Tag: family

Welcome to this, the 71st DUFC. Do you know what that means? It means that we’ve been doing this for quite a long time and that it’s lots of fun. Thank you so much to Chally for organising these and providing me with some submissions, and to Mindy and Mary for sending me many submissions. Any omissions are my own, and if I missed a great post you made this month (and you’re a feminist writer from Australia and New Zealand), please let us know about it in the comments.

International Women’s Day

Heidi La Paglia writes at NUS Women’s Department, “International Women’s Day and the Continued Importance of Feminism“:

In the last few decades’ women around the world have come a long way in their progress towards gaining autonomy and equality with men. In Australia alone, the successes are almost countless. Changes in legislation have allowed women to access affordable means of contraception, join the workforce in areas previously dominated by men and follow aspirations apart from getting married and having children. BUT… while women HAVE come a long way in their fight for emancipation, there are still many goals we’re yet to met [sic].

Christina Ryan at intersectionalitytimes writes, “Reflections on International Women’s Day 2014 (or the only X in the village)“:

Can these women speak for the 1 in 5 of their Australian sisters who have disabilities? No, and nor should they. Just as they shouldn’t speak for our Aboriginal sisters, or our LGBTI or culturally diverse sisters. The experiences of women of diversity are different and relevant. We bring enormous depth and difference to any conversation on any issue. Most importantly we aren’t just focussed on our own space. Just as women generally will talk about finance, geopolitical events, and architecture (for example), and not just stick to childcare or maternity leave. Women of diversity will talk about finance, geopolitical events and architecture, but we will talk about them with very different eyes and understanding.

Betty Taylor at One Voice in the Crowd writes, “Tony Abbott A Feminist …Delusional Thinking“:

What a ridiculous statement. Abbott refers to a handful of women who have had various measures of success in attaining prominent public roles. The success of a few women does not mean that gender equality has been achieved for all women. Abbott also fails to acknowledge his own role in the public abuse & humiliation of Australia’s first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. When one woman is abused and degraded, all women become vulnerable targets.

Kimberley Ramplin at The Referral writes, “It is about feminism…“:

Third wave feminism is a reaction against the second wave ignoring the voices and agency of women of colour, differing abilities or gender identification. In scorning the third wave, Hardy scorns the Ciceronian legacy she professes to admire; for we move further along the path of ‘kindness, generosity, goodness and justice’ through welcoming and celebrating diverse voices, not mocking or ignoring them. Hardy’s column is a strange exercise in confirmation bias: ‘my weltanschauung* is better than yours and I am here to liberate you’; yet most of her criticism is reserved for middle-class, white, female feminists. Yes, she is correct in using the dread ‘socialism’ tag twice in four paragraphs: International Women’s Day was started by groups of European socialists. In 1911, more than one million women and men attended IWD rallies in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, campaigning for women’s rights to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office and end discrimination. I’ll repeat that for the peanut gallery: women AND men joined together to give birth to this crypto-socialist feminista wankfest. A week later, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire claimed the lives of 140 women in New York City, cementing labour standards and working conditions as a key angle of future IWD observances.

New Matilda writes, “Why You Should Know About These Women“:

But what about the underrated women, the quiet achievers, and the historical figures whose contributions laid the foundations for others?

Who should we know more about this International Women’s Day? New Matilda asked 10 women for their recommendations.

Kath at Fat Heffalump writes, “Happy International Women’s Day!“:

You see that’s what misogyny is. It’s the myth of “femininity”. The myth that womanhood fits one narrow band of features and behaviours, and that womanhood is a competition between the female of our species to appeal to male of our species, and only those that “win” the attention of men are allowed to consider themselves “feminine”. Femininity is measured by how pleasing a woman is to men – by her appearance, her voice, her behaviour and her sexual availability.

Intersectionality

Aaminah Khan at Days Like Crazy Paving writes, “No such thing as “normal”“:

I am not normal. I am too brown and too female (and femme) and too mentally ill and too queer to be normal. Most of the people I know aren’t normal. And every time one of us tries – usually so that we might get that job we really want or a place on that guest speaker list or a piece of writing published or just acceptance into a new circle of friends – we find that the goalposts have shifted. Because the big secret about normal is that it’s whatever the people oppressing you want it to be. You can never meet the standard, because the standard will change with the specific goal of making you fall short yet again.

Transcendancing writes at The Conversationalist, “Queerness and Midwifery“:

Where I find my experience of studying midwifery stands out next to my classmates and teachers around me is my acute awareness of my queerness. I have moments of feeling apprehensive, of worrying about my queerness in the context of midwifery. I worry about fitting in with my classmates and with my future colleagues, though really this is just the uncertainty of a new situation speaking. By now, I am quite practised at navigating outward queerness and ordinariness in new group situations. Largely, I think queerness stands out to me only because my gendered experience, for possibly the first time ever, does not stand out to me at all.

Saman Shad at Ideas At The House writes, “Intersectionality and why we need it“:

While intersectionality has certainly proven to be a divisive issue amongst feminists I feel it is something that very much needs to be discussed and adopted by the wider feminist community. Feminism used to mostly be the domain of white, educated, middle-class women. Issues that needed to be targeted by feminism were hashed out by smaller groups, generally in academic circles. Now, however, with the rise of social media, feminism has been somewhat democratized – all women are deciding what issues matter and are relevant to them.

Jo at A Life Unexamined writes, “The Reality of Disadvantage“:

It was here that I started to question some of the things going on. Many of the things my group chose to represent as attributes of an ideal ambassador were straightforward: friendliness, organisational skills, patience, enthusiasm. Thinking of the emphasis on low socio-economic areas and Indigenous students, I threw in ‘cultural sensitivity’ and ‘awareness of own privilege’ – two things I think lie at the basis of any social justice-type work. But as soon as I said the word ‘privilege’ left my mouth, I was shot down. My fellow group members frowned at me. ‘I don’t think that’s necessary,’ one girl said. ‘Surely everyone is unique and has challenges of their own?’ Well, yes, I thought. But there’s a difference between individual challenges and institutionalised or generational disadvantage. But I could sense the hostility, so I said ‘ok, I won’t add it then,’ and we moved on.

Relationships

Sydney Jones at wom*news writes, “Preview of Upcoming Zine “Injustices and Inequalities”“:

I don’t even have to make up a hypothetical situation here to explain to you how these conversations play out after I politely message back, telling the man I’m not interested. 8 times out of 10, he will ask something along the lines of “Why not?”. I sincerely feel that I should not have to answer that question. If I’m in a bar and a guy starts to talk to me, I will make it clear if I’m not interested. I’ll tell him I have to go or show him with body language. But online, you have to be more direct. I do have to say “No.”

Jo has started a new blog/space called The Asexuality Story Project, allowing people to submit biographical stories about their journey from around the world.

Orlando at Hoyden About Town writes, “Friday Hoyden: Hortense Mancini“:

In the middle of the 17th Century, an Italian noblewoman brought her five daughters to Paris, where her brother had acquired a position of enormous political power, with the intention of finding them all illustrious husbands. They were pretty, educated, noble, wildly intelligent and gracious good company, so this wasn’t a difficult task in itself. A good marriage on paper, however, bears so little relationship to what the experience of it will be. The five Mancini sisters and their two cousins, nieces of the highly influential Cardinal Mazarin, were collectively referred to at court as “Les Mazarinettes”, which tells us how little France appears to have changed in four hundred-odd years. Hortense Mancini was her uncle’s favourite, and was made his heir. She was married at fifteen to one of the richest men in Europe, who turned out to be an obsessive, violent, controlling abuser.

Media

AlisonM at The Hand Mirror writes, “Pregnant and Headless“:

Stock images were born of marketing — trying to get particular groups of people to buy stuff; or to illustrate company annual reports, brochures, political party propaganda. The images are selected, as scholar Paul Frosh explains it in a paper aptly titled “Inside the Image Factory”, “in accordance with the classificatory regimes employed by advertising and marketing discourse to specify meanings and target audiences (most fundamentally class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and age)”. He goes on to point out that the ethical question raised by this is connected to representational power, in particular “the inability of certain groups to control representation of themselves or even to be represented at all.”

Over at the news with nipples, “The special women’s section“:

Making an explicit effort to include women’s voices in the news is an excellent idea, but it is a terrible idea to put them in a special section that men will never read. It’s the same complaint I have about Daily Life (another complaint being that the content is often indistinguishable from the lifestyle and entertainment sections), and about the All About Women Festival at the Opera House, where well-off women will pay to see other well-off women talk about stuff they already agree with. Some of the festival will be interesting – Ilwad Elman and Mona Eltahawy are speaking – but is unlikely to lead to any real change because it’s pitched as an event for women. Don’t get me wrong, I think there’s a lot of benefit in women talking with each other about how to change things, and in writing for each other about our opinions and lives. We do that all the time, and I enjoy it and learn a lot from it. But if cultural change is the goal, then it won’t happen this way.

Liz Barr writes at No Award, “Secrets & Lies“:

My blurb:

Manpain. No sympathetic adult women. One person of colour, unsympathetic. The hero has never read a detective novel ever, and is following the How To Look Totally Suss playbook.

Nevertheless, the mystery is interesting and I like the setting, so I’m probably going to keep watching. And blogging.

Rebecca Shaw writes at The King’s Tribune, “Relatable Relationships“:

Not only am I a lesbian (which means I am a woman, in case you hadn’t realised), I am also a FAT woman (not to be confused with my alter ego Fatwoman, who is like Batman except she spends all her money on parties). In the same way that being a lesbian has defined certain aspects of my life, being a fat person in this society has as well. For me, as a privileged and white fat lesbian, the anti-fat sentiment I have experienced my entire life has been more pervasive and damaging than any amount of direct homophobia I have encountered (so far). Don’t get me wrong; they are both REALLY fun to experience, and they have a lot in common, especially when it comes to media representation. If you try to list all the thin, white actresses who have ever played a straight character on television or in movies, you would be here for days and days and eventually your colleagues would call the police because they would be concerned that something had happened to you because you weren’t annoying them at work. And something WOULD have happened to you – you would have had died of starvation and dehydration, but not before realizing that in the big picture, almost all women in movies and TV are thin, white and heterosexual. The number of lesbians on screen compared to their prevalence in actual society is low. The number of fat women on screen compared to their prevalence in actual society is INSANELY UNJUSTIFIABLY low.

Avril E Jean at Becoming Avril E Jean, Artist writes, “Why ‘The Big Bang Theory’ utterly fails to describe Geek and Nerd culture“:

I come from geek culture. I identify as a geek, I’m a massive massive geek. I’ve been in FOME, MURP, and the SCA. All my friends are both female and males. My collection of star trek and wars figures is actually slightly embarrassing. I watch SF, I read it, and I will get involved in a discussion about Babylon 5 at the drop of a hat. THERE ARE HUNDREDS OF WOMEN LIKE ME. All my female friends are equally geeky. Geeky girls like geeky boys and there is a lot of dating and going out and socializing. This stuff just is not shown on that TV show.

Repro Justice

Julie at the Hand Mirror writes, ““Choose Life” is not about choice; it’s about force“:

There’s a new campaign by one of my least favourite lobby groups (Family First in case you were wondering), which is encouraging people to wear special pink and blue ribbons to say “Choose Life,” by which they mean don’t have abortions.

The use of the word “choose” implies that Family First is asking people to make a choice. But in fact what they actually want to do is take away the very choice they are supposedly promoting.

Julie at the Hand Mirror also writes, “The fundamentally anti-women notion at the heart of anti-abortion campaigns laid bare“:

Let’s be clear; this example shows us precisely what the opposition to abortion are all about: denying those with uteruses power over their own bodies, and encouraging those who aren’t pregnant to hold sway over those who are. Most of the time that is going to be a woman disempowered, harassed, upset, abused, and a man taking power, harassing, hectoring, abusing. And that is fundamentally anti-women.

Lauren Ingram writes at Birdee, “THIS IS WHAT MY ABORTION WAS LIKE“:

The morning of my abortion, I got dressed in comfortable clothes and my boyfriend drove us to the clinic. Despite the time, around 7am I think, there were protestors out of the front of the building. They were all white, over 60, praying loudly and holding signs. Their mere presence infuriated me and I resolved to let them have it if they said anything to us. Somehow they ignored us (maybe we didn’t look enough like we were going to get an abortion?) and we walked right in.

tigtog writes at Hoyden About Town, “Debate vs Inquiry and “Reasonable Debate” as a silencing tactic“:

As Greta also notes, most arguments based on fetal personhood fail to engage with the unconscious violinist analogy: since one cannot be compelled to donate the use of one’s tissues/organs to a born person who will die without them, not even if their survival is dependent upon oneself and oneself alone, not even if one caused their fatal condition, then (again) what is the justification for making abortion a special case?

Mary at Hoyden About Town writes, “Fetal personhood in NSW: “an issue that should be of serious concern to all of us””

Megan Clement-Couzner writes at New Matilda, “Are The Abortion Wars About To Begin?”

Are these just the demented bleatings of a fringe-dwelling religious right? Yes and no. While Australia is overwhelmingly pro-choice, the attack in Victoria came from Liberal MP Bernie Finn. In the NT, the Attorney General has proposed laws that criminalise pregnant women who drink alcohol. In NSW, a female Liberal member is sponsoring Zoe’s Law in the upper house. ‘Zoe’ was the unborn daughter of NSW woman Brodie Donegan, who was struck by a drug-affected driver in 2009. When Zoe died in utero, the driver who caused her death was charged with injury to her mother.

Our Stories

Julie writes at The Hand Mirror, “On her bike“:

It’s actually going well. I have worked out I have poor balance (I fall off quite a bit, have trouble with take off too), and that’s not all that likely to go away. I’m also rather scared of going fast, so I use the brakes a lot going downhill. People smile at me more when I have the basket on, and it’s quite delightful to be able to get around my suburb and a bit further afield and say hello to those I meet on the street; something I could never do in a car.

What I’ve worked out is that when I cycle I feel I am a part of the neighbourhood I’m moving through, with all my senses, as opposed to being separated from it by the steel and glass shell of a car. And that’s a good feeling.

LGBTIQ

Rebecca Shaw writes at SBS, “Why I don’t care about Fred Phelps“:

The WBC held up a mirror to people undecided on gay rights, and a lot of those people have not liked what they saw. They have caused citizens to band together, groups of bikies to take up the cause, and come together to do things like block the WBC from picketing. Phelps has no power over us. He is nothing. The tiny, mostly-related Westboro Baptist Church is nothing. You should feel no pangs of anything – except worse hunger pangs (I still haven’t had lunch).

Danielle Colley writes a story told her by a mother of a trans* child at Daily Life, “My eight-year-old daughter just wants to be a boy“:

I was driving along in the car recently when my daughter, Ruby*, asked if she could go to the doctor’s and get a penis. She’s eight. My breath caught in my throat, and without taking my eyes off the road, I said I’d have to Google it when I got home.

Parenting and Families

Poor Stevie writes, “oh, baby“:

I mean, all my love and Cheezels to Jodi Gordon and Braith Anasta, but for pretty much every woman I have spoken to about motherhood, their newborn baby did not bring the glowing joy and love this photo depicts. It’s not the couple or their little family I have a problem with – they are all incredibly brave to wear white – it’s the “bundle of joy” bullshit women are force fed.

Race and Racism

Chally Kacelnik writes at Global Comment, “The Australian Aboriginal People With Disabilities Being Held In Prison Without Trial“:

To be frank, I’d be surprised if anyone in Australia is surprised. There’s a long history of disproportionate incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – who number two per cent of the general population versus a quarter of the prison population – and appalling treatment within the prison system. There have been so many Aboriginal deaths in custody that 1991 saw a royal commission, most of the recommendations from which have not been put in place. As such, deaths have been on the rise in recent years, such as that of Mr Ward, an Aboriginal elder who died from being transported in an extremely hot prison van by Western Australia’s Department of Corrective Services in 2008.

Celeste Liddle writes at Rantings of an Aboriginal Feminist, “Fair-skin privilege? I’m sorry, but things are much more complicated than that“:

Additionally, whilst I never denied skin colour as a marker, and whilst I also don’t deny the existence of some fair skin privilege in the some ways, what about visiting the concept of “migrant privilege”? The White Australia Policy existed until the early 1980s yet from the 1940s onwards, following the impacts of wars, it was chipped away at bit by bit. Non-white immigrants were eventually accepted into the country in various “waves” to the point of Malcolm Fraser openly supporting multiculturalism and opening up the refugee programmes to many Asian nations. This country has gone so far backward since this time with elections being won on the basis of “stopping the boats” that I am disgusted to live in it. Yet, here’s the thing: my father, despite being born in this country and having ancestors that had been born in this country for roughly 4000 generations, was not counted in the census as a citizen of this country until he was 17 years old. This is why I have problems with the term “First Australians”. Each successive wave of immigrants became Australians before the First Peoples, regardless of skin colour, were recognised as human beings. Therefore, migrant communities, whilst actively discriminated against by other Australians and enduring vast poverty, racism, ostracism and countless other things, also had more rights in this country than the First Peoples.

Aaminah Khan at Days Like Crazy Paving writes, “Fairy tales for privileged kids: “the anti-white racist”“:

See, racism isn’t just about prejudice. Is it possible for non-white people to be prejudiced against white people? Sure. I mean, I don’t know about you, but if I lived in a community where land and house prices were soaring because of gentrification, leading to me having to give up my home, I’d probably be a little prejudiced against the people driving me out onto the street. If I were to be looked over for a promotion because my boss didn’t want a non-white person being a public face of the company, I’d probably be a little prejudiced against the people who made the decision that a non-white spokesperson would seem too threatening to be effective. If my son were, say, shot dead in cold blood by a white man who was then found not guilty of murder because my son was walking home on his own wearing a hoodie, then…yeah, I guess I’d probably be a little prejudiced against the assholes who ensured my son’s killer was never brought to justice.

So yeah, non-white people can be prejudiced against whites.

Can they be racist against whites? Nope.

Jennifer Wilson at No Place for Sheep writes, “The unbearable ignorance of Tim Wilson, Human Rights Commissioner for *Freedom*“:

Everyone, Mr Wilson asserts ought to be allowed to use the term “nigger,” for example, because it is widely used in black communities. Wilson reveals his monumental ignorance and gobsmacking stupidity, through either his incompetent or deliberate misunderstanding of the difference in the meaning of that term, when used within communities or by outsiders.

This dangerous call for absolute free speech favours only white people, and only certain highly privileged white men are demanding it. Wilson’s call for “personal responsibility” in this matter is ridiculous. There are matters society cannot afford to leave to an individual’s sense of “personal responsibility” and as has been proven over and over and over again, hate speech is one of them.

