Check it out.

I was really excited about reading Susan Brownmiller’s In Our Time: Memoirs of a Revolution. My sister had brought it back from America (I don’t envy much about living in America, but I would love your bookstores, particularly their low prices). I was really disappointed; think I got to about page 20, before I had a biro in my hands at all times to make furious scribbles in the margin. You could call it a stylistic problem: I could not handle the way she described the women she was working with:

“Kathie [Sarachild] had close-cropped, honey-colored hair and a voice that was small and tenacious.”

“Carol Hanisch, an Iowa farmer’s daughter, red-haired and freckled..”

“Like her namesake in Little Women, Jo [Freeman] was a stubborn, coltish, no-nonsense doer.”

“At five feet one inch tall, she gazed at all comers through owlish glasses, tossing the mane of dark hair that cascaded below her shoulders.”

The last one refers to Shulamith Firestone. This is only the beginning other women are described in just the same way: bubbly, titian hair, frizzy hair, big soulful eyes, hair that falls below her shoulders, open-faced and bespectacled. She describes Bernadine Dohrn as a siren.*

Partly it’s the descriptions themselves, which read exactly like the sort of descriptions that journalists never give men - trying to make a point about who a woman is by the way she loosk. But partly the focus on physical experience is part of a wider lack of respect she seems to have for other women in the movement. She casually mentions serious personal problems prominent women were going through in a way that is almost gossipy.

Other things that frustrated me when I read the book, bother me less now. As I wrote in my review of Against Our Will, I now understand Susan Brownmiller’s aversion to anything that resembles left-wing economic analysis. But it certainly doesn’t make the book any stronger:

The SWP’s passion for marches and rallies added another dimension to the abortion struggle. Worried that legalized abortion might be employed a form of population control by “the state”, the activists carefully appended “No Forced Sterilization” to every WONAAC poster and flyer. At first WONAAC championed the provocative slogal “Free Abortion on Demand.” Later it excised the “free” part as ultra-left and unrealistic. WONAAC’s effectiveness was seriously undercut by its ties to the SWP.

Red-baiting is not adequate political analysis.

Those are the small issues I had with it. The big issues are larger:But I still fundamentally disagree with some of the things she says, and more than that, I’m astonished that she makes the argument she does.

I watched the battered women’s movement from a sisterly distance, and was deeply impressed even as I developed philosophic differences with some of its tenets. The larger women’s movement had begun to lump rape and battery under the general rubric of ‘violence against women,’ and I thougth that was sloppy thinking. Rape was a one-time event, whether it happened in the context of a date or was committed by a stranger or strangers, unknown to the victim. Battery was systemic violence within an intimate, ongoing emotionally complex relationship. Any woman could become a victim of rape, but a pattern of physical abuse in a long-standing relationship begged for further interpretation.

I find it staggering that the person who literally wrote the book on rape, would categorically state that rape was a one time thing. I don’t know if she’s missed the fact that women get raped in abusive relationship many more times than just once. Or she blames women who are raped in the same way she blames women who are in abusive relationships, but either way I’d expect better.

The fundamental problem I have isn’t that I disagree with her. I’m probably going to disagree with any feminist about some issues. It’s that she’s not clear what sort of history she’s attempting to write.

She calls it a memoir, but she doesn’t attempt to tell her own story. She starts as the feminist movement began, with very little background. You get very little idea of what was going on in her life, and how she became the person she was. She doesn’t owe us that, she has no obligation to write her story. But the book becomes a personal tale when she wants it to. Early on in the book she appears to summarise inter-feminist struggles in two different ways, in one part other feminists with power were trying to shut her out, in another part she was unfairly cut down because people were jealous of her power. She appears to be presenting very similar situation differently depending on what position she was in.

I understand that she would feel that way (I’ve felt that way), but that’s not a historical analysis. That’s not the story of what happened in the women’s liberation movement.

Part of my frustration was about the fact that I’m a big historical geek. Right at the beginning Susan Brownmiller credits “SNCC Position Paper (Women in the Movement)” to Mary King and Casey Hayden, but this just isn’t true. The paper was written by larger group of women in SNCC. It’s not a huge mistake, but it shows how easy it is for hearsay to creep in. Because she doesn’t footnote most of her statements we don’t know whether her accounts come from the fact that she was there, the fact that she’s talked to people who were there, the fact that she’s talked to people who talked to people who were there or the fact that she’s read stuff about what happened. It’s incredibly frustrating to read all sorts of interesting bits of information and not know where it comes from, and no way of judging their reliability.

But even if you’re not a geek, even if you’re not filing pieces of information away in your mind, the difference between memoir and history is important.

I believe memoirs - people telling their own stories, how they experienced the world, what it was like for them - are incredibly important. But if you try to tell your story under cover of a general story, then you’re going to end up being dishonest. You need to be clear what’s your experience and what’s other people’s.

If you want a good memoir of the feminist movement I can’t recommend Roxanne Dunbar Oritz’s Outlaw Woman enough, Ruth Rosen’s The World Split Open is a good history.

*I find this particularly frustrating because I’ve read many accounts of the history of SDS which cast Bernadine Dohrn as an Eve character - sexually tempting the New Left to a fall - to violence and the underground. There is no excuse for women to go aorund with the same offensive idea.
This post is open to feminists etc. only.

One question that I’ve never resolved to my satisfaction, is why I write a blog. When I started I saw it as an opportunity to do some writing. I didn’t have any grand ideas for my blog and I don’t see it as political action in itself.

Ever since I’ve started I’ve been feeling obligated to write about certain topics - to write about topics that don’t get covered in the mainstream media. To use this odd little platform I have, to raise issues that are important.

I generally haven’t been able to do that, because I generally don’t have anything to say about those topics. There’s a limit to the number of times you can say “This happened; it was awful”, or (more rarely) “this happened; it was awesome’.

But there are exceptions, and the situation is Oaxaca is one of them. I would have written about it sooner, but I’ve been away from home, and it’s taken me a while to get a handle on what was going on.

Resistance

From Democracy Now:

Over the past four months, the residents of Oaxaca - sparked by a teachers strike - had turned the city into an autonomous zone. The police and official government had been kicked out - in its place the protesters formed the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca or APPO.

For months entire families have been camping outside to oversee barricades protecting the city. The protesters have been demanding the resignation of the state’s governor Ulises Ruiz and the formation of a more representative government.

From La Luchita: Paz, Justicia y Libertad:

This all started as a routine labor strike by Section 22 of the Mexican teachers union (often referred to in Spanish language press as “el magisterio”) escalated into a state-wide revolt after state police tried to violently evict the encampment of striking teachers on June 14.

