Tagged: fuck you i won’t do what you tell me

Fighting the patriarchy in lipstick vol. 1

This post got a little long, so tune in tomorrow for part 2, in which I reserve the right to manage my own spoons, we note that a life conforming ain’t perfect either, and I get to the point.  Kinda.

I always end up describing the concept of “choice feminism” to other people in two ways:  if someone’s using it as a serious term they probably mean some variation on “people who pretend every choice they make is feminist because they make it.”  If it’s me arguing against that idea, it’s “let’s stop shitting on other women from orbit just so we can prove that not shaving our legs makes us Superior Patriarchy-Fighting Machines.”

Because no choice is perfect in a society which narrates and interprets our actions against an evil spirit level of power dynamics and biological essentialism.  We can never win; all our choices are, on some level, wrong because we are women making them in a patriarchal society.

Wearing high heels?  You’re just superficial and obsessed with shoes, like a woman (and sucking up to the patriarchy to boot) (and are probably stupid because omg who would ever like shoes which hurt your feet unless they were brainwashed???)  Wearing “sensible” shoes?  Prepare to be marked down as a dyke, as a square, as “not well-presented”, and all the attendant harassment and employment discrimination that comes along with it.

And that’s one of the most trivial examples (albeit one which I, as a very-privileged heel-wearer, take a little to heart).

What the anti-“choice feminist” people want to say, though, is that my wearing of high heels might be fine and dandy, oh, they might be magnanimous enough to tolerate my collaborator’s footwear, but don’t I dare claim that wearing high heels is a feminist action.

Because you know, I do that all the time.

And of course I’d better be okay with being called “stupid”, and I’d better be okay with people questioning my feminist credentials because I’m obviously too selfish/superficial to understand that High Heels Are Tools Of The Man.

To me, this is not only demeaning, and a tad misogynist, it’s also a refusal to even consider that the spectrum of our actions and choices is a bit more extensive than (a) Conforms to patriarchal standards ergo Is Bad vs (b) Doesn’t conform to mainstream patriarchal standards ergo Is Good.

So, a couple of points about why I’m frankly just fine with the label “choice feminist”.

1.  Patriarchal standards aren’t uniform.

Sure, high heels are a great go-to for Things Approved Of By Patriarchy.  If the only role women were ever forced into was that of “sex kitten”.

But there’s also “mother” or “teacher” or “nurse” – the unsexy woman held up for her Nurturing Qualities, her understanding of Her Place, her utter lack of autonomy and an identity focused entirely on being a helpmeet to others.

Betcha she wears “sensible shoes”.

This is one of the ways patriarchy gets us coming and going (well, not usually coming, boom boom!).  There isn’t a perfect choice, even if your one goal in life is to conform (a goal which, I’m going to address later, does not actually make you an evil person.)

2.  That whole “reclaiming” thing

People can, and do, do things which are surface-level conforming, yet present a challenge to kyriarchy/patriarchy.

It is a challenge to conventional beauty standards when a fat person dares to dress, and act, like a sexually-aware being.  It is a challenge to people’s assumptions when a woman changes her name after marriage – and lets them know it’s only because she has no emotional connection to her “maiden” name.  It is a challenge if a sex worker chooses to call herself a whore.

A lot of people take issue with the notion of reclaiming.  I simply submit that shaking up the assumptions of others and causing them to rethink their immediate impressions of things is a form of activism in itself.

Part 2’s up tomorrow.  Tune in then, or comment now, as you like.

Guest post: Phil Goff’s balls

Now up at The Standard and reproduced below for those who choose not to tread there.

Guts. Backbone. Chutzpah. Grit. Will. Vision. Courage.

The one thing all of these words have in common is that Phil Goff could quite easily have used them instead of “balls” when he said:

“It’s time to make a decision that will build a stronger future for New Zealand. We’ve got the balls to do that. John Key doesn’t.”

And I know that Phil knows that, because he’s quoted using at least two of them elsewhere in that story.

Normally you’d cue up a big ol’ Queen of Thorns rant complete with naughty cusswords and all-caps. But seriously? Phil, save us the trouble of firing up a whole two brain cells to figure out your subliminal messaging. We get it. You’re a Man’s Man and you speak like Common People and The Days Of That Nasty Bitch Helen Are Behind Us.

