I know comments are mostly dead here, but I thought I should let people know that I'm experimenting with Disqus. If I like it I'll export previous comments over to this forum, otherwise I'll go back to blogger. But until I've decided I'm not going to export all the old comments so they'll be hidden for a week or so.
I don't have time to write a long rant about this - it's late I only have time for the principle:
Being pro-choice means creating a world where every person who is pregnant can make a decision free of any form of coercion whether or not they want to continue the pregnancy.
The welfare reforms proposed by National are economic coercion.* Supporting women (and all pregnant people's) right to choose, means opposing these reforms and going further and demanding (among other things) a living wage for women on the DPB.
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I'd like to say more about the 'reforms' themselves and explain why they aren't actually about getting women on the DPB into work, but misogyny and punishment. But all I have time for is this:
As I mentioned in my previous post, I read a few pro-life blogs. One of the things that they have been talking a lot about recently is the http://www.nsu.govt.nz/antenatal-screening.aspx">screening programme for Down's Syndrome. They're pretty intent on misrepresenting it, but the way that they misrepresent and use the rhetoric of disability when doing so makes me think about some of the problems with pro-choice discussion about disability
In our legislation 'fetal abnormality' is a specific category for abortion. In some DHBs, people seeking second trimester abortions for foetal abnormalities go through a different process, and see different doctors, are treated differently from those who are seeking them for other reasons. This different status is repeated often among pro-choice activists. There was an element of this in the coverage of George Tiller's murder, and the way that abortions for 'fetal abnormality' were emphasised over other reasons for second and third trimester abortions. 'Fetal abnormality' is treated as a more legitimate reason for abortion, particularly late in the pregnancy, than a woman who just doesn't want to be pregnant.
I think this is extremely problematic. I don't think pro-choice politics and disability rights have to be at loggerheads, I think they are fully compatible (and the rest of this post will at least partly explain why). But I think a lot of pro-choice discussion about abortion and fetal impairments is not compatible with disability rights, and certainly not with the social model of disability.
I think what illustrates this most starkly is the difference in between pro-choice discourse around abortion because of fetal impairment, and abortion because of the sex of the foetus. A post on The Hand Mirror is called More On Abortion: Female Foeticide. Something that I don't think many pro-choice activists (unless they were also disability activists) would be comfortable saying about abortion because of foetal impairment.*
There are two, related but distinct, reasons that people decide that they cannot continue a pregnancy based on some characteristics of the foetus. The child your foetus is going to be will take more resources to raise than the child you had hoped to have. And the child your foetus is going to be is valued less, by society and/or by you than the child you had hoped to have.
I see no moral or ethical difference, no difference based on principle, between decisions about abortion when someone has learned that the foetus is female, and decisions about abortion when someone has learned that the foetus will have an impairment. Or rather any argument that there is a difference has to be based on devaluing people with disabilities.
I think the compassion that I see many feminists extend to women who are making decisions after learning about a foetal impairment is appropriate (although not the status as somehow different from other women seeking abortions). But I wonder why they don't extend the same compassion to women who terminate pregnancies based on the sex of the foetus. I do wonder what part the fact that many western feminists can imagine themselves, or someone they know having an abortion because the fetus has an impairment. Whereas having an abortion because the foetus is female is something that other women do, in other countries.
My position is that the only good decision maker when it comes to is the person who is pregnant.** I think people who are making difficult decisions about their pregnancy should have their decision making process taken seriously, and be treated with compassion. I do not believe that it is legitimate to deprive people of information about their pregnancy on an individual level, because of fear of what decisions they'll made. I can judge a culture that devalues girls and people with disabilities, I can try and change that system. But the problem is structural not individual.
But however a feminist articulates supporting reproductive freedom, I think treating all cases where people are making decisions about abortion based on characteristics of a foetus the same, is an important principle.
* And Deborah's companion post about abortion and disability illustrates this - she comes to the same conclusion, but uses very different language to explain that conclusion.
** I also believe, but don't think it's particularly relevant to the political argument, that it's not necessarily in the interest of girls, or people with disabilities, to try and make people who don't value them, become parents to them.