The teachers union and the newly formed Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca made the ouster of unpopular governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, widely considered to have won the election by fraud, their primary demand. As violence by police, paramilitaries and mercenaries escalated, the protesters began barracading their neighborhoods in self-defense. For example, after the Radio Universidad radio station used by the teachers union was attacked, protesters responded with a wave of radio station takeovers. But the protesters also began organizing to put their demand into action, declaring Gov. Ulises “banned” from Oaxaca, seizing government buildings and chasing out politicians from the local and state governments.

Violent attacks had for months been escalating against protesters, in what protesters said was part of Gov. Ulises Ruiz Ortiz’s repressive Operation Iron (”Plan Hierro”). Brad Will himself documented this with an article a week ago called “Death in Oaxaca”. With the murder of the indigenous teacher Panfilo Hernandez, the death toll was at 9 for the protesters. Meanwhile, political parties and the commerical Mexican media were reporting that the protesters were killing people, often without saying the name of the supposed victim or the time and place of the supposed killing. The killing of dissident teacher Jaime René Calvo Aragón, (who argued for the teachers to return to classes) was blamed by the government on protesters, while protesters blamed the government or paramilitary mercenaries of the PRI of killing the teacher as a pretext to repress the protestors, as reported by La Jornada.

I only wish I’d paid enough attention to learn enough to write about the autonomous zone when it was still an autonomous zone.

Reaction

On Sunday Mexican Federal Preventative Police entered the city. I don’t think I can give a good summary of events so I recommend the following sites:

Narco News
La Luchita: Paz, Justicia y Libertad
Infoshop
Indymedia Oaxaca (if you speak Spanish - I’m sure there are many many other great Spanish sites about this conflict, it’s just I can’t find them).

Three people died in the assault, and the fight is still on-going.

What Next

The Zapatistas are supporting the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca:

The EZLN announced that “for the entire day on November 1, 2006, the highways and roads that cross territories where the EZLN are present in the Southeast of Chiapas will be closed.”

The battle isn’t over.

Why this is important

I’m not writing this as a call for support. I think it’s fairly clear that the people of Mexico are doing a far better job of organising and resisting than almost anyone in the first world.

I’m writing this because I want people to know that resistance is met by repression. Efforts to organise and liberate ourselves do threaten the interests of those with power, and will be met with force. To the extent that that doesn’t happen to you, is the extent that your priviledge and/or powerlessness prevents you from threatening society.

Thanks to brownfemipower andVegankid for most of the links.

Note for the comment thread: I’m not prepared to host comments attacking the people of Oaxaca or their resistance (disagreeing with me is OK though).

Also posted on Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty

I’ve written before about the experience of waiting for news. In New Zealand waiting for news generally means listening to the National Radio news bulletin every hour on the hour. There are six pips and then they tell you what’s happened in the last hour. Usually it’s OK if you miss some, usually not that much happens between one hour and the next. But, sometimes, when you really care about what happened it matters desperately and you never miss a bulletin.

From the 28th August to the 21st September 600 workers were locked-out of their jobs. I listened to the news so obsessively that when the lock-out ended I realised I’d forgotten how to listen the news with mild curiosity. I am going to write a brief history of that struggle, because I think remembering that we can win if we work together is an important part of the battle.

There are 600 workers who run the distribution centres for Progressive Enterprises. Progressive run three separate supermarket chains, so the distribution centres receive goods from the suppliers and distribute them to the different supermarkets. In 2003 Progressive Enterprises closed down their Auckland and Christchurch distribution centres, made all the workers redundant, and then reopened in another location, rehiring the workers on lower pay. They weren’t able to do that at the third distribution centre (in Palmerston North), because they either weren’t able to find a new site, or weren’t able to get rid of the lease. So workers in three different locations, doing exactly the same work, were paid three different rates. Workers were paid $2 an less in Christchurch than they were in Palmerston North, for doing exactly the same job.

This picture comes from Friday 25 August, the workers at the three distribution centres went on strike in support of their claim for a single collective agreement and one rate of pay. I was only vaguely aware of it at the time. I’m a unionist - I support striking workers - so I was excited. But I didn’t pay that much more attention than I’m currently paying to the workers at TVNZ who are currently taking industrial action.

That all changed on the Monday (28 August). Progressive Enterprises responded by locking the workers out. All the workers were locked out (without pay), unless they dropped the claim for a single collective agreement. The company started putting out ridiculous lies - they said the union was demanding a 30% payrise. Lock-

At the start it was about Woolworths distribution, going into the second week it was about New Zealand workers in general, there was a lot of members of the public that saw that, and rallied behind us.

That’s from Shane Cooper, a worker at the Palmerston North distribution centre.

That was my experience as well, although I was paying attention during the first week of the lock-out I still saw it as an issue for that site. When the company and the union went into mediation later in that week I haunted the radio (and peppered anyone who might tell me what was going on with text messages asking if there was any progress), because being locked-out is an awful experience.

The families who were locked out were facing an indefinate time without wages. For the first week, before substantial funds came in, the union couldn’t give out money. It just paid the most urgent bills people had, provided food (many donations of kind came in - but it cost $1000 a day just for food on the Auckland picket line), and tried to defer the rest (all the major banks gave mortgage holidays). The stress that that uncertainty puts on people is hard to imagine. Most people can’t afford to be without work for weeks at a time, particularly not knowing when that time will end. There were some families where the locked-out workers was the only wage-earner, other families where both parents worked in the distribution centres.

It was frustrating, being in Wellington as that first week came to an end. We were desperate to help, but didn’t know how. We had no distribution centre near by (Palmerston North was two hours drive away). We went to a picket outside one of the Supermarkets (the retail workers at those supermarkets were also negotiating for a wage increase, but they weren’t locked out).

After a week of closed distriubtion centres the supermarket shelves started emptying. It was really exciting to go in there and see a sign say “We apologise if your favourite product is out of stock.” The situation was really odd as well. The one product the supermarkets had in abudance was budget toilet paper. The managers had obviously been told that they didn’t want the shelves to look empty, so everywhere they were short the shelves were filled with toilet paper. You’d be looking at the biscuit aisle and in between the Tim-tams and the Shrewsberries there’d be Toilet Paper.

The second week things started to get serious, both on their side and on ours. In New Zealand if workers are on strike, or locked-out, it’s illegal to hire or contract any one else to do their work. Progressive were breaking this law in two ways, one they were getting suppliers to deliver supplies directly,¹ and two they had hired Linfox, a supply chain company, to distribute the goods in the meantime. Christchurch and Auckland workers were 100% union, and stayed strong throughout the lock-out. However, Palmerston North was less than 100% union, and also had the least to gain from a settlement, since they were already on the highest rates.²

At the beginning of the second week workers in Palmerston North started resigning the union and going back. The only way the company would let them back to work was if they resigned from the union, and therefore renounced their claim for a single collective agreement. By Tuesday 5 September (just over a week after the lock-out began) enough workers went back that the company could reopen the Palmerston North distribution centre with scab trucks. They did this with the aid of the police - who once again made it clear which side they were on in industrial disputes.

