Ideologically Impure

Lauredhel at Hoyden About Town posits a fascinating question - what TV couple defines our decade, the difficult-to-find-a-non-dodgy-nickname-for 00s?

My answers, a bit more fleshed out (and not in any particular order), follow - shouldn’t be any fear of spoilers as NZ TV? Not great with the screening-things-any-time-soon.

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Slight lull in posting here; it’s been a full-on fortnight and I just haven’t had it in me to churn out some nice vicious-yet-coherent posts. I suggest perusing the good folk on the sidebar to the right.

I’ll also paraphrase and flesh out the most useful piece of advice I ever read, when I made the effort to research white privilege: don’t expect the minority to trust you. Trust is earned, and you’re just another commenter who they can’t tell apart from any other commenter. You’re entering someone else’s space, where different rules apply. You get to have the rest of the world for people to assume you’re a wonderful person. Here, you’re just another one of ‘them’, and given the track record of ‘them’, it’s up to you to listen, learn and prove that you’re being thoughtful and honestly trying to examine your privilege.

Anne Onne at The F-Word has the most fantastic post up: Men! Feminism needs you! (Not your privilege…)

It’s everything I always try to express about men’s participation, especially on blogs and in comments where a lot of the normal context-giving elements of human communication aren’t available, only it’s a lot more succinct and eloquent.

Some choice quotes:

Shift the paradigm - something should have to prove it’s not misogynist instead of you assuming it’s perfectly acceptable unless it’s bad enough to offend you as a man

Think about each comment before you send it. Is it adding something to the conversation? Is it really relevant? Be honest with yourself. If you’re really writing about something else, hit the backspace. A thread about rape is not the place to talk about false convictions. Not with a 6% conviction rate. A thread about street harassment is not the place to talk about genuine friendliness. These are not relevant. Women get more latitude than you to discuss tangents, because they’re never going to derail to such an extent with the ‘what about the men’ argument. Unlike you, it’s not in their interests to.

Fan-bloody-tastic.

… which is a joke possibly few will get, since even my more politically-savvy mates seem to forget that ACT is an acronym.

Anyway, via frogblog, Rodney Hide and staff are throwing their toys out of the big crib that is Bowen House, and they’re not sorting them into paper/plastic before they do.

In a show of defiance, some ACT staff have turned their recycling cubes into pen holders and are ignoring the instruction to sort their waste.

GO TEAM! FIGHT THE POWER! SMASH THE NANNY STATE! YOU SHOW THOSE BASTARDS THAT YOU WON’T GIVE A DAMN FOR THE STATE OF THE PLANET JUST BECAUSE IT’S LOGICAL AND SELF-PRESERVATORY AND DOESN’T ACTUALLY TAKE THAT MUCH EFFORT! HOO-RA!

Update: and now this has hit the blogosphere in force, there’s also a round-up of posts at The Hand Mirror, in addition to what I’ve garnered at the end of this post.

…

Via PublicAddress, I learn of a High Court review, instigated by Right to Zygote Life NZ, of the workings of our Abortion Supervisory Committee.

And it’s kind of, do-I-laugh-or-do-I-cry:

In a review of the workings of the Abortion Supervisory Committee, initiated by Right To Life New Zealand, Justice Forrest Miller said there was a reason to doubt the lawfulness of many abortions.

Here’s the deal in the liberal hippie communist paradise of the South Pacific, bastion of human rights and progressive thinking (see also Women’s Suffrage, Abyssinia, nukes, Georgina Beyer):

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As seen at The Hand Mirror:

Andrew Cushen, a Masters student of Political Studies at Auckland, is writing his thesis on political blogging in Aotearoa NZ and needs some help from those of us in Blogland.

He’s doing two anonymous online surveys - one for those who identify as political bloggers (takes about 20 minutes), and the other for those who read political blogs (takes no more than five minutes).

Have at it!

And while we’re on the topic of ticky-boxy-fun, this is awesome:

My name is Jaimie Veale, I am undertaking this research for my Doctoral thesis in psychology at Massey University. This research is testing a model that I developed to explain the development of gender-variance e.g. transsexualism, transvestism, and other forms of gender diversity. If you would like to know more about this model, you will be given the opportunity at the end of the questionnaire to read a more detailed explanation, and comment on whether you believe it is feasible.

Because you won’t be giving any information that will identify you, you and all the other participants in this project will be completely anonymous. In addition, the Apache server used to collect this data provides a high level of security.

If you wish to participate, you complete a multiple-choice survey of approximately 150 items. I estimate that this will take 30-55 minutes for you to complete. Completion and submission of the questionnaire implies acknowledgement you are over the age of 16 and give consent.

