Workers' Bodies

Today the Standard had a guest post on ACC:

The investment losses have been a big part of it but there is also a rising accident rate stemming from our ageing population and climbing obesity rates, which has been foreseen by medical experts for some time. We cannot do much about an aging population really, but obesity is wholly avoidable with smart policy that has some guts behind it.

Why should we focus on obesity? Obese workers have a higher accident rate, take longer to recover, cost more treat and are out of work for a longer period of time. A 2007 Duke University study found that “obese workers filed twice the number of workers’ compensation claims, had seven times higher medical costs from those claims and lost 13 times more days of work from work injury or work illness than did nonobese workers”.

Although they don't provide a link I'm going to assume the guest poster is quoting from the press release about the study. Here's a link to the study itself for people who speak science article.

The numbers quoted are absolute numbers, they're not controlled for anything. In particular, they're not controlled for occupation.* I'm sorry to insult my readership by pointing this out, but the correlation between class and body size is pretty well established, as is the correlation between class and work-place accident rates.

Surprise! When the authors control for occupation (although not income, and managers appear to be treated as the same occupation as workers) the numbers look rather different. These numbers are expressed in risk ratios, whereby a control group is set at 1, and 2 means something is twice as likely when all the variables that are mentioned have been controlled for (full disclaimer, I could be lying, I don't understand statistics that well). The risk ratios for number of claims for people who have a BMI of over 25 range from 1.09 to 1.45. To understand how insignificant a risk ratio of that size is here are some of the risk ratios for occupational groups:

Laundry Staff: 7.35
Housekeeper: 6.44
Laboratory Animal Technician: 17.36
Inpatient Nurse: 4.01

The guest posts asks 'why is ACC costing so much?' And answers 'workers' bodies'. Even though its evidence is a study that demonstrates that the nature of work plays a far bigger role in the numberof workplace accidents than the nature of workers.

I'm a 'which side are you on' kind of a girl, and this post makes it very clear which side it's on. It blames workers and their bodies for workplace accidents. It chooses policing workers bodies, over fighting for workers bodies.

* I don't actually like debunking scientific research about fat, it seems to me to be conceding too much. Even if everything they said about the dangers of fat were true it wouldn't change my political analysis of fat at all.

** There are two other problems with those numbers. First that when it says 'obese' and 'non-obese' it appears to be comparing people with a BMI of between 18.5-24.9 and a BMI of 40+. In the article obese is defined as a BMI of 30+, so the terms used in the press release are not the same as those in the article, or the common medical use of those terms. I'm not going to dwell on that because I have less than no time for the BMI in the first place.

The other problem is that all the numbers apart from the numbers of claims made appear to be based on guesses at what the numbers might be rather than actual numbers:

Lost workday rates (days per 100 FTEs) were calculated by multiplying these stratum-specific claims rates by their corresponding mean number of lost workdays per claim. Similarly, multiplying the claims rate by the stratum-specific mean costs (including the amount already paid and the amount reserved) allowed calculation of cost rates (dollars per 100 FTEs) separately for medical and indemnity claims costs. Confidence intervals were calculated assuming that the number of events followed a Poisson distribution.

I'm not going to comment any more than that, because I don't speak science article, but will concentrate on the 'claims made' figure when explaining why this research doesn't prove what the standard thinks it proves.

Reasonable opinions

Act's law and order spokesperson on double bunking in prisons:

"Who cares if inmates don't want to be 'cooped up' together for long periods of time? These criminals have lost the right to have their comforts considered," Mr Garrett said. [...]

The fact is: if you don't want to be assaulted - or worse - by a cellmate, avoid prison by not committing a crime,"

My view - that prison should be abolished - is incomprehensible. If any MP expressed that view it would be news for weeks, but none of them would, because no one would.

David Garret's view is acceptable enough that it is just quoted in a news story on double bunking, not the subject of a news story.

I keep writing things, and deleting them; they don't capture the gutteral scream of despair that I'm trying to convey. I find analysing public discourse on prisons so upsetting that I do it in very small doses.

So I will move to a slightly different angle. References, jokes, and evil press releases about prison rape, are not quarantined from the way we understand rape. They are part of that understanding, and reinforce it. I'm sure you could write a lot about that; I'm sure people have. All I want to say is that any expression that anyone, anywhere, ever, deserves to be raped reinforces the idea that some people are rapeable.

Don't Corrupt NZ Aid

You may have heard of the plans to merge NZAid with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. It may have sounded like 'Blah-blah-blah-new-governments-restructuring-to-prove-they-exist-blah-blah-blah'. But I think it is much more important than that.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade's job is to advance New Zealand foreign policy agenda. That means acting as a colonial watch-dog (and enforcer) in the Pacific and negotiate on behalf of New Zealand capitalists everywhere. This is not a plan I'm particularly fond of (ah MFAT you may move from office block to office block but still I protest outside you).

Part of the suggested change is to focus less on the elimination of poverty and more on economic development. For those who missed "The ridiculousness of trickle down theory" that means focusing aid less on poor people and more on rich people.

I think a radical analysis of NZAid as it is currently constituted would probably find much to criticise. I don't know enough about NZAid to know for sure. But it doesn't take a particularly radical analysis of MFAT to think that giving it more power to act out it's policy agenda is not good for children and other living things.

For a more mainstream analysis you can check out Don't Corrupt Aid. I think this issue is worth talking about, for those who oppose New Zealand's imperialist role in the Pacific, it's important to understand that this would involve increasing the capacity to act in this role.

Dollhouse episode 3: Stage Fright

Spoiler warnings apply. If anyone is caught up with America on BSG I had a few thoughts about the latest episodes here

If anyone ever asks me when I started loving Dollhouse, I'll tell them "When Eliza Dushku hit a singer with a chair and said "Friends help each other"

I don't feel like Dollhouse is great TV yet, but I do think it'll get there, and this episode showed me that the writers are interested in some of the things I'm interested in.

I really appreciated the scene between Dr Saunders and Boyd - the trust that is building between the workers of the dollhouse mirrors that building among the dolls. I'm glad they're taking the position of the workers seriously, as deeply compromised as it is. I'm also glad they're building worker solidarity against management, because there's no such thing as too much of that on TV.*

The FBI plotline was marginally less boring this week - mostly because of the reveal that Victor is an active, and because the Victor character is amusing. I'm not enjoying the patheticness of Mellie. I feel the same way about her and Paul as I did about Kaylee and Simon: "I get that you want this guy, but I can't get behind it because he's not into you and not into you is not fun" (although clearly I cared a lot more about Kaylee than I do about Mellie).

While I really enjoyed the scene where Rayna and Echo talked about being grown in a lab, I do think it demonstrates what may be a permanent weakness with the show. The subjects of the Episode of the Week plotline are likely to continue to be obscenely rich people. I think it's very difficult for plotlines where obscenely rich people and brainwashed people explore their similarities to also talk to those of us who are neither brainwashed or obscenely rich. I think we could have identified with Rayna, and I still think we could identify with the dolls. But I think it's hard to find the common ground with either of them when their similarities with each other

Thinking about it, this problem was exacerbated, and the episode was weakened, because Rayna's problems were told us by Rayna, rather than shown. I think if we'd just seen snippets of the consequences for her of not toeing the line - of not being just rebellious enough - then the episode might have soared.

But the heart of this episode was obviously none of this, but the relationship between Sierra and Echo, and I don't really have anything to say about that except I that it made me very, very happy. I'm OK with the dolls coming to conciousness being messy, complicated and dangerous, and for violence to be a part of it, but I want building relationships to be part of it too.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Maurissa Tanchareon (of "there are no Asians in the movie") co-wrote this episode and two of the main characters in this episode were non-white women.** Although it's problematic that Eliza Dushku ends up rescuing them both. The casting description for Sierra worried me: I was afraid she was going to be Orientalised, but clearly she hasn't so far. The potential of the concept of actives to play with and against and through stereotypes is an awesome one (and I do wish they'd actually cast a heavy active). Maybe if the show continues they'll take more advantage of that with the actives they cast.

I read somewhere (and I really can't remember where or I'd link) that Sierra is the Women of Colour best friend cliche. An idea which makes me think of Wonderfalls and Gilmore Girls and shows like that (Felicity? I'm trying to remember any of the other characters. I think the role and the relationship, and presumably how much they'll come to both need the relationship, mean that it doesn't map perfectly. But I can see where the parallels are, particularly as Echo is both the centre and the more aware character. I think Sierra will be much more likely to fall into this stereotype if they continue to only show her on engagements where Echo is the primary. Even if a show is centred around one person it's possible to demonstrate that the characters aren't centred around that one person. What do other people think?

Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen, the writers of this episode, co-wrote Dr Horrible's sing-a-long-blog and also Commentary! The Musical. So it isn't surprising how well the songs worked, but it was very satisfying, particularly at the end.

The end was even better than the middle. The tabula rasa makes the smallest movement more powerful, a change of direction and a head shake.

* I briefly started watching Grey's anatomy because George refused to cross a picket line, and thereby wasted hours of my life

** I think the only other time you will find two non-white women talking together in the Whedon-verse is somewhere in Season 7 of Buffy. That's operating under the assumption that Rona and Kennedy spoke to each other (or Chao-Ahn) at one point. I don't like Season 7 enough to know, or check. But it's pretty appalling anyway

Who was missing from the jobs summit?

There has been a heap of discussion both in blogs and newspapers about who was missing from the job summit. There were just about 200 people there and only 30 of them were women, 2 were people with pacific island heritage, and only one person was Asian (and Asia is a big continent).

But I think that way of looking at the summit misses the point. The jobs summit was full of people who had cut jobs over the last 12 months, and empty of people who had lost them. The reason it was short of women, Pacific Islanders and Asians, is because it was short of workers, and 14 union leaders are not a substitute for that. The number of Maori at the jobs summit was about representative, but the Maori who attended were not.

The discussion about whether there were enough women there distracts from the main question, which is whose interests are being served here?

I found it grotesque that a bunch of people whose average income would have been considerable over $100,000 thought that cutting people who earn considerably less than that wages by a tenth was an acceptable option (the government has already ruled out making up that extra day's pay).

The proposals are about making life better for businesses. Which when it comes down to it was the entire point of this summit: trying to maintain the fiction that the interests of workers and the interests of businesses are one and the same thing.

PS (just because it's been bugging me): A cycle/walk way the length of the country may provide 4,000 temporary jobs (and more on the nature of those jobs in another post). But geographically many of the jobs created are going to be a long way from the jobs that were lost. I wonder if that's a design feature of the plan, rather than a flaw. I'd be surprised if the idea of punishing the job-less has entirely disappeared, and this plan could end up resembling the work camp (and one of the other suggestions from the job summit was to up the intra-national market for labour)

Review of Episode Two of the Dollhouse (ridiculously long)

I am so excited about having a new Joss Whedon TV show (even though I haven't been able to write anything else, because I've been planning this epic review. I may need to make the reviews a little less epic, if I'm going to ever blog about anything but Joss). Even though dollhouse is not great, by any stretch of the imagination, I've missed having a show to watch every week, and there's huge potential.

I thought this episode was a huge step up over the second pilot (and not as good as the script from the pilot that they scrapped, but that's the great minds of Fox executives for you). In particular the main plotline wasn't deathly boring, and there was some connection between that plotline and what we learned about the dollhouse. It seemed to show exactly how much they could fit in an episode, and how much richer the episodes are when they're full.

Plus it seemed more like a Joss show in general, it was more twisty, and the dialogue was snappier ("Four brother, none of the democrats" being the standout line). I thought the crash cut between the shooting of the deer and the sex, was obvious, but in keeping with the themes of the episode.

Clearly the heart of the episode was about Echo's relationship with Boyd, and how he came to see her as human. I thought they tied the threads in together thematically really well, with the violence of Alpha reflecting (and possibly not just metaphorically) the psychopath's mission. We learnt more about how the dollhouse operated quite organically.

Most importantly I really liked that they showed that Echo and Boyd's relationship had started off with him contemptuous of her. To get explicitly political: The dollhouse was trying to divide it's employees - the actives and the minders - by encouraging the minders pre-existing inclination to see the actives as lesser. To see Boyd and Echo overcome that was pretty awesome.

The big question for me is the politics of the engagement. One of the big questions that other people have asked is: 'what makes depicitions of sexual predatory exploitative?' and 'does the fact that the woman wins in the end matter?'. And I can't really comment that much, because I don't watch the crime shows and horror movies where this sort of stuff happens, so I don't really have a feel for the parameters. As a single episode this didn't bother me from that perspective, although I would have a big problem if it happened all the time. But that might change if I knew just how bad things are in the land of TV and movies I don't watch.

The question I was more interested in was about the psychopath. I saw his psychopathic behaviour as a natural extension of buying the perfect woman. If you see people as commodities to be brought to order then of course you want to test them, of course you see them as yours. But another reading could be to see the fact that he's a psychopath as endorsing what went before. "Well it's a problem now he's trying to kill her, but building her to spec is totally shiny."

Having rewatched the ep, I think the show did actively undermine the second reading and support the idea that wanting to buy someone was part of him being a psychopath. In particular, he comes across as creepy from the first moment and his entitled misogyny is apparent from the way he talks about women with Adele. Although any understanding of this episode is challenged by the revelations about the psychopath's connection with Alpha, and my reading could be uncompatible with what will be revealed in future episodes (which was the one thing I didn't like about the way the stories came together, I liked the psychopath as a psychopath and wouldn't like anything to undermine that).

The point of the story turned out to be that Echo overcame her programming in her relationship with Boyd. I think that that, combined with the fact that the psychopath is portrayed as an extension of men who feel entitled to women's bodies, makes me more generous towards the general creepiness of men writing stories about men who want to kill women. But I would be worried if it was going to be like this lots.

Although this episode was much stronger than the pilot, I think the show still has a long way to go. I'm still unconvinced about Eliza Dushku's acting range. Although I don't think the scripts really helped her. The two male fantasy characters she's played in the first two eps are Faith like (you can imagine either one of them saying "I've got mad skills" like Faith to Robin in the final of Chosen). I think she's doing an excellent job as Echo, unimprinted, but I'm not sure about the idea that she can be anyone.

The FBI plotline just goes from bad to worse. You can tell that the writers on dollhouse have spent their entire writing life constructing plotlines where they get to set the rules "Don't touch the Flabotinum in jar C "*, and don't know how to make plots from real life. It's not just that everything they know about cop-shows they've learned from other cop shows. It's not even that they're telling a story about a cop and have no interest in cops and nothing to say about cops (and I've watched the Wire, they've watched The Wire, there's no excuse). It's that they don't seem to care that they're regurgitating scenes we've all seen hundreds of times before.

I actually enjoyed Lasagne girl AKA Mellie. But I was more than a little distracted that this was the woman who was originally cast as November. The casting description called for:

20’s, any ethnicity, beautiful and heavy.

And like a chump I got all excited, just like I did when Kaylee was described as zaftig in the Firefly pilot(and I'm not saying a word about Jewel Staite who was unbelievably awesome as Kaylee). I knew that they'd cast Miracle Laurie, so I wasn't surprised when I saw her, but I still spent most of that scene going "What?". I think it was underlined by the fact that the costuming people appear to have taken the same tack the Buffy people did with Tara "This is a real person, she will wear real people clothes that emphasise her real-ness".**

I forget what the point of this rant was? I'll be interested to see where Mellie goes, but her character will have to develop quite a way before I stop ranting in my head everytime she's on screen.

It was really noticeable to me that this episode did not pass the Bechedel test (none of the female characters talked to each other). More than that the women in Dollhouse don't seem to have relationships with each other, in the way Topher*** and Boyd do (or Boyd and Echo) do. While I'm hopeful that Sierra and Echo will develop some sort of relationship, that'll be long and slow. All the other female characters seem very isolated from each other. But, unlike on say Battlestar Galactica, where you got the feeling there must have been heaps of relationships between women that existed and the show just really wasn't interested in them, I can believe that the women who work in the dollhouse are atomised, it seems like the place that would do that to people. I think that could be interesting, as long as they show the relationships developing over time (and at this point Adele DeWitt and Dr Saunders could have a huge history, but we wouldn't know abuot it).

I'm worried about different things than I was after the first episode. I think this episode showed that they could write an interesting stand-alone story, that we weren't just going to be bored with a procedural of the week.

But, in my head Echo's coming to conciousness would be about forming relationships with other people.**** And in this episode it seems to be about violence. The first sign we had that she remember everything was the horrific-ness of "shoulder to the wheel/do you deserve to live." It seems to undermine the idea that she's overcoming her programming if all she takes with her is something from one of her programmers.

This episode was, for me, still more rocket launchers than emotional resonance.***** The Echo/Boyd plotline was cool, but it didn't hit me in the gut. It was a story about trust and a growing relationship, but it seems strange and unusual, not resonant. I think the premise is very rich in emotional resonance, but mining it might be a challenge, because the leap to ideniify with an Active, or someone's relationship with one, is a big one.

