Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty

On Change and Accountability: A response to Clarisse Thorn

2011-12-26T14:18:00.002+13:00

Note for those who don't read Feministe. Clarisse Thorn posted an interview with Hugo Schwyzer. People objected to Hugo Schwyzer being given this space on a feminist blog as he had, among other things, tried to kill his girlfriend a decade ago. Clarisse Thorn responded by closing comments on the interview thread and writing a post called On Change and Accountability. This post is primarily in response to that last post of Clarisse's, which attempted to transfer the debate to a theoretical one about change and accountability. (Feministe has since offered this apology). This post will focus on the general not the particular - so you don't have to have followed all the links to understand it. If you want to follow the wider discussion La Lubu's post is my favourite (I also think there's been some good stuff on Tumblr, but I can never find stuff there).

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Dear Clarisse

Towards the end of your post On Change and Accountability you asked:

Have you thought about these questions in your own life? I don’t mean abstractly, as an intellectual exercise. Concretely, and with intention. What would you do if, tomorrow, you found out that your best friend was a rapist? Your lover? What would you do if your sibling came to you to confess a terrible crime? To request absolution? To request accountability?

Did you expect your readers to answer no? Sometime this year, it'll be a decade since a man tried to rape a woman in my house. They knew each other, and me, through left-wing political circles. Since then I've known more than ten left-wing men who used intimate violence against women. I've never been central to any collective response, all of which were ad hoc and some of which may have done more good than harm, or been particularly close to the men. I still have no idea on how to respond to intimate violence on the left in a positive way, but I do have quite a good idea of some of the ways individual and collective responses can do harm.

So yes, I have thought about your questions - my answers and my response to you is deeply intertwined in the experiences I've had, the conversations I've had about those experiences, and the reading I've done.* However, I am being a little bit more focused in my response than you were in your post. I am very suspicious of attempts to broaden discussions of intimate abuse and abuse of power, to a wider idea of bad things people have done. Men who use the power that our sexist and misogynist society gives them to hurt women generally find it easy to do so, and get a lot of support when they're challenged. I believe that that social context is important. I am going to focus this post on responses to men who abuse women, because that was the situation that triggered your post and it's what I have most experience with.

I will provide direct answers to your questions the end of the post. First, I want to outline the ways I disagree with the premise of your post, and why some parts of it I disagreed with so strongly that I felt driven to spend the last few days planning and writing this reply. You ask:

How can we create processes for accountability? Feminists often discuss crimes like partner violence and sexual assault. Our focus is on helping survivors of these crimes, just as it should be. I personally have been trained as a rape crisis counselor, and I have volunteered in that capacity (if you’re interested in feminist activism, then I really encourage you to look into doing the same). And the history of feminism includes convincing people to actually care about and recognize the trauma of rape: Rape Trauma Syndrome was first defined and discussed in the 1970s.

But perhaps because of our focus on helping and protecting survivors, I rarely see feminist discussions of how to deal with people who have committed crimes. In fact, I rarely see any discussions of how to deal with that, aside from sending people to jail. Let me just say that problems with the prison-industrial complex are their own thing—but even aside from those, the vast majority of rapes and assaults and other forms of gender-based violence go unprosecuted.

I think other people have already pointed out whose work you rendered invisible in this section, but I want to take it in a slightly different direction. Here you seem to suggest that responding to perpetrators and responding to survivors are two separate things and that feminists' focus on survivors has left little space for dealing with perpetrators. My experience has been that the best response to perpetrators have been more survivor centred, and the worst have been entirely perpetrator-centred. Why? Because abuse is about power and control - and centring perpetrators is giving them power and control.

A basic assumption of your in the post is that good responses to perpetrators need to be centred around perpetrators. You barely mention survivors in your post, let alone other people who may have been hurt by similar behaviour and have boundaries and triggers and want to keep themselves safe. Men who use the power society gave them to hurt women can do so because their experiences are centred in society. I think centring perpetrators makes it harder for them to change, not easier.

“Accountability teams” are one way I’ve heard of for dealing with this: whether support groups of perpetrators who share their experiences with making amends and changing their ways, or groups of friends who assist a perpetrator with those processes. I would like to see more and larger discussions about those teams, and more acknowledgement that change is possible.

'Accountability teams' sound great - but I'm pretty sceptical of them. When I've known support groups set up formally around perpetrators, they have become advocacy groups for those perpetrators. One man I know, who was part of 'support group' for a perpetrator rang up individual members of a collective who had decided that the perpetrator was not welcome in their space; he attempted to pressure each individual member, and ignored a woman who repeatedly stated "I'm not comfortable with this" and kept trying to pressure her. Likewise, I'm reasonably familiar with government funded programmes which act broadly like the perpetrator groups you describe above. From what I know of the research, they're not particularly effective, and there is some suggestion that they actually make people better abusers.

We live in a world with a profound level of ignorance about intimate abuse, and an awful lot of myths that many people believe. In my experience, perpetrators who don't want to change have found it easy to surround themselves with friends who support their worldview in some way. This makes sense - if you're someone who doesn't want to be abusive, you are likely to have among your friends people who will support you in meaningful ways, but if you don't want to change, then it's very easy to find people who will act as your apologists. Those who surround themselves with apologists will generally be happy with presenting themselves as trying to change - and use any support group to bolster that claim.

This doesn't mean that I don't believe in support for perpetrators who are genuinely trying to change. I just have known far more perpetrators who were trying to persuade people that they were genuinely trying to change, than those who have genuinely tried to change. And those who are not trying to change have tended to use systems that have been set up to punish women they have abused.

I can imagine a time, or a circumstance, when I would have been excited about 'accountability teams'. I think our disagreement there is just a sign about how many layers of abuse apologist bullshit I have found around every abusive man I have known. However, my disagreement to what you said next is more fundamental:

If we can’t create this kind of process, then how can we expect to create real change around these crimes? How can we expect perpetrators of violence to work on themselves if we can’t give them the space to work? Why should someone work for forgiveness if they know forgiveness can never come?

I want to untangle this, because there are a lot of different ideas here. First of all, when it comes to feminist blogs, there is no 'we', in fact when it comes to communities (which after all are informal sets of relationships with non-formalised power and decision making) there is no 'we'. There can be no 'we' without a collective decision making process - just a false 'we' people talking on behalf of others.

I agree that perpetrators need space and resources to change, but the biggest barrier to that is generally that they are surrounded by apologists and cultural narratives that justify their behaviour. Outsiders can't intentionally clear that away, they can only offer alternatives.

But what I really disagree with is the idea that abusive men should be working for forgiveness, let alone your conclusion that that means people need to forgive.

As others have pointed out forgiveness has a lot of religious overtones and baggage, it's a narrow way to frame responses to abusive men, that will only speak to particular people. However, even if I translate it to language that resonates more with me, rather than forgiveness I would talk about 'being OK with someone', I still think you are talking about deeply personal decisions and boundaries that people can only draw for themselves. For example, seven years ago I stayed silent, when a woman with black eyes told me it was an accident, even though I knew that wasn't true. I have realised, over the years, that I am never going to be OK with what I did. I also realised that that meant I was never going to be OK with this woman's boyfriend, because I'm not going to hold myself responsible for my inaction around abuse, longer than I'm going to hold the man who did it (who has changed more than most men I know who have committed intimate violence - although he has behaved in deeply problematic ways much more recently than seven years ago).

Perpetrators should not be working for forgiveness, because forgiveness is deeply personal. But more than that I'm incredibly wary of the idea that abusers should be working on stopping hurting people, for any kind of reward, including changing the way people think of them.

One group response I saw from a distance used their silence over a rapist (and were generally very good at silencing other people) to try and get him to attend an anti-sexual-violence programme. They held out that they would keep his abuse from going too public and got him to take certain steps. It was, obviously, a disaster - change is fucking difficult and people have to really want to do it. If you try and use leverage you have over someone to make them change (particularly someone manipulative, as most successful abusers are) then you are going to be unsuccessful.

An easy path back to everything being OK, is often what abusive men who don't take their abuse seriously (but don't necessarily deny it) - want. I've known an abusive man demand this, and punish the survivor because he didn't get it. He used all ll those subtle talking to friend of friends ways that it's so easy for abusers to punish survirors particularly if other people let them. One group I know set the simple requirement "you tell us when you think you are ready to come back" and never heard from two different men again. I think it's important not to offer short-cuts or a path to people being OK - learning to live with what you've done and other people's reaction to what you've done is a perpetrator's own messy work.

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However, none of that was why your post troubled me so much. You wrote it in response to people who were part of a feminist space and were outraged at the way you had centred in that space a man who had tried to murder his girlfriend. You were explicit both at feministe, and your place, that criticisms of that man bothered you, and shut that criticism down.
Then you wrote a post that is incredibly dismissive of people who disagree with you:

But I hope I can dim the flamewar into a lantern to illuminate issues that actually matter.

I believe that the politics of this situation are mostly a cheap distraction from truth and honor.

You go further, you go into some detail about why you think Hugo has changed and explicitly argue that your view of Hugo should be other's view of Hugo:

Other feminists have been angrily emailing me, Tweeting at me, etc with things like “FUCK YOU FOR PROTECTING THIS WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING.” But I have seen no evidence that Hugo hasn’t made an honest and sustained effort at recovery and accountability.

Your entire post reads, to me, like an argument that people who who don't agree with you about Hugo's transformation, or the relevance of Hugo's transformation about the way he has treated should not hold or express those views (partly because you don't spend much time trying to persuade people on either of these points). You are demanding a 'we' without a collective decision making process.

To explain why I think this is the most anti-feminist position that I have ever read on Feministe I have to tell a story.

In 2006, a man named Ira hit his girlfriend when they were breaking up (he did this in a supposedly radical social centre - he was not the first man to assault his girlfriend in that social centre). After they broke up the girlfriend (who I will call Anne for the purposes of the post, although that's not her name) named the abuse within the relationship. Ira had been emotionally, physically and sexually abusive.

Ira had many defenders, and responses to the abuse focused on him (in fact a lot of my caution about ideas like accountability teams, and my firmness that all responses have to be survivor centred come from this experience). He was exceptionally good at using mutual acquaintances (and there were many) to punish Anne. He never made amends with Anne, or anyone else. He did what most abusers who I've known who were seriously challenged do - he left town.

Apparently in this new place, he talked a good game. He admitted to some of what he'd done, and presented himself as a reformed man. He didn't need to make meaningful change, he just needed to present himself as someone who had done so.

In 2009, about three years after they broke up he was part of organising climate camp. This was supposed to bring people from all around the country to Wellington, where Anne was living. Anne wanted to go to the camp, but she did not want to be around him. She wrote to various people, including the safer spaces team, outlining the situation and asking if he could not come. She got nothing back but vagueness and an argument that they could not do anything because the camp did not exist yet.

One of the arguments of the safer spaces team, which included people who claimed that they were feminists, was that they had talked to Ira and were convinced that he had changed. They believed, or at least acted as if it was true, that it was their belief about him was important. They ignored the view of one of the people he had abused, and many other women who felt unsafe around him.

It got messy from there. Ira left, but only after a protest. A woman who had been part of protesting Ira's actions was kicked out of climate camp by the safer spaces committee for being 'abusive' because she yelled at a man for hugging her when she didn't want to be hugged. Ira got someone connected with Climate Camp to harass Anne - like I said he was good at getting mutual acquaintances to punish her.

The safer spaces committee had made it clear where they stood when they decided that it was their view on whether or not Ira had changed that mattered.

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Your post read to me as taking exactly the same position as the climate camp safer spaces committee. You appeared to be arguing that your view that Hugo Schwyzer was reformed, and that his reforming mattered was important. Why?

Everything about your post oozes pressure. When you argue: "Why should someone work for forgiveness if they know forgiveness can never come?" You are arguing that people should forgive abusive men, because it's necessary for them to change.

There is no space in your post for survivors. Either direct survivors of Hugo's actions, or survivors of similar violence. There is no space for people to draw their own boundaries around an abusive man. Indeed nothing appears to matter in your post except the perpetrator, and his path to forgiveness. There is no way of getting a unified response - of promising survivors' forgiveness - which doesn't involve asking or demanding that some people ignore their own boundaries.

There is nothing new or transformative in arguing that survivors and those who care about their abuse, should not have boundaries because other people believe that the man has changed. Just a month ago I was in a meeting where someone argued that as far as we knew Omar Hamed hadn't tried to rape anyone all year, and therefore it was divisive to argue that he should not be welcome at our political event.

I believe that part of being OK with an abusive man, has to be accepting that other people may not be OK and respecting their boundaries.

To pressure women to be OK, act OK, or pretend to be or act OK around a man who has been abusive towards woman, is a profoundly anti-feminist act. That pressure cannot be part of anything that is truly justice, or truly transformative.

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I don't have a generic answer about how I'd act if someone I cared about had raped someone. There are too many variables. Obviously if anyone came to me seeking absolution, I would tell them that is not something I can give. But, if I decided that I was OK continuing the relationship then I would tell him that he needed to respect people's boundaries around him, that some people would never be OK with him, and that he needed to find a way of being that wouldn't pressure other people and their boundaries (and he would have to be on board with that for me to continue the relationship). I would respect other people's boundaries around him, and try to ensure that I didn't put direct or indirect pressure on them.

I feel incredibly lucky, ten years down the track, that I have never had to respond to intimate violence from a man I cared about. But I have seen the harm that women do to survivors of violence in defence of men they care about. I've seen manipulative men get women to do their dirty work. I've seen the way 'he's changed' has been used by other women to pressure both direct survivors, and women who are uncomfortable with abusive men more generally. I hope I have learned enough to recognise those roles and refuse them.

Do we actually believe that people can change? If so, how do we want them to show us they’ve changed? Is absolution possible? Who decides the answers to these questions?

In reverse order, groups that have genuine collective decision making processes can make group answers to these questions. Otherwise the decisions can only be individual.

Absolution is a religious idea that is not compatible with liberation. Whatever we have done, we have done. Nothing and no-one can stop us from being the person who has done the worst actions we have taken.

Abusive men show me that they've changed when they stop hurting women and don't use intimediaries to do their dirty work. If an abusive man was OK with people talking about their abuse, was OK with people not being OK with it, and understood that responses to their abuse cannot be all about them, but about the people they hurt, then I'd probably be willing to believe that he'd changed.

And yes - I do think people can change. I think feminists have to believe in the possibility of abusive men changing otherwise there's no hope but a separatist commune.

But I won't stake anything on that belief, not anyone's safety, or comfort, or boundaries. I don't like the odds. Nobody knows how to stop someone from abusing their power, and most attempts to do so are failures (that's from friends who have worked in the field and reviewed the research).

I know this post sounds despairing. Believe me when I say none of the ways that abusive men I've known have responded to being challenged has given me any reason to hope.

But still I hope. And it is that hope that lead me to write this post. That hope that makes me believe that it is worth writing about my experiences and more and less harmful ways of dealing with abusive men.

In recognition that we are part of the same struggle,

Maia

* I haven't read the book The Revolution Starts at Home yet, but I have read the zine (warning that link is a pdf) and recommend it, even though as this post probably shows I am deeply unsure about any way forward. I should point out that one of the problems with the post I am responding to that other people have discussed is the way it renders invisible the work of WoC dealing with issues that you say feminists don't deal with.

Scarlet Road

2011-12-10T15:19:00.000+13:00

I have seen this trailer posted on tumblr and blogs a few times:

Scarlet Road Video from Paradigm Pictures on Vimeo.

Something about the way it was posted as an awesome exciting and sex positive feminist trailer bothered me, but I hadn't figured out just what it was. The post on Jezebel reminded me of the sort of comment that I've seen in a few places (and I expect nothing from Jezebel, but they're not the only people who have written about it like this).

A post on the The F-Word responded to Jezebel directly:

I then read in Jezebel about a sex worker who is awesome because she works with disabled clients, which apparently makes her intriguing.

And I started to wonder, what do you think of us? Of me? In these three stages, the mainstream, and the left-wing, tell me that I am inferior, and I am other. So very, very other.

I share Philippa's concern with the way people who celebrate this trailer present disabled people and their sexuality, and I want to unpack why I was so troubled by the many people who posed this with the idea that it was awesome, exciting and amazing.

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At this movie's centre is a paradox. It's argument is that men with disability need to express their sexuality just like everyone else. However, the existence of the movie posits sex with people with disabilities as different. This trailer, and the people posting it, appear to believe that sex work with men with disabilities is in some important way different from other sex work. The Jezebel post described her as 'awesome' based on nothing but the trailer. None of this makes sense if you genuinely believe what the trailer is presenting as the central premise of the documentary.

Of course the reality is that disabled people are de-sexualised by society, there sexuality is denied, and the very limited idea of sex, sexuality and desire that is promoted in our society has no room for them. That's the social model of disability - disabled people's sexuality is not different because of their bodies, but because of how society responds to their bodies.

The paradox could be undone with media that centres the experiences of people with disabilities. A story which starts from them could show that there is nothing intrinsically different between disabled people's sexuality and non-disabled people's sexuality - but there is a profound difference in how their bodies and sexuality is treated.

However, by centring this documentary around an able-bodied women, all that happens is the paradox is reinforced, she is awesome because of what she does.

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The trailer talks about 'people with disabilities' - but it portrays and focuses on men with disabilities. Obviously as a feminist I have a problem anytime that happens, but rendering women with disabilities invisible in this context reinforces damaging and pervasive ideas about women's sexuality and about disability.

This is not the first piece of media, which has discussed men with disabilities' sexuality and sex work in a way that makes women with disabilities invisible. I've been keeping an eye on these stories for at least ten years, and there is a pattern. Every so often some media outlet puts out a story about men with disabilities and sex work, often crass and offensive, sometimes in a faux 'it makes you think' kind of way about the welfare state's interaction with legal sex work. This trailer is less awful on those grounds - but it should also be seen as part of an existing tradition.

Why is the media always the same? Why is it unthinkable and unprintable that women with disabilities have sexual desire. To understand that we have to look at the intersection between dominant ideas about disability and dominant ideas about women's sexuality.

One of the most fundamental (and damaging) ideas in our existing understanding of sexuality is that men desire and women are desired. This is reflected in a lot of our language about sexuality (think about how the phrase 'sexy' is used by and about women) and the way sexuality is understood in public discourses.

An identical video where the genders which switched, would not have the same feel good response. Because viewers would assume that the women with disabilities portrayed wanted to be desired as well as have their desires met. In reality of course, most people want both to desire and to be desired. That people with disabilities might desire requires a much smaller change to our understanding of sexuality than that people of disabilities might be desirable.

Therefore the invisibility of women with disabilities in discussions about disability and sexuality, is about the sexual double standard and is based on accepting that women don't desire. But it is also about bounding and limiting the discussion of disability and sexuality to desire, not desirability, and cutting off the possibility that we might challenge our idea of desirability.

Ultimately it's a failure of imagination. When I say I believe another world is possible, I mean one where women desire and men are desired, and where disability is not constructed as antithetical to either.

Support locked-out workers

2011-12-02T15:36:00.001+13:00

111 Meat workers are still locked-out from the jobs at in Rangitikei. They've been more than six weeks without wages and they need support.

This weekend is a national day of fund-raising and action in support of the locked-out workers. McDonalds are being targetted, as they are one of the primary customers of the company. There are events organised all over the country:

Whangarei
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10:00: McDonalds Whangarei, Bank Street – Mehau, mehow@riseup.net, 0226894509

West Auckland
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10:00: McDonalds Lincoln Rd, CNR Lincoln Rd & Moselle Ave, Carol Gilmour, CarolG@nzno.org.nz, 0274 827 030

Central Auckland
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11:00: McDonalds Grey Lynn, 102-112 Great North Road - Louisa Jones, louisa.jones@epmu.org.nz, 027 590 0071

Hamilton
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12:00: McDonalds Five cross roads, 231 Peach Grove Road - Jared Philips, jared@unite.org.nz, 029-494-9863

Tauranga
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12:00: McDonalds Tauranga at CNR 11th Ave & Cameron Road - Jill Kerr, 021 626 094

New Plymouth
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11:00: McDonalds New Plymouth on Cnr Eliott and Leach Sts – Sam Jones, sam.jones@sfwu.org.nz, 0275448563 (pls txt)

Manawatu
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11:00: McDonalds Palmerston North, Cnr Rangitikei & Featherston Sts - Simon Oosterman, cmplockout@nzctu.org.nz, 021 885 410

1:00: McDonalds Bulls, 95 Bridge St, Bulls – Wayne Ruscoe, wayne.ruscoe@epmu.org.nz, 0275910056

1:00: McDonalds Feilding, 78 Kimbolton Rd – Joceyln Pratt, jocelynp@nzdwu.org.nz, 021 551 991

1:00: McDonalds Levin, Cnr Stanley & Oxford Sts – Simon Oosterman, cmplockout@nzctu.org.nz, 021 885 410

1:00: McDonalds Wanganui, 314 Victoria Street – Terangi Wroe - 0220165199

Hutt Valley
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11:00: McDonalds Petone, 29 Victoria Street - Toby Boraman, ffyddless@yahoo.co.nz

Wellington
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12:00: McDonalds Manners Mall, 55 Manners Street, Tali Williams, tali.williams@gmail.com, 021 204 4087

Greymouth
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11:00 - McDonalds Greymouth, 57 Tainui Street – Garth Elliot, garth.elliot@epmu.org.nz - 0275900084

Christchurch
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10:00 – Banner making at Occupy Corner.
11:00: McDonalds Riccarton, CNR Riccarton Rd & Matipo St, Riccarton - Matt Jones, matthew@unite.org.nz, 029 201 3837

Dunedin
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10:00: McDonalds George St Dunedin, 232 George Street - Malcolm Deans, mdeans@gardener.com, 0210566593

Invercargill
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Dylan would like to attend a protest if someone can help him organise it: dylan_dogg@hotmail.com.

If you can't attend then donate some money (info on donating here) If employers discover they can starve workers into accepting wages 25% wage cuts then who is next?

Reasons to be cheerful

2011-11-27T01:38:00.001+13:00

I'm not feeling particularly cheerful tonight. You can read details of my not cheerfulness over at The Hand Mirror, where I live blogged the election.

This parliament will be the first parliament for 12 years that does not have a majority for abortion law reform. There was never a majority to talk about abortion, or to have the debate, but there has been a majority that would support abortion law if they had to vote. That majority almost certainly no longer exists, thanks to the mob Winston Peters brought in, and the high vote for National. Important abortion rights advocates in the Labour party are gone: Steve Chadwick, Carol Beaumont and Carmel Sepoluni (although there is a small chance of either, but not both, of the last two getting in on the specials). While we can expect some turn-over and some of them to get back in this term, it won't change the fundamental maths and ability to add up to 61.

While high National polling was inevitable, and under 48% is actually much less worse than it could be, the results themselves are pretty dire. My main hope for the evening was that both John Banks and Peter Dunne would lose their seat, that they didn't bring any cronies with them is not a particularly big silver lining. I did idly think "well it'd be funny if NZFirst got back in" in the last few days - I didn't mean it! That's all bad news. I'm not sad about Labour's collapse or glad about the Greens rise - apart from how it effects abortion politics. I would have liked to see Annette Sykes in there - although I'm sure she'll just as useful work from where she is now.

I find the rise of the Conservative party pretty depressing - a sign that money can buy your votes. But also everything felt reactionary last night - and the news that almost 3% of people want National to be more reactionary than they are - is pretty depressing.

The coverage was also pretty reactionary. TVOne's election coverage was so bad that I considered advocating a shift to TV3 - where Paul Henry, John Tamihere, Chris Trotter and Rodney Hide waited for us. It was wall to wall bloke, bloke, bloke bloke, matey, bloke. Which was only emphasised when they brought on Jacinda Arden and Nikkie Kaye and talked about their looks, or had Petra Bagust circulating round a party. On top of that with Willie Jackson on TVOne, John Tamihere on TV3 and Derek Fox on Maori TV each channel had its own Clint Rickards apologist. I'm not surprised by the male centred nature of this coverage, but the programmers should be ashamed.

Having said that there are always some reasons to be cheerful.

MMP is looking pretty safe.
Turn-out was low. I find knowing that 35% of eligible voters voted National much more reassuring than the near 50% you hear in the news.
National actually lost 100,000 votes over the last three years (Labour lost 200,000)
Don Brash is resigning his farcical time as ACT leader.
Paul "the most important thing to me that people in prison can't vote" Quinn is out of parliament, at least for now.
Paula Bennett may yet lose Waitakere - that would be a thing of beauty.
There are some strong advocates for abortion rights within the Green caucus.
Mojo Mathers should get in on the Specials. Having a deaf MP should have some pretty awesome flow-on effects when it comes to accessibility and entrenching NZ Sign as an official language.
Kelly Buchanan got 36 votes - so my friend should have had a pretty good night.

There's a more fundamental reason to be cheerful - and I'll expand on this tomorrow - we don't have to accept the world the politicians want to make. If voting is the most important political act you do, then election night is always going to be depressing. But if you dream of a world that is better, then there are going to plenty of opportunities to help make it over the next three years. After all the biggest steps towards women's liberation in this country were made under right-wing Male Chauvanist Piggy Muldoon.

How I'm Voting

2011-11-25T13:42:00.000+13:00

So in my last election related post before the polls I thought I'd describe my plans for tomorrow.

Electorate Vote

As I live in Wellington Central I can't use the ridiculously complex analysis I did of electorate seats. On top of that familiarity has certainly bred contempt when it comes to the parliamentary parties' candidates.

As it happens I can more easily make a case for voting for Paul Foster-Bell the National candidate than either Grant Robertson or James Shaw. If the polls were swinging differently Paul Foster-Bell could be a tactical abortion vote, but they're not so he's not. James Shaw appears to have been grown in a lab to personify everything those on the left criticise the Greens for.

Then there's Grant Robertson - who gets a lot of support round Wellington. I don't like him - not just because other people do - I think I sometimes come across as more contrarian than I am. But for actual good policy based reasons on an issue that is important to me. Grant Robertson was involved in designing the PBRF (performance based research fund) system that is currently doing such damage to tertiary education (and was always going to do damage in exactly the way that it did). And I am a little bit contrary so any time people on facebook are nice about him I mutter PBRF and get a little more entrenched. Plus my second rule of voting is "1984: Never forget, Never forgive." - and I take that very seriously.

So who am I going to vote for? I have two choices: Kelly Buchanan - the Alliance candidate I know and broadly agree with (she posted her responses to the Right to Life on The Hand Mirror). Or the Pirate Party candidate - because I believe new episodes of Joss Whedon TV shows are a fundamental human right.

I will probably vote for Kelly - mostly because I'm very good friends with her partner - and they're going to drink a shot every vote Kelly gets. It's been a hard year and it's time for my friend to have fun. Also I don't know the Pirate Party Candidate's position on abortion - and a girl has to have standards.

Party Vote

A few days ago my facebook status was "I think I'm a reasonably unprincipled voter; all I want is to vote for a left-wing party, where no-one in an achievable position on the list is anti-abortion or a rape apologist." So obviously I've been having trouble figuring out if I can vote at all.

Rule 2 obviously rules out Labour (and I'm looking for a left-wing party).