Poverty

Kath at Kath-Homeless writes, “Understanding Homelessness in Australia“:

I have spoken to so many people that have opened up to me in the last few weeks it is fantastic. Many have or know people that have been homeless. I hear so many different versions it is amazing how common it is. People that have lost their jobs, family members, housing due to bills, deaths, or as a youth or in their younger years. But all I have spoken to have recovered from it. I am having trouble doing that at the moment because of having car problems, money stolen from me, health and car insurance costs and general living car expense. It is very hard to do on newstart. People do not want people that don’t work or a struggling in their share accommodation and if so it is quite unaffordable if you are not employed. Many will say well others are doing it. Yes many are they are sharing houses together or living with a pensioner or family. I myself do not want to share a house full of people on the dole just as people do not want to share with me so this is another reason I am homeless.

Politics and Law

Kate Galloway writes at Curl, “Queensland to reintroduce gendered statutory language“:

In this post however, I will examine the legitimacy of a lower profile change proposed by the Bill: the renaming of the head of the CMC from ‘chairperson’ to ‘chairman’. See eg clause 35:

35 Amendment of s 224 (Qualifications for appointment as the chairperson)

(1) Section 224, heading, ‘as the chairperson’—
omit, insert—

chairman and deputy chairman

(2) Section 224, ‘chairperson if’—
omit, insert—
chairman or deputy chairman if

It would, I imagine, be argued that there is no legal effect to the change. Section 32B of the Acts Interpretation Act 1954 (Qld) provides:

In an Act, words indicating a gender include each other gender.

Kate Galloway also writes at Curl, “Women’s Property“:

I’ve spent this last few weeks going back to basics. What was I really trying to show? My (bigger than PhD) idea is that the notion of property is itself inappropriate to deal with contemporary issues. I think property theory, in its liberal market mould, is unsuitable for our contemporary culture (copyright), for culture in its wider sense (first nations/Indigenous peoples’ customary ‘title’) and it is most certainly unsuitable to deal with the huge issue of the environment, including of course, climate change. My PhD thesis is about the gendered nature of property and how it upholds the economic dependence of married women (married in a legal and de facto sense).

In my view, all property does is support the creation of a new market based on the idea of atomised, separated, individuals who are ‘rational profit maximisers’ and are in competition and unconnected with anyone else.

Julia Baird writes at the Sydney Morning Herald, “Quentin Bryce showed her true colours, quietly“:

Dame Quentin Bryce has mastered the art of the subtly powerful gesture. When she – our first female governor-general – swore in our first female prime minister on June 24, 2010, she wore a dress the colour of rich butter. Pinned conspicuously below her shoulder was a brooch of purple silk flowers, with green linen leaves and white stems. The colours of the suffragettes.

bluemilk writes, “Abbott wants to stop measuring gender equality in the workplace“:

Given this data is all computerized and the bulk of it is collected in a standard payroll database it is difficult to see what exactly is so onerous about this but Sloan is trying her best to make the case. The other kinds of data collected by government include the family friendly working arrangements offered by a company and which of their employees use them. Again, all of this information is routinely collected by companies about themselves. Sure, reporting requirements aren’t cost-free but they’re not enough to have any Human Resource Department on a fainting couch either. And anyway, there’s no significant penalty for non-compliance and half the firms love the exercise because they use any better-than-average results to compete for the best job applicants.

Chally Kacelnik writes at Global Comment, “Australia’s Manus Island Shame: Where’s the Inquiry?“:

In response, Papua New Guinea’s Justice David Cannings initiated the inquiry. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports that, late on Friday, ‘the inquiry was put on hold after lawyers for the PNG government obtained a stay order in the Supreme Court in Port Moresby,’ claiming that Justice Cannings is biased because he has worked as a human rights lawyer. Immediately following this, Justice Cannings launched a new inquiry, and allowed Australian barrister Jay Williams access to the centre. All this has clashed with Papua New Guinea’s and Australia’s Prime Ministers, respectively Peter O’Neill and Tony Abbott, who are, according to Mr Abbott, in concert in agreeing that there ought to be no inquiry. Mr Abbott added that most of the asylum seekers were ‘economic migrants’ rather than true refugees.

Jennifer Wilson at No Place for Sheep writes, “Taking to the streets: why protest matters“:

March in March has come in for a fair amount of criticism for its alleged lack of focus and purpose.For some reason, ordinary citizens expressing grievances against their government is not regarded as being focused, or as having any purpose.

El Gibbs writes at No Fibs, “Moving Blue Mountains for #MarchInMarch: @bluntshovels reports“:

Moira Cox, Rachel’s mother, hasn’t done anything like this before. She heard about the March in March on Twitter and is passionate about her dislike for the current government. Ms Cox is concerned that commercial media will not cover the marches because she wants the Government to see how people feel about them.

Disability

Stella Young writes at Ramp Up (ABC), “Practicing pride in the face of exclusion“:

When I discovered the social model of disability when I was 17, it allowed me to make a distinction between the limitations of my body and the failings of society. In a nutshell, the social model tells us that we are far more disabled by inaccessible environments and hostile attitudes than we are by our physicality. My disability comes not from the fact that I’m unable to walk, but from the presence of the stairs. We are not wrong for the world we live in, the world we live in is not yet right for us, and we need to change it.

Eliza Cussen at Ramp Up (ABC) writes, “Something a little more comfortable“:

Online dating instantly expands your options. In many cases, it allows people with disability to go ‘under cover’ and reveal their disability to people on their own terms. But it also means opening yourself up to the scrutiny of the internet, which, as we well know, can be an unfriendly place.

“The beauty of online communication is that if you don’t tell them, the person on the other end of the line has no idea that you’re in a wheelchair, and therefore they treat you as a ‘normal’ person. I crave normality,” wrote my friend Holly.

I’d wager anyone who’s spent more than 20 seconds on a dating site will have worked out a filtering system for potential suitors. On OkCupid I would only respond to men who messaged me using full sentences. Those who introduced themselves with “Heeeeeeeeeeey” were let straight through to the keeper. Holly would avoid everyone who said they were fun-loving because she doesn’t enjoy redundant statements. (Who doesn’t love fun?)

Feminism & Sexism

Jo at A Life Unexamined writes, “Not Being Sexist Isn’t That Difficult“:

One of the reasons I was drawn to Dreamfall in the first place was because it had a cast of characters dominated by females: something of a rarity in the gaming industry. The primary protagonist (bear with the tautology) and the secondary protagonist are both female and well-written, complex characters. A large portion – probably the majority – of the supporting cast are also female, and women are portrayed in all sorts of positions and stages in life. The racial diversity is pretty good as well – though the game does fall short on its range of body types and shapes.

All this was quite pleasing while I was playing, but it wasn’t until three quarters through the game that I really noticed what I was enjoying the most: the lack of that casual sexism and misogyny that worms its way into so many games. Because three quarters through the game, you suddenly gain a sidekick: the obnoxious sexist sidekick, in the form of a talking crow. And then I realised how much I had been enjoying the lack of that character earlier in the game.

Celeste Liddle writes at Rantings of an Aboriginal Feminist, “Aboriginal Feminism – So what does this entail?“:

Due to the process of colonisation, what effects white women generally affects black women, however due to the intersection of race, black women face unique battles as well. Back when the women’s movement was fighting to access to safe and effective contraception and legal abortion in this country, Aboriginal women were additionally fighting for the right to keep their children in the face of the legislation that led to the Stolen Generations. White women were fighting for economic independence separate from men (eg: so they were not forced to be married to have security) and the right to equal pay while black women were also fighting to be paid for their labour in the first place.

Georgina Dent writes at Women’s Agenda, “Can anyone afford not to work?“:

In theory we might support the idea of women working and having a family but the reality isn’t quite so encouraging. Australia women are stuck in the middle – waging a logistical war between wanting a career and a family. The fact our female workforce participation rate lags the rest of the world, and is slipping, confirms it.

Shonias writes at Hoyden About Town, “Cloaking device“:

The moment I arrived, unbeknownst to me, my cloaking device had been deployed. I stood waiting to register, and when a position was free, the bloke on it gestured to the man who had arrived after me. I just wasn’t there. Some women could see through it – the woman on the merchandise stand remarked on my unlikely existence. However, a woman I approached at a cocktail meet and greet looked straight through me and turned to a man at her left.

tigtog writes at Hoyden About Town, “SIgnal Boosting: Surly Amy’s Skeptic and Atheist Do Better Challenge“:

Amy’s tapping into something fundamental about human nature here: most of us want what we do in the world to matter to others as well as ourselves, to make some sort of difference to people other than ourselves, to leave some sort of legacy that others will recognise and value after we die. Religions all provide some sort of framework within which people can find projects to join which fulfil this desire alongside fellowship with likeminded others who will honour their passing, as part of a community of shared values which recognises efforts and accomplishments beyond the commercial/careerist/competitive world of earning their livelihoods.

Andie Fox (bluemilk) writes at Daily Life, “Natalie Barr doesn’t speak for all women“:

Reading this you feel defensive, naturally. Your life hasn’t been exactly like these success stories. It is tempting then to continue this conversation of individualism and to describe the specifics of your own life as counter-argument. But unless we’re very thoughtful about it, this kind of discussion tends to be dominated by a lot of very similar voices (ie. those with access to the media), tends to over-generalise, and tends to limit definitions of sexism to intentional acts by one person against another. This capacity to recognise sexism rarely and only on an individual level means we seek to fix sexism simply by shaming offenders. Preferably in public. Sexism is therefore corrected by correcting the individual.

Clementine Ford writes, “Can we stop being delicate about cunts?“:

And look, they may sound crude but they have a place in a lexicon that quite comfortably embraces labels like ‘cocksucker’, ‘dickhead’, ‘dickbrain’ (as favoured on-air for many years by former 5AA radio talkback host Bob Francis) and even ‘asshole’. The fact is, much of modern English has been influenced by writers like William Shakespeare and Geoffrey Chaucer (the latter of whom was fond of a bit of ‘queynte’ in his writings). Humanity loves a good dirty joke or double entendre. Show me a clever writer with a dirty mouth and I’ll show you a cunning stunt. As Lauren Davidson writes here, “It really does seem only fair that if Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence — a bunch of old white men — could use it rather joyfully, why shouldn’t we?”

Violence *Trigger Warnings for posts in this section*

Louise Taylor at intersectionalitytimes writes, “Domestic Violence against Indigenous Women is Everybody’s Problem“:

On any available statistical analysis Indigenous women are significantly more likely to be a victim of family violence. To be hospitalised because of it. To die as a result of it. Some would argue to have their children removed because of it. Ridiculously Indigenous women appear more likely to be criminalised themselves for their engagement with the systems charged with protecting them when they report family violence.

Claire Shove writes at Sextracurricular Studies, “Art Against Female Genital Mutilation”

Claire Shove also writes, “YouTube, Tumblr, and Ethical Responsibility in Celebrity-Fan Relationships“:

And so it continues. As of yet, none of the people accused or anyone from NerdFighteria has addressed any of this in a video, and so the main forum for discussion is still Tumblr. I’m hopeful that this discussion will move onto YouTube soon as well. Partly because the people who are responsible for these actions should be a part of the discussion, and partly because Tumblr has now been definitively proven to be an unsuitable place for sensible discussions of abuse, and for survivors to seek support. This should come as a surprise to no one, given that it is the residence of the most intensely devoted fans of these YouTubers. Having said that, I’m glad in a way that this has all started on Tumblr, because the most intensely devoted fans are also the people vulnerable to coercion and abuse.

Clementine Ford writes, “There’s no such thing as rape culture“:

I always thought my commitment to challenging rape culture was due to me caring deeply about the fact we live in a sexually aggressive, oppressive world that forces women to bear responsibility for our own rape prevention while casting men as primal creatures so easily overcome by the sight of exposed flesh that they can’t help but force themselves onto women (despite complaining about how feminists always paint them as rapists).

Eliza Cussen writes at Women’s Agenda, “How my work saw me threatened with rape online“:

As a Crikey reader recently said, a ‘troll’ is someone who posts on a Star Wars forum that Star Trek is better. Still, I think the word troll can be applied here. This form of abuse is being done by people who think a woman’s safety is no more important than the fictional struggle against the Galactic Empire. It is done by people who think of women only in the abstract, individuals who merely exist on screen.

Aaminah Khan writes at Days Like Crazy Paving, “[TW: child abuse] Cry of the Tiger Cub – or: I Grew Up with a Tiger Parent and All I Got was This Lousy Psychological Trauma“

The linkspam of ARGH ARGH GET IT OFF ME

11/10/2013

Rebecca

Linkspam No Comments

So I had a terrible fright the other night while driving home that a spider had crawled down the back of my shirt. It ended up being a very dead moth, after smearing it all over my shirt and back, and a very frightened me. Now that my panic of creepy crawly things has passed, I thought I’d share some great links with you that I’ve found over the past month.

First up is a post from Eve Rickert, guest posting at Solopoly, “Slippery language and couple-centric polyamory“, which I pretty much agree with all of:

Part of what Franklin and I are trying to do with our book is to reflect the real diversity of structures and approaches that polyamorous people adopt. We’re trying to break free from the couple-centric approach that has long characterized so much of the writing and discourse about polyamory, even on Franklin’s own site. In this process, we’re learning that language can be very slippery. Many common phrases that poly people use — even those who don’t practice hierarchical polyamory — reflect a couple-centric viewpoint. It’s damn hard to root these out.

Greta Christina featured a guest post from Franklin Veaux (the Franklin referred to above), “More Than Two: Guest Post on Ethical Polyamory from Franklin Veaux“:

It’s difficult to talk about polyamory without hearing the expression “ethical non-monogamy.” There’s a bit of a sticky wicket, though, in that we rarely talk about the definition of “ethical,” beyond the obvious “don’t lie to your partners.” That’s a good start, sure, but it’s not enough to construct an entire foundation of relationship ethics on. When we’re living in a society that proscribes everything except heterosexual marriage between exactly two cisgendered people of opposite sexes, how do we even start talking about what makes an ethical non-monogamous relationship? Where do we turn for ethics? What distinguishes an ethical relationship from a non-ethical one? Are ethical relationships egalitarian, and if so, how does that align with BDSM relationships that are deliberately constructed along the lines of power exchange? If two people make an agreement and then present that agreement unilaterally to a third person, who is given few options other than accept the agreement as-is or walk away, is that ethical? What happens when people make relationship agreements, and then their needs change? What are ethical ways of revisiting and renegotiating previous agreements? How do we even define “ethics” in the first place, without resorting to religious or social conventions? What does it take for a person to make ethical relationship choices that aren’t aligned with a religious tradition or a cultural norm?

Laurie Penny New Statesman writes, “Society needs to get over its harmful obsession with labelling us all girls or boys“:

There are many conditions that can cause a person to be biologically intersex. Stories about the “third gender”, about gods and humans who weren’t quite men or women, have been with us for millennia, but there has long been pressure on doctors and parents to “fix” any baby who isn’t obviously either a boy or a girl. This often entails intimate surgery that is performed when the child is too young to consent. Traumatic reports about the effect this sort of procedure can have on kids when they grow up appear routinely in the tabloids – but the question of why, precisely, it is considered so urgent that every child be forced to behave like a “normal” boy or girl is rarely discussed.

Carl Zimmer at The New York Time’s Science section writes, “DNA Double Take“:

But scientists are discovering that — to a surprising degree — we contain genetic multitudes. Not long ago, researchers had thought it was rare for the cells in a single healthy person to differ genetically in a significant way. But scientists are finding that it’s quite common for an individual to have multiple genomes. Some people, for example, have groups of cells with mutations that are not found in the rest of the body. Some have genomes that came from other people.

“There have been whispers in the matrix about this for years, even decades, but only in a very hypothetical sense,” said Alexander Urban, a geneticist at Stanford University. Even three years ago, suggesting that there was widespread genetic variation in a single body would have been met with skepticism, he said. “You would have just run against the wall.”

But a series of recent papers by Dr. Urban and others has demonstrated that those whispers were not just hypothetical. The variation in the genomes found in a single person is too large to be ignored. “We now know it’s there,” Dr. Urban said. “Now we’re mapping this new continent.”

Rebecca Hiles at XOJane writes, “How Not To Be A Dick To To Your Polyamorous Friend“:

While the vast majority of my friends and family were incredibly understanding when I came out as polyamorous, some had questions and criticisms. Even now, after about 4 years of being publically polyamorous, I know quite a few people who just “don’t get” polyamory.

While discussing relationship structures which may be unfamiliar to you can be a bit awkward, and lead to misunderstandings, it is important to ask questions rather than passing judgements or making blind assumptions.

Clare Foran at The Atalantic Cities writes, “How to Design a City for Women“:

The majority of men reported using either a car or public transit twice a day — to go to work in the morning and come home at night. Women, on the other hand, used the city’s network of sidewalks, bus routes, subway lines and streetcars more frequently and for a myriad reasons.

“The women had a much more varied pattern of movement,” Bauer recalls. “They were writing things like, ‘I take my kids to the doctor some mornings, then bring them to school before I go to work. Later, I help my mother buy groceries and bring my kids home on the metro.'”

Women used public transit more often and made more trips on foot than men. They were also more likely to split their time between work and family commitments like taking care of children and elderly parents. Recognizing this, city planners drafted a plan to improve pedestrian mobility and access to public transit.

Sarah Milstein at HuffPost Women writes, “5 Ways White Feminists Can Address Our Own Racism“:

Last month, the hashtag #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen erupted on Twitter. Started by Mikki Kendall, it immediately became a channel for women of color to call out how implicit racial bias, double standards for women of different races and overt racism are all baked into mainstream white feminism. If you’ve been following feminism for the past 150 years, you probably weren’t surprised by the range of grievances. But if you’re a white feminist and you were surprised or you felt defensive or you think you’re not part of the problem, then now is the time to woman up, rethink your own role and help reshape feminism.

While there are many reasons white feminists have to do this work, Kendall’s hashtag highlighted an important one: we cannot credibly or successfully seek societal change when we ourselves create the same injustices we rail against. In other words, the problems we face as women are often the problems we create as white people.

Erin Rook at PQ writes, “International Leather SIR/boy Competition to Ban Trans Contestants“:

The board of directors for two international leather community events announced Sept. 22 that they will no longer permit trans men to enter the International Leather SIR/boy contest — contestants must be cisgender gay men.

The change comes after ownership of the contest changed hands from Mark Frazier to Jeffrey Payne about a year ago and as the organization expands opportunities for participation to a wider segment of the community be eliminating the requirement for contestants to advance through regional competitions.

According to Leatherati, Payne explained that the policy change harkens back to the old days of the contest, which only opened up to trans contestants five years ago in order to comply with California law.

Suzi Skinner at Women’s Agenda writes, “Three tips for talking about gender equality in a social setting“:

Discussing women in leadership, or gender equality in general, in a social setting can be illuminating. If your companions are supporters of the cause the conversation will flow and there is, usually, much for us to learn when this occurs. However, if those in your company are not on the informed side of the ledger, it can be tricky. In that instance it’s helpful to know what you can expect so here are a few tips to think about.

