Posted: May 15, 2012 at 10:03 pm | Tags: ALC, Christianity, equal marriage, identity, lgbtiq, parents, Religion
So the ACL put out a press release today claiming that the “gay activists” (yes I know, I’m one too, I want to know who isn’t apart from the ACL), was claiming victory over the (voluntary as far as we know) resignation of Professor Kuruvilla George from the Victorian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission. For those who haven’t been following Australian Politics (and I completely get that), Professor Kuruvilla George co-signed a submission to the Australian Senate Enquiry into equal marriage suggesting that children should be brought up in a heterosexual unit as that was the most appropriate family unit and that no studies have ever found that having same sex parents is good for children. Yes, I know.
The submission was listed as “Doctors for the Family” and is available here.
The big problem for Professor Kuruvilla George, being his role as a board member for an organisation that promotes equality and acts in cases of discrimination against protected attributes, one of which is sexual orientation. He is also the Deputy Chief Psychiatrist for Victoria. According to The Age today, his resignation was voluntary and had nothing to do with his submission to the Senate Enquiry which was done in as a private individual (though signed with: MBBS MPhil FRCPsych FRANZCP after his name – which means he was signing it in a medical capacity at least – as far as I read it).
I was going to talk about the ACL’s press release and their suggestion that all research on queer families was bunk, but the delightful Chrys beat me too it, so I’ll point you at her work here, and another article which debunks the authors that the ACL are relying on here.
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Posted: April 11, 2012 at 10:42 pm | Tags: Feminism, identity
After reading Sleepydumpling’s post at The Fat Heffalump, “To All the Lionesses of the World“, I thought about a few of the minor, but important victories I’ve had at work in the past 6 – 9 months.
The first is actually being introduced/called by my name. Now most of my team refer to me as “Bec”, which doesn’t bother me too much, but a couple of people, after talking about the importance of being able to be identified as I prefer and how that demonstrates respect to me as a person, go out of their way to call me “Rebecca” because that’s something that I prefer to be called.
The other was to not be referred to as a “guy”. Initially the two men (who sit on either side of me), laughed when I pointed out that I wasn’t a guy, and went out of their way as a joke to say “Hello guys and Rebecca”, or “Hello guys and girl”, but now it’s said automatically and without any joke or malice attached.
Both of these things are small, but in the end I feel more respected because things I asked for have been given to me by my colleagues without having to fight about it, without tantrums, and without intolerance.
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Posted: February 6, 2012 at 9:44 pm | Tags: Christianity, identity, lgbtiq, Religion
This is a guest post from James Dominguez.
–
Right now in this country, and around the world, huge numbers of wicked, self-entitled people are demanding that the government grant them special rights based on their lifestyle. That’s right! We’re not talking about in-born traits here (no matter what these sickos claim) but a conscious lifestyle choice.
For some reason, these people think they can demand special treatment from government, special exceptions from our traditional laws, and special human rights that aren’t granted to anyone else outside of their sordid little club. How on earth could this be constitutional?
People can’t help who they are, or where they were born, or the circumstances of their birth. Disallowing discrimination based on these inherent traits, such as race or disability, makes sense of course. The problem is that these shrill, demanding people want us to believe that even though they have chosen this deviant lifestyle long after birth (some of them not even acting on these impulses until very late in life!) they are entitled to all kinds of legal protections and special rights.
No reasonable person could possibly agree with this. If you make a choice to join a minority group based on weird behaviours, then you know that you are buying into any negative consequences that go along with that. Don’t want people to treat you badly? Don’t choose to join in with this destructive lifestyle! It’s so simple!
Hopefully I’ve convinced you by now that these people should be denied any kind of special rights and protections. Please join me in spreading the word about this widespread injustice:
People who choose to join religious groups should not be granted any legal protection against discrimination.
I mean honestly, it’s not like it’s something they’re BORN with, like sexual orientation!
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Disclaimer: No, I don’t really think religious groups deserve no protections: everyone should have the legal right to live their lives in peace. But seriously, why is the religious right still using such an easily reversed argument?
Oh, and thanks for letting me guest-post, Rebecca! 
- James “DexX” Dominguez
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Posted: February 4, 2012 at 3:10 pm | Tags: atheism, identity, media, minority rights, privilege, Religion, secularism
Frank Furedi posted another screed against atheism, well “so-called New [Atheism]” earlier this month. It’s not hard to demolish, so I’m not going to deconstruct it line by line, but seriously Mr Furedi, next time try actually providing some examples of what you are talking about instead of emotional arguments. It’s not like he’s your every-day pundit either, he’s a former Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent in Caterbury, so he should at the very least be able to quantify his arguments.
