Broads go digital

Any of you post-luddites out there remember Broadsheet?

It was a feminist magazine, founded in 1972 by Sandra Coney and according to Greg Newbold and Jenny Cross:

Broadsheet soon became the central voice of feminist politics in New Zealand. It initially focused on issues such as sexual stereotyping, prejudice, exploitation and discrimination, but before long specific matters such as rape and woman-beating began to appear as common themes. In 1973, reflecting rising awareness about violence towards women, the first of what became a network of women’s refuges was established, which was consolidated under the National Collective of Independent Women’s Refuges in 1981.

Feminists writing included Anne Else, Donna Awatere, Ripeka Evans, Lisa Sabbage, Pat Rosier, Miriam Saphira, Christine Dann, amongst many, many others.  In 1992 twenty years of Broadsheet were celebrated, with the publication of a collection of outstanding articles edited by Pat Rosier.

Broadsheet is important enough to feminists and New Zealand history to be archived by the Auckland Women’s Centre, referenced in Te Ara, New Zealand’s online encyclopedia as important to social change in Aotearoa in the 1970s, and timelined by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.

Now, there’s a campaign to get it digitised - and make it forever available to all.  Since the magazines are now collectors items, this seems like a good idea to me.

 

Every vote counts – if you want to see New Zealand’s feminist heritage preserved, get yourself over to DigitalNZ now.

 

For sure the act is simply wrong

The paydirt for the Maori Party in entering into a relationship with the National Party has always been more to do with shifting positions than political alignment.  Maori want mana from our political system – and National, very cleverly, have worked out ways to deliver this – even while they seemingly offer a political agenda with very little positive for the vast majority of Maori.

So the new relationship is delivering fruit.  The Maori Party’s raison d’etre was getting rid of the Foreshore and Seabed Act – and the recent “independent” review has delivered a resounding verdict – the Act needs to be repealed because it is “simply wrong in principle and approach”.

The Act severely discriminated against Māori. Supporters of the Act claimed there was uncertainty but the Act took away the right to go to Court to have the uncertainty resolved.  It imposed extremely restrictive thresholds for the recognition of customary interests and severely reduced their nature and extent. It drew on legal tests that had developed in other countries whose historical treatment of the issue was entirely different from our own. It was simply wrong in principle and approach. The timing and the process were also wrong. It caused much anguish and Māori and to many non-Māori as well.  

 The Maori Party are pretty happy.  Maori activism on this issue, after all, resulted in Aotearoa being told by the United Nations that we’d enacted racist legislation.   Tariana Turia deserves congratulations and respect for her leadership role in this – she took huge risks in leaving Labour over the issue, huge risks in working to establish the Maori Party, and huge risks in leading them into a closer relationship with the National Party.

Attourney-General Chris Finlayson continues to describe the Act as unsuccessful and discriminatory, and promises the Government response to the recommendations will consider the interests of all New Zealanders.  He has the history, of course, of representing Ngai Tahu in negotiating with the Crown.

What a welcome turn-around from National, for which, I suspect, Chris Finlayson can take credit.  Because the National Party in 2004 – alongside a media baying for blood – was an enormous part of positioning the Labour Party on Maori customary rights to the foreshore.  To quote the then leader, Don Brash, on the issue:

We will deal with the foreshore issue by legislating to return to the previous status quo – the settled legal situation before the Court of Appeal decision. That is a position where for the most part the Crown owned the foreshore. In so far as there was uncertainty about the situation before, we will clarify the position. Public ownership leaves room for recognising limited customary rights, but we will not allow customary title. If this Government issues such title, we will revoke it.

The Labour-led response in 2004 was cowardly and lacking in any kind of integrity.  The review of the Act is a welcome start to repealing some embarassing legislation in a country proud of having “the best race relations in the world.”  

 

Which woman will die today?

I get flack on this blog periodically for talking about why sexual and domestic violence needs to be considered through a gender lens.  Lots of commenters here think this means I don’t care about men who experience violence, or think all men are violent.

I try to be very clear that I abhor all violence, and like many other women who work to end violence against women, I also challenge and campaign against other kinds of violence.

But this morning, it strikes me, again, how important it is that we remember gender.

The media has been reporting on four dead women in Aotearoa.  All killed, or allegedly killed, by men in their lives with whom they had been intimate.

Nai Yin Xue was found guilty of killing his wife An An Liu last week.  He strangled her.  She’d previously fled his violence to stay in a Refuge, had gone through a court process to have him successfully prosecuted for assaulting her and her daughter, had sought and been granted a protection order – and the justice system knew he had held a knife to her belly and threatened to kill her – but like the vast majority of men who assault their partners, he had not been seen as violent enough to sentence to prison time.