Alexandra at The Feminist Hive Mind writes, “I’ll make myself a sandwich, thanks“:

There are some warning bells going off as I read more and more of the posts. For instance: There are tags for “forbidden“/”Forbidden foods“. Hell, there’s a list of “forbidden” foods in the sidebar! And I get it, there’s some shit out there that will simply ruin a pizza for me (whoever thought that black olives would be a great addition to an otherwise wonderful pie needs to sit in the corner and think about what they’ve done). But “forbidden,” even in the context of making food for someone else to enjoy, is scary strict and not a healthy way to talk to a romantic partner. I know people with food allergies that wouldn’t even use that type of black-and-white, here’s-the-line-you-do-not-cross language and their health is on the line (unlike Eric who just doesn’t like to eat green vegetables). At minimum, it’s condescending and insulting.

Alecia Simmonds at Daily Life writes, “In defence of ‘murderous rage’“:

In case you missed it, last week Gillard gave her first interview since being dismissed from the office of Prime Minister with journalist, author, in fact all-round-feminist-goddess, Anne Summers. When the discussion moved to the sexist treatment she endured in office Gillard responded with stoicism. She knew of the vulgar cartoons but chose not to focus on them. ‘But it must have been upsetting, surely,’ probed Summers. Gillard grinned: ‘I would have said more like murderous rage, really’. And the auditorium erupted in laughter, (which was weird because most of the people there were killjoy feminists who spend their days in a state of crushing seriousness broken only by the occasional screech of ‘that’s not funny’ when they see lovers standing on a bridge giggling at ducks).

It was a joke. It was very clearly a joke. And in case you didn’t get it Gillard explained a few seconds afterwards: “I think maybe we can drop the ‘murderous’ but we should feel a sense of rage about it because it’s only through something that really spurs you on to action that it’s going to change.”

fliponymous at Eponymous Fliponymous writes, “Scriptive, or, There Is Trouble In The Forest“:

The bisexual community has, for many years, been dismissed and erased just as surely as its individual members. Yes, we are an amorphous and heterogeneous community, but frankly no more so than any other community of Identity. Whenever I speak of the Bisexual Community, or make a statement that “Bisexuals (X)”, there is always someone waiting in the wings to point out that I don’t speak for all bisexuals, that no one can because we’re all different. I acknowledge that, and when I speak in person I am always careful to point that out. So take that as a given. I don’t speak for all of Teh Bi any more than Dan Savage speaks for all of Teh Gay. But these are distinctions that are only made within the LGBTQ community. As far as the Overculture is concerned, we are all the same.

And in important ways, we are.

If you don’t fit neatly into one of the two crisp and prescriptively defined monosexual categories, Straight or Gay, you are invisible. To use the Queer Theory concept of the cultural matrix, monosexuality has two boxes and people are shoehorned into one or the other. If you don’t, and you are loud enough about insisting that you don’t, you are at best assigned to some mythical fence where your lack of belonging completely to either puts you outside of and beneath consideration. (That’s a Chestnut, we haven’t quite gotten into the swamp yet, but feel how the ground is starting to get squishy underfoot, how the daisies are being replaced by ladyslippers?)

Noami Ceder guest posts at Geek Feminism, “Trans*H4ck 1.0 – Trans* coders make (their own) history“:

We all introduced ourselves and spoke of our backgrounds, our goals for the hackathon, and, yes, our preferred pronouns. It was clearly the first time some of the cisgender folks had ever been asked that particular question.

By the end of the evening teams had formed and work continued on through the night and into the next day, when things paused at noon for a panel discussing being trans* in tech, featuring Enne Walker, Dana McCallum, Naomi Ceder (me), Jack Aponte, and Nadia Morris and moderated by Fresh! White. The discussion ranged from using open source projects and GitHub to build a professional portfolio to finding a champion at work to how to take care of yourself in the face of the inevitable stress.

Julie guests posts at Geek Feminism with, “I think I’m in an emotionally abusive relationship… with the tech community“:

This week, I think I finally figured out what it is. I noticed the symptoms – what some might refer to as “red flags.” I think we’re in an emotionally abusive relationship.

How did we get here? Why is it this bad? Why are we staying?

There’s always been the microaggressions. I didn’t always notice them, but eventually they accumulated enough that I was buried. I couldn’t ignore them any more. Recently, a new symptom finally hit the point where I couldn’t pretend it isn’t there. Gaslighting (or at least something very akin to it).

Gaslighting is a symptom of emotional abuse, so it was a disturbing discovery. Out of curiosity, I looked up other symptoms of emotional abuse. An upsettingly long list of them were all too easy to identify with. Fuck.

Fiona Stanley at writes at The Conversation, “Let’s treat the social causes of illness rather than just disease“:

But as a young doctor working in child health, particularly with Aboriginal children, it became obvious to me that prevention of disease was by far the best way to practice medicine; it’s more humane and definitely more cost-effective.

In 1972, I left Australia to study epidemiology and public health in the United Kingdom and then the United States, where these disciplines were well advanced. I learnt of the limitations of modern medicine, that prevention was the key to health and that many diseases commenced in social adversity.

Minna Salami writes at The Guardian, “African women are blazing a feminist trail – why don’t we hear their voices?“:

In fact, women have made significant gains all around Africa: indeed, the most successful social movement in Africa in recent decades has been the women’s movement, particularly in policy and legislation. Malawi and Liberia have female heads of state, and earlier this month Senegal elected its first female prime minister, Aminata Touré. Also, the African Union chair is female for the first time in its history. Africa’s strong legacy of female leaders is a hugely positive statement about the continent’s direction.

So why does the western feminist movement hardly look at African feminism for clues? Why does it only pay such little attention to the realisation of a once utopian fantasy of female majority leadership in Rwanda – where, since 2008, women have held over half the parliamentary seats? Feminists everywhere have spent decades campaigning for equality in political leadership, yet its achievement in Rwanda has been met with a loud silence.

At Newswise, “It May Not “Get Better” For Bisexual Teens” *trigger warning for discussion of suicide*:

Teens were divided into groups based on their self-reported identification as heterosexual, mostly heterosexual, gay, mostly gay or bisexual. The study found that depression symptoms, namely thoughts of suicide, decreased from 42 percent to 12.3 percent as teens in all groups transitioned into adulthood and suicide attempts decreased from 15.9 to 2.9 percent. But the “mostly gay” and bisexual teens did not report a significant decrease in some measures of suicidal thoughts or behaviors.

The study did not determine why suicidal thoughts persisted in some groups, but experts offer some suggestions.

“Some bisexuals may struggle with depression later on because they don’t feel accepted and supported in either lesbian and gay or straight communities,” said. “Bisexual identity does not fit into the gay/straight categories most people are comfortable with.”

He suggests that gay teens may find more support than bisexual teens from the LGBT community after coming out, which would encourage feelings of self-acceptance.

Rebecca Shaw writes at The Kings Tribune, “What do you see?“:

If you follow my Twitter account, my Tumblr, my Facebook, my Myspace, my LinkedIn, my email, if you Google me, ask anyone that knows anything about me, look at my cats and music collection, have read anything I’ve ever written, or can see my thoughts, you know that I’m a lesbian. I have been out and proud for many years now, and I’m not afraid to say it in real life or online. This article is about a different kind of coming out. It is about a subject that has easily caused me more shame and discrimination than my sexuality. Being a queer person has its challenges, but most people I encounter don’t have an automatically negative opinion about me based on it. Also, they usually don’t know about it until I tell them. This other issue undeniably causes an immediate adverse reaction to me, as soon as people see me, and it happens literally on a daily basis.

I, Rebecca Shaw am… a fat person. *crowd gasps, delicate lady faints*

I don’t have to come out as fat on a day-to-day basis, because you can tell by pointing your beautiful eyeballs in my direction. However, if you are one of the people that so far mostly know (and no doubt ADORE) me from the Internet, you may not have realised. I’ve mentioned it in various places, but it’s not something I have broadcast by taking out a full (figure)-page newspaper ad or informing the population of Australia via carrier (delicious roasted) pigeon.

Katie J. M. Baker writes at Dissent, “Cockblocked by Redistribution: A Pick-up Artist in Denmark” *trigger warning for rape and PUA*:

Fans of the travel writer will be disappointed that “pussy literally goes into hibernation” in this “mostly pacifist nanny state,” where the social programs rank among the best in the world. Roosh’s initial admiration for those resources is almost charming, if you’re able to momentarily forget that this is a man who considers devirginizing teenagers a sport.

“A Danish person has no idea what it feels like to not have medical care or free access to university education,” an awed Roosh reports. “They have no fear of becoming homeless or permanently jobless. The government’s soothing hand will catch everyone as they fall. To an American like myself, brainwashed to believe that you need to earn things like basic health care or education by working your ass off, it was quite a shock.”

Shadowspar writes, “The Epistemological Twilight Zone” *trigger warning – rape*

It’s interesting¹ how the second a woman starts talking about being raped, or assaulted, or harassed, she gets put into a kind of Epistemological Twilight Zone, innit?

Here’s what I mean.

When someone tells you about something they’ve seen or done, we usually extend them a measure of credit and take what they have said at face value. We grant that their statements about their own firsthand experience are good-faith expressions of the truth as they have observed it. This is called “not being an asshole”.

The alternative is to treat this person’s experiences as expressions of opinion; assertions; mere façades that may or may not objectively exist — and this being despite our likely lack of any concrete evidence that would put these statements into doubt.

Meg Barker at Rewriting the Rules writes, “DIVA article on non-binary gender“:

Later on it felt good to share stories about the confusion and discomfort we’d received from department store staff when shopping for clothes. The group I hung out with included transmasculine folk, butch women, and people who identified as non-binary.

This latter term is one which I increasingly relate to myself. So what is it like if neither of the accepted gender labels fit?

DIVA spoke to several non-binary people, as well as to professionals who work across the gender spectrum, to find out how it is to occupy a place outside the binary. The main message is that, like bisexual or gay people, non-binary people are ordinary folk who should be treated with the same respect as anybody, rather than as some kind of special case.

Welcome to the 65th Down Under Feminist Carnival!

04/10/2013

Rebecca

Down Under Feminist's Carnival 5 Comments

Hello and welcome to the September 2013 edition of the Down Under Feminist Carnival. Big thanks go to Chally for organising the DUFC (you can nominate to host it yourself here), and to Mary, Scarlett, Claire, Jo, Chally and Kathryn for submitting posts. This collection covers posts by Australian and New Zealander feminists written in the month of September.

Politics

Well Australia had the election we had to have in September, which means that with a new Government and a new Prime Minister, many posts were written.

No Place for Sheep wrote, “Why I can’t call Abbott a cunt“:

The cunt, pink, plump, shiny with the juices of desire, is a thing of exquisite beauty, hidden from view, shown only to the chosen one, repository of what is most astonishing in human sexuality. When I think of the cunt, the last association I make with it is, yes, you’ve guessed right, Tony Abbott.

No Place for Sheep also wrote, “Why I don’t care that there’s only one woman in cabinet.“:

It is, of course, shameful that in 2013 a first world country should be led by a man with such biologically determinist attitudes. I don’t believe for a minute there aren’t women in the LNP as worthy and capable as many of the men Abbott has chosen. However, I have no sympathy and no respect for any of them, if they are content to stand silently by while their leader treats them with such contempt, simply because they have vaginas.

Orlando at Hoyden About Town writes, “Quick Link: Public Education On Principle“:

If anything Benedikt, probably knowing how furiously some parents of cherished, privately schooled offspring will condemn her anyway, overstates the drawbacks of her stance: “But it seems to me that if every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve. This would not happen immediately. It could take generations. Your children and grandchildren might get mediocre educations in the meantime, but it will be worth it, for the eventual common good.” I think if there were a concerted effort on the part of parents who have options to opt in to public school, the change would actually be pretty rapid, for all the reasons Benedikt goes on to detail.

The Koori Woman writes, “On what’s on my mind this week“:

It is no secret I am not a fan of Abbott. I find his ultra conservative views both revolting and incredibly dangerous for both Aboriginal people and all Australian women. His ‘daggy dad’ moments are sexism painted as chuckle worthy little mistakes instead of what they really are, alarm bells at a thousand decibels.

It is also no secret I am not a fan of Noel Pearsons empowered communities initiative which Abbott has flagged as the governance model he will use in various communities across Australia. At time of writing, the initiative has been slammed by leading Aboriginal activists ranging from Marianne Mackay to Wayne Wharton. Cape York is the ‘testing’ ground of the welfare reforms outlined in the initiative, so it’s incredibly telling that no less than eight mayors of the Cape York region itself have been scathing in their opposition to Pearsons vision.

The Koori Woman also wrote this month, “On the feminist politics of Abbotts front bench“:

Now the kerfuffle raised by feminists regarding Tony Abbot naming his front bench that includes only one woman has died down, let’s talk about the other glaringly obvious omission from Abbotts front bench that has received virtually no media space. Abbotts front bench is all white.

I’m not surprised media haven’t written on this. Because most mainstream media is white. They don’t notice their own default. Can I blame them? Yes. Yes I can.

Rachel at Musings of an Inappropriate Woman wrote, ““The people make the ultimate decision / The system says they always get it right…”“:

Maybe this stuff shouldn’t matter. Government is about governing, after all, and they mostly did fine on the policy side of things, if you come from a centre-left perspective. But politics is also about emotion, and the to-ing and fro-ing, the tantrums and willingness to throw each other under the bus, left them seeming ultimately untrustworthy. And all that means is that it is too simple to cast Labor as the good guys, and the Liberals as evil. There may not be good reasons to vote the Coalition in today, but there are good reasons to vote Labor out.

Marieke Hardy wrote, “I didn’t vote for this.“:

You’re right, Helen. It is shocking. I mean, who would have imagined that the man who said ‘I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons’ would ever DREAM of putting together a cabinet of little pink sausages, proudly jostling for attention? Why, are we talking about the same devoted husband who leered at a team of teenage netballers during the campaign ‘A bit of body contact never hurt anyone’? That funny old ‘daggy dad’ who brought the house down by quipping ‘We have a bizarre double standard; a bizarre double standard in this country where some-one who kills a pregnant woman’s baby is guilty of murder, but a woman who aborts an unborn baby is simply exercising choice’?

IT SIMPLY DEFIES COMPREHENSION, DOESN’T IT HELEN?

Liz Barr at No Award wrote, “Follow ups, election day, WorldCon, links“:

I, for one, was quite troubled by the Liberals’ strategy of silencing their candidates of colour so as to avoid gaffes and difficult questions. This was the case in my own electorate, where candidate Shilpa Hegde did not participate in any public forums or interviews with citizen journalists. Nor was she seen out campaigning.

As a Commie leftie pinko, I should be glad to see the Liberals mis-step, even if they still win the election, but I think this is a pretty shitty approach. It’s not enough to have people of colour as your candidates, you have to let them be candidates. Allegedly, or so I read in the mainstream press (probably a Fairfax paper, but I couldn’t tell you when or which one because I’ve been site-hopping to avoid their paywall), the strategy was conceived after Jaymes Diaz famously stuffed up an interview. If they’re so worried about candidates looking stupid, though, they would have put a lid on Fiona Scott before she could tell the world that refugees cause traffic jams. Funny how it’s only the non-white candidates who were told to shut up.

Queen of Thorns at Ideologically Impure writes, “Why the religious right should not have any credibility in discussions of morality“:

I am categorically saying we shouldn’t give a fuck what religious extremists have to say about society. Their entire movement, and its assumption that a “return” to Good Wholesome Judeo-Christian Values will save our society, is in no position to pass judgement on anyone.

Relationships

Blue Milk wrote, “On being here“:

A friend tells me that she lies in bed awake at night frightened for my future. I know she means it kindly but I am hurt by her sense of hopelessness for me. I am alright, I say, I really am. I decide I shouldn’t tell her about the nights when the children are staying with their father and I sometimes sigh with pleasure in my empty house. And then there are the nights when I do not even stay home in my empty house.

Spilt Milk writes, “Love story“:

Most of my writing on this most precious of loves, this fervent and brilliant and life-changing love, has been private. To her I write all of my secret words. Whisper sweet everythings. Compose bare poetic couplets. And of course this is how it is, ought to be, with lovers.

There is still the desire to make open proclamations, though. And there is perhaps an imperative to share.

Chrys Stevenson at Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear writes, “No point in being blunt“, the story of her grandfather and family, their lack of belief in a deity, and the good lives they lived:

My grandfather was an atheist. When he married my grandmother, he didn’t just take on his new bride – he also housed her widowed mother, her sister and her daughter and the baby left motherless when another sister died in childbirth. And did he moan and bitch about having all these family strays in his home? No! He accepted it with astounding generosity and an abundance of good humour.

Feminism

Blue Milk wrote, “Women have to be strategic about gender, the PM was no different“.

Ariane at Ariane’s Little World writes, “Living as the default“:

As a white middle class straight man, the standard discourse is about you. However, since you are the default, it doesn’t mention you explicitly. Most of the voices you hear, day in day out, represent you. But since you hear them day in day out, you don’t hear them at all any more. This is also true for white middle class women like me, on issues other than women’s issues (and even then – women’s issues are framed largely from my perspective).

As the default, you are defined by what you’re not. You don’t belong to any interesting culture (because you are surrounded by your culture – it’s forced down everyone’s throats, but you just don’t see it). You’re not gay (or bi, or trans*, or queer). You’re not disabled. You’re not a woman. All those people get a mention all the time. “Indigenous councils”, “gay minister”, “female politician”, “disability advocates”. Unless you are taught to see it, it never occurs to you that “marriage” means “straight marriage”, that “politician” means “male politician”, that “social values” means “white social values”, that “employee” means “able bodied employee”. Because you are the default. When no descriptor is added, we assume white, male, straight, cis, able bodied (and probably some other things too).

A guest posts at The Hand Mirror, “Guestie: Another Fine Myth” (I’m not sure who wrote it, if you do, please let me know in the comments and I’ll attribute correctly)

Orlando at Hoyden About Town posts, “Thursday Hoyden and Talk Like a Pirate Day Special: Ching Shih“:

After her husband, who ran a flourishing pirate crew already, died in 1807, Ching Shih took over the enterprise and made her pirate band into a force that the Chinese, British and Dutch navies could not curtail. By offering defeated crews the choice between suffering a gruesome death, or changing sides and joining her, she forged a fleet of around 1,500 ships, all under her ultimate command. By 1810 her notorious ‘Red Flag Fleet’ had amassed such a fortune, and had so severely pummelled all the soldiers and sailors, generals and peasant armies, sent by various authorities to try to shut her down, that she cheerfully accepted the amnesty for herself and her crew offered by the Chinese government. She divvied up the spoils and retired to the country where she lived to a ripe old age.

tigtog at Hoyden About Town posts, “Friday Hoydens: Lakota and Dakota Grandmothers vs Neo-Nazis“:

These women from the Standing Rock Indian Nation in North Dakota are only holding this Nazi flag up to the camera because they’re about to burn it, having captured it from public display on the property of a white supremacist in the nearby very small town of Leith, ND.