It's frustrating, because the more I watch and think about the dollhouse, the more excited I am about the premise. Because at it's heart it is a criticism of commodification, and (presumably) a statement that people cannot be commodified. It could be an amazing statement about resistance. And I know Joss's work well enough to be reasonably confident that that will be part of the story he's trying to tell (but probably not all of it). I'm just worried that Fox was more into the sex and violence, and not at all into the collective resistance, and they're going to cancel it before we get to see the bits that I'm most interested in.


* A term the Buffy writers coined to refer to the magic plots which they could just make each week since they controlled the whole universe.

** Although the costumes are in general miles better than Buffy, where all the women had ridiculously large wardrobes and wore even more ridiculous and unsuitable clothes (remember when Willow skinned a muppet and wore it for a vest). On Dollhouse the clothes are stylie and all but they also seem to serve the story, rather than just be things the actresses want to wear. Also I've wanted almost every top Adele DeWitt has worn.

*** Confession: I find Topher really engaging. Clearly he's an absolutely asshole, but particularly in his relationship with Boyd, I find him really watchable. I think it's at least partly because he's an archetype Jossian character surrounded mainly by normal people. I've got kind of addicted to people who talk funny and it's nice having one on my TV.

*** I think this is influenced by the unaired pilot, where the first sign we're given that Echo is coming to awareness is that she's grouping with two of the other
dolls.

***** For those less obsessed than me in the commentary to Innocence Joss said that the two most important things in the work that he does were emotional resonance and rocket-launchers. Innocence certainly has an abundance of both.

Just because it made me cry

I haven't seen Milk, or any of the other films that were nominated for Oscars. But everyone should watch the speech that Dustin Lance Black gave when he won the best original screenplay for Milk:



via Yes Means Yes

Blackout

Tomorrow morning this blog will be blacked-out as part of the Internet blackout against S92a. S92a would require that ISPs cut off access to the internet for anyone repeatedly accused (yes that's accused) of breaching copyright. The law will come into force in six days.

I haven't written about s92a as part of my resolution to only write about things where I feel like I've got something to say (Prisons and Joss Whedon at the moment). So instead I'll post a comic:

Joss Extravaganza: Commentary! The Musical (and the Dr Horrible Sing-a-long-blog DVD)

So continuing my Joss extravaganza I thought I'd review the Dr Horrible DVD, and most importantly Commentary! The Musical.

For those of you who don't know, Dr Horrible's Singalong Blog was Joss Whedon's internet musical phenomena of last year. I don't think it's Joss's best work, but it has some very funny moments.*

The DVD came out just before Christmas, and is absolutely awesome. It's geared very much to the focused fan, with lots of very difficult to find easter eggs (I'm lazy so I just went on-line and found all sorts of pretty things). There's everything you could expect a commentary and making of documentary.

But there's also "Commentary! The Musical", which is what you're sound. If you're a Joss fan I'd recommend getting the DVD even if you didn't like Dr Horrible, because Commentary! The Musical is awesome. They rarely talk about what's actually going on on screen, so it's less a commentary and more a musical radio play, without much of a plot.

But the song are brilliant. Most importantly to me is the song about the writers strike. Clearly Joss songs about strikes are my favourite things.

Most of the rest of the songs are about the personas that various creative people involved take on. Felicia Day's overactive brain is as hilarious as Zak Whedon's who wants to be street wise. Although Nathan Fillion as a self-important asshole is funnier than bother of them (his song is called "Better than Neil, and is just as great as you'd think it would be).

Like the greatest silly humour it's extremely random - there's a song dedicated to the iphone game Ninja ropes. And another song which is about itself ("It has internal rhyme, but not in every instance and the meter is occasionally a little bit bizarre)."

Most of the humour is silly and hilarious (there's a great Nathan joke which revolves around the hammer being his bpenis). But there's also some good satire. Maurissa Tancharoen (one of the co-writers and one of the groupies) sings "Nobody's Asian in the Movies", which I love as much for it's faux resolution as anything else.

Although one of the people who co-wrote Commentary! The Musical, has executive produced 4 TV shows, and written and directed a movie. This gave him some power to determine how many Asians there were on movies and TV. Buffy was on for seven seasons and 144 episodes - and the largest recurring Asian part was Chao-Ahn, a Chinese potential slayer. One of Cordelia's friends was played by an Asian actress, but she was a very minor character. And that's it, in seven seasons (and if I've missed anyone it's someone who was as part was as minor as the Cordette). Angel had precisely one recurring Asian character (Gavin) and Firefly/Serenity had no Asian characters at all (as far as I can tell from imdb - there might have been a small one shot). Writing funny songs about problems is a lot less impressive if you have had the power to do something about those problems and didn't.

Then finally there's Joss's song about creation itself:

A CAVEMAN PAINTED ON A CAVE
IT WAS A BISON, WAS A FAVE
THE OTHER CAVE-PEOPLE WOULD RAVE –
THEY DIDN’T ASK “WHY?”
WHY PAINT A BISON IF IT’S DEAD
WHEN DID YOU CHOOSE THE COLOR RED
WHAT WAS THE PROCESS IN YOUR HEAD
HE TOLD THEIR STORY
WHAT CAME BEFORE HE DIDN’T SHOW
WE’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO

I think cavemen probably did get asked why they used the colour red. The division between artist and audience is a new concept, as it was only possible or expected due to the development of one to many technologies such as the printing press, radio, TV etc. That's now been reversed by the many to many technology of the internet. To reify one sort of relationship as the natural state between artists and audience to ignore the material basis for these relationships.**

After listening to Commentary! The Musical, I've decided that should dollhouse fail I want Joss to make an internet radio show. That way I'd get my serial storytelling from him, and it wouldn't need to be massively resource intensive, the way an internet (or actual) TV show is.

* I've been thinking about Penny and the feminist implications of her character. I think I've decided I don't mind the story from that point of view. Jane Espenson makes a great point on her blog that dramatic characters are intentionally funny and comedic characters are unintentionally funny. Penny makes jokes - she's a dramatic character in a comedic series. For me that works with the idea that these ridiculous men are fighting over her (it just doesn't make the story any more resonant with me).

** I still haven't decided how serious this paragraph is, if I figure it out I'll let you know.

Joss Extravaganza continued - the problem with the comic books

I've really enjoyed the Buffy comics, even though I stopped reviewing them. After a while there are so many ways you can say "It's great that Buffy had sex with someone that I don't hate so much I would like to pickle them in brine, but do they have to draw all the women looking the same?"

What draws me back to talking about the Buffy comics isn't the series itself (although it's getting really interesting and exciting), but the letters column at the back of last month's issue (the Harmony issue for those who subscribe). The last letter in the column said:

I'm not loving the way the characters are drawn. I know they're comics and that's how men typically draw women in comics, but why does Buffy have such a tiny waist and such large breasts? Seeing the way she was drawn in #10 was a real let down; Buffy looked more like Heidi Montag of Jenna Jameson than Buffy. I don't have anything against a tiny Waist (I have one myself!) or large breasts (okay, those I don't have, as most women with tiny waists don't have naturally. But it was disappointing to see Buffy have an unrealistic, unattainable, Barbie-esque body type. I don't understand why Buffy's looks are clearly modelled after Sarah Michelle Gellar, but someone decided to inflate her chest.

I wish I had a scanner so I could show you the image she was talking about, but I'm sure you can imagine it. I want to draw attention to how specific the author's point is. You could write, but all she is saying that in the comics female character's waists have got smaller and their breasts have got larger.

You can tell the reply is going to be full of weasaling because Scott Allie immediately turns over the replyto one of the few women who work on the comics.* Sierra Huhn an assisstant editor spends the first few sentances blathering on about how Buffy is much better than other comics, because the women don't have big breasts and itty-bitty waists (she clearly didn't look at the first frame of #10 before she wrote that.

She ends with the mealy mouthed "The last thing we want is for anyone who reads this comic, or works on this comic, to feel like we're in the business of exploiting women" (acutally the last thing she says is 'yay Buffy means more women read comics', which is so irrelevant that I'm ignoring it). Which is nice side-stepping what was actually brought up (the original letter didn't mention exploitative. It's also an interesting rhetorical technique when the facts are against you (the way women look in the comics is limited and emphasises extreme hour glass figures) you say "I don't mean to make people feel that way" - shifting the topic from what exists to other people's feelings.

But it's in the middle that she gets really offensive:

It's true most of the characters are attractive (have you seen the show?), and thin (Slayers ahve to follow a pretty strenuous exercise program...just saying'...), and sometimes Buffy may be more buxom from one issue to the next. It happens. But not unrealistically so, and not all the time.

