And yet, still no sign of the Herald’s DEMOCRACY UNDER ATTACK banner …

You might think the legal/policy arrangements around reimbursing carers of adults with disabilities would be a bit of a minority issue which the vast majority of New Zealanders don’t have to worry about, due to their able-bodied privilege.

But you’d be wrong, because right now that issue is the site for the National government’s most egregious shitting-upon of basic concepts of justice.

Take it away, Andrew Geddis.

What’s a good way, you might ask, to create a policy on paying family caregivers without running the risk of it being overturned? And the answer I assume you’d give is “make sure that the policy isn’t unlawfully discriminatory, so there is no reason for this to happen.” If so, you are an idiot. Because there’s a far, far better way to respond.

You simply tell the Human Rights Review Tribunal and the courts that they are not allowed to look at the policy and decide whether or not it is unlawfully discriminatory.

I’d just like to end with a little thought experiment for the class: imagine that Labour were in power and passed any legislation – say, to plant more native trees on public land, or to make it illegal to waterboard people – and then said “but you can’t see the advice we’ve made this decision on, and you can never ever challenge it.”

Oh, and passed it under urgency.

Just imagine it.  The Kiwiblog commentariat would shit themselves.  W****O**’s servers would probably explode.  You’d hear Cactus Kate’s screams all the way across the Pacific.

Add this to Sky City’s 35-year protection clause and our whole constitution just got taken out back and shot in the head, and National’s turned the corpse into a ventriloquist’s doll and is assuring us that democracy is just resting after a rather vigorous squawk.

We are so fucked.  And the mainstream media will probably do fuck-all about it.

When the right is failing even in terms of their own rhetoric

I really, really hate the phrase “NZ Inc” and would not be said to see all those who use it uncritically fired into the heart of the sun.

We’re not a corporation.  We’re a fucking sovereign nation.

(Damn, that should be the chorus line of an epic anti-neoliberal rap.  If only I were vaguely talented in that particular oeuvre.)

But the thing about the classic righty propaganda about “balancing a budget being just like balancing a chequebook” is that it says so much when they can’t even measure up to their own framing.

Anyway, Russel Norman said it better in a piece over at RadioLive.  Warning for the obnoxious use of black background/white text.

If the New Zealand economy was a business; the management team that has a business plan to increase losses to $17 billion a year while selling some of our best earning assets would be treated as rogue traders.

And yet that is what the National Government is doing to the New Zealand economy.

Through the efforts of its highly paid spin doctors and friends with vested interests, it manages to portray itself as “sound economic managers”.

But the facts just don’t back that up.

…

Finance Minister Bill English is depicted as predictable and safe. Yet the CFO of NZ Inc has been recklessly borrowing money. He started borrowing the minute he took on the job and hasn’t stopped since.

On top of this National gave pay rises (tax cuts) to the wealthy. NZ Inc couldn’t afford this dividend to wealthy investors at this time. It was seriously bad management.

The only fly in the ointment, and the truly depressing thing about all this, is that this is pretty normal business practice in many parts of the NZ private sector.  Look at Solid “oh shit, where did all this debt come from?” Energy.  Look at every collapsed, taking-out-your-life-savings-with-them finance company.

So I guess that the Nats really are running government the way they would run a business.  We just should have double-checked what kind of business.

Unwarranted Budget-related cattiness incoming

Well, at least Diane Vivian got well rewarded for letting Paula Bennett use her as a puppet to shit on beneficiary parents.

Budget Day

Bugger this.  I’m off getting pissed.  Have a macro specifically targeted at the political/trashy History Channel crowd.

 

[Ill-fitting] bras are tools of the patriarchy

This is a great post on some of the basic reasons that bra fitting is a feminist issue.  It predominantly affects women, but not all women have breasts and not all people with breasts are women – and those people thus outside “the norm” have an even worse time of things!

I just want to take one teensy-tiny issue with this bit:

Unsupportive bras mean bouncing and ligament pain, which discourages women from physical activity, thereby keeping them less fit. Putting it like that makes it sound like a huge conspiracy, but

Let me stop you at “but”, friend.  No, I’m not saying there literally is a smoke-filled room somewhere where former Skulls & Bones members twirl their moustaches with glee over blueprints for The Most Uncomfortable Bra Ever, slapping each other on the back and saying “they’ll never be able to jump rope in THIS!”

But let’s think about it this way.  Capitalism requires a steady stream of workers.  Workers have to be born and raised.  Currently, a lot of the birthing and raising is done by people who are firmly identified as “women”.

