear it directly from her:



it's an incredibly sad story, and there are several things that bother me about it.

the initial problem started when someone convinced her to go topless during a chat using a webcam.  a year later, the same man threatened to send a topless photo of her to everyone she knew, unless she agreed to further demands.  he had accessed her personal information and also knew how to contact the important people in her life.  he did end up sending the photos around, and continued to stalk her even after she moved cities and schools.

what i don't understand is why the police didn't look for this man.  from the video, it appears the police were the ones to notify her that the photograph had been circulated.  it was taken when she was in 7th grade, and i don't know how old she would have been, but it clearly appears she would be underage.  that in itself is a crime.  then using the photo to coerce her into doing other sexual acts would be another crime.  i would think circulation of the photo without her consent would be a crime as well.

that initial circulation, according to her own words in the video, affected her badly, leading to anxiety.  how is it that the authorities were unable to find out who this guy was and have him brought to justice?  it doesn't make sense to me.  even if they didn't do it at the point the photo was first circulated, surely it would have been done at this point:

She changed schools and found a new group of friends in an effort to leave behind the bullies. Then the man created a Facebook profile, using her uncensored photo as his profile picture. "Cried every night, lost all my friends and respect people had for me... again... then nobody liked me," she wrote in the video.

on top of that, her reaction to the circulation of the photograph is likely to have been the result of feeling shamed.  that shame comes from the people around - she talks about people losing respect for her.  it's appalling that shaming a young person in this way would take precedence over shaming the person who did it to her.  if she had supportive people around her, particularly from her peers, the feelings of shame would have been a lot less.  clearly, all the young people around her were judging her for what she did.

and where would they have learned to do that?  from the adults in their lives, who either had the same reaction or who didn't bother to correct the reaction of their young ones.  it's possible some might not have known this shaming was going on, which suggests to me that they weren't involved enough in the lives of their young ones to know about they way their kids were mistreating others.

then there was the further incident of a group of young girls from her old school beating up this young woman, for the crime of having sex with the boyfriend of one of them.  while she chose not to press charges, i believe those kids could have been tried for the crime, with use of witness statements from the teachers who came over to see what happened, from the 50 or so witnesses from the new school, and from some of the members of the group from the old school.  ms todd need not have had to testify at all.  the fact that nothing was done, the total lack of consequences for the physical violence, empowers the bullies and add to the culture which allows bullying to keep happening.


while i'm talking about young women being bullied, let me also mention malala yousafzai, the young pakistani woman fighting for her life after being shot by a member of the taliban.  what has been done to her is appalling, and it is heartening to see the outpouring of support from around the world.  i really do wish her all the best, and hope she survives and continues to be an inspiration to young women in pakistan and around the world.

one of her "crimes" was to be seen to align herself with the very western powers who are responsible for invasion and occupation of afghanistan, and for the drone attacks in northern pakistan.  that would have been motivation enough for those who killed her.  but that they think there is any kind of religious justification for the attempted murder of a young woman, effectively still a child.  even if they believed she had committed a crime, there is no room for vigilante justice without any kind of trial.

i can only hope that the outpouring of support and prayers around the world will lead to some kind of cultural change in the places where it's most needed.

who hates who?

i've been meaning to write a post about mona eltahawy's article published in foreign policy, entitled "why do they hate us".  if you haven't heard about it yet, it's a piece that details misogyny in the middle east, and has caused quite a bit of controversy.

the controversy lies in something i've mentioned many times here: that it is very difficult to deal with issues of misogyny when they intersect with racism or bigotry.  in other words, the very act of raising issues of misogyny is likely to increase the level of discrimination faced by the very women who are the subject of misogyny.  in other words, the way you frame the debate very much determines whether or not that group of women will continue to be stereotyped as helpless victims in need of saving, as women who have little agency or ability.

as i read the first few paragraphs of the ms eltahawy's piece, my heart sank a little.  they were based on fiction, but are definitely part of the reality of many women's lives.  but not just arab women: there are women all over the world who are used for sex by men who have little concern about women's desire or pleasure, who are trapped in relationships for various reasons but very often related to poverty.  not only that, but islamic law actually requires husbands to ensure that their wives have sexual satisfaction within the relationship.  but ms eltahawy mentions none of this - you don't get that kind of context at all.