Two women in Porirua, Joeline Rangimaria Edmonds and her boarder 16-year-old Jashana Maree Robinson, were murdered last week.  Police have charged a man with name suppression – and a protection order from Ms Edmonds – with their murders.

And finally, we have the delightful case of Sophie Elliot, a young woman stabbed 216 times in the face by her ex-partner Clayton Weatherston, who alleges he is guilty only of manslaughter.  The court case has been littered with descriptions of their “torrid and tumultuous” relationship – just as An An Liu allegedly died, not because her abusive husband strangled her, but because she was trying out some fancy sex thing involving near strangulation.

No doubt Ms Edmonds found baseball bats sexy too.

I am sick of these women-hating myths which play out whenever men are violent to women they have loved.  All three of these relationships were historically violent before the men killed – just as they always are.  In two of the relationships, the women had done all they could under the justice system to keep themselves safe – they had gone through the expensive, arduous and frightening process of applying for protection orders.

And the justice system, the communities they live in, and the wider New Zealand climate in which we excuse violence against women again and again and again by blaming women and refusing to create a culture of non-violence? 

Please, commenters here who excuse male violence, take note.  These cases are not isolated examples – they are typical of the most severe violence which is perpetrated on women in abusive relationships. 

Rest in peace, An An Liu, Joeline Edmonds, Jashana Robinson and Sophie Elliot.

 

By which you will all know my political leanings…

I am a quiz geek.  So thank you with a big bunch of flowers to Lew at Kiwipolitico for linking to this, a political spectrum quiz.

I like quizzes because they make this overcomplicated little world really simple, just for a minute or two.  Of course it’s a nonsense, but it’s a nonsense that gives me, someone who struggles around in the not-knowing space, some brief sense of knowing.

“Thank heavens,” Luddite says, “I’m a Far Left Moderate Social Libertarian”.

 

Left 7.98
Libertarian 1.57

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m unsurprised where my ideas about military intervention end up: Score -7.46

Or where being culturally superior fits in: Score -8.21

Miffed though, at being only slightly libertarian.  Guess that’s what comes of believing there should be some ways we hold those with more power accountable to those with less.

A much less impressive quiz on the same site informs me I am, in fact, a full-blooded feminist.

Your Result: You are a full blooded feminist!

 

You believe in women’s rights all the way and continue to be unhappy with the way things are right now and wish for more change. You are willing to take part in marches, boycotts and meetings that involve the amelioration of women’s issues. You realize that society views feminists negatively but still are proud to call yourself one. You are appalled to see women who don’t have a clue that “gender” is simply a term which the definition is 100% man made. If you feel a comment is sexist or makes you uncomfortable you speak up on it! You are always aiming to help others become aware of how much further women need to go and how society restricts them and predetermines their roles. You hate that feminists are so divided in themselves and believe that only if they are unified can they make a difference. We need more of you!

Who knew?

 

Wellington Rape Crisis funding

A while back I criticised Karl du Fresne’s attacks on ACC helping to fund the counselling and support of people recovering from sexual abuse.

And of course more recently, ACC pulled their funding of the only 24 hour crisis line service operating in central Auckland for victims and survivors of sexual violence.

What does this mean?  I’m not overstating Mr du Fresne’s influence – there are always those willing to deny the horrific nature of sexual violence – which, by definition, leads us to a place of being able to systematically underfund services which work with victims and survivors. 

If it isn’t really happening, why pay to help people recover?

What it means though, is the 8,500 people who called that line last year – to talk about what happened to them, to ask for help, to find out how to support their family member or friend, to ask for an advocate to support someone through the police process, to try and deal with the flashbacks they are having which are stopping them sleeping/eating/functioning, to talk about their self-harming or suicidal thoughts – well, those 8,500 Aucklanders may have no service available to them very soon.

Services in Aotearoa are patchy, with some communities offering no support for victims and survivors at all.  One of the responsibilities of the Taskforce on Sexual Violence is to examine real, sustainable funding for agencies helping individuals and families recover from sexual violence. 

So all this brings me to ask you Wellington based people to come collecting for local services this year.  You can spend as little as an hour helping Wellington Rape Crisis out – not only with gathering money needed to continue running their services, but by raising the profile of sexual violence in Wellington. 

