My friend Pip has a blog called Great Expectations. She’s only got a couple of posts up but she’s asking some really interesting questions:

Are there white middle-class butches? If so, where are they? I found Judith/Jack Halberstam’s book, Female Masculinities, particularly disappointing in this regard. It seems that J/J identifies as butch (??). But although she shows how butch history has been ignored by middle-class feminism, she doesn’t admit that being an academic means that working-class butch history doesn’t simply belong to her. She doesn’t use this opportunity to share her own experience of butchness, and instead uses the (often extremely personal) stories of others to illustrate this story. It’s this kind of behaviour that allows white middle class men/women/butches to claim a rich history and identity, while hiding our privilege over others of the same gender (just like white women using pictures of black mothers to symbolise the fertility or spirituality of all women).

You should go and check out her blog, leave some comments and encourage her to write more.

*******

Also check out Super Babymama who has been writing an excellent series of posts on the reality of life on food stamps. As a feminist I believe the right to have (and be able to raise) a child is as important as the right not to have a child. In both New Zealand and America that right is severely curtailed. Super Babymama explains exactly how little food you’re allowed if you’re raising children by yourself.

I feel almost like an anthropologist exploring unfathomable territory when I read about American electoral politics. No matters how much I read, it doesn’t make any sense to me.¹

The Democrats are considerably to the right of the Labour party, the major left wing party in New Zealand (who I would never support, because they’re too right wing) and I suspect they’re also to the right of the National party, the major right wing party in New Zealand. I read people whose analysis is to the left of the Labour party in terms of the NZ political spectrum, and yet they still support this incredibly right wing party?

How much Democrat support for the war in Iraq is too much? How many women denied access to abortion are too many? How much Homeland Security is too much? How much welfare reform is too much? How many children dying from sanctions are too many?

I can understand taking a pragmatic approach and always voting for the least bad lizard.² But for those who claim that they’re supporting something positive when they support the Democrats, when would you stop believing that? When would you say fuck this shit there are better ways to reach my goals?

1. Not the actions of elected politicians that makes perfect sense, and it’s what you’d expect from the electoral and economic system. It’s left-wing people’s attitudes towards the electoral system that baffles me. (back)
2. Oh I miss Douglas Adams. (back)

I didn’t link to brownfemipower’s amazing post about la familia and immigration, because I wanted to say something. I wanted to argue for open borders. Then I thought that when I get round to writing about open borders then those comments should stand alone.

brownfemipower covers so much in her post including transience:

In Michigan, it’s different. Detroit, Flint or Saginaw may have established Mexican communities–but in the community I grew up in, there wasn’t one single family that had grandparents or even parents who had been born there. All of us whose families had settled in the neighborhood had multiple friends that disappeared after a year–their families moved back to Mexico or Texas or over to other farming states for work. Two of my best friends as a child left Michigan in the second grade. Only one wound up coming back to Michigan–when we were both in high school.

And as somebody who worked in the fields–I can remember falling in love with a dark-skinned, lightly muscled boy who smiled at me every time I walked past. He was there for one season and I never saw him again. A common happening in migrant work.

These disappearances were very upsetting to me, but I lived–just like I know the people who disappeared lived as well. We’re all used to it, and we’ve learned to accommodate shadow figures, shadow relationships into our lives.

Go read brownfemipower now.

I try to think how we got here. The theory I developed in college (shared by many I’m sure) is one I have yet to beat: Womb Envy. Biology: women are generally smaller and weaker than men. But they’re also much tougher. Put simply, men are strong enough to overpower a woman and propagate. Women are tough enough to have and nurture children, with or without the aid of a man. Oh, and they’ve also got the equipment to do that, to be part of the life cycle, to create and bond in a way no man ever really will. Somewhere a long time ago a bunch of men got together and said, “If all we do is hunt and gather, let’s make hunting and gathering the awesomest achievement, and let’s make childbirth kinda weak and shameful.” It’s a rather silly simplification, but I believe on a mass, unconscious level, it’s entirely true. How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? That every popular religion puts restrictions on women’s behavior that are practically untenable? That the act of being a free, attractive, self-assertive woman is punishable by torture and death? In the case of this upcoming torture-porn, fictional. In the case of Dua Khalil, mundanely, unthinkably real. And both available for your viewing pleasure.