(Just look at how much of the kerfuffle around marriage equality was that same-sex couples “can’t” make babies, or how men who choose to become pregnant are, well, [insert transphobic hatespeech here].)

That birthing-and-raising of productive little workers is unpaid work.  It’s not even viewed as work.  It’s considered completely demeaning for the non-birthing class (“men”) to perform it (though they will be lionized as heroes for making the “sacrifice” of taking time out to raise their own children).

Why the fuck would a group which makes up just over half of the population put up with this?

Enter bras.  Enter beauty standards.  Enter conflicting, YET VERY VERY IMPORTANT messages beamed into our brains daily about the “right” way to behave, to look.  Enter a situation where skilled, educated people are walking around with Impostor Syndrome because it’s so ingrained to believe that they’re doing something wrong.

(Enter also rape culture, which reinforces the idea that you can never ever feel safe; enter antichoice rhetoric, which is one facet of a whole system dedicated to telling you you don’t really know your own mind and need others to make decisions for you; enter economic disadvantages which push you towards heterosexual cohabitation.

Enter a neverending roundabout of diet advice, childrearing advice, all underscored with the notion that if you’re doing it wrong – and believe me, you ARE doing it wrong – you are basically a completely worthless individual who’s letting the entire species down.)

To completely appropriate/paraphrase a wise thing I read somewhere, you can’t politicise people who are starving, because they’ve got more important things on their minds.  Modern capitalism/patriarchy has worked to make sure that even when women aren’t starving, even when they’ve got huge amounts of privilege, their minds are on things which they’ve been convinced are more important.  They’re getting depression and eating disorders … not rocking the boat.

Why do you think the good old chestnuts about hairy-legged lesbians have such currency?  Because the people who refuse to shave their legs and enter heterosexual relationships and produce the next generation of good little productive workers are threatening the whole system.

It’s not a conspiracy of moustachioed men in a bunker.  But what other word do we have for such a complex, deliberate system of coercing an entire population?

Original link via Good Bras are a Feminist Issue.

An open letter to shock jocks: Please stop apologising

This one goes out to all the people whose employment is entirely based on the fact that they say gratuitously offensive crap into a microphone on a daily basis.

Stop apologising for doing your job.

This isn’t an expression of support, I hasten to add; I’m not one of those “woo yeah fuck the [insert favourite slur here] freedom of speech fuck yeah” fans who inevitably crowd around you when, yet again, you’ve just done your job.

I’m not in any way in favour of what you do.  But I understand that, while there are people equally juvenile and petty and vicious who are willing to tune in to hear your shitty, bigoted utterances, you’re going to have a job.  You’re going to be giving a certain type of audience What They Want.

All I’m asking is that you stop trying to have your offensive cake and eat it offensively too.

When you make tweets comparing a talent show contestant to an iconic literary rape victim [sadly deleted ETA: screenshot courtesy of Daily Blog], I think you know exactly what you’re doing.  It’s part of the role, to be the person who publicly cracks the unoriginal-yet-taboo joke when you see particular names or phrases.  To get all marketing-wank about it, it’s the core of your personal brand.

All I’m asking is that you grow a pair of the gonads of your choice.

Don’t prevaricate about how the offensive joke is obviously a joke.  No one’s taking you literally.  They know it was meant to be a joke – and an offensive one.  Why sell yourself short by undermining its offensiveness?

Don’t apologise “if” people were offended, or claim you didn’t mean to offend anyone.  Your entire existence is dedicated to offending people.  Why publicly question your own success?

(And seriously, if you sincerely didn’t think a crack about Once Were Warriors was going to offend people, maybe see a neurologist because significant parts of your cognition appear to be malfunctioning.)

Don’t promise it’ll never happen again.  Of course it will.  It’s your job.

And don’t whinge when there’s backlash.  You live on backlash the way most people live on oxygen.  What is it they say about people who can dish it out but can’t take it?

Oh, that’s right.  Deep down, all you “shock jocks” are chickenshit douchebags who’ve gotten where you are in life because most of the people who really took your shit to heart either dropped you as a friend, didn’t want to make a scene, and don’t work in radio station senior management.

So you want to stay being paid and famous for telling rape jokes on Twitter … but only as long as no one ever calls you out on it … despite offending them being the entire point.

Stop apologising.  It’s just pathetic.

