I often learn from the ideas or concepts or experiences or political analysis of people with whom I disagree, sometimes vehemently, about other things.

When I went to see the leader of the Black Panther Party in London a few years ago, he was fascinating on race, and much more thoughtful about gender in terms of African American women’s experiences than I’d expected.  But he called anyone he didn’t agree with a faggot.  Repeatedly.  This was unchallenged by everyone there, including me and my straight but not homophobic Black British friend.  The reasons I didn’t challenge were complex – partly I didn’t think I was going to change his mind, partly I was very aware of being nearly the only white person in the room, partly I was there to learn about a struggle I was less familiar with than battling homophobia.

So in theory I could go and see Germaine Greer, second wave feminist legend, author of one of the most important feminist texts in the 1970s, exponent of women’s liberation rather than just equality with men (which men?),  the butt of much misogynist hatred.

Oh, and a raving, offensive, hateful transphobe.

Who deliberately outed transwomen in the 1980s and 1990s.  Knowing that there were no protections for those transwoman from reactions like being fired, or losing their homes, or facing transphobic violence and rejection from their communities.

I could forgive Germaine this if it was a view she held thirty years ago, and after listening to transpeople and those for whom the gender binary just does not fit, she could re-examine those views.  After all, we’re all capable of getting things wrong and changing our minds.  But some of this transphobia is recent, and even though I abhor the way Germaine is criticised on the basis of her age, the fact is this is hate speech.

I’ve loved being a girl since I knew I was one, I’ve loved messing with gender in terms of what I wear or how I cut my hair since I had control over these things.  I love that I can throw seventy metres, like a girl, and do many, many other things which traditional gender roles told me I shouldn’t.

Despite my gender play, I’m comfortable in the gender I was assigned at birth.  This means going to see Germaine would feel like treachery to those experiencing an oppression I’m privileged around.  A very different thing, for me, than listening to an expert in challenging racism express homophobia.

Protest anyone?

I do know I hate the poster I walk past in their national office every morning, which, irritatingly enough I can’t seem to find online. All I can find is this, part of one of their Annual Reports:

This is some of the poster adorning their national office, but not all. The rest of it features more white men. In fact, it ends up with men outnumbering women (despite there being 122 women to every 100 men after age 65) and with no one recognisably Pacifica or Maori. I don’t think the woman second from the left on the bottom features either, I think the sole representative of people of colour is the man on the right at the bottom.

Obviously there’s dangers in judging ethnicity or cultural identity by just looking at people, but I think it should be possible for Age Concern to have recognisably Maori and Pacifica symbols and people on their main poster, just like the rest of the Annual Report cover.

Then there’s what people are doing. In this version, and in the national office poster, the women are smiling. The men are pointing or playing sport and I think there might be another white man doing something important, but we don’t want women to be worrying our pretty heads with such things, do we?

I’m going to one cantankerous old woman, let me tell you, if all I get to do is smile after I turn 65. Best I start wearing purple now.

But surrounding the facebook discussion she focused on, and in many other online debates I’ve seen more recently, is the repeated idea that there is a clear difference between sex and rape.  That we shouldn’t talk about forced sex, or coerced sex, or unwanted sex – because those things are not sex, they are rape.  That women can tell the difference between sex and rape – and therefore I’m assuming by inference, men can too – because rape and consensual sex are qualitatively different experiences.

Clearly that’s true for some of us, and that’s wonderful.  Wonderful to be able to draw clear distinctions around sex we want, and sexualised experiences we didn’t want, or were coerced into, or were forced into.  Rapes.

But it’s simply not true for many of us, and herein lies the rub.  In trying to separate off rape so cleanly, we are, I think, not counting experiences which not only in some cases meet legal thresholds for sexual violence, but in others meet ethical thresholds for sexual interactions which are not mutual, not enthusiastic and not respectful of both (or more) people’s desires and personhoods.  And in not counting those experiences, we do those who survived them the enormous disservice of supporting rape culture because we’re leaving those experiences as “just sex”.

I get that’s not the intention of this nice, clear-cut distinction.  And I truly celebrate that many of us feel able to draw such clear lines from our own experiences.

But let’s try some scenarios.  Woman, man, together for years, parents.  Great exploratory sex for the early part of their relationship.  Consensual negotiation of group sex with other people.  As the relationship goes on, male partner wants sex (in this case, vaginal intercourse) more often than female partner.  He sulks if she doesn’t say yes.  He will only do nice things for her if she says yes.  He keeps pestering her until she says yes.  He starts watching porn and asking her to try things she’s not interested in, because he tells her he’s not having sex enough and he needs to.