It’s safe to say that I’ve snapped. That something broke, like one of those robots you can conquer with a logical conundrum. All my life I’ve looked at this faulty equation, trying to understand, and I’ve shorted out. I don’t pretend to be a great guy; I know really really well about objectification, trust me. And I’m not for a second going down the “women are saints” route – that just leads to more stone-throwing (and occasional Joan-burning). I just think there is the staggering imbalance in the world that we all just take for granted. If we were all told the sky was evil, or at best a little embarrassing, and we ought not look at it, wouldn’t that tradition eventually fall apart? (I was going to use ‘trees’ as my example, but at the rate we’re getting rid of them I’m pretty sure we really do think they’re evil. See how all rants become one?)

That was written by Joss Whedon, you can find the rest here. I’m not even going to make a snarky comment about how well he knows objectification. I’m just going to say I’m feeling pretty good about naming my blog after him.

This is what happens when ‘your employer owns your body and soul’ cross-breeds with ‘nothing is more dangerous than fat.’ A treadmill desk designed by the Mayo clinic. Don’t mock because they were seriously scientific about their research:

“If obese individuals were to replace time spent sitting at the computer with walking computer time by 2 to 3 hours a day, and if other components of energy balance were constant, a weight loss of 20 to 30kg a year could occur,”

It’s none of our employer’s business whether or not we lose 20 to 30 kg, or gain 20 or 30 kg. Our bodies and our lives should belong to us, that’s the basic meaning of freedom.

A reader sent me a link from the local paper the heading said: Don’t want to be harassed? Stop acting like a man

The blurb said

Behaving like “one of the boys” to get ahead at work may not be the best strategy for women. A study had found that alpha-females are more likely to suffer sexual harassment.

The actual research said:

“The more women deviated from traditional gender roles - by occupying a ‘man’s’ job or having a ‘masculine’ personality - the more they were targeted,” Dr Berdahl said. “Although having a masculine personality would seem to help employees fit into male-dominated work environments, having such a personality appears to have hurt the women in this study.”

She said the study supported the theory that sexual harassment was motivated by a desire to punish “gender-role deviants” rather than by sexual desire.

I’ve only read Amazon’s extract of Jessica Valenti’s Full Frontal Feminism. After I’d finished I had to remind myself that there are lots of different kinds of feminism, and the fact that the media picks and chooses who to focus on isn’t the fault of the chosen.

But I still wanted to respond to what frustrated me in the extract I read. I was once a middle-class girl who was too scared to call herself feminist, the audience of the book. But I didn’t change my mind because feminism seemed easy, but because I realised what how hard the women who had been before me had fought, and I wanted to honour that struggle. I wrote about it a year ago, but thought I’d repost it just to show that even middle-class white girls who say ‘I’m not a feminist but…’ aren’t a homogenous group.

In some ways I was extremely precocious feminist. I still have my copy of the Railway Children which says “Happy 7th Birthday on the inside” and in which I had writeen RUBBISH in black felt tip pen over the paragraph near the end when the Doctor tells Peter that he must be nice to girls because they’re soft and weak. I grew up in the 1980s and really believed Girls Can Do Anything, and was prepared to fight for it.

But something happened in my teens, my feminism faded. I know why, and I know I’m not alone. To middle-class girls in all-girls schools sexism and misogyny often seem far away. I was taught by some of the coolest feminists I’ve ever known. My school had a quilt hung in the hall that said “Me aro koe ki te hä o Hine-ahu-one. Pay heed to the dignity of Women”. But it was an all women world and so feminism seemed unnecessary.

It was ridiculous, because sexism and misogyny were all around us, all the time. We didn’t recognise them mostly because we were too busy using them to try and destroy each other.

So all through high school, and into my first year of university I didn’t call myself a feminist. I was 18 when this changed, and I remember the change as a revelation. it wasn’t of course, I must have forgotten all the small things that lead me there.

I was babysitting, I’d put the kids to bed and settled down to do the readings for one of my tutorials. I was reading women’s accounts of growing up in Germany towards the end of the 19th Century. One woman was from the aristocracy, one was middle class, and the others were all working class women.

Most of the women had become involved in left-wing politics later in their life and their stories were amazing. The best of the fathers in the narratives were completely hopeless, most weren’t that useful, but the women survived, and fought for their brothers and sisters. I was blown away by those women and their strength. They had all fought so hard for things that I saw as so basic.