which is a pity, because the lives of these women, who are used or trapped, they need to be improved.  and cultural change is part of the process, as is structural and political change.  all of these are required, and her main point that there is a danger of women's rights being lost in the aftermath of the arab spring is a very important and valid one.

she accepts a lot of the criticism of her piece, and responds by saying that she had made it deliberately controversial just to kick-start the conversation. you can hear her saying this during a debate with leila ahmed:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

incidentally, i have a book on women in islam by leila ahmed on my bookshelf, but this is the first time i've seen her speak and i was much impressed.  i think she brought a lot of good points to the debate, and you can read her thoughts as part of a suite of responses at foreign policy here.  the links to the other 5 responses can be found here, and though it was separate from the main issue, i did like the critique of the photographs accompanying ms eltahawy's piece contained in the 5th piece.

as always, my facebook friends provide me with valuable insights, and here is a comment from one of them:

Eltahwy's piece - whether well intended, providing advice for women, pointing to problems that exist within the context of the revolution period- can only be sustained by a racist orientalist narrative that juxtaposes a Western emancipatory culture with Arab and Muslim society as regressive and misogynistic. Moreover, what is missing in the critiques of Eltahawy and broader feminist debates is under what notion of woman, freedom, equality, subjectivity and autonomy is Eltahawy's feminist critique of Arab and Muslim society operating under? People like her talk about oppression, freedom, etc. as if they're neutral categories and have universal meanings. This isn't a cultural relativist argument, rather, it is pointing to the fact that when Western observers like Elthawy judges and scrutinises other societies and their practice, they are participating in an arrogant assumption that they know best and their version of freedom, agency, and desire - as such should be applied uniformly. Lord Cromer and Laura Bush echoed similar sentiments. Further, they also rely on the assumption that FGM, rape, virginity tests, etc. should only be understood within a uni-dimensional narrative. How do you reconcile the reality that FGM is largely enforced by women themselves? Or are going to fall into the 'false consciousness' trap? Moreover, Eltahawy's entire career has been reliant upon pitting herself as liberal, free, enlightened against her abject and silent sisters of which she alone has a permission to narrate their experiences for they have the inability to speak for themselves. This is Said's Orientalism 101 and the fact that Eltahawy is Arab and Muslim doesn't change her incredibly racist views. The fact that she is unaware of the implications of everything she writes and even supports the banning of niqab in the context of a rise in Islamophobia in the West reaffirms her parochial and naive politics. Her voice SHOULD be silenced through discrediting her in whatever way possible; I'm not interested in the postmodernist argument that every voice has a validity, authenticity and value to be heard when these narratives are deployed to wage wars, structurally marginalise entire communities and perpetuate racist views that dehumanise others. They are products of colonial mimesis: mimicking the voice of empire. The greatest irony here is that Eltahawy participates in the ultimate violence against women and Islam: an epistemic violence that erases entire histories and cultural realities with a narcissistic cry of self-righteous indignation.

all of this does ignore the fact that ms eltahawy was herself the subject of extreme violence, which is also likely to inform her views.  and it also doesn't help us solve the conundrum: what is the right way to raise & discuss these issues?  what perspective would work and how do we achieve real change?  and when we talk of change, what is the change that is best for those women living in that environment, as opposed to the change that we, sitting so far away, would want for them?

i certainly haven't arrived at any satisfactory answers to those questions.  if anything, i'm involved in trying to provide practical support through the provision of social services (at a governance level rather than hands-on provision), but this doesn't foster cultural, societal or political change.  the only organisation that seems to be attempting the latter is shakti, but their approach is similar to ms eltahawy's, only more so, and i'm personally very uncomfortable with it.  somehow we have to find a way to improve women's lives while also ensuring we don't exacerbate views like this (yes, that would the same fred barret from tirau who i wrote about here, still going strong).


i'll just finish off linking to some more reading on this issue, if this post wasn't enough for you, a couple of which i got from here (a piece supporting ms eltahawy, and rightly pointing out that a great deal of the controversy surrounding Eltahawy’s essay, revolves around who she is and what her perceived intentions are, rather than what she stands for or the issues she raises).  there is this piece in the guardian which i really liked (avoid comments), and this piece in the atlantic which raised some good points but started to get a little too apologetic for my liking (the comments are relatively not so bad here, at least for the first half, and worth a quick look).  and finally there's this piece, which is sort of relevant in that it deals with islam & feminism.