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Posted: January 21, 2012 at 11:47 pm | Tags: exclusion, identity, lgbtiq
Last weekend I went to Melbourne’s Midsumma Carnival to volunteer at my work’s stand for a couple of hours. The weather was lovely, the people were fantastic and I had a really great time. Just one thing bothered me, and it’s the thing that always bothers me, because language is a powerful thing. Let me be very clear
Gay and Lesbian do not equal LGBTIQ. Gay does not equal LGBTIQ. Lesbian does not equal LGBTIQ.
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Posted: January 21, 2012 at 12:47 pm | Tags: body, fat, Feminism, gender roles, identity, lgbtiq, sex
From the new and awesome blog Queereka, “Sunday School Salutations” which is soon (probably already has) launched a sex advice column and is seeking questions:
The most instructive answer I got was “your first column must contain at least two (2) hymen jokes.” However, this answer is mostly useful because it is pretty bad advice, at least as regards the goal of this column and this blog. I mean, not to get all RAWR HETEROSEXISM on my friend (who was, of course, making a joke), but one of the goals I have for Sunday School in the first place is to tear down the dominant narrative about sex. Raise your hands, dear readers: did your first sexual experience involve hymen rupture?
Yeah, mine didn’t, either.
The Huff Post lists some very interesting tech failures at marketing products to women, noting that women are already big consumers of electronics.
On Monday HSN announced the results of a survey by the international research firm Parks Associates that asked 2,000 adults about purchases they wanted to make before 2012. The results showed women outstripped men in their interest in owning electronics, with 18 percent of women planning on buying a tablet before 2012 (compared to 15 percent of men), 20 percent of women wanted a laptop (only 14 percent of men did) and 20 percent of women planning on purchasing smartphones — compared to 17 percent of men, Mashable reports.
The MailOnline has an interesting piece on the BMI of models and how they would be ranked as anorexic. This article is NSFW – there is nude “plus” size model posing with a “straight” model.
Tesseral Harmonics reblogs (it’s Tumblr, I’m not sure how it works really) on ““Bisexual” is not oppressive, can we talk about biphobia and straight privilege? and other thoughts on bisexuality”:
It’s a big problem that people who are bisexually identified (or engage in bisexual behavior) are dismissed and mocked by gay/queer/lesbian people. I honestly don’t think I need to spell out an explanation of why it’s important for spaces that call themselves “queer” or “LGBT” to be inclusive. In short, anyone who is bi (in name or behavior) is still queer and may need support as a queer person. Biphobia also makes it difficult for anyone who is gay-identified and experiencing sexual fluidity (Lisa Diamond’s research on sexual fluidity (pdf) is super interesting, btw). It also means that gay people who are in “straight” relationships for whatever reasons (family and religion are two examples) are dismissed by the queer community. Biphobia is part of a culture of identity-policing, where if you don’t adhere closely enough to the requirements delineated by the official bureau of gayness you’re out of the club.
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Posted: November 6, 2011 at 8:49 pm | Tags: feelings, identity, image, me, thoughts
There is this thing that I… hate… detest… suffer from… something… the feeling of being stupid. I’m not sure why exactly I have a thing about this, because I know I don’t know everything, nor do I understand everything, and I’m also quite smart… but feeling stupid is something that sometimes really upsets me.
A case in point happened last week, while I was in a work training course. We were doing a role-play of a real life scenario, and consequently didn’t have ALL the data. We were provided with a three page summary of what was happening, and my team were the guinea pigs for this case. This meant that our team was under the greatest pressure in the case study, we had the least preparation time for the two scenarios (they were back to back), and we’d only just been trained in the theory that we were practising.
Halfway through the first case study, I realised I had no idea of what was going on. The team I was a part of seemed to have read a completely different case study to the one I had read, well that’s how it felt, and I suddenly felt cast adrift. In feeling like I’d missed a major point or issue in the case study, I suddenly felt like I was stupid, which really upset me. Upset me to the point of tears, in a training room with many of my colleagues, and members of my senior leadership team. So yes, I was feeling stupid, upset and humiliated all at once.
It’s not necessarily about being wrong, because as I said, I don’t know everything, and I will be wrong sometimes. I think it’s a lot to do with how I feel (I was exhausted at the time of that role play), the amount of stress I’m under, and how important my competence/image is at that moment. Given how I’m still not feeling 100% sure in my current role, feeling stupid is a really big deal. The added stress of nearly bursting into tears during the role play was extra stressful and extra humiliating.