But it was still school work, so as soon as I was finished being blown away I watched a movie the kids’ parents had left behind. It was called The Heidi Chronicles and I remember almost nothing about it except that it was about a woman who was involved in women’s liberation, and it showed how much she’d gained but how hard it was, and how it had cost her.

My response to the stories of women’s lives, both fictional and real was: “I have to call myself a feminist, I owe it to all these women who went before me, who fought so hard and gained so much to become part of that struggle.”

And that was the beginning.

I went to see Rosita in theHuman Rights Film Festival this weekend.

Rosita’s parents were from Nicaragua, but they moved to Costa Rica to find work. Her father worked as a itinerant coffee picker, her mother sometimes joined him in the fields. Rosita didn’t start school until she was seven, because the school was a long way away. When she was 8 a man, who lived on her way to school, occasionally offered her and her cousins fruit while they were walking past. One day, when she was walking home alone, he raped her.

Rosita’s mother realised something was wrong and took her to the doctor’s several times. Eventually the doctors told Rosita’s mother that Rosita was pregnant.

The documentary Rosita is her story.

Rosita is a very well-made documentary. Despite the fact that Rosita is not shown on film (her parents’ decisions - their reasons are obvious) the film-makers work hard to let her voice come through. The story is told from an oral history Rosita did with her mother, and illustrated with Rosita’s drawings, which are sometimes beautifully animated.

The story would have been worthless if they hadn’t worked to give Rosita a voice, because her story is one of people trying to take away her voice, her choices, and her right to self-determination.

By setting her story in its full context, by showing us the cotton plantations that her parents worked in and the effect this had on her, the film-makers show how connected our struggles for self-determination are. That freedom from sexual violence, and control of reproduction alone would not be enough for girls like Rosita.

The centre of the story is her family’s struggle to get an abortion in either Nicaragua or Costa Rica, even though she was just nine years old. The rapist fades out of the film when he is sentenced to 3 months jail - demonstrating the effect of the rape on her life is so much greater than the effect on his.

There were doctors, Bishops, even government departments, who were trying to stop Rosita from having an abortion. The family had to leave Costa Rica in the middle of the night, because they were worried they would be stopped from leaving. Then they had to run out of the hospital to avoid government officials who were trying to remove her from her parents custody. Usually a Nicaraguan abortion requires authorisation from 3 doctors, in this case the Health department wanted it signed off by a committee of 16.

The attitudes of these various men (and a couple of women) were summed up by one man who said: “I said all along that it would have been better if she had died that day.”

That’s what we’re fighting - so many of our struggles are against people, and power structures, that would rather see us dead than living our lives the way we want to.

The film had a happy ending, as much as it could have. Rosita got an abortion; her parents got some land and moved to the country. But as well as this happy ending it also offered some more hope. It ended with a conversation between the film-makers and a taxi-driver who was saying “I don’t believe they should have had the abortion, abortion was wrong.” The film-makers asked: “What if it was your daughter?” And the taxi-driver couldn’t answer - because the right of someone you love to decide their life (and live their life - pregnancy at 9 carries huge risks) is much harder to deny. I think that compassion and that love is where we can build and organise.

Hugo Schwyzer wrote a post about veganism and feminism that I found really frustrating. The point he is exploring is an interesting one - as a vegan who once had an eating disorder he is noting the similarities between the two:

The funny thing is that being strictly vegan (off honey entirely) means that I am more attentive to what I eat than at any time in my life since I was crash dieting fifteen years ago.

But, his perspective is extremely limited as he seems to see eating disorders primarily in terms of body image:

Back then, I counted calories and fat grams obsessively. Today, I largely ignore fat and calorie information and read to make sure that what I’m eating is entirely plant-based and devoid of hidden dairy or egg traces. (Damn that sneaky caseinate!) I’m once again radically concerned with everything that goes into my mouth — but for a radically different reason.

Eating disorders are not just about reasons, they’re not just about appearances, they’re often also about morality and control. Hugo doesn’t acknowledge that veganism can feed the food/control/morality connection, which is central to an eating disordered mindset. For someone with a tendency to trying to exert control through self-denial of food (which is rarely a small percentage of a female population), any language around veganism which emphasises self-control and morality is going to make things worse. I guess I’ve more experience of this than most; I’ve spent a lot of time in a scene where there are quite a few vegans and lots of young women. I’ve despaired every which way at the policing and limiting which young women do to each other can happen take on a radical hue, and still be just as damaging.