Conversations I want to have

The following was recently published in 'Thinking Differently', the quarterly newsletter of Autism New Zealand Inc.

'Your Letters'

This is an excerpt from a letter we received from one reader, who had been married to a man with Aspergers Syndrome. She discovered he'd been sexually interfering with her 11-year old twin daughters and eventual divorced him. The letter is extensive, but she presents a valid point of view, based on her experience.
"The Law is there to protect others from those behaviours. Aspergers should not be exempt from the law or being locked up. I do believe many serial killers and rapists have Aspergers. They can be cunning and devious. Aspergers do commit crimes, probably more often than normal people. We matter too."
H---- F--- (abridged)

I'm angry and saddened that it was written, more so that Autism New Zealand saw fit to publish such an offensive letter whilst stating that it presents 'a valid point of view'. But I'm perhaps most frustrated at the way it has set the agenda, that to counteract this it feels necessary to scrabble round for statistics saying that we're not any more likely to murder or rape than "normal people". I don't want to have to come up with examples of how we're the good "Aspergers" who pay our taxes and follow the law and have never had so much as a speeding fine. Those aren't the conversations I want to have.

I don't think there's any way to usefully engage with the idea of 'serial killers'. Is regular murder not shocking enough? There really aren't enough serial killers out there for this to be a meaningful discussion. I don't believe aspies are any more likely to be rapists than the general population. If there's evidence of a statistically significant disparity, that needs to be looked at, but in a country and world with the rates of rape and associated violence that exists, along with the terrible conviction rates and limited government willingness to do anything about either, I feel there are more important things to engage in that idle speculation about who does it most.

But let's leave aside the serial killers and the rapists for a second. Let's talk about the aspies who end up in the justice system for vandalism, for theft, for getting into fights or retaliating against violence. Lets talk about those who have not done what they're accused of but can't stand up to questioning or navigate the legal system (as a teenager I admitted to shoplifting I hadn't done (fortunately avoiding a criminal charge) because security guard told me I had no choice but to admit it and I believed that, literally, and because I didn't see any way anyone would understand my compulsive need to read song lyrics anyway). If the main backbone of the conversation is that statistically most of us are law abiding, if those of us who can go round flaunting our jobs and our taxpaying and our relationships and our degrees and our mortgages and our nice clean criminal records, then we're feeling good about ourselves and changing absolutely nothing.

So instead, let's have a conversation about a world which makes things unbearable for us, and when we lash out, potentially at people or at objects, the solution is not to change the environment to prevent a reoccurance, but to punish us. Let's have a conversation about how difficult legal systems are to navigate, how atypical facial expressions or eye contact are so often assumed to mean guilt, how a neurotypical person can sometimes avoid a charge for a minor offence with a "sorry mate" whilst pedantic questioning of language and the nature of the offence is almost certainly going to lead to an arrest. Let's talk about how atypical movement or gestures or reasons for going to places is viewed as grounds for suspicion, how silence is viewed as stubbornness or lack of co-operation, how literal interpretation of questions is viewed as rudeness. Let's talk about how the effect is doubled, tripled for people already disadvantaged in our legal system.

Let's not be afraid to have a conversation about prisons. When people say we don't lock up autistic people/mentally ill people/intellectually impaired people, I always want to ask what the hell they think prisons are other than a dumping ground with disproportionate rates of all of the above. And I get why we're afraid to talk about this - we've spent so long trying to say that we're good people really, we're not scary people, we could be your neighbour. But we need to challenge the assumption that there's a perfect correlation between 'in prison' and 'bad person', or that crimes exist in some kind of vacuum as an indicator of someone's morality, rather than being socially constructed.

Yes, it is worth challenging such obvious bigotry, the inaccruate assumptions, the stereotyping and the offensive language. And then let's move on. If we're talking about Aspergers and crime, let's talk about parents who murder autistic children and are then treated with sympathy, about autistic people who have been raped and are then told their non-verbal communication is inadmissable in court. Let's talk less about how some cunning and devious aspies can apparently get away with everything (something I'd guess would have far more to with the numbers who get away with child abuse generally) and more about how the legal system fails aspies on both sides.