By this time the fight was for all New Zealand workers, and it was clear that the company was out to destroy the union. Progressive enterprises is an Australian based company that is Australasia’s largest private sector employer. It’s cheif executive Roger Corbett earns $8.5 million a year (Australian), the claim the workers were seeking would have cost a fraction of that. Australia has recently passed extremely anti-worker employment legislation, and it seemed they were testing their tactics in New Zealand. Progressive and Walmart seem to have a friendly relationship, and have had management exchanges, so they can learn how to screw over workers together.

The intractability of the company made it a union-wide issue. If they could break such a well organised site, they could break anyone So many times over the next few weeks someone would say to me “thanks for what you’re doing” and I’d say “it’s just we have to win this you know?” and they’d nod.

You see the New Zealand union movement hasn’t been known for fighting for a number of years. In 1991 the National government introduced extremely anti-worker legislation. Despite a mandate from around the country the central union organisation the Council of Trade Unions wouldn’t call a general strike. The next decade saw stagnation and decreases on wages, attacks on unions, and workers and unions to afraid to stand up for themselves. Just now, 15 years later, the union movement is starting to fight again.

Laila Harre, the current secretary of the National Distribution Union (the main union in the distribution centre) challenged the incumbent and won in that rare thing, a contested union election.³ She was personally attacked during the lock-out and one newspaper editorial blaming the whole thing on her personal ambition to lead the CTU (quite how she’d have the power to make the company lock-out the workers is unclear). She didn’t drive the workers to the picket lines, the actual story does her a lot more credit. When, after the first 24 hours on strike the workers decided not to go back, she recognised that this was their decision to make and her job to work to make that decision work.

In terms of union leadership this was a huge step forward. I believe that if we’d lost this the union movement wouldn’t have fought for anything, and that would have been the death blow (union movement’s are always much stronger when they fight).

I only got up to the Palmerston North picket-line once, on my way somewhere else. The camp was amazing and it was great to meet the workers. I came about lunch-time and they offered me lunch, I demurred - I hadn’t had lunch, but I didn’t want to take food that was meant for someone without an income. They insisted and one guy said to me “We can’t stop the trucks going in, and we can’t stop the trucks coming out, but we can give you hospitality, and cook good food”

Those workers couldn’t stay out alone - the union movement came in behind almost immediately, giving substantial amounts of money to the lock-out fund (over a hundred thousand of dollars). That was great, but the public reaction was something else. The only thing we could really do in Wellington was collect money, so we threw ourselves into it and got to see, first hand, the level of support out there for the locked out workers.

We were just out there on the street, rattling our buckets, and the response was amazing. People would go to get money out so they could give it to us; people would empty their wallets into the buckets; after a couple of hours our buckets were heavy with coins and we’d raised over a thousand dollars. It was really clear to me that the people of Wellington understood that this was a fight for all New Zealanders. The street collecting was just one way people were contributing, there was a 0900 phone line, and a bank account people could put money into. Ordinary workers gave over a hundred thousand dollars to the lock-out fund.

This picture comes from the Auckland rally to support the locked-out workers, there were rallies like this all over the country.

I had my first ‘We’re going to Win’ moment on Friday 8 September two weeks into the lock-out.⁴ The Council of Trade Union called a special meeting to decide what the union movement could do to help. As well as contributing substantially more money, people began to talk about solidarity action (which is illegal in New Zealdand). The Maritime Union of New Zealand and the Maritime Union of Australia, both started talking about refusing to work on Progressive cargo, that would have broken the company. Just the possibility made us feel so much stronger. Unions were starting to pledge serious funds. The richer workers, from well organised workplaces, agreed to pay $20 a week for the duration (that’s how I began to think and talk, everything was for the duration). These were work places with thousands of workers, so it would be $20,000-$40,000 a week.

It was also becoming clearer and clearer that the company was breaking the law and the union was going to be able to sue.⁵ There was even the possibility that the whole lock out was illegal. By the third week I really did believe we were going to win, with the legal options and the industrial options, we were strong and the company wasn’t going to break us. It was just a question of how long, because those workers were hurting. Although we’d raised a lot, it doesn’t go very far when it was split 600 ways.

These cases were due to go to court Tuesday 19 September, they didn’t - because the company blinked. They agreed to go back into bargaining and post-pone the court date. Then, for the first time, the company actually agreed to negotiate. It took all day and all night (negotiations finished sometime between 3.30am and 4.30am the next morning), but they pieced together a deal. It was a three year deal for three seperate collective agreement, but the rates were aligned so by the end of two years the workers would have pay parity.

Two days later, on the 21st of September the workers voted to ratify this deal, and the day after that the lock-out formally ended and the workers returned to work.

To fight and win, is the most amazing experience. The union didn’t choose the fight, the company did, which made it even sweeter that we won. I say we, but I don’t work in the distribution centre, and while this was a victory for everyone, it’s the workers who did the hard work.

My favourite story from the strike came from the partner of a worker in Palmerston North. She had recently been made redundant, so they were in a particularly difficult position. Her 7 year old daughter went to visit her grandmother (who worked in a nearby factory) during the grandmother’s afternoon smoko. The little girl was standing on the pavement asking, and her grandmother asked what she was doing. She replied “I’m on strike, I’ll wave at them and they’ll toot at me, because they agree.”

So with the risk of sounding like a placard - dare to struggle, dare to win:

1. They had legal advice that said something along the lines of in order to keep this legal avoid talking about payment until after the lock-out is ended. (back)
2. In New Zealand you can’t close a shop, so people join the union on an individual basis not a worksite basis. (back)
3. As one official put it “Democracy has broken out in the union movement.” (back)
4. Yes this is a Buffy reference, sorry about that. (back)
5. Yes I have a problem with the company breaking the law and don’t have a problem with the union breaking the law. It’s not because I’m a hypocrite, it’s because I’ve picked a side - deal with it. (back)

Another former police officer is currently standing trial for historical rape charges (if you want more context for the ‘another’ read this post. In 1988 he handcuffed a woman who was giving him a lift home, took her into the police station and raped her multiple times.

I know there are many more women who have been raped by police officers. I know because they’ve told me. By e-mail, in comment threads, and in person. I only wish women who had been raped by police officers could count on people believing them.

I know that only the tiniest fraction of the women who were raped by police officers will ever get to tell their story. An even smaller fraction will have it believed. That women are prepared to come forward, after the way Louise Nicholas was treated, is an amazing testament for their courage, and their fight for justice.

There is one note in all this that gives me hope. It is the defence, not the prosecution, who is reminding the jury to put the trial of Bob Schollum, Brad Shipton, and Clint Rickards out of their mind. Those men were found of not guilty of the charges. The defence lawyer wants exactly the same result as their lawyers achieved, but he thinks that he will only achieve that if they

People believe that Clint Rickards, Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton are guilty; they believe Louise Nicholas. Defence lawyers think that the trial that became ‘the Louise Nicholas’ trial will make juries more likely to believe women and convict rapists.