I've written at some length with my problems with the Greens in general and Russel Norman in particular. But my not voting for the Greens this time is more fundamental, because my first rule of voting is "Tories are evil":

I don't care it's a 1 in a 100 chance that the Greens will abstain on confidence and supply for a National party government after the election (and I think it may be higher than that) - it's still astronomically too high.

So if I'm voting with my party vote I'm voting for Mana. I was doing a pretty good job of convincing myself to vote for the lizards so the wrong lizards don't get in. But then I read their policies. Now some Mana policies are great - the disability policy is radical, and clearly addresses many of the problems with the current system in a way that takes disabled people's lives and liberty really seriously. And (as you'd expect) their Te Reo and Te Tiriti policy are awesome. They released their Industrial Relations Policy today and it's very impressive (I am a little worried that a 25% loading which made casualised labour a legal category would entrench casualisation - but since it's not going to happen that's of rather minor concern).

However, their education policy is just weird. In some places it is strangely specific, but it ignores or is unclear many of the really important education. So it's very clear that every school needs a community garden, but doesn't mention the level of the operation grant. It appears to be promoting a work for the student allowance system (but that isn't really clear).

Then there's their National Standards policy:

Abolish National Standards and replace with information that lets parents know how well their children are doing compared to other children, nationally, without the bad effects of the current direction.

On one level the statement is so incoherent to be laughable: abolish National Standards, but standardise where children are nationally in a way that would magically get rid of unspecified 'bad effects'. This is such a damaging attitude to what education is for. The point of education should not be measuring children against other children - but about learning. Children differ so much in what they find hard and what they find easy, what they love and what they struggle with. I want an education system the values in every child what they are good at, and but also values learning and improving from where a child is. Measuring children with other children is the antithesis of that.

Their policy to make NZ tobacco free is so ridiculous that it's hard to know how to respond. The failure of prohibition is pretty well documented when it comes to alcohol and drugs. Criminalising marijuana has hardly been liberatory for anyone.

On one level it doesn't matter because it's never going to happen. But I think it shows a fundamentally problematic attitude towards working-class people's lives. Working-class people are making complex choices about their survival strategies and the path towards liberation involves fighting for more resources and more choices. Taking away the chance to find a break, breath deeply, and get a hit of nicotine so they can keep going from those who feel like they need it is not liberatory.* They're ignoring all that and instead asking how can we use the power of the state to get people to behave how we want them to behave?

With National Standards and Tobacco in particular - my problem is not just that the policy is bad, but that it shows a way of thinking about society and state roles that I fundamentally disagree with and makes me distrust the way they are thinking about politics.

See writing this I have almost persuaded myself not to vote for them. But I really do want to vote for the least worst option, and they are it. Unless something dramatic happens in the next 24 hours I'll party-vote Mana.

Referendum Part 1

MMP.

(I can on occasion be brief)

Referendum Part 2

I think I've decided to vote for STV.

STV is the least bad of the four options. It also has the added advantage that it'll struggle against MMP, because then it'll be seen as just as (if not more complicated). In general I don't like it, because I think it kind of formalises protest votes and encourages (or forces in Australia) people to vote for candidates who will win, and it has a high threshold for minor parties. Although it would make voting on abortion easy.

If SM was in the picture at all, I would consider voting FPP - but as the choice is between STV and FPP - it's pretty simple.

I'll be live-blogging the election at The Hand Mirror. Expect mostly mockery, bile, depression, and obsessive attention to who is in parliament and where they stand on abortion.

* I guess I should be clear here that I addiction isn't liberatory either. I totally support any moves that makes it harder for people to get addicted to ciagerettes and assistance towards quitting.

An idiosyncratic guide to voting for abortion law reform: Part 2 - Electorates

2011-11-21T20:29:00.001+13:00

So yesterday I looked at the party vote at this election. Today some thoughts on the electorate vote.

It's fairly easy to vote on principal when it comes to the electorate vote. All you need to do is find out where your various candidates stand and then decide how you're going to vote accordingly. Which obviously isn't that easier because many candidates are not particularly willing to tell you where they stand on abortion. But if you can get information (and do share in the comments anything you have) voting on principal isn't complex. If you live in Rotorua choosing between Steve Chadwick and Todd McClay is clear - McClay has only voted on abortion once and voted reactionary. Although choosing what to do in Invercargill where Lesley Soper - known SPUCer, runs against Eric Roy would require careful inquisition of the minor candidates.

What I'm going to concentrate in this post is how to vote tactically pro-choice in this election. For example, even if you know that Andrew Little has better politics on abortion law reform than Jonathan Young (which seems likely) - the reality is they're both probably going to be in parliament anyway. So you can vote on a principal basis on that occasion - but it's going to have very little tactical effect.

This post is going to focus on marginal electorates where the local vote may have an impact on the make-up of parliament. A basic assumption is that the make-up of parliament is more important than whether a paticular MP has a label as the local MP. I know this is an assumption many in parliament don't share (see the ridiculous focus on New Plymouth or Auckland Central). But I think the make-up of parliament is what matters when it comes to abortion law reform. So what are the marginals seats where voting can make a difference to the make up of parliamentary support for Abortion Law Reform?

Ōhariu
This is the simplest and most obvious - if you support abortion law reform vote Charles Chavel (I believe Katrina Shanks is also liberal for a National MP on abortion law, but she has a lesser chance of getting in). Peter Dunne is not as bad on the issue as he once was (the rumour is that in 2002 no move on abortion law was an unwritten part of United Future and Labour's coalition deal - this is ) and amusingly right to life are mad at him. However, he is not a reliable on the issue, and likely to vote conservatively on incrementalist legislation. Charles Chavel is an advocate. Getting rid of Peter Dunne would be a victory for abortion law reform - and supporters of abortion law reform can vote for Charles Chavel with a clear conscious.

I would vote for Charles Chavel and I can't bring myself to vote for the Greens because they're too right wing (and because of Russel Norman).

Epsom
The same principle applies in Epsom as John Banks is a known reactionary and Don Brash is completely incoherent on the matter. This applies even though Paul Goldsmith's position is less clear than Charles Chavel's.

Te Tai Tokerau
My understanding is that Hone is broadly supportive of abortion rights. He would bring in other candidates who are more likely to support abortion law reform than the rest of parliament. Kelvin Davis will be in anyway. From an abortion politics point of view, this is the reverse of Epsom.

Rimutaka
This one is also simple for another reason: Jonathon Fletcher is incredibly reactionary on abortion (see the smiley faces on Value your vote). He is number 67 on the National party list - and so won't get in unless he wins the seat.

Chris Hipkins' ability to enter parliament is also looking shaky - Labour need to do better than the polls say for him to be in on the list (but not by much). I don't know where he stands on abortion (and would like to know), but he's not going to be as conservative as Jonathon Fletcher.

West-Coast Tasman
Here is where things start to get nice and complex. Both Damien O'Connor and Chris Auchinvole are conservative on abortion. However, Chris Auchivole is 43 on National's list and looking pretty safe, whereas Damien O'Connor is not on Labour's list. Therefore, in terms of abortion law reform there is definitely a reason to not vote for Damien O'Connor and a reason to vote for Chris Auchinvole to keep Damien O'Connor out.

On top of that there is another way of looking at the make-up of parliament. As well as looking at who we're bringing in on electorate seats, we also need to consider which list seat candidate they're replacing. Now this gets super complicated - but I think from the point of view of abortion law reform the people who are looking tantalising close but not close enough are Steve Chadwick and Kate Sutton - at number 34 and 35. Every electorate seat that Labour wins from someone who is further down the list than they are makes it harder for Steve Chadwick and Kate Sutton to get in. If you're voting in marginal electorates consider where the Labour candidate is on the list before voting for them (note that Chris Hipkins is further up the list than Steve Chadwick and Kate Sutton, otherwise I wouldn't be as supportive of voting for him in Rimutaka).

Voting against Damien O'Connor doesn't just keep an anti-abortion voice out of parliament - it also makes it more likely that abortion law reform advocates will get in.

Mana
I think there is both a principled and a practical reason for voting for Hekia Parata in Mana. The first is that my understanding is that she is more liberal than Kris Faafoi on the issue (who was both incoherent and reactionary when he talked about parental notification in May- does anyone have the link - I ranted about it on facebook but didn't keep a link). The principled issue needs more research and I think it's important to hear what they say when asked specific questions.

But the practical choice is clear. Hekia Parata will be in parliament anyway, and Kris Faafoi is higher on the list than Steve Chadwick and Kate Sutton. Voting for Hekia Parata also makes it more likely that abortion law reform advocates will get in.

Palmerston North Ōtaki & Christchurch East

So how far do you take this approach? In Palmerston North, two people whose position on abortion is unkinown are running, in Otaki the National candidate is Nathan Guy, an arch-reactionary (who will get in anyway) and in Christchurch East the Labour candidate is Lianne Dalziel who is a known supporter of abortion law reform.

I think it's counter-productive to vote against supporters of abortion law reform to try and get better supporters of abortion law reform in. There are too many variables, and I think MPs are such cowards on abortion those who are prepared to say their position should be rewarded in a pavlovian kind of way. I also wouldn't vote for Nathan Guy myself - partly because it's not necessarily - there's no way Labour is picking up that seat. But I would probably avoid voting for the Labour candidate. And I would seriously think about voting for the Nat in Palmerston North.

Te Tai Tonga
The same argument about Labour applies when it comes to Te Tai Tonga as Rino Tirikatene is higher up the list than Steve Chadwick and Kate Sutton. However, there the effect is more complicated because Rahui Katene won't get in on the list anyway. I don't know about Rahui Katene. Without knowledge that she supports abortion law reform I think it's risky to vote for her on the basis that she might bring in advocates on the labour list.

Tamaki Makaura
Here the key piece of information is Pita Sharples position on abortion - which I don't think we can judge on his very limited voting record. Pita Sharples won't get in unless he wins Tamaki Makaura (whereas Shane Jones is in no matter what), so if enough information could be found about his position it would be a relatively simple decision.

There are many other arguments you could make. For example, there is probably a case for voting Paul Foster-Bell in Wellington Central, since he is not guaranteed a place and a support of abortion law reform in National's caucus would be useful. However, given that Grant Robertson is demonstrably better on the issue than Foster-Bell, and Foster-Bell isn't really borderline because National are polling at a gajillion, and Wellington Central isn't actually marginal - I don't think the argument is very convincing. But I think talking and thinking about electorate seats in this way is useful. I'd be really interested in hearing where people's analysis, judgement and information differs from mine.

Of course the line is somewhat subjective. Could I get up in the morning and look myself in the mirror knowing I'd voted for a Nat - even for the best reasons? I'm not sure, but I do know that I'd vote for Paul Goldsmith if I lived in Epsom. And abortion law reform is more important to me than keeping ACT out of parliament.

Updated: I got Kelvin Davis's place on the list wrong so I've edited that. On top of that I've realized that on current polling (things have changed a bit since I started writing this post) more pro-choice women are in hazardous positions further down the list - on what Curia says today Carmel Sepoluni and Carol Beaumont are only just in if no marginals change hand. The bottom line is that in the labour party the people who most vocally support abortion law reform tend to be on the list rather than in winnable seats. Therefore, supporting Labour electorate candidates does not necessarily support the abortion law reform voices within the party.

An idiosyncratic guide to voting pro-choice this election: Part 1 party vote

2011-11-21T12:00:00.000+13:00

Voting for abortion law reform* is notoriously hard in New Zealand. In 1978, after parliament passed our current laws – Eric Geireinger wrote an entire book on how to vote for abortion law reform (and the effort generally failed). In desperation some women suggested ‘Vote prohibition for repeal’ – so there’s this very weird increase in the vote about whether alcohol should be banned in 1978.

It is impossible to vote on a principled basis on abortion – because no party has solid policy on the issue. The Greens do have some sort of policy, but it does not promise abortion law reform, and other parties just say ‘it’s a conscience vote’. On top of this most politicians’ strongest view about abortion is “DON’T MAKE ME TALK ABOUT IT”. So finding out what various candidates’ views are is a combination of taking opportunities to ask questions, gossip, and instinct.

More than that - voting won’t get us abortion law reform. That will only come about if we educate, agitate, and organise - force MPs’ hands.

However, I think it’s worth talking about the different parties and some electorate races. Mostly because it allows for complicated nerdy calculations (I have made spreadsheets to assist me with this post). There are other places with great information ALRANZ have a blog post discussing the campaign, they also have party guide and a record of how MPs have voted. Although the voting records need to be read with a careful eye of the history of the votes. Tertiary Women's Focus Group include abortion in their voting guide. There's also Family First's guide which I find amusing.

The second part of this post will be about electorate seats and is considerably more idiosyncratic than this first part, which just runs down the parties. I’ll mostly be talking about MPs who stand out from what is usual in their parties, known supporters of abortion law reform in right wing parties and known opponents in left wing parties (while people’s position on abortion doesn’t shake down along party lines exactly – what is normal within a party does). But I will also be talking about advocates – mostly on our side who we have reason to believe will actively advocate for abortion law reform. But I’ll also talk about the leaders of the reactionaries as well.

I have also focused on the candidates on the cusp of being elected. Paul Hutchinson from National is the only member of National's caucus to vote against Judith Collins bill for parental notification but he’s number 26 on National’s list and has a seat so he’s going to get elected whatever happens. Likewise we can’t do much about Clayton Cosgrove, who is anti-abortion, and at number 8 on Labour’s list.

Note: All calculations in this post are based on the assumption that no seats change party and the figures are based on the Curia poll of polls. These are unlikely to pan out exactly. So it’s probably wise not to be too tactical with your vote

Labour

The predominant view in Labour is that abortion law reform in theory (practice is another matter), but that doesn’t mean that we can safely assume any individual Labour MP or candidate supports abortion law reform. There are definite anti-abortion voices in the party, and unless they’ve been in parliament long enough to have their position on record – or are as vocal as Lesley Soper down in Invercargill – we won’t know who they are.

However, Steve Chadwick is the strongest advocate for abortion law reform currently in parliament. She is number 34 on the Labour party list, and Kate Sutton, who should be pretty strong on this issue, is number 35. On current polling neither of them will get in – but it is close.

If Labour rises a little in the polls (or stops sinking) a vote for Labour could be bringing in Steve Chadwick and Kate Sutton. If the polls continue to sink then it’ll be about bringing in Rick Barker, Deborah Mahuta-Coyle, Stuart Nash, Michael Wood, or Phil Twyford. Rick Barker spoke reasonably well to oppose Judith Collins parental notification bill, so can probably be relied upon; the others appear to have avoided making any public record of their position on abortion (although I think this post demonstrates the priority Phil Twyford gives to abortion).

A record of anti-abortion labour MPs and candidates would be useful, but unfortunately the DON’T TALK ABOUT IT desire is strong, and the recent voting record is not necessarily a reliable indicator. Damien O’Connor and Clayton Cosgrove are the two labour MPs that I know are anti-abortion – if people know of others share them in the comments.

The other, equally important and far less accessible information, is who was it who refused to let Steve Chadwick’s bill go forward.

Greens

The Greens have policy on abortion – but not policy for abortion law reform. And that’s not an accident – people are holding that policy up because they are anti-abortion. I don’t know who that is – I’m not inside the Greens, but I think it’s important to understand that there must be some anti-abortion advocates in there somewhere for the policy not to have got further.

Both Holly Walker and Jan Logie appeared interested in being advocates for abortion law reform at Ladies in the House. And while you can’t necessarily expect MPs to act based on what they said as candidates to the most sympathetic audience in the country, it’s better than most candidates (another advocate at Ladies in the House was Jordan Carter who is number 40 on the Labour list and unlikely to get in on election night, but may well come in mid-term). Jan Logie is 9 on the list and currently looking pretty certain, while Holly Walker is 12 and in on current polling – but the Greens have a history of shedding several seats between polling and election day.

The views of other Green candidates on the cusp would be pretty useful to know, but I don’t know them. I’ve no idea about Steffan Browning, Denise Roche, Julie Genter and Mojo Mathers. James Shaw who is number 15 supports abortion law reform – my aim is to ensure that at least the Wellington Central candidates don’t get to hide their views.

Mana

I actually think Mana is the best bet for ensuring no-one in caucus in opposes abortion law reform. But that’s mostly based on instinct (and the fact they won’t get many MPs – I certainly wouldn’t begin to guess the position of anyone past Sue Bradford). However, there is no-one who stands out as an abortion law reform advocate in Mana. Mana don’t have policy at the moment, but have said that it will be set by Mana Wahine (and I’d expect that group to come up with good policy). Getting that position out of Mana took quite a lot of work.

I do think it’s to Hone’s credit that he answered Family First’s survey and indicated where he stood on abortion. I find the arrogance of people who want to be representatives, but refuse to say where they stand on issues repulsive and offensive.

Maori Party

The Maori party have taken consistently reactionary positions about abortion. While I’ve no idea of the position of Waihoroi Shortland or Kaapua Smith (the first two people on the Maori party list) without any indication otherwise it’s probably safest to assume they will not support abortion law reform (and anyway the Maori party are very unlikely to get any list MPs so there’s not much point giving them your list vote – even if you support their actions over the last three years).

National

National are actually going to get very few list MPs, because they win the vast majority of the electorate seats. However, any known abortion law reform voices within National would be valuable. Two that I know of are Paul Foster-Bell, who is 56 on the National list and Jackie Blue, who is 46 – and because of the way the electorate seats shake down there’s only 2 actual list places between them. At current polling they are both in, and Claudette Hauiti, Joanne Hayes, Leonie Hapeta, are on the border line. Their opinions are unknown, but people going to electorate meetings in Mangere, Dunedin South, Palmerston North and Wigram could usefully ask.

If polling does slip then voting National will be more likely to bring in Paul Foster-Bell and Jackie Blue. But then if it slips a bit further (or National does very well in marginals) then Tau Henare number 40 on the list and 57^th in if no electorate seats change hands, is probably in trouble. This would be a very good thing, because he is an extreme reactionary. However, there are many hazards in the National party when it comes to Abortion Law Reform, starting at number 2.

Fun fact, in 2002, before he was even an MP I wrote to John Key the candidate and asked him where he stood on abortion. He replied with one of the clearest statements that abortion law should be based the right of the pregnant person to control their body that I received from anyone (I didn’t receive many responses). Make of that what you will.

ACT

To the surprise of no-one ACT’s supposed liberalism is optional when it comes to women. John Banks is an absolute reactionary. The only person he is likely to bring in is Don Brash – who doesn’t seem to know what he thinks about abortion (see the family first site I will give ACT candidates some credit for sharing their opinions).

New Zealand First, Conservative Party and United Future must all be considered anti-abortion parties based on their history and their leaders’ positions.

Abortion isn’t the only consideration about how I’m going to party vote – and I’m pretty intense about the issue – so I don’t think it’ll be the only consideration of many readers. But I think information about who is on the cut off, and their position on abortion can be useful for people who are choosing between parties (which again I’m not).

If you’re choosing between Labour and the Greens, for example, figuring out which vote is more likely to bring in advocates based on polling would be useful. On the other hand if you’re choosing between National and ACT, figuring out whether you’re bringing in unknowns, vague supporters of abortion law reform or arch reactionaries by voting National is probably relevant – voting for ACT almost certainly brings in someone who doesn’t know what he thinks about abortion (if it brings in anyone).

There are big gaps in this post – a lot of people on the cusp whose views on abortion are a big black hole. So if you’re at an electorate meeting, or someone wants to shake your hand or kiss your baby, then ask them where they stand and share it in the comments.

But to return to a theme – the sorry state of the information really does demonstrate that it won’t be by voting that we’ll bring about abortion law reform.

* I have deliberately avoided using the term ‘pro-choice’ in this post. I believe to support the right of women (and all pregnant people) to choose, you must also support the right to have children.

In solidarity with Russel Norman's EA*

2011-11-20T15:52:00.002+13:00

Russel Norman's decision to stand down his EA because of the actions of her partner is a feminist issue. I'm going to leave alone why the Greens thought it appropriate to condemn putting stickers on National party billboards (although it doesn't look good for principled left-wing green voters).** But why is his EA even part of the discussion?

Russel Norman decided to go public with the fact that his EA was in a relationship with Jolyon White. He then decided to use the power he has because she works for him to stand her down (I know that he is not her direct employer but Parliamentary Services are pretty responsive to MPs wishes).

From an employment perspective this is creepy enough - she is being stood down because she didn't tell her boss something her partner said months ago and instead made it clear to her partner that she didn't want anything to do with his actions. This is a pretty horrific view of employment and the right bosses have over their employees lives. A view Russel Norman endorsed.

But there is an important gendered to this. Russel Norman's action reinforces a world-view that defines women in relationships with men through their partners' beliefs and actions and therefore denies their autonomy and even existence. People have condemned Julie's writing on the hand mirror and tried to silence her, because of who her partner is. This discriminatory way of treating of women in relationships with men is systemic. Men are not treated this way, and are not defined by the actions of their partners. Russel Norman has endorsed this double standard by the way he has treated his EA.

Although this is far from the only feminist reason not to vote for any party which has Russell Norman at number 2 on its list. This was, after all, his assessment of Clint Rickards:

I don’t see that being involved in consenting group sex is any reason for him not to go back to work. And people use sex aids so using a police baton in a consenting situation doesn’t seem grounds for refusing him his job back.

Something to think about in the polling booth.

* Obviously this construction of her identity is problematic. However, I decided since I didn't think her identity should be public in this way I didn't feel comfortable putting yet another hit into google about who she was.
** I find the idea that political parties should be able to put up their truly inane hoardings in publicly owned space, but it is morally wrong to talk back to those hoardings, no matter what you are saying, a really depressing view of political dialogue.

Comment update

2011-11-07T15:56:00.003+13:00

I know comments are mostly dead here, but I thought I should let people know that I'm experimenting with Disqus. If I like it I'll export previous comments over to this forum, otherwise I'll go back to blogger. But until I've decided I'm not going to export all the old comments so they'll be hidden for a week or so.

Pro-choice means opposing welfare 'reform'

2011-11-03T01:42:00.000+13:00

I don't have time to write a long rant about this - it's late I only have time for the principle:

Being pro-choice means creating a world where every person who is pregnant can make a decision free of any form of coercion whether or not they want to continue the pregnancy.

The welfare reforms proposed by National are economic coercion.* Supporting women (and all pregnant people's) right to choose, means opposing these reforms and going further and demanding (among other things) a living wage for women on the DPB.

********

I'd like to say more about the 'reforms' themselves and explain why they aren't actually about getting women on the DPB into work, but misogyny and punishment. But all I have time for is this:

[Text "Want a job, Bro?" "You know I can't do your ghost jobs, John" for context see youtube]

* As are the current DPB levels which were deliberately set at levels that were unable to buy adequate food

What does it mean to be pro-choice and support disability rights?

2011-11-02T09:00:00.000+13:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, I read a few pro-life blogs. One of the things that they have been talking a lot about recently is the http://www.nsu.govt.nz/antenatal-screening.aspx">screening programme for Down's Syndrome. They're pretty intent on misrepresenting it, but the way that they misrepresent and use the rhetoric of disability when doing so makes me think about some of the problems with pro-choice discussion about disability

In our legislation 'fetal abnormality' is a specific category for abortion. In some DHBs, people seeking second trimester abortions for foetal abnormalities go through a different process, and see different doctors, are treated differently from those who are seeking them for other reasons. This different status is repeated often among pro-choice activists. There was an element of this in the coverage of George Tiller's murder, and the way that abortions for 'fetal abnormality' were emphasised over other reasons for second and third trimester abortions. 'Fetal abnormality' is treated as a more legitimate reason for abortion, particularly late in the pregnancy, than a woman who just doesn't want to be pregnant.

I think this is extremely problematic. I don't think pro-choice politics and disability rights have to be at loggerheads, I think they are fully compatible (and the rest of this post will at least partly explain why). But I think a lot of pro-choice discussion about abortion and fetal impairments is not compatible with disability rights, and certainly not with the social model of disability.

I think what illustrates this most starkly is the difference in between pro-choice discourse around abortion because of fetal impairment, and abortion because of the sex of the foetus. A post on The Hand Mirror is called More On Abortion: Female Foeticide. Something that I don't think many pro-choice activists (unless they were also disability activists) would be comfortable saying about abortion because of foetal impairment.*

There are two, related but distinct, reasons that people decide that they cannot continue a pregnancy based on some characteristics of the foetus. The child your foetus is going to be will take more resources to raise than the child you had hoped to have. And the child your foetus is going to be is valued less, by society and/or by you than the child you had hoped to have.

I see no moral or ethical difference, no difference based on principle, between decisions about abortion when someone has learned that the foetus is female, and decisions about abortion when someone has learned that the foetus will have an impairment. Or rather any argument that there is a difference has to be based on devaluing people with disabilities.

I think the compassion that I see many feminists extend to women who are making decisions after learning about a foetal impairment is appropriate (although not the status as somehow different from other women seeking abortions). But I wonder why they don't extend the same compassion to women who terminate pregnancies based on the sex of the foetus. I do wonder what part the fact that many western feminists can imagine themselves, or someone they know having an abortion because the fetus has an impairment. Whereas having an abortion because the foetus is female is something that other women do, in other countries.

My position is that the only good decision maker when it comes to is the person who is pregnant.** I think people who are making difficult decisions about their pregnancy should have their decision making process taken seriously, and be treated with compassion. I do not believe that it is legitimate to deprive people of information about their pregnancy on an individual level, because of fear of what decisions they'll made. I can judge a culture that devalues girls and people with disabilities, I can try and change that system. But the problem is structural not individual.

But however a feminist articulates supporting reproductive freedom, I think treating all cases where people are making decisions about abortion based on characteristics of a foetus the same, is an important principle.

* And Deborah's companion post about abortion and disability illustrates this - she comes to the same conclusion, but uses very different language to explain that conclusion.

** I also believe, but don't think it's particularly relevant to the political argument, that it's not necessarily in the interest of girls, or people with disabilities, to try and make people who don't value them, become parents to them.

On thinking...

2011-10-31T00:57:00.000+13:00

Unless you follow pro-life blogs,* you may not have realised that pro-life New Zealand has linked a campaign called Just Think. They're super modern and aimed at youth, which you can tell because it's on facebook. Their basic campaign strategy appears to be women are quite dim and don't realise that if they don't have an abortion they'll have a baby.** You think I'm kidding? This is their poster:

[Text: You know, I used to think abortion was ok, and then something happened to me - I had a baby of my own. So I haven't figured it all out yet... but why is that when I wanted a baby she was a baby...and when I didn't, she was something else?]

You'll notice that even in the text of an anti abortion poster a woman isn't allowed to be articulate enough to explain that she's anti-abortion. It's just that babies and pregnancy confuse her.

On one level it's just a terrible, terrible poster, but I think it is also quite revealing about one of the conundrums of being 'pro-life' (heavy sarcastic quote marks).

30-60% of New Zealand women get an abortion (I've heard both figures - the lower one from more reliable sources - either demonstrates my point). If you believe that abortion is murder (which pro-lifers probably don't - but say that they do) then that figure is horrific. You either have to believe that thirty per cent of women are murderers. Or say "They know not what they do."

And because outright misogyny is damn unattractive, often even to other misogynists, pro-lifers chose to portray women as incapable of thought. It's not that we're choosing to have have abortions - it's that we're being tricked and are too stupid to know what an abortion is.