Because we all know training regiemes give women large breasts and small waists (you think slayers spend hours doing the "I must, I must, I must, increase my bust arm thrusts?). It's a ridiculous and insulting answer to a serious question.

That's not even what I object most to what she says. It's that she's stepping on the greatest moment of the history of TV.

Those of you who watched the show will remember Buffy's last speech. For those who don't Buffy is talking about doing a spell to share her slayer power, with all the potentials all around the world (it's way cooler than I can make it sound in a sentence). And as she was doing this there is a series of images of girls becoming slayers, at school, at home, and on a baseball diamond. It means a lot more if you've watched the show, but you get the idea.

One of the slayers is fat. She isn't not-skinny, she isn't hollywood fat, she isn't a size twelve, she takes up space. And she stands up and uses her body and her strength to stop stops the man who is trying to hurt her. Meanwhile we hear Buffy's voice saying "Everyone who can stand up; will stand up."

Why haven't we seen her in the Season 8 comics yet? Don't tell me that she started a strenuous exercise programme and now she's got a tiny waist (her boobs would presumably be the same size) and is one of the many identical looking slayers you see in the background, because I will hurt you.

* There have been eleven men and one women involved in producing the art of the comics (that's pencils inks colours and letters) and five men and one woman have written scripts. Jo Chen does most of the covers, and the designer has always been female. Listed in the front is three editorial staff and a publisher. The Publisher and Editor are both male, but usually one of the editorial staff is female. I say this not because I necessarily think the comics would look any different if they had more women involved in their creation, but to point out that given how few women are involved in producing the comics to put one forward to justify the way women's bodies are drawn is tokenism of the worst sort.

** Random piece of Buffy trivia - that was the last shot of Buffy Joss ever shot.

Ghost - Dollhouse Episode Review

So Joss Whedon has a new show. I've already reviewed the premise. On Saturday night I sat down with my best friend Betsy incredibly excited that I was again watching a Joss Whedon show.

And I was disappointed.

I liked the opening, even though, or perhaps because, it was ridiculous. Clearly I don't find male fantasies that involve motorbike chases and barely present dresses interesting, but it was clearly framed as being a fantasy. And I thought the opening did a really good job of portraying how creepy it was that she went from being this person to being blank. It seemed clear to me what they were taking away from her.

I also really liked the characters who work in the dollhouse. I liked the relationship between Topher (the computer geek) and Boyd (the handler). For the time being the relationships between the people who work in the dollhouse are going to be the main on-going relationships in the show. I think the work they're doing is repugnant, but that doesn't mean that they're not interesting.

I'm interested in what happens to the dolls in their blank state, and thought it was very well done. There have been lots of people question the politics of the show, but I'm not one of them. I'm fascinated with the idea of a story about people who have been so atomised and commodified. The first glimmerings of Echo's self-awareness "I don't remember what fell on me?" and her recognition of Sierra, are great.

Less great, more ridiculous, was the cliched FBI fight argument/kick boxing match. Clearly FBI agents arguing with their superiors is a hard scene to understand on TV, so we needed a second depiction of this where Tahmoh Penikett was shirtless for no reason.

But my main objection to the episode was it's plotline (which is not an incidental part of an episode of TV). Initially I thought the biggest problem with it was that it was deathly boring. If I wanted to watch a procedural about a child being kidnapped I'd watch Without a Trace.

I said in my concept review that I thought it might be difficult for the episodes of the week to engage me. Having watched the first episode I think this may be a bigger problem than I realised. Because the engagements are all going to be about meeting the needs of the obscenely wealthy. And while I do think you can tell interesting stories about the obscenely wealthy, I think it takes work that was missing from this episode.

But my problem with the kidnapping plotline ran deeper. The character that Echo was imprinted with included parts of a woman who had been kidnapped and sexually abused by one of the kidnappers.* Others have commented on the clichedness of this plotline. But I would go further, I would say that it was horrific.

The dollhouse gave a Echo memories of being sexually abused as a child in order to make her a better tool. In doing so they were taking memories from someone who had killed herself because of them. They were doing something obscene both to the woman who hadn't been able to survive those memories, and to Eleanor Penn, who was suffering from these memories they had created.

None of this was given any particular time or weight - they were just plot points, not what the episode was about. I don't think there's anything wrong with telling a story about someone who is imprinted with memories of childhood abuse. But I think if you're going to tell a story where someone is imprinted with memories of child sexual abuse to meet a man's need, then you have to say something about it. Otherwise your using that sexual abuse narratively in the same way Topher is.

I think I saw glimmers of that - Eleanor Penn calling herself a Ghost. But it wasn't central enough, and it wasn't thought through.

I know this episode was probably written in a hurry, as Joss decided Fox needed a new pilot. I understand that there wasn't time to get the script of this episode right, and I'm optimistic that the episodes will get better. But I'm worried about the lack of judgement in including sexual abuse in the opening plotline, when they didn't have time to think it through.**

When my friend and I finished watching it we talked about authenticity and identity until three in the morning. I still think the show is fascinating. But I'm worried about the weekly plotlines.

* Given that Topher did not know who were the kidnappers were this is a coincidence of the laziest sort.

** It seems to me the same sort of 'sexual abuse as plot point' which led to Spike trying to rape Buffy so they could develop his character, and not ever try and say anything about the effect of the sexual assault on Buffy.

Joss Extravaganza Day 2: Premise Review of Dollhouse

So in a few hours Dollhouse will air in the US, sometime after that I will get my hands on the pilot and review that. But I thought, before I did that, I would review the premise of the dollhouse, bec. There are no plot spoilers here for any of the episodes.

For those who aren't crazy obsessed with Joss Whedon (what's wrong with you?) the idea of the Dollhouse is that an evil corporation (see I'm with them already) has people who can be programmed with any personality and ability. The actives (as the imprintable people are known) spend any time when they're not being someone else living in the dollhouse, a very controlled spa. They are supposed to remember nothing of who they are or what they've done. The actives may or may not have volunteered (and in what sense their volunteering involves meaning consent is left very open).

I'll have to admit that when I first heard of the premise I was very sceptical. Why would you care about the dolls? The whole point of television is that you grow to care, love and massively over-identify with characters. If Echo is a new person each week then why do I care

I think there are a couple of reasons I'm no longer worried about that. The minor one is that the non-doll characters seem interesting and engaging. The major one is that I've seen the metaphor - and I'm not sure how I missed it at first.

Joss has described the sort of questions he is asking as about identity, what makes us who we are, what is imprinted by society. And, of course, the main plotline is that Echo (Eliza Dushku's character) is starting to become aware, not as blank as she seems.

And that, though I imagine it will have to be reasonably slow for there still to be a show, is fascinating. So while I remain unconvinced that I'll be that into the procedural episodes of the week aspect of it (this week Eliza Dushku has ninja skills in a circus, but something goes wrong), I think there will be enough else that I love to make me stick around (apparently the episodes start quite stand-alone about engagements and eventually become much more about the dollhouse itself).

The other big question, that has got some attention, about the dollhouse, is the politics of the thing. Or more specifically the gender politics of the thing. The people who were always praising Joss for writing strong female characters, are now criticising him for writing a woman who is powerless in an absolute kind of way. In an article on npr dollhouse was called the anti-Buffy.

Now my love for Joss has never been that he wrote female characters that could beat people up. I love Joss because he wrote female characters that had relationships with each other and who fought misogyny in various forms.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with writing about women who have no power, because there are lots of women have no power. In fact I think it's anti-feminist to write as if it's all happy and awesome and women are free and equal, because that's dishonest. I worry that some of the sorts of criticisms that get dished out on-line, like criticising battlestar for the number of women who die. Women die because of misogyny all the time, and to engage with and depict that is a feminist choice.

Clearly, the point of showing someone so powerless is so that she can come to a realisation of her own power. The point of showing someone so controlled by others is that she can take control. And I think that's an important story to tell.

The final hesitation, is that a chunk of what the dolls are doing is sex, and sex that is quite clearly non-consensual. I have no problems with TV depicting non-concensual sex as long as they let it be creepy. And I think the dollhouse is supposed to be creepy. But that's not necessarily enough. Nothing Joss Whedon's done before about prostitution or non-concensual sex fills me with confidence in his ability to do this.* But the way he has been talking about it has made me feel that there's some hope, and he may have thought this through more than the things I found objectionable in Buffy and Firefly. Apparently Fox wanted him to tone down the sexual themes:

"My problem has always been, what happens is that you get the corporations basically enjoying the titillation of the thing instead of wanting to baldly talk about it," he says. "We really wanted to hit it in the face and say, well, what does it mean? Is it wrong to pay somebody to have sex? How wrong is it to try to create your own perfect experience? When is it appalling? And when is it a part of people becoming increasingly incapable of dealing with other people and living these incredibly insular lives?"