I don’t know if Hugo has tried to think about veganism in a different way (Stetnor suggests one). But I know that a restricted diet doesn’t mean that you have to control what you eat. I realised a couple of years ago that I was severely allergic to dairy products. I have to read the label. There are dairy products in most brands of some really basic products (bread and margarine, for example). If someone offers me food, then I don’t eat it unless I know it’s dairy free.

I don’t talk about, think about, or experience this as controlling what I eat. I didn’t know that I’d be able to avoid this dangerous thought pattern; I wasn’t even sure I could cut dairy out entirely. I was surprised at how easy as it was. Dairy products are not an option, in the same way foods I don’t like are not an option. Sure I miss them - other people’s cheesy food smells divine, but it’s not self-control that stops me from eating them. Avoiding dairy products is a choice I’ve made.

I’ve had to be incredibly protective of myself in all this: I’ve corrected people who say I’m not ‘allowed’ something, when people describe dairy products as if they were disgusting I’m likely to sing their praises. In order to maintain this as a choice, I have to avoid anything that sounds like moralism.

I’m sure it’s much easier for me than people with other food restrictions. My symptoms mean that I have every reason to avoid dairy products. But I don’t actually need the threat. Most of the time I don’t think “Wow that cheese looks yummy, but if I eat it I’ll feel ill and end the night crying on Betsy’s couch about much I hate my life.”* I think “What shall I eat?”

Even if I experienced every piece of cheese I didn’t eat as a massive battle for control, I’d be very careful never to talk about food and control. As a feminist, in the society I live in, my first goal when talking about food with people I know has to be to avoid reinforcing or triggering eating disordered thought patterns. I can have all sorts of conversations about food, but I need to have them in ways that won’t make other women’s eating disorders worse.

I think the way Hugo talks about veganism fails that basic test.

* Then after about half an hour of my whining at her she’d say “Could this be because you ate dairy products?”

There has been a lot of publicity over the last few years about rape by New Zealand police. Yesterday more allegations were made, which you can read in this (rather badly formatted) post.

Some of those allegations shouldn’t surprise anyone - police officers were able to rape prostitutes with impunity when prostitution was illegal. It wouldn’t surprise me if the larger allegations are true (and they’re consistent with comments left at the end of this thread).

One of the statements in the article has been confirmed. A pornographic video, which included bestiality, was shown at the police commissioner’s house (the police commissioner is the top police officer in NZ). This is minor compared with the other allegations. But, to me, it shows a pattern of contempt for women, willingness to ignore laws around non-consensual sex when fellow officers broke them, and putting male bonding above all else (this was all to raise money for the police rugby team).

This raises the problem of what could possibly be done about a police force where police officers have regularly abused and exploited women.* If some police officers in the area regularly demanded sex from the local brothels, then it’s likely that other police officers in the area knew about it. No-one who stood by while that was going on should be in the police force any longer. Likewise, anyone who promoted Clint Rickards, knowing that a police report had found that he had abused his power, should not be in the police force. Who is left? Anyone who had stood up against violence and abuse wouldn’t have survived; anyone who didn’t should not have the power they do.

For me this shows one of the fundamental problem with the police. Abuse, including rape, appears to be an inevitable result of the sort of power we give police. I know people have different analyses about how much good the police do (I come down on the side of ‘none’). But even if you believe that the police do improve society, do you really believe that what happened to Louise Nicholas, Judith Garrett and countless other women is an acceptable side effect of that good?

* The police also have a history of racism, homophobia, and abusing their power left, right and centre.

There’s a protest in Downing St 3.30pm-5.30pm today - 10th May. Tell Blair (and his successor) what you think of him. (from Lenin’s Tomb which has a good post).

For everyone else: No, Blair’s resignation won’t make any difference. You kill the Tzar and a new one follows.

The pace has certainly picked up in this third issue of the Buffy Season 8 Comic book. We have plot, relationships, and many unanswered questions. This of course gives me even more to pick at. Since I’m about to rip it to shreds, I should make it clear that I enjoy the Buffy comic and would recommend it.

I’ve already written about the awfulness of Part III’s cover.