Unless you follow pro-life blogs,* you may not have realised that pro-life New Zealand has linked a campaign called Just Think. They're super modern and aimed at youth, which you can tell because it's on facebook. Their basic campaign strategy appears to be women are quite dim and don't realise that if they don't have an abortion they'll have a baby.** You think I'm kidding? This is their poster:
Tonight Qantas management has locked-out its workers and grounded its plans across the world. The dispute itself is complicated, involving three unions, and lots of different issues. But at it's heart it's about Qantas's desire to fire 1,000 people, and outsource the jobs, cutting wages and conditions.
As they are crying poverty it is worth pointing out that the CEO, Alan Joyce, received a 71% increase in his pay, and now gets $5 million a year. Qantas's annual profit also doubled last year.
In Rangitikei, CMP meatworks demanded that its workers accepted a 20% pay cut. It has locked out union members until they agree to this pay cut. They have now been locked out for 11 days.
The recession gives employers power - and these lock-outs show that they're prepared to use it. The only way to stop employers doing what Qantas and CMP meatworks is doing - is not give in. The collective . By standing against companies, large and school, these workers are protecting other workers. Because if their bosses succeed other companies will take note and do the same.
I haven't heard what solidarity Qantas workers are asking for, although I'll try to update this post if I hear anything. But the CMP workers need money. There are 100 of them, and they're trying to survive without wages. You can donate through internet banking here:
38-9007-0894028-08 NZCTU – Disputes Fund
If you're in Palmerston North you can also make donations of food at the union centre.
There's more to say - and if it continues I'll say more. But the most important thing you can do this week to protect your wages and conditions (if you have a job) is to donate to the CMP workers lock-out fund.
Earlier this year we had a blogswarm for world health day "Abortion is a Health Issue Not a Crime." I never finished my post, partly because I am have deep reservations about "Abortion is a Health Issue" (which is what the post ended up being about). I'm posting it today as part of a week of pro-choice posts in the run up to the release of NZ's abortion statistics on the 28th. I'm posting three posts this week, and I realised they have a theme - the importance of keeping "Trust women, and all pregnant people"* at the centre of any struggle for any abortion rights.
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In 2004, a woman in New Zealand was told she was not allowed in abortion when she was diagnosed with a heart condition in the 21st week. She was told it was too late in the pregnancy and that she did not meet the criteria. She died after the baby was still-born. Of course access to abortion is a health issue - women die when they don't have access to abortion. Abortion is a health issue, because women die when they don't have access to safe abortion.
But abortion is not only a health issue or even mostly a health issue. Abortion is about autonomy, freedom, survival and social relationships. The slogan "Abortion is a Health Issue" suggests a strategy which narrows the lens and focuses our struggle for abortion away from these wider issues. Now I'm uncomfortable about this because autonomy is the core of why I support abortion rights. But on top of that I think this strategy may have fish hooks - the discourse of 'health' may not be as useful for us as it first appears.
First off, abortion as a health issue appears to be an area where anti-abortion people are actively taking the abortion struggle. Incrementalism - the anti-abortion tactic of making things just a little bit worse - is based on a facade of treating abortion as a health issue. Whether it's 'informed consent' (those are heavily sarcastic scare quotes in case you can't tell) or states putting in ridiculous regulations about the height of the ceilings in the abortion clinic. Anti-abortionists are actively interested in fighting abortion as a health issue.
On one level this is quite a strange position for anti-abortionists to take - because the science is really heavily not on their side. The only reason they manage to even engage with health is they take conveniently ignore that by the time someone is seeking an abortion they are choosing between continuing pregnancy and abortion - and abortion is safer than bringing a pregnancy to term.
I may think that anti-abortionists are have to be some combination of: lying, deluded, misogynists, who are incapable of argument, reason, empathy, compassion or logic. But they have a goal, and there has to be a reason they do the things that they do (besdies the fact that they're lying, deluded, misogynists, who are incapable of argument, reason, empathy, compassion or logic). There are some areas that they deliberately try to avoid: the reality of women's experiences, women's autonomy, and who should be the decision-maker. They know these are losing strategies for them and they will just say 'but what about the baby' to try and distract from the fact that they don't want to talk about any of these things.
But they are prepared to talk about health? Why is that?