At the moment, women can drop in off the street and talk to qualified advocates and counsellors at Wellington Rape Crisis.  Male victims receive telephone support and referrals to specialist counselling.  Email support and advocacy with other agencies is available to all.  WRC will also work with families – because sexual violence has an impact not only on individuals, but on wider relationships.  Would you know how to support your partner if they were raped?

Wellington Rape Crisis provides community education and contribute to community programmes to prevent sexual violence.  Give them some time and energy on July 3rd if you can spare it.

 

Are you Pakeha?

The New Zealand Census counts who lives here and in what circumstances every 5 years.  The next one is due in 2011, and if, like me, you are a white New Zealander who calls nowhere else home and so describes yourself as “Pakeha”, you’d better get busy.

Reason being?  In 1996 white New Zealanders could describe themselves as “Pakeha” (bracketed with New Zealand European) in the census.

But this drew “significant adverse reaction from some respondents” – so Stats NZ removed the word “Pakeha” for the 2001 and 2006 censuses.

Anyone think we’ve grown up about this a little over the last 13 years?  And should allow another option for those of us who think calling ourselves “European” is a nonsense, because we’ve been to Europe, and we know how out of place we were there?

I’m a Pakeha of Scottish and Canadian descent.  I celebrate all of my whakapapa – but Aotearoa New Zealand is my home, and I’ve been describing myself as Pakeha for an awfully long time now.

Stats NZ wimpishly avoided the “significant adverse reaction” by removing “Pakeha” – and last census, 400,000 of us ticked the “Other” box and wrote in “New Zealander”.  15,000 ticked the “Other” box and wrote in “Pakeha”.

Stats NZ are calling for feedback about whether to include a “New Zealander” option.  Since this would include all New Zealand citizens, it would obviously remove the ability to examine ethnicity at all – a “New Zealander” might mean a Chinese New Zealander, someone from Ngai Tahu, a Tokelauan New Zealander, or someone who is Pakeha.

They note these problems – but haven’t offered us Pakeha back.

You can tell them what you thinking of this by emailing ethnicity.review@stats.govt.nz - but you have to do it by 25 May.

They have a discussion paper up here.

 

I’m out of control, someone stop me…

The top-selling book in 2008 according to USA Today was Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight.  She also took out the next three slots with books from her series on what happens when vampires try not to drink human blood.

Now, most pop-culture phenomenas pass me by in my wee Luddite world, but I decided I give Twilight a flick through.  I love sci-fi, I love fantasy, I love exploring how to make ethical decisions in new and interesting ways.

I don’t like repackaging traditional sexist ideas and making them palatable for new waves of young people.

For those of you who have somehow missed the Twilight maximum product coverage phenomena, the story goes a little something like this.

Bella is a young, smart, shy woman who moves to a rainy town in the US to live with her dad.  She’s too sensitive to enjoy the petty rivalries and hierarchical fighting in small town USA high school, and we hear lots of her take on her new world.

Enter stage left, Edward.  He’s smart, articulate, beautiful and strong.  Oh, and a vampire.

They fall in love, despite/because he is more attracted to her blood than any other.

Cue Bella’s descent to page after page of longing and solely writing about how wonderful Edward is and how much she wants to see him, midst various adventures.

Their relationship, as they tend to, becomes physical:

I moved even more slowly than he had, careful not to make one unexpected move.  I caressed his cheek, delicately stroked his eyelid, the purple shadow in the hollow under his eye.  I traced the shape of his perfect nose, and then, so carefully, his flawless lips.  His lips parted under my hand, and I could feel his cool breath on his fingertips.  I wanted to lean in, to inhale the scent of him.  So I dropped my hand and leaned away, not wanting to push him too far.

Some of this stuff is delicious.  Who cannot remember those feelings of first touch with someone you desire, and have desired for a while? 

But holding off your own – if you are a girl – because you might “push him too far”?  What Victorian planet are we on?

Page after page after page is littered with this.  Will Edward be able to stay “in control”?  Does Bella even want him too?  Can Bella stop the taunting her sexy bloodied presence causes?

Yawn.  Yawn.  Yawn.  I am so over this.  I am so over the idea that men have uncontrollable sexual urges and that we women have to gatekeep them.  And repackaged in sexy new vampireness or not, this is tired old crap.

Just in case we’ve missed the woman-as-temptress overtone, the cover of the book helpfully draws on another misogynist story to remind us.  A girl with an apple.  Right.

There are other irritations too.  Bella descending into having a head with nothing in it but Edward.  His overbearing “protection” of her – including insisting driving her everywhere despite her owning and driving her own car for the first part of the book, seemingly without her ovaries getting in the way.