Even worse than the cover was the Andrew sequence. There are non-drawing problems with that sequences. I am not OK that in a world where there are heaps of women coming together to fight, men are acting as the leaders. I can’t stand the ‘heh Andrew’s gay’ jokes, which are lacking in the funny and try to compensate with the offensiveness. It’s even worse when the ‘joke’ is basically a set-up to have pictures of women in their underwear (because Andrew doesn’t find naked women interesting, isn’t that just the funniest thing you ever heard). The artist ‘just happened’ to have the woman with the most exaggerated hourglass figure front and centre in that panel (although my friend Rowan thought one of the slayers had a strap-on - which would have made for a much more interesting reading of the comic - unfortunately it is probably just underpants with a teddy bear on them).

The art is getting worse - women’s bodies are objectified more each week. There is no reason at all why Rowena is recovering in a sports bra and skin tight pants, except that in a comic her body isn’t created for her, but as a signal to readers of the position of women.

I guess I should be grateful that inside the book they’ve gone for the hideous witch look of OMWF for Willow.

Because I suspect someone will ask, there is an important difference between the way women’s bodies are portrayed throughout this issue, and how Angel and Spike were portrayed in the (hilarious) dream panel. In the three issues so far women’s bodies have been casually objectified and posed for the male gaze no matter what they’re doing. Fighting, healing, sleeping, standing, whatever - it’s been for men. If, in that context, there’d been a similar dream from Xander’s perspective, it wouldn’t have meant anything - just a continuation of the rest of the art. The only reason that panel stands out from the rest of the comic is because the artist isn’t randomly objectifying men.

There’s obviously a lot more to a comic than the art (particularly to someone as non-visual as me). For me, the most satisfying part of the comic were the dream sequences, which were pretty much perfect. I’ve always liked Joss’s dream sequences and this worked particularly well. I liked the idea of dreamspace - and like every other geek who owns this comic I’ve spent considerable time identifying what’s in the cubes (definitely Joss by the way) .

I thought the battle between Willow and Amy was pretty fantastic as well. I still think that Amy’s reappearance had more to do with a whole in the plot, than the character she had been, which sucks. But the fight was well done, I loved both the Zombie ball, and Giant Dawn.

I thought not telling us who kissed her was a bit of cheap tension. I hope they resolve the kiss soon, and not in a Chosen - whatever you want to happen that was what happened - kind of a way.*

I’m worried that Warren, like Amy, has been chosen for convenience rather than character (I don’t even care that there’s no way he could have survived). Unless the rest of Warren’s plotline involves intense Misogyny, then he was the wrong person to bring back.

But the big hole in the issue for me is Willow. Call me over-invested in these characters, but Willow, Xander and Buffy are friends. Now we’re landed in a situation where Willow hasn’t contacted Xander and Buffy for a long time. This is in a world with cell phones, and psychic communication. I’m not saying that it can’t work, but I think this is the wrong place in the story to bring us in.

I’m not saying that it can’t work, but I’m not sure this dynamic will hold my interest long enough for Joss to explain what’s going on. A month is a long time between issues, and the comics cost $8 each here.

Although while I’m being over-invested, enough with the retconning Willow’s sexuality. Willow was straight in high school, she totally ran with the stubbly crowd, from that badly dressed vampire in the first episode, to the stupid robot episode, to sex at graduation. Am I the only person who remember Oz?**

* I want Spike not to have been in Chosen at all and since I have a fan’s selective memory (Magic!Crack? I don’t know what you’re talking about) that’s relatively easy to achieve.

** Hey, maybe they’ll bring Oz back, that would be extremely awesome.

Over the last few years there’s been a lot of publicity and discussion about police rape in New Zealand, including a damning report into how police respond to police officers who rape.¹ Given this you’d think the police would try, at least a little bit, to avoid looking like they’re blaming women who have been raped for their rape. You’d be wrong:

Police are warning young women against walking alone at night, after a Wanganui teenager was abducted and sexually violated on the weekend.
[…]

“It’s a timely reminder to young girls that they shouldn’t be walking on their own,” Ms Mansell said.

“These types of attacks are rare but they do happen and girls who are walking the streets on their own at night-time are making themselves targets.”

I wanted to write less about rape, not because I don’t care, but because I feel like I was writing paint by numbers posts, where I assembled basic feminist ideas one after another.