By talking about abortion and health we're bringing in a discourse that already exists, and those discourses can serve anti-abortionists purposes as much as ours. Take their incrementalist demand for parental notification/consent for under 16 year olds. At the moment abortion is treated as exceptional within the health system. For other medical decisions children are legally treated as unable to consent, and parents have to give their consent. Those who are trying to punish young girls, can use normal health practice and rhetoric about involving the family, and parents' responsibility for children's health to support their cause.**
The existing discourse about health serve anti-abortionists purposes as much as they serve ours. They can play on the idea that 'health' means there is one right decision and that people are not well equipped to make decisions about their own health. Discourses of health in our society are not about autonomy and liberation. They are moral discourses that are based on an ideal way of being. In order to be healthy you must do some things (exercise, eat certain foods) and not do other things (smoke, eat other foods). In health discourses people are not treated as competent decision makers, but people who have to be persuaded to adopt a limited array of behaviours.
Women can go through the process of being certified as needing an abortion under the mental health provisions in this country, and not realise it, and not realise how restrictive the laws are. One of the reasons for this, is because we're so used to gatekeepers to get access to health procedures, diagnoses, and pharmaceuticals, that talking to so many doctors seems normal.
It is four years today since the events I described in the first part of this post. The grumpy sleepy baby is now six. I got his name for this story from the Latin word for frog, which used to be his nickname; now he is old enough to object and explain the ways he is not like a frog: "Am I green? Do I croak?" Everyone else in this story is older too - and different, although not in such easily quantified ways.
But the prison is still there. There was a visiting hour this morning.
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When I knocked on the door at 7.15 that morning Anura was still asleep. Anura, aka the frog, is two, and his godless father was in prison. It was the first day any of us could visit Thomas,* and I wanted him to be able to see his godless son.
The visit didn't start until 8.30, but Rimutaka prison is half an hour's drive from Wellington and I was told to get there half an hour early. So Anura's mother woke him up, and I strapped a grumpy, sleepy baby into his carseat. We talked about the visit on our way up, me and Anura. "We're going to visit Thomas" I said; "Yeah" he said". "He's in prison" I said; "Yeah" he said. But mostly I just drove.
I'd heard that you could take property (which is corrections lingo for stuff) into the prison while you were visiting. I had my bag of baby stuff in one arm and my bag of prisoner stuff in the other as we went from the visitor's carpark to the gatehouse. We were a little late, and he was walking really slowly so I slung him on my hip, with my two bags. "Takahe" said Anura - although actually it was a Pukeko.
When we got to the gatehouse it was clear that I wouldn't be able to take anything in - everyone was putting everything they had into lockers. So I did too and we were the last to go through the metal detector. "One at a time" the guard said - so I sent the baby through first. Neither of us set off the metal detector - I'd worn my black pants rather than my jeans to make things easy. After searching my bag he let me take my nappies and a museli bar down to visiting. I wouldn't let Anura walk to visiting, but carried him instead - I wasn't going to cut into our hour.**
When we got there the guard made me go back and leave my bag in the entrance way. I could see everyone else hugging their prisoner, but I couldn't see Thomas. The guard told me that they would get him and I should sit down.
Visits at Rimutaka were in a prefab - bigger than the ones at school - but the same basic shape. In one corner was a small fenced in area - like it should have been for children to play in, but there were no toys.
Then Thomas was there in a bright orange Guantanamo bay jumpsuit and I was hugging him and he was OK. The next fifty minutes weren't how we'd normally talk, and not just because the guards would come over and tell him to put his feet on the floor. Although when Anura got bored (even a prison visit hour is a long time for a two year old) he came over and grabbed my face - just like he would have in any other conversation (although he's a better talker now so when I wasn't paying attention to him yesterday he just said "Stop Talking").
Prison visits are too short - they tell you it's over and you try and get one last hug, and say one last thing, and then another last hug, and then it really is over.
The prisoners were taken away and we were sent to the entrance way. They don't let you out of the visitors centre right away. While waiting in the I got a nappy from the bag they hadn't let me take in. Anura had needed changing for a while. I put my hand under his head as he lay down and changed his nappy just outside the door to the visitors centre - there was nowhere else.
Once they let us out we walked back to the gatehouse at two year old pace - he wouldn't be carried.
But in the end, my experience was as borrowed as the baby. When I was waiting to visit the following week,*** I noticed a woman who visited every day. Later she pointed me out to a friend - "She's with the terrorist" and glared at me. I don't know what her problem with me was, but I would think part of it is that I was so obviously there temporarily.