Random recommended reading

Brittany Mann from Critic magazine spent some time with the Dunedin antichoice protest thugs.  Quote of the day:

I asked him what Voice for Life does, apart from protesting abortions. “Not a lot,” said Les, unabashed. “It used to be called SPUC – Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. But it got mocked.”

Truly, sometimes I cry myself to sleep at night about the fact they’re not called SPUC any more.  The memes write themselves.

Must-read – with trigger warnings for sexual abuse – on Elizabeth Smart’s campaign against judgey abstinence-only sex “education”.

Mexican archbishop admits that he thinks abortion is a worse crime than priests raping children.  It’s one of those, “I’m not really surprised you think this, I’m surprised you’re bullish enough to admit it” things.

Charles Ramsey is a hero, and yet he shouldn’t be, because society shouldn’t make it so normal to ignore [what looks on the surface like] domestic violence.  But of course he’s a man of colour speaking a type of English which gets coded as unintelligent and mock-worthy, so of course he’s been reduced to a meme.  Thanks, racism!

Top 10 best things about Family First’s deregistration notice

Family First have helpfully posted online the full text of the letter and decisions informing Bob McCoskrie of his deregistration as a charity.  I’m not sure why he thought this would be a good idea – maybe he just copy-pastes things on autopilot these days – but we should all be thankful for the lulz.

Note:  IANAL.  The following is based on my own reading of the linked document and I am happy to be corrected in matters of fact.

10.  One of the precedent cases cited by the Charities Commission is Draco. (properly In re Draco Foundation (NZ) Charitable Trust HC WN CIV 2010-485-1275)

This makes sentences like “Draco also approved comments in the guidelines published by the Charities Commission” just really funny in a post-Harry Potter age.

9.  Copy-pasta strikes again!

“But, but we educate people!”  Family First cried, and indeed, educational purposes are a fantastic ground for charitable status.  Unfortunately – and this one gets three numbers all to itself because it’s so awesome – the Charities Registration Board doesn’t think much of the “education” offered by their website:

… the Board considers that, viewed holistically, the Trust’s publications to its website are predominantly opinion pieces intended to promote the Trust’s point of view on controversial social issues.  The Board considers that this description is apt for the news items and media releases.

8.  Your book reports suck

Research!  Family First does research, right?  Wrong:

Thirdly, the Board considers that the research papers commissioned by the Trust do not advance an educational purpose and do constitute propaganda

…

The papers do not represent original research.  With the exception of The Value of Family … the reports (i) do not … provide a balanced and rigorous analysis of the empirical evidence for conclusions reported; and (ii) do contain emotive language and calls to action, and engagement with alternative points of view that is fairly polemical.

7.  Whatever you paid Curia, it was too much

Specifically, the Board considers that the Trust’s activities in commissioning polls do not advance research but rather canvas support for political outcomes advocated by the Trust

Ooops!  Who’d'a thunk it?

6.  If Family First actually gave a fuck about real families, they’d have done better.

A big issue in the consideration of whether an organisation counts as charitable, when it’s saying political things, is the self-evident public good as a matter of law.  The example they use is that saying you promote peace through disarmament doesn’t count, because disarmament-for-disarmament’s-sake isn’t really a matter of law.  Promoting peace through eliminating weapons of mass destruction does count because WMDs are obviously something our law recognises as bad, mmkay.

Unfortunately for Family First:

In particular, the Board rejects the submission that the Trust’s point of view accords with New Zealand’s international and domestic law recognising the rights of the child and support for families.  Neither New Zealand’s international law obligations nor New Zealand’s domestic law favour “the natural family” over other forms of family

Yep.  Promoting one narrow-minded view of the family doesn’t align with our domestic and international laws.  Maybe if Family First actually bothered to advocate on behalf of all families they’d have done better.

5.  That’s just, like, your opinion, maaaaaaaaan

Family First have copy-pasted an “affirmation” from the “World Congress of [limited definitions of] Families” to describe their views.  The whole point of calling it an “affirmation”, of course, is that saying “I affirm the sky is green” sounds a lot more forceful and definitive than “I believe the sky is green.”

Unfortunately,

The Board considers that the Trust’s perspective on family can be fairly described as an opinion on what is best for families and civil society.

…

The Board also considers that the Trust’s perspective on family is one that is controversial in the relevant sense, i.e. that its benefit to the public is not self-evident as a matter of law.

4.  You must be deregistered for the greater good of all charities

After summing up how Family First doesn’t meet the requirements of a charitable organisation:

Accordingly, the Board considers that it is in the public interest to remove the Trust from the register as this will maintain public trust and confidence in the charitable sector.