You’ve been listening to Chris Trotter and you wanted to make it very clear, to talkback land and those nasty white-anting progressives at the same time, that you’re A Safe Pair Of Manly Man Hands and Not A Pussy.

You’ve chosen to put yourself firmly, obviously, in the camp (ha) of Damien “gaggle of gays” O’Connor.

Or alternatively you’re a bit shit at figuring out the implications of your own words.

In either case, those of us clinging to a phantom hope of a Labour/Green/Mana-or-Maori coalition actually delivering good outcomes for women, non-whites, queers et al can surely, at this point, take it as read that your party gives not a shit for us if we’re in the way of taking power. (And somehow expects us to vote for you anyway.)

I mean, when Jordan Carter’s pre-emptively parroting the line on Twitter I think we can safely file this crap under “Labour election key message”.

Or I’m just vindictively destroying the Left from within. Again.

A “bad Labour” does, in fact, make it *worse*

I feel like I’ve been making this argument forever, but I’m prompted to make it again by this post at Imperator Fish (the title of which must be satirical … except that as I’ve already predicted, it’s probably going to be used a lot more seriously on 27 November).

Scott states:

Even if there’s some fair comment amidst a great deal of the carping I’ve heard about Labour and its leadership, direction, PR, etc, it doesn’t change the fact that a bad Labour’s still (in my totally unbiased opinion) miles better than a good National.

Well, to continue my horrid carping, Scott, that’s not a fact.  It’s an opinion. Like you just said, in fact.

Here’s a few scenarios to kinda prove my point:

Scenario one: My personal, entirely uneducated, pick

The polls turn out to be [roughly, and surprisingly] on target and National scrapes in with a set of agreements allowing them to deal with ACT, the Maori Party, maybe even the Greens on certain issues, Peter Dunne if he survives.  But they don’t have the numbers to ram through the vicious rightwing agenda they really want to; for the first year or so at least, John Key wants to maintain his fluffy-bunny facade so they only partially sell our state assets, they only slightly cut taxes for the rich, they only mildly shaft the health and education systems.

By 2014, New Zealanders are starting to get bored, John Key probably fucks off to early retirement in Hawaii, Bill English and Steven Joyce enjoy a bloody feud, ACT implodes again, Labour has a proper rejuvenation of personnel and approach, and voila, a mighty [centre-]left victory ensues, in good time to renationalise our assets and save our social safety net.

Scenario two:  Labour at all costs

Labour miraculously scrapes together a coalition with the Greens and Maori Party/Mana.  ACT are trounced, Dunne vanishes, Winston bites off some of National’s base but is once again pretty much robbed when he doesn’t win a seat.

But Labour are still kinda floundering.  They’ve got capital gains tax, and that totally populist “mess about with monetary policy” policy, but Phil Goff still isn’t Helen Clark, one of the Davids gets tired of playing the waiting game (having been banking on a 2011 defeat to shake stuff up), there’s no clear direction, there’s no [authorised this time, please?] pledge card of good solid achievables for people to say “I’m glad I voted for Labour, they’ve ticked off all the boxes and really made a difference.”

2014:  the centre thinks “Well that was a fucking waste of time, wannit?” and goes back to National, which now gets to openly campaign on its vicious rightwing policies under the banner of “you gave Labour a go and they did fuck all, so clearly we’re the only people with answers”.  Labour is a one-term government and the Right claim a firm position as The Only People With A Clear Idea Of What To Do.  We get royally fucked.

Scenario three: my personal dreamland

Labour get their shit together, the All Blacks lose terribly, John Key is caught embezzling charity money, Mana and the Greens stake out nice mutually-exclusive patches of policy and take 15% between them.  A new era of socialist awesomeness dawns.

But that’s not really the point.  The point is that I have no time for the idea that any Labour under any leader with any level of cohesion is better than any National-led government.  It may feed nicely into the beltway left’s firm belief that John Key is actually Beelzebub and when the light of the full moon hits the Beehive on the equinox everyone will “wake up” and realise who their true leaders-by-right are, and it certainly dovetails with that whole entitlement complex that apparently I’ve just been making up in order to personally destroy the Labour Party.