I saw people I knew when visiting, and I wasn't surprised to see them, although they were very surprised to see me. I don't belong to any of the groups whose existence is criminalised or for whom jail is a life hazard. I visited five times in four different prisons before I saw other pakeha visiting pakeha.
So I don't want to talk as if I know anything about having people you love in prison - because twenty-five days is nothing - people are on bail for months and are sentenced to years in prison. There are families and communities, poor and non-white families and communities, where people in prison isn't a horror or an aberration, but a fact of life.
I kept coming back to how much I had, when working to support people in prison. Most important was that there were heaps of us doing this together. I was in a good position for other reasons I had a car, I didn't have a job, I didn't have a child, English is my first language. While I love my friends who were arrested, their disappearance did not change the fabric of my life. I wasn't trying to live without their income, or what they did around the house.
Despite all this trying to support people in prison took everything I was able to give. Even prison visiting - which was the high point of my weeks - is work, doubly so if done with a two year old. The work of having people in prisons, and keeping families and communities functioning while they're away, is done by women. Female visitors outnumbered male visitors three or four to one. It was mothers, sisters, daughters, girlfriends and friends who were there, with or without kids, to do what needed to be done.
The week after I first visited Rimutaka, I visited Arohata - the women's prison. I'd gone to the prison half a dozen times already, to drop off books, letters, newspapers and visitors forms; I knew the prisons were different. At Arohata they weren't set up for supporters. At Rimutaka there were signs, forms and boxes for anything we might want to do. At Arohata they weren't as rigid, but after a week they wouldn't let us drop any more newspapers off, because they'd never seen this number of newspapers.
I got to Arohata half an hour early - just like I did at Rimutaka. When I rang the bell they told me that visiting didn't begin for half an hour and I'd have to wait outside. About ten minutes later another woman came, she was Maori and there to visit her mother. She'd come down from Palmerston North and we talked a little bit as we waited. I leaned against the fence, and she sat on the grass. She was pregnant, and needed to pee. I wanted to fight for her to get in and get a proper seat, but I'd already spent long enough in the prison system to know that it would just make me tired and get us nowhere.
Theoretically women prisoners on remand have much more visiting time than male prisoners on remand. Visiting time was in two hour blocks, rather than one hour blocks. All visiting time is cut into by the slowness of the prison system, but at the men's prisons they at least seemed to be expecting visitors. At the women's prisons they didn't even realise we were coming, until visiting time began.
As I said, from 12pm Monday 15 October to 4.01pm Thursday 8 November my happiest hours were spent prison visiting. While I was visiting I knew that they were really there, and that they were still them and fears that I couldn't even acknowledge dissipated.
But visiting at Arohata made me so sad, sad and angry, because the other female prisoners didn't seem to get visitors. The woman I'd waited on the grass with was the only other visitor the day I was there, and when other friends had visited the day before, none of the other remand prisoners at Arohata had got visits.
There are fewer remand prisoners at Arohata than there are at Rimutaka (18 vs 81 in the 2003 prison census). There are only three women's prisons in the country, so women as far away as Gisborne would be held in Wellington. But even taking the numbers into account there were five times as many visitors over two days at Rimutaka, than two days at Arohata.
I don't think that I can extrapolate out total support from two days of visiting, but there's other evidence that implies this is a pattern. Three times as many women as men had custody of children immediately before they were locked up (35.5% vs. 12.1%). For men, almost 80% of the children were looked after by their partner or ex-partner. Whereas for women less than 25% of children were looked after by their partner or ex-partner (full figures here). Instead it's immediately family, larger whanau or CYFS.
Women do the work when men go to prison, and when women go to prison there isn't necessarily anyone to fill the gap.
I'm not pointing out anything new when I say this makes prisons a feminist issue. The invisible work women do is even further from the public eye when it is to serve an institution designed to hide and conceal.
There are different ways of knowing. I've believed in prison abolition for years, but I believed it different on Tuesday 16 October when I stood outside barbed wire fences and thought about people on the other side. And I knew that prisons were a feminist issue when I changed a nappy at the entranceway to a prison visitors centre.
* I have a car, and in a crisis situation I like nothing better than I really long to-do list, so I'd gotten myself approved first.
** That's the guard's job
*** A visit that never happened - but the way the corrections department at times seems deliberately set up to make your life worse is a topic for another post.