The pro-choice position reflects the reality of women's lives: the number of women who have abortions, the fact that political belief about abortion is not a good predictor of willingness to have an abortion and the necessity of abortion for people who are pregnant and don't want to be. Anti-abortionists won't even portray women as capable of making the decision to be anti-abortion. We believe that women (and other pregnant people) are the best people to make decisions in their own lives.

* I do it so you don't have to - and also because Andy Moore's youtube channel
has to be seen to be believed.

** I'm using 'women' t deliberately in this case to describe how they see their target audience.

Lock-outs

2011-10-30T01:18:00.003+13:00

Tonight Qantas management has locked-out its workers and grounded its plans across the world. The dispute itself is complicated, involving three unions, and lots of different issues. But at it's heart it's about Qantas's desire to fire 1,000 people, and outsource the jobs, cutting wages and conditions.

As they are crying poverty it is worth pointing out that the CEO, Alan Joyce, received a 71% increase in his pay, and now gets $5 million a year. Qantas's annual profit also doubled last year.

In Rangitikei, CMP meatworks demanded that its workers accepted a 20% pay cut. It has locked out union members until they agree to this pay cut. They have now been locked out for 11 days.

The recession gives employers power - and these lock-outs show that they're prepared to use it. The only way to stop employers doing what Qantas and CMP meatworks is doing - is not give in. The collective . By standing against companies, large and school, these workers are protecting other workers. Because if their bosses succeed other companies will take note and do the same.

I haven't heard what solidarity Qantas workers are asking for, although I'll try to update this post if I hear anything. But the CMP workers need money. There are 100 of them, and they're trying to survive without wages. You can donate through internet banking here:

38-9007-0894028-08 NZCTU – Disputes Fund

If you're in Palmerston North you can also make donations of food at the union centre.

There's more to say - and if it continues I'll say more. But the most important thing you can do this week to protect your wages and conditions (if you have a job) is to donate to the CMP workers lock-out fund.

The Limits of Abortion as a Health Issue

2011-10-26T13:00:00.000+13:00

Earlier this year we had a blogswarm for world health day "Abortion is a Health Issue Not a Crime." I never finished my post, partly because I am have deep reservations about "Abortion is a Health Issue" (which is what the post ended up being about). I'm posting it today as part of a week of pro-choice posts in the run up to the release of NZ's abortion statistics on the 28th. I'm posting three posts this week, and I realised they have a theme - the importance of keeping "Trust women, and all pregnant people"* at the centre of any struggle for any abortion rights.

*********

In 2004, a woman in New Zealand was told she was not allowed in abortion when she was diagnosed with a heart condition in the 21st week. She was told it was too late in the pregnancy and that she did not meet the criteria. She died after the baby was still-born. Of course access to abortion is a health issue - women die when they don't have access to abortion. Abortion is a health issue, because women die when they don't have access to safe abortion.

But abortion is not only a health issue or even mostly a health issue. Abortion is about autonomy, freedom, survival and social relationships. The slogan "Abortion is a Health Issue" suggests a strategy which narrows the lens and focuses our struggle for abortion away from these wider issues. Now I'm uncomfortable about this because autonomy is the core of why I support abortion rights. But on top of that I think this strategy may have fish hooks - the discourse of 'health' may not be as useful for us as it first appears.

First off, abortion as a health issue appears to be an area where anti-abortion people are actively taking the abortion struggle. Incrementalism - the anti-abortion tactic of making things just a little bit worse - is based on a facade of treating abortion as a health issue. Whether it's 'informed consent' (those are heavily sarcastic scare quotes in case you can't tell) or states putting in ridiculous regulations about the height of the ceilings in the abortion clinic. Anti-abortionists are actively interested in fighting abortion as a health issue.

On one level this is quite a strange position for anti-abortionists to take - because the science is really heavily not on their side. The only reason they manage to even engage with health is they take conveniently ignore that by the time someone is seeking an abortion they are choosing between continuing pregnancy and abortion - and abortion is safer than bringing a pregnancy to term.

I may think that anti-abortionists are have to be some combination of: lying, deluded, misogynists, who are incapable of argument, reason, empathy, compassion or logic. But they have a goal, and there has to be a reason they do the things that they do (besdies the fact that they're lying, deluded, misogynists, who are incapable of argument, reason, empathy, compassion or logic). There are some areas that they deliberately try to avoid: the reality of women's experiences, women's autonomy, and who should be the decision-maker. They know these are losing strategies for them and they will just say 'but what about the baby' to try and distract from the fact that they don't want to talk about any of these things.

But they are prepared to talk about health? Why is that?

By talking about abortion and health we're bringing in a discourse that already exists, and those discourses can serve anti-abortionists purposes as much as ours. Take their incrementalist demand for parental notification/consent for under 16 year olds. At the moment abortion is treated as exceptional within the health system. For other medical decisions children are legally treated as unable to consent, and parents have to give their consent. Those who are trying to punish young girls, can use normal health practice and rhetoric about involving the family, and parents' responsibility for children's health to support their cause.**

The existing discourse about health serve anti-abortionists purposes as much as they serve ours. They can play on the idea that 'health' means there is one right decision and that people are not well equipped to make decisions about their own health. Discourses of health in our society are not about autonomy and liberation. They are moral discourses that are based on an ideal way of being. In order to be healthy you must do some things (exercise, eat certain foods) and not do other things (smoke, eat other foods). In health discourses people are not treated as competent decision makers, but people who have to be persuaded to adopt a limited array of behaviours.

Women can go through the process of being certified as needing an abortion under the mental health provisions in this country, and not realise it, and not realise how restrictive the laws are. One of the reasons for this, is because we're so used to gatekeepers to get access to health procedures, diagnoses, and pharmaceuticals, that talking to so many doctors seems normal.

The existing models and meanings for health are not the sort of abortion services I am fighting for. As Anna Caro points out: "The whole way our medical system’s set up seems antithetical to anyone’s autonomy." The slogan of last year's pro-choice demo was 'No More Jumping Through Hoops'. But for many people jumping through hoops is part of engaging with the medical system (The End is Naenae has an example of how much work, and how many gate keepers there can be to get what you need. Amanda W has a great post on second shift for the sick).

There were many brilliant posts written as part of the blogswarm. I think talking about abortion and health is a really important way of connecting with some people we need to connect to. But focusing on abortion and health is an incredibly risk strategy. I wished we lived in a world where discourses of health were always discourses of autonomy and liberation - but we don't. So we have to always keep the autonomy and liberation of women (and all pregnant people) at the centre of our demands around abortion.

* 'Women, and all pregnant people' is a phrase I'm trying out. I'm struggling to talk about abortion in a way that acknowledges that not all people who get pregnant identify as women and also acknowledges that the politics of abortion are about misogyny and the struggle for freedom of women as a class. I welcome ideas and feedback

** I think there are two answers to that - . The first is that children should have control over their own health care before the age of 16 and the law in general should change. And the second is that abortion is specifically different from other health care. However, I think this demonstrates the problem of trying to argue abortion as a health issue. Either you are also trying to change the nature of the health system - or you're also arguing that abortion should be treated differently.

Repost: A Feminist Issue

2011-10-18T19:01:00.002+13:00

It is four years today since the events I described in the first part of this post. The grumpy sleepy baby is now six. I got his name for this story from the Latin word for frog, which used to be his nickname; now he is old enough to object and explain the ways he is not like a frog: "Am I green? Do I croak?" Everyone else in this story is older too - and different, although not in such easily quantified ways.

But the prison is still there. There was a visiting hour this morning.

******

When I knocked on the door at 7.15 that morning Anura was still asleep. Anura, aka the frog, is two, and his godless father was in prison. It was the first day any of us could visit Thomas,* and I wanted him to be able to see his godless son.

The visit didn't start until 8.30, but Rimutaka prison is half an hour's drive from Wellington and I was told to get there half an hour early. So Anura's mother woke him up, and I strapped a grumpy, sleepy baby into his carseat. We talked about the visit on our way up, me and Anura. "We're going to visit Thomas" I said; "Yeah" he said". "He's in prison" I said; "Yeah" he said. But mostly I just drove.

I'd heard that you could take property (which is corrections lingo for stuff) into the prison while you were visiting. I had my bag of baby stuff in one arm and my bag of prisoner stuff in the other as we went from the visitor's carpark to the gatehouse. We were a little late, and he was walking really slowly so I slung him on my hip, with my two bags. "Takahe" said Anura - although actually it was a Pukeko.

When we got to the gatehouse it was clear that I wouldn't be able to take anything in - everyone was putting everything they had into lockers. So I did too and we were the last to go through the metal detector. "One at a time" the guard said - so I sent the baby through first. Neither of us set off the metal detector - I'd worn my black pants rather than my jeans to make things easy. After searching my bag he let me take my nappies and a museli bar down to visiting. I wouldn't let Anura walk to visiting, but carried him instead - I wasn't going to cut into our hour.**

When we got there the guard made me go back and leave my bag in the entrance way. I could see everyone else hugging their prisoner, but I couldn't see Thomas. The guard told me that they would get him and I should sit down.

Visits at Rimutaka were in a prefab - bigger than the ones at school - but the same basic shape. In one corner was a small fenced in area - like it should have been for children to play in, but there were no toys.

Then Thomas was there in a bright orange Guantanamo bay jumpsuit and I was hugging him and he was OK. The next fifty minutes weren't how we'd normally talk, and not just because the guards would come over and tell him to put his feet on the floor. Although when Anura got bored (even a prison visit hour is a long time for a two year old) he came over and grabbed my face - just like he would have in any other conversation (although he's a better talker now so when I wasn't paying attention to him yesterday he just said "Stop Talking").

Prison visits are too short - they tell you it's over and you try and get one last hug, and say one last thing, and then another last hug, and then it really is over.

The prisoners were taken away and we were sent to the entrance way. They don't let you out of the visitors centre right away. While waiting in the I got a nappy from the bag they hadn't let me take in. Anura had needed changing for a while. I put my hand under his head as he lay down and changed his nappy just outside the door to the visitors centre - there was nowhere else.

Once they let us out we walked back to the gatehouse at two year old pace - he wouldn't be carried.

But in the end, my experience was as borrowed as the baby. When I was waiting to visit the following week,*** I noticed a woman who visited every day. Later she pointed me out to a friend - "She's with the terrorist" and glared at me. I don't know what her problem with me was, but I would think part of it is that I was so obviously there temporarily.

I saw people I knew when visiting, and I wasn't surprised to see them, although they were very surprised to see me. I don't belong to any of the groups whose existence is criminalised or for whom jail is a life hazard. I visited five times in four different prisons before I saw other pakeha visiting pakeha.

So I don't want to talk as if I know anything about having people you love in prison - because twenty-five days is nothing - people are on bail for months and are sentenced to years in prison. There are families and communities, poor and non-white families and communities, where people in prison isn't a horror or an aberration, but a fact of life.

I kept coming back to how much I had, when working to support people in prison. Most important was that there were heaps of us doing this together. I was in a good position for other reasons I had a car, I didn't have a job, I didn't have a child, English is my first language. While I love my friends who were arrested, their disappearance did not change the fabric of my life. I wasn't trying to live without their income, or what they did around the house.

Despite all this trying to support people in prison took everything I was able to give. Even prison visiting - which was the high point of my weeks - is work, doubly so if done with a two year old. The work of having people in prisons, and keeping families and communities functioning while they're away, is done by women. Female visitors outnumbered male visitors three or four to one. It was mothers, sisters, daughters, girlfriends and friends who were there, with or without kids, to do what needed to be done.

The week after I first visited Rimutaka, I visited Arohata - the women's prison. I'd gone to the prison half a dozen times already, to drop off books, letters, newspapers and visitors forms; I knew the prisons were different. At Arohata they weren't set up for supporters. At Rimutaka there were signs, forms and boxes for anything we might want to do. At Arohata they weren't as rigid, but after a week they wouldn't let us drop any more newspapers off, because they'd never seen this number of newspapers.

I got to Arohata half an hour early - just like I did at Rimutaka. When I rang the bell they told me that visiting didn't begin for half an hour and I'd have to wait outside. About ten minutes later another woman came, she was Maori and there to visit her mother. She'd come down from Palmerston North and we talked a little bit as we waited. I leaned against the fence, and she sat on the grass. She was pregnant, and needed to pee. I wanted to fight for her to get in and get a proper seat, but I'd already spent long enough in the prison system to know that it would just make me tired and get us nowhere.

Theoretically women prisoners on remand have much more visiting time than male prisoners on remand. Visiting time was in two hour blocks, rather than one hour blocks. All visiting time is cut into by the slowness of the prison system, but at the men's prisons they at least seemed to be expecting visitors. At the women's prisons they didn't even realise we were coming, until visiting time began.

As I said, from 12pm Monday 15 October to 4.01pm Thursday 8 November my happiest hours were spent prison visiting. While I was visiting I knew that they were really there, and that they were still them and fears that I couldn't even acknowledge dissipated.

But visiting at Arohata made me so sad, sad and angry, because the other female prisoners didn't seem to get visitors. The woman I'd waited on the grass with was the only other visitor the day I was there, and when other friends had visited the day before, none of the other remand prisoners at Arohata had got visits.

There are fewer remand prisoners at Arohata than there are at Rimutaka (18 vs 81 in the 2003 prison census). There are only three women's prisons in the country, so women as far away as Gisborne would be held in Wellington. But even taking the numbers into account there were five times as many visitors over two days at Rimutaka, than two days at Arohata.

I don't think that I can extrapolate out total support from two days of visiting, but there's other evidence that implies this is a pattern. Three times as many women as men had custody of children immediately before they were locked up (35.5% vs. 12.1%). For men, almost 80% of the children were looked after by their partner or ex-partner. Whereas for women less than 25% of children were looked after by their partner or ex-partner (full figures here). Instead it's immediately family, larger whanau or CYFS.

Women do the work when men go to prison, and when women go to prison there isn't necessarily anyone to fill the gap.

I'm not pointing out anything new when I say this makes prisons a feminist issue. The invisible work women do is even further from the public eye when it is to serve an institution designed to hide and conceal.

There are different ways of knowing. I've believed in prison abolition for years, but I believed it different on Tuesday 16 October when I stood outside barbed wire fences and thought about people on the other side. And I knew that prisons were a feminist issue when I changed a nappy at the entranceway to a prison visitors centre.

* I have a car, and in a crisis situation I like nothing better than I really long to-do list, so I'd gotten myself approved first.

** That's the guard's job

*** A visit that never happened - but the way the corrections department at times seems deliberately set up to make your life worse is a topic for another post.

Open Letter about Omar Hamed

2011-09-27T23:04:00.002+13:00

Omar Hamed is an organiser for Unite! Union, a member of Socialist Aotearoa, and until recently was a defendant in Operation 8. The following letter was written in March by several Wellington activists and sent to a number of individuals and activist groups in Auckland and around New Zealand. Omar Hamed played a prominent role in yesterday's occupation at the UoA. Tove has written about feminist attempts to respond to him in Auckland. The letter is reproduced here to support those who are fighting for a left that takes sexual violence seriously.

In the last year [2010], Omar Hamed has been living in Wellington. While here he has consistently behaved towards women in a misogynistic, disrespectful and sexually predatory way. Comrades from across the left have brought up problems with his behaviour and he has consistently failed to understand the importance of meaningful consent in sexual relationships.

A group of us concerned about Omar’s behaviour have come together to draft this document outlining what has happened while he has been in Wellington and what efforts we, and others, have made to challenge his behaviour. We have sent this e-mail to groups, and bcc'd it to individuals. We hope it will be useful for those who work with him when he returns to Auckland.

This statement is not confidential. We encourage people to forward this e-mail to anyone who has or will come into contact with Omar, or who is interested in this issue.

Omar’s pattern of behaviour

We don’t want to identify the women affected, so we haven’t gone into detail. It’s also important to understand that this is a pattern of behaviour on Omar’s behalf, and not isolated one-off incidents.

He does not take sexual consent seriously when his sexual partners are drunk. He has repeatedly ignored drunk women when they told him they were not interested in his sexual advances. He has repeatedly encouraged women who have rejected him to get drunker and then attempted to make a move on them when they were more incapacitated. Some women have had to physically fight him off. He has demonstrated that he is willing to have sex with someone who is too drunk to give meaningful consent.

We have focused on his most grotesque behaviour, but he has consistently talked to and about women in ways that make it clear that he does not respect them as comrades and human beings, but instead sees them as objects.

He went to a party at the flat of a person with whom he previously had a sexual relationship, even though she repeatedly told him not to come. He refused to leave when she asked. He tried to punch and threatened to kill a male she was talking to. This behaviour is typical of men trying to maintain power and control over their lovers and ex lovers.

Omar clearly has a problem with alcohol, and has used this to excuse his behaviour. But this problem with alcohol is not causing his misogynist and disrespectful behaviour, and neither abstaining, nor reducing his drinking will solve it. While sober he has defended his drunken behaviour. He has made it clear to those he was talking to that he either does not understand, or does not care about, meaningful consent.

Responses to Omar from Wellington

It’s important that people from other parts of the country understand that Omar has been challenged by groups and individuals from across the left. Basic ideas such as ‘meaningful consent’ and the impact that sexist behaviour has on women have been explained to him repeatedly. He is not operating out of ignorance.

He has responded to challenges from individuals in a variety of ways depending on who was doing the challenging:

When he has thought he was among friends he has minimised the behaviour, often in a sexist way. He responded to a lesbian’s comrade’s criticism of his sexist behaviour: “why? are you worried I might steal your girlfriend”. When two men were criticising his behaviour and one left the room he said to the other: “But four women in two weeks that’s pretty good eh?”
When these tactics haven’t worked he has got very upset, begged for forgiveness and promised that he would behave differently in the future. Despite his promises he has repeated his behaviour.
When he has been challenged by those who he did not consider friends he has tried to silence and discredit them.

Wellington groups have also challenged his behaviour. AWSM banned him from their political events and outlined their problems with the way he was treating women. He has also been banned from the 128 social centre. Workers Party members collectively brought up these issues as did members of his own party.

What is to be done?

We understand that people will have different ideas about how to deal with Omar’s behaviour. Groups and individuals have to draw their own boundaries about when he’s welcome.

If Omar is willing to change the way he relates to women, then assisting him to do that is important political work. However, he has given no indications so far that he is willing to change, and if he does not recognise what he is doing is wrong then his comrades cannot make him change his behaviour.

The most important political action that people can take about Omar’s behaviour is to speak about it openly. Openness about the fact that he ignores people’s boundaries and does not take sexual consent seriously is the best protection we can offer women within activist communities. This can be really hard to do, because there are many different instincts that train people to be silent at times like these.

Here are some suggestions of what could be done to make environments and groups that Omar is welcome in safer spaces:

Not allow him to take up positions of power.
If people are organising events where there is alcohol, then a responsible person should keep an eye on him throughout the event.
Consider that if Omar is welcome at an event, then some women who know of, or have experienced, his past behaviour may not feel safe attending.
Undertake political education work around sex and consent more broadly, this could include distributing material or running workshops.

Finally, and we cannot stress this enough: the action that will make the most difference to women’s safety when Omar is around is to make sure that everyone there knows about his pattern of behaviour.

Fighting sexism, misogyny, and sexual abuse of any kind must be part of our revolutionary organising now. Omar’s behaviour is an issue that affects individuals, groups, communities, and the left as a whole. It hurts the people he assaults, their support network, organisations he’s in, and the revolutionary movement. To allow his behaviour to continue is to create a left which is actively hostile to women. A left which is actively hostile to women cannot bring about meaningful change.

[Note from Maia: I will be moderating this post very carefully, and will delete any comments which minimise sexual violence, attack survivors, or suggest that there is a way that people who have been sexually assaulted should or do behave. Obviously there is more to say, and I may write a post of my own about this soon.]

The cost

2011-09-06T14:28:00.000+12:00

It is the 8th of November 2007 at 3.30pm, we are in the park next to Symonds St cemetery. We are waiting. The solicitor general is going to announce whether the crown is going to persue terrorism charges against our friends. We had followed them to Auckland and now we are waiting until 4pm. A few days earlier, I had decided that we are going to win, and I am holding on to my own conviction as a talisman.

Some people are going to get snacks - I find some coins and ask for Whittakers Dark Almond Chocolate. "And if you don't find it they won't get bail."

"Don't say that!" Risks are not acceptable.

They come back with chocolate, but not Dark Almond. What have I done? Someone else there digs to the bottom of her bag and finds a few almonds and I eat the almonds and the chocolate together - that will have to do.

At 4.01 the solicitor general announces that the there will be no terrorism charges.

*********

I was in my office of the 29th of August 2011 - engaging in magical thinking. I had almonds and dark chocolate and ate them together. The Supere Court was going to deliver the most important legal decision in the case since the solicitor general decided not to press terrorism charges sometime that week. I decided that they were going to win. I couldn't think of anything else to do.

The judgement came down about midday Friday. It wasn't as clear as the decision in the park, although it was definitely good news. I tried to guess what it meant, my mind racing through what I knew about the case and the law.

*********

Today the crown dropped the charges against all but four of the defendants (obviously there is more to say - but there a quite a few suppression orders in play at this point).

********

18 people were arrested during the raids on October 15th 2007. Another 4 were arrested in the first half of 2008.

2 had their charges dealt with reasonably quickly in 2007.

1 pled guilty and got discharged without conviction in 2008.

1 had his case thrown out at the depositions hearing in 2008.

1 died in 2011.

13 have had their charges dropped today.

4 still face charges under the Arms Act and of "being part of an organised criminal group"

*********

I have never been able to take the charge of "being part of organised criminal group" seriously. I think it's the word organised. That and the fact that I've read the legislation and know enough about the crown case to see a non-overlap. It is appalling that these ridiculous charges mean that those four people, and those around them, will have to continue to pay the costs of being a defendant.

*********

The 14 people who have had their charges dropped spent a combined 9 months in jail and 50 years on bail.

As part of their bail conditions they have had to report to a police station 1,650 times

They have had to travel more than 15,000 km to meet those bail conditions.

Those living out of Auckland had to travel a total of 7,500 kms to get to Auckland for each court hearing.

They owe millions of dollars in legal aid - which they will have to repay with liens against houses and orders against wages.

And that's not even really it. The most important costs aren't so easily quantifiable. Stress demands compound interest. The raids and charges did not just effect 22 people - hundreds were in houses, cars or school buses that were searched - and more had to sit while people they loved were locked-up, and face the horrific threat of it happening again.

So many people, including me, have stress fractures that will not heal. The cost was on bodies, on minds, on relationships and it cannot be undone.

Tuhoe Lambert did not live to see these charges dropped.

Rage: A review

2011-09-05T00:57:00.001+12:00

I was not in New Zealand in 1981, although it may have played a role in my parents deciding to move here; the protests against the tour were a large part of what they knew about NZ before coming. I remember going on the protests later in the 1980s (we got to go to McDonalds after one). Apartheid was the second political issue I understood when I was a girl (the first was anti-nuclear).

I was certainly chanting a long while watching Rage.

In many ways it was a very good movie. I was particularly impressed with the way archival footage of the key moments was edited with fictional material. The acting was strong. And even though I spent most of the first twenty minutes asking: "Where is that? It is not Victoria University" there were some nice period moments.

The politics of the movie were reasonably clear. Although I could have done without a wise old African man telling a young Maori women how awesome New Zealand white people are.

The other political message was about the police - and the movie quite deliberately presented the police as stuck in the middle. We saw the police through the eyes of a young Maori female recruit who faced no racism or sexism from her co-workers. We didn't see the red squad. The police came and protected a house full of protesters in Hamilton. That is not a complete picture of the role of the police in '81 - it's a misleadingly limited one.

Leaving aside that political difference - my main objection was the sheer inanity of the 'plot'. Pro-tip if you're writing "falling in love wasn't part of the plan." then you may not be conceiving your characters as individuals with interesting and complex inner lives and well developed relationships.

It was neither the love story or the dead mother that bothered me per se; it was the way those two stories played out in the most predictable, unoriginal, ridiculously timed kind of a way. There was nothing specific or real about those stories that couldn't have come from "So I see you're writing a star-crossed lovers" cheat-sheet.

On top of that it meant we saw the anti-tour protests through a pakeha perspective.* You could tell an interesting story of a young Maori woman working as an undercover police officer, and the way she navigated that life. But instead of it being about her life and her world and what she saw - her story revolved around who she was sleeping with.

I think what bothered me most about the film was the idea that the events of 1981 and the many different realities those involved in them weren't interesting or dramatic enough in themselves to make a tele-movie. There are so many vivid interesting real stories that could be told about an incredible, stressful, intense time. Those stories could also have involved sex, and death and love and joy. Why rehash inanities rather than find something interesting and specific?

* And don't think I didn't notice that the only moment that it passed the Bechdel test was when the Donna Awatere character criticises the under-cover police officer. To have a pakeha man (who is supposedly deeply involved with the tour and reasonably politically aware) come in and rescue her was pretty telling about where the film-makers stood.

Today we are talking about David Cunliffe

2011-09-03T18:11:00.001+12:00

I don't actually want to talk about David Cunliffe. I want to write about the politics of television or active bystanders in rape prevention or the problems of the conflation with a moral body with a healthy body.

But then David Cunliffe talked about abortion:

He also supports the current state of New Zealand abortion laws and sees no reason to change them (this may or may not have anything to do with his statement that he is a practicing Anglican).

Now this is a very vague answer - probably deliberately so. It demonstrates why those of us who care passionately about abortion need to answer the questions ourselves. The most important information we need for MPs is not whether they think the law should change, but how they would vote if it did change.

What I want to draw attention to is how entirely unprincipled and unacceptable David Cunliffe's answer is. There is absolutely no way you can support the current law on principle - either disagree with the law, or you disagree with common practice.

The current law means that almost all women can get an abortion if they want one. However, in order to get access to an abortion we have to jump through hoops. For some women this means an extra visit to the hospital, another day off work, another trip across town, or further. For others it means travelling much further than is justified by the medical nature of abortion, from Palmerston North to Wellington or Invercargill to Christchurch. This price falls disproportionately on some women, as many prices do.

David Cunliffe is not the only MP whose response to questions about abortion - many MPs answer in a way which could be paraphrased as "My priority when it comes to abortion is never talking about it. They don't want to talk about abortion because they don't want to alienate people, or because they think it's kind of icky, or because they don't think it matters. So the law remains the same.

And this entire time women having abortions are paying a tax for MPs conscience. They're using an extra day's sick leave and paying for extra petrol every day 18,000 times a year. A generous interpretation of his priorities suggests he doesn't care about what women need to go through to get an abortion. A less generous interpretation would suggest that people like David Cunliffe want this tax, because they think abortion is a little bit icky and women should jump through hoops.

Understanding and Insight

2011-08-23T22:12:00.003+12:00

I first learned about Living Below the Line at the Wellington Candidates Meeting - it was not auspicious introduction. James Shaw mentioned that he was doing it and therefore he wouldn't be putting on weight to look like the other Wellington Central candidates; the audience laughed in that way people do when you mention fatness - there doesn't need to be an actual joke. And I sat at the back rolling my eyes - "because obviously there is no correlation between poverty and fatness in New Zealand."