But National, especially National led by John Key and operating in an MMP world which puts them on shaky ground for stable coalition partners, is simply not the reincarnation of Rob Muldoon, or the third coming of Roger Douglas.  And when the alternative is potentially a “bad Labour” which solidly fucks the entire left movement in this country for a decade by failing to produce a concrete, inspiring ideology … yeah.  Fuck that “fact”, Scott.  Whoops, there I go again, sowing discord, I’m such a baaaaaaad leftie.

Well I’ve certainly been put in my place

I’ll be Cossack-dancing like a good little red into the voting booth after this one:

Curran today said she didn’t want to comment. ”I’m not taking it any further. I think there has been enough in the blog-osphere about it, with people going feral, so I’m not going to fuel that further.”

An excellent choice of words, I think.

~

PS. Lew, I think the hyphen in “blog-osphere” means you win this round.

Clare Curran is the reason I will not vote Labour

ETA: Clare Curran has apologised, hat-tip to NRT.  Of course, interestingly it’s about her intentions, which are of course magical, doesn’t refute the idea that Labour does feel entitled to votes (only that she didn’t want to make that argument) and would prefer to bag the Greens than do something about it, and provides a nice platform for people to continue rolling out the “who cares about stupid armchair bloggers anyway???” barrel.  Oh, and no mention of referring to critics as “feral”.  But one supposes it’s a start.

~

… and that’s only slightly hyperbolic and somewhat metaphorical.

Sauce: NRT and matching wine: Dim-Post.

Recent polls have put Labour in the mid-20s.  Which is obviously bad.  It probably means you’re down to the absolute core of people whom you could wheel semi-comatose into a voting booth and they’d manage to tick the red box through sheer force of will.

And I totally understand that as a geeky politically-sarcastic blogger, I am by no means the “middle New Zealand” or the “swing” vote that Labour has lost along with the large proportion of lefties who would honestly rather risk a second NACT term than return the current pack to the Beehive.

But seriously.  How long has Labour, and some of its supporters in the blogosphere, been trying this fucking pathetic “OMG HDU VOTE 4 SUM 1 ELS????” line?  How has it not yet sunk in that you are not our dad, we don’t have to listen to you, and your entitled fucking attitude might just have the tiniest bit to do with our continued lack of interest?

It’s certainly not just Clare Curran, though she’s got the best online history of this, including awesome posts about how everyone should just shut up and pitch in, as though we’re still in a two-party FPP system where there are no alternatives for an angry leftie/progressive.  And it’s really awesome to see a party’s technology spokesperson, the one who’s meant to be all internet-savvy, resort to tired old cliches about how anyone who comments on a blog must by default be a reclusive shut-in with no life and no real friends who never does anything.

It’s also the awesome hypocrisy.  Attacking other members of the left for nicking your rightful votes, while releasing those parties’ decade-old policies as your own with a wide-eyed, “Oh look!  A completely original and earthshaking idea which surely shows how brilliant we are!”  Attacking Idiot/Savant (you know, that guy whose spreadsheets of currently-lodged, previously-lodged and to-be-lodged-in-future-depending-on-results-of-currently-lodged OIA requests could, I assume, save any Excel nerd from ever needing aphrodisiacs) for doing nothing while your own campaign manager has spent a hard day out-cycling a pondscum blogger whose irrelevancy would be a lot easier to throw in the media’s face if only you’d stop fucking dignifying him.

And as always, it’s the amazing ability I have to predict the future.  To know with absolute certainty that when Labour don’t roll Goff, don’t shake up their front bench, don’t make any effort to bring back the alienated left,* they will be on Red Alert the next day having a whinge because why don’t we stupid people realise that our votes are theirs out of manifest destiny.

The 2000 US election was a key part of my teenaged political development.  I could sympathise, a little, with Democrats’ anger at Ralph Nader’s temerity, “stealing” rightful D votes in an entrenched two-party system.  You don’t have that excuse, Labour.  This is New Zealand’s sixth MMP election.  We have options, and you really have to stop acting surprised when we use them.