Omar Hamed is an organiser for Unite! Union, a member of Socialist Aotearoa, and until recently was a defendant in Operation 8. The following letter was written in March by several Wellington activists and sent to a number of individuals and activist groups in Auckland and around New Zealand. Omar Hamed played a prominent role in yesterday's occupation at the UoA. Tove has written about feminist attempts to respond to him in Auckland. The letter is reproduced here to support those who are fighting for a left that takes sexual violence seriously.
In the last year [2010], Omar Hamed has been living in Wellington. While here he has consistently behaved towards women in a misogynistic, disrespectful and sexually predatory way. Comrades from across the left have brought up problems with his behaviour and he has consistently failed to understand the importance of meaningful consent in sexual relationships.
A group of us concerned about Omar’s behaviour have come together to draft this document outlining what has happened while he has been in Wellington and what efforts we, and others, have made to challenge his behaviour. We have sent this e-mail to groups, and bcc'd it to individuals. We hope it will be useful for those who work with him when he returns to Auckland.
This statement is not confidential. We encourage people to forward this e-mail to anyone who has or will come into contact with Omar, or who is interested in this issue.
Omar’s pattern of behaviour
We don’t want to identify the women affected, so we haven’t gone into detail. It’s also important to understand that this is a pattern of behaviour on Omar’s behalf, and not isolated one-off incidents.
He does not take sexual consent seriously when his sexual partners are drunk. He has repeatedly ignored drunk women when they told him they were not interested in his sexual advances. He has repeatedly encouraged women who have rejected him to get drunker and then attempted to make a move on them when they were more incapacitated. Some women have had to physically fight him off. He has demonstrated that he is willing to have sex with someone who is too drunk to give meaningful consent.
We have focused on his most grotesque behaviour, but he has consistently talked to and about women in ways that make it clear that he does not respect them as comrades and human beings, but instead sees them as objects.
He went to a party at the flat of a person with whom he previously had a sexual relationship, even though she repeatedly told him not to come. He refused to leave when she asked. He tried to punch and threatened to kill a male she was talking to. This behaviour is typical of men trying to maintain power and control over their lovers and ex lovers.
Omar clearly has a problem with alcohol, and has used this to excuse his behaviour. But this problem with alcohol is not causing his misogynist and disrespectful behaviour, and neither abstaining, nor reducing his drinking will solve it. While sober he has defended his drunken behaviour. He has made it clear to those he was talking to that he either does not understand, or does not care about, meaningful consent.
Responses to Omar from Wellington
It’s important that people from other parts of the country understand that Omar has been challenged by groups and individuals from across the left. Basic ideas such as ‘meaningful consent’ and the impact that sexist behaviour has on women have been explained to him repeatedly. He is not operating out of ignorance.
He has responded to challenges from individuals in a variety of ways depending on who was doing the challenging:
It is the 8th of November 2007 at 3.30pm, we are in the park next to Symonds St cemetery. We are waiting. The solicitor general is going to announce whether the crown is going to persue terrorism charges against our friends. We had followed them to Auckland and now we are waiting until 4pm. A few days earlier, I had decided that we are going to win, and I am holding on to my own conviction as a talisman.
Some people are going to get snacks - I find some coins and ask for Whittakers Dark Almond Chocolate. "And if you don't find it they won't get bail."
"Don't say that!" Risks are not acceptable.
They come back with chocolate, but not Dark Almond. What have I done? Someone else there digs to the bottom of her bag and finds a few almonds and I eat the almonds and the chocolate together - that will have to do.
At 4.01 the solicitor general announces that the there will be no terrorism charges.
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I was in my office of the 29th of August 2011 - engaging in magical thinking. I had almonds and dark chocolate and ate them together. The Supere Court was going to deliver the most important legal decision in the case since the solicitor general decided not to press terrorism charges sometime that week. I decided that they were going to win. I couldn't think of anything else to do.
The judgement came down about midday Friday. It wasn't as clear as the decision in the park, although it was definitely good news. I tried to guess what it meant, my mind racing through what I knew about the case and the law.
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Today the crown dropped the charges against all but four of the defendants (obviously there is more to say - but there a quite a few suppression orders in play at this point).
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18 people were arrested during the raids on October 15th 2007. Another 4 were arrested in the first half of 2008.
2 had their charges dealt with reasonably quickly in 2007.
1 pled guilty and got discharged without conviction in 2008.