"Living Below the Line" is a five day challenge where people live on $2.25 a day, with the purpose of both raising money and awareness. Apparently: "it allows thousands of people in New Zealand to better understand the daily challenges faced by those trapped in the cycle of extreme poverty"

This 'understanding' is facilitated through a completely arbitrary set of rules: you're not allowed to accept anything free, you must include the cost of a whole packet of anything you use a bit of, you don't have to count the travel to get food, you don't have to worry about the cost of cooking fuel, and you can use whatever fancy pants equipment you've got in your kitchen.

I find everything about it, the rules, the blogposts, the tweets, horrific and offensive on a very fundamental level.

Poverty is not a fucking game.

Poverty does not have rules except you have to do it again tomorrow. Poverty is not new or exciting. Poverty is not neatly quarantined to one area of your life. Poverty is not something you can control with neatly defined parameters. And it does not come with prizes.

If people want to use stupid gimmicks to fundraise then I'm probably not going to both writing a blogpost about it. But to pretend that this highly structured game will promote insight or understanding is an insult to the women and men (but mostly women) who have to feed themselves and other people with inadequate resources year in and year out.

The cost of being a woman in public

2011-08-15T20:28:00.003+12:00

Felicity Perry has talked to both Stuff and Nine to Noon about her experience on the Independent Youth Benefit. This is one of the benefits that National is planning to target with its latest scheme to pathologise young people.

David Farrer wrote a post about her (I'm not linking to it). In the comments thread someone posted her cellphone number. In that thread she has been repeatedly denigrated. She has also been harassed by phone.

She told a small part of her life story. Of her experiences on the Independent Youth Benefit, and what these policies would have meant for her. Her experience was not the experience of MPs, businessmen and international financial traders. It was not enough for those who disagreed her to denigrate her and attack her legitimacy to speak; they also had to harass her personally and extract a toll from her for what she'd said.

*******

On Friday's New Zealand Next Top Model the contestants were given a "Pacific Blue Courtesy Challenge". They had actors making life hard for the contestants, and this included an actor playing a papparazzi. The fake papparazzi took a picture of one of the contestants, Aroha, in her underwear when she was getting out of the taxi, and when she tried to get away from them she was the most assertive.

Aroha was deemed to fail the "courtesy challenge" and kicked off the show.

She was blamed both for being harassed, blamed for her harassers success, and blamed for fighting back.

*******

Drawing attention to misogyny on either kiwiblog or New Zealand's Next Top Model, is kind of like talking about the wetness of the sea. Women's bodies and lives are treated as public property, and these are just two of an ocean of examples. But as well as being examples they normalise it. NZTM is fun Friday night entertainment, and the huge number of tampon adds on TV3 OnDemand makes it very clear whose its ideas of what it means to be a woman are for. While Kiwiblog is happy to exact a cost for stating opposing views - a cost that'll be higher for those who are more marginalised.

So my opposing narrative is to offer solidarity to Aroha and Felicity. To applaud their strength and resistance. To offer the same to other women who are experiencing variations of the same horrible harassment, whose lives and bodies are treated as public property, and who are penalised for any difference with what the viewer expects.

Wellington Central: Abortion and other matters

2011-08-10T15:51:00.002+12:00

In general, I don't think Meet the Candidates forums are particularly useful. It's fun to say to James Shaw (Wgtn Central Green Candidate) "I won't vote for the Greens because Russell Norman said that Louise Nicholas had consensual sex with Clint Rickards", but not an hour and a half of my life fun. Anyone who cares enough to go to a Meet the Candidate forum probably already knows where the parties stand. However, there is one thing you can learn at a meet the candidates meeting that it is very hard to learn anywhere else - and that's candidates' position on 'conscience' issues.

Like abortion.

So when Victoria University had a meet the candidates forum, this seemed like an excellent opportunity to figure out where Wellington Central candidates (many of whom end up deciding things for the rest of us) stand on abortion.

I thought a bit about how to phrase it. Give them an inch wiggle room and they'll not answer your question at all - one person asked about child poverty and whether they would commit to raising benefit rates - and Grant Robertson waxed very lyrical about the evils of child poverty and didn't mention benefits at all. So I made it very focused on law change.

Grant Robertson emphasised that he was pro-choice and that he thought the law should be changed.

James Shaw just said ditto.

Then the New Zealand First candidate and the United Future candidate agreed as well. The United Future candidate said that UF was pro-choice - which may surprise Peter Dunne, although at this point who knows.

Then came Paul Foster-Bell, the National party candidate. He began with a long spiel about how every abortion is a failure, and then said that he supported a woman's right to choose.

It was neat that he got shit for this response on twitter. Although I was more interested in the second part of his response than the first. Obviously ideas like that are ridiculous and should be challenged. But when it comes to MPs, I'm much more focused. They can believe that abortion angers the Wombles, but pleases the Fraggles if they like. I care how they're going to vote.

Although I was interested in why he thought we cared that he thought abortion was a failure. I had asked for his position on the law, not I understand why the Nats run liberal candidates in Wellington Central - but of all the places to

*******

The debate as a whole was one of the most male dominated events I've been to for a while. All the candidates were men, and James Shaw introduced two other local Green candidates who were also men. The chair was a man, and I'm pretty sure that only one woman asked a question. This did not reflect the audience. No-one appeared to notice.

It feels almost cruel, in events like this, to pick on the candidates from the smaller parties. For some reasons candidates from smaller parties which are trying to portray themselves as middle of the road are always much, much, weirder than anyone else.

So I'm not going to say anything about the United Future candidate, although he was hilarious - because he was just some guy who said yes when asked. Is that any reason that he should be mocked on feminist blogs for going along to a student focused election forum and talking about hunting and fishing?

But I am going to say that Ben the NZFirst candidate who said that there never used to be child poverty in New Zealand and blamed current poverty on poor parenting is as ignorant as his politics are terrible.

Apart from that I hate them all (although Grant Robertson almost got me appreciating him when he argued with Ben's ideas about child poverty - which just made me hate him more).

What's before 101?

2011-07-16T23:23:00.004+12:00

Today I went to the Big Radical Left Fair. It was a fun day - lots of baking, lots of people, and some super cute kids.

If you could get yourself to the venue - the only access was up a flight of stairs.

This is not rare in Wellington. Many people who organise events seem to treat an accessibility as a 'nice to have' - given up when something a group deems more important is under threat.

Every political event is also political statement - over and above anything that is said - the medium is a message. And what organising an event up or down a flight of stairs says is this:

"We have chosen to exclude people from this event on the grounds of their mobility disabilities."

That's not just wrong, because excluding people is wrong, it also weakens the left. Any exclusion of marginalised classes of people make it harder for us to fight for our collective liberation.

So when you're part of a group that is deciding on a venue for something and your struggling (as you probably will in Wellington) and you think "hey what about this community hall/bar/art space that is up a flight of stairs?" Ask yourself "Would I prepared to print - we have chosen to exclude people from this event on the grounds of their mobility disabilities - on every piece of advertising for the event?" And if you wouldn't be prepared to name what you're doing, then don't do it.

In Wellington next Tuesday? Come see Bob Kerr

2011-07-05T20:53:00.000+12:00

One of the things that has given me great joy as an adult is discovering that some of my favourite children's authors were lefties. Bob Kerr is a New Zealand example, I read his awesome graphic novels as a child, and as an adult I am awed by his illustrations of labour struggles and conscientious objectors.

Next Tuesday he's giving a talk "Putting Visuals to History" illustrated with examples from his book “After the War” and from exhibitions on Archibald Baxter, Rua Kenana and others.

When: Tuesday 12 July, 6pm
Where: Sandwiches, corner of Kent and Marjoriebanks st*
There will be a cash-bar and refreshments will be provided.

After the War is one of my favourite books to read to kids. It doesn't have many words (and if you've said you're going to read three books that's a definate plus), but it is beautiful and meaningful in a very few pages. If you have never read it then check it out when you're next in the library(or buy it for a small child you know).

If you haven't seen any of his art since you read "Terry and the Gunrunners" you can check it out on his blog.

This is part of the Labour History Project's AGM (more info about them here)

Dominique Strauss-Kahn

2011-07-02T11:51:00.003+12:00

Women with boyfriends in jail can be raped.

Women with multiple cell phones can be raped.

Women who can't read or write the language of the country they are in can be raped.

Women who lie on their tax forms can be raped.

Women who launder money can be raped.

Women who have told that their actual oppression is not enough to get them asylum, and so have to learn a story that will can be raped.

Women who have many truths they cannot tell to authorities can be raped.

With our brothers and our sisters in many far off lands

2011-06-30T20:31:00.004+12:00

I don't really use twitter, but every so often I get mesmerized by a hash tag. Tonight it was #J30 and #isupportthestrikes (with an occasional check out @Ed_Milliband - just to enjoy the many ways to say "fuck off"). A large chunk of British teachers and public servants are out on strike. Schools, courts and benefit centres are shut all over the place, and there are rallies and marches across the country. There are really awesome connections between struggles, with those protesting benefit cuts, joining the picket lines of the people who work in job centres.

Everytime people chant "The Workers United Will Never Be Defeated" in Wellington there are about 25 people there. I always make the same joke: "I agree with the general principle, but don't see it's application here. But when you've got more than half a million people out I think it's fully justified (although the workers aren't quite united, who is on strike and who isn't seems super complicated and doesn't make any sense to me).

The picture is from Elephant the best site I've found for live reports.

Of course Britain is not the only far off land in upheaval (The Daily Telegraph had a headline "Strikers Should Learn From Greece" - a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with, although I suspect we mean slightly different things). It is the easiest one to find good info in a language that I speak though. I'd welcome links in the comments. libcom did have good info from Greece, but it hasn't been updated in a while.

Why is Dita De Boni wrong? Because grammar

2011-06-29T22:48:00.004+12:00

I am only going to respond to half a sentance of Dita De Boni's ridiculous article about slutwalk, because life is too short to pay attention to the rest. She says:

I can't see the value in putting yourself out there to complete strangers as a sexual object - especially in social situations where alcohol blurs the ability of people to moderate their behaviour.

Actually I'm ignoring the second clause in the bit I quoted too - because it's stupid. And I've been a feminist blogger too long to have new ways to say "That's victim-blaming nonsense and if you don't mean to victim-blame then you should stop talking."

No the bit I'm interested tonight is the idea that you can put yourself out to strangers as a sexual object.

You can't - it's nonsense. If you are putting yourself out there you are the subject in that sentence, not it's object. This is a really important and basic point, which can very easily get lost. You can't objectify yourself - it's not possible. If you are acting then you are the subject of that action - you can't act to make yourself acted upon. Because in everything you do, even things that people suppose take away your agency, you are using your agency.

I keep saying the same thing, but getting increasingly more convoluted in saying it, because it's a really simple grammatical point.

But it's also an important political point; you can't present yourself as a sex object. Objectification is something that is done to you, it is not something you can do to yourself. Without this understanding any attempt to talk about the politics of objectification descend into gibberish.

A day of protests and babies

2011-06-29T01:39:00.001+12:00

The weather forecast had been ominous. But it was the perfect winter day - the sky was blue, the sun was shining, the sort of day that they made up the slogan 'You can't beat Wellington on a good day' for. And I was going to protest. I had a busy protesting schedule. Youth rates at midday and then slutwalk at 2pm.

The youth rates demo was 25 people with banners and a megaphone - theoretically we were outside the National Party Headquarters, but actually we were down the road a bit, which didn't matter, because it was a Saturday, so not many of them would have been there either. A perfectly respectable way of demo-ing, but not sustainable for very long.

But I didn't have to spend any of my time concentrating on demo-ing, because I saw a friend I hadn't seen for ages, and he had his baby with him. "I'm here for you" I tell the baby. The baby responded by dropping a rattle and making sure gravity was working.

2 4 6 8

No More Youth Rates

"Technically, the fact that there isn't a minimum wage for those under the age of 16 isn't a youth rate - it's a lack of rate." Pedantry over slogans written around bad rhymes and worse - it's my favourite.

I think fighting youth rates, and demanding the same minimum wage protection for under 16s that over 16s have, is incredibly important, and there's nothing wrong with hastily called demos (I have organised enough of them in my time). But hastily organised demos are not a substitute for that fight, or even a beginning - actual fight back needs organising, not just calling together the same two dozen people to stand outside Unity Books.

The demo was mercifully short, leaving plenty of time for a between demos coffee (or ginger beer in my case - I'm not a coffee fan). We talked a bit about slut-walk - because one of the people there had never heard of it.

I had resolved to go, but the Close Up piece on Friday night had nearly made me change my mind. I'm going to leave my thoughts about the problem of 'slutwalk' as an idea for another post. But I knew, ultimately, that I had to go. As this report of two demos in one day demonstrates - I go to demos. I think standing collectively with people who are advancing a cause you agree with is important enough to over-ride any non-monumental disagreement. I went along to a CTU budget day rally where Phil Goff was speaking - the finer nuances of the politics of rape, bodies, gender, sexuality, dress and good sound bites were not going to keep me away from 'slutwalk'.

I walked up Courtney Place and down Tory St, quite astonished at the wonders of the sun. Would Slutwalk be big? One of my friends had thought over a thousand. I sort of thought he was right, but didn't want to be disappointed.

I wasn't disappointed. When I got there, the not-yet-march was spread out along several different paths - so it was multi-pronged and hard to guess at size, but it was big. I saw so many people I knew from areas of my life besides trouble-making. My ex-next door neighbour, and her no longer tiny children, someone who I'd met at a friend's wedding. And, most exhilerating for someone who makes a habit of going on protests, there were so many people I didn't know.

Then I saw Strypey.

I had made a mental list of men who shouldn't be there. He hadn't been on my list, but he should have been. I know little about how he has treated women, but I do know how he treat rapists. I've known him defend multiple rapists and abusive men. I've seen him criticise survivors of intimate abuse and those who stood with them. I couldn't believe a man who was so open about doubting women's accounts of rape would dare come to this event.

I saw some people I knew, got distracted, spent some more time being impressed at the size and adorableness of babies. And then the march was off.

I made my way to the front to do a head a head count (at this point it's become a compulsion) - and it was a fab march for counting - long and not too wide. But I knew I wouldn't be able to count everyone. I counted groups of ten up to 100, and used that first hundred to count out blocks of a hundred down the march. Not 100% reliable, but better than journalists "make up a random number about half of what it actually is." I reckon there were about 1,200 people on that march, and it was beautiful.

Then, just as I stopped counting, I saw Strypey again. I walked up to him and said "I don't think you should be here. The way you have acted as a rapist apologist, and defended abusive men. I can't believe you would come along to something like this. I don't think you should be here." As I said this I remembered the time his bullshit discussion of lying women had driven people out of the room. He didn't leave, just said "I appreciate your point of view." But I was so glad that I'd said it.

It was quite literally a slut 'walk' - as the route was pretty inaccessible for those with buggies or in wheelchairs (and possibly rollerskates - although it wouldn't surprise me if regular roller skaters have less problems with stairs than I do). The march went over the city to sea bridge, and while there were ramps it followed the steps. Then on top of that the council was doing some works on the other side of the bridge which blocked the ramp alternative to the last lot of steps. Obviously any form of march is inaccessible to many people, but steps make things inaccessible for people. Those with buggies, in wheel-chairs, or with other problems with steps had to peel off from the main group and take the bits with steps on their own (or in a small posse). In a demo that was about collective solidarity, I thought this was a real shame (an organiser's perspective is here).

The rally was up on the bridge over civic square. I heard part of the first speech, (if I inherit vast sums of money from an eccentric relative whose existence I wasn't previously aware of I'm going to buy a really good sound system and the generator to power it and provide it free for Wellington demos*) but then I went to meet a friend and after that I wasn't somewhere I could hear the speeches. Except Brooklynne Kennedy - whose speech was both audible and amazing.

As I didn't hear the speeches I don't know if anyone mentioned (or anyone knew) that the City to Sea Bridge, the very ground we were standing on, was designed by a rapist. To me that's the most important message, that rapists are not a scary other group of men, they're just men who have listened to the many messages in our society that they shouldn't take consent seriously and they're everywhere. And while I can understand why a woman brought a placard "rapists R Freaks", to me the opposite message important, rapists aren't freaks, they're the people you know, so believe people when they say they've been sexually violated.

It was an amazing day. Two of my friends have just had daughters, and the day felt like a promise to them, and all the kids I saw that day - a promise that said "we'll keep on fighting. We know this world isn't good enough. We want it to be better for you."

* The demo of October the 28th 2007, protesting against the raids and demanding bail would have always been memorable for me. But it was the most captivating rally I've ever been part of, partly because the speakers and singers were amazing, but that would have been meaningless if the sound system hadn't meant that you could hear every word.

For realsies?

2011-06-24T16:31:00.001+12:00

So someone somewhere declared it the national week of anti-feminists shooting themselves in their feet. Alasdair Thompson has done his part, but Right to Life refuse to be out-done. They've decided to seek leave to appeal their recent Court of Appeal rout, on grounds including the following:

The legal recognition of children before birth as human beings endowed at conception by the Creator with human rights, the foundation right being a right to life.

That sounds like an argument based on firm legal footing.

I appreciate their ability to throw good money after bad. If the supreme court take the case then it seems very unlikely that they would find in Right to Life's favour - and if they don't that's more costs awarded.

But the kicker is if Right to Life did succeed in their aim and get abortions declared illegal, then all they'd do is hasten the speed of liberalisation. Almost all New Zealand MPs may be cowardly fucks when it comes to abortion, but New Zealand women need access to abortion and will make sure that we get it - that's the whole lesson from the last time they decided to try and make abortion harder to get.

Thanks Right to Life, thanks Alasdair Thompson - it's been an amusing few days.*

* I actually think the implications of what Alasdair Thompson said are not at all amusing and am in the middle of writing a post about them. But his TV3 interviews are comedy gold.

Taking up more space

2011-06-22T00:29:00.001+12:00

Last week Anthea wrote about taking up space:

But it's much more than that. I've recognised this tendency in myself, and in others, to apologise for your size, to make yourself as small as possible. Clearly if a seat is too small for the people sitting on it, in the short term both are going to be in some discomfort and, all else being equal, it's up to both of them to absorb some of that discomfort - but it should be about just that, a mutual effort to deal with a problematic situation, not the onus being on one to not inconvenience the other.

Anthea's basic argument is one that can't be repeated enough - people's bodies are expected to fit the built environment not the other way round and that's ridiculous (and also all capitalism's fault). But what her title made me think of was something I've been meaning to write about for a while - some of the subtler ways we reinforce the idea that people can pathologise taking up space.

I don't know if it's just a verbal quirk of the people I know, but reasonably often when a friend is ranting about someone who is annoying her she'll say "he takes up so much space."*

Most of the time if I'm going to respond to something people say that bothers me I have to have a line that I use (in fact few things make me feel cooler and more high than responding to fuck-wit things people say just off the cuff). In this circumstance, if I say anything at all I say "I hate that metaphor." Most people I know who use the concept of 'space' in this way don't think of it as a metaphor, but it is.

When you use a metaphor you're making a statement not just about what you're talking about, but also what you're comparing it to.** So when people criticise someone for 'taking up space' if they mean taking up time or attention they're implying that there is a scarcity of space, and there's not. Any scarcity of space is about the way the world is organised, and we should not legitimise that organisation by policing other people's physicality, even by implication.

* The pronouns here are representative of most of the conversations, which represents the strong pressure women feel not to take up space - either physically or metaphorically.

** I have known people whose metaphors make me want to say: "OK I disagree with your metaphor and your analysis of thing B, but actually we need to stop the conversation for a while to talk about your analysis of thing A, because that's even more disturbing to me."

School balls

2011-06-16T01:01:00.003+12:00

When I was at high school there was one girl who was out, she was the year below me. When the school ball came a lot of girls went together (double tickets worked out cheaper than singles). But this one girl brought her girlfriend - turned out the girlfriend had been my babysitter. I found this terribly embarrassing; in that vague way I found anyone talking to me embarrassing when I was a teenager. I don't know now - because I didn't think at the time - how hard that had been from her - what reactions she had faced.

St Pats has forbidden a student from taking another boy to the school ball. I just think it's awesome that students are fighting these rules - but shit that they have to do it at such risk and cost.

There was a facebook event for people to support them, but it seems to have disappeared - I am worried that the personal cost on them for taking this stand has been high.

Which seems like a good time to remind people of the follow-up meeting for Queer the Night - we are stronger together than we are alone.

When: Thursday 16 June 7pm
Where: Trades Hall
What: Homophobia and Transphobia - how we respond.

Note: The people involved have received a lot of media attention. I've left their names out of this post deliberately any comments that name them will be deleted.

Queer the Night: Demo Report

2011-06-11T02:04:00.001+12:00

"Are you here somewhere?"

I wasn't - I was running late - but the wording of the text was quite thrilling.

I got there just as the demo was leaving and let the people stream past me. I went backwards and forwards trying to get a handle on the size of the demo. It was more than 500 - too big to count. I did some section counting and my best guess is 600-800 people. It was fucking beautiful.

I saw my friend who had been up to her eyes in organising the demo and told her my estimate (she was expecting it - I'm a little obsessive with demo counting).

"Black, White, Gay, Straight, Love Does Not Discriminate"

"Isn't love the ultimate discrimination - saying that this person is more important than anyone else." Taking chants literally is up there with head-counts as one of my favourite things to do at demos.

"Shut up Maia"

"You've done an amazing job." I give her a hug.

It was a joyous march - you can get a sense of it here:

Two young men had brought along placards designed to insight hate rather than fight it. One said "Iran executes gay people - which side are you on?" the Other "Israel is the most gay-friendly state in the middle east." . Slowly the crowd edged away from them leaving them alone.

Later on someone gave me a flaming torch and I resisted the urge to set their placards on fire ("on careful consideration it would just bring attention to them away from everything awesome" "Yes and they'd also have a burning placard to attack you"). Although having a burning torch and not setting anything on fire is quite difficult, and I had to content myself with lighting people's ciagerettes.

I couldn't hear most of the speeches. I was down the back and megaphones are hard to hear at the best of times.

There were lots of Green party MPs, and Kevin Hague gave what sounded like a good speech. I was surprised about the lack of labour party MPs. When Jordan Carter talked about needing to vote I tried to shout out "Not for parties with MPs who accept that supporting gay rights is hating God." But I couldn't make it work in the moment, so it came out as random labour party sucks rhetoric (it's not that pithy even now).

The most powerful speeches, of course, were of people telling their own stories. Stories of hate, violence, fear - and resistance. Brooklynne's speech spelled out so amazingly how important that resistance was - and the whole event was about collective strength.

There was a girl there in her school uniform. When I was in sixth form the Evening Post printed an article stating we had a lesbian support group in our school (which I don't think even was a lesbian support group). Our principal was on Kim Hill who asked her if she'd allow satanist support group. I didn't do any work in any of my classes the next day, because we just talked about it all the time (what were the conversations even about?). At Queer the Night, those high school kids whose gender and sexuality don't conform with what they're told they should be got such a different message than anything available when I was at school.

It is appalling that Queer the Night is needed, but amazing what the organisers, and everyone there managed to create.

* I have a little bit of a demo counting obsession. I count or try to estimate pretty much every demo I go on.

Let's not tell rape jokes

2011-05-29T16:46:00.001+12:00

The Labour Party's Let's Not game has been out for a few days.* I'm not linking to it, for reasons that will become apparent, but I do want to discuss one of the offensive parts of it.**

If someone puts their finger in someone else's anus without their consent then that is sexual assault. This is still true if the two people involved are on a rugby field.

Ten years ago John Hopoate puts his finger in three other players anuses during a rugby league match. Apparently the people who were making this flash game thought "You know what we should do? We should animate this in an amusing way. That'll help us win the election and be awesome." Apparently people being violated without their consent is kind of funny if it's men on the rugby field.

One of the basic rape-myths that help uphold a culture where sexual assault is endemic is that sometimes consent doesn't matter. If you ever say that some people's violation doesn't matter - if you ever set some people up as unrapeable - then you, or in this case the Labour Party, are upholding that rape myth.

* I do incidentally think it's a terrible, terrible, terrible, piece electioneering even if you take all the offensive material out (it makes me think of David Mitchell - but thinking of David Mitchell could just be my brain's defense mechanism).

** It's not the only offensive part. I may try and write a follow-up post of what is so offensive about its portrayal of the treaty, Hone Harawira, the relationship between daughters and fathers in general and Maori women as a group.

#thingsfatpeoplearetold

2011-04-11T18:52:00.002+12:00

Sometime on the weekend I started seeing tweets like this (summary from Brian:

@mymilkspilt: Your body sends a bad message to your children. #thingsfatpeoplearetold @red3blog
Apr 9, 2011 10:20 PM GMT

@TheRotund: @mymilkspilt Your chronic illness would disappear if you lost weight. #thingsfatpeoplearetold
Apr 9, 2011 10:31 PM GMT

@MargitteLeah: "no one will ever love you." actual #thingsfatpeoplearetold
Apr 9, 2011 10:34 PM GMT

@BookMD: Fat people are stupid. If they were smart, they wouldn't be fat. #thingsfatpeoplearetold
Apr 9, 2011 11:58 PM GMT

@Fatheffalump: Telling anyone that it's ok to be fat makes you personally responsible for their death #thingsfatpeoplearetold
Apr 10, 2011 12:45 AM GMT

@elizabethgallo: You have such a pretty face... #thingsfatpeoplearetold
Apr 10, 2011 12:56 AM GMT

You can see what's been posted recently over on twitter. There have been thousands of tweets in the last few days.

They just flick up 1 new tweet, 5 new tweets, 46 new tweets and so on depending how long I've been away from the computer. Telling the truth about oppression is a radical act. And one of the most important truths about oppression is that it happens and it matters.

I'm sure different people have got different things out of reading that hashtag. Some statements made me uncomfortable with their resonance, because there are many things people have said around me that I'd rather forget for the sake of my relationships with those people.

But my overwhelming feeling one was one of deep recognition. Not just of things people have said to me, but what I'm afraid of hearing. To see this endless row of statements scrolling down that contain everything that anyone's projected on to my body since I was ten, everything that I've run away from hearing. And it's made clear to me not just the various elaborate things I have done to avoid hearing #thingsfatpeoplearetold - but my ways of avoiding hearing these things are valid and important survival strategies, not things wrong with me. It's incredibly legitimising to read all this and think "actually yeah that's really hard to deal with."

What #thingsfatpeoplearetold has done, for me, is to take the toxic fumes of fat stigma and made them concrete and in this form they lose their power.* In this form thhey are not about us as individuals, but about the culture that we live in, and in this form we can fight them.

It's a reminder that we are stronger together than we are alone. Individually they're just 140 characters, but together it's so much more.

************

Every so often, over the last few days, someone will tweet in astonishment about how awful people can be. Fat Heffalump has a great http://fatheffalump.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/on-expressions-of-dismay-and-disbelief/ response to these tweets:

So I want to say this to all of the people who are horrified at the things they read in these tweets. Don’t just shake your head, gasp in horror, and cluck your tongue at how terrible people are to the poor fatties. Stand the fuck up. Say something when you hear fat hate. Speak up when you see someone being treated badly because of the size of their body. Challenge those articles you see in magazines, newspapers and on television that perpetuate myths about fat people. Ask questions of the “facts” you see spouted that shame fat people, think about who might just benefit from fat phobia. After all, fat activists have been doing just this for decades.