Yep.  I know, I know, it’s just formulaic legalese, but by Satan and all his little wizards I love the idea that the public of New Zealand will have less faith in / respect for charitable organisations if Family First remains one.

3.  Three strikes and you’re out

This is not simply a matter of Family First forgetting to do some paperwork.  They have been deregistered for failing all three tests the Board has put to them:

• Their purpose is to promote a point of view
• They aren’t promoting religion nor education
• They are trying to “procure governmental actions”, i.e. make policy changes, in line with their views

Not even a couple of sausage sizzles for the orphans could have saved them.

2.  The fact that Family First deliberately avoids mentioning the fundamentalist Judeo-Christian basis of their beliefs is part of their undoing.  

Because while it looks way better to J Public to pretend that you’re just defending “tradition” instead of “extremist teachings which conflict with pretty much everything Jesus had to say about anything”, unfortunately when you’re trying to avoid paying taxes by claiming you’re a religious outfit, it kinda damages your case to never have mentioned religion anywhere in your many many websites.

1.  Bob McCoskrie apparently has no idea how much he’s undermined himself by publishing this document.

Seriously.  Anyone with high-school graduate literacy can read the entire thing, and – barring the technical legal jargon – understand absolutely why Family First was deregistered.  Because they don’t promote education.  Because they’re a political lobby group without even a smattering of charitable deeds to their name.  Because their views are not actually as mainstream as they constantly insist they are.

Thanks, Bob.

 

Abortion and mental health research not as clear-cut as reported; no surprises there

In a previous post I questioned recent research which was widely reported as “proving” that there’s no positive mental health benefit associated with abortion – thus basically “disproving” the idea that abortions are being legitimately permitted on mental health grounds in NZ.

Via some helpful pixies, I was able to obtain a copy of the full article, and … yeah.  No surprises here.

The fact is, it’s a literature review, which revisits the results of previous studies which had pretty inconclusive results regarding the abortion-mental health link, usually because:

• they didn’t distinguish between unwanted and unintended pregnancy
• they didn’t compare people granted abortion against people denied abortion (it’s a lot easier to come to terms with things when you have no other option)
• some of the studies were carried out by people with explicitly antichoice views

So … yeah, pretty much what we already knew.

Here’s the rub, though:

It may also be suggested that the studies reviewed contain multiple problems research design, analysis and interpretation that prevent any clear conclusions from being drawn. In comparison to the ideal of testing the mental benefits of abortion using a randomized controlled trial, it is clear that existing observational studies provide only limited and potentially flawed evidence on the mental health consequences of abortion. However, this observation does not impugn the validity of the conclusion that: at the present time there is no credible scientific evidence demonstrating that abortion has mental health benefits.

So sure, you might say that some/many/all of the studies we looked at were flawed/biased/unscientific, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are no studies which prove the opposite.

Oh, except that:

In addition, it could be suggested that the comparisons made in the study between those having abortion and those having unwanted or unintended pregnancy do not provide an appropriate test of the mental health effects of abortion. A better comparison would be between those having abortion and those refused abortion.

In addressing the research question, we have taken the approach used by the majority of the reviews of the mental health consequences of abortion (Bradshaw and Slade, 2003; Charles et al., 2008; American Psychological Association, 2008; National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health, 2011) by comparing those having abortion with those coming to term with unwanted or unintended pregnancy. Further, to our knowledge, the only study that has compared those having abortion with those refused abortion is the re-analysis of Gilchrist et al. (1995), conducted by the AMRC review.

This re-analysis found that, for a number of outcomes (psychotic illness, non-psychotic illness, self harm), those refused abortion fared worse than those provided with abortion, with this difference being statistically significant (p<0.01) for psychotic illness. This evidence suggests the possibility that further studies making such comparisons could demonstrate positive benefits for abortion.

However, at the present time the evidence is far too limited to conclude that abortion reduces any mental health risks of unwanted or unintended pregnancy.

[Emphasis and paragraph breaks mine.]

Sure, you might raise the totally valid point that unplanned =/= unwanted and this might muddy the results, but fuck you, that’s what everyone else does.  And anyway, there’s a small amount of research which does actually suggest that if we compared apples with apples we’d get different [more accurate] results than when comparing apples and tractors, but fuck you, because there’s not much of that so go away.

And here’s the Bonus Rub Cookie:

A NEW ZEALAND professor whose work has been used by pro-life groups to contend that abortion holds no mental health benefits for pregnant women has said that his research is too limited to make any definitive conclusions.