Orlando at Hoyden About Town also posted, “Friday Hoyden: Rosie Hackett“:

This month, Dublin City Council voted to name the new bridge over the river Liffey “Rosie Hackett Bridge”.

This was in response to a huge campaign from Dubliners, mostly women, who felt Rosie was due a decent and long-lasting public memorial. All of the 16 previously existing bridges in the city are named after men.

Amy Gray at Pesky Feminist wrote, “Do women without children face discrimination in the office?“:

It is illogical to argue one group of women suffer at the benefit of another. Women with children face real discrimination in the office – pregnancy discrimination, career discrimination. There are statistics and studies to show this. The Sexual Discrimination Commission is currently running an inquiry on the matter. Women without children face equal discrimination in a workforce disposed to trying to predict a woman’s fertility as though it were a ticking time bomb and blocking any chance at flexibility to develop themselves as she may choose.

It is in this fallacy that we miss the point: we’re not discriminated against because we do or don’t have children, we’re discriminated against because we’re women and have the temerity to seek flexibility from a system that is already opposed to our presence.

Kate Galloway at Curl wrote, “A sense of entitlement? The (gender) subtext of ‘lifters not leaners‘”:

Work – by which politicians and commentators mean paid work – may well be an important aspect of our social identity, but the argument of feminists is that paid work does not occur without unpaid work. Unpaid work is largely carried out by women. To characterise those who engage in unpaid work as ‘leaners’ misses the point of the structural disadvantage of women and fails to seek to remedy this.

These structural questions will not be helped by marginalising those who receive welfare support. Instead, the basis of distributive justice in our system needs recalibration. For example childcare tends to be positioned as a domestic issue rather than an economic need. This will keep primary carers of young children marginalised in the context of paid work. Reframing this issue would provide structural solutions that addressed the real needs of society and its paid workers.

Scarlett Harris at The Early Bird Catches the Worm writes, “Music: “Work, Bitch” as Feminist Anthem*.”

Claire Shove at Sextracurricular Studies writes, “Why Gender-Specific Relationship Advice is almost always Terrible“:

As times have changed, so have the dominant attitudes in our relationship conduct literature, but some notable trends have persisted. The offering of relationship advice to a select audience based on gender is perhaps the most obvious, and as I see it, the most problematic of these. In the first place, this places all of the responsibility for romantic conduct and communication on one partner instead of acknowledging it as a mutual concern. Again, The Rules gives excellent examples of this behavior: included among the 35 rules are stipulations against initiating conversation with a man, answering his phone calls, meeting him more than once a week and ‘rushing into’ sex, i.e., anything which would suggest mutual attraction[3]. This anti-feminist manifesto places all of the responsibility for initiating and maintaining a connection onto the man, under the false assumption that returning the affections of a suitor will make a woman seem easier to ‘get’ and therefore less valuable.

Stephanie at No Award wrote, “book pusher (not a white cis dude edition)“:

What are the books that you always recommend to people, that you always want people to love, that you shove at people and wave your hands about and reread constantly? Only rule: the author cannot be a cis white dude. Trans white dude, fine. Cis asian dude, fine. Ladies, all fine. Author doesn’t conform to your gender binary? All good.

Our bodies

Celeste Liddle at Rantings of an Aboriginal Feminist wrote, “On being a feminist with period pain“:

So if it is so damn normal and average and stuff, why is it so hard to talk about? Why is it that this hardcore black feminist, when confronted with pain and depleted energy as a result, finds it so difficult to say “I think my uterus is actually twisting itself into an infinity symbol in four different directions and I simply need to rest”? I mean it is that normal for me that, generally speaking, most months I will need a day away from society or work to rest, and it has always been that way. I hate to say it, but in the quest to be the all-conquering feminist ready to take on the world, I think I unfortunately sometimes see my own body’s needs as a sign of weakness and a thing to be overcome. And that, quite frankly, is ridiculous.

Kathryn Daly at A Little Bit of Life wrote, “The body and our worth“:

So the tipping point for me has been that I am really fucking sick of people commenting on my body. Not just the obscene bullshit that men offer when a woman is walking in public spaces (which, I might add, has a whole post of its own when I stop wanting to stab someone each time I try to think about the issue), but also the uninvited commentary from every other source.

It’s the people who tell me I am looking too thin. My best friend is about ready to attack the next person who says this to me: ‘All the shit you have going on in your life and people who are meant to be your friends manage to find something bad to say to you? Tell them to, “Get fucked”’.

Race and racism

Celeste Liddle at Rantings of an Aboriginal Feminist wrote, “Andrew Bolt: The “new racism” is so last season!“:

Apart from his extraordinarily lazy focus on the left in his analysis, I have but one thing to say: Congratulations Bolta, you’ve discovered “structural racism”! Have a biscuit, lad. Some of us have been talking about this for a while, and the thing is, it’s not exactly “new”. Nope, the discussions have been going on for a long time now, but we’re glad you’ve joined us! The left and the right may talk about structural racism and its manifestations in different ways as you have “amply” shown us, but it doesn’t mean that we are not talking about the same thing. Yes, the idea that a person may end up being oppressed and have their agency diminished by structural and social forces, even if there is some argument over what those forces might be, is nothing new at all.

stargazer writes at The Hand Mirror, “can’t win” about the recent winner of the Miss America Pagent:

yes, the last one really grates with me, because i’m always struggling against the “foreigner” label myself. the many little & big ways that certain people need to make sure i understand that i don’t belong here, don’t deserve to have the same things as everyone else, should be grateful just to be allowed to exist in this space and place. yes, it grates.

and i know that this group of people don’t represent a whole country, they don’t even represent a majority. but they are the vocal minority that can make for a hostile environment. they cause fear, they have an impact that is far greater than their number. this ugly end of racism is the tip of the iceberg, the bits we can see clearly but there is so much more that is insidious and not always so plainly obvious, therefore much harder to fight.

Hannah Paige wrote a great poem, “poem – I want you to promise”

Stephanie at No Award wrote, “indigenous literacy day and getting caught reading“:

Today is Indigenous Literacy Day! This is great because it means we are talking about Indigenous Literacy! This is bad because Australia, it means we still need to talk about Indigenous Literacy.

There is a huge gap in English literacy rates between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Australia. A disgustingly enormous, we should feel ashamed of ourselves gap. By year 3, the gap in reading, writing and numeracy is already significant, and by the age of 15, “more than one-third of Australia’s Indigenous students ‘do not have the adequate skills and knowledge in reading literacy to meet real-life challenges and may well be disadvantaged in their lives beyond school’.” MORE THAN ONE THIRD. That is so uncool I cannot even. But Indigenous Australians should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and Australia is totally not racist, amirite?

LGBTIQ issues, stories and experiences

Spilt Milk writes, “Please, won’t somebody think of the children?“:

I haven’t told her that I couldn’t legally marry my partner. Shattering her fragile ignorance of the extent of the bigotry her family faces would break my heart. Soon enough someone will tell her that Mama and Ima can’t be married like most of the other parents and step-parents she knows. Like all kids, she has an easily mobilised outrage switch: I expect she’ll rail against the injustice. But she’ll also have the sensation that I feel every time my relationship is devalued or erased or vilified. The sensation of a thousand tiny voices whispering ‘you are less than us.’

Reproductive Justice

AlisonM at The Hand Mirror writes a dual post (two for the price of one) called, “Ready, Set, Go: The Prochoice Highway“:

The move toward reproductive justice and away from “choice” is a hotly debated one, and you’ll notice that with its title, the Highway has a bit of a dollar each way. But the more I read about reproductive justice, which has been spearheaded by women of colour, the more I like the way it allows the discussion to be made a lot broader. (A friend pointed me toward a great publication by the US group Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice on this issue. Pdf warning: This link is to a pdf. And another good resource is Sister Song: Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective) Just last weekend, for example, I met up with a group of people wanting to do some work around what I’ll loosely call the policing and criminalisation of pregnancy, of pregnant bodies, of pregnant women. When you start looking at what’s going on it turns out it’s going on everywhere: in the public square, in medicine, in the judiciary, in state agencies, in legislation aimed at preventing child abuse, the list is long and a bit depressing. (I wrote a bit about the issue a while ago in Werewolf and here about a related “careless driving” case.)

Mary at Hoyden About Town wrote, “Fetal personhood (“Zoe’s Law”) before NSW Parliament“:

The stated intent of the bill is to allow separate prosecution of injury to a fetus, following the death of Zoe Donegan (stillborn at 32 weeks gestation) in 2009 after Zoe’s mother Brodie was hit by a van driven by Justine Hampson. Hampson was convicted of grevious bodily harm with regards to Brodie, but not with injuring Zoe or causing Zoe’s death.

However, the bill has been introduced by an anti-abortion politician, and there are grave concerns about its potential interpretation, particularly “an unborn child is taken to be a living person”

Queen of Thorns at Ideologically Impure wrote, “The “hard questions” of the antichoice movement“:

The real point is this: Pro Life New Zealand want to use over-simplified, judgemental arguments to shame pregnant people into not having abortions. Note the question about sexual assault, and “isn’t abortion the best solution” – as though prochoice activists are out there insisting that every pregnancy resulting from assault be aborted. Note the first question is about disability – as though these religious extremists give a fuck about challenging society’s ableism once you’re out of the womb.

Lee Rhiannon writes at New Matilda, “Abortion Is No Sleeper Issue“:

The problem was not that the then PM spoke publicly on abortion. The problem was that there was not a strong public voice backing her in what was a historic and necessary speech. Necessary because the push is on from some quarters in Australia to wind back the clock on women’s rights to the full range of sexual and reproductive health procedures. Abortion is still covered by the Crimes Act in some parts of Australia.

Jacki Brown at fuckability: disability, sex & our revolution! writes, “Disability feminism & the selective abortion of disabled foetuses“:

Disability eugenics is an issue at the intersection of feminist discourses- the right to body autonomy-and disability discourses regarding the value of a non-normative body/mind and living as an act of resistance to a social discourse which says ‘’better off dead then disabled’’. The choice to abort is framed as a medical one when it also has social, political and ethical implications. As a disability feminist my resistance to selective abortion procedures steams from its value judgment on our lives, it positions us a flawed and wrong and it seeks to disempower us further by framing us an unwanted burden, as inhabiting a life not worth living.

I wrote a post called, “Let’s talk about abortion – again“:

The most telling part of the Pope’s comments on abortion is that the people who are pregnant aren’t even mentioned. There is lots of talk about babies and children (despite the fact that it’s not until they are born that they are babies or children), and those babies or children having Jesus’s face (which is just a bit creepy), but nothing about the people whose lives may be in danger or whose ability to manage a pregnancy and the next 18 years of raising a child is being questioned by them. It’s telling, it says “The Catholic Church cares more about babies than it does about the people whose body they incubate in, who will then spend the next 18 years or so raising, feeding, and attempting to afford them”.

Sex Work and sex workers

Gaayathri writes at A Human Story, “Brothel Visitors Outed Online By Council Candidate… | Stuff.co.nz“:

As I can see it, Hawker seems to think he can increase his standing in the community by shaming sex workers and the men (or women) that use their services. He seems to be enraged by the fact that the people he sees patronising this place of business appear to be wealthy business men. He seems to think he has some sort of moral higher ground. I don’t buy it. Hawker does not care about the impact his actions may have on the sex workers who count on their clientele to earn their living. I guess in his mind he is doing them a favour.

Disability

Jackie Brown at fuckability: disability, sex & our revolution! writes, ““Are you a paraplegic?”“:

Perhaps they feel asking ‘the poor little cripple what happened’ is their good deed for the day; as one woman informed me ‘‘you need to talk about it, you need to tell me what happened, it’s good for you’’. She assumed that I possessed some tragic story, and that it must be at all times on the tip of my tongue when in fact if I had had some kind of accident/trauma it would be something I would get support to process with trained health professionals, not curious strangers on the street. No, this was not the 1^st time I have been expected to divulge my disability in the street to a passing stranger but it was the 1^st time I was abused for refusing to do so and called “cuckoo”’ and “crazy’’ for saying I am happy the way I am.

Xanthe Coward writes at Meanjin, “All The Women Are Tired Here“:

There’s a raging debate amongst those who suffer from the condition, their doctors and academics, over the name Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). Personally, I don’t care what they call it; I’m just relieved to have been diagnosed. I was so tired all the time. And there it is. The problem people have with the name of the illness is that it indicates a constant state of exhaustion. My experience with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is exactly that—a constant state of exhaustion—but I also suffered from a host of other symptoms, for which there didn’t seem to be an explanation. No one knew what was wrong with me, least of all me. Family members and friends assumed I was depressed and worn out from a move inland.

Violence *Trigger warning for posts in this section*

Coley at Tangerina writes, “Help get sexual violence services properly funded. Finally. Please.“:

No matter how vital an organisation is, if the climate in which it operates doesn’t value or support the work it does – it will die. Our Government has created a hostile environment for many community not-for-profit agencies. We live under an administration that feels competition is a good thing, not just in the private sector, but in community service provision.

While excellence in service should always be strived for, the way to achieve this is not to pit tiny, often volunteer-run organisations against each other for laughable sums of money. Money that they have to annually re-apply for at great expense of their already stretched resources. Money that makes organisations scared to speak out against Government initiatives for fear of being reprimanded through the loss of their funding.

Claire Shove at Sextracurricular Studies writes, “How Popular Music Contributes to Sexist and Rape Tolerant Attitudes“:

If they were in fact going for irony, this seems a very roundabout way of doing it. Rather than assuming the audience would see power in the way the women looked directly at the camera, couldn’t Martel have instructed them to raise their eyebrows or roll their eyes? If they were supposed to be empowered, why not make that more obvious? Fuck it, why not have the women fully dressed, in a club, with the same suited men hitting on them and striking out?

The most likely answer, in my opinion, isn’t that Martel and Thicke thought their super subtle irony would be safely understood by the general audience. It’s that they didn’t think about it much at all. Ultimately, even if all the participants in the creative process had the same tongue-in-cheek intentions for it, which it doesn’t seem like they did, it fails as satire because the majority of the viewers didn’t get the so-called joke. You don’t make a comment about degrading women by continuing to degrade women.

The Sixty-Sixth Edition of the Down Under Feminist Carnival is planned for 5 November, 2013 and will be hosted by Steph and Liz at No Award. Submissions to yiduiqie [at] gmail [dot] com for those who can’t access the blogcarnival submissions form.

The post European summer and beginning of spring linkspam (September 2013)

14/09/2013

Rebecca

Linkspam No Comments

I’m back in the country and have been looking at the interesting stories I’ve collected for linkspam while I was away and since I’ve been back. There is surprisingly a lot more than I expected, clearly the downtime during my holiday was spent reading great material.

Ruby Hamad wrote at Daily Life, “Charged for screaming at childbirth“:

Zimbabwe, with a GDP of $US500 per person and an average yearly income of $US150, is one of the world’s poorest countries. Not coincidentally, it is also one of the most corrupt. In a worldwide report on corruption by Transparency International (TI) 62 percent of Zimbabwean respondents said they had paid a bribe in the past year.

Also not coincidentally, women bear more than their fair share of this poverty and corruption, one of the most shocking of which was a local hospital that was found to be charging women $5 for every scream they emitted during childbirth.

The fee, ostensibly for “raising false alarm” was in reality, as The Washington Post put it, “clearly aimed at separating women from their money.”

It doesn’t end there. This fee, essentially robbing women of their right to holler their heads off in the throes of unimaginable pain, is in addition to Zimbabwe’s mandatory $50 delivery fee.

Ben Richmond at Motherboard Beta wrote, “Inside the CIA’s Role in Pakistan’s Polio Outbreak“:

Pakistan is the only country in Asia with confirmed Wild Polio Virus type 3, and along with neighboring Afghanistan and Nigeria is one of three countries where polio is still endemic. The country has been working to eradicate polio since 1988, and making progress. Then, in 2012, the efforts hit a major roadblock.

A local warlord banned vaccinations after Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi was linked to the CIA operation to find Osama bin Laden. Under the guise of giving out a Hepatitis B vaccination, the doctor collected DNA samples from children, looking for bin Laden’s family members.

A link was established between the CIA and vaccinations and starting on June 16, 2012, tribal leaders banned the vaccination campaign. The Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur said vaccinations would be banned until the CIA stopped its drone campaign in North Waziristan, according to UPI.

EEB Guest posts at Almost Diamonds, “I Am a False Rape Allegation Statistic” *trigger warning for rape, violence, harassment*

So understand: I am a “false rape allegation” statistic. When they wrote their reports, sent the numbers off to the justice department to compile the information, I am down as a liar, a false allegation, even though no charges were ever filed against me. (Don’t know if that’s because they didn’t think they could make a case against me, or because they didn’t want to put a cop’s daughter on trial.) And you know what? I am not the only person. It is horrifying, the number of women that I have met in support groups and activist meetups who experienced very similar things. They too, are false allegation statistics. We were all raped.

forgedimagination at Defeating the Dragons wrote, “modesty rules and transphobia” *trigger warning transphobia*:

Most of that revolved around wearing skirts and culottes. We weren’t allowed to wear anything that even approached something that looked like pants. At one point, I heard a pastor preach against wearing skirts with a jeans-type zipper and button fastener in the front. Because those look like mens’ pants, and that’s not feminine. I also heard messages preached against business suits, blazers, and button-up shirts. If we were going to wear button-up shirts, they could not be made out of cotton, could not be Oxford style, and we had to make sure that they buttoned “correctly.”

Tied up in all of this was horrible, rampant transphobia– in the extreme. Cross-dressing? Abomination. Drag? Straight for the pits of hell. Long hair on a man? A horrible shame and a curse upon him. I can’t tell you how many stories I heard growing up where some preacher was in line somewhere, standing behind a man with long hair, and being “horrified and appalled” when they realized that who they had assumed to be a woman was actually a man. The first time I ever heard about the sorts of procedures and treatments trans* people need, like hormone replacement therapy (part of the standard course of treatment for gender dysphoria), I was in a revival service, and the evangelist was railing against “those disgusting hermaphrodites.”