I'm really excited about the show, anyway. I think it's going to be fantastic, the ideas are interesting, the cast seems great, and it's Joss. Watch it tonight if you're in America, I'll let you know what I think of the pilot as soon as I get to see it.

*Clearly there is not time in this post for the problems with how ill thought through Inara's character's position was. There is also not time in this lifetime to describe all the problems of Buffy/Spike in season seven.

Joss extravaganza

So as I said, I'm going to take a break from writing about abolishing prisons and ending violence against women, to write about something else, which is almost as important to me: Joss Whedon.

His new show, Dollhouse, airs tomorrow in the states (well technically it's today, the timezones get complicated, anyway I'll watch it in my tomorrow). So in honour of that I thought I'd put together some of the awesome things Joss Whedon has written or said - a 'loving Joss for beginners'. There's heaps more - I've kind of left out the funny and focused on the awesomely political. But I need to go to bed.

********

"But that's not the point. There's always a name. Lincoln. Hitler. Ghandi. The name can inspire terror, awe, sometimes great things. But there's milions of people go into making a name. People facing things they couldn't imagine they would. In the moments that matter even our own names are just sounds people make to tell us apart. What we are isn't that.

The real questions run deeper. Can I fight? Did I help? Did I do for my Sisters? My comrades, children, slim slug clan... There's a chain between each and every one of us. And like the man said you either feel its tug or you ignore it. I tried to feel it I tried to face the darkness like a woman and I don't need any more than that."
-The Chain, Buffy Season 8

"Dateline September 2007, things are looking grim in the negotiations between the writers and the studios. AMPTP spokesman Nicholas Counter says quote I will grind the writers guild into a fine paste cut it with baby powder and sell it to underprivileged kids end quote."
Commentary the Musical (there's a strike song, who knew I'd ever get a Joss strike song?)

"You know what? I was wrong. You are an idiot. My life happens to, on occasion, suck beyond the telling of it. Sometimes more than I can handle. And it's not just mine. Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they're too busy with their own."
- Buffy, Earshot (I know Jane Espenson wrote the episode, but this speech was Joss)

"Get the word out, remind everyone that corporate greed (it's nothing but) is hurting everyone in this country. Not just because they're robbing people of entertainment (and, on occasion, art) and strangling an entire (non-writing) community, but because they're sending a message to every union in the country: you're next. The actors know that in their case, it's literally true, but it's also true for the concept of a unionized workforce. We get a lot of flack for being well-fed, glamorous, rich and powerful. We've worked hard to dispel that stereotype but in fact, a select few of us are wealthy and influential. And we have the support of some of the most famous and beloved (and wealthy and influential) people in the country: TV and movie stars! So the fact that the studios feel perfectly comfortable SPITTING IN OUR FACES in front of the whole world cannot bode well for any other union that works under them -- or under anyone who sees how easy it is to deny the basic rights of workers even so public as we. This is bad for writers, bad for actors, teamsters, teachers, nurses, dockworkers... the shape of this country is changing. The middle class is being squeezed out. We're trundling back to the middle ages, people, and all we can do is lie there and take it.

But of course, that's not what's going to happen. The studios mean to starve us out. They can't. We know what's at stake. We take care of our own, and those around us who aren't our own."
- At Whedonesque on the writers strike.

"It's the only way. For our planet, for our people. For every mother holding her newborn child.

"I don't want it to have my name on it if it doesn't reflect what I want to say. Because once you get to the position of actually getting to say something, which is a level most writers never even get to, and is a great blessing, you then have to worry about what it is you're actually saying. I don't want some crappy reactionary show under the Buffy name. If my name's going to be on it, it should be mine. Now, the books I have nothing to do with, and I've never read them. They could be, "Buffy realized that abortion was wrong!" and I would have no idea. So, after my big, heartfelt, teary speech, I realize that I was once again lying. But I sort of drew the line. I was like, "I can't possibly read these books!" But my name just goes on them as the person who created Buffy."
- Interview with The Av Club

"You have gross emotional problems and things are not OK between us."*
- Willow, Innocence (I've always kind of wanted to say this to someone, which if you think about it is one of the most stupid ambitions ever. My life needs less emo dramas not more.)

Crochet Me interviewer: "So, crafty people often feel like they have to let their materials behave and become what they want to be, even if it's not what we had in mind to begin with. Do you feel that's somewhat similar sometimes in how you write characters and plot lines?"

Joss: "You're going to need to meet the materials halfway. Yes, you definitely want every skein of yarn to do exactly what you have in mind, but they never will. And that's part of what makes it beautiful. That's part of what makes it not working in a factory. And every actor is going to bring something to the party, and I'm going to embrace what they're bringing as fucking hard as I can as long as it doesn't hurt the narrative, so that it becomes something more than just an idea I had that somebody acted out. You have to remember that if the thing isn't slightly out of control, it ain't art. Or [muffled] craft."
- Interview with Crochet Me (I actually just included this one because I knit and it excites me to year of Joss talk of yarn)

"With me? You mean to say, as, sex? Hell with this. I'm going to live."
-Kaylee, Serenity

"Well, you know, I'm sure I'm going to bring down News Corp with Dollhouse. Hmmm—maybe you shouldn't quote that. I'm not a huge fan of Mr. Murdoch's politics, God knows, or his methods. But I've been at Fox on and off for practically the whole of my career. Am I the biggest hypocrite in the world for taking their money? Am I doing any good? Or am I working for Wolfram and Hart?"
- Interview with Mother Jones (listen to it it's awesome, even though the interviewer is idiotic enough to ask Joss who he thinks has suffered more the black man or the white woman).


"In every generation one Slayer is born because a bunch of guys that died thousands of years ago made up that rule. They were powerful men. (points to Willow) This woman is more powerful than all of them combined. So I say we change the rules. I say my power should be our power. Tomorrow Willow will use the essence of this scythe, that contains the energy and history of so many Slayers, to change our destiny. From now on, every girl in the world who might be a Slayer, will be a Slayer. Every girl who could have the power, will have the power. Who can stand up, will stand up. Every one of you, and girls we've never known, and generations to come... they will have strength they never dreamed of, and more than that, they will have each other. Slayers. Every one of us. Make your choice. Are you ready to be strong?"
- Buffy, Chosen (Shooting Script)


And finally there's this:



(Transcript here)

Some further thoughts on othering and a break

While I've enjoyed the prison series I have been writing (although not as regularly as I intended to), I've felt that there's a tendancy in my writing to get more and more insular, and get obsessed with exactly what I mean and don't mean. Which is interesting to a point, but I want to go further in this series than doing that would allow. So after this post I'm going to take a break from writing about prisons for a week or two (specifically timed so I can write about the glories of Joss Whedon and his new TV series), so I can come back and stop working on things I've felt like I've said before.

I do want to write a bit of follow-up to my previous post othering rapists, which generated a bit of discussion. Some commenters asked, in a gotcha kind of a way, what this meant for my attitude towards Clint Rickards, or rapists I knew.

How to deal with rapists is a basic question for this series. What would actual justice look like? How can those who have been raped get what they need? What hope is there for change? What about men who don't want to change?

I wasn't trying to answer any of those questions in my previous post. I wasn't thinking about our attitude towards men who have raped, but our construction of rapist. I think how we deal with actual rapists is a vital and complicated question. But the way we construct rapists at the moment, as a dangerous other, doesn't reflect how people react to actual rapists.

There was a suggestion on kiwipolitico that arguing that rapists are not strange scary other people, means accepting and normalising rape. Quite the opposite, the only way to fight rape is to face it as it exists, not as we construct it. The first step to un-normalising rape, is acknowledging it is currently normalised.

Finally there was an awesome discussion of those on labellementeuse's Live Journal. Which I suggest you check out. There was a particularly good discussion there about whether or not it's perfectly legitimate for women to other rapists, as the vast majority of abuse is perpetuated by men. I hope I've made it clearer where I stand with my discussion of the difference between how we treat actual rapists, and our idea of rapists, but I recommend checking out the discussion.

Battlestar Galactica (Spoiler Free)

Political bloggers tend to be geeks. So there has been lots of discussion of Battlestar Galactica among American blogs recently. Including a series of letters to the editor of fleet newspapers about the latest events in season four.

I wrote my own letter to the editor over at Alas. I won't post it here, because obviously many people won't have seen the new episodes. But if you have (or dont' mind spoilers) my view of the BSG world is here.

Note please keep discussion in this thread only to episodes that have aired in New Zealand.