ETA:  This just in:  I am part of National’s “cadre of attack bloggers”, apparently along with Lew, Danyl, and Russell Brown.

~

*I assume that unless John Key’s mansion is discovered to have a basement corpse collection rivalling that of John Wayne Gacy, the centre will quite happily remain National’s.

Proper mothers only vote for political parties the Establishment likes

The Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party reports some slightly worrying comments from Judge David Burns:

“If Ms X attends and supports the Legalise Cannabis Party the likely influence is that she supports consumption of that substance … That is in direct contradiction to her obligations as a parent because it affects her reliability as a mother,” David Burns said.

First up, no, dude.  The “likely influence” is that she supports legalising consumption of “that substance” (the clue is the big L in the name.)*

Secondly?  Go.  Fuck.  Yourself.  It is fucking ridiculous to act as though your own political views, and your own perception of what is and isn’t mainstream, allows you to make any fucking comment on a person’s ability to responsibly parent their child.

This is an issue whether you agree with legalising marijuana or not.  It would be an issue if a judge said “Parent X supports Act, which wants to fuck our tertiary education system so that’s in direct contradiction to hir obligations as a parent.”  It would be an issue if a judge sid “Parent X supports the Greens, who put the welfare of the planet before our god-mandated duty to procreate, so that’s in direct contradiction to hir obligations as a parent.”

When Ms X is openly dealing pot on the streets and advocating hotboxing your maternity ward during pregnancy,then maybe we can talk about parental obligations.

Supporting a political party which advocates changing our current law and therefore theoretically supports the future legal performance of a currently illegal action?  Kinda what political supporters do, Your Fuckface Honour.

~

*She may well smoke pot too, but that may have more to do with … being a New Zealander.  There’s a reason Tool albums sell really well here.

This slut is made for walking

Soooooooo the big ol’ SlutWalk issue.  The ultimate expression of grrl power ever or massive enforcement of the dominance of cis white voices in gender-oriented progressive politics?  THAT IS THE QUESTION.  Nah, that’s just me being trite.

That Whole Reclaiming Thing

The aspect I probably have the least issue with is the reclaiming of “slut”, because it’s a reclamation I’ve made for years.  Back in my Livejournal days I was a member of a community called sluts4choice, a group with a stated goal of fucking with the heads of antichoice scum by saying yes, we enjoy sex and yes, we can have abortions if that goes wrong and no, we aren’t going to keep our legs shut or apologise or play the moralistic but-my-contraception-failed-and-I’m-monogamous-and-my-life-was-in-danger, the distancing oh-I-support-choice-but-I’ve-never-had-a-dirty-yuck-abortion games.

And it was pretty fucking successful, and pretty damn empowering.  I was a freaking virgin when I joined s4c, and for years during the beginning of my life’s quest to piss off antichoice scum online.  And I was able to take that word, that entire message which was being used to control and monitor people’s (primarily women’s) sexuality and say “So.  Fucking.  What.”

It taught me that “slut” was one of the thermonuclear bombs in the misogynist arsenal (used primarily against white cis women in this way) because it was so fucking amorphous, so completely devoid of concrete meaning, it could be used against any of us and it worked because it was so ingrained in us to flinch, to withdraw, to immediately deny its assault on our (white cis) feminine dignity.

And when a white cis girl says nah, actually, I’m not going to be shamed into silence and I’m not going to make excuses to justify myself and qualify my defence of reproductive justice … well then antichoicers generally get paternalistic and pearl-clutchy and “I am ashamed of you, young lady” (another assault playing to our privilege because of course we should be expected to behave) … but eventually they shut up and fuck off, because there’s plenty of other “oh but I don’t believe abortion should be used irresponsibly” hacks out there to harass into incremental surrender.

These are my reasons.  They don’t resonate with everyone and plenty of people choose not to reclaim slut, like other slurs – and as a lot of the critiques of SlutWalk have shown, it’s not a word that means the same thing to people who aren’t in a predominantly white, cis, middle-class Western environment so it’s not something they want or even feel they can reclaim.