JOS posted at Feministing, “The shameful, unacceptable media coverage of Chelsea Manning’s transition” *trigger warning for transphobia*:

I do understand the impetus to mention Manning’s old name at least once so the audience knows what’s being reported on. Personally, I think it’s unnecessary – “Pfc. Manning” should be enough to clue in your audience. Of course, I’m more comfortable with just using Manning or Pfc. Manning because that’s how I’ve been referring to her since 2011. Part of what has annoyed me about the news coverage over the past day is that this is not new information. Chelsea came out publicly, telling us her name and how we should refer to her, which should be more than enough to correct reporters. But she had already been outed through the process of the trial. She’d already said privately she was female, information that then became public. Yet even her supporters continued to default to her given name and masculine pronouns. When I see or hear someone communicate that their gender is different from the one assigned to them at birth, I listen, and I respect that. Most people in this world default to the gender that is coercively assigned to someone at birth. I happen to believe that people know their own genders way better than any outside “expert,” be they a doctor, lawyer, judge, or journalist. And I know how hard it is to go against the gender assigned to you in this transphobic context. It can be particularly hard for women assigned male at birth – the costs of living your actual gender are higher, because patriarchy. When I first read Manning’s words about her gender identity during the process of the trial, I believed her. And I stopped defaulting to her assigned name and masculine pronouns, because I always put self-identification over an identity that’s been coercively assigned to someone. So I didn’t take the announcement yesterday as groundbreaking news – I saw it as Chelsea making clear and public the name and pronouns she wants to use. Which is part of why I’m so disgusted – this announcement is being treated as major news instead of a clarification of how to report on Chelsea.

Dances with fat posted, “To the Guys Who Threw Eggs at Me Tonight” *trigger warning for fatphobia*:

To recap – two adult males threw the eggs and carton at me for daring to exist outside my house in a fat body. Of course they are utter cowards who sped away immediately, leaving me with so many questions:

First of all, how did you come to have 2 eggs and an egg carton in your car? Did you throw the first ten at other fatties, or are you now dealing with 10 eggs and no carton in your car?

Were these fatty-specific eggs that you had planned to throw, or are you guys eating cereal for breakfast until somebody can get to the store?

How do you miss a 300 pound woman who is three feet away from you? I mean, I’m happy that I didn’t have to walk 5 miles covered in egg, but let’s work on that follow through son, you never know when a softball game might break out.

Finally, what the hell kind of person throws eggs at strangers from their car?

It also set up a second interaction around mile seven wherein someone yelled “YO FAT BITCH!” and I yelled back “DO YOU HAVE EGGS?” The looks on their faces were priceless as they asked “What?” and I said “The last people who harassed me today threw eggs, if you don’t have eggs then you’re behind the fat bashing curve tonight.” The guy who had yelled in the first place ducked his head and said “Wow, that’s crazy. I’m sorry ma’am.”

Leena Van Deventer writes at her new blog by the same name, “The keepers of the gates.“:

I was enjoying a nice cup of tea while reading a blog post about writing (procrastinating about the writing I was supposed to be doing). And then I LOL’d, but then I serious’d.

I sniffed the air, it smelled familiar. Sour.

Gatekeeping bullshit.

It contained a quiz you could take to find out whether you were a ~~real gamer~~ professional writer or not. If you didn’t answer the “do you spend every spare moment writing” questions entirely connecting “sacrifice for your art” with “being professional” (ew) then you were relegated to the pitied-upon class of “hobbyist”. I know right? Apparently that’s a word used by people who aren’t accountants. Who knew! It was said that if you had a clean (nice) house, went out with friends, watched television, dared engage in small talk instead of big talk, or liked hearing nice things about your work, that you were not a professional writer. Now, many others have pointed out how fucked up this is, so I won’t go into picking at each point and its dumbassery, they’ve covered it supremely well. But what struck me was how it was note for note the same bullshit that tries to keep people out of collectives everywhere.

Sarah Kendzior writes at Al Jazeera, “Mothers are not ‘opting out’ – they are out of options“:

On August 7, the New York Times ran an article called “The Opt Out Generation Wants Back In” – a follow-up to a 2003 story about highly accomplished, well-educated American women who left the workforce to stay at home with their children. Ten years later, the mothers are seeking work that befits their abilities but most are unable to find it, causing them to question their original decision.

The New York Times piece frames the mothers’ misgivings as a result of questionable planning and poor marriage partners, paying mere lip service to the tremendous change in the economy over the past ten years. Whether to work or stay at home is presented as an option that has to do with personal fulfillment and childrearing preferences, divorced from fiscal limitations.

But for nearly all women, from upper middle-class to poor, the “choice” of whether to work is not a choice, but an economic bargain struck out of fear and necessity. Since 2008, the costs of childbirth, childcare, health care, and education have soared, while wages have stagnated and full-time jobs have been supplanted by part-time, benefit-free contingency labour.

The media present a woman’s fear of losing her career as the fear of losing herself. But the greatest fear of most mothers is not being able to provide for their children. Mothers with high-paying jobs go back to work to earn money for their kids. Married mothers with low-paying jobs quit to save money for their kids. Single mothers struggle to find work that pays enough to support their kids. Self-fulfillment is a low priority in an economy fuelled by worker insecurity.

The assumed divide between mothers who work inside and outside the home is presented as a war of priorities. But in an economy of high debt and sinking wages, nearly all mothers live on the edge. Choices made out of fear are not really choices. The illusion of choice is a way to blame mothers for an economic system rigged against them. There are no “mommy wars“, only money wars – and almost everyone is losing.

NK Jemisin posted the other blog post she would have posted had Theodore Beale not been expelled from SFWA’s membership, “The Ten Percent“.

Katy Waldman at Slate writes, “Haters Are Gonna Hate, Study Confirms“:

After marking the dependably hateful haters with a scarlet H, the researchers presented participants with information about a new product: the “Monahan LPI-800 Compact 2/3-Cubic-Foot 700-Watt Microwave Oven.” This elaborately titled microwave oven does not exist (except in Jack Donaghy’s mind), but participants didn’t know this and were given three glowing fake reviews and three dissatisfied fake reviews. While people who more or less liked taxidermy and crossword puzzles also liked the oven, the haters drenched their fake consumer surveys in haterade. They were also more likely to hate on recycling and vaccine shots. (To be fair, it’s hard to be a ray of sunshine when you’ve got the measles.)

Nafeez Ahmed at The Guardian writes, “Pentagon bracing for public dissent over climate and energy shocks“:

It is therefore not surprising that the increasing privatisation of intelligence has coincided with the proliferation of domestic surveillance operations against political activists, particularly those linked to environmental and social justice protest groups.

Department of Homeland Security documents released in April prove a “systematic effort” by the agency “to surveil and disrupt peaceful demonstrations” linked to Occupy Wall Street, according to the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF).

Similarly, FBI documents confirmed “a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector” designed to produce intelligence on behalf of “the corporate security community.” A PCJF spokesperson remarked that the documents show “federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

In particular, domestic surveillance has systematically targeted peaceful environment activists including anti-fracking activists across the US, such as the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition, Rising Tide North America, the People’s Oil & Gas Collaborative, and Greenpeace. Similar trends are at play in the UK, where the case of undercover policeman Mark Kennedy revealed the extent of the state’s involvement in monitoring the environmental direct action movement.

Celeste Liddle writes at The Guardian, “Broome bombing: where is the outrage?“:

What I do wish to know, however, is where is the media and Australian community outrage over this event? Where is the coast-to-coast coverage? If I was not hooked into social media, where a number of Indigenous community members were talking about it, I probably would have missed the story due to the lack of coverage. It is telling that the Chinese national press agency Xinhua covered it, yet most of the Australian sources failed to mention it. Last year, when I was told at work that the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union had been the target of a bomb threat, I was able to read about it in a variety of sources. That one turned out to be a hoax; this attack actually injured four people.

Had this been an attack on an Australian city, or on a group of non-Indigenous people, would it have been deemed an event of public importance? As Aboriginal feminist and activist The Koori Woman so eloquently writes: “(I’m) Idly wondering what would happen if I went and casually lobbed an explosive down the whitest street in the village”.

Rafi Alam, “Smashing the fash: fascism in Australia“:

We’re told to never forget, because there is a danger in allowing the past to repeat itself. Fascism wasn’t an anomaly of world history, but is rooted in something visceral within society. It has an economic and political vision that strives to protect the legitimate members of society from the ebbs and flows of global finance and immigration; it seeks to create hope in the less fortunate by blaming society’s ills on the least fortunate. It thrives on crisis and decline, and mobilises movements by encouraging the masses to rise up against decay and attain power for the rightful heirs of the state, usually white ‘natives’.

Magda Szubanski writes at The Hoopla, “Magda’s Catholic Family Values“:

The way Tony Abbott purports to represent family values. In particular, Catholic family values. I am so weary of this face of Catholicism – this mean-spirited, uncharitable, hard-man version.

But in a bigger sense I am so heartbroken by the way the millions of moderate, social justice-minded Catholics – the ones who do the real, actual work the Church is supposed to do… like caring for people, being compassionate, looking after the weak and the less fortunate – have been ignored, disenfranchised.

Pushed aside by the power elite.

There have always been two Catholic churches – those who try to practice the basic message of Jesus , “love thy neighbour as thyself” – and those who are there for other reasons. The “Career Catholics” as I like to call them.

1DeadlyNation writes, “Abbott, the Truth and Cost of his Indigenous Volunteering“:

In August of 2012 Tony Abbott did indeed go to Cape York, but it wasn’t for a week or two as Mr Pyne suggests. It was for 2 days! It was a working bee of sorts and some of Australia’s business leaders were taken along to volunteer as well. Photos of Abbott with tools in hand were taken and the myth of Abbott the saviour of the Black man had a wonderful photo op. No problem so far until you examine the Expenditure on Entitlements paid by the Department of Finance and Deregulation to Mr Abbott for this trip of “Volunteering”. And what do we find on page 12? An amount of $9,636.36, tax payer dollars, to fund the hire of a private charter flight for the 2 days. I don’t know about you, but when I volunteer to hammer in a few nails for a day or two I don’t ask the people of Australia to cough up 10k. That isn’t volunteering, that is the most expensive labourer in the history of Australia. I wonder what the sandwiches cost….(http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/parliamentarians-reporting/docs/P31/ABBOTT_Tony.pdf page 12.)

Matt Siegel at the New York Times writes, “News Corp.’s Tight Grip on Australia’s Papers Shapes Its Politics“:

They have been front and center in the current national election pitting Mr. Rudd and the Labor Party against the Liberal Party led by Tony Abbott. The papers have run a string of scathing front-page editorials since Mr. Rudd called for elections last month. The decision to portray Mr. Rudd on the front page of The Daily Telegraph as Colonel Klink from the 1965-71 television comedy “Hogan’s Heroes,” sporting a Nazi uniform and a monocle, raised eyebrows and led Mr. Rudd to publicly call out Mr. Murdoch over the coverage.

Mr. Murdoch has made it clear, Mr. Rudd told reporters last month, “that he doesn’t really like us, and would like to give us the old heave-ho,” adding that “I’m sure he sees it with crystal-clear clarity all the way from the United States.”

Although several Murdoch papers endorsed Mr. Rudd during his first successful run for the leadership in 2007, they quickly soured on his positions toward big business, like a proposed tax on mining profits and an emissions trading plan. The company was seen as instrumental in the media campaign that saw him ousted in a 2010 party coup amid record low approval ratings. Mr. Rudd returned to government in June after upheaval in the Labor Party.

One of the Labor government’s plans calls for a National Broadband Network that would deliver high-speed Internet access to wide swathes of the country, a service that would broadly compete with News Corporation’s subscription TV service, Foxtel, which remains the company’s most profitable Australian venture.

Janet Mock writes, “How Society Shames Men Dating Trans Women & How This Affects Our Lives“:

Guess what? Many men are attracted to women, and trans women are amongst these women.

We, as a society, have not created a space for men to openly express their desire to be with trans women. Instead, we shame men who have this desire, from the boyfriends, cheaters and “chasers” to the “trade,” clients, and pornography admirers. We tell men to keep their attraction to trans women secret, to limit it to the internet, frame it as a passing fetish or transaction. In effect, we’re telling trans women that they are only deserving of secret interactions with men, further demeaning and stigmatizing trans women.

…

When a man can be shamed merely for interacting with a trans women – whether it be through a photograph, a sex tape or correspondences — what does this say about how society views trans women? More important, what does this do to trans women?

This pervasive ideology says that trans women are shameful, that trans women are not worthy of being seen and that trans women must remain a secret — invisible and disposable. If a man dares to be seen with a trans woman, he will likely lose social capital so he must adamantly deny, vehemently demean, trash and/or exterminate the woman in question. He must do this to maintain his standing in our patriarchal society. For a man to be associated with a trans women, in effect, is to say that he is no longer a “real” man (as if such a thing exists) because he sleeps with “fake” women (as if such a thing exists).

Aaron Day at Pink News writes, “Russia: Top lawyer comes out as bisexual and transgender against anti-gay ‘propaganda’ laws“:

Masha Bast, the chair of the Association of Russian Lawyers for Human Rights, has spoken out in mainstream Russian media to oppose the anti-gay law.

In an interview, she told the Moscow Times: “The law banning gay propaganda among minors is completely wrong.

“I remember being 10 and wanting to be a girl and putting on girl’s clothes. I didn’t understand what was happening to me.

“This was in the Soviet Union and there was no information to explain what was happening to me.

…

“So it isn’t a matter of upbringing. It’s nature. That’s why I think the law against “homosexual propaganda” is a law against children and one that targets certain social groups. It is a fascist law and nothing else.”

Ms Bast said she explained to her wife when they first started dating “I wasn’t the gender I appeared to be. I am female and have always wanted to be a girl.”

She said: “We talked about it for a long time, and it wasn’t an easy decision for her. I explained that I like men, but I am a bisexual woman.

Sophie Pilgrim at France 24, “Feminists want ‘great women’ buried in Pantheon“:

Around one hundred women and a dozen men gathered outside the Pantheon mausoleum in Paris on Monday to demonstrate in favour of interring more women in the prestigious sanctuary, which is home to the remains of the country’s most treasured national figures.

There are currently only two women to 71 men buried at the site: Marie Curie, whose scientific breakthroughs changed the face of modern medicine; and Sophie Berthelot, who was buried alongside her husband, the chemist and politician Marcellin Berthelot.

In March, French President François Hollande said he wanted to grant due recognition to female historical figures in French history and has hinted that more women should be buried at the Pantheon in order to “represent the principles of the country”.

59th Down Under Feminists’ Carnival

03/04/2013

Rebecca

Down Under Feminist's Carnival 12 Comments

Hello and welcome to the fifty ninth Down Under Feminists’ Carnival. There has been so much going on this month I think you’ll thoroughly enjoy all the posts I’ve collected.

International Women’s Day

Helen at Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony writes, “International Women’s Day 2013: Time for action to end violence against women” and discusses the great work that feminism has achieved over the past year.

Jo at A Life Unexamined writes, “To every woman in the world” an affirmation to all women about how awesome we are.

Media

Clemintine Ford writes about Fairfax Digital’s very odd decision (now rectified) to retitle the Daily Life section to “Women’s Perspective” in “An open letter to Fairfax Digital“.

Clem Bastow at The Vine writes “Let’s talk about Adam Hills and Joan Rivers” in which she writes how wrong Adam Hills’s response was to Joan Rivers’s comments.

Deborah at Bee of a Certain Age writes, “Missing the point“:

There’s no attempt to talk to any women bloggers about their experience of trolling. And what we know now is that the abuse handed out on-line to women who dare to blog is outrageous.

Poverty

Molly Eliza at Wom*news writes, “The Price of Existence“:

Even existing on the most basic level has a price tag. The bottom of Maslow’s pyramid. You need to pay for a roof over your head, food to eat, electricity, water, healthcare; all of those things we took for granted as kids, assumed that they were just a given. You pay through the nose to keep on living. It seems that the poorer you get, the more you pay to keep on living. We all know this, and accept it as the status quo – that living, existing on the most human level comes with a price. After all, that’s why you have a job.

Orlando at Hoyden About Town writes “Friday Hoyden: Ela Bhatt“:

“I would urge us to ensure that six basic primary needs are met from resources within 100 miles around us. I call it the ’100 mile principle’. If food, shelter, clothing, primary education, primary healthcare and primary banking are locally produced and consumed, we will have the growth of a new holistic economy, that the world will sit up and take note of.”

Politics

Kim at Larvatus Prodeo writes, “Feminism, Julia Gillard and Magical Thinking“.

Cat Williams guests posts at The Australian Independent Media Network with “stupid lefty whore“, where she discusses the value in knowing the arguments of the other side, and her experience of misogyny online.

My post “The proof is actually in the Tony Abbott pudding” was nominated for this carnival:

So today Abbott has come out saying that he’s a changed man, that he’s grown and changed (recently) and that we shouldn’t judge him by comments he made 35 years ago. Ok, sure, I won’t judge Tony Abbott for comments he made 35 years ago, back when he was a dick, I’ll judge him for comments he’s said far more recently than that, which still show he’s still a dick.

Andie Fox who blogs at blue milk, has the following piece in the Guardian, “Julia Gillard’s adoption apology comes after an abyss of trauma“.

Megpie71 writes at Hoyden About Town, “On Political Polls and Negative Rainfall“:

Poll watching is the great spectator sport among Australian journalists, and there are polls just about every week measuring how people feel about X, Y, or Z. What these polls leave out (and what they have to leave out) is due to the mechanism of our representative democracy, how we-the-voters feel about issues doesn’t matter most of the time. It only matters on one day every three years – on election day, when we get to cast our votes. The rest of the time, it’s just noise, and no amount of opinion polls showing how concerned we are by $ISSUE are going to change the fact.

Personal politics this time and my blog post on “When it’s not about you” was nominated to be included in this month’s carnival:

So this is for those people who fail to consider other people before looking for their own emotional resolution. Those people who demand closure or their emotions handled when the epicentre of something bad happened to someone else they know. I do get that generally we are self centred individuals who think about our own suffering before others, but we should perhaps consider not opening our mouths when someone else has every reason to be suffering or grieving more than we do ourselves.

Jacqui Tomlins writes, “Without Jesus, our students are lost“:

A couple of weeks ago my kids came home from school (a local state primary) with a letter asking whether I would like them to undertake Special Religious Instruction (SRI). No, I wouldn’t, I told the school – three times in heavily circled biro. It’s not the first time I’ve been asked this question and every time it really, really annoys me.

Disability

Joanna at The view from down here writes, “I could talk“:

So much I could say. So much I could post. Though of course not all of it I would post. I could and probably should post about the NDIS/disabilityCare thing and the problems with that label, not to mention any of the other funding or UN Convention on the RIghts of people with disability implications. Or I could talk about the sense of disconnect I fear between the expectations placed on the NDIS and what I fear the outcomes will be, especially in terms of the expectation of being participatory human members of society. Not to mention our own expectation of this.

Sarah Jane Innes at Sarah’s world of procrastination writes, “Deadly Bloggers Challenge week 11: Language“:

I am dyslexic. Dyslexia is more then reading things incorrectly. The words trip and tumble. There is a disconnect between my brain and what is intended to be said.I speed through sentences so that people don’t notice the incorrect words, the stammer, the confusion, the fear. Words have long been my enemy. Rather ironic that I have an Honours degree in Communications (Writing). People are unforgiving. They judge your intelligence based on your spelling, your pronunciation, your grammar. I refuse to use the popular name as I find it offensive so lets just call them the Grammar police.