On being the butt of the joke

I was on the bus this afternoon when I got a text from Julie (my co-blogger from The Hand Mirror):

Hey is everything ok? Farrar has mentioned something about u getting arrested this week

I replied:

What? Where? Only excitement I've had this week is getting a warrant for my car

Which reflected my thought process pretty exactly.

She called me (which was really good, because I have no credit on my phone) and said DPF had twittered that he was wondering if Maia was going to be arrested this week.

I didn't think I was going to be arrested this week. I couldn't think of any reason to be arrested this week as opposed to any other week. I tried to think of a protest that I might be going on, and I couldn't think of one. I've spent quite a lot of time challenging the police these last few years. I couldn't rule out that they'd arrest me for something related (maybe DPF had a source in the solicitor generals office).

I was nowhere near a computer and I was going to get home for hours. I wanted to see the context, check the news, find out what was going on, but I couldn't.

I texted a whole bunch of people, and waited nervously for replied. One friend rang me, and confirmed about the twitter: "I also checked the news and there's nothing breaking about anything you've been involved in, or anything you might have been involved in, or anything the police might have mistakenly thought you've been involved in."

He offered to ring DPF, and I said yes. At this point I just wanted to know what was going on.

A few minutes later my friend rang back, he no logner sounded concerned:

It's all right. I should have guessed. He was talking about Maia from Shortland Street

. And so now everyone is making fun of me.*

I'm not sure what the moral of this story is. Pick from the following:

1. Try and avoiding sharing a name, or pseudyom with a character on a major Television show.*
2. Try to keep up with general knowledge and pop culture, you never know when you may need it.
3. Social networking sites have more pitfalls than you ever dreamed of.
4. It's better safe than sorry.

*They might be making a little less fun of me if I didn't sort of make a habit of this sort of thing. A while ago I thought there was a serious chance of being arrested any day (I'll leave long time readers of the blog to try and figure out when that might have been). I was living alone and didn't want to get arrested and no-one know that it happened. So each night I set up a text message to ten of my friends saying: "police here, if you don't have another text message in ten minutes assume I am arrested." (You know where this is going right?) But I was tired, I wasn't going to bed early enough and I was finding it hard to get up. My alarm would go off and I'd hit the snooze button. So I stumbled out of bed, picked up my cell phone and accidentally pushed one of the buttons.

I watched the little sending message screen, and I couldn't make it stop. While I was writing a text message explaining what happened, my phone kept beeping with replies, and my home phone rang. Opps

* Talking of which, one of those arrested in the police raids in 2007 is called Omar. I watched the Wire alone, but because I like to talk about TV when I watched it I sent random text messages to my friend Larry who had lent me the DVDs. I started to worry that if the police were collecting my text messages they could completely misunderstand "I love Omar, he fucks shit up."

The wafer thin line

To follow on from my last post (and some comments on it at The Hand Mirror), I wanted to outline more what I meant by a wafer thin line between opposing prisons and supporting convictions in some cases (not actually deconstruct it yet, just draw where it might be).

As I think I've said before, I've believed in prison abolition for years. In my early 20s I read Jessica Mitford's Kind and Usual Punishment, and was utterly convinced by her argument about the impossibility of prison reform. As I became more of an activist my analysis developed, until I thought I was pretty solidly anti-prison.

Then I actually went to a prison (or four). Now my opposition to prisons is total and visceral. I can barely read stories about prison in the news. I struggle to concentrate as I follow state highway one past Arohata. I couldn't write a post about Brad Shipton not getting parole, because I couldn't say that I thought he should stay in prison.

But...

Before, and still, prison abolition is not the total of my politics. The (in)justice system shapes the way we talk about and understand rape, and it has huge impact on women who have been raped (whether or not they make a complaint). I believe that this impact is almost all negative. I think that if I wished away the prison system by magic tomorrow, then what would be left would be better for rape survivors than what we have now.

I no longer feel any ambivalance about jail itself. I hate jail and don't want anyone to go there ever. But sometimes, although rarely, I think a conviction is important even though it might result in jail.

When? Here's my list:

• Police Officers
  
• Rapists who use a consent defence
• Police officers who use a consent defence to rape (for the avoidance of doubt, as we used to write in agreement negotiations).
  

There are possibly other examples, mostly around provocation defences to murder.

I want to make clear that even though I support (I'm not even sure that's the word I'm looking for maybe, hope for, wish for, don't oppose would be better) convictions in those cases, that doesn't mean i support the sentances that sometimes follow.

I'm not going to make any grand conclusions about why. I want to explore that in more depth in the rest of the series. I just wanted to make clear that though the line may be wafer thin, what's on the other side of it is very small.

Oriwa Kemp

Nia Glassie's life and death should not be measured by the length of the prison sentences handed out to those against her. I've made that argument in general, and I make it now, in particular.

She doesn't come back, whether the collective jail time is the minimum of 42 years, or a much larger maximum, her life doesn't get any better.

I don't believe, I don't imagine anyone can believe, that the sentances will act as a deterrant. Whatever the cause of Nia Glassie's death it certainly wasn't

In 17 and a half years (a little less for time served) Michael and Wiremu Curtis will become eligible for parole, they won't even be forty yet. They'll get out. They will probably get partners, their partners may have kids. Prison, years of being controlled and brutalised, won't have made them any less violent and so they will probably beat up their partners, and their partners' kids.*

Murdering a child is horrific, I have actually been able to read very little about the case, because when I get to "clothes dryer" my brain turns off. But prison isn't a line that ends it all. It is part of a system that perpetuates it all.

None of that was what I meant to say, when I decided to write about the sentencing. What I wanted to write about was the sentences given to Oriwa Kemp.

Oriwa Kemp was 17 when she was in a relationship with Michael Curtis, and he was beating her up.

I started this series at least partly in response to feminists who get outraged at short jail terms. I wanted to explore what jail is and what it does, and why I think supporting it, even in that limited sense was not part of women's liberation.** I haven't really done that yet (although I hope to).

But Oriwa Kemp, who has already been in jail for over a year, and has more time to serve, who is in jail because of a relationship where she was being abused, her story should stand as a warning to any feminist who upholds the jail system.

* None of this is inevitable. I don't want to dismiss the possibility of change. But change is much more likely outside of prison as inside it.

** I also wanted to explore the wafer-thinness between my line of supporting convictions, and will hopefully still do that too.

Othering rapists

Wellington City Council are up with the mid 1990s and currently running a campaign called "Safe in The City." Anita wrote about this campaign at Kiwipolitico. I'd seen the comment thread referred to as interesting - although I didn't realise until I went there it was interesting in the sense that you curse someone by wishing them 'interesting times'. If you feel like seeing the depth of denial about rape culture you could check that thread out (there are some really useful comments in there, but they have to fight through people claiming that "women can't rape men" and people denying that they'd ever know a rapist).

The claim that Anita made that so incensed the commenters on that thread as:

The reality is that we all know people who rape, just as we all know people who have been raped. I’m talking about the fact some of the people we know have raped people they know, and they way they’ve talked about sex and dates and partners so we’ve had every opportunity to hear that true consent isn’t an issue for them.

Given the figures I discussed recently about the number of male college students in the US who have admitted to raping someone, and that studies of New Zealand women show a similar rape prevelance to other areas, what Anita said should be uncontroversial.

But rhetorical rapists abound in that thread, and understanding of rape as it's experienced by women is lacking (despite women disclosing their own experiences).

The belief that rapists are different from normal people is linked with the idea that prison can solve rape. This connection was made explicit on the thread by one commenter who says that if he knew anyone he knew was a rapist, that'd be one more rapist behind bars. As I've said before, this line is a basic of upholding the prison system. As long as rapists, along with other 'criminals' are scary others - the reality of the prison system need not concern most people.

This idea is dangerous because when people hear that one of their male friends has been accused of raping one of their female friends, then in order to believe their female friend something has to give. Either people abandon their idea that rapists are all 'bad people' or they abandon the idea that their friend is a good person. But often neither of these things happen, and instead this person (who had been rigorously berating the evils of rape) doesn't believe the woman who was raped.

Rapists don't have horns, sonic signals, or anything else that identifies them. Talking about rape as if they do doesn't help fight rape, and it doesn't help get any form of justice.

* As a side point I've been meaning to write about these ads for a while and could never figure out what to say. While I agree with all the points Anita makes, I think "stick with the girls" is less punitive and more likely to work than the vast majority of anti-rape advice that is given to women. Clearly there is an undertone of "don't have a one night stand you slut." But "marginally less awful policing of women's behaviour" isn't exactly a blog post waiting to happen.