She loves him, and often likes having sex with him.  By the time their relationship ends however, after this going on for more than a decade, he makes her skin crawl.

Or how about this?  Two men, mutual attraction, playful date, go home together, begin kissing and playing, begin mutually undressing.  One man realises he doesn’t feel ready to have sex (in this case, anal intercourse), but also realises if he tries to stop what’s happening, he might not be able to.  Decides to allow intercourse because he says it was going to happen anyway.  Goes home, never speaks to his date again, much to his date’s surprise.

Or what about this?  Bi couple hanging out with another bi friend, longstanding friendships, whenever the three party together the couple repeatedly try to get the other person to be sexual with them – but only when they are all chemically enhanced.

In none of these three “real-life” scenarios are the people concerned calling what is happening rape.  Outside observers might, particularly with the first two, and depending on outcome, possibly with the last one.  But is this ok, to describe others’ experiences in terms they don’t use for themselves?

That’s why I use the phrases unwanted, coerced and forced sex, especially when I’m exploring with someone how they understand an experience.  Because sometimes those phrases capture dynamics around how we enact sexual encounters we are participating in that are not captured by “rape” for the people concerned.  They capture the fact that what we want in a sexual interaction can change over time (both in terms of repeated sexual encounters and in terms of a one-off experience).  They capture the fact that in this world as it stands, gendered scripts can create completely different understandings of mutual experiences.  Being masculine means you hunt and gather sex because you want it all the time and you know how to do it because you da man, and being feminine means you gate-keep sex because giving it up devalues you, and holding onto it makes you moral and worthwhile and pure, and besides you don’t really like it anyway, do you?

These scripts are enormously harmful of course, we all know that.  Psychologist Nicola Gavey calls them the cultural scaffolding of rape when she pays attention to how often experiences of “just sex” actually meet legal thresholds for rape.

There’s two parts to challenging this.  One is to sit with the ambiguity of people’s lived experiences – and unpack it experience by experience – rather than pretend that rape can always easily be distinguished from “just sex.”

The other is for those active in challenging sexual violence to continue to describe how most sexual violence happens – that we usually know the perpetrator, that it usually happens in our homes or the homes of the perpetrator not in dark alleyways, that people who are vulnerable are targeted, that it’s not usually “violent” in terms of other injuries, that no one has the right to do anything sexual to your body that you are not happy with – so we can continue to take rape culture apart, and enhance every person’s entitlement to joyful, respectful, fun sexual experiences.

But I digress.

Fantastic series of posts at Stop Street Harassment which I’m only just now catching up with, and which complements nicely the fabulous work of the Wellington Young Feminist Collective in bringing Hollaback to Wellie.

Stop Street Harassment is:

a resource center where visitors can access lists of statistics, articles, films, and campaigns around street harassment as well as ideas for action to stop street harassment in their community.

Stop Street Harassment also provides people with a place to share their stories. International Anti-Street Harassment Week is one of Stop Street Harassment’s campaigns.

So the posts I enjoyed – post one details international successes in stopping street harassment, from new laws in Chile and Saudi Arabia to UN awards for Egyptian groups combating street harassment.

Post two lists new or expanded campaigns world-wide, including of course the extraordinary phenomena for 2011 that was Slutwalk.

Post four are street harassment stories from people who stood up to harassers. Inspiring and fabulous, and brings me to my last feminist act for 2011.

Walking home after eating ripe strawberries in the spa in the local aquatic centre (read on, that’s not the feminist act ), I notice a man with both hands down his pants sitting at my local bus stop, masturbating and leering at me as I walk past.

I sneer – which believe me, is quite fearsome – walk on for twenty metres, call the police, then follow him down the road when he starts to move so that when the police arrive, they can take a statement from me and deal with him. I did have to discuss the law with the police officer, but all in all, while not the loveliest way to wind down the year, far better than letting the guy get away with taking over my neighbourhood.

Let’s hope 2012 has more lying in spa pools with strawberries, and less wankers in my street.

Anyway, my mother loves this album, so I buy it, and tell the salesperson why because I’m that pretentious, and I keep it for her, sitting on my dresser.

Until she’s dying in hospital. I tell Mum what her christmas present is one afternoon when we’re alone, because I want to give her the pleasure of receiving, even though we both know she won’t get to unwrap it under the tree. She coughs and says “I’m not surprised that album is still being made, it’s so good.” I hope this is ironic, but I fear it was earnest.