Joanne at The view from down here also writes, “A cautionary tale aka: of Picolo, cake and dodos“, and I’m really sorry that she went through that experience.

#DestroyThe Point

Helen at Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony writes about Helen Razer’s dig at Destroy the Joint in “We waste enough energy already explaining to trolls“:

To be fair to Razer, and to get back to the general topic of this rant, this attitude is not unique to her. I wish I had a dollar for every Tumblr social justice blogger who has blasted “feminists” for not writing about the Terrible Thing which she has decided is the Thing which must be written about du jour. Next thing you know she’s posting about nail art or some favourite food. (This is perfectly OK by me, by the way – I’m not the one wanting to make a huge deal out of blogging/not blogging any given topic. But consistency, y’know.)

Jennifer Wilson at No Place for Sheep, writes about her views of Helen Razer’s recent comments and Jenna Price’s response in “Feminism. Feminists.”

Mindy at Hoyden About Town writes, “Defining feminism and destroying the joint“:

I do think that Razer has misjudged the point of Destroy the Joint, it won’t have failed if it doesn’t bring down the Patriarchy. That is a big ask for one organisation where three waves of feminism have failed to do that before. The same with Everyday Sexism – it is less about destroying the Patriarchy in one big gulp and more about pointing out how everyday things we often take for granted are sexist. Will it change the world, probably not, will it open a few eyes and start a few minds working – yes and that is a success right there.

Kim at Larvatus Prodeo writes, “Destroy which joint?“:

What’s the message here? Yes, representations are important. Culture shapes life. But material life is reflected in Culture too. Social location is important. It’s very easy, perhaps too easy, to sit in one’s hot desk at a Co-Working Space tweeting anti-Alan Jones messages. Lo, how the Old White Men have fallen! Yep, contest their ground. But don’t forget – they won’t go away so easily. Because the real injustice is the permanent suppression, the permanent inequality, the permanent oppression that so many women not on Twitter live as their daily existence. The key is to think that, think outside your own circle, talk as well as decry.

Feminism

Team Oyeniyi writes, “If this is feminism, you can keep it – Warning: discussion of rape and swearing”

So while I appreciate the essay’s philosophic merits, I’ll be damned if I can correlate the content to saving women NOW, TODAY! I don’t need to analyse the history of the rise of feminism to push countries to pass laws to prevent the subjugation of women. I don’t need to consider “The cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world; it has no truck with bisexuality, pre-oedipal symbiosis, unalienated labour, or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all the powers of the parts into a higher unity.” What I need is to see that fucking decal gone from that ute so small children aren’t seduced to organic unwholesomeness.

Can be bitter writes, “Bitterness by request: What got us into feminism” with her story of how she got into feminism (which is clearly obvious from the title of the post).

Wom*news writes “UQWC’s Reply to ‘Fabulous Feminism’ in Semper Floreat” in which they reply to an article which paints itself as feminist while being very much not so.

At Musings of an Inappropriate woman, “At home in the Musings household…” briefly follows a conversation.

stargazer at The Hand Mirror writes about “changing names“:

but globalisation has tended to change some of that. because many eastern cultures absorbed the notion that western cultures were more advanced and modern, they have adopted some of the cultural norms of the west. with the result that women who were never expected to change their names on marriage are now pressured to do so. the societal pressure that was so absent is now building & has been for some time now.

Jennifer Wilson at No Place for Sheep, writes “If you see a child as “sexualised” there’s something wrong with your vision” *trigger warning for discussion of rape*

Utopiana at Rantings of an Aboriginal Feminist writes, “Spambots: the horseman of the binary patriarchy apocalypse“:

Here’s the thing: I am currently thinking that the patriarchy is so deeply embedded that all you need to do is type a phrase whilst sitting on your couch in your pyjamas and suddenly shiny patriarchy will appear. Like dial-a-patriarchy or something. It’s really so convenient. I, for example, typed “fake tanning” on my blog and managed to receive three posts from alleged fake tan providers discussing the virtues of their products. My post examining labiaplasty got a further two posts from cosmetic surgery companies (apparently) talking about the wonderful procedures they had on special should I wish to craft myself into the ultimate socially-acceptable woman. My comments on surrogacy earned me a post from an international surrogacy provider talking about the wonderful genetic material incubators they had available (in other words, women) just raring to produce a little Celeste clone so my life would be complete. Elsewhere, I questioned the Lingerie Football League and ended up with a free-ticket offer to one of their games (sadly, the tickets were available in North America not Northern Burbs Melbs). A literal cornucopia of patriarchal advertising just eager to get to my inbox. It is really quite insane.

Mikaela Wangmann at the NUS Women’s Department writes, “Gender Studies is under attack. Again.“:

This is a huge issue as not simply because a reduction in courses and subjects that students have to choose from is a detriment to their education by lack of breadth but also because it awkwardly reflects a lot of what is taught in these courses. To be honest I can’t think of better way to mirror the content of these courses about how women have been undervalued and had to fight for every freedom we enjoy today but also show the distance we still have to go than by cutting them.

Race and Racism

Mehallelujah writes, “I’m not racist but…“:

We see ‘I’m not racist but’ comments on social media all the time. Websites like theantibogan.wordpress.com have been set up to give the online community the power to name and shame racists, sexists and homophobes. Such initiatives can make big statements particularly in the online sphere where people often think they have the added advantage of anonymity. But what of real life encounters? Where do we go to report IRL racists?

stargazer at The Hand Mirror writes about her hopes for the new Race Commissioner in New Zealand, Susan Devoy in “hoping for the best” and how important it is that they be able to work together:

if she fails to act or to speak, she won’t suffer the consequences: i will, or some other marginalised person and/or community of colour will. if she fails to do her job properly, i will find it harder to fight the discrimination i face in my day to day life.

Mindy at Hoyden About Town writes a book review “#AWW 2013: Mum Shirl book review“:

Reading this book is like having a cosy chat with MumShirl. She gently but unflinchingly reveals how white policies, perhaps well meaning but misguided perhaps intentional, had devastating effects on Aboriginal communities. She talks of her early life at Erambie Mission in Cowra with her family, discovering she had epilepsy and her early struggles with it when medication was still unavailable to treat it, marrying, child rearing and losing her marriage and giving up her child to the care of relatives. She also talks about the extensive efforts she went to to support prisoners, family and anyone and everyone in need of help. She was a founding member of both the Aboriginal Legal Service and the Aboriginal Medical Service. Throughout her determination to do her best is her motivation, no matter the cost to her personally. She really was an amazing person (she passed away in 1998). She was awarded an MBE in 1975, an Order of Australia in 1985, Aborigine of the Year in 1990, and named as a National Living Treasure shortly before her death.

Queen of Thorns at Ideologically Impure writes, “Fuck off Jezebel: Quvenzhané Wallis is too good for your shit edition“:

Now, to Jezebel. Jezebel, which on top of all its previous crimes against social justice decided that right now, right after a young black girl was called a cunt by The Onion, was the perfect time to post a big ol’ article about how cunt isn’t a bad word, it’s a word we should reclaim, woo yeah girl power right on.

LGBTIQ

Jo Tamer at Wallaby writes, “Sexuality and sex work” where she recounts a conversation she participated in where a straight woman asked a gay woman how much money it would take for her to sleep with a man.

Spilt Milk writes “Comfy world“:

In dealing with homophobia in my daily life, I’m coming to see just how fiercely straight adults also hoard the soft furnishings of social ease.

Chrys Stevenson at Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear writes, about the “Hattonvale Nursery Queensland – homophobic rant“.

Chally at Zero at the Bone wrote a “Book Review: A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner” which sounds like something I’d love to read.

Family

Jennifer Wilson at No Place for Sheep writes “Dance me to the end of love” about her relationship with her husband.

blue milk posts “Review of Things I Didn’t Expect (When I Was Expecting) by Monica Dux“:

One of the strengths of Things I Didn’t Expect (When I Was Expecting) is the way it so clearly identifies the contradictory pressures on new mothers – be natural, but don’t let yourself go. Speaking of hypocrisy, there’s also an excellent discussion in the book of the duplicitous game of ‘bad mother’ confessions that women sometimes play in mothers’ groups where the information they share is really slyly designed to enhance their own reputations as good mothers. But this is the difference between a feminist author like Dux, and a less nuanced writer – Dux is ultimately forgiving of the ‘bad mother’ game because she understands that while this behaviour silences us, it is also really about mothers coming to terms with the pressure of the ‘selfless mother’ expectation that is on all of us.

Julie at the Hand Mirror writes, “No country for young babies” regarding the baby left in a car at a supermarket carpark and the judgement poured on the mother of that child.

AlisonM at the Hand Mirror writes, “UN ‘Family’ Resolution Raises Concern” and spells out why there are concerns.

Repro Justice

Utopiana at Rantings of an Aboriginal Feminist writes, “Turning 35 and the quandaries of reproductive “choice”” talking about the different types of choice (to have children or not as one example), and other reproductive issues, including surrogacy and birthing choices.

AlisonM at The Hand Mirror writes about a court case in New Zealand currently where a driver is being charged with reckless driving causing death of his wife’s fetus in ‘Careless Driving Causing Death’:

“There’s no definition of a person in the transport act, so that’s where this issue will focus on. What does it mean by a person,” he said in an interview in January. Along the way, however, Miller says, the police also must prove that Gebretsadik was careless and, if so, that it was the collision that caused the death of the fetus. His complaint with the police over the “causing death” charge is what he sees as their lack of compassion.

The Body

Team Oyeniyi writes, “Womanhood: from menstruation to menopause” describing her recent experience of menopause and the decision to try HRT (MRT).

Can be bitter writes, “Songs I Listen to While Running #2: ‘Sexy and I Know It’, LMFAO“:

LMFAO go out of their way to posit that every body can be “sexy”, even those that do not meet society’s expectations. We know this from the fourth line, “This is how I roll, animal print pants, out of control”, where Redfoo seems to feel the need to address his unconventional appearance. This is reiterated with his “big afro”, and wearing a Speedo at the beach. Although he clearly attracts attention (“Everybody stops and they staring at me”), he does not apologise for standing out or taking up space. In fact, he relishes it, and asks for more (“Girl, look at that body”).

Bridgett Judd at the ramblings of an idiot writes, “The Obesity Paradox” in which she discusses the fact that the “war on obesity” has lead to a rise in eating disorders.

Sleepydumpling at Fat Heffalump writes, “Creating the Problem In the First Place“:

This shit doesn’t happen in a vacuum. These same media outlets publish story after story beating the “obesity epidemic” drum, and wringing their hands over “childhood obesity”, and then wonder why children obsess over their weight from a ridiculously early age? These media outlets crap on about being “healthy”, which is just diet-talk reworded with no actual conscientious addressing of holistic health of all people, and then they get all up in arms about children dieting? They allow the most hateful, bigoted crap about fat people to be published in the comments and call it “opinion”. Not to mention that every single time I go to a mainstream media site, women’s or not, I am bombarded with ads for weight loss. Where do they think kids, and their parents, get all of this stuff in the first place?

blue milk posts an interesting “Conversation with my gynecologist“.

Chrys Stevenson at Glady, the Cross-Eyed Bear writes, “Tales on a Tutu” about being inspired by a Fat Activist to make and wear her own tutu and about choosing to be an activist.

LudditeJourno at The Hand Mirror writes about “Scaffolding” and her recent experiences of her body.

Sleepydumpling at Fat Heffalump writes, “Public Fat Shaming is not Good Marketing” about a recent experience she had while attending a public event.

Queen of Thorns at Ideologically Impure writes two separate posts on the fatpocalypse, “I am become fatpocalypse: the apology” and “I am become fatpocalypse: eliminationism” both of which are great.

Violence *trigger warning for posts in this section*

the news with nipples writes, “Warped reporting at Sydney Morning Herald and Daily Telegraph“:

It’s tough being a woman. We just walk down the street and then, out of nowhere, an assault happens to us. We need to be particularly careful of these disembodied assaults that just hang around until they can happen at someone. At least, that’s the impression I get when journalists report on violence against women: men don’t assault women, it’s just that women have assaults happen to them.

Katie Larissa at Wom*news writes, “Slut: A Myth“:

Everyone knows that the word “slut” has power, whether we agree with it or not.
It is used to shame and degrade women and, more importantly, to put them in a box with a label that says “you’re not human here” and to make sure they stay there. Whilst there are many different variables in the slut-shaming game, the objective remains the same: to ensure women’s behaviour is deemed “acceptable” by societal terms, and to make sex a source of shame and not power. In a culture that is so concerned with labels and definitions, one has to pose the question: what is a slut? After years of being called a slut, of hearing my friends being called sluts I can only assume that a slut is a woman who doesn’t adhere to every societal expectation heaped upon her.

MJ at Kiwiana (inked) writes “No, seriously, please stop bringing up false accusations when we talk about rape“.

Jo at A Life Unexamined writes, “When will women stop being told to be more careful?“:

So when the media talks about women taking preventative measures to stop rape, it’s actually not dealing with the issue at hand very well at all – it’s only taking a tiny percentage of rapes and assaults into consideration. It’s telling us that if we just act ‘more carefully,’ we can stop being raped. With the implication being that if we are attacked, well, we obviously weren’t being quite careful enough.

the news with nipples writes, “How much do we need to know?“:

There’s a wider discussion to be had here, about what should be shown and what shouldn’t be shown. Particularly as these stories get reported all around the world. When someone takes a gun into a school and starts shooting children, should the media make him famous? On the other hand, if his identity is just a minor part of the story, it removes him from his crime.

LudditeJourno at The Hand Mirror writes, “TVNZ smacks their b*tch up“:

What was this about for TVNZ? Their appalling choice of backing music makes it look like it was all a bit of a laugh. Their focus on all the reasons people don’t intervene – including putting up an image of brave bystander Austin Hemmings not once but twice makes it look like they don’t believe community responsibility is possible. Their slavish hyping up of one young man’s potential for violence felt more like watching the build up to a boxing match than anything else. Their joky, oh-imagine-looking-like-a-dick defense of choosing not to intervene isn’t that far off the “it’s just a domestic” excuse of the 1950s.

Orlando at Hoyden About Town posts, “A Short Post on Rape Prevention“.

Orlando at Hoyden About Town writes, “Friday Hoyden: Zerlina Maxwell“.

Louise Scarce at NUS Women’s Department writes, “Your Group of 8 law degree: now featuring rape culture“:

My law lecturer made a rape joke while delivering a lecture to hundreds of students. Most of the
students laughed. That concerned me. But, I was equally concerned about the statistical certainty
that some of the students who laughed must have themselves been survivors of sexual assault.
When a well-respected professor from a sandstone university jokes about rape, he sends the
message that rape is a laughing matter. His voice is more powerful than most. His job is to teach us
about legal and ethical standards. By virtue of his position as a legal academic and student mentor,
this man had a responsibility to counteract rape culture, not perpetuate it.

Mikaela Wangmann at NUS Women’s Department writes, “The sad thing is…”

I haven’t been able to get this out of my head since, and I think that it is important that we don’t forget that these things are still happening, dont put dealing with them in the to hard basket, say that colleges are just out of our reach or we can’t make the change in the 12 month term. But realise that the campaigns we run and in particular Talk About It are really important, they can and do help young women who are being abused, pressured and harassed. They do force Universities, Colleges and Government to take action.

Sarah Jane Innes at Sarah’s wold of procrastination writes, “Self Worth“:

My low self-esteem has led to my low self-worth and now they feed each other. Like most things wrong with adults it can be blamed on my childhood, specifically my teenage years. I was bullied, on all sorts of levels in all sorts of ways since year 4 (possibly earlier it’s all a blur). I was bullied for being new, for being quite, for freckles, for weight, for mental illness, for awkwardness, for my ‘weird’ family, for my learning difficulties. Basically I was the bully’s easiest target. I feel things deeply and I used to wear my heart on my sleeve. I still feel things too deeply but I try and hide it. Laugh it off or deliberately appear humourless. The years of bullying have worn away at me in a way that prevents me feeling worthy of the successes. I try to counteract this; I have had years of therapy on and off. I have realised on one level that my bullies were sad in their own ways, low on self-esteem, victims of bullying whether at school or at home. One actually has on her social media profile that she can’t stand ‘shy people’ or people with ‘mental weaknesses’, she plans on being a Journalist. I wonder how with her apparent lack of empathy. For the most part these people have no place in my life, I cut the ties, unfriended and avoid. Some I pity because of their current life circumstances but none of this undoes the pain and hurt. None of this fixes my self-esteem problems. Nor should it. The day I feel better because my former bullies are not successful in the ways that I measure success is the day I sink to that high school level.

Bigotry masqurading as rational arguments

04/02/2013

Rebecca

LGBTIQ No Comments

It’s not often I bother to click on a link tweeted by ABC Religion and Ethics because far too often I find myself suffering serious eye-roll, if not rage. Sometimes they have articles worth reading, today’s effort by Roger Scruton and Phillip Blond (two UK writers) was not one of them.

The article was florid and pretentious, using language and terms that many people would struggle with, but the worst thing is that the article was masquerading as a balanced view on marriage, which instead came across as sexist, gender essentialist and a bit homo, bi and trans* phobic. I suspect that most people would have been put off by the language use, I almost was, and perhaps for my rage levels I should have let myself be – curse my stubbornness.

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Linkspam of February 2013

02/02/2013

Rebecca

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So January 2013 has passed us by and we’re already into the second month of 2013 – where does all the time go? This post is a collection of some of the very cool things I read in January (well before this post was finished).

Michael Taylor at The Australian Independent Media Network writes, “Do some research and you’ll find it’s OK not to be black enough“:

Aborigines face the unending task of resisting attempts, on the one hand to cut them off from their heritage, and on the other to bury them within it as a thing of the past. This statement is indicative of the struggles that Indigenous Australians face in the constructions of their own Aboriginality.

This was never more evident than during the Andrew Bolt case where:

. . . in two famous columns in 2009 he took a swipe at “political” or “professional” or “official” Aborigines who could pass for white but chose to identify as black for personal or political gain, to win prizes and places reserved for real, black Aborigines and to borrow “other people’s glories”.

More recently, Tony Abbott reignited a similar argument when he foolishly described Western Australian Liberal MP Ken Wyatt as “not a man of culture”. Ken Wyatt is an Indigenous Australian.

I would have hoped that both incidences found their way into the dustbins of history, but they haven’t. Bolt’s comments, in particular, have entrenched themselves into our vernacular. Never before have I had the displeasure of hearing so many degrading comments aimed at our Aboriginal brothers and sisters as I have since the Bolt case. “He’s too white to be an Aborigine”, “She’s white but calls herself an Aborigine”, or the ultimate insult “He’s only a half-caste” are common speak.