Survivor centred

Sorry I didn't post yesterday. I want to go backwards a little to what I wrote about a couple of days ago. There I looked about how news stories about sentencing treat the length of prison sentance as the only way of measuring victims pain.

A few weeks ago there were several news stories that went like this:

The woman, who cannot be named because it would identify her daughter, told The Press newspaper, her daughter, now 19, was terrified of accidentally seeing her abuser again.

She had three cars of volunteers ready to "stake out" the prison and follow any vehicles leaving and was also preparing to hand out leaflets where Harris would be released.

Reading the thread about this on the hand mirror most people responded to the question of 'help' or 'hinder' with 'hinder'.

To me it's not quite clear what it was that teh woman's actions were going to help or hinder. Were people arguing that this wouldn't help the woman who had been raped? What else could it hinder? Our general fight against rapists? The justice system's fight against rapists?*

Because to me the key question is how can the 19 year old woman ensure that she doesn't see her rapist again, which is what she's said is what she needs.

I think at the discussion around this mother's actions has tended to uphold one of the key ideas of our (in)justice system: justice is not about you. It's not about what would make you feel better, or what would help you heal. It is something that you have little input in and no control over. Louise Nicholas wasn't even allowed to speak at the parole hearing of Bob Schollum.

I think this is, at it's heart, complete and utter nonsense.

I'm not arguing here for vigilante-ism (although I will point out that a lot of the ways vigilante-ism is discussed assumes that people cannot be trusted with justice. That it is inherently wrong that, for example, women who have been raped should play a part in deciding what happens next. I don't think it'd be easy to switch from the conceptions of justice to a survivor based idea of justice.

But I do believe, and this is pretty fundamental, that women who have been raped,** know better than anyone else what they need, and what justice would look like.

I think it takes quite a lot of imagining to think about what that would mean, and that imagining is part of what I want to get too later. But now I want to make clear that for me the involvement of victims, survivors, or whatever you call people who have been wronged, is non-negotiable in my idea of justice.

* If you think it exists, which I don't.

**Or anyone who has suffered any other abuse or violation against anyone. Either something that is classified as a crime at the moment, or is not.

Another clarification

One of the problems I've had in this series is that I don't really want to talk about 'crime' and clearly I have problems with the idea of 'criminals'. One of the basic ideas of this series is that violence against women is often used to support the existence of the prison and (in)justice system. I see resistance to both violence against women and the prison system as vitally important.

I think the abolishment of the prison system for the vast majority of what is currently classified as crime (particularly drug and property offences) is a relatively simple stance to uphold. I can defend my opposition by focusing on the problems with prison and the (in)justice system and no-one's going to say "what about the pot smokers?" or "what about the shop lifters?".

But I do think that 'what about the rapists?' is an important question. Both because of it's ideological role in upholding the prison system as it currently stands, and because it's something we need to answer.

So I'm mostly going writing about the offences that are already over represented in the discussion. I want to acknowledge that really explicitly, and make it clear taht my definition of "bad things people can do to each other" isn't particularly related to the government's definition of "crime" even though it may seem like it is because that overlap is what I'm discussing in this series.

But what about the rhetorical rapists?

I want to stop focusing just on the prison system and start looking particularly at the way the (in)justice system deals with violence against women, and what that means for feminism.

First off, I want to address the way that rapists are used in discussions as stand-in for 'Very Bad and Dangerous People'. A classic example of this is David Farrer's concern about the release of Brad Shipton. These discussions, and they happen occasionally, are about rhetorical rapists. They are discussions about law and order, not about women's experiences, because they only focus on convicted rapists.

4.5% of male college students in the US admitted to having raped someone (This is a good discussion on that). If we take it as a figure that is probably transferrable to some degree if not entirely accurate (the most important reason it's not accurate is that college students tend to be young, and therefore this can't be taken as a study on how many men rape women over the course of their lifetime), then there are around 72,000 rapists in New Zealand.*

There are approximately 1,000 men in jail for sex crimes at the moment.**

When I suggest that we should end prisons even if it means letting those 1,000 rapists out, and someone replies "What about the rapists?" it makes no sense to me. 'What about the rapists?' is an important question. 72,000 is a terrifying number, but that's the problem that needs to be solved, not the 1 in 73 rapists who are in jail at the moment.

* Numbers from stats I used my base figure half the over 15 population in New Zealand. These figures are supposed to be very loose, I'm not claiming any rigour for them, just trying to demonstrate the size of the problem.

** From Corrections

From our court reporter...

There are several staples to the way the media report on court. One of the most frequent is victims or family members commenting after sentencing. These stories usually involve the victims or family members talking about how the sentence is too short, or disappointing in some way. Sometimes they just involve talk about how the sentancing represents 'closure'.

This sort of media disturbs me. Because the suffering of the people quoted is real, and often horrific, and it feels intrusive even to comment on their way of coping. But the function of these stories is to reinforce one of the fundamental, but nonsensical, ideas behind our (in)justice system:

"The way we value someone's suffering is the length of time we incarcerate the person who inflicted it."

This statement is treated as obvious and self-evident, but it's not. In fact it makes no sense at all, except as a description of the way society works.

But people who are suffering turn to and reinforce this idea. Partly I think this is a result of it's hegemonic status. But more importantly I think that people who have suffered great loss turn to this idea, because they have nothing else.

Our understanding of violence between people is centred entirely on what to do with the perpetrator, not about supporting those who have suffered. The state justice system doesn't even dream of saying to people "What would make this easier? What can we do for you?"

So when people who have suffered from violence condemn the lightness of a sentence, that certainly reinforces ideas of prison I disagree with. But I would suggest that this has to be understood in a context where they're offered nothing else. That there is no other way that society recognises their experiences and suffering.

Safer Communities Together

This post isn't part of my current series, I won't be posting in that series today

It's hard to stop thinking about Halatau Naitoko and his family.

I find the media coverage obscene. Although the SST's "LOOK PRETTY YOUNG WHITE PEOPLE WERE ALMOST HURT" is quite the worst. The media appear to be trying to avoid mentioning that Halatau Naitoko is a young brown man, exactly the people who the police view as the enemy, and tend to shoot.

But the biggest unanswered question, for me, is "Would it have been OK if the police had hit the person they were aiming for?" Even indymedia emphasises Halatau Naitoko's innocence.

Stephen McDonald appears to have become much more dangerous after the police's intervention than he was before (given the charge sheet). By initiating the chase the police played a role in creating the situation whereby they justify shooting at him (even at the risk of hitting at least two, and possibly four bystanders).

The ideological purpose of the crime tax

I didn't expect to be writing this much about proposed legislation, but it turns out they're excellent ways of illustrating the role of the justice system in our society. Needless to say I think the $50 crime tax, a ridiculous, regressive idea. A lot of the policy arguments are discussed over at the hand mirror. I want to think about this idea a little bit differently.

Louise Nicholas only received normal witness costs for the trials. This didn't cover her support people, or her travel to court outside of the days she was testifying. I'm not denying that the current system is completely inadequate. At the moment large costs, which are the direct result of someone being victimised are borne individually.

However, the current proposal asks 'who should pay?' and answers 'the criminals'.

In 2006, there were almost 4,000 convictions for serious violent crime; there were over 200,000 convictions for any crime.*

This fine reinforces the idea that criminals are a class, and elides over the fact that the acts that we are most scared of, the acts that ruin people's lives, are a very tiny minority of the acts that get criminalised.

The prison system, and the justice system as a whole can only be justified and maintained if it's true nature and role is avoided. As long as the line between 'criminals' and 'citizens' can be maintained as an 'us' and 'them'. The ideological purpose of this tax is to reinforce that division.

* Statistics from Ministry of Justice. My definition of serious violent crime is a lay persons one not a legal one. I included murder, manslaughter, attempted murder, kidnapping, all sexual assaults, and grevious bodily harm. It won't necessarily reflect the boundaries of this scheme, but it does reflect the sorts of examples that have been discussed in the media.

Two Small Thoughts

1. On the discussions about Police Orders there's been a lot of discussions about the problems that could come about if people were ordered to leave their house for five days. Issues such as the fact that the police have no obligation to ensure that people are dressed let alone they have a wallet, have been raised.

There seems to be an assumption that ignoring these issues would be irregular or unusual. My experience of the police and justice system would be that this is a false assumption. I know people who were arrested at 6am in Wellington and then released on bail four weeks later on a Friday at 5pm in Auckland, from the side of the court house. They weren't given their original clothes back, let alone their wallets, so they had neither money or ID. To assume that the police only occasionally ignore the needs of those they label as criminal is naieve for the extreme.