'Happier Times'

Dear media,

When reporting on domestic violence cases, please stop captioning pictures of the smiling couple with the words 'in happier times'.

By the time the violence comes to legal and/or media attention, it's usually been going on for some time. And people experiencing all kinds of trauma - especially that which they might be terrified to reveal - learn to hide it.

Violence doesn't start when it's reported, and smiles do not equal happy. Unless you know this case to be an exception to that rule, the 'happier times' label reinforces both of those myths. Please don't.

Thanks.

Barbaric to pretend violence against women isn't our problem to solve

King of the blog David Farrar's recent stuff opinion piece on immigration and women's rights on the surface does not make violence against women a Muslim issue:

I also think that one has to be careful not to attribute events like this to one religion. While forced marriages and honour killings are generally associated with so-called adherents of Islam, they are a tiny minority. Some might advocate that our immigration laws should discriminate on the basis of religion, but I do not.

Commendable, despite the headline to the piece, "Barbarism in NZ and Canada" which seemed to set it up in quite a different light.

What troubles me is his later framing of New Zealand as a country with certain fundamentals in place:

The rule of law, democracy, equal rights for women, separation of state and church, and free speech.

Making all new immigrants aware of the laws they are subject to once they live in Aotearoa New Zealand is undoubtedly a good thing, and something women's groups active in supporting migrant women in abusive relationships have been advocating for years. Too often, violent men deliberately hold immigration status as a threat over migrant women as a tool of abuse -but interestingly, there is no evidence these violent men are shadowy barbaric men of colour rather than New Zealand citizens. Win a wife, anyone?

But please let's not pretend we have anything like an equal society in terms of gender. We have a current MP, after all, who thinks Silly Little Girls are ruining the western world, by, you know, leaving the kitchen. Should we ask immigrants to read Richard Prosser's book as preparation for life in New Zealand? Or how about they listen to John Tamihere on the radio? Also an MP when he expressed his concern about "front bums" and the influence we have. Then there is legendary All Black Andy Haden, telling New Zealand that women only call rape when "the cheque bounces." Unfortunately dealing with the rape culture that piece of victim blaming provoked didn't happen on Kiwiblog - instead commentator after commentator said Andy Haden was just telling the truth, completely without challenge by Mr Farrar.

What about the domestic violence which provoked this opinion piece? New Zealand levels are epidemic. A woman is dying every five weeks here because her partner or ex-partner believes he has the right to kill her, often before killing himself. Was what Clayton Weatherston did "barbaric," or sadly a commonplace incident which received higher than usual media coverage because he was white, middle class, and entitled enough to believe if he spoke in court he could convince us that cutting pieces off a woman is justified if she's not respectful enough of your penis? Most perpetrators of domestic violence don't speak in court, they let our general New Zealand culture of victim-blaming and minimising violence speak for them.

In short, I agree with David Farrar that what happened to that young woman, forced marriage, is horrific and a violation of her rights. I agree with him that it's not acceptable or desirable to discriminate on the basis of religion in terms of immigration. I agree that discussing the laws and rights which protect New Zealand residents is important for everyone thinking of migrating here. And I'd add to that - especially appropriate to remember today - the context of Te Tiriti o Waitangi should be compulsory for all new waves of tangata tiriti.

But I don't agree we have consensus on issues of justice for women in Aotearoa, I don't agree we have anything like gender equity, and I'd enjoy seeing every incident of violence against women - regardless of the ethnicity of the perpetrator - attract as much concern and desire to shift cultural norms from New Zealand commentators as this one has.
Yours,
A Silly Little Front Bum

Uncomfortable Overlaps

A few years ago, I sought counselling from a feminist organisation. I had effectively untreated and quite serious PTSD from events earlier in my life, and there were a couple of other smaller stresses on me at that time. I've never had a good time with counselors; my previous experiences had ranged from outright homophobia and pretty significant verbal abuse to my pissing them off for reasons I simply couldn't identify. Suffice it to say that I didn't try again until I really needed to.