1 had his case thrown out at the depositions hearing in 2008.
1 died in 2011.
13 have had their charges dropped today.
4 still face charges under the Arms Act and of "being part of an organised criminal group"
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I have never been able to take the charge of "being part of organised criminal group" seriously. I think it's the word organised. That and the fact that I've read the legislation and know enough about the crown case to see a non-overlap. It is appalling that these ridiculous charges mean that those four people, and those around them, will have to continue to pay the costs of being a defendant.
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The 14 people who have had their charges dropped spent a combined 9 months in jail and 50 years on bail.
As part of their bail conditions they have had to report to a police station 1,650 times
They have had to travel more than 15,000 km to meet those bail conditions.
Those living out of Auckland had to travel a total of 7,500 kms to get to Auckland for each court hearing.
They owe millions of dollars in legal aid - which they will have to repay with liens against houses and orders against wages.
And that's not even really it. The most important costs aren't so easily quantifiable. Stress demands compound interest. The raids and charges did not just effect 22 people - hundreds were in houses, cars or school buses that were searched - and more had to sit while people they loved were locked-up, and face the horrific threat of it happening again.
So many people, including me, have stress fractures that will not heal. The cost was on bodies, on minds, on relationships and it cannot be undone.
Tuhoe Lambert did not live to see these charges dropped.
I was not in New Zealand in 1981, although it may have played a role in my parents deciding to move here; the protests against the tour were a large part of what they knew about NZ before coming. I remember going on the protests later in the 1980s (we got to go to McDonalds after one). Apartheid was the second political issue I understood when I was a girl (the first was anti-nuclear).
I was certainly chanting a long while watching Rage.
In many ways it was a very good movie. I was particularly impressed with the way archival footage of the key moments was edited with fictional material. The acting was strong. And even though I spent most of the first twenty minutes asking: "Where is that? It is not Victoria University" there were some nice period moments.
The politics of the movie were reasonably clear. Although I could have done without a wise old African man telling a young Maori women how awesome New Zealand white people are.
The other political message was about the police - and the movie quite deliberately presented the police as stuck in the middle. We saw the police through the eyes of a young Maori female recruit who faced no racism or sexism from her co-workers. We didn't see the red squad. The police came and protected a house full of protesters in Hamilton. That is not a complete picture of the role of the police in '81 - it's a misleadingly limited one.
Leaving aside that political difference - my main objection was the sheer inanity of the 'plot'. Pro-tip if you're writing "falling in love wasn't part of the plan." then you may not be conceiving your characters as individuals with interesting and complex inner lives and well developed relationships.
It was neither the love story or the dead mother that bothered me per se; it was the way those two stories played out in the most predictable, unoriginal, ridiculously timed kind of a way. There was nothing specific or real about those stories that couldn't have come from "So I see you're writing a star-crossed lovers" cheat-sheet.
On top of that it meant we saw the anti-tour protests through a pakeha perspective.* You could tell an interesting story of a young Maori woman working as an undercover police officer, and the way she navigated that life. But instead of it being about her life and her world and what she saw - her story revolved around who she was sleeping with.
I think what bothered me most about the film was the idea that the events of 1981 and the many different realities those involved in them weren't interesting or dramatic enough in themselves to make a tele-movie. There are so many vivid interesting real stories that could be told about an incredible, stressful, intense time. Those stories could also have involved sex, and death and love and joy. Why rehash inanities rather than find something interesting and specific?
* And don't think I didn't notice that the only moment that it passed the Bechdel test was when the Donna Awatere character criticises the under-cover police officer. To have a pakeha man (who is supposedly deeply involved with the tour and reasonably politically aware) come in and rescue her was pretty telling about where the film-makers stood.
I don't actually want to talk about David Cunliffe. I want to write about the politics of television or active bystanders in rape prevention or the problems of the conflation with a moral body with a healthy body.
But then David Cunliffe talked about abortion:
He also supports the current state of New Zealand abortion laws and sees no reason to change them (this may or may not have anything to do with his statement that he is a practicing Anglican).Now this is a very vague answer - probably deliberately so. It demonstrates why those of us who care passionately about abortion need to answer the questions ourselves. The most important information we need for MPs is not whether they think the law should change, but how they would vote if it did change.