That’s a huge step forward.

Also posted on Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty

Comments on this post are only open to those who are feminists, pro-feminists or feminist friendly.

Should supply and demand determine the cost of adoption? Tariq sent me this article about a campaign by Rev. Ken Hutcherson in Washington state. Hutcherson is taking on the adoption industry. Here’s a quote:

When a couple seeking to adopt a white baby is charged $35,000 and a couple seeking a black baby is charged $4,000, the image that comes to the Rev. Ken Hutcherson’s mind is of a practice that was outlawed in America nearly 150 years ago — the buying and selling of human beings.

The practice, which is widespread among private adoption facilitators, of charging prospective parents different fees depending on the race or ethnicity of the child they adopt is one that Hutcherson is fighting to change from his Redmond, Wash., church. The Antioch Bible Church has established its own adoption agency, and is lobbying state legislators to change Washington’s laws.

I don’t have time to write about this in detail, but this article outlines some of my concerns about the adoption industry and American’s views on children in general. Read the article, and tell me what you think.

When I was at University a young Act support called Nick Archer wrote a letter to Salient (the student newspaper). I don’t remember what the context was, I don’t remember what he was responding to. But I remember the letter itself very clearly. Because Nick Archer compared women to pieces of meat. He said that men were lions trying to get women, and if women wore too few clothes then they were responsible for men’s response.

I once ran into Nick Archer walking down a long and isolated road wearing a tight singlet - which was a very stressful experience.

I introduce this to point out that misogynists obviously have quite a limited imagination. Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, the Australian Mufti whose statements about rape, appears to have developed Nick Archer’s thesis a bit more thoroughly before . But they cover exactly the same ground. Because the Sheik has claimed he has been misrepresented I have provided the section in full. While it is possible that he was mistranslated, his reference to being sentanced to jail appears to make it clear that he is referring to non-consensual sex. This translation is from the The Australian:

But in the event of adultery, the responsibility falls 90 per cent of the time with women. Why? Because the woman possesses the weapon of seduction. She is the one who takes her clothes off, cuts them short, acts flirtatious, puts on make-up and powder, and goes on the streets dallying. She is the one wearing a short dress, lifting it up, lowering it down, then a look, then a smile, then a word, then a greeting, then a chat, then a date, then a meeting, then a crime, then Long Bay Jail, then comes a merciless judge who gives you 65years.

But the whole disaster, who started it? The Al-Rafihi scholar says in one of his literary works, he says: If I come across a crime of rape - kidnap and violation of honour - I would discipline the man and teach him a lesson in morals, and I would order the woman be arrested and jailed for life.

Why, Rafihi? He says, because if she hadn’t left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn’t have snatched it. If you take a kilo of meat, and you don’t put it in the fridge, or in the pot, or in the kitchen, but you put in on a plate and placed it outside in the yard. Then you have a fight with the neighbour because his cats ate the meat. Then (inaudible). Right or not?

If one puts uncovered meat out in the street, or on the footpath, or in the garden, or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, then the cats come and eat it, is it the fault of the cat or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem! If it was covered the cat wouldn’t have. It would have circled around it and circled around it, then given up and gone.

If she was in her room, in her house, wearing her hijab, being chaste, the disasters wouldn’t have happened. The woman possesses the weapon of seduction and temptation. That’s why Satan says about the woman, “You are half a soldier. You are my messenger to achieve my needs. You are the last weapon I would use to smash the head of the finest of men. There are a few men that I use a lot of things with, but they never heed me. But you? Oh, you are my best weapon.”

I only wish Nick Archer’s comments had received the same level of outrage as this man’s did. It’s not particularly reassuring to know that men will defend women’s right not to be treated as objects only when they can use women’s rights to attack other men (hence missing the women not being objects target anyway).

Also posted on Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty

Comments are only open to feminists and feminist friendly/pro-feminist commenters.

I’ve been meaning to write a review of Susan Brownmiller’s In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution. But since she discusses the reaction to Agaisnt Our Will I decided I needed to read that before I could write my review.* Then, once I’d read her chapter about race, I realised that I needed to review Against our Will before I could review In Our Time, because some of my thoughts about Against Our Will were too long for a footnote.

If that isn’t enough of a precursor I then lost my copy of Against Our Will, so I haven’t finished it. But since I’m reviewing a 30 year old book, just to make some points so my review of another book makes slightly more sense, I don’t think it’ll matter if I’m only actually talking about half the book. So here goes…

My first reaction to Against Our Will is just how amazing it is that it exists. The women’s liberation movement invented feminism as we know it. Rape, domestic violence, body image, even abortion - haven’t always been defined as political issues. It is a testament to the amazing analysing, educating and organising of the women’s liberation movement that we no longer see these things as individual problems.

So I have to start by giving credit to Susan Brownmiller for the work that she did. Also to point out that she didn’t work alone. It was as women talked together about their experiences of rape that they realised that rape wasn’t just an individual issue. Susan Brownmiller articulated that important understanding, but it was because of the work of many conciousness raising groups that she came to this conclusion in the first place (a debt she fully acknowledges).

The Red Menace
One of the most puzzling things to me about In Our Time was its weird semi-red-baiting. She dismissed any economic argument out of hand, and seemed to think that calling someone red was enough to discredit their point of view.

Having read Against Our Will Susan Brownmiller’s position no longer puzzled me. This is an excerpt from a signed article in the Daily Worker:

Was it not a fact that she had been promised $5?
Was it not a fact that she accepted this offer?
Was it not a fact that she had dates in the past with one of the men?

This is completely reprehensible. To imply that if a woman is a prostitute she automatically consents to sex, or if she dates a man she is consenting to sex ever after - that is to condone, if not actively promote, men raping women.

The Communist Party of America did good and important work defending black men against a racist court system. But they didn’t need to trash women to do so, they didn’t need to reinforce rape myths to do so.

So I can understand Susan Brownmiller’s anger at the Old Left - for not just repeating these lies, but believing them. I understand her anger at the New Left that proposed a ‘rape-in’ against congressmen’s wives as political action; used women as a reward for politically right on men: “Girls Say Yes, To Guys Who Say No”; and embraced Eldridge Cleaver. I would say fury is the only appropriate response to these things. I do think that this fury blinded her to some ideas that were too important to be dismissed just because those who espoused them were misogynist assholes, but I understand why it did.

A Question of Race

The most controversial part of Against Our Will was always Susan Brownmiller’s discussion of race. In a way I feel it is foolish for me to comment on it. I’ve read a bit about American history, but I’m not American, I know enough to know that I don’t know enough – and that this is a difficult topic. But I’m feeling stupid today, so here goes.