Said feminist organisation was the only option - at least that I was aware of - that was possible given my budget. I wasn't comfortable with it from the start; I knew people whose employment or voluntary work brought them into contact with it in a professional capacity. Rationally, most of the people I had in mind were caring and supportive - or at least capable of acting so. But every week I sat in the waiting room on the verge of throwing up from the fear that I would meet someone I knew and explain that I was not there in my usual activist role. However much I believed there was no shame in being there, I was utterly ashamed.

This post is an attempt to untangle, both from personal experience and a more theoretical standpoint some of the issues around the uncomfortable intersection between the activist community and the provisions and receipt of services (none of these are ideal terms, but I lack better ones). And the first point is criticism. Because my experience wasn't good. It involved - and I won't go into the details - significant amounts of implied victim blaming, repeated dismissal of my disabilities, telling me to do things I'd explicitly identified as triggering and ultimately - when the counselor left the service -  dropping me when I was in an obviously incredibly vulnerable state without any kind of follow up.

Yet I really hesitated about writing this post. It's been brewing in my head for a while, and I'm still not sure if I'll actually click 'publish'. And one of the reasons is I feel uncomfortable criticising this organisation when I know many people who do important work to support it. I don't think I personally know anyone who works or volunteers there, but I could. They're the sort of people I organise events alongside, go to meetings with, march with. It goes against a lot of instinct - even though the only place my criticism gets personal is against that one counsellor - to criticise when we should be standing together against some scary common enemy, or something like that. Moreover, I know this organisation and others like it are horribly underfunded and need support - and they do help a lot of people and I really don't want to undermine that in any way. It's not a new, or an unusual quandry - how to criticise from within a marginalised group or perspective without reinforcing that coming from without, but I think it has a particularly concerning place here.

The second point is about supporting people who are within activist groups. This is a much bigger topic than I have the scope for here, and a lot has been written about it. But all I've found is centred on two things; one is when someone is being supported with an issue that relates to the group (for example abuse by another group member) or short term support - such as someone being triggered within a meeting. I don't necessarily consider this a bad thing, or that activist groups should be taking on long term support roles - in fact, I think often the danger is taking on too much and it is better to draw a clear line around what can and can't be done well. But where activism and service provision are mixed, things can become problematic, and I'm not sure a lot of people involved even note this as an issue.

Part of this relates to heirarchy. This is not to discount the hierarchy present within activist organisations, and part of this is personal - I really struggle with interacting with medical and related services and I tend to thrive in environments where I get to talk loudly, organise things and play with websites and mailing lists. I appreciate this isn't universal. But the movement of the same people, involving the same issues, between the fuzzy, ill defined and informal roles and heirarchy of informal activist groups and the really clear cut roles of (say) counsellor and client is not necessarily an easy one. And then - more simply but perhaps hard to resolve - simpler issues like confidentiality and how relationships change between spaces.

I think also, there are different stories told in service provision and activist groups. I'm sure there are a lot of exceptions to these, as there are people about whom they are true, but as much as anything it's the assumptions that are made that's relevant. One, by (generally charitable) service providers, is of the client who comes to them with a problem; usually there are multiple things wrong in their life. They are helped by the organisation, they grow in confidence. They volunteer for the group and become a campaigner on the issue they experienced. The other story is - well I've found it most common in socialist groups, particularly around sexual orientation, but I think it's wider than that - of people who participate in activism for a cause, perhaps defending people they care about, perhaps because it relates to something else they're involved in, perhaps seeing it in pretty abstract terms initially. It's that involvement that gives them the knowledge and confidence to address it in their own lives.

And there are problems - probably for both groups - in reconciling these two stories. It was really hard to explain that yes, I'd organised a reclaim the night march (hey look, there's the poster for it on the wall right there), yes, I'd blogged for the best part of the year on victim blaming, but that doesn't mean that I haven't internalised a whole lot of these ideas.

The third angle I wanted to talk about was exclusion. Whilst the counselor crossed some very clear lines with me, as others have done, I'm increasingly seeing my general negative interactions in terms of my disability status. I didn't fit into the typical mold of people they catered for, and they didn't cater for me. The lack of acknowledgement or understanding of this is what makes it particularly problematic, but even with that, it's exclusionary.

I'm reasonably confident in my response to groups that deliberately discriminate against groups of people (it ain't positive). I also recognise that they cannot provide services to all people, and that there are legitimate limits to what they can and can't do. But this indirect exclusion becomes more difficult when there are discrepancies between a funded service provider that may well have a mandate to meet the more typical needs of the majority, versus a dynamic where questioning such exclusions is a discussion that comes naturally to some of the members.

