With our brothers and our sisters in many far off lands

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

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

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?

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

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

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

"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

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

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.

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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.

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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...

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.

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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.