This was the article of her book that I read first, the controversy – so I wanted to see what she’d said for herself, so I could better judge how she’d reported on the conflict.

For about the first half of the chapter, I thought she was making a lot of sense. She pointed out that white men were using white women to punish black men, and often the white women were merely pawns. The Scottsboro Boys, which is one of the most famous cases, is a good example of this. The rumour that they had been raped was not started by the two white women who were riding on the same train as the Scottsboro boys. The police arrested these women and told them that they’d be charged with prostitution unless they gave evidence.

I think it was an interesting point, and - like I’ve already said - I agreed with most of the points about how those organising the defence chose to frame these cases. She also has some really good figures about the frequency of inter-racial rape, and the actual reasons black men were lynched (it was more likely to be for owning property, than for accusations of inter-racial relationships).

But the chapter, and her argument, got completely unhinged near the end. It starts with Susan Brownmiller’s discussion of the Wille McGee case - a black man who was executed because he was accused of raping a white woman. Towards the end of the appeals process Willie McGee’s wife came forward and said that her husband had been having an affair with the white woman, and it was when he was caught that the white woman accused him of rape. It seems to really matter to Susan Brownmiller that the white woman is telling the truth and Willie McGee’s wife (who was black) is lying. I think it’s always dangerous history (and even more dangerous politics) for the facts of an individual case to matter that much. If you need everyone on your side (in whatever sense you have a side) to have always been worthy and pure, then you’re not on particularly solid ground.

If Susan Brownmiller’s argument depends on no white woman ever using the agency and power she did have maliciously, then her argument is invalid. That Susan Brownmiller needed to believe the white woman over the black woman, is a sign of her racism.

It doesn’t get any better from there on in, and by the end of the chapter it seems that she’s suggesting that the reason left-wing people criticise the prison system is because they don’t take rape seriously, and don’t care about women.**

The need to be specific

The racism in her book isn’t only in her chapter on race, although it comes across most strongly there. While she acknowledges that black men were raped because they were accused of raping white women, she doesn’t seem to accept that this means that you have to have a different analysis of rape in the white south, than you would where these circumstances were not present. Over and over again she refuses to see see any other dynamic but a gendered one, and to look at colonial and slavery-era America solely through the point of view of gender.

The only exception, the only time she acknowledges that men don’t always rape is the fact that the Viet Cong, and other guerilla armies, don’t rape (because they can’t, as their military strategy requires the support of the people around them). I guess her background meant that she believed that, when people told her. But she rushed over this point, having spent an entire chapter talking about why men always rape women in times of war.

As well as being hugely racist, I think this is just plain bad scholarship, and bad feminism. Her analysis that men always have raped women in exactly the same way, with exactly the same meaning, throughout recorded time - offers no hope, no subtlety and no possibility of change.

If I’m going to live in this world I have to believe that it doesn’t have to be like this. I have to believe that men rape women because of specific historical circumstances, and that we can change these circumstances.

* No I hadn’t read Against Our Will before now, I’m a bad feminist. I’ve also tried to read The Feminine Mystique about half a dozen times, but it never seems to make any sense. But I’m not entirely convinced that’s a problem with me.

** She was mostly talking about Jessica Mitford (and I’ll happily admit that I’m biased when it comes to Jessica Mitford - because her books played a large part in me becoming a political activist) and her critique of prisons. While I’d admit that Jessica Mitford’s letters indicate that she her political analysis of rape was only slightly more advanced than Stephen Erber’s - I’m fairly sure that her criticism of prisons was based on a thorough understanding of the prison-industrial complex - and is the only reasonable position to take in the face of that knowledge.

Also posted on Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty

This post is only open for feminist, feminist friendly, and pro-feminist commenters.

The New Zealand government has announced some changes to its benefit system, and while I haven’t gone through the details yet I wanted to use it as an opportunity to discuss issues around work and disability.

In New Zealand the sickness benefit is available for people who are unable to work due to sickness, injury, disability or pregnancy. The invalids benefit is available for people who are permanently and severely restricted in their capacity for work because of a sickness, injury or disability (why the difference? I don’t know. Although it’s made even more pointed by the fact that the Invalids benefit is paid more. I’m lying I do know that it’s a nasty sort of moralistic division between really deserving, and possibly shirking poor).

The Ministry of Social Welfare has announced that more ’services’ will be offered to people on sickness or invalids benefit, to help them get jobs. The ’services’ currently provided by Social Welfare focus on teaching people how to look for a job and matching up people and jobs (I’m being very generous with my description here). By making such a big deal of offering these services to people on the sickness and invalid’s benefits (and later forcing people to use them) the government is saying that they think the main things people on the invalids and sickness benefits need to get into jobs is access to these services.

I say bullshit.* I’m going to explore the actual barriers that stop people who are sick, injured, disabled and pregant from getting a job.

The most obvious barrier is the sickness, injury, disability, or pregnancy. To get on the sickness or invalids benefit you have to have a doctor sign off saying that you are unable to work, so it’s not just a barrier - it’s a medically certified barrier.

There are all sorts of things that the government as a whole could do to ensure that people who are sick, injured, disabled or pregnant can participate fully in society. For example, many health conditions are exacerbated by living in low-quality housing that isn’t properly heated (read most NZ houses). The government could do something about this, both by providing more, warmer, state houses, and by instituting better building standards.

What about stress? Many (most?) chornic healthy conditions are exacerbated by stress. Poverty is stressful (and anyone who is on these benefits is poor). Dealing with social welfare is stressful (I’ve known people suffer from serious health relapses due to the stress of trying to deal with WINZ). There are many thing that the government as a whole, and WINZ in particular could do to improve the health of many people who are sick, injured or disabled. Why aren’t they starting there?

Lets move away from the sickness, injury, disability or pregnancy for a bit. After all to focus on those is still to imply that it’s a problem with the person that they are not currently employed, and that’s not what I believe. There is a huge amount of unreasonable prejudice against hiring people who are sick, disabled, or injured. Everyone I know who has fitted in those categories has had a much harder time finding a job than similarly qualified and capable people who don’t. Why not start by working on the people with the prejudice, rather than ask people who are discriminated against to jump through more hoops?

That’s only the start though, because it’s not just the unreasonable prejudice that is the problem, it’s the prejudice that is considered totally reasonable. For example, if someone had a chronic health condition that didn’t stop them working a forty hour week most of the time, but that flared up a few times a year and the worker required a couple of weeks off a time, then it would be considered perfectly reasonable not to hire them. Or if someone had a full-time job and then developed a health condition which meant that they could only work three days a week, it’d be perfectly legal to fire them.

WINZ is obsessed with work as the be all and end all of people’s contribution to society. But we only get to contribute to society on employer’s times. Employers don’t have to (and generally don’t) take on workers whose health allows them to work some of the time.