On a personal level, I found options that worked for me and I am doing much better now. Options that required having someone to help me research them, and a disposable income, both of which I had, neither of which should be expected. On a more general level... once again, I feel only that I have a whole heap of issues to raise and no solutions to offer, but it's a start.

Comment direction: no speculation about the identities of individuals and organisations involved please. It makes me really uncomfortable and isn't relevant. I ask you to remember that this post represents my thoughts and experiences and not necessarily those of anyone else at THM.

Call to Action: supporting Auckland Sexual Abuse Help

Luddite Journo has written several excellent posts on the urgent funding plight of Auckland's 24/7 phoneline for those affected by sexual violence, run by Auckland Sexual Abuse Help.  You can still sign the petition, currently over 5000 sigs in less than a week.

Tomorrow (Friday 16th December) those in Auckland have two chances to show your support for this absolutely vital service, and pressure the Government to come through with the vital money, as follows:

Crisis Cake Stall
WHEN:  11am, Friday 16th December
WHERE:  Outside Nikki Kaye's electorate office, 82 College Hill, Freemans Bay.
WHO:  Anyone really who wants to show support for the service, and the organisation in general.  I'll be there, with Snuffly and cupcakes.
I'll add a link to the media release on this once it is up.

Public Rally
WHEN:  6.30pm, Friday 16th December
WHERE:  QE2 Square, opposite the Britomart Train Station
WHO:  All welcome, bring your ranty voices!
Facebook event with more info is here.

If you can only make one and are trying to pick then I recommend the evening event, as that's where numbers will be most important.  Although, if the funding from Government is pledged before 6.30pm then it may be cancelled (in which case I'll try my best to put an update on the blog).

An Ironic Juxtaposition

Cross posted from my usual spot...

jux•ta•po•si•tion / [juhk-stuh-puh-zish-uh n]
noun
an act or instance of placing close together or side by side, especially for comparison or contrast.

An Ironic Juxtaposition: Twilight Vs. White ribbon day.

Some people will say “ahhh I have heard this rant before”. Some people may be on the “huh?” side of things.

When I read the first twilight book I had shudders. I read the entire series because A) they were easy to read, and B) I wanted to see exactly how dysfunctional things got.
If twi-hards read my blog, at this point I’m sure you are thinking “What the HELL!! This is TRUE LOVE, look what they GO THROUGH TO BE TOGETHER!!!” (More than three exclamation marks to a fan is as glitter to the vamps)

Actually, true love means doing the best for your partner. In the example of the twilight characters it would be him never talking to her and walking the hell away, since at their age difference it is essentially paedophilia.

Having been in an abusive relationship I know exactly how romantic it is.
The massive ups and downs. Having them tell you that they are sorry, it is just that they love you SO MUCH. After I broke up with him it advanced to more fully fledged stalking, and abuse. Even then there were 17 year olds cooing about how romantic he was. WTF is romantic about someone following you, or sitting outside your house and just watching?

Seeing as 12 years hasnt improved anyone's comprehension of romance vs dysfunction, I am going to lay out the stark facts. These thanks to the Sophie Elliot Foundation (I found her case terrifyingly close to home).

Early signs of abuse in relationships

Power and control
Is obsessive. Tells you who you can see, what clothes to wear, how to have your hair or makeup. Often says, “If you love me you will …”

Possessiveness
Wants to know where you going, who you are with, when you will be home, and so on. Displays stalking behaviours such as following you, accusing you of being unfaithful, flirting, and so on.

Isolates you
Stops you or makes it difficult for you to see your family or friends. Sulks or is moody when your family or friends are around, and makes you feel uncomfortable until they are gone.

Threats
Is abusive to you, or about your family, friends or pets. Indulges in name calling, and physical and emotional threats. Says things like, “I will leave you if …”, “I will hurt you if ….”. Nasty behaviour towards pets is a frequent early warning sign.

Suicide threats
Says things like:
“I need you.”
“You’re the only one who understands me.”
“I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“If you leave me I will hurt myself.”
“I need help; please help me.”