… are you fucking kidding me.

Look, apparently Dr David Fergusson considers himself prochoice.  Which is great.  And no one wants to be the big scary feminist meany-head who scares off the gentle, placid, well-meaning allies.

But what the fuck is with a supposedly pro-choice researcher putting out research which is too limited to make any definitive conclusions when anyone with half a fucking ounce of awareness would understand exactly how said limited research will be twisted to fuck with the lives of pregnant people?

Is there some kind of “papers published” quota researchers have to meet?  With no other important KPIs like “papers must be actual good research” or anything?

Why the fuck didn’t I go into academia?

Another issue with the original research:  here’s the five “mental health outcomes” measured, which were then equated with a general picture of “mental health”:

anxiety, depression, alcohol misuse, illicit drug use/
misuse, and suicidal behaviour.

… all of which are pretty complex things.  I mean, are we really going to equate a once–pregnant person who smokes the occasional joint among friends with a once-pregnant person who starts huffing paint thinner to get through the day?  Is post-partum depression – common even in pregnant people who are happy and enthusiastic about having a baby – being included and thus compared with other types of depression which might exist regardless of birth status?  Do we ignore the fact that suicidality might be affected by the gigantic social pressure on new parents not to “abandon” their infants?

Sure, some of these questions may merely highlight my own lack of clinical psychological training, but come on.  Even the dude who wrote the damn article thinks it doesn’t pass muster.

~

H/T Alison McCulloch and the magic pixies.

New rule: The Onion

This was originally going to be a random recommended reading link, but then I got ranty.

The Onion is now officially covered by the Jezebel Rule, because there’s nothing satirical about fantasizing about the violent death of a black woman.  And since they fired the person who called Quvenzhané Wallis a cunt, they’re also covered by the Hell Pizza rule, i.e. “if you have multiple employees who will make these kind of fuckups, you don’t get to keep playing the “just one employee fucked up” card”.

Also:  personally, I really really hate people equating shit like this to A Modest Proposal.  When Swift uses utterly dehumanizing language and tone towards the Irish babies he proposes to farm for eating, it’s because he’s satirizing the language and tone other people use towards Irish families.  He’s writing shitty things to highlight shitty things.  Also, dude was Anglo-Irish.

For The Onion’s latest vile piece to be equivalent, The Onion would have to be satirizing the callous and fetishistic way media discuss violence against women of colour.  (Compare with how The Civilian manages near-perfect mimicry of the standard NZ media tone.)  Which they’re clearly not, because then they might have written something like “TMZ.com wins 2012 Pulitzer for groundbreaking uploading of graphic imagery.  Judges commended the website’s lack of ethical fibre in a fearless pursuit of pageviews at the expense of people’s privacy and safety.”

What The Onion appears to be trying to satirize – if we grant that the article is meant to be satire – is Chris Brown’s continuing lack of ownership over his own violence.  But instead of saying something like, “Tearful Chris Brown finally admits to Barbara Walters that he’s never done anything wrong ever”, the article is all about Rihanna.  All about committing acts of violence towards Rihanna.  All about Chris-Brown-as-perpetual-violent-abuser and Rihanna-as-perpetual-victim.

Which brings up the topic of The Onion’s apparent indifference to the violence of white male celebrities.  Their most recent articles on Charlie Sheen – who’s cropped up as a counter-example on Twitter a few times – include

Responsible, Thoughtful Nation Decides To Ignore Charlie Sheen Situation

… which delivers a serious poke at the everyday people who continue to prop up the gossip industry while simultaneously decrying its lack of ethics, and

A Troubled Sheen

… which includes a timeline of his fall from grace and pointedly criticises TV networks’ ongoing deference to him:

2010: CBS implores Sheen to keep doing whatever the hell he wants, but with at least the tiniest goddamn bit of discretion

Neither article mentions his history of domestic violence – which could be read as problematic in that it erases his serious crimes in favour of buying into the “wacky Charlie Sheen is wacky” narrative – but I’m really quite happy for The Onion to err, however unintentionally, on the side of basic decency with that one.  

Chris Brown’s violence, on the other hand?  Hi-larious.

There was a time, I’m sure, when The Onion was brilliant and edgy and breathtakingly funny.  But if y’all didn’t get the hint that they’d turned to the dark side after the whole paywall thing, let this be your final straw.

(And no, I’m not linking to The Onion, because that’s their entire fucking plan.)