This is ridiculous. Why do we let our economic system dictate our participation in society, rather than organise an economic system that allows everyone to participate? Almost everyone can do some useful and meaningful work, if they’re allowed to do it on their terms. The fact that it doesn’t work like that, that we aren’t all able to contribute according to our ability is not the problem of individual people, who have sicknesses, injuries, or disabilities, which don’t fit employer’s wants.

* For the sake of clarity I also want to emphasise that these ‘services’ are generally not what unemployed people need to get jobs either. I think changing the Reserve Bank Act would do more to lower unemployment than all the ‘work4u’ seminars in the universe.

Also posted on Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty

In yet another case of blackface racism, a group of white Ohio football fans, including children, taunted their black opponents. The racist fans, including this white boy on the left, yelled racial slurs, painted their faces black, beat on frying pans, and wore Afro wigs when their team played a predominantly black opponent. This is really disturbing to see young children engage in this sort of behavior, which really challenges the whole kids are colorblind argument. The coach of the predominantly black team, Jeffrey Saffold, called the head of the youth football association for the white team to complain. Here is a quote from the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

“I think this was a way of supporting the team by showing up in bigoted costumes to mock their minority opponent,” Saffold said.

Saffold said he twice previously complained to Hudson coaches about the use of the N-word.

He said after Sunday’s game, he complained to John Elffers, president of the Hudson Hawks Youth Football Association, who sent him a letter apologizing for the fans’ actions.

Elffers, however, said the first complaint he heard came Monday when Saffold called him and said parents of Shaker players were offended. Elffers said he doubted supporters meant to be offensive.

“Their actions, albeit unwise, foolish and insensitive, were meant to be totally supportive and not intended to insult or offend anyone in any way,” Elffers wrote in his letter to Saffold. “We regret what occurred and apologize for any righteous indignation these actions may have caused to the coaches, players, parents and family members of the Shaker football organization.”

What I found very disturbing is not only the actions of these kids, but also the most insincere pathetic apology I have ever seen. John Elffers tries to argue that these actions were not meant to offend or insult, and I don’t see how else this behavior could be interpreted. Using the n-word and painting your face black is insulting, no matter how you try to frame it. Moreover, in the statement above he is apologizing for the righteous indignation of the black kids and their fans when he needs to be apologizing for the racist behavior of these white children and their parents. (FYI–I am not the one who edited out the white child’s face. The the local TV station did that.)

This case also seems to follow the typical pattern in these blackface cases. The whole “we didn’t mean to offend them argument” is the standard defense in these cases. However, this clearly should not be taken at face value. If any news reporters are reading this, I would recommend asking people who makes these claims two questions 1) What did you intend? 2) How do you expect blacks to respond to this sort of behavior? I’d love to see these white people’s responses to those questions. Reporters, and people in general, need to go a little deeper, and not just accept these sorts of claims. Let’s not be so quick to let the “we didn’t mean to offend” argument slide.

Check it out at Taking Place.

As if the Source hasn’t had enough problems, now beleaguered Source owners Raymond “Benzino” Scott and David Mays have lost a major lawsuit brought by for Source editor Kimberly Osorio. There is some dispute over the amount of the damages, and it was a little unclear from initial reports exactly what charges the defendants were guilty of. The New York Newsday said the suit did not award Osorio damages for sex discrimination, but they did find that she was fired in retaliation for making sex discrimination claims. Here is a quote from Newsday:

The jury rejected Osorio’s claims that she was subjected to sexual discrimination when she worked at the magazine from 2000 until 2005, becoming the magazine’s first female editor-in-chief.

But it concluded she was fired in retaliation after she made her sexual discrimination claims, complaining of a workplace in which pictures of G-string-clad women hung on the walls and an X-rated movie was shown in the mail room.

On Tuesday afternoon, Osorio expressed satisfaction with what she believed was a $15.5 million verdict, and her lawyers painted it as affirmation that sexual discrimination should not be tolerated at any workplace, despite the jury’s rejection of that claim.

“I definitely hope this has an impact on the attitude of hip-hop toward women,” said Osorio in a news conference. “It was very hard for me emotionally. There was a lot of harm to my reputation.”

I’m waiting for the final outcome, but I think this is a landmark case that sends a signal to some of Hip Hop’s head misogynists. Many women love Hip Hop, but we don’t have to take this sort of brazen anti-woman bigotry. Moreover, the two former owners continue to tarnish their own reputations.

Editor’s Note: Of course, this case is not just about Hip Hop. Sex discrimination is pervasive in many workplaces, but this is one of the first big cases in the Hip Hop industry.

I first read about a protest against the Minutemen at Columbia on Foolish Owl’s blog. For those who don’t know the Minutemen are an American group, who specialise in vile anti-immigration racism and have taken it on themselves to police the Mexico-US border.* The Young Republicans at Columbia had invited . Anti-racist/immigrant rights groups got together and organised a protest outside. Some people also went inside and disrupted the speech (either by unfurling a banner, or shouting the speaker down - I wasn’t there, and only have dial-up so I can’t watch the video - it’s irrelevant to my argument).

I absolutely support and applaud this sort of protest (I’ve done this sort of protest, just for the record). But what I wanted to address directly was the idea that by disrupting the event (however they did it) interupted this man’s right to free speech. The Happy Feminist was reasonably vocal in her disapproval:

But no it wouldn’t change my analysis. You protest outside, you write scathing editorials, and you publicize the fact that the College Republicans are basically inviting a hate group onto campus. But as a matter of both tactics and ethics, disrupting the actual speech isn’t right.

and

And to be crystal clear, no, I would not agree with shouting down a pro-life speaking or anti-feminist speaker.

It’s the same principle as the Jewish ACLU lawyer who defended the right of Nazis to demonstrate in Skokie. No matter how noxious and personal and awful he found what the Nazis were saying, he still defended their right to say it.

To me the principle of freedom of speech is to stop those with power limiting the speech of those without power (particularly stopping the state limit people’s freedom of speech, but I think the role of companies in limiting people’s speech also comes under the same analysis). The idea that respecting freedom of speech means listening in silence while someone says something you find offensive seems ridiculous to me. All freedom of speech guarantees is the ability to speak - it doesn’t mean that anyone has to listen to, or respect, what you’re saying.

Shouting down a speaker isn’t interfering with free speech; it is free speech.

What I find just plain weird, is that this argument is generally only applied to people who are speaking in formal settings. On Saturday the neo-nazis held their annual rally and there was a reasonably large counter protest which stopped them meeting where they wanted to meet, and shouted them down (more on that in a second). Very few people jump up and down and says a counter-demonstration is interupting the nazis freedom of speech. But when someone is an invited speaker - when they have backing by some institution, some power base then somehow they have more of a right to free speech than they do on a speech corner. That seems like the wrong way round to me. Those who are in positions of power, generally need less, not more protection against their rights being infringed.

