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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

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.

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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

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

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]

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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?

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

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

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.