We’re doing christmas differently this year. Today’s my last day at work, before being picked up by my father and brother to go across on the ferry and drive to Nelson – obviously we booked a while back – for a week.

We’ve never gone away as a family at christmas.

We’re eating our christmas lunch out, at some posh place near Mapua, which has promised to cook me special vegetarian food since their menu is pure animal.

We’ve never not spent the day at home, cooking and eating and drinking and hanging out with friends and each other.

We’ve never not been with Mum.

Yet so much will be the same. I’ve made two of Mum’s fudges and her strawberry ice cream. Dad’s made Mum’s christmas cake. My sister’s made her biscuits and truffles. We will play board games and listen to Christmas carols. I’ll give Dolly and Kenny to the whole family, and we’ll have a laugh and, for some of us, probably a cry too. My brother and I will be the ones who cry.

So we’ll have presents, and every one of us will cook something delicious for the others, and we’ll play backyard cricket and compete over sudoku and Dad will pick at least one fight about politics per day, mostly with me, and my brother will obsess about the weather and my sister will read ten books and I will need to go off for a walk or do some yoga to stay sane (ish), even though I love my family.

In a way, this year is about our family now, and how we re-form together, since we’re no longer the family we were this time last year, with my mother. I will miss her horribly, but I’m excited about the new stuff too, and looking forward to the familiar. I’m even kinda keen to hear Dolly and Kenny.

Just the once mind.

I hope everyone gets the chance to spend some time with people they love this christmas, and celebrate the time or enjoy some peace. Ciao for now.

I want to look at context here, specifically the context of the last few years and specialist funding for counselling for survivors of sexual violence from ACC.

In October 2009, ACC changed the way it funded counselling for survivors of sexual violence, introducing a number of constraints and barriers they called the “Clinical Pathway.” This Pathway was essentially ripped up after a six month review by an independent review team, because it was causing harm without any “legislative or clinical reason.” The review came back in September 2010.

This bolt-from-nowhere was introduced without consultation to a sector which we know from the “comprehensive road-map” was already struggling to meet community need. It led to survivors deciding not to even try to go through what ASAH called at the time an “outrageously inhumane” process to access help. It also meant the sexual violence intervention sector, including ASAH, had to mobilise to prove what we already knew – that appropriate, skilled, specialist support and counselling is critical to recovery after sexual violence for many survivors.

Recent information released from ACC under the Official Information Act demonstrates just how disastrous the Clinical Pathway has been – for both survivors and the dangerously underfunded specialist sector which tries to supports them on their way past surviving to thriving.

Numbers of clients dropping from the moment the new Pathway was introduced, continuing after ACC recognised the Pathway was inappropriate and were instructed to make changes to address the problems.

Maybe more relevant to what is happening now for ASAH – and for every agency working in the specialist sexual violence intervention sector – let’s look at ACC funding for specialist counselling over the last few years:

Does this bear repeating? In 2009, the Report for the Taskforce for Action on Sexual Violence said the sexual violence intervention sector needed “urgent and immediate” funding. In 2009, one of the most major funders of this specialist work began slashing funding to that very same sector, and the slashing hasn’t stopped even after an independent review order.

So what will our new government do about it? Time to step up and use your mandate for good, Mr Key.

These stories do not belong to everyone equally, because like all stories they are written from particular points of view, but they have power to both create and obscure social relationships in Aotearoa.

So there’s lots of historical evidence colonisers coming to New Zealand post 1840 wanted to create a “better Britain” in which the rigid and vicious class hierarchy of England was absent, Pakeha and Maori would have the “best race relations in the world” and in the words of politician William Pember Reeves, women were able to vote for the first time in the world because “they simply asked for the vote, and we simply gave it to them.”

All of these stories are contested. Because simply believing you are more egalitarian, less racist and more valuing of equality for women does make these things true. In fact, it can make it even harder, for those of us living within the story of an equal society, to recognise discrimination.

This troubles me in the case of Phillip Cottrell, a man viciously attacked in the street in Wellington, who died in hospital this week. The Police don’t know why he was attacked, who he was attacked by, or which weapon was used to kill him. In fact, the Police did not even realise he was gay until asked in a press conference if sexuality could be a factor.