Changeable/volatile behaviour
Is erratic – nice one minute or day, and abusive and nasty the next. Blames you for his behaviour. “You make me react that way”, “if you did this, or didn’t do that I wouldn’t get so angry.” You feel like you are walking on egg shells and constantly “trying to make him happy.”

Sexual
Is coercive, pressuring you to do things you don’t want to. Takes no responsibility for contraception, seeing it as “your problem”.

Physical abuse
Says he loves you but then physically abuses you, by hitting, punching, choking, or pushing. Often has a history of previous abuse.

Communication
Is haphazard and unreliable. Leaves you to do the contacting and keeps you dangling. You are left confused and don’t know what he wants. Doesn’t appear to be telling you the truth about what he is doing and says “it’s none of your business”. Makes you feel crazy, or jealous, or insecure when that is not how you usually feel.

So with the above in mind, have a go at the quiz below… and let me know if you still think Edward should be held up as the ultimate boyfriend.



Some Facts about Abusive Relationships thanks to Living without violence NZ, and other references.

One woman is killed by her partner or ex-partner in New Zealand every four weeks. Approximately half of all homicides in New Zealand are family violence related.

66% of women seeking Women’s Refuge help are 17-35 years old. In 2009, 26.1% of refuge clients were aged 16 – 25 years old. (New Zealand Women’s Refuge 2006, 2010)

One in three New Zealand women experience physical and/or sexual abuse at the hands of a partner during their lifetime.

25 per cent of those convicted of ‘male assaults female’ in 2006 were 15 – 24 years old, with 44% of all those convicted being under 29 years old. (Ministry of Justice, 2008)

In any one year, one woman in five will experience physical and/or sexual abuse at the hands of a partner.

15-24 year olds are the age group most at risk of physical, psychological and sexual victimisation from current and ex-partners. (New Zealand National Survey of Crime Victims, 2006)

One in five New Zealand men are subjected to violence by their partners.

One woman dies approximately every 26 days at the hand of her partner or former partner. We estimate that over 20 women have been murdered since Sophie in 2008. (Roundtable for Violence Against Women)

93 out of every 100 domestic violence cases in New Zealand are male assault female.

In 2009, nearly 75% of the 29 female murder victims were killed by offenders identified as a family member or partner. (Police Statistics on Culpable deaths in New Zealand, April 2010)

About 10 children are killed every year in New Zealand by a member or members of their own family.

Women’s Refuge receive a crisis call every 9 minutes. New Zealand police receive a domestic violence crisis call every 7 minutes. (Its Not Ok, 2010)

The annual cost of family violence in New Zealand is at least $1.2 billion.

37% of protection order applications and 25% of respondents are under 29 years old. (Family Court Statistics, 2007)

Family violence is a major problem in New Zealand but by reaching out for help all of us can begin to change the cycle of abuse and violence.

48 per cent of couples at age 21 years old reported having been involved in physical partner violence. (Dunedin Longitudinal Study, Moffitt and Caspi, 1999)


NB: Please note that the above stats and info relating to “Male” to “female” violence is due to the current white ribbon campaign. Abuse can occur in the reverse and cisgender women and men are not the only identitie included within this data.

Anti-social media

Under the hashtag #mencallmethings, feminists from Australia, the US and the UK have started naming the insults they are receiving via Facebook, Twitter and email.

Lots of the comments are explicitly rape threats, or death threats, or both.

Stuff is calling these hate comments "trolling". I think it's much more than that - I think it's the playing out of power over around gender in the newer arenas of social media. And I don't think it's an accident that many of these threats are sexualised, because sexual violence continues to be a fundamental site for the oppression of women.

I welcome the idea that maybe we need to stop ignoring these threats - which has probably been the most common response so far - and do something about them. If I think about some of the responses I've had to public writing, they have been intimidating, hateful and often deeply personal. I've been sent rape poems, told I'm "on the rag", and been told I've probably too ugly to get a man. I've had men sneer at me about being "triggered" when I've said I am not prepared to debate issues around violence against women when people are abusive.

I've had my name, place of work and some potted history of my life posted on men's rights websites - which, for those of you who don't visit them, are often pretty scary places.

The only time I've deleted a comment from my own blog - I'd usually rather try and set up a respectful tone to debate things - was on a blog about rape culture called "It's not rape if you yell surprise". The male commenter simply wrote "SURPRISE".

