Youth Rates Suck

Sue Bradford's Private Members Bill to eliminate youth rates was drawn from the ballot today.

The good news is that this would be a huge step forward for 16-17 year olds, because the minimum wage is just $7.60 (which is 80% of the adult minimum wage of $9.50). The bad news is that it does absolutely nothing for under 16 year olds, who currently have no minimum wage protection. Employers can (and do) pay 15 year olds $5.40 for working in a supermarket or $6.30 to train others in how to make coffee.

I think it's really important that we take this opportunity to organise against youth rates, but we need to keep the lack of a minimum wage for those under 16 front and centre.

Shooting to kill

I'd decided not to believe a word that was said about the shooting of a passenger on a US plane in Florida - it seemed wise.

But my first reaction was "I bet he's not white and mentally ill - obviously a crime that should be punished by death." And the more they talk, the more likely that seems.

Possibly the island is too good for him

The Vatican has withdrawn an invitation for Brazilian singing star Daniela Mercury to perform before the pope in a Christmas concert because she took part in an anti-AIDS campaign promoting the use of condoms, the singer said on Wednesday.

I've just rewritten about three responses to that fact - I am so angry I find it difficult to write a coherent response.

I understand why capitalists act the way they do, when I come across something that I find particularly repugnant I have tools to analyse their behaviour, and that analysis guides my response. I have no idea why nut-case religious leaders act the way do. Where in the bible did Jesus say "I'd rather people died than wore a condom"? Why doesn't the life people are actually living matter to the pope? How could you have those people's deaths on your conscience and still get up in the morning?

5 reasons I would be happy if King Kong flopped

1. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is seriously over-rated. The second one in particular, is unremittingly boring.

2. Any day where Kerry Prendergast gets to prance around talking about how much she loves Wellington is a bad, bad day.

3. I don't think we should celebrate any industry where people end up hoping they get out alive.

4. I am sick of the orgy of nationalism every time a Peter Jackson movie comes out. I don't like nationalism at the best of times, but at least sporting nationalism is honest about what it is. This is the nationalism for the liberal middle-class who find rugby a little distasteful.

5. From rumours I've heard around Wellington Peter Jackson is so anti-union that he'd hire Pinkerton if they were still around.

Other Reasons to Hate Chriscos

There are many (of course) reasons to hate Chriscos (the 'boy's stocking stuffer' has blow-up punching gloves with the American flag on them), but I'm going to focus on the 'Healthy' Hamper. I have some issues with the use of the word 'healthy' to refer to food, and this hamper is particularly bad.

This hamper has Diet Coke, diet jam, weight watchers cookies (of many different sorts), and similar products.

There are lots of comments that you could make about this (artificial sweeteners not being the least carcinogenic thing on the planet) and many examples where rice-crackers wouldn't be the food that would most improve an individual's health. But I have one simple point to make:

Weight-loss diets and healthy are not synonymous. Things that promote weight-loss do not necessarily promote health (and vice-versa).

Comments Policy

My comments policy (open to change anytime if I feel like it) is that I will delete personal attacks and name calling.

Island-bound

Regular readers to this blog may remember that I have a long-standing fantasy to send a whole bunch of capitalists to an island where they can go and prove how well capitalism works when they don't have anyone else to exploit; there are some variations to this plan of mine (sometimes I give them a whole bunch of money and nothing else, sometimes I film it reality TV style, sometimes the island is Muroroa), but the basic plan is always the same.

I don't know who runs Chrisco Christmas club, but I definately want them on the island. One of my friends had acquired a catalogue, and the prices they charge are outrageous. For those of you who don't know Chrisco Christmas Club offer Christmas hampers where you pay a small amount per week and get all this stuff at Christmas. Nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but the amount that you pay through the year is more than you can get the goods for at Christmas time. So they're charging your interest when you're lending them the money. Plus they target low-income areas after Christmas, preying on their poverty and their dreams.