Really interesting questions, and amazingly inoffensive, and I cannot plug it more! Plus, not limited to NZers.

… nor has there been a marked rise in calves born with two heads or other such examples of fantastic Apocalyptic imagery.

Yes, it’s been five whole years now since the enactment of my favourite piece of legislation from our government, the Prostitution Reform Act.* First, a little retrospective: the amazing Georgina Beyer’s fantastic, inspiring speech during the Parliamentary debate:

It provides people like me at that time with some form of redress for the brutalisation that might happen when a client pulls a knife. The horror of that situation is that it could be a life and death one—one does not know—but it would have been nice to know that instead of having to deal out justice afterwards to that person myself, I might have been able to approach the authorities—the police in this case—and say: “I was raped, and, yes, I’m a prostitute, and, no, it was not right that I should have been raped, because I said no, and it was not paid attention to.”

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Worst house-moving in the history of domiciles. On the plus side, I had forgotten how AWESOME a steaming-hot bath is.

Anyways, some good reading to tide you over till I get some real writing done:

The Inaugural Down Under Feminists Carnival is up at Hoyden About Town. If that doesn’t keep you busy, there’s nothing for it but a Rubik’s Cube.

Concerned of Linwood has a nice piece up about the lobbyists I hate even more than Family First - our own “Sensible” Sentencing Trust.

And in case you were in need of a bit of a giggle, Jolisa over at Public Address brings the goods (hopefully that link works, my computer is being flighty) with her son’s conclusion as to why people* dislike hoodies:

Well, I said, some young people like to wear outfits with hoods, because they think it looks cool. Whereas some older people think the hoods look really dodgy and threatening.

He thought about it for a moment and then lit up.

“Oh, I get it. They think you’re a dementor!”

And for something completely different, a plug for my current webcomic obsession, Darths & Droids: Because The Phantom Menace is just so much better if you assume it was a slightly chaotic RPG campaign. Warning: may contain jokes about dice.

*If by “people” I mean “those who enjoy demonizing Da Yoof and damning their comfortable clothing”.

Via a Feminist Bookmark Alert at Hoyden About Town, this post on street harassment at The F-Word … well, it should be thought-provoking. The fact that almost every woman on the planet has at some time faced harassment, threats, or abuse from random strangers on the street - and the fact that this is almost invariably sexualised, so please spare me the “But TEH MENZ get hassled too, honest!” - should be shocking and unbelievable.

But it isn’t, to me.

Last week I was walking to a dance class at the Ungodly Hour of 7.00 pm. It’s been an absolute fright of a winter in these parts, so I was in black stockings, knee-length skirt, big fluffy scarf and bulky hoodie. My shoes were flat and plain. I had a backpack on.

And as a small red car full of young white men sped past, one wound down his window and shouted, “HEY BABY, HOW MUCH?” at me.

I’m amazed how quickly I managed to regain control of my thoughts and flip the wankers off. And then I felt shaky, and nervous, and kept looking around expecting the car to come back, and thought about the front cover of my copy of Against Our Will, with the words writ large: “a conscious process by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.” And after my class I asked my teacher to give me a lift home - because at 8.30, on a weeknight, in a well-lit area of a pretty bloody safe city, I did not want to be a woman walking home alone.

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A proposal has been formed by Victoria University of Wellington that will effectively gut and destroy its School of Gender and Women’s Studies.

This proposal makes approximately no sense, and I don’t even have to use specifically-feminist arguments to explain why.

1. The University claims it wants to focus on research levels (= money). GWS, for having only 2 full-time lecturers and a total staff of under 10, produces a phenomenal level of research publication for its size.
2. Going where the money and prestige are, the University further wants to encourage postgraduate study. GWS has (wait for it) around TEN PhDs currently underway. It enjoys the highest rate of postgraduate study for its size in the entire university.
3. You want even more money? GWS is one of the best programmes of its kind not just within NZ but internationally, and draws one HELL of a lot of interest and students from all over.

The case for destroying I mean restructuring GWS is even weaker than the one they tried to build against the Film department only a month or two ago, and they’re still under the impression that sneaking this through and not informing key stakeholders until the day after submissions close is somehow going to Fool Us All.

Well, tough luck. Because this Wednesday, 28 May, 12 noon, meeting in the courtyard of the Hunter Building, there is a PROTEST. Not just for GWS. For all the departments and programmes that could be next in line for this kind of undemocratic, illogical, someone-read-an-article-in-an-overseas-magazine-and-thought-it-would-look-Efficient-and-Modern-to-do-it-here BULLSHIT.

I certainly encourage all of you in Wellington NZ to come along for some direct action and banana cake.