Yet Detective Senior Sergeant Scott Miller can say, in a press statementdoing the rounds of the queer community:

“We do not believe Mr Cottrell’s sexual orientation was a factor in his death. Any member of the glbti community who has serious safety concerns or has any relevant information in relation to this investigation, should contact Wellington Police on (04) 381 2000 or phone Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.”

Was Phillip Cottrell attacked on a Wellington street because he was queer? I don’t know, but it wouldn’t be the first time in the city I love that a beautiful queer man was hurt, simply for looking like he loved men. When I talk with young people about sexual violence, queer men in Wellington report repeated experiences of being attacked in the street because they break masculinity rules.

The Police should not be ruling out hate crime yet. They should not be ruling out hate crime until they catch who killed Phillip Cottrell, and find out why. Telling us sexual orientation was not a motivator does not “allay the fears” of the queer community – it tells us the Police have decided to ignore sexuality before they know what happened – and, as importantly, it does nothing to honour the memory of Phillip Cottrell.

“the most comprehensive roadmap on sexual violence prevention and services that any New Zealand government has ever received. There are no quick-fix solutions when it comes to sexual violence and the Government is grateful for the guidance this report provides.”

The Report for the Taskforce for Action on Sexual Violence started life under the last Labour Government and revealed decades of under-funding of services for survivors, family/whanau, and those with sexually harmful behaviour.

The 2009 comprehensive roadmap called for “urgent and immediate” funding to ensure services in the community could continue, let alone develop. Did you know most crisis line services in Aotearoa are run by volunteers? And that many services have wait lists to see clients, just because there are not enough paid staff?

Most survivors cannot contain their needs to nine to five. Firstly because that’s not when most rapes happen. And secondly because it’s not when many survivors need to talk about flashbacks and terror, receive help to cope – that’s at night, or on the weekend, or when something reminds them of what happened to them, or when they feel unsafe.

At the moment one of the many marvellous helplines open 24 hours a day, seven days a week for survivors to call is Auckland Sexual Abuse Help. They run the only helpline in Auckland (there are others in South Auckland) which can respond if someone is raped and needs help going to the Police or medical services.

While Refuge services in Auckland are cutting back their hours because they are too poorly funded, it’s even worse at ASAH, which has been working with survivors for
29 years. In January 2012, unless some “urgent and immediate” funding materialises, ASAH will no longer be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

You can sign a petition asking the government to sort this out before Auckland survivors lose their only 24 hour resource. Or you could email the new Minister for Women’s Affairs, Jo Goodhew, and the new Minister of Justice, Judith Collins, or how about the seasoned Minister for Social Development, Paula Bennett.

Perhaps remind them of the comprehensive road-map, and the distance we still have to travel before our services responding to sexual violence are available to all who need them, whenever they need them. This will not be the only service closing, unless we start following that road-map pretty damn soon.

He served a four year jail term for this offence. Last year, he served another year jail term for stealing another woman’s underwear, ripping it, and returning it to her house. The judge who sentenced him for the second sexual offence called him a “high-risk recidivist offender”. What this means is that it’s unlikely he has accessed a full sexual offending programme while in prison, as these programmes have low – 5% in the last NZ study – recidivism rates.

What this also means, of course, is that a woman is now living next to a man who raped her. Apparently he can see into rooms of her house. She reported the rape, went to court, answered all the questions put to her, and took out a protection order to protect herself from him.

Most of the media coverage has focused on how awful it is that the law can do nothing.

Southern District police area commander Inspector Lane Todd confirmed that police had no legislative power to prevent Crofts from living next door to his victim unless he committed another offence.

This is absolute nonsense, and it infuriates me that the media has swallowed it. Let’s look at the legislation, specifically the standard conditions for a protection order which state that the respondent (person the order is against) cannot:

watch, loiter near, or prevent or hinder access to or from, the protected person’s place of residence, business, employment, educational institution, or any other place that the protected person visits often;

And then there are the special conditions – which, if I was supporting this woman and this was what she wanted, I’d be going back to Family Court with her to access:

Where the court makes a protection order, it may impose any conditions that are reasonably necessary, in the opinion of the court, to protect the protected person from further domestic violence by the respondent, or the associated respondent, or both.

Living next door to the man who raped you, who knew you lived there when he chose his new home, is not a reasonable expectation in a country which takes sexual and domestic violence seriously. The Police have the tools to deal with this situation, and they are choosing not to use them. Yet again, the state is failing to protect survivors of sexual or domestic violence.

That’s the real story here. Our legislation, in this instance, is fine. It’s the failure of the state to implement our legislation which is the problem.