Playing On: Organise

Being organised matters. In the early 1980s half of all AIDS cases were in New York (even as the epidemic grew exponentially. But it was San Francisco that things happened, it was where the first AIDS clinic, and AIDS ward were set up and it was where the first funding was won at both the state and city level. Gays in San Francisco weren't just numerous they were organised. The book, possibly unfairly, attributes this to New York being full of closet-cases (although there does seem to be a problem if the President of the Gay Men's Health Crisis doesn't want to send out invitations with 'gay' on the, because then his mail carrier might know his sexuality). But the central point is that it wasn't coming out of the closet that helped San Francisco, it was getting organised

Nancy Goodman Brinker: Not the Feminist of the Day

Nancy Goodman BrinkerFounder of Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and Race for the Cure, US Ambassador to Hungary "You can either respond with anger and destruction, and get nothing done except destroy yourself and those around you. Or you can take the energy and channel it into something productive. I believe that we can make a difference."

Nancy Goodman Brinker is credited with two main accomplishes. I'll deal with her work as the Ambassador to Hungary first, from an on-line biography:

In 2001, Brinker accepted President George W. Bush's nomination of Ambassador to Hungary, and her achievements there are equally impressive. She helped to preserve tax benefits and lower tariffs on U.S. companies doing business in Hungary. Brinker negotiated the hosting and training of the Free Iraqi Forces, an expatriate group who later joined coalition forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom, making Hungary the first European country to contribute to regime change in Iraq. Her groundbreaking efforts to advance the cause of women's health in Hungary included a symposium and ceremonial walk across the country's oldest bridge (lit pink for the occasion) to raise breast cancer awareness.

Wow she organised a ceremonial walk, that certainly gets her enough feminist points to make up for all the ones she loses for helping the invasion of Iraq. Plus wherever you stand on so-called free-trade, ensuring special treatment for American products is not a feminist act.

Then there's the breast cancer work, just because it involves women - doesn't make it feminist. When you want to analyse something from a feminist point of view, but you're too lazy to do it yourself right now, there are a couple of really reliable women who will have done it before you, and better than you ever could. In this case I will quote Barbara Ehrenreich, who has had breast cancer:

In fact, aside from the dilute sisterhood of the cyber (and actual) support groups, there is nothing very feminist - in an ideological or activist sense - about the mainstream of breat-cancer culture today. [....]

Like everyone else in the breast-cancer world, the feminist want a cure, but they even more ardently want to know the cause or causes of the disease without which we will never having any means of prevention. [....]

But today theirs are discordant voices in a general chorus of sentimentality and good cheer; after all, breast cancer would hardly be the darling of corporate America if its complexion changed from pink to green. It is the very blandness of breast cancer, at least in mainstream perceptions, that makes it an attractive coporate charity and a way for companies to brand themselves friends of the middle-aged female market. With breast cancer, "there was no concern you might actually turn off your audience because of the life style or sexual connotations that AIDS has." Amy Langer, director of the National Alliance of Breast Cancer Organisations told the New York Times in 1996.

Go read the whole thing - it's well worth it.

Barbara Ehrenreich even has a response for that godawful quote:

No, this is not my sisterhood. For me at least, breast cancer will never be a source of identity or pride. As my dying correspondent Gerri wrote: "IT IS NOT OK!" What it is, along with cancer generally or any slow and payful way of dying, is an abomination, and to the extent that it's man-made, also a crime. This is the one great truth that I bring out of the breast-cancer expereinece, which did not, I can now report, make me prettier or stronger, more feminine or spiritual - only more deeply angry. What sustained me through the 'treatments' is a purifying rage, a resolve, framed in the sleepless nights of chemotherapy, to see the last polluter, along with, say the last smug health-insurance operative, stranged with the last pink ribbon.

Conclusion: No, Nancy Goodman Brinker is no sister. Which is good, because feminists we get angry - because we're paying attention.

Harmeet Sooden

I haven't written about Harmeet Sooden, and the other CPTs missing in Iraq, because I've got nothing to say, it's just such an awful situation, and it must be so horrendous for those captured, and their family and friends.

But I thought I'd link to the vigil information - in case anyone in Auckland didn't know it was on.

The Christian Peacemaker Team website is also worth looking at.

It's All Wrong

I'm reconsidering my plan to go see A Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe - it's not because of the creepy religious marketing. But because I'm suddenly worried it's going to be all wrong - I saw the trailer again and there's a light shining out when Lucy opened the wardrobe - which is so totally and utterly wrong that I may have to avoid the entire movie.