And then that beautiful thing.  Bella being able to talk to other people:

“Hello Tyler, this is Edward Cullen.”  His voice was very friendly, on the surface.  I knew it well enough to catch the soft edge of menace.

“I’m sorry if there’s been some kind of miscommunication, but Bella is unavailable tonight.”  Edward’s tone changed, and the threat in his voice was suddenly more evident as he continued.  “To be perfectly honest, she’ll be unavailable every night, as far as anyone besides myself is concerned.  No offence.”

So the perfect romantic hero is one who threatens away other people on behalf of his delicate flower woman.  Because she is his.

Staying away from pop culture sounds better and better.  Bring back Nancy Drew I say.  If you have a young woman in your life, talk to her about this nonsense. 

And remind her she has every right to both desire and autonomy.

 

Richard Boock takes on rugby league

You can see why Richard Boock is the Qantas award-winning sports columnist for 2009 from his latest article:

WHAT IS the world coming to? It’s bad enough for the poor NRL players as it is, banned from binge drinking on some days and prohibited from frequenting nightclubs on others. But now they’re being told to knock off the group sex thing? Outrageous. You wonder what the authorities can be thinking. Next thing they’ll be instructing their players to treat all women with respect rather than as a potential gangbang.

You can see why the players are getting fed up. One of the unwritten rules of the NRL was always an understanding that, if any of them should score a slapper, they were duty-bound to share her with the rest of the squad. That, and the practice of hiding a couple of the boys in a wardrobe so that they could leer at their team-mates. The group root was one of the last bastions of blokedom, after all. What were they supposed to do now?

It’s not just the Aussie league players, either. A New Zealand cricket team was embroiled in a similar controversy before a tour in the mid-1990s, the Kiwi league team landed itself in disgrace in 2007 and the England rugby team’s stocks plummeted last winter after a player took a woman back to his hotel room, where he was joined by a few of his team-mates. “All for one and one for all,” was never about just on-field loyalty.

For all that, if the practice of gang-banging young women was to become an international sport, the NRL would automatically become the home ground of the champions. Whether it’s been the Bulldogs and their reprobate behaviour at Coffs Harbour in 2004, Dane Tilse and his Newcastle Knights in 2005 or the Brisbane Broncos in a hotel toilet last year, the idea of treating all women as garbage seems firmly established as a guiding principle.

No wonder, then, that so many are rushing to defend their code against the fallout from this week’s ABC Four Corners documentary, which lifted the lid on a Christchurch woman’s historic sexual abuse allegations against several Cronulla Sharks players, including Matthew Johns. She was asking for it, apparently. It was consensual, they argued. As always, so quick to judge the women’s behaviour; so reluctant to condemn that of the players.

What were the details again? Up to six of them having turns with her; others standing around masturbating and still others just laughing and gawking. Classy stuff, indeed.

We shouldn’t kid ourselves, either, that this has anything to do with lust; it hasn’t. Power tripping and a pack mentality are the prerequisites for men who abuse women in this manner. It’s even been claimed that some NRL coaches have hired prostitutes for their players to work over, in order to boost the team bonding process. Over the past decade, in a competition that’s only recently been expanded to 16 teams, 10 sexual assault allegations have been levelled. NRL boss David Gallop is right to be outraged.

Mothers of young, sport-loving sons should not have to think twice about the current climate before deciding that the league environment is better avoided. Just the suggestion that young sportsmen will be encouraged to act like wild animals towards the opposite gender, taking everything they can get and exploiting all carnal opportunities, should presumably act as a massive recruitment obstacle. It’s not the law that separates humanity from barbarism, after all. It’s morality; judgement.

It’s about the ability to not take advantage of someone’s vulnerability, even when there is an opportunity. It’s about the ability to have some compassion, not to mention an independent mind. The Sharks players might not have been guilty of breaking the law in Christchurch; but neither would they have been if they’d gang-banged an 80-year-old. That they hadn’t acted illegally should hardly be interpreted as an endorsement of their behaviour.

These guys might not be rapists, but they are the next worst thing. They are men who would be horrified to discover their mothers, wives, girlfriends or daughters associated with such behaviour, yet are hypocritical enough to take advantage of an apparently anonymous opportunity themselves. Why? Because they feel lionised by their sporting success; because they feel they can flout social norms, and, above all, because they think they can get away with it.