But I want to go further. Yes a lot of the people who say #thingsfatpeoplearetold are actual assholes and some of them are much worse.

But assholes are not the problem here. The problem is systemic. Fat hatred is promoted by fashion, 'beauty products' and weight loss industries, built into the medical system, and officially endorsed by the government.

People need to stop saying these things, and start challenging people who do. But that's not going to be enough. A fair number of tweets, particularly from women, were said by their mothers (people often mention it - and anyway things that come from people's Mum's have a certain feel to them). My Mum is a feminist, and very loving and caring, and I'm not even going to write down the things she said to me while I was growing up, because they were too awful. The job of mothers is to bring up their daughters to survive in society, and that involves a lot of acclimatising to sexism. In a world where the government, the health system, and various industries are working to pathologise, then trying to stop your girl entering this hated category is a rational survival strategy (albiet a futile one). I'm not excusing what mothers do to their daughters, at all (It makes me so angry that my mother, her friends, and my friend's mothers, all feminist women, were prepared to police their daughters in this way). What I'm saying is that it won't change, people won't stop telling fat people this shit, if we think of fat stigma as an individual problem. I know a lot of people know that, but the repsponses to #thingsfatpeoplearetold means I feel I need to repeat it.

People may be assholes, but systemic change does not come from individuals being better. It comes from attacking the structures which give them the power to be assholes.

**************

So thank you everyone who added to #thingsfatpeoplearetold, and the people who are still adding to it. You can see the power of what they've done by reading #thingsfatpeoplearetold and reading Brian's summary, then pass it on, add your own. Understand that fat hatred is real and important, but in doing so realise that it can be fought.

* Yes I am thinking of the Labyrinth "YOU HAVE NO POWER OVER ME" I say. And it's not quite true - but it's more true than it was last week.

To learn more...

2011-03-14T22:51:00.007+13:00

In October of last year, The Hand Mirror was part of a debate about Te Papa and the tikanga they used for some taonga.

As a follow-up to that I wanted to draw attention to Kim's post The tapu of taonga and wāhine in a colonised land.

Her post discusses lots of different aspects of the collection itself, the tikanga, and the debate about it in the media and on blogs:

And this is the real issue, while Māori must understand a European worldview and law to survive in this land, colonisation has meant that very few people have any understanding of mātauranga Māori, or, in fact, of colonisation. Whenever an issue requires some understanding, whether it be the significance of te reo Māori, or kaitiakitanga, or whatever, the ignorance of most New Zealanders makes dialogue impossible. And thanks again to colonisation, this creates a problem not for those who are ignorant, but for Māori. Māori must repeatedly start from the beginning and attempt to explain their whole culture—this occurs in conversations, the media, court hearings, tribunal hearings. At some point, tauiwi need to take some responsibility for understanding the indigenous culture, and for understanding how their ignorance contributes to cultural imperialism, to Māori perspectives being marginalised and foreign in their own land.

I recommend reading the whole post.

The minister for police and upholding rape culture

2011-02-28T23:51:00.006+13:00

From the Herald (via No Right Turn):

Police Minister Judith Collins said the actions of looters was akin to "people who rob the dead".*

She expected to see the judiciary throw the book at looters.

"I hope they go to jail for a long time - with a cellmate."

Judith Collins introduced widespread double-bunking; she championed it in the media. When people who had actually done research suggested that it would lead to more prison rape and violence, she shrugged those statements off.

And now she's telling us that, for her, abuse and violence between inmates is a feature of double-bunking, not a bug. She is not explicit, but we live in a culture where threats of rape in prison are common enough that she doesn't need to finish the thought by telling us that the cellmate is large and called Bubba. By signalling that she thinks looters should be subject to rape and violence from their cell mates, she has acknowledged that her policy of introducing cellmates is responsible for increased rape and violence.

************

One of the most fundamental ideas of rape culture is that sometimes consent doesn't matter. And if you suggest that, about anyone, ever, then you are legitimising it as an area of contention and debate,

So when the Police Minister implies that looters should be raped, the ideas she's promoting about prison are appalling, but they don't just affect prisoners. What she says is part of the same culture that tells us not to drink, to go out at night, to dress that way. It's the same culture that says if we're in a relationship with him, or drunk, or flirted, or were in a war zone, or were asleep, or had sex with other people then our consent doesn't matter. It's the same culture that has been reinforced in every rape case I've ever written about. When someone ignores our consent and violates, it's that same culture which will find a reason, any reason, that we caused it and deserved it.

We can't dismiss comments about prison rape as somehow being different from other comments about rape. Like prison, prison rape is part of society, not removed from it.

* Just as a note - I haven't written anything about the earthquake. I try not to write on my blog without a reason - either because I've got something to say, or because there's something that I think should be heard, otherwise I try to stay silent. My silence should not be read as indifference.

Good News

2011-02-17T12:57:00.001+13:00

Yesterday the Court of Appeal upheld the SFWU & PSA case against IDEA Services - more usually known as the 'sleepover case'.

For those who haven't been following it - across the country there are residential houses, which offer around the clock care for people who need for disability or mental health reasons. These are funded (or rather underfunded) by the government. At the moment, the caregivers in these houses are paid what are called 'sleep-over rates' overnight. IDEA Services pays its works $34 for a 9 hour shift. This is obviously well below the minimum wage.

The unions involved took a case in 2007 to argue that workers should be paid the minimum wage. They won in the Employment court, and have now won in the court of appeal. Consistently the courts have found that since the workers have to be there then it is work (I could have told them that for free, but oh well) and should have been paid the minimum wage (for more information see the Service and Food Workers Union website - which is where I got the picture from).

I think this is one of the most important active feminist struggles in New Zealand at the moment. New Zealand feminists have been fighting for equal pay for equal work for a very long time. And we haven't won yet jobs that are preformed by women are consistently judged of less worth than jobs that are performed by men.

And this is a classical example: jobs that are dominated by men, Doctors, Firefighters, and ambulance officers, all get paid far more than minimum wage and are able to sleep on the job. Whereas disability service workers are mostly women, so they're not even working.

However, unfortunately victory in the courts may not deliver either backpay or a new. The IHC has made preparations to go bankrupt if they have to pay the money. Unless the government, which is the funder of services and so was, and has been, complicit in this whole thing. The government has also indicated that it would be prepared to change the law specifically to stop the payment of minimum wage over sleep overs (it's willing to make exceptions to the labour law for itself, as well as film studios).

So it's important not to just rely on the courts to make this change, but to actively support the workers in their struggle to get the very most basic wages and conditions.

Aesthetics, Lifestyle and survival strategies

2011-02-17T09:00:00.001+13:00

Ten years ago I was attending a reunion of a Women's liberation group, as an observer. It was an incredible experience and an honour. And on the first day, in the first session, one of the women got up excitedly and said "I just want to say look at all the people wearing trousers, when we first met, every one of us would have been wearing a skirt, Isn't it fabulous."

She was an awesome, friendly, loving woman. She had the best of intentions.

And over the next two days I heard pretty much every woman who was wearing a skirt talk about what she'd said. She'd made them feel self-concious and judged. And other women who were wearing trousers that day felt the same way.

By celebrating one form of dress within a feminist space, a well-intentioned woman had alienated many of those there. And I don't think that she ever knew the effect her words had.

*************

I have been misquoted pretty consistently as arguing that The Wellington Young Feminist Collective 'should' take issues of aesthetics/lifestyle/survival strategies off the table. I didn't say that. What I said was this:

This is the reason I wrote my post: "I used to think I couldn't be a feminist because I like looking a certain way and I am interested in certain things."

I think this is a real danger - equally the inverse - that women can feel that they can't be a feminist because they don't look a certain way and aren't interested in certain things. And I think the easiest way to avoid that is to make aesthetic/lifestyle/survival choices off the table for feminist discussion.

Now I want to talk about why I think that, what I meant by it, and why I think it's important.

*************

I'm going to take as a basic assumption of this post that it is not OK to criticise another woman's aesthetic/lifestyle/survival strategies in the name of feminism.* I know that this isn't a universally held belief. This post and the discussion at Boganette's makes that clear. But I think it also makes it clear why other women's survival strategies should not be open to criticism.

Why isn't it OK to use the language of feminism to judge other people's decisions?

Because it's alienating, none of your business, and the survival strategies other people choose has nothing to do with your liberation.**

I am happy to argue about this in the comments, but I am going to spend the rest of the post speaking to people who don't support criticising other people's aesthetic/lifestyle/survival strategies in the name of feminism, but don't understand why they should be off the table. I'll try and explain why I think celebratory, or supposedly neutral comments about aesthetic/lifestyle/survival strategies can be damaging in feminist spaces.

*************

I opened with a story, here are some more.

My friend was at a feminist action. She had been given free razors as part of a promotion. She didn't shave her legs. She gives them to someone and says "here you shave your legs have these". Later, much later, the person she gave the razors too tells her how shit she felt in that moment, how judged. My friend doesn't even remember it happening. [Please respect this story. I'm not going to accept any second guessing of it in the comments]

------

It had been advertised as a feminist meeting, but it was actually a clothes swap. Indeed it wasn't really a clothes swap at all, but one woman giving her clothes away. People tried on clothes, and they mostly didn't fit . One woman, who was probably half my size, put her hand on her hips and thighs and said "They're huge, that's why this is never going to fit."

------

An older feminist is running a feminist workshop. She makes frequent references to where she does and doesn't shave. She was trying to put us at ease. In fact it just made me feel like this mattered.

------

I could give many more examples like this. Think of the effect of celebrating a particular aesthetic/lifestyle/survival strategy in the name of feminism has on those who for whom it is financially impossible, or for those for whom it is inaccessible because of the way society disables their bodies.

When you're celebrating a particular survival strategy it still has nothing to do with anyone else's liberation, it's still alienating, and it's still none of anyone else's business.

In particular, in my experience, discussions about aesthetic/lifestyle/survival strategies take on more meaning and become more fraught when they happen in feminist spaces - and even more so the larger the feminist space.

This is just an observation. It may not be true in all feminist spaces, but it has certainly been a consistent experience of mine. I'm just guessing, but I think this is a result of the impossibility of women to win with their choices - they're always too much something, and are juggling so many different expectations, as well as their own and other people's needs. Therefore any kind of expression within a feminist space about these issues becomes a whole nother axis of pressure.

You'll notice that I only feature as an observer and the one excluded in these stories. This is not because I have some magic non-alienating super power. It's because what these stories have in common (as does the Trousers one I mentioned) is that the people who have made others feel alienated and excluded by discussing survival strategies have no idea that they've done unless someone tells them.

***************

I stand by my statement that the easiest way to solve the problem that I have now explored in quite some detail is to make discussions of aesthetics/survival strategies/lifestyles off limits in feminist spaces.

Let's consider a different way of dealing with discussions of clothes shops on the WYFC feed. Another way of doing it would be to post "Hey we all know clothing yourself can be super difficult. I just found this neat boutique called Emma's which works for me for [x reasons], but it might not work for you. What are your favourite clothing shops?" That's less universalising and I would have made no comment on a post like that.

Would people feel posting that they liked City Chic? The Warehouse? Hallensteins? Glassons? Supre? Each of these spaces provide different types of clothes at different prices for different people. Is this a space where people would be able to say, actually I can't afford to shop for clothes. Or I don't go to the clothes shops because of anxiety. If those things don't get posted how do you know why?

So what if someone comes a long and all the shops seem to them super-femme, or expensive, or don't cater to bodies anything like hers, and she's think "oh", and feels like feminism is a bit further away. My experience suggests that this is not just a hypothetical. This is a likely outcome.

The reason I say that I think the easiest solution is to take these matters off the table, is because I think having a good conversation about survival strategies/aesthetics/lifestyle is really fucking difficult. (for ones that go badly see any number of discussions on Feministe) If you want to initiate these sorts of conversations you have to know what you're doing and take the responsibility really seriously.

Can it be done? I was very interested in some of the conversations they had a FWD. They put a lot of effort into making sure that different experiences were heard. But who knows if people felt alienated by the way they did it.

***********

I know how useful discussion with people, those who share your experiences, about your aesthetic/survival strategy/lifestyle can be. They're useful for understanding why you do things the way you do, what meaning you've given to them, they can help making you stronger. I know what a difference it's meant so much to me having not just a name for the set of things that I found hard (dyspraxia) but someone who finds some of the same things hard.

I think spaces which tell individual women's stories and describe their aesthetic/lifestyle/survival strategies are really awesome and important. I follow a lot of blogs about women's lives, with their experiences and their analysis all rolled around. And then it's really clear 'this is me'. Locally, I love, and learn a lot from Letters from Wetville and Tales of a Redheaded Devil Child

The discussions which are useful for one person - will be unbearable for another. A description that one person finds really speaks to them is super alienating for another. There is value in creating spaces for all of us where we can feel comfortable, relax and socialise.

***********

And I know, many people have said, that it can seem ridiculous that when I've caused so much division to be so concerned about alienating people. But to me divisions based on ideology - 'what is feminism' are necessary and important. And if I write a follow up post - a response to all the people who asked me "Who the fuck are you to say what feminism is?" I'll try and explain why.

Alienating people who are wearing trousers, or who shave their legs, or who can't use the products you promote, when you don't even mean to, that's completely unnecessary and avoidable.

* Just to be clear I differentiate betweens survival strategies and the use of power. So, for example, if you take a job that gives you management responsibilities then you can and should be criticised for the way that you use that power. However, almost all survival strategies don't involve the wielding of power over someone else.

** The other exception I would lay out to when other people's survival strategies become other people's business is if you cross a picket line, but I don't think that applies here.

Bad news

2011-02-16T22:51:00.004+13:00

So according to the Right to Life (I'm not recommending you follow this link - just providing for information sake) website the Family Planning Assocation have withdrawn their application to provide medical abortions from their Hamilton clinic.*

If this application was successful Family Planning would have been able to apply to provide medical abortions in all their clinics.

Family Planning have clinics in Greymouth, Invercargill, Timaru, Tauranga, Ashburton, Whanganui, Ashburton and Rangiora - at the moment women in those places have to travel to another town or city to access abortion. They also have multiple clinics in Auckland and Wellington - so women from Porirua wouldn't have to take two buses and a train to get to Newtown Hospital, and women from South Auckland and the North Shore wouldn't have to make their way to Epsom. It would have completely transformed abortion access in New Zealand.

It would have not solved all the problems that our horrific abortion legsilation creates for women seeking abortion. It would mean that women in larger cities would have a choice between surgical and medical abortions, but those in other areas could only easily access medical abortion. And women who go to Family Planning would still have to jump through the hoops to prove to doctors that they deserve an abortion.

But it would have made a real difference to abortion access in New Zealand. And now it won't happen.

Right to Life have had marches and law suits against the Family Planning Association. That's how worried they were about it.

I think this is another sign of the importance of building an active pro-choice movement in this country. Come along to the 2011 Pro-Choice Gathering.

* And just to make fun of Right to Life they include in their press release the statement that medical abortions have killed 12 people - worldwide. Where pregnancy and childbirth is normally totes safe, and has never lead to any maternal deaths, ever, anywhere.

Have some fun

2011-02-16T21:05:00.000+13:00

It's election year, and Family First are responding by running a poll about how the government should leave families alone, except poor families and women, and also the government should define families more.

Go have your say it's all democratic like.

Possibly we should also take a poll on favourite illustration. I'm quite taken by the poor soft toys being exposed to a bra.

Is this what feminists look like?

2011-02-14T23:05:00.003+13:00

There's this awesome new project The Wellington Young Feminists' Collective. I'm super excited about it, but don't quite know how to orient myself towards it.

Because in about one in every twenty things they post makes me want to have a massive city wide discussion about what feminism means. Here's the latest:

Hey ladies, here is a shop I discovered in Berhampore today which is FANTASTIC. Lovely handmade, locally designed ladies clothes and jewelry. And they fit ladies with big boobs, which is rarer than it should be. Yay for awesome local businesses! x

That was posted on Saturday, and about every four hours since I've gone backwards and forwards about responding to it, and how I should respond to it. Which maybe has a little bit to do with the fact that I've been travelling alone and the alternative was walking in the rain to Pak 'n' Save to discvoer they don't stock Whittakers Dark Almond Chocolate. But it's also because feminism is really important to me and things which I would normally just be 'eh' about really agitate me when they're done in the name of feminism. On the other hand I know it's very easy for me (particularly in full rant mode) to come on very strong. In this case I want to start a discussion, rather than just rant about why am I right and everyone else is wrong (which to be honest which is what I want a lot of the time), but I don't know that I've got that setting. So far I've stayed silent (and started an argument about Seasame St on facebook to make myself feel better).

But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that there was an important feminist principle at stake that I wanted to try and articulate. I think (and maybe the admins of the Young Feminist Collective will disagree) that posting anything to a feed of a feminist group is to promote that post as a feminist act. I have three main objections to that in this particular case:

1. Cutting for some body shapes (like a large bust) will make clothes fit some body types better, but other body types worse. Clothes shops sell a hole that your body should fit into. And promoting any particular sized or shaped hole is problematic from a feminist perspective.

2. Promoting clothes shops that only sell straight sizes in a feminist space is exclusionary. But actually what I find even more offensive, is that nowhere on Emma's website does it mention what sizes she stocks. So people have to go out to Berhampore to learn they're not welcome to buy her clothes. By looking at another website that sold her stuff, I was able to discover that she has a very few 16s, a few more Ls which is 14-16, and some styles which have 14 as their largest size (and a lot of her clothes don't come in an 8 either). Fine different shops stock different ranges of sizes. But to not specify what body types you sell for, to act as if they really limited range which you do stock covers everyone is perpetuating particularly damaging ideas about women's bodies.

3. And then there's the capitalism issue. Because actually no I don't support locally owned businesses, even the supposedly awesome ones. The idea that local businesses are any better than larger ones is not an evidence based assertion. While I know nothing about Emma, I do know a reasonable amount about the New Zealand clothing industry - and the way clothes are produced in New Zealand is absolutely the opposite of everything I think feminism stands for.

I'm not dissing clothes shopping - I understand that clothes shopping can be awesome for some women at some times(my question of the moment is how many LucieLu dresses with zips up the front do I need - and the answer is ALL OF THEM). What I object to as promoting clothes shopping (particularly at a specific shop) as something that is going to appeal to a group of women who have nothing in common other than they're young feminists.

Feminism isn't a particular aesthetic or lifestyle or survival strategies. We're not all the same, we don't all like cupcakes, knitting, cute dresses, cool accessories, moon-cups, op-shops, roller-derby, Joss Whedon, gardening, and bicycles.

There's a reason I didn't post all my Dollhouse reviews to the Hand Mirror, and partly that's because of spoilers, but it's also because the Hand Mirror isn't just my playground the way my blog is. The Hand Mirror is a group feminist blog, and the only one (that I know of) in the country. What I do in The Hand Mirror, more than what I do anywhere else, is done in the name of feminism and that comes with it a certain responsibility.

To me a core part of that responsibility is to never suggest that liking the things I happen to like is part of being feminist. Feminism is an ideology not an aesthetic. Feminism should be about massively different people coming together with ideas in common.

The week isn't ending

2011-02-10T08:00:00.001+13:00

Last week was a week of feminist rage - this week was supposed to be something new. I wasn't quite expecting a week of feminist revolt and joy, but I was hoping to rage about something else for a week.*

But no - The Rock were determined that my week of feminist rage should never end. To be fair he mention of "the Rock" in the news in itself is like a lighthouse warning that rocks of misogyny are ahead. They did after all used to have billboards which said "We gave you something to listen to while your girlfriend was talking" (printed on the t-shit of a woman while not showing her head - naturally).

But now they have started a competition to 'win a wife':

The winner of MediaWorks' The Rock promotion will fly to the Ukraine for 12 nights, be given $2000 spending money, and be able to choose a bride from an agency.

There are really no words besides 'gah' and 'argh' and obviously their obnoxiousness is in part seeking an outraged reaction.

But what got me were the questions you have to answer to enter the competition. A large number of them ask about the various things contestants have done to 'score'. And then:

All women are nuts, but what can you tell us about your craziest Ex that sets her apart from the other nut-jobs?

The internal contradictions of a masculinity which hates women but requires hetrosexuality are so stark that whenever I try and think about it my brain short circuits.

It's like women are bogs of eternal stench with islands in the middle. And sex is catching a butterfly on one of those islands taking it home and pinning it on your wall for your mates (who are very judgemental about bog smells) to see.

It seems so ridiculous, so contrived, so obviously not connected to anything real or true that I find it hard to understand how this house of cards stands.

And it doesn't quite stand. The Rock, and beer ads, enforce masculinity in ways that dance so close to parody - and a sturdy house wouldn't need this sort of scaffolding. Our radical notion that women are people is a powerful counter-weapon.

* I have had lots of rage about the treatment of minimum wage workers both by the government and their employers. Tomorrow maybe.

Topping my week of feminist rage

2011-02-06T17:29:00.004+13:00

The existence of the New Zealand police taps pretty much into the core of my rage at the best of times. And their recruitment campaigns are always appalling. There was one that was all about how boring and stupid teaching was. And then there was this one:

Girl germs are super catching - and they don't impress his manly bbq-ing friends - obviously the only solution is his own baton.* That whole series of ads was basically "work that is coded feminine is gross and not suitable for men."

But their latest set of ads are about communicating a slightly different message:

Yes, Clint Rickards, Brad Shipton, Bob Schollum, and many other men who have never been publicly named did like them young. Police rapists don't rape indiscriminately; they focus on powerless women.

The message of the latest campaign is clear: "We're over even pretending to care about police officers who rape. Instead we can go back to what we do best. We've even got a guy at the training college to make sure everyone understands the 'bros before hos' message"

Ideologically Impure (who gets credit for the picture) and Luddite Journo are much more coherent than me on these posters. I don't think I've got anymore words for my anger at the New Zealand police force, at least not at the moment. So consider this a scream at the end of my week of feminist rage.

* This definately makes me think of the Simpsons: "Dude you kissed a girl that's so gay".

Enough liberation to go round

2011-02-05T01:18:00.004+13:00

Queen of Thorns wrote a post Why the Left Needs Feminism and cross posted over on the standard. I think her post is really interesting and important (and it's great to see it at the Standard, which usually only comments on feminist issues when there's a really obvious way to insult John Key in the process). Here I do focus on what I disagree with her about and so I suggest you read the whole post, because there's lots of cool ideas in there.

And I agree with her conclusion - obviously I agree with her conclusion. But I disagree with some of the points she makes along the way. Mostly, I think, because we have a different analysis of the role of the Labour Party within the left.

QoT appears to begin her post by setting up a Labour party: "focused on class struggle or strictly economic leftist ideas." This labour party does not exist. Chris Trotter has indeed tried to portray worshipping at the altar of testosterone as a service to the working class, but that doesn't make it true. Likewise there are those who suggest the reason that the fifth labour government alienated so many working-class people was because of it's crazy feminism, but the actual feminist legislative achievements at that time were minimal particularly with what doesn't done (I'm looking at you pay equity and abortion law reform). At times QoT appears to accept Chris Trotter's zero-sum game and just argue that 'identity politics' things are important - rather than going further and saying that there's enough liberation to go around.

In places of her post she is treading over reasonably familiar ground. One of the biggest intellectual challenges for the left is to understand the why and the how of the fourth labour government? Certainly this has come up on left blogs before and there is an argument which places the responsibility at the feet of 'identity politics' (Chris Trotter, John Minto and Bryce Edwards have all made it). I disagree - and I've written my thoughts on this before, so I'm not going to go over them again.

But at times QoT seemed to be arguing the inverse of Trotter's argument:

Trotter is speaking about the 1980s, that golden age of namby-pamby identity politics when the left got distracted by piffling little side issues like whether men should be held accountable for raping their wives and whether gay men should be allowed to be gay.

A time when the Left wasn’t, to quote Phil Goff’s own advisor John Pagani on that thread, “connecting with things that matter to people”. You can probably draw your own conclusions as to the kind of people he means.

I've said it before, and I'll probably say it again, but this idea that the 1980s was a golden age of identity politics (whether you see that as a bad thing) gets repeated far more often than it gets proved. No-one has been able to tell me what the wonderful legislative feminist gains of the fourth labour government were.

But more importantly here Pagani is clearly conflating the 'left' and 'the parliamentary labour party'. He's also wrong on both counts. Because in the 1980s the parliamentary labour party was 'connecting with things that matter to people' - if you call a kick connecting. It was privatising assets, introducing GST, introducing student fees and selling post-offices. And the extra-parliamentary left were also connecting with those very same things, remember just because we didn't win, doesn't mean we didn't fight.

Likewise while homosexual law reform and rape law reform, both had their home in the extra-parliamentary left, neither sat quite as comfortably in the parliamentary left. Homosexual law reform was a private members bill, and several Labour MPs at the time voted against it. Whereas the act that criminalised rape in marriage had been drafted under Muldoon's government, but not passed before the snap election. I disagree with QoT idea that 'the left' focused on Homosexual and rape law reform during the 1980s and this was good, as much as I disagree with Trotter et al's reverse formulation.

I am concerned about the stories that get told about the 1980s, partly because I care about history, but also because I am worried people will draw the wrong lessons today. I think QoT reinforced Trotter's formulation of class and 'identity' politics standing in opposition to each other with the way she talked about the past even though I think her argument was the opposite of that.

This is not a zero sum game - there isn't a limited amount of liberation available that we have to fight among ourselves for. It's the opposite - your struggle is my struggle, and I cannot be free while you are in chains.

Apparently it is OK

2011-02-03T18:36:00.002+13:00

Over the last few days Stuff have inflicted those stupid enough to read it with an endless string excruciating stories about who John Key and Phil Goff find attractive.*

Key and Goff obviously playing a role, and communicating their support of a very particular model of sexual desire. For those who were slow on the culture narrative John Donegan spelt it out for us: "Those women who might be upset at his comments are obviously just disappointed they never made John Key's list and never will." The only reason women object to their role as the objects rather than the subjects of sexual desire is because they're not very good objects.

But I find it hard to care about that angle of the whole thing, because the Tony-fucking-Veitch-ness of this story enrages me.

Tony Veitch broke his girlfriend's back in four places. He was abusive and controlling during their relationship.

And the Prime Minister is prepared to go on his radio show every week, and make it clear that they share a worldview when it comes to women.

* And maybe it's just me, but there's something so weirdly generic about it all. Like they both went to google and entered "safely sexy celebrities". I guess it makes it clear how much discussion of celebrity crushes are often not actually about people's sexual desire, but statements of how they wish to appear to others. That's as true with Jezebel and Ryan Gosling as it is with this entirely painful conversation.

Isabelle Brown is a person

2011-02-02T23:00:00.001+13:00

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.

Wahine Maori

2011-01-31T10:25:00.000+13:00

For a long time Ana at Whenua Fenua Enua Vanua was the only wahine Maori blogging that I knew of. But recently a couple more blogs run by Maori women have started, and I wanted to bring people's attention to them.