1. The people who are responsible for rape are the rapists.
2. Blaming women for being raped is not acceptable.
3. If you tell women to modify their behaviour to avoid rape then you are placing the responsibility for rape in the wrong place.
4. Avoiding being out alone out night is a serious restriction on a woman’s freedom.
5. Anti-rape advice isn’t just victim-blaming, it’s also wildly inaccurate.
6. Most rapists know the women that they are rape.
7. Rape is most likely to happen in someone’s home.
8. A woman who walks home with a man she knows is at more danger from rape than a woman who walks home by herself.
9. Clint Rickards is a rapist.²

I guess I’ll keep writing it till there are no longer people who need to hear it.

1. In case you were wondering, they make the rapist one of the highest police officers in the country (back)
2. Not strictly speaking relevant for this particular paint by numbers post, but I wanted a number for it. (back)

Note about this post Currently New Zealand parents have a defence from convictions of assault for hitting their children by arguing that they used force for correction and the force was reasonable under the circumstances. This defence Section 59 of the Crimes Act. Over the last couple of years a bill to repeal Section 59 has been winding its way to becoming a law. I’ve written about this on my blog a bit, but generally not cross-posted on Alas, because I think they’d require too much explaining. The law has now all but passed, and in a couple of months children will have almost the same protection from assault as everyone else (there were a couple of compromises along the way).

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There was another letter in the paper today about Section 59 and education. I’ve noticed a few letters that argue what is needed along side the repeal of Section 59 is more parenting classes.

In objecting to these letters I’m want to make it clear that I do think learning how to be a parent is important. Learning how to parent is work, it’s devalued work, and it’s work women do. Either learning how to parent is completely ignored (there’s a lot of skill-sharing, and support within women’s networks, particularly mother’s networks) or there’s an idea that it’s unnecessary - neurotic.

But there’s a tone to these letters, a tone that says ‘the reason other people hit their kids is because they’re not educated enough.’ Leaving aside the patronising, offensive implications of that, I just don’t think it’s true.

I’m the oldest of four children and my parents were better at parenting by the time my little sisters came along. Partly that was about learning and experience, my parents had a much better idea of what they were doing third and forth time.¹ When my littlest sister hit adolescence and started slamming doors, my Mum would say “I don’t know what’s wrong with her” and whichever older sibling was at hand would say “Well she’s thirteen.” There was no-one to do that when I was thirteen; my Mum felt it was about her.

But there’s only half the reason. Just as important was that my parents were much more stressed when I was in adolescence. There were reasons for that stress that were specific to our family. But the stress could have been eased in so many ways if parenting was supported and if non-parenting work didn’t have to always be organised on what the employer wanted, rather than what you could give.

I said last year:

So while I do support the repeal of section 59, it’s ridiculous to look at that in isolation. Parenting will continue to be a job that is much more stressful than it needs to be when it is done in isolation, without adequate support or resources, and children will always be the ones that suffer when their parents are under stress. The law can’t change that.

I’m glad the bill is going to go through. Section 59 said kids didn’t matter when their parents hit them, and if all this law does is reassure one kid that they do matter, then that’s enough for me. But there was a missed opportunity here to talk about parents and what they need. If that had happened then at the very least people wouldn’t be writing to the paper suggesting that all we need is a few parenting classes and maybe we would be demanding a whole lot more.

1. According to my sister our family is Experiment (me), Boy (my brother), Perfection (her), and Overindulgence (our little sister), she calls me ’speri for short. (back)

The Subway handbook says that workers can have free soft-drinks while working. Jackie Lang shared a drink that she’d poured while on shift with a friend. Not only has she been fired, but Subway called the police. The police arrested her and charged her with theft, and she was in the cells for two hours.

That story was in the same paper as a story on mobile trucks in South Auckland,¹ that sell goods on credit at extortionate prices. This is perfectly legal, if being a parasite off the poor was illegal our entire economic system would collapse. But I would hope that taking money from people’s bank accounts wouldn’t be:

Customers were sometimes being asked to sign multiple, undated direct debit forms allowing the company open access to their accounts.

Many companies continued to take money after the debt was repaid and failed to advise customers when they have gone into credit.

I know there are people, who consider themselves progressive, and believe that the police are neutral, that their primary role isn’t to uphold the power system we have in place. I would ask those people why police care about a 19 year old who shares a soft-drink, but not companies who steal through direct debit.