I first learned about Living Below the Line at the Wellington Candidates Meeting - it was not auspicious introduction. James Shaw mentioned that he was doing it and therefore he wouldn't be putting on weight to look like the other Wellington Central candidates; the audience laughed in that way people do when you mention fatness - there doesn't need to be an actual joke. And I sat at the back rolling my eyes - "because obviously there is no correlation between poverty and fatness in New Zealand."
"Living Below the Line" is a five day challenge where people live on $2.25 a day, with the purpose of both raising money and awareness. Apparently: "it allows thousands of people in New Zealand to better understand the daily challenges faced by those trapped in the cycle of extreme poverty"
This 'understanding' is facilitated through a completely arbitrary set of rules: you're not allowed to accept anything free, you must include the cost of a whole packet of anything you use a bit of, you don't have to count the travel to get food, you don't have to worry about the cost of cooking fuel, and you can use whatever fancy pants equipment you've got in your kitchen.
I find everything about it, the rules, the blogposts, the tweets, horrific and offensive on a very fundamental level.
Poverty is not a fucking game.
Poverty does not have rules except you have to do it again tomorrow. Poverty is not new or exciting. Poverty is not neatly quarantined to one area of your life. Poverty is not something you can control with neatly defined parameters. And it does not come with prizes.
If people want to use stupid gimmicks to fundraise then I'm probably not going to both writing a blogpost about it. But to pretend that this highly structured game will promote insight or understanding is an insult to the women and men (but mostly women) who have to feed themselves and other people with inadequate resources year in and year out.
Felicity Perry has talked to both Stuff and Nine to Noon about her experience on the Independent Youth Benefit. This is one of the benefits that National is planning to target with its latest scheme to pathologise young people.
David Farrer wrote a post about her (I'm not linking to it). In the comments thread someone posted her cellphone number. In that thread she has been repeatedly denigrated. She has also been harassed by phone.
She told a small part of her life story. Of her experiences on the Independent Youth Benefit, and what these policies would have meant for her. Her experience was not the experience of MPs, businessmen and international financial traders. It was not enough for those who disagreed her to denigrate her and attack her legitimacy to speak; they also had to harass her personally and extract a toll from her for what she'd said.
*******
On Friday's New Zealand Next Top Model the contestants were given a "Pacific Blue Courtesy Challenge". They had actors making life hard for the contestants, and this included an actor playing a papparazzi. The fake papparazzi took a picture of one of the contestants, Aroha, in her underwear when she was getting out of the taxi, and when she tried to get away from them she was the most assertive.
Aroha was deemed to fail the "courtesy challenge" and kicked off the show.
She was blamed both for being harassed, blamed for her harassers success, and blamed for fighting back.
*******
Drawing attention to misogyny on either kiwiblog or New Zealand's Next Top Model, is kind of like talking about the wetness of the sea. Women's bodies and lives are treated as public property, and these are just two of an ocean of examples. But as well as being examples they normalise it. NZTM is fun Friday night entertainment, and the huge number of tampon adds on TV3 OnDemand makes it very clear whose its ideas of what it means to be a woman are for. While Kiwiblog is happy to exact a cost for stating opposing views - a cost that'll be higher for those who are more marginalised.
So my opposing narrative is to offer solidarity to Aroha and Felicity. To applaud their strength and resistance. To offer the same to other women who are experiencing variations of the same horrible harassment, whose lives and bodies are treated as public property, and who are penalised for any difference with what the viewer expects.
In general, I don't think Meet the Candidates forums are particularly useful. It's fun to say to James Shaw (Wgtn Central Green Candidate) "I won't vote for the Greens because Russell Norman said that Louise Nicholas had consensual sex with Clint Rickards", but not an hour and a half of my life fun. Anyone who cares enough to go to a Meet the Candidate forum probably already knows where the parties stand. However, there is one thing you can learn at a meet the candidates meeting that it is very hard to learn anywhere else - and that's candidates' position on 'conscience' issues.
Like abortion.
So when Victoria University had a meet the candidates forum, this seemed like an excellent opportunity to figure out where Wellington Central candidates (many of whom end up deciding things for the rest of us) stand on abortion.
I thought a bit about how to phrase it. Give them an inch wiggle room and they'll not answer your question at all - one person asked about child poverty and whether they would commit to raising benefit rates - and Grant Robertson waxed very lyrical about the evils of child poverty and didn't mention benefits at all. So I made it very focused on law change.