So I have absolutely no ethical qualms in holding banners, chanting, or communicating in any way, while someone I disagree with is speaking. I exercise my freedom of speech by not being silent.

That doesn’t mean I think that shouting at people is always the best tactic. The counter-demonstration against the neo-nazis is a time where I thought the tactics were wrong. There aren’t very many neo-nazis in New Zealand, but they tend to be exactly sort of violent thugs you’d expect (two years back someone vandalised the graves of jewish people, and they attack people as well as graves).

To me, the point of protesting against neo-nazis is to make it really clear that white supremacy is not welcome. I see this message as not just for the nazis themselves, but also for everyone who walks by. But there’s never any purpose to the anti-fascist demonstration except to piss the nazis off. I strongly suspect being protested against makes the nazis feel cool and important, so the counter-protest ends up being counterproductive.

I do think that we need to organise to ensure that fascists don’t get a hold. But we don’t do that by shouting at them. Political racism has appeal for working-class people who believe that they should be better off than they are. By saying “it’s the jews/immigrants/Maori who are to blame for your situation” various groups (including mainstream political parties obviously) use racism to organise and gain support. The only response to those lies is to present what we see as the truth - to show that it is capitalism that is to blame for people’s economic problems, and that it can be fought.

I didn’t attend Saturday’s anti-fascist demonstration. I’m sick of them, sick of the macho atmosphere, and sick of activists who seem to get their kicks by playing cops and robbers with fascist groups, as if it’s the most important work in the world. There’s a real macho culture to these sorts of demos, that makes me very uncomfortable.

I’m really glad I didn’t go, as there seems to have been a distinct lack of political analysis at the counter-protest. “More hair than brains” may be an amusing chant towards skinheads - but actually our problem isn’t with their hair cut, or their intellect. Likewise a whole crowd chant of ‘Ugly, Ugly, Ugly’ seems to miss the point.

But most disturbing to me was that some supposedly anti-fascist protesters shouted “cocksuckers” and “faggots” to the nazis. Now I don’t want to tarnish the entire demonstration with the misogynist homophobic actions of a few. I have a lot of friends who were at the demonstration, and I know that they would neither shout that, or stand silent while someone else chanted it. But I think it shows that my fears about a macho atmosphere are not unreasonable.

* Just for a short break and disturbing story. My sister once met someone who worked for the US border patrol at a party. When asked what he did he flipped out his badge (which he’d carried with him to Wellington, presumably to impress the girls) and said “I shoot Mexicans”. Just a reminder that the Minutemen are only one of the violent racist groups on the Mexican-US border.

Also posted at Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty

Sydney politely shakes hands / tentacles with the dark lord.

But then they get less formal. Awwww.

Just hangin’ out and looking cool. I love this black turtleneck, it makes her look like a beatnik.

Sydney tries on Bean’s bicycle helmet. Safety first!

Then she tries on Jake’s cap. I think the cap is cuter than the bike helmet, but Sydney much prefers the helmet, and runs around in it for several minutes telling everyone that she’s looking for a bike to ride.

Sorry, folks… I’m working on it.

UPDATE: You can leave comments again; we think we may have licked this problem for good now. We’ll see.

(The vacation is really nice, by the way. There was a party last night; we carved pumpkins and played silly games and danced with infants and sat around a bonfire. When I’m home, if she gives me permission, I’ll post a pic of Meg’s insanely great tree pumpkin. My life should be like this more often.)

Easily the best post I’ve read this month is Winter’s How do I look? Thoughts on feminism and white middle-class femininity. I was really pleased to see that both Hugo and Rachel used the post as inspiration for their own posts. They both focused on Winter’s starting point:

My experience with feminine beauty practices has been oppressive. You can read about it here if you’re interested, but now I realise that when I wrote about my experiences, I should have paid a lot more attention to the fact that my own attitudes to feminine practices are deeply class-based. I have not been talking about “femininity,” I have been talking about the specifically white middle-class femininity that affects my life, and which often seems to be taken for granted as a universal experience for all women when white middle-class women speak on the subject. Hence the accusations of class privilege: white middle-class people are all too used to getting to speak for everyone.

I agree with this entirely. I’m not going to attempt to parse the discussion about the relationship between feminity and feminism, but there was an assumption that feminity had a set meaning, and covered a reasonably stable set of behaviours. As Winter points out this just isn’t true. The gendered behaviour expected of a woman depends on the time and place, culture and class that that woman lives in. Her ability not to conform to those expectations often also depends on her culture and class.

That’s not to say that middle-class white women shouldn’t analyse the experiences they have of being middle-class white women. The problem is not that these discussions happen, but that they become a stand in for all women.

Winter went on to make an even more interesting point. Appearance and feminity is generally something that is left up to women to police (certainly among middle-class white women, my understanding is it true for a wider group of people, feel free to jump in if you have a different experience). In particular within white middle-class women part of conforming to standard ideas of feminity is not looking like you’re trying.

Therefore, feminist discussions about appearance and supposedly feminine behaviours can fit right in a white-middle class discourse about women’s bodies. Feminist critiques of shaving/waxing/make-up and so on, all fit into the idea that women shouldn’t appear, and women critiqueing other women’s appearance is how the whole system is maintained in the first place.

I think that analysis explains why it’s very difficult to discuss these issues in a way that doesn’t come across as policing policing. It also explains why discussion gets so fraught so quickly, as most women have good reason to get defensive when they feel other women are policing their appearance and behaviour. It’s not just on-line either. I’ve been part of in person discussions that have gone badly wrong, and no-one really knew why.

But go and read Winter’s whole post - I think her laying it out there like that was an awesome starting point.

Also posted on Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty

So why does the Lancet study matter? To me, it matters because it reiterates something that too many Americans have forgotten: Starting wars is evil.

A chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg has said George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes along with Saddam Hussein. Benjamin Ferencz, who secured convictions for 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating the death squads that killed more than 1 million people, told OneWorld both Bush and Saddam should be tried for starting “aggressive” wars–Saddam for his 1990 attack on Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.

“Nuremberg declared that aggressive war is the supreme international crime,” the 87-year-old Ferencz told OneWorld from his home in New York. He said the United Nations charter, which was written after the carnage of World War II, contains a provision that no nation can use armed force without the permission of the UN Security Council.

Ferencz said that after Nuremberg the international community realized that every war results in violations by both sides, meaning the primary objective should be preventing any war from occurring in the first place.

He said the atrocities of the Iraq war–from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the massacre of dozens of civilians by U.S. forces in Haditha to the high number of civilian casualties caused by insurgent car bombs–were highly predictable at the start of the war.

According to the most recent study, published in Lancet, somewhere between 400,000 and 800,000 Iraqis have died because Americans - both Democrats and Republicans - lost track of the incredibly basic, obvious fact that starting a war is evil. Around half a million people are dead. Is it possible that we’ll learn a lesson from this, and not start a war with Iran?