So feminists debating this who suggest we start thinking about abuse logs, reporting to the Police and moderating for hate are opening up a good discussion in my opinion. As is Aotearoa's own National Council of Women, who are campaigning to get Facebook to remove pro-rape pages like "You know she's playing hard to get when you're chasing her down an alleyway" and "Riding your girlfriend softly ‘cause you don't want to wake her up." Seems like Facebook's own guidelines should make such pages bannable, but apparently not.

Time we virtually holla-ed back, I reckon.

Head of the District Court

Judge Jan Doogue is the new head of the District Court. I've been following her career, which began in the Family Court, for a number of years.

Judge Doogue became a Family Court judge in 1994, just before the Domestic Violence Act 1995. Her legal decision-making almost immediately led to applause from Men's Rights groups, as she made it onto the "court decisions which help us" page at Menz. According to Menz, Judge Doogue:

ruled that the move by custodial mother from Auckland to Wellington, as primarily catering for the mother's, and not for the children's psychological needs. Doogue J emphasised that the children had already been through the trauma of parental separation from father.

No mention of why the mother had sole custody - so we don't know if domestic violence was a factor in this situation. And the disturbing implication that a mum wanting to live somewhere she has support is not important for her children.

In 2001, Judge Doogue released her thoughts on psychological abuse, in which she equates custodial parents (mostly mothers) who have "concerns" (unexplored) over access with non-custodial parents with "inter-parental conflict". At no point does she acknowledge that psychological abuse is one strand of domestic violence - underpinning physical violence, sexual violence, financial abuse and isolation tactics - according to the law in Aotearoa.

But Justice Doogue's most controversial foray was her address to a Child and Youth Law Conference in 2004, when she challenged the "social experimentation" of the Domestic Violence Act:

Research and experience supports the proposition that in New Zealand some children are being deprived of contact with a parent who has been alleged or judged to be violent when that is not in their best interests.

Considerable reliance has been placed on "Supervised Access" as being a panacea to balancing a child's rights to be safe and a non-custodial parent's right to access. This sometimes results in either inappropriate outcomes for children or unacceptable disenfranchisement for parents.

Judge Doogue went on to say:

At this point social science cannot support the assumption that any access, even supervised access with a parent who has been violent, is necessarily in a child's best interests. But nor does it support the assumption that access to a parent who has been violent is necessarily detrimental to a child's best interests.

This is back to the bad old days. Actually, there's a multiplicity of evidence that having contact with a violent parent, even if the violence is directed "only" towards adults, is bad for children. And still more evidence that courts too often do not appear to ensure the key determinant of access after a violent relationship ends is children's safety.

The Family Law Section of the NZ Law Society said the views expressed in this speech had no basis in fact at all. The available research showed the DVA was working quite nicely in court according to judges and lawyers, but noted some implementation concerns lingered in making sure it's protections were available:

"Overwhelmingly the people who were interviewed as key informants for this research and those who responded to the surveys, consider the Domestic Violence Act 1995 to be a good piece of legislation that achieves its objectives."

The media, however, were all over Justice Doogue's speech and Men's Righters loved it.

More recently, Judge Doogue's sentencing in the Tony Veitch case passed clear judgment on the man who pled guilty to breaking his partner's back in multiple places:

"You need to be held accountable for the harm done to the complainant, and to promote in you a sense of acknowledgement of that harm ... to denounce your conduct and deter others from similar offences."

"I dismiss any suggestion...that her behaviour that evening was provocative. Nothing she did justified what you did that night."

However, Judge Doogue's kindness in sentencing Mr Veitch to a bit of community work and some small change (for him) also came with the "mitigating circumstance" that this was a one off, unpremeditated assault. Seems odd when the original charges ran over three years of violent assaults, and these were only dropped at trial, as part of the deal the lawyers did to resolve this more quickly.

I've not followed Judge Doogue in the District Court, but I will be watching this space. She recently handed a non-custodial sentence to a 24 year old man who groomed a 15 year old on Facebook and then sexually abused her.

Final word from Chris Finlayson:

"Judge Doogue has the breadth of legal experience, skills and leadership abilities required for the Chief Judge position,” Mr Finlayson says. “I am confident that she will make a significant contribution in the office.”