Kim from He Hōaka is a friend of mine. This is from the introduction of a post:

Colonisation invented a story of who Māori are: it made Māori a race, and made up a limited set of characteristics for that race. These stereotypes are not controlled by us (Māori), they limit us, and they serve the purposes of ongoing cultural imperialism. They make us uncomfortable in our own skins and on our own land. They are used to blame us for the problems created by colonisation. It is essential that we develop our own answers to the question of what it means to be Māori.

Just a warning Kim's posts tend to be very long - so make sure you have some time to really get into them when you're posting - they're worth it.

Te Whaainga Wahine is more than a blog. It was formed last year:

A national hui of Māori women, Te Whaainga Wāhine have condemned the exclusion of wāhine from national, regional, local and Māori political forums.

The hui made specific reference to the Iwi Leaders Group who do not speak for Māori women.

The hui, the first called in thirty years, has challenged Māori leadership that advance the political agenda of the National-ACT-Maori Party Coalition at the expense of whenua, whānau and hapu wellbeing.

Hui spokesperson Denise Meisster said Te Whaainga Wāhine confirmed Maori women’s political, spiritual and rangatahi leadership to carry current and future generations to 2040.

[....]

The hui affirmed Tino Rangatiratanga by 2040 and implemented a specific plan of action to achieve this. Te Whaainga Wāhine will be reconvened in Feb, 2011 in Palmerston North.

There's more about the hui here. Their blog has the press releases they put out, and links and copies of other awesome material from wahine Maori.

For another discussion of Maori bloggers, see Maui St - most of those listed are men.

Does anyone else have any links to share?

Open thread about Egypt and Tunisia

2011-01-30T22:54:00.004+13:00

I haven't had time to keep up with everything happening in Egypt and Tunisia. I have just ducked in and out of news sites, and seen so many stories of the incredible strenght of collective revolt (and prison break-out - I do love stories of prison break out). I thought I'd start an open thread where people can contribute plcaes for good sources of news, and interesting links

My contribution is this amazing gallery of images Women of Egypt.

My only comment I can give at this point of ignorance is: know where you stand. I've read a lot of supposedly progressive blogs, particualrly from America, which talk about 'we' and 'us' as if the author's stand with the American government. I know I don't stand with the NZ government, or any government. I stand with people fighting for their liberation.

The promotion of drivel

2011-01-30T16:30:00.003+13:00

I heard this on Checkpoint last Thursday, as part of a story about research that had found a correlation between strokes and living close to a road

The author's did find that people with lower incomes tended to live in areas with more traffic noise and we know that socio-economic status is also a predictor for strokes, but they didn't control for that in this study and it could be less about the noise and more about other lifestyle factors

I didn't even have time to get angry about the fact that, poverty is not a fucking lifestyle factor, because I was so horrified that they didn't control for class. What were these researchers doing? And why did such a ridiculous study get international news coverage? Why was 2 minutes 19 seconds of so the lives of Radio NZ listeners wasted with this drivel?

If you're researching people's bodies - no scratch that - if you're researching people and you don't take into account that people have different access to resources, then your research has no meaning and no value. And if it is picked up and promoted and treated as interesting, that's because it's lack of truth makes it a useful ideological tool.

Why does no one seem to remember or care that President Zuma of South Africa is a rapist?

2011-01-29T15:33:00.005+13:00

I'm not AVAAZ's biggest fan at the best of times. I'm wary of activities that make people feel like they're doing something, without encouraging any sort of collective action that could actually create change.

But AVAAZ's latest campaign is particularly free of analysis and I disagree with it in more ways than I'll be able to articulate in this post. Their petition is directed at President Zuma and says:

We call on you to publicly condemn 'corrective rape', criminalise hate crimes, and ensure immediate enforcement, public education and protection to victims. This terrible practice can only be stopped with leadership from your office and throughout government.

I disagree with the general principle, that the only way misogynistic violence can be stopped is through leadership from the President's office, or that leadership from a President's office can stop misogynistic violence.

I disagree with focusing on 'corrective rape' for many reasons (for those of you who don't know this is a term invented by aid agencies to describe women who are raped by men for being lesbian). It is grotesque to focus on one group of rape survivors and say "Hey this is super duper bad, and different from the other ways people are raped, we need to do something about just this".* (I think I was making a related argument the last time I was writing about President Zuma)

But to me the worst thing about this petition, is that each person who signs this petition, asking President Zuma to do something about one single category of rape, is devaluing the experience of and rendering invisible one woman in particular: the woman he raped.

He raped her in 2005 in his home; they knew each other, it is the . He was found not guilty. But I followed the case and read the misogyny soaked judgement, and I'm as sure that he raped this woman as I am that Clint Rickards is a rapist. Here's what I wrote about the case at the time:

The trial sounds hideous, and familiar. She was put on trial and her sexual history, including other times she had been raped, was put into evidence. When Zuma took the stand he argued that she consented by wearing a knee-length skirt and complaining that she didn't have a boyfriend:

She had never in the past come to my house dressed in a skirt. Including times when I was living in Pretoria. When she came to me in a skirt after those talks I referred to earlier on, well, it told me something.

The judge, well the judge is a misogynist asshole, who said that she didn't act as rape victims should.

To write to a rapist and to ask him to do something about a particular category of rape victims, while excluding the woman he raped is disgusting. It's also pretty foolish. Even if everyone had access to a computer signed AVAAZ's petition Zuma's not going to suddenly become an opponent of sexual violence and an ally in the fight to create a new world.

***********

I think there is another element of this - an element that is particularly important right now, and that was explained really well over at Not Afraid of Ruins (a new blog written by a super smart and cool friend of mine so you should all go and follow it right now):

Okay, there’s another reason I don’t like the term ‘corrective rape’. It’s a bit like ‘honour killing’. It’s one of those terms that mean ‘a specific type of misogynist homophobic violence that only happens in non-Western societies’. Having special names for kinds of misogynist homophobic violence that only happen in non-Western societies is super handy because it allows us to pretend that the kind of violence that happens There is different from the kind of violence that happens Here. Because That kind of violence is an intrinsic part of Their culture. But violence that happens Here is always an isolated incident committed by individuals. It is something extrinsic to Western culture, which is a culture of respect and equality.

* I think this is related to the effort by the US republicans to restrict federal funding for abortion to those who have been 'forcibly' raped. I'd write more on that but I can't write about the Hyde Amendment without seething with rage at practically everyone. But I think it's more evidence that dividing up rape into categories is not done to support those who have been raped, but to attack them.

Dear Sandra Coney

2011-01-28T18:21:00.004+13:00

I am aware of the debt of gratitude that I owe you. I have read every issue of Broadsheet you edited. Your columns in the Sunday Times were one of my early exposures for feminism. I know that so many of the parts of my life that I hold most dear to me were only possible because the movement you were part of changed the world.

But all this compels me to speak, rather than compelling me to stay silent. This week you used your vote on the Auckland City Councillor to support the re-criminalising of outdoor sex-workers in Manakau.

That is not a feminist action.

From memory (I read your column in the Sunday Star Times during the prostitution law reform debate) you favour 'The Swedish Model' decriminalisation of selling sex and the criminalisation of buying sex. I do not. But I do recognise that it is a feminist position, taken as a result of feminist analysis. However, I cannot take those who promote it seriously as feminists unless they are more passionate about decriminalising sex-workers than they are about criminalising Johns.

Instead you supported legislation that criminalises buying and selling sex - but only for poor people. Only those who live in South Auckland (possibly all of Auckland by the time the bill is done) and can't afford to work indoors need to worry about this legislation.

This bill will impoverish women who get caught, tie them to the stress of the court system, and put them in the power of the New Zealand police.

And that should be enough, for any feminist in this country. We know the power the police have, how they have used it, and how many within the force take 'bros before hos' as a life mantra and cover for their mates. How dare you support giving the police more power over a group of our sisters, for any reason?

The bill hasn't passed yet, you still have time to change your position. You have time to stand in solidarity with street sex workers , rather than with those trying to punish them.

In sisterhood,

Maia

********

For those who want to know the voting break-down went like this:

In support: Len Brown, Cameron Brewer, Sandra Coney, Chris Fletcher, Mike Lee, Des Morrison, Calum Penrose, Noelene Raffills, Sharon Stewart, John Walker, George Wood.
Against: Arthur Anae, Cathy Casey, Michael Goudie, Ann Hartley, Richard Northey, Wayne Walker, Penny Webster.
Absent: Penny Hulse, Jami-Lee Ross.

Mantrol and Manghurt?

2011-01-10T22:52:00.000+13:00

One of the great traditions of New Zealand advertising is that no portrayal of masculinity can be too over-the-top or too ridiculous to sell beer.

However, recently beer's place as the pinnacle of ridiculous masculinity by some products which are less deeply ingrained in NZ's idea of manhood - such as Yoghurt. Yes the same dairy product that made Sarah Haskins famous:

Ok now we've had that break for the awesomeness that is Sarah Haskins we have to go back to this bizarre new development in New Zealand which is manly yoghurt. What is manly yoghurt, well it's thick, packed with nuts and seeds and comes in flavours such as Apricot Manuka Honey, Mango Coconut Flakes, Lemon Passionfruit, and Apple Blueberry.

So how do you sell the idea that the official food of woman in apricot and manuka honey flavour is manly? Silly question - all you need is to emphasise misogyny, homophobia and the extreme danger of girl germs. This is from their website:

Man. It used to be the best job title in the world.

Man has lost his place in the world and his place in the fridge. There are scarce few products we can call our own. At Mammouth Supply Company, we've decided to do something about this and offer men something for men - non-nonsense, fill-you-up yoghurt, iced cofee and ice cream.

The boxes come with simple instructions about what men do and don't do - they do eat yoghurt but only manly yoghurt, but stay away from all things that might ever have been coded women or gay (although I do recommend reading the packages at the supermarket - they're even more ridiculous than you can imagine).

I find this deeply weird. I can guess the origins of these products. Fonterra was sitting round worrying about what to do with all its milk and thought "Men! We need to get men to consume more milk derived products." But does this really resonate? Who could it possibly resonate with? Do people suddenly forget that apricot honey is a body lotion flavour if there's enough homophobia on the packet?

And that's not even the strangest form of masculinity advertising products let me introduce mantrol:

There's also two shorter versions that makes it even clearer that according to some arms of the state New Zealand masculinity is about pakeha well-resourced homo-social leisure time.

I honestly don't understand these ads (but I am sometimes very slow about some aspects of NZ masculinity - I used to often have to have tui billboards explained to me). Is the point supposed to be MANLY THINGS! MANLY THINGS! MANLY THINGS! MANLY THINGS! DRIVING SAFELY IS ALSO MANLY BECAUSE IT'S IN THE AD WITH THESE OTHER MANLY THINGS! STOP KILLING PEOPLE!

I'd understand that. Even if I don't really understand the association between BBQ, cricket, video games, and not killing people, I can see NZTA's point. I'm sure they have many many statistics that show that the demographic they're targetting (I'm guessing it's young pakeha men) are dangerous drivers, and probably they've reached the time when they want address it head on.

But then there's this line: "If we're not in full control of such a manly thing [as driving] then what does this all mean? [and he gestures to many different depictions of homosocial leisure]"

And at that point I stop being amused, or weirded out, or confused, and become angry. That a government agency would spend millions of dollars reinforcing the idea that to be manly is to be in control sickens me. As if that idea wasn't deeply ingrained enough. As if it wasn't understood by so many women who have been at the receiving end of men's control.

That's the problem - each piece may not seem like much. Portrayals of masculinity can seem ridiculous and insignificant - it's just an ad, just a piece of packaging, just a beer company. But each piece normalises an idea of what it means to be a man that is so damaging for men and women and for men who conform to it and for men who don't. And those who want to use it to sell their products seem to be winning over those who want to tear it down.

Being a feminist is a lot like being a bowl of petunias

2011-01-09T13:40:00.000+13:00

I was in the middle of reading Gordon Campbell's mostly sensible article about wikileaks, and I came to this paragraph:

In one of the two incidents, the alleged conflict over consent reportedly turns on whether or not (in the midst of what had hitherto been consensual sex) Assange knowingly proceeded after a condom failure had occurred. In the other incident, consent is reportedly not the issue – it is whether the act involved unprotected sex, which is a (minor) offence under Swedish law.

The idea that Sweden has sexual assault laws that would be unrecognisable in the rest of the world has been repeated lots, but it's wrong. Plenty of English language sources have been explaining this for a while now.

There is no longer need for any prevaricating or lack of clarity about what Assange has been accused of. It is three weeks since the Guardian posted a full account of the accusations of sexual assault against Assange. There is no excuse for misrepresenting those accusations.

This is what one woman described:

Her account to police, which Assange disputes, stated that he began stroking her leg as they drank tea, before he pulled off her clothes and snapped a necklace that she was wearing. According to her statement she "tried to put on some articles of clothing as it was going too quickly and uncomfortably but Assange ripped them off again". Miss A told police that she didn't want to go any further "but that it was too late to stop Assange as she had gone along with it so far", and so she allowed him to undress her.

According to the statement, Miss A then realised he was trying to have unprotected sex with her. She told police that she had tried a number of times to reach for a condom but Assange had stopped her by holding her arms and pinning her legs. The statement records Miss A describing how Assange then released her arms and agreed to use a condom, but she told the police that at some stage Assange had "done something" with the condom that resulted in it becoming ripped, and ejaculated without withdrawing.

That is not an account that "turns on whether or not (in the midst of what had hitherto been consensual sex) Assange knowingly proceeded after a condom failure had occurred."

Gordon Campbell describes the second accusation like this: "consent is reportedly not the issue – it is whether the act involved unprotected sex, which is a (minor) offence under Swedish law." This is how the woman describes it:

The following day, Miss W phoned Assange and arranged to meet him late in the evening, according to her statement. The pair went back to her flat in Enkoping, near Stockholm. Miss W told police that though they started to have sex, Assange had not wanted to wear a condom, and she had moved away because she had not wanted unprotected sex. Assange had then lost interest, she said, and fallen asleep. However, during the night, they had both woken up and had sex at least once when "he agreed unwillingly to use a condom".

Early the next morning, Miss W told police, she had gone to buy breakfast before getting back into bed and falling asleep beside Assange. She had awoken to find him having sex with her, she said, but when she asked whether he was wearing a condom he said no. "According to her statement, she said: 'You better not have HIV' and he answered: 'Of course not,' " but "she couldn't be bothered to tell him one more time because she had been going on about the condom all night. She had never had unprotected sex before."

I really like Gordon Campbell; I think he's written some really important stuff. There aren't enough solid left voices in the New Zealand media.

I hoped, I still hope, that this was a mistake based on ignorance and not paying attention. I left a comment making most of the points I've made here on his post on Scoop. It hasn't been posted yet, although other comments on that article have been.

There are better ways of being the New Zealand Michael Moore or John Pilger than misrepresenting women's descriptions of sexual abuse. Please Gordon Campbell, delete that paragraph and replace it with an accurate one.

Julian Assange and rape myths

2010-12-09T11:11:00.000+13:00

I don't want to write about Julian Assange or the rape charges he is facing. I don't speak Swedish, a lot of the material in English misrepresents the Swedish legal system and. I don't have time to unpack all that.

However, I need to write about the way people have been talking about these rape charges. A facebook friend (who is political enough to know better) quoted from a a Daily Mail article* "The prosecution's case has several puzzling flaws, and there is scant public evidence of rape or sexual molestation."

Most women who have been raped had little public evidence of their experience. By repeating these rape myths in defence of Julian Assanger people are attacking not just the women involved, but other women who have been raped and had their experiences dismissed. They are also contributing to a culture where rape is denied, minimised, and distorted.

Left-wing defenders of Julian Assanger have been using rape-myths over and over again (as have his right-wing defenders, although they will not be the focus of this post). I think it's both disgusting and unnecessary to uphold rape-culture to defend Julian Assanger. I want to explain why.

"There is scant public evidence of rape or sexual molestation." As opposed to what? Is the person who stated this really arguing that usually there is an abundance of public evidence of rape? It's a ludicrous statement, but a damaging one. Because while the antithesis of 'scant public evidence' sounds ridiculous when it is spelled out, it has a lot of power when it's implied: women's statements about their experiences cannot be public evidence and cannot be relied upon. "No-one will believe you" - rapists say that to women and women say that to themselves. So many of the repsonses to Assange's case give that statement more weight, more power - they tell women all over the world "No-one will believe you."

Then there's the idea that some women are unrapeable. People uphold this rape myth if they describe some characteristic of a woman - most often, but not only, that she's a sex worker - as evidence that she wasn't raped, and can't be raped. The left-wing version of this du jour appears to be that one of the accusers had connections with the CIA. But there's a problem with this women who have had contact with the CIA, even CIA agents, can be raped.

There's a huge difference between stating "She has X Y and Z connections with the CIA. If she was working for them then this may be a set up." and "She has CIA connections you know." One is making the argument - the other is constructing some women as unrapeable.

Added to this we get a re-run of the Polanski trial and an argument that what happened to these women isn't 'rape-rape'. People were running these lines, before they even knew what the charges are. The charges are actually really clear cut: he had sex with one woman while she was asleep, and he didn't stop when another woman said stop. It doesn't require a very in depth and complex understanding of consent to understand that that is rape. But there is a constant narrative that anything other than stranger rape where force is used is somehow a lesser form of rape. That narrative is really damaging to rape survivors.

But I think that defenders of Julian Assanger do the most damage when they construct a way that rape victims behave and imply that the woman involved isn't acting like a rape victim: she tweeted about him, or she seemed happy, or she saw him again.

I lose it at this point. There is no way that rape victims act - there is no way that rape victims don't act. Seriously. If you don't know this then you have no right to say a word about rape.

It does so much harm to so many women, the idea that there's a way that rape victims act. It's not just some idea that you're spinning off into cyber-space. It's something that women who are going through trauma have to struggle through - their own, and other people's expectations of how they should be behaving. And it doesn't stop - the idea of the acceptable behaviour of a rape victim gets used as a weapon again and again.

Most rape myths are about women, about attacking suvivors of rape, discrediting them trashing them - and there's been a lot of that. But some are about men John Pilger said that he had a very high regard for Julian Assange. And? The rhetorical rapist - the scary man, who no-one holds in high regard - is a weapon that is used against actual victims of rape all the time.

And what is most ridiculous about this spreading of rape myths by left-wing supporters of wikileaks is that these myths are completely unnecessary to stand in solidarity with the wikileaks project.

It is states and companies that are attacking Wikileaks and Julian Assange, not two women. It is perfectly possible to criticise the actions of prosecuters, interpol, judges and government's without invoking rape myths.

Believing the women, or at least not disbelieving the women, does not mean that you have to stop criticising the way the (in)justice system operates or decide that that wikileaks is a bad project.**

The rape myths are unnecessary, and damaging. By repeating rape myths, you give them power. Doing so doesn't just hurt the women involved, but strengthens rape culture, and makes it harder for many, many, many other rape survivors.

Stop it.

* If you must look at it yourself the link is here - but no good ever came of reading the Daily Mail.

** On the other side of this, having a feminist analysis of rape does not necessitate accepting that the (in)justice system prosecuting rape is a victory for rape culture. I think these are actually flip sides of hte same argument, and brownfemipower has made some really interesting points about the limits of posts like this one.

In solidarity with the missing miners, their loved ones, and their communities

2010-11-21T01:22:00.002+13:00

I have nothing else to say at the moment, but to offer my solidarity.

But Sandra from Letters from Wetville has said something that I think should be listened to:

I would like the media to piss off.

They do not need to swarm around our town, vultures in search of a product to sell on their 'news' programmes.

I too, am desperate for news of the Pike River miners. I too, checked the internet and the radio about a zillion times today, hungry for word that the rescue team can begin their job. Like everyone else in Wetville, I appreciate the messages of support from all over New Zealand, all over the world.

Go read the whole thing.

Ladies I struck a blow for the working classes:* In Praise of Robyn Malcolm

2010-11-15T19:17:00.001+13:00

I haven't watched Outrageous Fortune for three seasons. Last night I came in half way through the finale. And I cried.

The episode was well written, everyone did a fantastic job, but a good 75% of why that episode was so powerful was Robyn Malcolm's performance as Cheryl West.

Cheryl West has always been a part of a lifetime. She is what I think about when I wish there were more strong female characters** on TV. I may like watching women kill their rapists on TV - but I'd prefer more Cheryl Wests. Women whose lives are shaped sexism and misogyny, by capitalism - by the power relationships in our society, who face the struggle with agency and strength.

Robyn Malcolm portrays Cheryl with warmth, strength and passion. But that's not why I want to praise her today. She fronted for the actors during the Hobbit dispute:

Malcolm says she has been accused of being little more than a loud-hailer. "But I really believe in this stuff. I believe in workers' rights.

"I could choose not to care. I could just very quietly not rock the boat. I am a working solo mother of two boys and I don't have a job. Outrageous Fortune has finished. I am looking for work. Would I really, in the words of Cheryl West, want to root my own industry?"

Union delegates often get attacked, but usually only by the boss. Brian Rudman made an important point about the way the women who fronted the dispute have been depicted in the media:

There they were, saying, "Tell us how long to grow our elven beards, and how hard to pull our forelocks, Sir, and we will do it. Straight after we burn those evil witches, Robyn Malcolm, Jennifer Ward-Lealand and Helen Kelly, in the public square for disturbing the tranquillity of our feudal land."

[...]

I say womenfolk, because throughout the whole battle, the patronising sexism aimed at the union side - nice gals, but out of their depth, not up to it, dupes of Aussie svengalis - has been shameful.

In fact John Barnett, executive producer of Outrageous Fortune, went several steps further than that:

"The feedback has been quite vocal and critical of them. They've been pushed into the front row and are now earning the opprobrium of the public."

He said anyone should be free to express their views but producers would be reluctant to hire them because public perception was a huge factor in casting.

John Barnett may be able to executive produce a good TV show - but he is an better Pontius Pilate. "As a producer it may be in my best interest to persecute and black-list any actress who shows an interest in collectively organise for wages and conditions. But that's not the reason I'm threatening to do so in a national newspaper - it's because the public demand it."

John Barnett is also wrong. Anyone who watched the last few episodes of Outrageous Fortune, even those with an underdeveloped sense of solidarity, is not heaping opprobrium on Robyn Malcolm, quite the opposite. Go to her facebook page if you want to join in the praises - or send some solidarity.

I will just say thank you Robyn Malcolm for Cheryl West, and more. All any of us can do is play our parts in the struggles around us - and you have been amazing.

EDITED TO ADD: In the original draft of this post I had confused James Griffin with John Barnett. I have fixed the error, and I'm very sorry for maligning James Griffin in this way.

* If you don't recognise this quote, then you haven't watched enough Outrageous Fortune. It is from the second episode - and it was the moment I decided the show was the best New Zealand television show ever.

** Gratuitous Joss linking

Wellington Local Body Elections - a follow-up

2010-11-01T00:13:00.005+13:00

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.

Don't let the weird nationalism break you up: thoughts on the Hobbit

2010-10-27T02:49:00.007+13:00

She is 16 years old and she's an actress. Her friends may perform in school plays, but she is an actress - she has a job. She's in a TV show.

Today she is in wardrobe. One of the producers comes in - someone always checks the costumes. He touches her breast.

She tells her parents and her agent. They ring up the producers; they're angry. Her contract is terminated that day - breach of confidentiality - she talked about being sexually harrassed. By the next day the scripts have all been rewritten

********

I didn't make that up. It happened on a New Zealand film set this century.

The government is at the moment passing a law which will exclude those working in the film industry from being employees - the default position will be that they are contractors. At the moment as independent contractors actors (and others in hte film industry) can be fired at any time for any reason - they have no right of due process.

What this means is that there is nothing to stop producers firing teenage girls, because they sexually harassed them. And when there's nothing to stop people abusing power, sometimes they abuse power.

Often it's not about an individual abusing power, it's about saving money. If you can fire people for any reason they're much less likely to complain about health and safety.

********

At the moment (as you've probably already been told several times over the last few weeks) the conditions for actors are set out in the pink book - a non-binding agreement between Actors Equity and SPADA.

The non-binding bit is the problem - you can see how that'd be hard to enforce in an environment where someone can be fired for complaining about sexual assault.

This isn't actually something that has just happened over the Hobbit. Actors Equity have been working for years to negotiate binding wages and conditions for their members. They've tried lots of tactics some even made headlines - such as the negotiations with Outrageous Fortune. From what I've heard, the producers have thrown everything they had at keeping the union away from any form of negotiations.

********

Imagine if you could be fired for any reason every day you go to work. Then imagine you're asked to change your terms and conditions. Imagine you're asked to work in dangerous conditions. Imagine a boss touches your breast. Imagine worse.

At various times and places in various industries, these sorts of conditions have been really standard. The film industry is not the only industry in New Zealand where they still are, but it is a significant one.

I want people to understand how much power companies have when there is no collective bargaining, and no employment law. That's not because I think we should only stand by the actors because their conditions are appalling,but because I want people to know what they're endorsing, if they oppose the actors struggle to get a binding negotiatiation for their wages and conditions. I want people to understand how high the stakes are, and how much power the companies have now.

********

But this is not a story about the powerless screwing the people while the people do nothing. What is so important about the Hobbit is that the actors do have power. Outside New Zealand (including almost everywhere the Hobbit might have filmed in) the movie industry is well organised. The reason that Peter Jackson, WB and the government acted like the sky was falling in (to steal from Ian Mune) wasn't because the actors were powerless - but because the actors had organised and used their power. The threat of a global acting boycott was a real threat that they had the power to do real harm to the movie.

That is where some people who would agree with everything that I wrote in the first half of the post, lose patience and decide maybe they don't support the actors union. A lot of people have critised Actors Equity and MEAA for the way they used their power. Reading the Maps has a great post about the problems with fence sitting. I agree with him absolutely that is entirely compatible to stand in solidarity with the actors and criticise their tactics (although I also agree that only those who are knowledgable of the history of actors and unionisation beyond what has appeared in the news - I only know enough to know I don't know enough to enter the discussion). But I want to make a few more points.

My political position is that the only people to determine the actors struggle for union recognition and binding wages and conditions are the members of the actor's union.**

However, I understand that not everyone shares this position. Not everyone is a unioinist - and there is a part of the left where it is acceptable to balance and weigh things up and support the teachers because they're restrained, but think the radiographers might have gone too far, because they might hurt someone (hell there are, shamefully enough, parts of the union movement where this is acceptable). I want to unpack the implications of this balancing act in the case of the actors union.

Those who criticise AE and MEAA usually focus on the fact that the Hobbit could be moved out of the country, jeopordizing the film industry as a whole. Often they'll bolster their claims with talk about the right and wrong ways of negotiating, and how it's illegal for the company to meet with the union.**

There's something amazing about the passive voice - it can hide who is actually acting in the circumstance. The actors could not and would not have moved the Hobbit out of the country. The studio is the subject in a sentence about moving the Hobbit out of New Zealand. The studio could have agreed to meet with the actors, given them everything they demanded (which would have probably cost less than they spent flying the execs over from New York to meet John Key and see what they can get out of NZ government). They could have decided to move filming anywhere in the world. Whatever the studios decide, that's their responsibility.

To say otherwise is to support a "look what you made me do" position: don't provoke those with more power, and if you do you are responsible.