The important point is not if the “right” number is 655,000 deaths, or 400,000 deaths, or even 250,000 deaths. The important point is that this war - and the whole idea of pre-emptive war - is a tragic, dismal failure, and one that can no longer be in good conscience defended by anyone who values human life. Daniel Davies writes:

The question that this study was set up to answer was: as a result of the invasion, have things got better or worse in Iraq? And if they have got worse, have they got a little bit worse or a lot worse. [...]

That qualitative conclusion is this: things have got worse, and they have got a lot worse, not a little bit worse. Whatever detailed criticisms one might make of the methodology of the study (and I have searched assiduously for the last two years, with the assistance of a lot of partisans of the Iraq war who have tried to pick holes in the study, and not found any), the numbers are too big. If you go out and ask 12,000 people whether a family member has died and get reports of 300 deaths from violence, then that is not consistent with there being only 60,000 deaths from violence in a country of 26 million. It is not even nearly consistent.

This is the question to always keep at the front of your mind when arguments are being slung around (and it is the general question one should always be thinking of when people talk statistics). How Would One Get This Sample, If The Facts Were Not This Way? There is really only one answer - that the study was fraudulent. It really could not have happened by chance. Anyone who wants to dispute the important conclusion of the study has to be prepared to accuse the authors of fraud, and presumably to accept the legal consequences of doing so. [...]

There has to be some accountability here. It is not good enough for the pro-intervention community to shrug their shoulders and say that the fatalities caused by the insurgents are not our fault and not part of the moral calculus. I would surely like to see the insurgents in the ICC on war crimes charges, but the Nuremberg convention was also correct to say that aggression was “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”. The people who started this war of aggression need to face up to the fact, and that is a political issue.

I’d love to see Bush, Cheney and the rest of the gang spend the rest of their lives in prison for war crimes - because starting a war needlessly is a war crime, possibly the worse war crime of all. But there’s no chance that will happen. Power protects power, and no number of people imprisoned and tortured without trial, no number of innocent Iraqis raped and maimed and killed, will suffice to see a single powerful American held responsible for the carnage.

At the least, I hope the people who supported this war might go against virtually all their impulses up to this moment and learn from their errors. Learn enough so that they won’t support the US starting yet another needless war, this time with Iran. Learn enough to condemn the evil, sick policy of “pre-emptive war,” which is just an Orwellian way of saying “let’s start a war because we damn well want to.” The Nuremberg judges knew more about war than Bush and the war boosters ever will, because they were actually willing to learn from reality. The main result of invading Iraq - hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths - should be enough to let us say “never again.”

It won’t. But it should.

Battlestar Gallactica Executive Producer to Remake Bionic Woman

On the one hand, why?

But on the other hand, I assumed that the remake of Battlestar Gallactica was going to be lousy, too. I was wrong. Really, it makes more sense to use lousy TV shows as fodder for remakes than it does to use good ones.

As long as this doesn’t become an excuse for more of the robot-woman fetish already on ample display in BSG¹, I suppose a new Six-Trillion²-Dollar-Woman could be okay.

1. A possibility Elkins pointed out to me. (back)
2. Inflation. (back)

The British Labour Party have been in power since 1997. The main advantage of this appears to be that the Conservatives no longer seem that scary. The Tories have taken to attacking the British Labour Party from the left or at least the centre (there’s really not that much room on the right). Tony Blair and co. have certainly done their best to ensure that even people who want a mildly social democratic government have realised that the British Labour Party are not going to deliver.

So they’ve responded to the fact that everyone hates them with attacks on brown people. In particular Jack Straw had the following to say in his local paper about women who wear veils over their faces:*

All this was about a year ago. It was not the first time I had conducted an interview with someone in a full veil, but this particular encounter, though very polite and respectful on both sides, got me thinking.

In part, this was because of the apparent incongruity between the signals which indicate common bonds – the entirely English accent, the couples’ education (wholly in the UK) – and the fact of the veil.

Above all, it was because I felt uncomfortable about talking to someone “face-to-face” who I could not see.

So I decided that I wouldn’t just sit there the next time a lady turned up to see me in a full veil, and I haven’t.

[...]

I thought it may be hard going when I made my request for face-to-face interviews in these circumstances.

However, I can’t recall a single occasion when a lady has refused to lift her veil; most seem relieved I have asked.

[...]

Would she, however, think hard about what I said – in particular about my concern that wearing the full veil was bound to make better, positive relations between the two communities more difficult.

It was such a visible statement of separation and of difference

I mention not just to point out again the vile racism that supposedly left-wing polticians will stoop to. But because I think it demonstrates really well the point Rachel was making in her post Bikinis and Burkas - that demands that women cover themselves, and demands that women uncover themselves, are both ways men claim ownership over women’s bodies (she also had some excellent points about how the discourse around these issues enable imperialism to hide itself and you should go read her whole post).

Jack Straw feels entitled to women’s faces. he believes that if a woman comes to his office asking for help, he is a better judge than her about what she should wear, and that he is well within his rights to demand that she dress in the way he wishes to.**

* To be clear while Jack Straw is obviously a troglogdyte he isn’t quite so stunningly ignorant as our own Bob Clarkson - he does appear to know the difference between a head scarf and facial veil.

** Can I just randomly mention that I hate George Galloway? Because I do. It’s not just that he’s part of the current push in Britain to restrict abortion rights. It’s that his comment on these eventscontroversy could be summarised as:

George Galloway, the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, called on Mr Straw to resign, saying he was effectively asking women “to wear less”.

Lets be clear you misogynist moron - the problem isn’t with asking women to wear more less, it’s men demanding that women dress for them in the first place.

In the summer of 2005, my financial situation, which had been shaky for months, finally reached critical point. A letter came from my bank demanding immediate repayment of everything I’d borrowed on pain of court action, and I knew I had no means of finding the necessary sum within the time they were willing to grant me.

I ran through an inventory of my assets, which didn’t take long. The most valuable thing I owned was my computer, and I’d only bought it for a tenth of the sum the bank was now demanding. Desperate, I started to wonder what an able-bodied white baby would fetch in a black-market paid adoption and whether I would be able to find a prospective buyer willing to make a down-payment while the baby was still in utero.

So I know what financial difficulties can do to a person’s thought processes, and that’s why I’m not rushing to criticise Amp for his decision to sell amptoons.com. If I’d owned a valuable domain back then and received the offer Amp received, I probably wouldn’t have even stopped to wonder what they would use it for.

I’m sticking around, but I know some people would prefer not to read or link to Alas now because of this connection. Some of these are people whose opinions I respect and whose comments I would hate to miss, so I’m going to start reposting the bulk of my Alas posts on my personal blog, The Iron-On Line. They will doubtless end up buried among memes, one-liners and updates about my life, but I hope people who can’t forgive Amp for this sale can still join in the discussion.