Grant Robertson emphasised that he was pro-choice and that he thought the law should be changed.
James Shaw just said ditto.
Then the New Zealand First candidate and the United Future candidate agreed as well. The United Future candidate said that UF was pro-choice - which may surprise Peter Dunne, although at this point who knows.
Then came Paul Foster-Bell, the National party candidate. He began with a long spiel about how every abortion is a failure, and then said that he supported a woman's right to choose.
It was neat that he got shit for this response on twitter. Although I was more interested in the second part of his response than the first. Obviously ideas like that are ridiculous and should be challenged. But when it comes to MPs, I'm much more focused. They can believe that abortion angers the Wombles, but pleases the Fraggles if they like. I care how they're going to vote.
Although I was interested in why he thought we cared that he thought abortion was a failure. I had asked for his position on the law, not I understand why the Nats run liberal candidates in Wellington Central - but of all the places to
*******
The debate as a whole was one of the most male dominated events I've been to for a while. All the candidates were men, and James Shaw introduced two other local Green candidates who were also men. The chair was a man, and I'm pretty sure that only one woman asked a question. This did not reflect the audience. No-one appeared to notice.
It feels almost cruel, in events like this, to pick on the candidates from the smaller parties. For some reasons candidates from smaller parties which are trying to portray themselves as middle of the road are always much, much, weirder than anyone else.
So I'm not going to say anything about the United Future candidate, although he was hilarious - because he was just some guy who said yes when asked. Is that any reason that he should be mocked on feminist blogs for going along to a student focused election forum and talking about hunting and fishing?
But I am going to say that Ben the NZFirst candidate who said that there never used to be child poverty in New Zealand and blamed current poverty on poor parenting is as ignorant as his politics are terrible.
Apart from that I hate them all (although Grant Robertson almost got me appreciating him when he argued with Ben's ideas about child poverty - which just made me hate him more).
Today I went to the Big Radical Left Fair. It was a fun day - lots of baking, lots of people, and some super cute kids.
If you could get yourself to the venue - the only access was up a flight of stairs.
This is not rare in Wellington. Many people who organise events seem to treat an accessibility as a 'nice to have' - given up when something a group deems more important is under threat.
Every political event is also political statement - over and above anything that is said - the medium is a message. And what organising an event up or down a flight of stairs says is this:
"We have chosen to exclude people from this event on the grounds of their mobility disabilities."
That's not just wrong, because excluding people is wrong, it also weakens the left. Any exclusion of marginalised classes of people make it harder for us to fight for our collective liberation.
So when you're part of a group that is deciding on a venue for something and your struggling (as you probably will in Wellington) and you think "hey what about this community hall/bar/art space that is up a flight of stairs?" Ask yourself "Would I prepared to print - we have chosen to exclude people from this event on the grounds of their mobility disabilities - on every piece of advertising for the event?" And if you wouldn't be prepared to name what you're doing, then don't do it.
One of the things that has given me great joy as an adult is discovering that some of my favourite children's authors were lefties. Bob Kerr is a New Zealand example, I read his awesome graphic novels as a child, and as an adult I am awed by his illustrations of labour struggles and conscientious objectors.
Next Tuesday he's giving a talk "Putting Visuals to History" illustrated with examples from his book “After the War” and from exhibitions on Archibald Baxter, Rua Kenana and others.
When: Tuesday 12 July, 6pm
Where: Sandwiches, corner of Kent and Marjoriebanks st*
There will be a cash-bar and refreshments will be provided.
After the War is one of my favourite books to read to kids. It doesn't have many words (and if you've said you're going to read three books that's a definate plus), but it is beautiful and meaningful in a very few pages. If you have never read it then check it out when you're next in the library(or buy it for a small child you know).
If you haven't seen any of his art since you read "Terry and the Gunrunners" you can check it out on his blog.
This is part of the Labour History Project's AGM (more info about them here)
Women with boyfriends in jail can be raped.
Women with multiple cell phones can be raped.
Women who can't read or write the language of the country they are in can be raped.
Women who lie on their tax forms can be raped.
Women who launder money can be raped.
Women who have told that their actual oppression is not enough to get them asylum, and so have to learn a story that will can be raped.
Women who have many truths they cannot tell to authorities can be raped.
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.
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.
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.