That Whole Privilege Thing

SlutWalk is a protest form very specific to a certain sector/region/culture/demographic of the world, and one that generally has a lot of privilege and often dominates feminist discourse and certainly feminist media coverage.

This is a problem when it means that that privileged demographic gets more than the lion’s share of mainstream public attention, and when organisers start insisting that actually, it is a protest that does work for everyone and if you’re a marginalized person who ain’t feeling it then well you are just wrong because the nice white ladies say so.  It’s a problem when /if the word “slut” becomes the be-all and end-all of sexual policing of people, primarily women, and the only way in which victims of sexual assault are ever silenced.

I don’t think these latter things have necessarily happened in the SlutWalk movement as a whole (the white cis women telling other marginalized women to shut up and get under the umbrella definitely has).

I like to think (and come from a position of privilee in doing so) that kyriarchal policing of sexuality and behaviour is something we can attack at all levels simultaneously: at the level of police officers telling college women not to dress like sluts, at the level of poor women of colour working in service jobs being targets for rich white men like Dominique Strauss-Kahn, at the level of sex workers being assumed to have no ability to refuse consent or treating rape as “theft of services”.

The trick with SlutWalk is to make sure that we don’t just spend all our energy and vigour on it.  The trick is to not sit back afterwards and pat ourselves on the back and then [in many cases, continue to] ignore the voices of other women and other groups who need our white cis asses to get in behind them – without fucking everything up by dominating the conversation and taking over and talking about ourselves all the time, thanks.

The Criticisms I Find Kinda Hilarious

You’re just giving men what they want!

Because “men” (I’m assuming here we use the term to describe “soulless hetero cis automatons of the patriarchy who are motivated solely by the whims of their cocks”) definitely “want” to see a pack of cis women and allies walking down the street chanting Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me and refusing to accept sexual assault being ignored via victim-blaming.

You’re actually making it harder for young girls!

Because young cis girls definitely need to have it reinforced to them that the word slut is bad and evil, and they will totally have the analytical skills to deduce that this is because it’s a patriarchal weapon of oppression.  And they won’t basically end up associating “slut is a bad word” with “being a slut is bad” and ending up in the same fucking mess of questioning their feelings and urges and sexuality that their older sistren are already in.  It would definitely be damaging for them to see large numbers of women marching in the fucking streets saying actually, we refuse to be shamed, actually, we refuse to accept your judgement and in 100% of cases would never lead to an awakening of feminist thought.  At all.

You’re just making this all about what women are wearing!

Sorry, were you paying attention?  Cause, um, I’m not sure how to break this to you, it’s already about what women are wearing, because of that whole don’t dress like sluts to minimize your chances of getting raped thing, which does in fact go back just a liiiiiitle bit further than this one Toronto douchebag (sorry, good peeps of Toronto).

IT’S ALWAYS ABOUT WHAT WOMEN ARE FUCKING WEARING.  Now go back to your pre-101 readings and look up male fucking gaze, objecti-fucking-fication, fucking beauty standards, and basic fucking victim blaming.  In the meantime I will happily collect whatever ridiculous sums people like Gail Dines get paid to talk out their asses.

~

NB  I’ve used the qualifier “cis” a lot here.  I don’t think SlutWalk is universally or automatically exclusive of trans* people but it is an issue that has been raised and I want to avoid just referring to “girls” or “women” when my points are generally more relevant to cis women.

SlutWalk: I guess we’ve been told!

Danyl at Dim Post doesn’t think SlutWalks are necessary or have any point or will change anything or are really serious and omg feminists aren’t a hivemind so it’s all doomed to fail.

In lieu of merely typing *EYEROLL* a few thousand times, some shoutouts to those with the spoons and ability to respond to Danyl without just saying (as I did on Twitter last night) OH THANK YOU, DANYL, NOW YOU’VE PASSED YOUR ALMIGHTY JUDGEMENT ON WHAT FEMINISTS SHOULD BE THINKING, DOING AND WEARING I’M GOING TO JUST GIVE THE WHOLE THING UP SINCE WHAT I WAS REALLY AFTER ALL THIS TIME WAS A MAN TO LAY DOWN THE LAW.