2. One thing that I want to make very clear from the beginning (and will discuss from several different angles later on) is that I'm not making any argument about what women who have been raped or abused should do. I don't think any women who is considering how to respond to her abuse should listen to a word I say.

More than that, I would not rule out going to the police and justice system myself (in fact I've done it). And I would certainly testify if asked.

Louise Nicholas showed that the justice system can be a platform.

I want to make this explicit, because it's too common for political analysis to be taken as an argument that individuals could change by acting differently. That's not something I believe in general.

Police Orders

I want to write a little bit about the new police orders in the Domestic Violence (enhancing safety) Bill. It has already been widely discussed (No Right Turn twice, Kiwipolitico and the hand mirror who all structured it as matter of competing rights between the right to live free of violence and the right to due process (Anita at Kiwipolitico proposed an option that she thinks would balance the rights better). Ludditejourno provided more information about the context of the bill (and how it has changed) and says:

The main difficulties in keeping victims safe from domestic violence according to every major piece of research since the Domestic Violence Act 1995 is however, not legislation at all.

The problem with justice sector responses to domestic violence in Aotearoa New Zealand is implementation, which is inconsistent, and at times, poor. And this has literally cost women and children their lives.

This very important point, and what the definition of poor is (and how to improve it) is one of the key things I want to write about in this series.

One of the comments that has been made in threads about this is: "would you give Clint Rickards this power?" And while clearly worries about how individual police officers might use this power are entirely justified, I think the problem goes much deeper to the way this legislation frames abuse and violence (even when used in the way it is intended).

My understanding about abuse in intimate relationships is that it are fundamentally about power and control. That physical and sexual violence is often part of that power and control, but there are many forms of abuse, and maintaining power and control, which go beyond violence (the power and control wheel is a graphical representation of this). This means that abuse has to be understood in the context of the whole relationship, not just as individual acts. It also means that further taking away power and control from people who have been abused in an intimate relationship even "for their own good" is not helpful.

In this series I will tend to talk about male perpetrators and female victims, not because, but because I believe that in our society men are given power over women in intimate relationships, which is not reversed. That doesn't mean that women can't be abuse perpetrators in relationships, just that women abusing men (or women abusing women) do not represent a wider power dynamic within society.

In order to demonstrate the model of abuse that police orders follow I will compare them with protection orders. This isn't to imply there are no issues with protection orders (I will try and write more about them later in the series).

The police orders are instigated by a police officer, and the law explicitly takes they can be taken against the wishes of those who they're purporting to protect. Protection orders are instigated by those seeking protection. And while the court system means the abused person doesn't have control over the process, it at least means they play a role.

Also, protection orders are usually supported by affadavits by the person who is abused. This allows them to talk about their own experience of abuse and power and control within a relationship (although obviously this must be shaped by the legal requirements). Police orders are based on the views of an outsider to the relationship who may have only been there for a few minutes.

Now this may seem like me putting my theoretical view of domestic violence over the immediate view of women who need protection from police orders. Of course, there are women whose safety would be greatly enhanced if they could get a police order removing the abusive man from their home on the spot (and who seek that now). But those are not the only time police orders will be used.

For example, a woman in an abusive relationship who relies on her partner to take the kids to school in order that she can get to work. With protection orders she gets to make decisions on how best to manage safety and the other needs of her life, and gives her time to make other arrangements. If excluding the abusive person from her life is something that is done to a woman, rather than she does herself, then the consequences of that exclusion are likely to be far greater, because she is not able to plan for or mitigate them.

Or what if a woman in an abusive relationship fought back? What if her partner has marks on him? What if the police exclude her from her home? In terms of power and control excluding the abused person from her home could make things catastrophically worse. Biting Beever (whose blog is no longer on line) had a story about the only time the police came to her house in an abusive relationship which lasted years, they warned her for scratching her abusive partner. She pointed out the power this gave him over her. Imagine how much more power an abusive partner would have if the women was excluded from her home.

While I'll this might not be the most frequent way that police orders are used it will happen. And the women who it will happen to will be the most vulnerable, with partners who are more articulate, who the police identify with.

The model and understanding of domestic violence that the legislation is based on will have real consequences for real women's lives.

I don't really have a 'what should be done instead?' because writing legislation isn't really the point of this series. But I do want to point out one interesting aspect of this legilation - which is it is about excluding abusive people from their homes, rather than helping abused people leave.

But this exclusion is done by force, and is not resourced in anyway (and for all commenters at various places have said that they're sure the police will make sure that people have their wallets before they go out - that's not my experience of how the police work). As a starting point, why stop making abused people the only group who can have somewhere to stay? Why not build sleeping places for abusive men (or any men) who are spending a few nights away from their relationship?

Choosing Conflict and Discord

I understand finding something to get excited about in the idea of Barack Obama being president (I don't share it, but I can see where it comes from). I cannot understand anyone with any progressive tendancies not being appalled by his speech. The first commentary I read on the speech which made sense was Louis Proyect's:

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

[Yes, they wrote books about that. They are called Horatio Alger stories and they are bullshit. Bill Gates got where he is by being born into one of Seattle's richest families and by exploiting technology that had hitherto been common property.]

The Daily Show also did pretty well

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Changefest '09 - Obama's Inaugural Speech

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

I don't have time (or interest) to pick apart the whole speech, but there was one section that really stuck out to me*:

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died in places Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life.

I'm going to ignore the reference to Vietnam because that's a whole nother rant, which I'm going to assume that the reader can supply themselves. I will quickly draw attention to the fact that this narrative of US history ignores anyone who was living there before European colonisation.

But my point is something quite different. People did toil in sweatshops, endure the lash of the whip and plow the hard earth. But they didn't do these things because they wanted to create the world that exists now, they did it because the alternative was starvation or death.

Millions of people worked in sweatshops, were held as slave and farmed in difficult conditions. They did so with varying degrees of control and consent. To say they did these things to bring about the world that currently exists is obscene. Millions of people have millions of different dreams, struggles and views of the purposes of their lives. Maybe some people were aiming to create the world that currently exists. But I know that some slaves, workers and farmers had a different idea of the worlds that they wanted to create. I know, because I've read about them, that some dreamed of worlds much like the world I fight for.

To claim generations of people were struggled and were exploited because so they could help create the world that we live in now is both ignorant and arrogant

* Although can I just say his view of the unselfish worker who gives up his hours so his friend will keep his job made was despicable boss pandering. How about both those workers go on strike to keep everyone's job and reclaim some profits from the bosses. I'm not saying I expect anything else from the president of the united states. I'm just saying that I don't see how anyone could have seen Barack Obama's inauguration address as doing anything but choosing sides with the rich and powerful

Prisons and women

In my previous post, I didn't deal with prisons as a feminist issue, or the effect of prisons on women. Prisons are a deeply gendered phenomenon, and their effect on men is fairly widely known (they go to prison). I think that aspect of the gendered nature of prisons makes it easy for feminists to put a 'someone else's problem' field around the issue. But I think this ignores some important aspects of women and the prison system.

Men who are in prison are a feminist issue, because of the impact their imprisonment has the lives of the women who love or need them. The vast majority of the work of having someone in prison, is done by women. Visiting, bringing children to visit, providing money and phone cards and the things that ease prison life, this is done by women. I'm not yet in a space where I can write about that with any kind of distance. I'm not sure I ever will be. It's over a year since I set foot near a prison and I still identify so strongly with the women that I queued behind and visited with. I think I'll have to let my previous post on this issue explain some of what I have to say for this.

Women in prison are also a feminist issue although they are a tiny minority of the prison population as a whole (although I think that percentage of prisoners who are women is increasing in many NZ and the US, and probably other countries with similar prison policies). Like the men in prison, women in prison are not just chosen as a random sampling of the female population, but tend to be poor, and non-white.

But prison is more gendered than that, and women in prison are not just the female version of men who are in prison. Women in prison are very likely to have been on the receiving end of violence against women, and on the receiving end of abuse, misogyny and control. There is often a path between women in prison's experience of abuse and being in prison.

Women also get considerable less support in prison than men (I wrote a post about this here which is based on my experiences of visiting at women's prisons). So the experience of being in prison is more isolating for women than it is for men, and women have less to call on when they get out of prison than men.

I might later try and write about the implications of being under complete control in prison for women who have been in abusive relationships (but I may not, because it is so far away from anything I know). But I think it's an important thing to think about, when conceptualising feminism and prisons.

So to ignore prisons as a feminist issue is to abandon the women who are in prison. Feminists who support the prison system (and I am planning to discuss the ways feminists uphold the prison system) abandon these women as collateral damage. I don't think that's acceptable.