Plus the paper says they've added a scene at the beginning when the children get bombed, which doesn't fit with the evacuation thing at all. Children were evacuated at the beginning of September 1939, and the first few months after that were called the phony war, because nothing happened. The bombing didn't happen till a good while later. Now the penvensies are clearly at least upper-middle class children, because they go to boarding school. So they probably wouldn't have been evacuated with everyone else, and their parents would have made private arrangements. But if they're not supposed to have been evacuated till a school holiday after the bombing started then why weren't there other evacuees in this big old house from the first wave of evacuations.

I'm overthinking.

A final random observation

I think being out of town means I actually pay attention to the world around me, but I keep on noticing interesting things.

Quite a lot of shops have a "No Tolerance For Truants" sign whose message is supposed to be: "bla-bla-bla if you hate school the problem is with you and not the school and larger society."

Anyway I saw one of those in a shop that sold Photocopiers.

Because if you can't go to the photocopy shop you might as well stay at school.

Playing on: Introduction

I spent most of yesterday reading 'And the Band Played On', which is an incredible history of people's reaction to AIDS between 1980 and 1984. It has a wealth of information, is totally engrossing, and is full of really interesting ideas, some almost in passing (there's about half a page about the role masculinity played in gay male culture). You should read it, go and get out of the library - or you can borrow my copy if you live in Wellington.

Generally it was an indictment on - well almost everyone. There were a lot of individuals doing very good work, but every institution, the Regan administration, blood banks, and gay organisations, completely fucking failed.

Over the next few days I'm going to write a series of posts about the implications for today of how the band played. I'll probably focus on the responses of the gay community, because that's where I think the most important lessons for actual people are. The fact that the government is most interested in re-election, and businesses would rather make money than ensure people live isn't really news.

Depressing Sights

Two depressing sights today

One was two hand lettered posters saying: "Deport All Asians - Stop SARS" and "Save Our Animals Deport Asians" (one side of me was a little appalled at the poor poster-putting up ability shown. These posters were stuck up with gaffer tape - which is not only expensive, but remarkably easy to knock down. Plus the choice of sites was all wrong - a bus and a stop sign - when right near by was one of those lovely traffic light control boxes which might as well have been invented for putting up posters. But that's kind of not the point)

I don't even know what the second poster was supposed to mean. Was it a reference to Paul McCartney's recent statement that he wouldn't go to China because they used cat and dog fur on things? (which I totally don't understand, lots of places use animals for fur, why just focus on cats and dogs, is it because they're cute and he's kind of racist). Or something to do with bird flu? Anyway - nonsense but depressing nontheless.

The other was a destiny church Sunday School. The, very young, kids were marching in a line - boys first. I couldn't help remembering the boy, probably about five years older who had shook his fist at me last year and shouted "Enough is Enough" - and when I asked him 'enough what?' - he didn't know.

Grooming?

Did you know that Sunsilk have just released a new manly range of haircare products. It's conditioner 'for strengthening hair' and it has a dumb-bell on it. See there was this whole market out there that hair care products just weren't reaching - but now you can prove your masculinity with haircare products(even if you can't bench press your own weight - your hair can).

Also Countdown has a section called 'Male Grooming' - besides a rather girly range of deoderants (I saw both Impulse and Mum) they have KY Jelly and Condoms?

What exactly are you grooming and how?

Rachel Carson: Feminist of the Day:

Rachel CarsonBiologist, writer, ecologist "Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species -- man -- acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world."

Rachel Carson is most famous for writing A Silent Spring, and exposing DDT for the poison that it is.

But she wasn't a feminist, a Life Magazine interview shortly before she died described her as "unmarried, but not a feminist" (5 words that say a lot about the attitudes towards women, marriage and feminism). She said: "I'm not interested in things done by women or by men but in things done by people." Unfortunately sexism affects all women, even those who want to ignore it. Those who had a vested interest in defending pestisides were more than happy to use sexism to try and silence her. She was portrayed as being a hysterical spinster (again a phrase which tells you a lot about the people who said it).