Cristy at In Hanoi writes, “Transgressive breastfeeding and the rules of the public sphere“:

What I think it is interesting is that Sharwood is very clear that this is not about the so-called “male gaze.” He is not offended because he views these breastfeeding breasts as sexual objects. In fact, as he proudly states several times in the opening paragraphs to his ‘article,’ he loves ogling at sexualised breasts. They are great. (Phwoar yeah, bring it on baby.) No, it would appear that the issue is precisely the opposite; these breastfeeding breasts that are apparently being thrust in his face (or, as he charmingly describes, flopped on to the dinner table) are not available to the male gaze. They are private breasts and shouldn’t be out in public.

It was here for me that this whole debate took on a disturbing level of clarity. You see, according to Sharwood (and his ilk), mothering is an ‘intimate’ and ‘private’ activity that should not be taking place in the public sphere. If somehow it does stray into that public sphere then it really ought to be careful not to become “a public spectacle.” This means that if for some reason a mother of young children does have to leave the house (which, by implication, is a transgresssive act in itself), then she should take every measure to ensure that her ‘private, intimate’ work of mothering young children does not take up public space, because it does not belong.

Amanda Taub at Wronging Rights writes, “What If We Responded to Sexual Assault by Limiting Men’s Freedom Like We Limit Women’s?“:

In response to claims that men are unable to restrain themselves from committing rape if they see women in skimpy clothing, members of law enforcement agencies around the country have called for men to blindfold themselves when they are in places where they might encounter a female wearing a tank top or a short skirt.

“For years, we have been told that men don’t understand how to respond to the sight of a woman wearing, say, gym clothes – that as far as they are concerned, if they can see the outline of her body, then that’s an invitation to sex that they are simply unable to refuse,” said one police chief. “If that’s true, then we have no choice. We want women to be safe, and there is apparently no way for some men to reasonably restrain their own behavior once they catch a glimpse of cleavage, so all men will have to cover their eyes while working out, going to bars or clubs, or relaxing at the beach.”

Michal Shmulovich at The Times of Israel writes, “A transgender wedding, for the first time in Israel“:

For the first time, a man and a transgender woman were married under a huppa in Israel this week. The couple, a blonde-bombshell and her husband, whose identity was not revealed, walked down the aisle to the cheers and tears of their friends and family, and with a Channel 2 television crew in tow.
…
But the man under the huppa, her husband, was different; married with three children prior to their relationship, he came through for her, she said.

N.K. Jemisin writes, “Gamefail bluescreen“:

Anyway, one of the things I’ve always loved about this series was that it was kind of equal-opportunity sexy. I don’t object to a sexual element in art or fiction or entertainment, if you haven’t guessed that from my writing. What I object to is the way that sexual element is usually women’s (often unrealistic) bodies or parts thereof, or women’s suffering, and that these pieces of women are so often present solely as men’s wank-material. I welcome sexy women when they’re presented as whole people in their own right who are uninterested in (or defiant of) the men gazing at them, or when they’re appealing to the female gaze instead of the male. There have been some scantily-clad women along the way in the DMCs, but that kind of worked because a) in a lot of cases those women acknowledged the oversexualization of their appearance in a tongue-in-cheek way, and b) the hero was often almost as scantily clad. And besides the fact that the DMC women had motivations and interesting stories of their own, there was a lot more sexual tension between the hero and his evil twin brother than there was with any of the ladies. (Yeah, I know, but it’s true.) And female gamers noticed.* I have no idea of the demographics of this series’s audience, but anecdotally I know a lot of ladies who love them some DMC. When a game like this is done right, nearly everyone gets to have fun.

…

But recently I decided to try engaging with the game’s very thin plot, despite its tiresome “chosen one” trope and the utter lack of relevant stakes for my character. I’ve been playing as a Redguard — that’s the black people, though they have straight hair** and pretty much the same morphological features as the other races — a foreigner in a land caught up in a civil war. All the NPCs are obsessed with the war and its two factions, but my character has no background, no family, no reason for even being in Skyrim other than plot convenience, so I haven’t bothered to side with either faction and for the most part don’t care what they do as long as they don’t get in my way. It doesn’t help that one side consists of paternalistic colonizers who’ve happily wiped out the indigenous culture and are trying to suppress the (subsequent) local religion, while the other side are ethnic supremacists. Also it turns out that my character is the embodiment of an ancient Nord legend — Nords being one of several flavors of white people in the game, this one clearly meant to reference ancient Scandinavian peoples — which, since my character’s not a Nord, apparently means she’s got “the heart of a Nord”. Yay, my black person gets to be an honorary white person. I’m all aflutter.

PZ Myers at Pharyngula writes, “The con game“:

And here’s why equality is important: those meetings are essential stepping stones in career advancement. In my very first year as a grad student, I was trained and groomed to present my work at local meetings. Heck, when I was an undergraduate and had made it clear that I planned to pursue a research career, my professors took me to regional meetings. We all knew that this was how preliminary work was disseminated, that this was how you made connections with peers and leaders in the field, that this was how you linked your face and name in the community as a whole with a body of work.

…

And that’s absolutely why we have to do a better job of opening doors for everyone at these events. It’s the faces in the audience at the convention that will someday be leading the movement. It’s those faces that will go home afterwards and share the stories and get more people interested. And if we don’t make opportunities for participation by everyone, we will be limiting our growth.

Libby Anne at Love Joy Feminism writes, “More Chores for Men = Less Sex?” critiquing the media coverage of an academic study.

Robin Marty at RH Reality Check writes, “They Are Coming for Your Birth Control: Radio Host Claims Your Womb is Full of Tiny Dead Baby Corpses” (really nothing more needs to be said on that article).

Ben C Jenkins writes an awesome piece at Daily Life, “Why you should pity the homophobes“:

Because Christ almighty it must be frightening to be homophobic. I have my own issues with anxiety, so I can sympathise with the persistent and inexplicable sense of impending doom that must plague these people. But even with this insight, I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like to hold a worldview in which the gays are forever lurking in a corner, waiting for the opportunity to explode our traditional way of life in a cloud of glitter and amyl before snaffling away our kids like the Pied Piper and marching them over some kind of horrible gay cliff. Being dogged by such thoughts must be utterly exhausting.

If I truly believed in a world so fragile and a force so malignant – a force that is, crucially, becoming less stigmatised, gaining more support, approaching some kind of ‘normalisation’ – then I doubt very much that I’d have the fortitude to get out of bed in the morning, save for the driving force to paint my beliefs on a sandwich board, hit the main-street every day and grab people by the shoulders shouting ‘Don’t you see?! Why am I the only one who sees!?’.

Seanan McGuire writes, “Micro-aggression, sexism, and cover art: some thoughts“:

When I go to the bookstore, half-naked women greet me in literally every section except for cozy mysteries. There are elegant half-naked women on action novels, waiting to be ravaged. There are misty, wistful half-naked women on YA novels, ready to embark on romantic adventures, probably while drowning. There are lots of half-naked women on science fiction and fantasy, many of them happy to show me their posteriors. And this doesn’t even touch on the comic book store, where there are so many half-naked women that I barely even notice them anymore. Once I stopped expecting puberty to give me a figure like Dazzler or Illyana Rasputin, I just tuned all the thrusting hips and pointy boobs out, like the white noise that they were.

I don’t actually know very many women who go “Oh, oh, I gotta get me a book with a naked chick on the cover.” I do know a lot of women who are uncomfortable with those naked chicks, and who try to avoid reading books with naked chicks on them in public. I had a few people get angry on my behalf when the cover of Discount Armageddon was released, before they realized that I had petitioned for that image, and that it was an intentional send-up of certain cheesecake conventions. And without speaking for any other authors, I am the only one I know of who actually said to her publisher, “Hey, you know what would be awesome? If my smart, strong, savvy, heavily-armed protagonist was in a miniskirt.” (DAW took this in stride, by the way, which was hysterical when you consider that my one cover request for the Toby books was “Can she be wearing clothes?”)

…

So it seems likely that the intended audience for the half-naked women is largely male. Okay. As a bisexual woman, I like looking at pretty girls, and I don’t see anything wrong with men liking to look at pretty girls. When I sit on the train, I should see dozens of men reading books with half-naked women on them, right? Because they’re trained to the male gaze, so they should attract it, right?

The single most common critique I received of the cover for Discount Armageddon was from male readers saying they could not read the physical book in public. And while I think anyone should be able to read anything they want to without feeling ashamed, this critique does raise a question about who the half-naked women are actually for, if guys don’t want to be associated with them.

Ashley Gork at Medill Reports Chicago writes, “Bisexual men more anxious, depressed“:

Oboza’s story does not stand alone. Research suggests that bisexual men are much more likely to experience depression and anxiety than their gay and straight counterparts. According to Eric Schrimshaw of Columbia University, this suffering comes from a high level of concealment and a lack of disclosure. The Columbia study showed that almost 38 percent of the bisexual participants said that they never told anyone about their sexual identity and 80 percent said they keep their sexual relationships with men to themselves.

Although this concealment may shield bisexual men from the types of discrimination and rejection often experienced by open gays, it can also leave many men without a language or a community with whom they can discuss their feelings, Schrimshaw suggested.

Shellity at There should be a sign writes, “The Applicant“:

Australia’s anti-discrimination laws exist so that you, I and everyone else can have a fair crack at getting a job for which we’re qualified. They generally state that certain things cannot provide the basis for whether an employer offers you a job or not. Things like gender, beliefs, race, marital status or disability. For example, if you’re a single, gay Lithuanian Muslim with an amputated arm and you apply for a job as an accountant, your potential employer is legally obliged to give you the same consideration for the job as they do for a divorced, straight, Scottish atheist with a third nipple.

Except if the employer is a religious organisation. Then the government thinks it’s special.

A.J. Walkley and Lauren Michelle Kinsey at HuffPost Gay Voices [still] write, “Bi the Bi: Does ‘Bisexual’ Imply That There Are Only Two Genders?“:

The idea that bisexuals are attracted to only two genders is an incredibly common stereotype of all bisexuals. Many people assume that the “bi” aspect of the word “bisexuality” implies a gender binary, and that those who identify as bisexual are only attracted to males and females. Though there are definitely bisexual individuals who are only attracted to cisgender people with male and female gender identities, there are also bisexuals who are attracted to people who are transgender, intersex, genderqueer and more; this assumed definition of “bisexual” leaves out those of us who are attracted to gender-nonconforming people — those who fall outside the “male” and “female” ends of an incredibly wide gender spectrum. Last summer I actually wrote a blog post about this issue in which I explained that, according to the definition of bisexuality put forth in the 1990 “Bisexual Manifesto,” bisexuality does not “assume that there are only two genders.” On the contrary, the binary implied in the word “bisexual” pertains to our ability to be attracted both to individuals who are the “same” as us and to those are “different” from us — meaning we have the capacity to be attracted to people all across the gender and sexuality spectra.

Ben C Jenkins writes at The Vine, “The Anatomy of Outrage“:

It’s also worth pointing out that no one has the right to go through life behaving like an unthinking dipshit without being called on their unthinking dipshititude. More than that, it’s possible to be offended by something and object to it without claiming that your rights have been infringed. The overwhelming majority of people do so.

While we’re here, the phrase ‘taking offence’ is more than a little misleading because it suggests that offence is something you chose to take, like it’s the last Tim Tam or a mistress. Setting aside the kind of people who lay in wait, complaint-scribbling pens at the ready, being offended is something you very rarely have an agency in, it’s something that happens to you.

And that’s why when people complain that these flare-ups are indicate an odious culture of over-sensitivity, it’s more than a little galling and not really their call to make.

It’s worth noting that these protestations of persecution almost always come from people in a position of power – whether cultural or economic, which means that the people who are most likely to tell someone to take an offensive joke in the spirit intended are statistically the sorts of people least likely to find themselves on the receiving-end of such a barb.

‘It’s just a joke’ does absolutely nothing to absolve you of responsibility. It’s a cowardly response to the accusation that you’ve behaved in a cruel or unthinking way. No one likes being called either of those things, and for some reason people have it in their heads that a joke can’t be cruel or unthinking – far better to be called ‘edgy’ or ‘totally un-pc’.

Laurie Penny writes at NewStateman, “Take Back The Net: it’s time to end the culture of online misogyny” *Trigger warning for online harassment and hate speech*:

The idea that this sort of hatespeech is at all normal needs to end now. The internet is public space, real space; it’s increasingly where we interact socially, do our work, organise our lives and engage with politics, and violence online is real violence. The hatred of women in public spaces online is reaching epidemic levels and it’s time to end the pretence that it’s either acceptable or inevitable.

The most common reaction, the one those of us who experience this type of abuse get most frequently, is: suck it up. Grow a thick skin. “Don’t feed the trolls” – as if feeding them were the problem. The Telegraph’s Cristina Odone was amongst many commentators to imply that Mary Beard should have done just that rather than speaking out this week. “Come on, Mary,” wrote Odone. “Women in public arenas get a lot of flak – they always have. A woman who sticks her head above the parapet. . . . is asking for brickbats.”

Asking for it. By daring to be a woman to be in public life, Mary Beard was asking to be abused and harassed and frightened, and so is any person who dares to express herself whilst in possession of a pair of tits.

The Vatican and “reality”

25/01/2013

Rebecca

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Apparently the Vatican still having conniptions about the fact that the rest of the Western world is not listening to them and are continuing to recognise same-sex relationships, granting people who are attracted to those of the same sex rights equivalent to those who are opposite sex attracted. And they just won’t stand for it – in order to let everyone know how unhappy they are, and how absolutely morally abhorrent they consider same-sex attraction to be, they came out and said (mid December 2012):

Monday’s edition of Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Vatican, features a front-page editorial attacking French Catholic magazine Temoignage Chretien (“Christian Witness”) for supporting marriage equality. The editorialclaims that same-sex couples exist in “a different reality” because they are unable to conceive children, and goes on to claim that marriage equality is part of some socialist “utopia”:

Saying that marriage between a woman and a man is equal to that between two homosexuals is, in fact, a denial of the truth that affects one of the basic structures of human society, the family. We cannot base a society on these foundations without then paying a very high price as happened in the past when there was an attempt to achieve total economic and social equality. Why repeat the same mistake and chase after an unattainable utopia? [(emphasis in original) from ThinkProgress]

It’s taken me a while to write this because every time I’ve thought about it, I’ve just struggled to understand where exactly the Vatican thinks it exists, what century they think it is, and why they think that anyone is going to listen to a bunch of old men in frocks who think that same sex relationships, and the ordination of women are worse or equivalent sins to Catholic Priests raping children and and adults.

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The first linkspam of 2013

06/01/2013

Rebecca

Linkspam 1 Comment

Happy New Y ear everyone! I hope that 2013 is awesome for you all, that you find happiness, peace, contentment, joy, and all other sorts of positive things this year.

Now here is a collection of posts and other interesting things I’ve found over the last month that I thought I’d share with you.

First up is a Part 1 of a short film “The Silent City” about the end of… we’ll we’re not quite sure. At time of writing there are 5 parts completed, and clearly intent for a 6th and perhaps more. The film makers have used the abandoned spaces of New York (I think) very well, and one of my favourite things about the movie is that it uses a non-white actor as the protagonist. Enjoy

Tim Chevalier at Geek Feminism, writes, “Being a better ally to trans people“:

In the rest of this answer, though, I’ll show how the accusation of ‘unnatural’ is only used to protect the power structure as-is: people accept all sorts of things that were once considered unnatural if those things prove to help white heterosexual cis men.[1] Specifically, they accept medical technology, beautifications and body modifications usually used by women (so long as they jibe with the male gaze), and (since it’s become economically beneficial for white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, at least to some extent) women working outside the home and in professional jobs. [emphasis in original]

Over at News Medical, “Bisexual men more likely to conceal their sexual orientation“, and although I do have some issues with this article, I think it’s better shared and considered than ignored because I have some minor quibbles with it.

Mikki Kendall at xojane writes, “On Behalf Of Willow Smith And Girls Like Her: Shut Up And Keep Your Concerns To Yourself“:

Any mention of Willow Smith seems to eventually devolve into a discussion of what is “acceptable” black parenting. There’s a myth (heavily fed by the media) that the Smiths are doing something incredibly new and unusual, particularly for black parents. Conversations about their parenting never really touch on the fact that their children are already millionaires in their own right with an even larger inheritance ahead. Willow Smith can shave her head one week and wear an ankle-length wig the next because she’s in an environment where it’s safe for her to explore everything that interests her. There is no need for the Smiths to teach their children the same lessons taught to poor black kids in the inner city, or even those facts of life that middle class black kids in the suburbs might need to learn.

Willow’s situation is unique for a young black girl in America, and the very public nature of her life has a lot to do with the responses to her fashion choices. Those who take issue with lack of boundaries set on her appearance are really reacting to the world in which walking while black can be an invitation for harassment, assault, or death. They live in communities rife with gang violence, police brutality, and institutional racism that would make it impossible for them to have green hair and be gainfully employed. In their minds, the Smiths are allowing Willow to develop habits that could have long-term consequences, and they cannot imagine how these choices could be a good idea.

Amanda Hess at Slate writes, “Lady Jerks of 2012: A Year in Review“:

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is fond of repeating this business world double standard among groups of women: “Success and likeability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women.” So as men gain power, we like them more. As women rise in the ranks, we like them less. Jessica Valenti has proposed that women respond by ditching their “desire to be liked and accepted” altogether. “Women adjust their behavior to be likable and as a result have less power in the world,” she writes. “But the trade-off is undoubtedly worth it. Power and authenticity are worth it.”

If only bitches had it so easy. People may dislike powerful women, but being unlikable won’t necessarily help women get that power in the first place. One 2011 study found that while acting rude and disagreeable helps increase men’s earning potential in the office, the same is not true of women. When it comes to salary negotiation, even nice guys don’t finish last—they, too, are better situated than disagreeable women. So women are counseled to act like ladies when asking for a raise.

Sarah Gish at Ink writes about the “Sweet Dreams: Young widow holds tight to the big life her husband left behind“:

Rachel and Tyler Fracassa always did things too soon.

They became inseparable when they were 12 and married at 16. At 18, they had a house in Raytown and another child on the way.

Last year, the couple built a homestead on a 16-acre plot of land in Urich, Mo. The one-room house was enveloped by three pastures, a winding creek and a spring-fed pond.

It was as beautiful as it was secluded, and it embodied the couple’s biggest dream: to live as simply as possible so they could spend lots of time together and, someday, save enough money to take their kids all over the world.

John Plunkett at The Guardian writes, “BBC ‘should be bolder’ in depiction of lesbian, gay and bisexual people“:

The report, into the media portrayal of LGB audiences, featured interviews with LGB organisations and representatives and comes two years after a 2010 study carried out by the BBC. In two parts, the report also featured the views of around 3,500 people on the BBC’s own independently run audience reaction panel, Pulse.