Tui:

You don’t think the right for women to choose their own clothing is important? What do you think about restrictions on women’s clothing in religious countries? Recently a (conservative) Israeli paper erased two women from a picture – I’m sure you’re familiar with this – they don’t print images of women for, you know, the usual reasons: women are dangerous. Our bodies, our images. The way we dress. Our visibility. These women were pretty conservatively clothed: there is *nothing* women can wear to avoid this! “The right to dress like a slut” doesn’t exactly have a ring to it when you put it that way, no. But the right to be seen? The right to be heard? The right to see and the right to speak? *those* are the rights that the word “slut” is used to curtail.

Psycho Milt:

How shameful I find a particular woman’s outfit is a measure of how fucked up I am, not a measure of anything about her. Just a pity the late-night streets are a smorgasbord of male fucked-up-edness.

I personally avoid skipping the other comments due to victim-blaming, mansplaining and some wonderfully petty Danyl v Russell Brown wank.

Shut up Phil, you’re not my real dad

H/T No Right Turn, who pretty much sums it up:

It’s Monday, so that means it must be time for the regular weekly failure by Phil Goff. This week’s fuck-up? refusing to work with Hone Harawira’s Mana Party

I flatter myself to have been saying this for two and a half fucking years, though it’s not really flattering to admit one’s been bashing one’s head against a brick wall for that length of time and clearly lacks the readership or influence to have got the message through to anyone, but nevertheless:

Dear Phil (and fellow anti-Mana naysayers),

Not all of us on the left are solely motivated by giving you and your mates a pay increase and a shiny Beehive office.

Many of us probably voted either for the Greens or for parties which clearly had no chance of breaking 5% specifically to get this through to you.

Some of us were probably thinking of voting Mana just to re-iterate that message to you given your clear desire to pretend like 2008 was all a bad dream.

Ever wondered if maybe confirming that you’re a racism-pandering centre-soliciting no-hoper focussed entirely on becoming John Key Mk II might not change our minds on that one?

Ever wondered if maybe we might quite like the idea of a leftist party with a practically-guaranteed electorate seat which you just might have to put your big boy panties on and deal with in 2011?

Given your single-minded focus on being PM, I think we can be pretty sure you’ll swallow that dead rat if you have to.

So how’s about you try getting a vision, being an opposition, running a campaign based on actual values and clear, focused key messages which are more than “we’re John Key lite” or “we’re populist and shallow too”, and stop treating the left voters who either switched teams or didn’t even bother turning out last election day like we’re silly little children who don’t understand how you’re just entitled to our votes.

Recommended reading: men talking good shit edition

A trifecta of good stuff for you this evening.

Craig Ranapia on Greg “if everyone would just be good little proles then the cops wouldn’t have to beat you” O’Connor and Tiki “brown man with completely inexplicable dislike of agents of repressive state apparatus” Taane:

But the one thing O’Connor and his ilk can’t do – and even worse, don’t believe they have to seriously try – is back up their assertion that words and music they don’t like lead to real world crime.

Gordon Campbell on both legal aid/the anti-nanny-state Government’s strange nanny-state-esque behaviour:

So far, the Key government has reduced the right to a jury trial, extended the powers of search and surveillance by state agencies, restricted the rights against self incrimination, sought the ability to conduct trials in the absence of the accused, and ended the independence of the agency dispensing legal aid – and that’s even before we got to today’s changes.

…

As Scoop consistently argued, the dispute was always about getting Warners more money, and the union dispute was being used as a diversion to that end. Simultaneously, the climate of anti-union hysteria did no harm to the ability of the government to get its rewrite of some key elements in our industrial legislation framework through Parliament.

Rob Salmond on the Labour list what-about-the-menz whining (h/t NRT):

What the graphs show is that Labour’s caucus will look broadly similar to New Zealand, but will continue to moderately underrepresent women, Maori, and New Zealanders of Asian descent. The Rainbow community is either marginally overrepresented (by about one MP) or represented proportionally, depending on which population estimate you prefer. And Pasifika peoples are overrepresented in Labour’s caucus by 1-2 MPs.