I suppose that this really ties into some of the important (and mostly fucked up) messages I got as a child. Image is important, very important. Being smart was as important as looking smart (I’m not sure how that works really). I suppose that me becoming an adult at 3 years of age has kinda warped some of my ideas about what it is to be an adult, and what is and is not important.
Next post – being angry.
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Posted: September 27, 2011 at 8:32 pm | Tags: identity, lgbtiq, names, people, politics, privilege, racism
This is relatively old news now, but I quit Google Plus (G+ from here on in). My reasons were relatively simple, and yet not at the same time. I had planned to write this post when I quit, but stuff happened and I didn’t. Stilgherrian’s piece at ABC’s The Drum today reminded me of why I was going to write, and effectively summed up what I was going to say, but I’ll lay out my reasons nonetheless.
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Posted: July 18, 2011 at 10:36 pm | Tags: anthropology, Feminism, gender roles, identity, minority rights, privilege, racism
Prior to reading First in their Field: Women and Australian Anthropology (edited by Julie Marcus) I had almost no understanding of what anthropology actually was. I understood that it was a study of people, but since there was also sociology, which I took to be the understanding of people in modern society, so therefore anthropology was the study of people now gone.
And then I read First in their Field, and learnt about Australian women breaking major ground (mostly unrecognised) in anthropology, creating fieldwork and what anthropology, at least at the turn of the 1900s was. I was disgusted to find out what anthropology actually was and the harm that it has caused.
This was brought back to my mind when I started reading Feminism FOR REAL: Deconstructing the academic industrial complex of feminism (edited by Jessica Yee). The second essay by Krysta Williams and Erin Konsmo has the following (pg 26 – 27):
First off, as has been well stated by many Indigenous Feminist before us, the idea of gender equality did not come from the suffragettes or other so-called “foremothers” of feminist theory. It should also be recognized that although we are still struggling for this thing called “gender equality”, it is not actually a framed issue within the feminist realm, but a continuation of the larger tackling of colonialism. So this idea in mainstream feminism that women of colour all of a sudden realized “we are women”, and magically joined the feminist fight actually re-colonizes people for who gender equality and other “feminist” notions is a remembered history and current reality since before Columbus. THe mainstream feminist movement is supposed to have started in the early 1900s with women fighting for the right to vote. However, these white women deliberately excluded the struggles of working class women of colour and participated in the policy of forced sterilization for Aboriginal women and women with disabilities. Furthermore, the idea that we all need to subscribe to the same theoretical understandings of history is marginalizing. We all have our own truths and histories to live.
and (pg 28)
All that the mainstream feminist movement is trying to claim today is merely a reflection of what an Indigenous person (including women, men, Two-Spirit, trans or different gender identifying people) sees when they look in the mirror. There is this feeling amongst “innovative thinkers” that we need to reach forward to build and/or discover a “new society” that includes gender equality. But we know that for us, as a community, this simply means a return to our Indigenous ways of life, a decolonization of our communities which will bring back gender equality. This is something that we have been fighting for and resisting since contact. However, being pushed forward by progressives while trying to hold onto and remember the past, honour our Elders and teachings – which being present – is a painful experience!
When reading First in their Field, the essayists wrote about the early female anthropologists living with various Indigenous tribes in remote Australia (well most of Australia at that time was remote). The essayists discussed how those female anthrpologists, with the exception of Daisy Bates who pretended to be a male spirit, accessed the spiritual realm of Indigenous women, learning about their ceremonies, their laws and how they fit into tribal society.
Prior to these female anthropologists living with the Indigenous inhabitants of Australia, white male anthropologists had determined that much like many white women at the time, Indigenous women occupied the domestic sphere, had no spiritual life and were much less than men, as they had been unable to access (and were not overly interested in) Indigenous women’s experience. The cut and paste of white society’s gender roles onto the gender roles of Indigenous Australians has no doubt caused the same level of harm as recounted by Williams and Konsmo.
The study of other societies as something less than white, European culture, as something you’d study as if looking at a collection of spores in a petri dish, thinking that you can study another society or culture without bringing in your own biases, issues and prejudices is just laughable and really wrong. There is no objectivity when studying another group of people, and no way to study another group of people without your presence making an impact on them (unless of course that society/culture doesn’t exist any more and you’re studying it from afar (such as Incan civilisations pre-Spanish invasion)).
The arrogance of my “ancestors” and the damage that they have caused Indigenous Australians makes me deeply ashamed and sorry that so much damage was done.