That's why it's impossible to sit on the fence in any kind of struggle where there's a power imbalance. Whether it's "I must finely examine the behaviour of those standing up to the powerful before I decide whether to support them. As if they make one mistake they are responsible for their provocative actions." Or "They appear to have lost, and therefore it should have been apparent that they would always lose and therefore I cannot support them." All this is predicated on accepting the power imbalance, and holding the actors responsible for the studio's power. The justifications people have offered for withholding their support from the actors have been grotesque.

Actors are workers, workers who at the moment gave access to neither collective bargaining, nor legal employment protections. They are organising to change that. If you stand with the bosses there's nothing I can do about that. But if you don't are your reasons for not standing with the workers really good enough?

Or you could just watch Florence Reece, who sums up the situation nicely:

* At this point someone always tries to execute a gotcha and say "well what if they were organising against women or Maori workers, . This isn't an unreasonable question - within in my lifetime unions have organised to exclude women from certain jobs. However, the point I make there is that the difference between a demand aimed at the boss and a demand made at other workers is a startlingly obvious one, and it is very easy to support the first and oppose the second.

** Which is just the kind of bullshit it takes two minutes to think through and expose. If WB can legally follow SAG minimums for American actors and MEAA minimums for Australian actors without that being price fixing. Then they can have collectively negotiated wages and conditions with their independent contractors in New Zealand. It's just that they don't want to with New Zealand actors, so they're hiding behind the law, and getting Chris Findlayson to help them out with that.

So, this is huge

2010-10-24T19:03:00.000+13:00

Regular readers will know that I'm a fan of television. I have in fact written an ode to television.

I have also written about the problems of television - the ways how it is produced limits what we can see

For one brief shining moment this winter I was proved utterly, utterly wrong as I watched 10 episodes of Huge.

Then I was proved right again, when they cancelled it.

But I thought I'd write about Huge anyway. For a NZ audience who probably won't have seen it - so no spoilers - just general raving about awesomeness. This is how it begins:

Huge aired on ABC Family a US cable network that I hadn’t even heard of until a few months ago, that apparently makes a TV version of 10 Things I Hate About You and sells airtime to Pat Robertson when it doesn’t have enough programming of it on. It’s set in a fat camp – where teenagers are supposed to lose weight.

So far so avoidable right? But it’s by the Winnie Holzman, the creator of My So Called Life (New Zealanders of a certain age may remember My So Called Life’s run on IceTV), and her daughter Savannah Dooley. (who I know next to nothing about, but think is unbelievably awesome – she is threatening my decade long commitment as a one-showrunner woman).

I want to explain what's so amazing about Huge, because I think it's important. It is the most closely observed show I've ever watched. This is not a show where the main character has to stab her boyfriend to save the world - this is the world we live in, or close to it.

I've always loved bangity-flash big moments on TV. But there is another way, instead of metaphors Huge delivers us the fine details of people's life.

The show appears not to take a side. For weeks the big question as I was watching it was - what is this show saying about fat? Will, played by Nikki Blonsky was fierce about not hating her body. But she was surrounding by people who normalised dieting. Where did the show stand? And it didn't appear to stand anywhere. Then at the 8th episode the kids had a weigh in and it showed, without judging, the effect that had on them. That's when I realised that standing nowhere can be a much more radical place to put the camera

Many things that are normalised in the world are shown on Huge without the appearance of judging: slut-shaming, body-hatred and adults bullying children. But in this light they appear as grotesque as they actually are.

While things that we are treated as something to be ashamed of like fat, but also asexuality, anxiety, live action role-playing, disability, queerness and many other aspets of the character, also appear differently when observed closely and without judgement. The things we're supposed to be ashamed of are not the same, so they don't appear the same on Huge. But collectively they are seen as ordinary, joyous, ok, real and a source of strength.

That is, in the end, what made Huge so beautiful.

It's been cancelled in America (because American TV executives enjoy stabbing anything that is beautiful or true to death). At the moment it is only available on youtube (or through other even less legal means), although it will come out on DVD.

I really do recommend that you watch it, and if you have older kids, show it to them. Because I think they'll probably get something they need out of it.

No More Jumping Through Hoops: A Belated Demo Report

2010-10-08T00:19:00.007+13:00

Last Tuesday was a fabulous day for feminism in Wellington. Action for Abortion Rights organised a protest outside the Appeal Court. When we were planning the demo we were thinking about something that might only have twenty people there. Not because we didn't think people cared about abortion rights, but because we had no idea if we could find and mobilise those people.

I've been an activist for a long time, and I've organised a lot of demos. But this demo was something else. There was so much energy and enthusiasm - and so much excitement that we were able to do something about an issue which meant so much. The papers said we had 50 people at the demo - but it was easily three or four times that.

Rebecca from Mothers for Choice gave a great speech:

We have a very strong message for the Right to Life brigade – not only do you not own women’s bodies, you don’t own families. Your ilk has spoken on behalf of families for too long. Most people in most families want a decent law that means everyone who needs an abortion can get one, without having to make the kind of case necessary under current law.

[...]

My daughter is four. I hate the thought that when she is older, she would have to jump through hoops to get an abortion if she had an unwanted pregnancy. I don’t want any more women to have to do so. The time is long overdue for the law we need, and together we are going to make sure it happens.

Ally Garrett, of I'm Offended Because, lead us all in a round of chanting "Hey, Hey, Mister, Mister, Keep Your Laws off Your Sister" dedicated to Peter Carlisle. Check out her amazing blog post which explains why Peter Carlisle deserves special chants towards him. (Also she has the best blog title ever - I'm super jealous).

We also had some great speakers from Action for Abortion Rights, the Women's Studies Association, Women's National Abortion Action Committee, Abortion Law Reform Association, and young labour came out against their parties refusal to allow Steve Chadwick to put the bill in the ballot.

Then we headed to parliament - because parliament, not the courts, are responsible for the current laws.

We had chalk so people could leave messages at parliament:

The current abortion law requires that women jump through hoops to get access to abortion. Right to Life want those laws to be higher and smaller. That's why we called our demo No More Jumping Trough Hoops - and did some hoop jumping:

As an added bonus pro-life NZ recorded our demo and put it up on youtube. So even those of you who weren't there can see it. Aren't they considerate:

This was just the beginning. Things are full steam ahead in Wellington. I'm sure there just as many people in other areas who are keen to be part of the fight.

Photos of this protest come from John Darroch and Stuff.

Local election - who I'm voting for.

2010-10-06T22:46:00.005+13:00

The time has come again where I have to try and figure out which of the various candidates for local body elections I can bear to vote for.

Here is a brief summary of my decisions - too late to do anyone else any good sorry.

Mayor
I'm not opposed to voting for lizards so the wrong lizards don't get in. However, I have my limits. So I'm not voting for Mayor. I am aware that a large number of Wellingtonians will outraged by this, but I'm not convinced that Kerry Prendergast with a slight green tinge will be improvement on Kerry Prendergast. Celia Wade-Brown, the only serious contender for mayor, has made it clear that economically she is no different from Kerry Prendergast. Recently the rates burden has moved from commercial to residential - a move Celia Wade-Brown supports. A 'green' approach to local body politics, can and has been cover for privatisation and an anti-people pro-business way of working.

I would get great pleasure from Kerry losing her job, and while normally that would be enough for me too vote for her opponent, but I cannot support Celia Wade-Brown.

Lambton Ward
What's super frustrating about local body politics is how hard it is to vote for any of them, because they seem to think voters are more interested in their CV, their love of Wellington and their family, than their actual policies.

1. Stephanie Cook - She's probably the reason that I bothered to vote at all. She has a good record of being on the right side of issues - and manages not to mention her family. So I'll vote for her - even though I think making her main campaign planting fruit trees is pretty inane.

2. Marcus Ganley - He has a clear statement against privatisation in his blurb, and is equally clear about his position on water metering. I've made me feelings about the labour party known on this blog several times. But with obvious (Alick Shaw) exceptions I think you can sometimes do +worse than a Labour party candidate on a local body. They tend to be on the left of the party, and they have a basic grasp that they should pretend to be on the side of people rather than business - under like their Green party counter-parts.

3. Mark Greening - I shouldn't rank him - because he believes in engaging youth to stop Graffiti - whereas I think that Graffiti is awesome. However, he's pro-library and he doesn't support water metering, or mention his family. Plus free wi-fi.

Yep I'm super unprincipled.

I'm not ranking:

Ioana Pannett - I vote for her last time, because I hate Alick Shaw just that much. I have appreciated her work against the liquor ban. But she supports the shifted burden of rates - Green party politics are particularly suseptible to neo-liberalism on councils. Plus she mentions her kid in her bio - which is the last straw.

John Bishop - I respect that he puts in that he's business friendly, I do like to see some policies, and respect for that fact that voters might want to know where you stand. But business friendly is Maia unfriendly.

Adam Cunningham - He actually ends his profile - SO IF YOU LOVE WELLINGTON TOO - VOTE CUNNINGHAM 1 IN LAMBTON WARD - just like that all in caps. I am not ranking him Number 1 - so clearly I hate Wellington.

Michael Fowler - He goes into the third person in his bio 'most of our lives were spent in Wellington' - I assume he means him and his wife - but he hasn't even mentioned her. Or possibly he has delusions of grandeur.

Ian McKinnon - Like John Bishop I respect that he made his politics clear, but I don't share them.

Kris Price - So I almost ranked him 4th just for not mentioning his family. Buthis complete lack of politics, as opposed to urban design ideas put me off.

Wellington Regional Council
I find it super difficult to choose candidates for the Wellington Regional Council. They're very pro-business.

Paul Bruce - Just to prove that my prejudice against the Green Party is not my ruling emotion.

Judith Aitken - I suspect she's less than awesome, but she has some good policies, and activism in the women's liberation movement goes a long way with me.

Chris Lipbscombe - clearly I'm getting soft near the end of the ballot, because I voted for him even though he mentions his family.

Not voting for

Sally Barber - Her water policy sounds suspiciously like she supports water metering

Dianne Buchan - More 'business is awesome' 'look at my business experience'

Charles Finny - I would vote for most people in Wellington before I'd vote for the former CEO of the Wellington Regional Chamber of Commerce. Plus he hates bus drivers - how can anyone hate bus drivers? Bad person!

Michael Gibson - He hates trains, and writes about himself in the third person. Where do these people come from?

Chris Laidlaw - I may get soft on Labour party candidates in local government. But I draw the line at former MPs.

Terry McDavitt - Blurb is non-stop inanity.

Daran Ponter - If he'd had more actual politics I probably would have voted for him. But his material is so slimy - and he spends so much time talking about his family that I just couldn't do it.

Bill Rainer - Why do these people think we want to know about their experience rather than how they will vote?

Fran Wilde - See I have these vague warm feelings towards her, because of her role in Homosexual Law Reform, but that was almost 25 years ago, and she's pro-business.

DHB
My main criteria is choosing people who believe in fighting for the health system, and it's workers. Also avoiding anyone who might think their religious beliefs are relevant to other people's health care.

1. David Choat - I broke my very important rule and forgave him for mentioning his family - partly because I know them, but more importantly because he has policy that I agree with.

2. Margaret Faulkner - Nurses who are clear where they stand on politics are worth voting for.

3. Maureen Gillon (you may notice that I'm voting for people in alphabetical order - this is because I'm lazy). Another nurse.

4. Malakai Jiko - On my list on easy gimmes is people who have worked for Primary Health Services such as Newtown Union Health.

5. Peter Roberts - He used to work for the doctors union and the coalition for public health - I would totally have voted him higher if only his name was further up the alphabet.

6. Peter Kelly - He used the phrase 'social justice' in his list. When it comes to the Health Board it doesn't take a lot.

7. Judith Aitken - see above.

8. Russell Franklin - his heart is obviously in the right place, even though he has a dodgy past and 8 is pretty far down my list.

9. Mark Jacobs - You were inane enough that I ranked you 9 - congratulations.

Not Ranking

Elizabeth Anderson - She accepts the funding limitations, and thinks her management experience is what's important. Nope.

John Apanowicz - Management. Management. Management.

Maureen Cahill - She doesn't just mention her family - she mentions her cat.

Camilia Chin - She used to be the 'Corporate Management Reporting Accoutnant for the CCDHB' - not my priority.

Barbara Donaldson - I don't disagree "Our DHB is in trouble" I do disagree "The Board needs poeple like me with experience in governance, management and health systems."

Andrew Holmes - actually your young family don't give you perspective for visionary governance FFS.

Virginia Hope - All management speak all the time.

Helene Ritchie - I'm PREJUDICED against random CAPS.

David Scott - If you're going to advertise your christianity when you're running for the Health Board that better come with a disclaimer - "I support a woman's right to choose" or else I'm not voting for you.

Donald Urquhart-Hay - I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I saw a House of Cards at a far too impressionable age to vote for anyone called Urquhart.

Nigel Wilson - The ratio of meaningless jargons to actual words is far too high.

Jack Wood - Funnily enough when thinking about who I want to run my health system and 'international business consultant' isn't it.

Now I've done my democratic duty I'm going to bed. I'll do a report of the abortion protest tomorrow I promise.

No More Jumping Through Hoops: Abortion Rights Demo

2010-10-03T13:41:00.000+13:00

I've talked a lot on this blog about the problems of abortion laws in New Zealand. If you live in Wellington, you can do something about it this Tuesday.

5 October · 12:30 - 13:30
Outside Court of Appeal (Corner of Aitken & Molesworth Streets)

Right to Life is taking the Abortion Supervisory Committee to court, to try and further restrict women's access to abortion in New Zealand (I'm going to try and get to at least some of the court case, so I'll try and provide a summary soon).

Our current law requires women to jump through many hoops before they can get access to abortion. Join the demo to demand that the current law is repealed, rather than interpreted more conservatively.

All welcome - bring your friends (If you're on facebook, you can invite your friends here)

The re-criminalising poor sex workers bill

2010-09-14T01:00:00.008+12:00

It has another, more euphamistic name (Manukau City Council (Regulation of Prostitution in Specified Places) Bill), but what it is actually doing is re-criminalising poor sex workers.

This bill will make it an arrestable crime, punishable with a $2,000 fine, to buy or sell sex outside of a brothel in areas decided by the Manakau City Council (if it goes through it'll be the Auckland super city council).

It is specifically targeting street sex workers. Street sex workers do not generally have $2,000 to pay a fine. The fines, when they're awarded, won't have the magic power to stop someone being poor and working as a sex worker, it'll just make them poorer. It won't make street sex work disappear, it'll just make it harder, more dangerous, and more marginalised.

It'll give police officers, like Peter Govers and Nathan Connolly more power over some women. And whatever else your politics, that is reason enough to oppose this bill.

I would like to take a brief moment to draw your attention to a new reactionary tendancy on this issue within the Greens (who block voted for prostitution law reform). Two of the Green MPs voted for the bill and Russell Norman abstained (because he thought I needed another reason to hate him).

Three parties block voted (Act and National supported the attacks, the Maori party opposed them), Labour and the Greens split their votes. Nanaia Mahuta was the only woman from either of these parties to vote for criminalising poor women who work as sex workers. Now it physically pains me to say nice things about Labour and Green MPs, but I want to give credit to the feminist analysis and solidarity that those who opposed these bill showed. It shouldn't be noteworthy that women MPs voted the way they did. But the extent to which their male colleagues accepted criminalising women who were already marginalised as an acceptable side effect of protecting small businesses (as the rhetoric in defence of hte bill is all the poor shop owners whose lives are made harder by the fact that sex work happens near them), means that it is noteworthy in the context in which they're operating.

The contempt that those who voted for this bill have for sex workers comes through in the parliamentary debate. George Hawkins uses the language of 'plague' to describe street sex work - which is about as dehumanising as you can get. Others demonstrate their contempt through sneering and patronising - and claim that this bill is necessary to stop underage sex work.*

A few months ago I read this article about American criminal approaches to sex work, and I was horrified. How can anyone who stands in solidarity with women say that being criminalised in this way helps anyone?

I understand that there are nuanced feminist positions on sex work. But I don't think good feminist analysis of any kind, can possibly endorse life being made harder for poor sex workers.

* No I don't get it either. How driving street sex work underground magically stops kids from being sex workers wasn't explained.

Abortion Rights Events in Wellington

2010-09-12T13:25:00.002+12:00

There are a couple of exciting abortion rights events in Wellington this week, which it'd be great to see lots of people at.

The first is a meeting, organised by WONAAC, to talk about abortion action:

Monday 12 September 7pm
Mezzanine floor of the public library

WONAAC (Women’s National Abortion Action Campaign) is holding a Public Meeting to discuss and take action regarding Steve Chadwick's proposed decriminalisation bill and the Right To Life vs. ASC court case on October 5-6.

Meeting is open to everyone; bring all your friends that would interested in joining the discussions and taking ACTION.

On Thursday is BE FREE an awareness/fundraising gig for abortion rights:

Watusi (6 Edward St) 7pm

Come along to Watusi to support freedom of choice for all women. Drink some tasty beverages and listen to the sweet sounds of Diana Rozz (swoon) and special guests (excite!). Free drink for the first 40 people!

Ticket price: TBC, but will be kept low, so note it on your calendars, on the mirror in lipstick, on the back of your hand, in the dust on your windowsill, and invite your friends!

What progress looks like

2010-09-03T00:46:00.005+12:00

A minor shit-storm has blown up over on Feministe where a guest blogger called Monica posted an fat-hating rant.* I'm not going to quote any of it - it was an inane, illogical post - and the point of this post is not to refute her nonsense (she actually talks about how people need to put down the donuts - that's how unoriginal she is).

Instead I want to talk about another post on feministe that was written almost four an a half years ago. It was a better written, and more coherent. But it was also arguing that fat acceptance activists went too far, and that we needed to talk about the unhealthyness of fat.

There were 122 comments on Monica's recent post - a good 95% of which are people telling Monica exactly how ridiculous and offensive her post is.

Four and a half years ago, there were just a few of us who spoke up for even moderate fat acceptance (and if you read the comments - which I don't actually recommend - I was being embarrassingly moderate and conciliatory).

In four and a half years the number of people talking fat and politics at feministe and feministe adjacent spaces has increased exponentially. Every person who says "I'm fat and there's no shame in that", makes it a little easier for the next person.

That a few moderates has become 100 angry radicals gives me such hope, and it really shows the value of continuing to talk and fight for what I'd still prefer to call fat liberation.

*Prompted by of all things a Jezebel post - if Jezebel is too fat accepting for you I recommend you don't read my archives.

Fit to eat

2010-08-28T18:51:00.001+12:00

If you're anything like me you would have had lots of friends liking Child Poverty Action Group recently. I was all prepared to join in, until I saw they were promoting this post with a cheerful "What are our kids eating? And what is our government doing (or not doing) to encourage them to choose an orange over an oreo?"

First it reminded me of the endless ridiculous games of substitutions that you see in women's magazines and "healthy food" (Next time you feel like eating chocolate try a tin of tuna instead). Which made me think of Sarah Haskins, swapping a six pack of beer for a fifth of whiskey:

So I was happy for a while. But when I recovered from my distraction I was still grumpy. Why should children be choosing Oreos over oranges - why can't they have both, and lots of other food as well? Why is an anti-poverty group calling on the government to promote a diet mentality among kids?

The post they linked to was called "Not Fit To Eat"* was talking about a $2.50 pack sold in a South Auckland dairy, that contained Oreos, two packets of chip like things, and an orange drink. I agree that that is not an adequate lunch, but each of the individual components, and the pack of the whole, is totally fit to eat.

What I found most ridiculous about the response to this pack, was the emphasis on how cheap it was - as if that was a bad thing (someone made their horror at this food being cheap explicit in the facebook thread). I do not understand how anyone concerned with poverty could ever have a problem with any food being cheap. I have so often heard people tutt-tutting about the fact that a litre of coke is cheaper than a litre of milk - as if it is the cheapness of the coke that is the problem.

The person who had found this pack asked the dairy owner "aren't you ashamed to be selling this?" Why is it more shameful to be selling this for $2.50 than anything else? Dairies make their money through high margins - if their is shame in their trade - surely it is selling food for more, rather than selling food for less.

You know there was a time when calories weren't as relatively cheap as they are now. Cheap calories can give people the ability to stay alive, and they're fabulous. I understand being angry at the expense of other nutrients, such as milk, vegetables, fruit, meat and whittakers dark almond chocoalte, but why is this so often discussed as if the cheapness of other fooods is the problem?

This seems to be my week to be grumpy about how people on the left talk about food and bodies.** But I think it's really important. It is totally possible to talk about food and poverty, without buying into a worldview that fetishises food and buys into an ideology that sees food in terms of morality. I really should write a grand theory post about why this is bad one of these days - but the really short reason is that one of the purposes of this ideology is to blame individuals for the effects of poverty. This is not something we can co-opt - it is something which will co-opt us.

And because no post like this would be complete without it, here is a link to the fat nutritionist's If only poor people understood nutrition.

* I think it is written by my co-blogger AnneE - so I'd be interested in hearing her perspective

** Who am I kidding, every week for at least the last five years has been my week to be grumpy about the way some people on the left talks about food and bodies.

Safer Communities Together

2010-08-27T13:22:00.003+12:00

Years ago, I heard a story.

A young, and new, constable was posted to Rotorua in the 1980s (yeah it's not a happy story). I don't know why he became a police officer, or what he wanted to do, or anything about him or his life. What I do know is his fellow police officerswould collect the names of single mothers - vulnerable women who would be home during the day alone - knock on the door in uniform and demand sex.

The young constable didn't like this, but he couldn't stop it, or maybe he just didn't know how to stop it, or wasn't prepared to do what it would have taken to stop it. But he couldn't be around these men, knowing what they did, and having to be an accomplice. So he left the police force.

Rape and abuse of power wasn't just something Rotorua police officers did in their off time? It was something that required structural support, and structural cover up. It required a widespread mentality that women didn't matter, and other police officers had a right to abuse them.

Dave Archibald was still operating under the 'bros before hoes' mentality when he used his position as police officer to get access to information in the hope it'd help his rapists mates.

Now he is in charge of training new police officers.

I'm reasonably clear that I don't think the police can be reformed, that I think the problems that come from the sort of power that they have are unavoidable, that their job, and the job of the criminal (in)justice system is to maintain the status quo not create safer communities together (see here).

But for those of you who have some faith in the police, who think the culture of rape and abuse is extinguisable, how is that going to happen? Maybe you think our young constable would have made a good constable, that he could have made a difference, but that difference he could have made was the reaosn he couldn't stay in the police force. Those who stayed, are those who could stomach, or turn a blind eye, to what was going on, they're the people who are training new police officers and choosing who gets promoted. How can you believe in reform?

It Never Stops

2010-08-23T00:05:00.004+12:00

I went to the Fairness at Work rally on Saturday. It was a beautiful day in Wellington, and pretty amazing to see so many people. When I first got there I spent a good ten minutes wandering round. Then I settled down to listen to the Brass Razoo solidarity band play Solidarity Forever in the sun (which is one of my all time favourite things to do).

Despite an awesome beginning, I have some reservations about the Fairness at Work approach, and different reservations about other proposals to fight back against these laws. But rather than throw my hat in the ring for that debate, I'm going to have say something I totally didn't expect to have to say.

One of the undoubted problems of the day was the sound system. You had to really try to hear what was said, and from many parts of civic square you couldn't hear a thing. However, from reports of those who heard some of the speeches, this wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Michelle A'Court was MCing the demo.* In her very first little spiel thing she said something like this (I didn't hear it myself, I didn't hear anything more than a phrase the entire time, but this is from a friend):

So there are sausages over there. You should eat them, because I don't like skinny people.

This is a bit off topic, but I really don't like skinny people. A friend of mine is friend's with a skinny person, and she introduced us, but I knew right off I didn't want to be friends with her. I mean what would we do all day? Not eat?

So anyway eat the sausages.

Except she went on like this a lot longer than that.

You know, I wanted to go on a protest. I wanted to have my say, stand together with a whole bunch of other people. Meet up with my friends, snark on some banners and leaflets - normal protest things.

I wasn't really prepared to get my angry feminist on. I think you have to try quite hard to bring policing women's bodies into a protest about work rights, but apparently it's possible.

There are different ways I could take this post from here.

I could write about humour - and the massive gulf between humour that laughs at structures of oppression and structures that laughts with them (This is an excellent post on just that divide). To the extent to which there was a joke in what Michelle A'Court said (and I'm dubious) it was ha, ha people's bodies

Or I could write about my school friends who join facebook groups called things like "Curvy women are sexier than skinny women". Policing and judging thin women is not revolutionary, it is not a blow for fat women everywhere. It's all part of hte same project, of making sure no woman can ever feel OK about her body. Acting as if thin people can and should control their bodies (the eat a sandwich, or in this case a sausage roll school of social commentary), upholds the idea that fat people can and should control their bodies.

I could point to this story of a woman who can't afford food because the government benefits are at starvation levels. And point out that skipping meals is not always a fucking choice. Let alone something to judge people on.

But I just don't see why I should have to do any of this. I don't think a work-rights demo should be a feminist mine-field. I think the basic principle shoudl be that everyone is welcome, without any part of their bodies, their minds, their lives, being subject to ridicule or mockery.

* I loved Michelle A'Court when I was a kid. I thought video dispatch was amazing, and that she was fabulous. I have a soft spot for her even today, and have really appreciated some things she's said. She had an excellent rant about tertiary education policy on the panel recently as well. I think that makes me even more frustrated with what passed for 'comedy' at this rally.

How dare we lose what they have won*

2010-08-21T01:00:00.004+12:00

Here's one reason (of many) why you should go to the rallies being held aroudn the country this weekend:

Auckland
1pm, Saturday 21st August
QE2 Square (bottom of Queen St, opposite Britomart)

Wellington
1pm, Saturday 21st August
Civic Square

Christchurch
1pm, Saturday 21st August
Cathedral Square

Dunedin
11am, Sunday 22nd August
Assemble at Dental School, Great King Street
March to rally at the Octagon

* From Bring out the banners

Keep On Walking Forward

2010-07-31T23:47:00.001+12:00

A couple of weeks ago I sat in a room that was over-flowing with people who had got together to fight for abortion rights. The meeting had been spectacularly well organised. When I came back to campus the week before, there was chalking advertising the meeting, and talking about the importance of abortion rights, all over campus. It didn’t rain that week – so awesome, strong messages were there for everyone to see (you can still see a bit of the chalking, in the door to the Kirk building, just under the overbridge).

To listen to dozens of people, mostly women, mostly younger than me, explain why they thought abortion rights were important, and why they were prepared to fight for them was not something I had ever experienced, or expected to experience.

I learned about our abortion law alone, in the Alexander Turnbull Library manuscripts reading room, with no. I couldn’t work for more than three quarters of an hour at a time looking through some of those files; I’d get so angry and upset I’d need a break. I once kicked the stone that said: This Building Was Opened By Rob Muldoon. My foot hurt, and I didn’t feel any better.

I felt alone. Most people I knew didn’t even know what the law was. I didn’t think I could do anything

I was wrong. Of course I was wrong. New Zealand’s abortion laws are outrageous, and of course there was heaps of passion about this injustice. There were always people who were prepared to fight the fight – it was just we all felt isolated, and had fifty three million other things to do, so nothing changed.