1. a poor area of Auckland (back)

I’ve written two posts recently about the persistent awfulness of the Democrats, neither of which mentioned voting. Despite that the discussion on both of them has turned to voting.

I would say voting is completely irrelevant in a discussion on the extent to which the Democrats suck. First you discuss how much the Democrats suck, then once you’ve reached consensus (or not) on that you discuss what impact that would have on your voting habits.

On the thread about Freedom Movement Amanda’s first question was:

What’s “support”, then? Are we permitted to steal into the election booth and shamefacedly vote for Democrats while publicly condemning them and helping them lose elections by increasing the number of people who don’t vote on the theory that they’re all the same?

My answer is it doesn’t matter.

Well it matters if people don’t publicly critique the Democrats because they’re afraid of the consequences. It’s unprincipled and bad politics. One of the first jobs of the left (wherever you are on the left) has to be to raise people’s expectations. Part of raising people’s expectations means saying that left-wing governments are not good enough.

But it doesn’t matter whether or not people steal into the election booth and vote. Sometimes it really doesn’t matter - since she’s from Texas Amanda’s vote in the Presidential election will be as important as mine.¹ At other times voting may have an effect, but if it’s the most important, or anywhere near the most important, political act you take, then you’re unlikely to achieve what you’re going for.

A lot of my friends don’t vote ever; I think even that is giving voting too much weight. Voting doesn’t do any harm (and America is proof that not voting doesn’t give the government any less legitimacy). I’ve no problem with people voting, or not voting, on the flimsiest of reasons. I’ve voted for the most left-wing party in parliament up until now, but at the next election I won’t do so, because of the co-leader of that party.²

But, and this really shouldn’t come as a surprise based on what I write, I don’t think real positive change comes from voting, which is why I see political energy focused on changing voting patterns, as wasted energy. I’m hardly the first person to observe that progressive change is driven from below, not given from above. That means that we should focus our energy below, not above.

1. I’m from NZ; I don’t get a vote. (back)
2. I should point out that New Zealand has a welfare system, and a national health system. Our Prime Minister even acted like a feminist for a few days this year (it’s not going to last). The parties I’ve voted for have been to the left of the Labour party, which is turn to the left of the government. (back)

I’m not into memes, so I’ve never done any where where I tell readers things they don’t know about me.

But high on the list would certainly be my support for Welsh independence.

This support doesn’t amount to much. My Welsh pronunciation is probably better than yours, but it’s not good. I would know less than fifty welsh words, and could probably only produce one sentence: Nos da, cariad bach.¹ Now I live on the other side of the world. While I could probably get together a Welsh solidarity group in Wellington, I don’t think it’s on anyone’s priority list.

I care because of my family. Mum’s cousins fought for Welsh hard. Back when Welsh street signs were only in English one of Mum’s cousins was part of a group that spray-painted Welsh language everywhere. My grandmother compared me to her; Welsh language and Welsh independence are part of a much wider set of values within my family. It’s the Welsh side of my family who have resisted every war since World War 1.

So I checked the UK elections today, I wanted to know how the Plaid had done. The Plaid is the party of Wales - whose basic principles include Welsh independence, support for the Welsh language and socialism. The elections that were held yesterday in the UK included voting on a new Welsh Assembly, and the Plaid gained seats. While I’m not particularly into elections I was glad, and I’d have probably voted for them.²

What I thought was particularly awesome was that Mohammad Ashgar, the first Assembly Member from an ethnic minority (obviously that’s a whole ‘nother problem) was from the Plaid.

It’s really awful that the fascist BNP gained so many votes in North Wales. So awful that I have to take a moment to make fun of the whole thing. Nationalism makes limited sense at the best of times, but even less sense when you’re not sure what language to be nationalist in. I’m fairly sure no-one has ever translated ‘Rule Britannia’ into Welsh

The support for the BNP is what makes it so important that the Plaid is not just a party for white people. Combining anti-racism, welsh independence and socialism³ seems the best way of offering a real alternative to the BNP.

I don’t know enough about Welsh politics to know what relationship there is between the Plaid and out of parliament activism. If winning those seats was the focus of Welsh progressive activism then it probably won’t achieve anything, but if it’s a demonstration of the level of support and activism for those goals then the land of my mothers might be in pretty good stead.