(Update: now with References)
One bit I left out of my blog post last night, or perhaps didn’t explain in the way I intended, is the direct harm that anthropology caused to Australia’s Indigenous inhabitants. Anthropologists were seen to be experts on Indigenous people and therefore were asked to provide advice to Governments and to fill roles such as “Protectors of Aboriginies” (First in their Field). If they did not come up with the idea of forcible removal of children from Indigenous communities, they certainly supported it. In Isobel White’s essay on Daisy Bates she states (pg 63 – 64):
By today’s standards many of Daisy Bate’s suggestions for the welfare of Aborigines seem impossible, absurd and an infringement of human rights. She believed that the Aborigines were on their way to extinction and her idea applied only to the declining number of those of full descent. She cared not at all what happened to the part-descent population, whose very existence she deplored. Consequently her suggestion for the full-descent population was to segregate them from all but minimum contact with Europeans so that there should be no more mixed unions. … Since she regarded them as incapable of governing themselves, they should be governed by a High Commissioner who, she insisted, must be a British, Anglican gentleman.
To no anthropologist would endorse a policy of taking children from their mothers and sending them to institutions where ‘civilised’ values and habits would be taught. But this was the policy in both Western Australia and South Australia where Mrs Bates was Honorary Protector of Aboriginies successively. The duties of these posts included reporting to the local police the birth or existence of so-called ‘half-caste’ children so that they might be seized, by force if necessary, and sent to an appropriate institution. Presumable Daisy Bates accepted this part of her duties and there is evidence that in at least one case she acted on it.
References
Feminism FOR REAL: Deconstructing the academic industrial complex of feminism, edited by Jessica Yee, 2001, DLR International Printing, Canada
First in the Field: Women and Australian Anthropology, edited by Julie Marcus, 1993, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Australia
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Posted: July 6, 2011 at 10:25 pm | Tags: identity, stuff, thoughts
I sponsored a child last week with Plan (a charity I highly recommend). I didn’t select a gender or a country trusting that Plan would set me up with whatever they needed for their aims of sponsoring children. I received the details of the child on paper at the end of last week, and as I flipped through it all I noticed that Plan highly recommended that I write to my sponsored child and could do so electronically, including attaching photos. It was made clear that any photo submitted should not show signs of materialism, and that my letter to my sponsored child should be about things we have in common in order to not upset the child with the things that they may never have.
This, of course, all makes perfect sense, and so I started thinking about the things that we have in common. I am growing some vegetables in my garden for us to consume, not exactly something we have in common because if my crop fails, I can just go to the supermarket and buy food, whereas my sponsored child and his family and community will face a much harder time if their crops fail. I have a family, he has a family, so we have that in common. I have been to school and he is going to school, so we can talk about school subjects, learning goals, and where those things can take us as we grow up/older.
There was a point to mentioning this, which has slipped my brain, but that’s ok, it may or may not come back to me as I continue to ramble on about things.
On Sunday my computer catastrophically went splodge. My husband was quite upset about the PC dying as it happened on his watch, so to speak, as I was out grocery shopping at the time. I shrugged and said it was ok, which surprised him as he thought I’d be upset. My PC has been giving signs of throwing in the towel for a while now, and clearly Sunday was the day for everything to fall over. I will be upset if the dying of the computer takes out one of my HDDs (the one with all the photos on it), but everything else is backed up, or available elsewhere. I was planning to buy a new PC with my tax return anyway, this just brought everything forward by a month or so.
So this weekend I’ll hold the brief funeral service before taking the PC (minus the valuables – HDD, RAM and graphics card) to the great recycling centre. We’ll farewell the PC in the style it was accustomed to living – perhaps not with the all nighters I made it do regularly.
I’m typically a calm person, I have a very high frustration tolerance and don’t often get frustrated with things, I am resigned to bad traffic, delayed or cancelled trains, that phone call just as I’m leaving the office, and stuff. That doesn’t mean that I’m never frustrated or angry, because that does happen, but just that it often takes more to make me angry than it does some of the other members of my household. And as well, if anger isn’t going to be useful (ie being angry for 2 weeks while my computer is replaced is a bit much), then anger is not the response I typically choose. Feminist flash rage happens on a daily basis.
It’s not that I think to myself that there are others in the world who are far worse off than me (as I think that’s a terrible thing to do to yourself) when something like my computer dies (or my house floods). I just process it differently and put it in the bucket of things I cannot control so will not spend time fretting about. I’m privileged enough to have sufficient savings to be able to borrow against to replace my computer – even if it is going to take 2 weeks for the custom build I’m getting. I’m privileged enough to be able to typically access reliable public transport, have a relatively flexible workplace, have a reliable car and to live with others who will hear my frustration and anger when it is present, whether it be about the rantings of ill-informed political commentators or many things failing to do what they should at once.
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