It appears that the Chris Trotter and Tammy X “abortion is kind of icky and won’t somebody think of the labour party” arguments won and Steve Chadwick’s bill will not be put in the ballot at the moment. Obviously I'm disappointed and disgusted.

But after the meeting we had – I know it doesn’t matter. We can educate, agitate and organise, until we’re strong enough to overpower MPs near pathological aversion to talking about abortion.

Whether next year or next decade, we will change abortion laws. We’re going to have honest laws that do not have unnecessary toll-gates in the way of women seeking for abortion.

And when we do I will look back on Monday the 19th of July as the night that I thought: “We’re gonna win.”

Another myth about abortion

2010-07-21T23:07:00.003+12:00

One of the ideas that permeates the abortion debate in so many ways is that supporting abortion rights is a minority position.

You see this partly in the idea that the law is cucrently 'outdated' (which is common even among those trying to change the law) as if it reflected it's time. Chris Trotter also strongly implied it - with the idea that hundreds of thousands of decent well-meaning people were behind the law as it stands now.

This is untrue - the current abortion law was wildly unpopular when it passed. 318,820 voting aged people signed the REPEAL petition (much like it sounded a petition to repeal the restrictive abortion laws) in 13 weeks. When you think about how many CIR have struggled to get that number of signatures - let alone that percentage of the population, you will understand it was a staggeringly unpopular law.

In this thread (warning the original post makes Chris Trotter look like a hardcore supporter of a woman's right to choose) the idea that abortion is a minority position bandied about by both supporters and opponents of law change.

Gaging public opinion on abortion is always difficult - the way the questions are worded makes a huge different to the way people answer them. But support for women having access to abortion is solid, and support for denying access to abortion is not.

More importantly in the 1970s public opinion on abortion swung very quickly. There are probably many reasons for this, but the most important is that women were speaking openly about their experiences of having an abortion and claimed abortion as a right - this position quickly resonated with people.

Those who support a woman's right to choose are not a minority, and the best way to build our movement is to make sure we don't act like one.

The (non-existent) relationship between abortion law and abortion rates

2010-07-12T21:27:00.006+12:00

In early 1978, after the current abortion law was passed, it was almost impossible to get a legal abortion in New Zealand.* The law was incredibly badly drafted - the interaction of the implementation dates of different clauses was unclear, and no-one was prepared to take a risk. Feminists responded by organising SOS - Sisters Overseas Service - so women could get abortions in Australia.

Before the new law for most New Zealand women the easiest way to get an abortion was from the Auckland Medical Aid Centre - which was challenging the law and providing abortion on demand in the first trimester, at a relatively low cost. After the new law came in it cost $500 (including the trip to Australia) - $3,000 in today's money.

And yet, by the best estimates New Zealand women had more abortions in 1978 than they had in 1977. They certainly didn't have fewer abortions.**

To be absolutely clear - when New Zealand passed what was then one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the Western world and the cost of abortion increased dramatically - the total number of abortions New Zealand women had went up.

I mention this as a response to Chris Trotter's ridiculous column:

Does Ms Chadwick not believe that 18,382 abortions are enough? Does she think there should be more? Has the existing legislation created an unfulfilled demand for abortion which her proposed private members bill seeks to satisfy?***

While it is true that restrictive abortion laws deny some women access to abortion, and I don't want to minimise those women's experiences, the vast majority of women who want an abortion in New Zealand do get one - just as they did in 1977. New Zealand's restrictive abortion laws have never had a significant impact on the abortion rate - that's not how abortion law or access works.****

I'm not an activist on this issue because I'm fighting for women to have abortions. Quinine, hot baths, knitting needles, trips to Auckland, vitamin C, menstrual extraction, trips to Australia, telling the doctors what they need to hear about their mental health - women do what needs to be done to terminate a pregnancy.

Yes women in New Zealand generally manage to jump through the hoops that have been set up (if they didn't then we would have had abortion law reform a long time ago - just like the only reason Ireland gets away with having such restrictive abortion laws is because women can go to the UK). But (and I will go into this in more detail soon) those hoops have a cost - time off work, travel, childcare and stress. A cost which has nothing to do with the reality of abortion. A cost I don't think women should have to pay.

I'm an activist on this issue, because I think women should not have to pay a penance to someone else's morality before they get access to abortion.

* A much smaller number of abortions were carried out in other hospitals, and probably provisions for illegal abortions in some places.

** The graph of women between the ages of 16-45 travelling to Australia for a period of less than 5 days has a huge spike at this time. On top of that there are details from groups such as SOS.

*** And he trots out the compromise lie - it was not a compromise - it was a complete victory for the other side - the voting record and debate demonstrates that very clearly.

**** Seriously this is abortion politics 101 - the law makes minimal difference to the rate of abortion. It doesn't matter how high the cost for an abortion is - almost all women will pay it, because the cost of a pregnancy, let alone a child, is going to be greater.

Tribute

2010-07-05T23:15:00.000+12:00

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

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

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

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

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

24 weeks

2010-07-05T23:03:00.000+12:00

It's been great to see a wide range of support of Steve Chadwick's legislation. But one area that has seen less support is the proposed time limit of 24 weeks. There are physilogical arguments about fetal pain and development and viability, but those aren't the arguments I want to make.* I want to go back to first principles.

Those who are uncertain about a 24 week time limit make arguments like Dita De Boni did in the Herald:

But there was one part of Steve's bill that had me stumped. Why is she proposing that the timeframe for abortions be moved to 24 weeks, when currently it is stated in law that no abortions can be performed on women after the 20th week of pregnancy, except to save a woman's life?

A similar issue was raised in a comment thread by Ms P

This may risk setting of some kind of comment bomb, especially in light of the comments in earlier posts:( Also, I've never been pregnant so acknowledge my ignorance about the timelines for obtaining an abortion, but 20-24 weeks seems quite advanced in the pregnancy to be accessing abortion. What do people think of the criteria listed for the bill?

There is a story that gives one answer to this question. In 2007, a woman with pre-existing heart waited 15 weeks for a heart examination once she got pregnant. In the twenty first week of her pregnancy she was told that she had heart problems. She asked for an abortion, but was told that it was too late for an abortion, as the risk of her having health problems wasn't bit enough. The baby was delivered dead by caesarean section when she was thirty weeks better, and the woman died four hours later.

The best person to make decisions about what is acceptable risk during pregnancy is the woman who is pregnant.

It's really important that people don't give into their own 'icky' response when it comes to late-term abortion. Yes the pregnancy is quite far advanced at 22 weeks - you know who knows that better than anyone else? The woman who is pregnant, has a rapidly growin fetus inside that has started moving and kicking.

Unless you are absolutely anti-abortion (and very few people are, which is why you get rape and incest exceptions in most legislation),** then you believe there should be a decision maker who weighs up the pros and cons of having an abortion - balances the life stage that the foetus is at, the risks of the procedure, and the desires of the pregnant woman. I think some people slip into wanting to be that decision maker themselves - "Well 23 weeks is very advanced. I'm not saying you can't have an abortion then, but you better have a very good reason" That's the logic that resulted in our current law - the state took the position that some abortions were necessary, but that special neutral doctors were the only people to decide whether or not an individual abortion is OK.

But it's a terrible solution. Because one of two things happen, sometimes the gatekeepers abdicate their role as gatekeepers, as Certifying Consultants have largely done in the current environement, and allow women to make their own decisions. In which case the decision-makers are just meaningless hoops, that take money, time and energy for women to jump through. Or they act as gatekeepers, and women are forced to remain pregnant, and sometimes women die.

There is a simple, elegant, solution to all this. Accept that there needs to be a decision maker who balances many different issues, including the stage of pregnancy, but agree that the best person to be that decision maker is the pregnant woman.

This is what I meant about holding the line. Dita De Boni gave a spurious argument that currently 0.5% of abortions happen after 20 weeks. Leaving aside that's because some women are denied them, should we abandon those 80 women just because they're a minority? Just because it makes it messier? Should we say - of course most women shouldn't have to use their resources to jump through administrative hoops to end a pregnancy - but if there's only a few of them why don't we just ignore them and focus on everyone else.

The core argument about abortion is the same at week 8 as it is at week 24. If you trust women to make their own decisions, then you trust women to make their own decisions at any stage in pregnancy.

* Now I should be clear that I don't actually support the 24 week limit - I believe that women are as capable of making their own decisions at week 25 as they are in week 24. I will talk later about why I can support this bill anyway, but there are some aspects of existing law that I want to discuss first.

** Except New Zealand's of course, because our MPs thought that if you could get an abortion if you were raped would lie about being raped to get an abortion.

People who are lying about abortion law reform

2010-07-04T21:33:00.003+12:00

So the only material we have about Steve Chadwick's proposed private members bill is one NZ Herald article. A lot of the people quoted in the article make reference to the origins of the current law - a topic I happen to know a reasonable amount about. History important for many reasons, including that some people will try and twist it to their own ends, and it helps to know the truth.

So liar the first Bernard Moran, president of Voice for Life (that's SPUC that was):

The present law is a compromise to recognise that there is an unborn child, that there is a human person involved in this procedure.
Decriminalisation would basically be saying that the human person, the child, has no value whatsoever; it's like removing an abscess or a tooth. That's a modern form of barbarism.

You see this idea repeated by quite a few different people, but it's absolutely incorrect - our current law is not a compromise. The law we have now was a total victory for misogynist anti-abortionists. The law was written and promoted by misogynist anti-abortionists David Lange and Bill Birch (respectively). None of the women in parliament voted for it. It was a horrific desperate defeat for feminists all over the country. Over 300,000 people signed a petition to repeal the law. For more than a year after the law was passed women who needed abortions flew to Australia to get them.

The current law is a savage defeat.

Then there's Phil Goff: "Labour leader Phil Goff said he hadn't given the matter much thought."

Deborah and QoT have both responded to this. But I had a slightly different reaction which was "Bullshit." In 1977 and 1978 Phil Goff was the spokesperson for Young Labour. Young Labour actively opposed the current abortion law. Phil Goff got a reasonable amount of publicity. The sort of person who goes on to become leader of the opposition, pays attention to the media coverage they get when they're 24. He has thought about abortion. He knows where he stands. He may not want to talk about abortion, but the rest is bullshit.

Holding the line

2010-07-04T01:22:00.002+12:00

So I have lots to say about Steve Chadwick's proposed private members bill, but I want to start with the nature of abortion law.

New Zealand abortion law is appalling. Parliament is not short of people who know this, but it is short of people who are afraid to do anything about it:

Helen Clark and Phil Goff spoke out about how bad the law we have now is back when it passed, but they haven't done anything about it, since they had the power to.* Sue Bradford, Sue Kedgley, Keith Locke, Ruth Dyson, Margaret Wilson, Marianne Hobbes, Maryann Street - they were prepared to fight this battle in the 1970s, before they got into parliament, they were feminists (or feminist supporters) then. And it's not just those who are in parliament now the numbers have been there for at least the last nine years, others had their chance: Jonathan Hunt, Matt Robeson, Laila Harre, and especially Phillida Bunkle.

So the fact that Steve Chadwick has stepped up - is far more impressive than it should be.

But it's barely even a beginning. Those of us who support women's right to access abortion and make choices about our own bodies cannot just wait for those in parliament to do the right thing. Because they probably won't.

It's not just about whether Steve Chadwick's bill ever gets put in the ballot. It's about what happens next; the Herald's report makes the bill sound very solid. Not my idea of perfect abortion law - but an abortion law that will not put up barriers or demand resources from women before they can access abortion (again I'll write more about that in the next few days).

But abortion law is a strange thing - and often those making it succumb to: "Yes women have a right to access abortion, but we have to remember that abortion is icky".

As Idiot/Savant points out - the danger isn't just that this law won't get through, but that it'll get through with various hooks in it. That those who theoretically believe in a woman's right to chose will bow to the backlash, and use the 'icky' instinct as a justification. Parental notification laws are an obvious example of ways to put huge obstacles in the way for some women, but the US has so many examples of ways to make things difficult for women, while theoretically maintaining a right to abortion.

In order to get meaningful change in abortion law, that'll make a difference to women's lives, everyone involved has to hold the line. Those in parliament won't suppress their 'abortion is icky response' if the organising all comes from misogynist anti-abortionists.

Deborah suggests writing to MPs, which is a start, but only a start. We'll need to do so much more than that to make sure the MPs have no choice but to hold the line.

I think a really good start would be public meetings of those who support the proposed bill. Anyone interested in organising them?

Note for commenters: This post is not for a discussion of the morality of abortion. But a space to talk about how those of us who oppose the current law can organise.

"I've never voted Tory..."

2010-05-07T23:08:00.007+12:00

Like many people, I've spent the last day following the British election. Indeed Victoria University's internet almost broke under the strain of the sheer number of people streaming BBC on the Guardian website. When I stopped to think about it couldn't figure out what I wanted to happen - except the spontaneous combustion of all present candidates for British Prime Minister and their predecessors. But I couldn't stop watching.

There have been many words spilt over the British election results and what they mean, with more to come. It seems a little arrogant to stake a claim to that process. But what is important to me is that the Tories could not get a majority. It's been 13 years since they were last in power, Labour has nothing to even pretend to offer, and is widely loathed. Despite this the Tories could not make it happen.

One of the things I respect most about the place I was born is its long memory and deep hatred for Margaret Thatcher and the Tories. Gary Younge summed it up brilliantly:

I don't have a phobia about Tories. That would suggest an irrational response. I hate them for a reason. For lots of reasons, actually. For the miners, apartheid, Bobby Sands, Greenham Common, selling council houses, Section 28, lining the pockets of the rich and hammering the poor – to name but a few. I hate them because they hate people I care about. As a young man Cameron looked out on the social carnage of pit closures and mass unemployment, looked at Margaret Thatcher's government and thought, these are my people. When all the debating is done, that is really all I need to know.

Coming from New Zealand where the collective political memory is goldfish like I think Britain's burning hatred is worth celebrating.

Cake is not the opposite of diet - and no diet day thoughts

2010-05-07T00:18:00.005+12:00

So I'm reposting some of the blog posts I wrote years ago over at The Hand Mirror. This week I have felt the irritation at International No Diet Day rise slowly (mostly fueled by the facebook group), and I wanted to write a post about why it annoyed me so much. Then I realised that I've already written that post so I decided to repost it instead (i've edited quite a bit, to finish the sentances and elaborate on the ideas).

In my experience No Diet Day's are most commonly observed at Universities, and usually by eating cake, chocolate and ice-cream at a dessert evening or some such event. Sometimes, when you have an anti-feminist women's rights officer, they're observed by giving away diet coke and fruit (because International No Diet Day becomes Love Your Body day and what better way to love your body than fruit, diet coke and yoga - I really wish I was making this up, but I'm not).

My superficial criticism of No Diet Day is how easy co-opted and perverted it is. An article from ABC in Australia:

In the 936 office Drive Producer, the lovely Lynn, got up especially early to spend most of her morning baking, in order to provide her colleagues with the most delectable Pavlova and cake.

Annie Warburton and the team from Mornings spoke with Stephen Dimsey, State Manger of Life Be In It Tasmania, to get some sensible tips for those who enjoy their food but want to stay in shape.

Then later on Stephen says: "What we're saying is that whatever body shape you are, make sure you're a healthy body shape," Talk about making the kind of sense that's not; I don't think I could translate that into English if you paid me.

But I have just as much problem with the dessert based versions International No Diet Day, which are organised on campus by people who are actually feminist.

I don't think dessert is the opposite of dieting. I think to suggest that it is is to perpetuate a shallow, unhelpful understanding of the role of food in our society. Food and control are so tightly linked that the only other alternative to controlling your food intake is losing control of your food intake. You can't just 'not diet' for a day - because the gremlins in your head about food and your body will still be there - interrogating every food choice, everything you do. To suggest anything can be achieved in a day is too hide how deeply people are affected.

The opposite of dieting is actually making food about food. I know that's an uphill battle. I know the vast majority of women students are nowhere near there. But I don't think having one day a year where you're 'allowed' to eat chocolate is a step in that direction.

In the end kicking those grelins to death is an uphill battle. Whatever the state your personal set are in I don't think it makes any difference whether you eat dessert or don't eat dessert on a particular day. And I think the suggestion that you should or shouldn't deal in any particular way actually makes it harder.

What is ultimately frustrating is that my experience of dessert evenings is that after a certain point people will start talking about how gross they feel and how someone should take the food away so they'll stop eating it - it's not an anti-diet dessert evening without people completely reinforcing ideas about food and control and food and power.

If I had a time machine, and could go back in time to when International No Diet Day was invented (my mind says 1989, but I'm too lazy to look it up on Wikipedia), I would make a suggestion that rather than make it 'no diet day' - how about 'no diet-talk day?" I don't know if it would actually help (and not being so easily commodified it would be less popular). But at least it presents the response to eating disorder culture and body hatred as something that involves many steps, rather than something you can just turn off.

He's still a police officer

2010-05-06T00:08:00.002+12:00

It never ends:

The woman, whose name is suppressed, argued in a civil case that she had felt obliged to fulfil Mr Govers' sexual requests because of his position.

The woman had helped police spy on a methamphetamine ring in 2005. Shortly afterwards, Mr Govers took a bottle of wine to her home.

She said he told her he could help if she was in trouble, and that he knew her children were in care and her violent partner had just gone to jail.

The woman said he asked her to perform a sex act on him, but court documents show Mr Govers denies this took place.

The woman was suing Peter Govers in civil court, arguing that their relationship was a fiduciary relationship - that he had a duty to act in her best interests. The Judge ruled that no such relationship existed - but she did say that she believed that the woman's story was more likely than not correct. I'm really glad that the woman involved was told that someone believed her.

The police culture in Rotorua in the 1980s was one that enabled police officers to rape women with impunity. That's pretty much a matter of record at this point.

We're supposed to believe that it's all changed now. It's all clean - the bad apples in Rotorua rotted the whole barrel - but bad apples aren't a problem anymore.

But a police officer can have sex with someone who did not feel able to say no and remain a police officer. Govers was demoted from detective Sergeant to Senior Constable. He still has the power of arrest, the badge, the baton, and the mates.

Years ago I asked this:

For me this shows one of the fundamental problem with the police. Abuse, including rape, appears to be an inevitable result of the sort of power we give police. I know people have different analyses about how much good the police do (I come down on the side of 'none'). But even if you believe that the police do improve society, do you really believe that what happened to Louise Nicholas, Judith Garrett and countless other women is an acceptable side effect of that good?

It's not just Rotorua and it's not just the 80s.

Minor news

2010-05-03T00:05:00.003+12:00

The paper had sat on our kitchen table for a few days. The Dominion Post is given away for free at campus and one of my flatmates brings it back to do the crossword. The headline caught my eye:

I never raped anyone, former officer tells the jury

I read stories like that, but I take a breath first:

A former Rotorua police officer denied raping a 17-year-old Rotorua teen in her flat 21 years ago but could not rule out a brief sexual encounter, a court has been told. Iosefa Fiaola told a jury in Tauranga District Court yesterday that he did not know the woman who alleged she was raped in her flat in 1989.

Then today I searched Stuff for 'Rotorua' 'Police' 'Rape'. There were lots of hits.

The jury had come back on Thursday. They had found him not guilty.

Another woman had gone to the police about being raped by Iosefa Fiaola, this article strongly implies this was the reason he left the police force.

The article I read was on page 5 or 6. When Rotorua cops stand trial for rape in the 1980s, it's barely news anymore.

I keep looking for the words, but I have so many jumbled things I could say to that. And I've said them all before, more than once.

How many people knew? Obviously lots of women knew, women who were raped, women who structured their lives around avoiding cops, women who had been warned. But none of them had the power to stop these rapists. How many police officers knew? How many lawyers? How about other men who could have stopped it? Or just men who could draw a line and say "I'm against raping women, even when my buddies do it?"

It's too big for me to comprehend, even now, even after thinking about it for years.

So I'm just going to say, again, that I believe this woman.

The state of a strange land

2010-04-13T22:41:00.004+12:00

The story posted on Shakesville about a New Zealander who was deported from LAX has been getting some attention among New Zealand bloggers. It's a powerful tale:

I was taken to another room and given another search. This one (thankfully) did not put her hands anywhere near my groin, just my legs, arms and torso. And my shoes.

I was then taken back out to the main reception area, given a paper bag, and told to put all my valuables into it. Including my $2 mood ring, my $3 watch, and... my bootlaces. And anything else I was carrying of value - my wallet, my MP3 player, and the water and food that I had been given by the officers at LAX.

I didn't know why I had to put the bootlaces in the bag. I think that if I had asked, I would have been told that it was "for my safety". However, since I was only able to shuffle slowly around, I believe that it was a ploy to dehumanise the detainees further.

I recommend you read the whole thing.

But I want to point out that New Zealand has its own degrading, dehumanising, racist immigration system. I've watched a woman about to be deported saying goodbye to her boyfriend in a prison visiting room. For pacific island women visas can be contingent on negative pregnancy tests. If you were detained in a New Zealand prison prior to deportation (and people are) - the cold, the strip search, the lack of access to medication, the constant dehumanisation would be the same.

And the best thing about it is they're guilty!

2010-03-17T21:26:00.003+13:00

In Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford she tells a story of the 1960s. I can't remember the details of the political trial - had the defendant's been accused of . But they were found not guilty, and in the party to celebrate the result a young man stood on a table and shouted out "And the best thing about it is they're guilty."

Today the jury took just two hours to find Adrian Leason, Peter Murnane, and Sam Land not guilty of willful damage and burglary.

In April 2008, they went to the Waihopai spy base and destroyed one of the domes. Since then they have been very clear that they did damage the spy base, but they were not guilty of any crime. They had taken the action that they did to avert much greater harm, including the on-going war in Iraq.

For those interested in the exact legal details I recommend Brian Law. But it's not the legal aspects of this that I'm celebrating. It's that the Waihopai 3 maintained that they did it, and that they were right to do it, and the jury believed them.

A note of I told you so...

2010-03-10T22:38:00.002+13:00

Like many people on the left I cut my eye teeth on student politics. In particular, I first became involved with political organising in 1997, the year of the Green paper. This was a proposal to corporatise the education system. I, along with 74 other people, got arrested on parliament's forecourt protesting it. We defeated some of the proposals in the Green paper, such as the proposals that tertiary institutions should be charged on the basis of their assets. But others, most critically funding of Private Training Institutions, went through.

So it is with the ears of a policy wonk that I listened to today's announcements about tertiary education. It is a clear rejection of the 'market fixes all' school of thought that had predominated in the 1990s.

This shouldn't be seen as a victory. It was interesting to hear Phil O'Reilly on The Panel today - he was torn in a couple of different ways. He specifically said that private providers and competition were important, but he also criticised the number of courses that these private training institutions had developed. Rather than being a step towards anything, it's just a recognition by capitalism that providing workers with specific skills needs more managerialism than a free market system will allow.

But I want to take a moment to say that we were right.

As for the 'solutions' - I think they'll probably do damage. The idea "we want Tertiary institutions to do X, therefore we'll pay institutions that do X more" creates all sorts of perverse incentives." The Labour government introduced a Performance Based Research Fund, because they wanted to make sure universities do research, not just concentrate on bums on seats. But by attempting to quantify research, they've created huge inequities, and perverse incentives. On top of that they've made the university a much more high pressure, unpleasant place to work. None of which actually encourages academic staff to do good research. It discourages anything that might be difficult, and instead encourages meeting criteria.

Support the right to strike

2010-02-23T21:07:00.004+13:00

There has been two bills that attacks workers rights drawn out of the ballot. Roger Douglas's bill on youth rates and Tau Henare's bill on secret ballot's in case of a strike. Now I could go 15 rounds with any readers who support youth rates right now. Fighting against youth rates is really important.

But that's not actually what I want to write about. I've been really disappointed to the muted response to Tau Henare's bill on the left. The best that The Standard and Frogblog can do is that there is no problem because unions already hold secret ballots. While No Right Turn appears to actively support it.

I believe such a nonchalant response to workers right to strike is at best short sighted.

Lets be clear from the start -I don't think union officials roll around the country trying to push their members into strikes.* We don't have many strikes, and I'm sure any of them that didn't face a secret ballot would have succeeded in one. So the important questions to ask are philosophical and practical.

I have a philosophical objection to it - I believe self-determination means that union members get to decide how they make their decisions. If people take a philosophical position that it is the government's place to legislate how people make their decisions in non-governmental organisations, then that should be consistent (a positio I do not take, for the reasons I've mentioned about self-determination). Why limit it just to unions?

Even more revealing of the ideology involved, why are strike ballots so special? Workers take many other important decisions in their time - the decision to accept an agreement without a pay increase, for example, is every bit as important as a strike ballot.** As are elections and other votes unions take.

As well as these philosophical objections, I think the bill could end up being really restrictive to union's ability to take action. I haven't seen a copy of the bill yet, but I'm operating under the assumption that it will deem strikes without a secret ballot illegal, in the same way that solidarity strikes are at the moment.***

Depending on the exact wording, this may take away a lot of workers flexibility when it comes to industrial. If you're not in an essential industry workers can go on strike at any time, they can go out for an hour or they can go out for a day, and they don't have to tell employers beforehand which. When I've had strike ballots (and none of the strike ballots I've had have developed into strikes) we talked about the sort of action that might be involved, then took a vote on the principle of further action. This left workers with the power to finely tune the exact time and length to depend on the work cycle of the employer.

Secondly how is the ballot going to be taken? In some circumstances the only way union members can leave their workplace for an hour to have a paid union meeting is to take strike action for that hour. It's a complete catch-22.

But most importantly it could weaken the bargaining power of workers who are on strike. At the moment how the union decies to take strike action is none of the employers business. But this would mean if there was a question about the decision to take strike action the employers could use that over the union. Particularly if a secret ballot is not defined in law workers and unions will be in a weak position. If some workers talk to each other and look at each others papers while the vote is taken is that a secret ballot? What are the restrictions on the wording on the paper? Union's may accept weaker settlements, because they don't want to fight the matter in court.

In addition there are real practical questions about how this will work in the case of health and safety strikes. The right to strike over health and safety is an incredibly important safe-guard for workers.**** If there is a requirement for a secret ballot before a health and safetry strike is taken, then workers will not be able to undertake a health and safety strike immediately, in response to an unsafe environment, unless they had the materials for a secret ballot at hand.

Which comes back to my philosophical point. It is up to workers how they want to make their decisions. This legislation will put more, not less, power in the hands of union organisers, and tie workers who want to take industrial action in reams of red tape.

That's the intention, it's not about democracy, it's about limiting unions' power.

* Which isn't supposed to be a criticism. I disagree with a lot of radicals who criticise union officials for not advocate for more radical action. I believe that it is a union official's only responsibility to carry out the directions of their members. Whether those decisions are to settle quietly or hold out for $50 an hour.

** As far as I know most unions do have rules requiring secret ballots to accept or reject an agreement. However, when these rules are not followed it is almost always to accept an agreement, rather than reject it - contrary to what Tau Henare is implying.

*** We have such limited rights to strike at the moment. We should be pushing from more, rather than refusing to defend what we've got.

**** As far as I know it is not used very much at the moment. I've never heard of a health and safety strike in New Zealand. But we shouldn't abandon the decision just because it is underused.