A solution? The Sydney Roosters have already touched on the most obvious path to redemption, by involving the players’ wives, partners and children far more closely when the team is playing away from home. It’s interesting, isn’t it? That the Matthew Johns of this world would never indulge in group sex if their partners were in town; only when they were on their own, accompanied by male team-mates. Talk about men behaving badly.

If anyone still disputes that the Sharks players were judged undeservedly this week, they should take note of the reaction from Johns’ wife, Trish, who was reported to be physically ill after watching her husband answer questions about the incident during an interview on Channel Nine’s A Current Affair. At one stage, while denying almost everything except infidelity and stupidity, he unwittingly managed to sound like Bill Clinton. “I did not commit an act of abuse to that woman,” he told the interviewer.

The Four Corners’ doco was a story about arrogance and misogyny. It was also a reminder about what can go wrong when we create a culture in which elite sporting figures are adulated, feted, and revered, no matter how immoral their behaviour may be outside the field of competition. Not to mention a sobering warning for those Kiwis who continue to wish we had more of Australia’s “winning” mentality.

Clearly, that doesn’t come without some baggage.

 

Rugby blokes

Asher over at Anarchia has been publishing the writing on power and oppression he is doing at university.  There’s been some thought-provoking stuff there about race and class in Aotearoa, and his most recent looks at the impact of rugby culture on how men here “do” masculinity.

Good stuff – would have personally liked to see some stuff in there about players and violence against women as well.  Sitiveni Sivivatu and his history of partner violence – which includes pleading guilty to assault.  All Black coach Graham Henry’s endorsement (later withdrawn) of Tony Veitch. 

Or the most recent display of complete and utter contempt of women - not rugby this time but league – in an incident the players call “group sex” and the one woman in the room calls “degrading sexual violation”:

“They were the players, they started it off and they did lots of the main stuff, but then there were four other guys, five other guys . . . who did heaps of gross other stuff and they’re just as bad as those two.

Other people were just standing around with no clothes on; so many people were just standing there with their pants off, with no clothes on, just watching like it was a show. Just getting off on the other guys.

I was just stunned and shocked. I didn’t help them do anything.”

The woman said she had been told by police that the Sharks players were arguing it was consensual.

“If it was consented, they did nothing wrong. It was morally wrong, but not criminally wrong if I consented.

It’s all of them saying it was consented, against me.”

Male sport has a lot to answer for alright.  Thanks Asher

 

Being queer is sooo yesterday….

….according to Bridget Saunders from the Sunday Star Times:

I guess gayness is no longer interesting because it is so accepted now. It is everywhere and no one much cares. There is minimal stigma if any, and actually,  sometimes there is kudos. Sometimes it is a help to your career (makeup artistry, for example).

Some black American commentator said, after Obama got in, he (the commentator) was colour blind now.

What he meant was that colour, after Obama’s election, was just not an issue any longer. It just wasn’t interesting.

And that is how I see gayness. It is like having dark roots on blonde hair. It used to be a no-no but nowadays it’s so accepted it’s not worth commenting on. It just is.

Well, bless my cotton socks, good old Obama has got rid of racism in just a few months after all those hundreds of years of genocide, slavery, economic oppression, sexual violence, forced break-ups of families…..

He’s one clever man, that Obama.

But back to the gayness thing.  My guess is Ms Saunders has missed the cultural phenomena – the backlash to greater visibility and acceptance of same-sex desire – known as calling anything you think is naff “gay”.  Some Facebook users think it’s a big enough deal to organise against. 

Then there are those pesky, boring gay men who get themselves killed for being so, well, boring and gay:

Stanley Waipouri RIP (mutilated and bashed to death, 2006)
Robert Hunt RIP (multiple knife wounds, 2004)
Robert Green RIP (shot in back of head, 2004)
Barry Hart RIP (multiple knife wounds, 2003)
David McNee RIP (30 – 50 blows to head, 2003)
John Sorrenson RIP (stabbed in back, 2002)
Jason Johnson RIP (murdered by a father and son pair, 2001)
Jeff Whittington RIP (bashed and stomped, 1999).

And then, of course, there is what young queer people say about their lives.  The Youth 2000 report talked to 10,000 kids in schools in Aotearoa.  Nearly 8% said they were not straight, and of these queer people:

• 25% reported depression symptoms
• 10% reported they had tried to kill themselves in the last 12 months
• 10% reported not feeling safe at school most of the time
• almost 50% had been deliberately hit by another person in the last 12 months, many more than once

So Bridget Saunders, guess I’m not with you on thinking being queer is so yesterday.  But then, maybe we mix with different queer people. 

Darling.