I understand why women want to believe that they, as an individual, can escape from a sexist society, that they can be a person not a woman, but unfortunately we can't. It's not those of us who draw attention to sexism that stop that from happening, but our sexist, misogynist society, which continues treating us like the other.

Conclusion: She says she's not a feminist, and I believe her, but her work was very important.

Parental Rights & Feminism

Most of the feminist blogs I read are based in the US. There is quite an organised 'men's rights' movement in America. One of the 'men's rights' movement's principle targets is child-support (because they're actually misogynist fucks who don't care about anything but maintaing power and control). Now one of the hypothetical examples these men bring up is the inequality around reproductive rights, because men can become parents when they don't want to and women can't (this assumes universal access to abortion - and these men do, because they don't care about women or reality).

Anyway I disagree with almost everything they say, but I believe really strongly that no good can come from making someone who doesn't want to parent, or doesn't feel capable of being a parent, fill that role. I believe parenting should be a choice, and there is no reason that it should be tied to biology. I don't really believe this because I feel sorry for men, but because I feel sorry for children whose parents don't want to parent, or who knew they weren't ready to be parents before the child was born.

This issue comes up with semi-frequency among feminist blogs - and there has been another round of discussion(because of some moron supposed 'liberal' that husband notification laws were actually a good thing), and the view on feminist blogs is pretty unanimous. Biological fathers have an absolute obligation to be parents:

That baby, once born, has a right to parental support whether the parents like it or not.

It's simple. Abortion is a surgery terminating a medically dangerous condition that a woman doesn't want to have. She has a right to decide whether or not she's pregnant or not, period. You think it's scary that someone else has control over whether or not you're a parent? Imagine someone else forcing you to donate your body to someone else's life support against your will. Better analogy.

I realised that the reason for our different perspectives was actually a pretty simple one: the domestic purposes benefit.

Lets be absolutely clear, in my ideal world the resources for raising a child wouldn't come from the individual biological parents, but from society as a whole, and the work of raising a child would be valued.

In America they're even further away from my ideal world than they are in New Zealand. This means two things, one is that mother's really need the child support, and secondly that the mother actually gets the child support (women on the DPB don't get child support in New Zealand, because the money goes to the government - although women who don't name the father do have their DPB docked - which is horribly sexist). I can see why in America at the moment ensuring that single mothers get the money needed to raise their children is seen as more important than ensuring that all parents actively wanted to be parents. But I see that as a particular situation, not a universal one.

My actual point to this post, is to show how much the end results of a feminist analysis depends on what your starting point is. Of course a feminist analysis of single-mothers would be different in a world where there's no DPB. I think it's important that feminists acknowledge when their analysis is limited to the circumstances they're in, and not assume that the same circumstances apply everywhere.

Blog Against Racism Day

I was unable to participate in Blog Against Racism Day, because my computer refused to work on December 1. Although I'm working on something - because even thought it's December 3 I can still write about our racist society.

But you should check out this collection of posts - I haven't read them all (obviously), but there are some interesting debates and ideas.

I always like Amp from Alas, and thought his How Not To Be Insane When Accused Of Racism (A Guide For White People) was particularly good.

KFC Strike

If you're in Auckland you should go to the Balmoral KFC (you've still got time it doesn't start till 2pm). The workers have voted to go on strike against youth rates.

Working against families

Child Poverty Action Group has won the right to challenge the government's Family Assitance payments on the ground that they discriminate against children on the basis of the work status of their parents.

This is fantastic, because even if they don't win this important issue should get some much needed media coverage (and I suspect the Human Rights Review Tribunal Decision will have all the force of a wet bus ticket).

Both the current Child Tax Credit, and the In Work Payment (which will start in April) are aimed at families with children, but explicitly exclude parents on a benefit. The Child Tax Credit is worth $15 a week per child, and the In Work Payment is going to be $60 for the first child, and another $15 for the fourth and subsequent child. This is a significant amount of money on most budgets. The idea that children on whose parents are on the benefit don't need that money is ridiculous.

...it isolates beneficiaries from other families - treats them like lepers and worst of all it treats their children differently - what is different about a beneficiary child? Does that child look different when she or he goes to school? Yes, that child probably does look different because of the circumstances of the family—but also the government wants everyone to know that he or she is different.”

That's from Annette King, by the way.