Doctor Who, Downton Abbey and Holby City were among the shows praised by the report for their inclusion of incidental LGB characters. “Doctor Who quite often has a gay character in it but it isn’t always an issue or the plotline,” said anti-hate crime charity Galop. “It’s just incidental which has been quite nice.”

But there was criticism of another BBC drama, Lip Service, about a group of lesbians living in Glasgow which aired on BBC3. The actors trade union Equity said: “Lip Service is written by a lesbian/bisexual woman. This makes a huge difference.

“However, the episodes were directed by men and the majority of the lesbian characters were played by heterosexual actors and this clearly impacts on the quality and integrity of the representation. Some of it was laughable.”

Tansy Rayner Roberts writes at Tor.com, “Historically Authentic Sexism in Fantasy. Let’s Unpack That.“:

But my rant is actually not quite about that stuff at all. It’s about history, and this notion that History Is Authentically Sexist. Yes, it is. Sure it is. We all know that. But what do you mean when you say “history?”

History is not a long series of centuries in which men did all the interesting/important things and women stayed home and twiddled their thumbs in between pushing out babies, making soup and dying in childbirth.

History is actually a long series of centuries of men writing down what they thought was important and interesting, and FORGETTING TO WRITE ABOUT WOMEN. It’s also a long series of centuries of women’s work and women’s writing being actively denigrated by men. Writings were destroyed, contributions were downplayed, and women were actively oppressed against, absolutely.

Claire Hoskings writes, “Playthings“:

The other day I saw the new character model for Cortana and I was thinking it seemed pretty alright – she looked older, stronger, far less caricatured. If Cortana was always going to be titillating, at least she seemed a more appropriate object of desire: more 25 than 15, more flesh than real doll.

So I got a bit nervous when I saw a lot of negative reactions to Cortana’s new larger boobs. Not because that reaction wasn’t coming from a good place – these were people I respected, reacting against objectification of women and the presentation of unrealistic ideals to young women. But just a couple of weeks earlier I heard they’ve got plans to make the new Lara Croft incarnation deeper, and part of that will be making her boobs smaller. The implication that larger boobs are a liability to well-presented, deep characters makes me nervous because, well, how many stacked women get to have complex stories in popular media? I can think of Joan Holloway and…?
Boob sizes have been neatly separating the mistresses from wives, the sexy/trashy good-times-girls from the arty/pretentious hipsters, the ciphers from the plotlines. Video games have certainly fed the first part of the stereotype, that ‘e-cup women are playthings’, but wouldn’t only giving empathetic roles to C-cup-or-less women just reinforce that? (It’s also implying small-boobed women can’t be objectified because they’re insufficiently sexy. The beauty of this system is no-one wins!) Where are the ‘twist’ video games for this gaming trope, promoted as indulging the players’ desire to objectify women, but surprise! actually gives you that character’s perspective about what it’s like to live with all that objectification? Lara Croft isn’t running towards her goal, she’s running away from you, thousands upon thousands of leering players.

But there’s another point I want to make, because the logic that suggests “Sex is fun, fun is trivial, certain bodies are more sex than others, therefore certain bodies are more trivial than others.”, comes from the same place as that attitude towards media: “Play is fun, fun is trivial, certain media forms are more about play than others, therefore certain media forms are more trivial than others.”

Over at not language but a map, “just shut up” about problematic themes in media (the excerpt below relates to Beauty and the Beast):

The film ended, and my professor flicked the light on. She passed out a handout we’d already received, a list of warning signs for domestic abusers. This list included things like, “Isolates partner from support systems—tries to keep them from family, friends, outside activities.” It included things like, “Attempts to control what partner wears, does, or sees.” It included things like, “Is extremely moody, jumping quickly from being nice to exploding in anger.” It included things like, “Is overly sensitive—gets hurt when not getting their way, takes offense when someone disagrees with them, gets very upset at small inconveniences.” It included things like, “Has unrealistic expectations of partner,” and “Is abusive towards other people,” and “Has ever threatened violence, even if it wasn’t a serious threat,” and, “Gets romantically serious very quickly,” and “Holds partner against their will,” and “Intimidates with threatening body language, punching walls, breaking objects, etc.” The Beast meets almost every criterion on the list, and those he doesn’t meet (“Was abused by a parent,” “Grew up in an abusive home,”) are only unmet in the sense that we have no way to know, from the narrative given to us, whether he meets them or not.

My professor said, “Okay. Now let’s talk about it.”

s.e smith at This Ain’t Living writes, “Yes, Genderqueer People Have A Stake In Gender Politics“:

One of the frustrating things for me about spending a lot of time with women, writing about women’s issues, and interacting with women is that I’m usually read as a woman and have that identity forced on me even though I’m very open about the fact that I’m genderqueer. This isn’t just because of how I look, although obviously that’s a factor; with a lot of images of me circulating on the web, often accompanying my work, it’s inevitable that people are going to make a snap assumption about my gender on the basis of my appearance. Nor is it because of the way I write; writing analysis tools tend to skew masculine when I run my work through them.

It’s because of what I write about. The assumption is that anyone who writes both passionately and sometimes personally about issues that primarily affect women must be a woman, because who else would care, right? And who else would share those experiences (rather than pontificating on them as an outside observer)? Consequently, I end up in this strange doublebind where I am welcomed into ‘women’s spaces’ and forcibly labeled as a woman—as long as it’s convenient, and then suddenly I’m shut out.

Asher Wolf writes, “Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk.“ *trigger warnings for misogyny & harassment*:

Inequality doesn’t just spring up without a context. And women don’t just opt out of hacking and hacker communities because of the tired rhetoric “maths and hacking is boys’ business.”

No, women stay the hell away from hacker-spaces, conferences and tech initiatives because of on-going experiences of misogyny, abuse, threats, put downs, belittlement, harassment, rape.

Last infosec conference I went to – there was six females and over 1000 males in attendance. My female friend roped me into pretending I was her lesbian lover, simply to get a guy to let-the-fuck-go of her hand.

After reading the post by Asher Wolf, I immediately came across a repost by Valerie Aurora at the Ada Initiative, “Re-post: Why conference harassment matters“:

At this point, some of you are thinking, “Well, if DEFCON is so bad for women, women just shouldn’t go. Who cares?”

As KC puts it, “Defcon is also many wonderful things. It is a fantastic environment to learn, network, and connect with friends old and new.” There’s a reason that I attended DEFCON five times before I quit. DEFCON and other hacker conferences are popular for all the reasons that conferences exist at all: learning new things, meeting people in your field, improving your reputation, finding jobs, and making new friends.

I’ll start with the most obvious benefit of attending DEFCON: jobs. Did you know that Twitter is recruiting computer security experts at DEFCON? So are Zynga and the NSA

Gregory Warner at npr writes, “Kenyan Women Create Their Own ‘Geek Culture’“:

“You know you’re the oddball just because of your gender,” Owigar says.

It turns out that in Kenya, exactly as in Silicon Valley, the problem with getting more women in tech is that there aren’t more women in tech.

“There are probably other women in tech who are alone, and they think they’re the weird ones, but if enough of us meet together, you know, it won’t be so weird anymore,” Owigar says.

Katherine Cross at Bitch Media writes, “Game Changer: Why Gaming Culture Allows Abuse… and How We Can Stop It“:

More people are finally taking notice of the abuse. But there’s still a dearth of discussion on why it’s happening. The culprit isn’t anonymity, often the go-to answer for why the Internet can’t have nice things. Instead, it’s believing in the exceptionality of the Internet—and online gaming—that allows the abuses within, and it is enabled every time someone utters “It’s just a game.”

That phrase is the machine to which oppressive power dynamics are the ghost. How many times have you heard someone say “It’s the Internet; you shouldn’t take that seriously”? This kind of thinking supports the idea you can do anything you want with no consequences, when in all actuality, virtual actions like sexual harassment, stalking, abuse, prejudice in all of its forms—racism, sexism, transphobia, or all of the above—do have consequences.

Let’s start with that distinction between “online” and “the real world.” In the virtual world, there is a clear, aggressively policed distinction dictating the boundaries of both cyberspace and its social practices. In online gaming spaces in particular, this distinction is similar to the difference between “play” and “nonplay.” As child psychologists have long recognized, the act of saying “this is play” makes the real seem unreal, and thus malleable and less threatening. It allows for experimentation and learning, as well as simply finding out who you are. But in online gaming spaces, when combined with a culture of zero accountability and prejudice, it becomes a way of denying the impact of one’s words and actions—putting no limit on how nasty they can be.

Chandra at Painting the Grey Area writes, “Literacy Privilege: How I Learned to Check Mine Instead of Making Fun of People’s Grammar on the Internet“:

There was a time that it gave me a blush of pride to be referred to as “the Spelling Sergeant” or “the Punctuation Police”. I would gleefully tear a syntactic strip out of anybody who fell victim to the perils of poor parallelism or the menace of misplaced modifiers. I railed against atrostrophes and took a red pen to signs posted in staff rooms, bulletin boards and public washrooms. I was, to put it bluntly, really, really annoying.

Four years ago, I was hired in a program that helps disadvantaged adults acquire fundamental literacy skills. To say that it has been an eye-opening experience deeply understates its impact; in fact, it has been mind-opening. And one of the ideas that has fallen into my newly-open mind is that being pedantic about the language skills of perfect strangers is kind of an asshole move.

It’s a tough habit to break, though. Prescriptivists are vocal and ubiquitous, and many of them have found their way into the public education system. Writing can be a powerful form of communication, and grammar snobs tend to be good at it, so the result is that their sneering condescensions become canonized – and cannon-ized – as easy shots against opponents in intellectual debate. The advent of the world wide web, naturally, has elevated this sport to Olympic proportions.

53rd Down Under Feminist Carnival

03/10/2012

Rebecca

Down Under Feminist's Carnival 13 Comments

So here we are again, with an amazing collection of writing from Australian and New Zealand feminists from the month of September. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I have enjoyed putting it all together. First, a comic from Judy Horacek from her October post (posted on 30 September 2012).

Food Crawl — I went on a "food crawl". "Just a few more Turkish restaurants then I'll move onto Italian, then Japanese then..." I ate so much my body started to swell. But I wasn't heavy - all the delicious flavours had made me weightless. I floated out of the door & into the sky. Like a zeppelin I floated above the streets of my suburb until nightfall. When my body finally shrank down back to its usual size & I drifted back down to earth, & back to my task. "Now where was I? ... Time for some Malaysian food, then I think Burmese, then Chinese..."

After that beautiful comic, lets start with..

Bodies

Frances at Corpulent, writes “On Stocky Bodies, and being a fat dancer” in which she describes having two photographers follow her around doing her every day things, and how having the photographers go to her dance class was harder than all the other activities they photographed.

Kath at Fat Heffalump (still one of my favourite names for a blog), wrote “Busting Myths About Fat Bodies” and “Can We Kill the Privilege Denying Please?” In the first Kath talks about some common myths associated with fat people and neatly demolishes them, and in the second she covers thin privilege and how some thin people deny their privilege.

Bri at My Scarlett Heart writes about “Just Me“.

Charlotte Audley-Coote at Wom*news writes about “Bodies: Taking Up Space” describing how women’s occupation of space is judged by the patriarchy.

Jo at A Life Unexamined, writes “Are Periods Really That Special?“.

Family and parenting

Blue Milk writes about Keynes economics in “Does Keynes still have the secret to happiness? And even for parents?” and invites readers to read the linked to essay and post excerpts if they do not understand the economic theory.

Blue Milk also writes about “Poking fun at motherhood or mothers? And also, how white feminists get black motherhood wrong“, which is fairly self explanatory from the title.

Ariane at Ariane’s little world, writes “Torture? Really?” regarding the recent discussion and arguments around controlled crying.

QoT at Ideologically Impure writes about the lengths some health professionals go to bully parents into breastfeeding in, “I wonder who earned their Christmas bonus for coining the term “Breastapo”?“.

Jshoep at Maybe it means nothing, posts about the discrimination of the Australian paid parental leave scheme in, “Australia’s Paid Parental Leave scheme is flawed“.

Emily at Tiger Beatdown writes about her grandmother in, “Coming Undone“.

LGBTIQ

No Place for Sheep writes about whether “beliefs” should be protected and held above the rights of others in the marriage equality debate in, “Belief, the State and same sex marriage“.

Chrys at Gladly the Cross Eyed Bear writes about ending Homophobia not just in the AFL but everywhere, in “End homophobia in AFL Football? No! Let’s just end homophobia!“.

Emily Manuel calls out the transphobia in a pantomime that is/was playing at the Sydney Opera House in, “Obnoxious pantomime alert: “trAnnie”“.

LudditeJourno writes about “Queering Twitter” and the incidence of homophobic terms on Twitter.

Justine Larbalestier writes about her support for marriage equality in “On Marriage“.

Emma at The Lady Garden posted about the call for submissions for Louisa Wall’s Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill, and her own beliefs on marriage in, “Submission Pun Goes Here“.

Personal stories

AlisaK at Champagne and Socks (great blog name) writes about having one of those days which boosts your confidence in, “On of Those kind of days“.

Rachel at Musings of an Inappropriate Woman writes about how “I don’t ask people about their love lives anymore.”

Bri at My Scarlett Heart writes about “wearing my heart on my sleeve“.

Julie at The Hand Mirror, writes about making friends through community activities in, “Making friends, with fruit trees“.

Politics

Chrys at Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear, writes “Why I’m Defending Prime Minister Gillard against Alan Jones“, regarding the “sewage politics” engaged in by Jones.

the news with nipples writes about Alan Jones’s “Destroy the Joint” comment in “Let’s destroy the joint“.

At leftover words a post on the demonisation of those on welfare in, “Resources on welfare“.

Sky Croeser writes about her study of the Occupy movement’s use of social media, particularly twitter, focussing on the Occupy Oakland group in, “Upcoming: #oo activism“.

Nikki Elisabeth at Mothers For Choice Aotearoa NZ, has written a letter to the Labour Women’s Caucaus, and encourages others to do the same in, “International Day for the Decriminalisation of Abortion“.

Racism

Helen writes at the Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony, “The Recent Unpleasantness“, describing the failure of the mainstream media to comment or cover those Muslims who did condemn the action taken by a few, and the inherent racism in branding an entire group of people for something done by only a few – especially as that doesn’t happen to white people.

I wrote about how “Multiculturalism hasn’t failed“.

Deborah at a Bee of a Certain Age, writes about “Taniwha and belief“:

The fist criticism conflates two sets of attitudes about taniwha. One can believe in taniwha, or one can respect, or at least tolerate, other people’s belief in taniwha. Personally, I don’t believe in taniwha, or elves, or the Norse gods, or the Christian god, or all sorts of other things, but I can see that other people believe in these entities, and even more than that, that they order their lives by reference to their beliefs. So while I may not believe their belief, I’m prepared to tolerate it, to the extent that it doesn’t cause harm. That’s a fairly standard move in liberal thinking.

steph at 天高皇企鹅远 writes about assumptions people make about China and how she tell those assumptions from what they questions ask her in, “citation needed“.

Mindy at Hoyden About Town writes about the ubiquitous photo of the child holding the sign at the recent Sydney Protests in, “A picture paints a thousand words“.

stargazer writes about the “consequences” of Islamaphobia and how those claiming their freedom to speak bigotry would probably be less likely to do so if they experienced the treatment that is meted out to those they speak against.

stargazer also writes about her thoughts of belonging after reading a post on indigenous people, and her conclusion that she is not indigenous to anywhere, in “not indigenous“.

Stephanie at ginger honey writes “On offense” discussing how when it’s not about you, your reaction says a lot about you.

Feminism

Utopiana from Rantings of an Aboriginal Feminist writes about her decision to participate in Frocktober and the clothes she’s generally comfortable in, in “Yes, yes, I wear a dress… ”

No Place for Sheep writes about Collective Shout’s shaming of women and girls who wear certain types of clothes in, “How Collective Shout shames women and girls“.

Chrys at Gladly the Cross Eyed Bear wrote about the sexism in the criticism of Deveny’s appearance on Q&A, especially the characterisations that Deveny was militant, shouty, disrepectful etc, in “Defending Deveny“.

Jane at Putting Her Oar In, wrote an open letter to Deveny detailing her own experiences of gaslighting, and how Jensen and his supporters attempted to gaslight Deveny in “an open letter to catherine deveny“.

orlando at Hoyden about Town posts the “Friday Hoyden: Paulina in The Winter’s Tale” and now I know about a Shakespeare play I’d never heard of that I must go and investigate.

stargazer at The Hand Mirror writes about “social workers’ day” and how social workers are not recognised for their worth to society.

Jo at A Life Unexamined writes about the discrimination faced by women in academia, specifically archaeological academia in Australia in, “Bluestocking Week: Glass Ceilings and Gender Inequality in the University“.

Justine Larbalestier writes about how problematic it is to have a YA protag proclaim her hatred of all women, and breaks apart why this is a bad thing, and what some of the causes are in, “Girls Who Hates Girls“.

Can Be Bitter asks “Why should women stay ‘glamourous’ while working in traditionally male-dominated careers?”

Ana Australiana at flat 7 writes about “Solnit and ‘splaining“.

Media

Elizabeth Lhuede at Devoted Eclectic writes about the Australian Women Writers Challenge and her mistype of destroy the joint in, “How can we de-story the joint?”

Over at Can Be Bitter, a discussion on the Doctor’s companions in, “Bitterness by request: A look at the ‘Doctor Who’ companions of the revived series (Part I)”.

QoT at Ideologically Impure writes about a recent press release from the Australia and NZ Society for Palliative Medicine, and how they really need to hire a new PR firm in, “Palliative medicine needs better PR people. Also a soul.”

Can Be Bitter also writes about the super powers of Black Widow and Cat Woman, and the new Batwoman, in “Why ‘female sexuality’ is not a legitimate superpower“.

Tansy Rayner Roberts at Stitching words, one thread at a time, writes about the other queens that Doctor Who has met in, “Seven (or More) Queens That The Doctor Met Before Nefertiti…”

Kirsten at wild colonial girl interviews Wendy James and discusses genre, writing, and dealing with publishers in, “Writing Mothers: Wendy James“.

Violence (All articles in this section carry a trigger warning for violence, rape, harassment, etc)

Helen at Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony writes, “Taking back the night, tethered goats, and Perfect World chimeras“, discussing the recent case of Jill Meagher and the victim blaming that has occurred.

tigtog at Hoyden About Town writes “The thing about intimidatory silencing tactics?“.

A guest post by Dr Peter John Chen at Hoyden About Town covers, “Moral panic stifles useful dialogue on social media “trolling”“.

tigtog wrote at Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog, a 101 post on cyberbullying, “Cyberbullies 101: Part 1 – muffling their megaphones” – stay tuned for the continuation of the series.

LudditeJourno at The Hand Mirror writes on the recent response by the NZ Justice Minister on the Law Commission report regarding rape, in “Terrible news for rape survivors“.

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