1. Night night love (back)
2. I am planning to write a post on my position on elections. The fact that I think the Democrats suck seems confusing to some people (back)
3. a basic plank of the Plaid, although they’re not necessarily very good at it, since they wanted to cut business rates by 50%. Which is why you should never trust electoral parties (back)

I think it’s really important to publicise what happened to the immigrant rights protest in Los Angeles. The police attacked protesters with tear gas, rubber bullets. ¹ You can read more.

I’m sorry I didn’t write sooner, I’ve been sick. Brownfemipower is on it. I particularly recommend State Violence is Not an Anomaly (if you’ve got a faster internet connection than I have). This is awful, but it’s also not the first time the police have acted like this, by any stretch of the imagination, and it won’t be the last, unless there’s some counter-organising.

Note about comments I don’t want this to become yet another debate about ‘illegal’ immigration, or who immigration policy should serve.

1. This protest was inter-generational, and included a lot of old people and children. I don’t want to emphasise that, because that implies that I might think it was OK if the police had just attacked people in their twenties, but I thought you should know. (back)

I love writing about the Freedom Movement, as I’ve learned to call the Civil Rights Movement. I can’t ever do justice to those in the movement, but I write about them anyway, because they give me so much hope.

So when Amanda made some off-hand comments about the Freedom Movement, in her response to my last post I saw a great opportunity to tangent. Not because I necessarily disagree with the points she was making, but because I like talking about the Freedom Movement. My point, in as much as I have one, is that the Freedom Movement was amazing, and its radicalism is too often ignored. It is easy for the institutions of power, like political parties, to try and recast this story as one which upholds those power structures, I believe this is wrong.

Anyway, Amanda said:

It echoes pretty neatly the way that LBJ lost the Dixiecrats by supporting civil rights, only to have Nixon come and swoop them up with his coded speeches about “law and order”.

While it’s true that the Dixiecrats left the Democratic party because of LBJ’s position on civil rights, calling that position ’support’ is overstating it a little. There a Freedom Movement poster that said:

There’s a street in Itta Bena called Freedom.

There’s a town in Mississippi called Liberty.

There’s a department in Washington called Justice.

Throughout the early 1960s federal justice officials stood by and watched while local law enforcement broke federal law and beat up people trying to enroll to vote. What Johnson and the federal government offered to the freedom movement was certainly not support.

At the 1964 Democratic Convention, Johnson was given a clear choice between Dixiecrats and the freedom movement and he chose the Dixiecrats. Over the summer of 1964, 90,000 people across Mississippi voted in a the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party primary, which was non-segregated. Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were murdered that summer. When the representatives of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party got to Atlantic City, Johnson wouldn’t let their case to be seated as the Mississippi delegation go to a floor vote (and tried to pre-empt any coverage they might get in front of the credentials committee by having a speech of his own). He put the MFDP delegation under surveillance. Finally offered a ‘compromise’ where he picked two of the delegation to get general seats (64 people had come). The MFDP rejected this proposal; as Fannie Lou Hamer said “We didn’t come all this way for no two seats, ’cause all of us is tired.”

I think it’s easy to forget that each town in the south needed to be desegregated, and the federal government wasn’t the people doing it, even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. The people who were actually doing that work were in great personal danger and were not supported by the federal government.

Amanda again:

When you find yourself confused on how the principle of the public leading the politicians works, remember this: Martin Luther King didn’t think that withholding his vote from Kennedy would get the CRA passed. They had to take to the streets while voting for politicians that were mildly more amendable to their views than the alternatives.

I am a little bit confused here, because Kennedy didn’t stand for election while a Civil Rights Act was under discussion. The 1960 Civil Rights Act was while Eisenhower was still president, and Kennedy was dead by the time the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed. Also southern blacks couldn’t really vote for politicians who were mildly more amendable to their views, because most southern blacks couldn’t vote.

But leaving that aside, one of the things that I find so frustrating is the popular view of the Freedom movement lead by Martin Luther King, which pretty much ignores everyone else. I’m going to use this as an excuse to quote from the speech John Lewis, Chairman of SNCC,never gave. It was written for the March on Washington, but toned down due to pressure from the White House and more conservative organisations:

We march today for jobs and freedom, but we have nothing to be proud of, for hundreds and thousands of our brothers are not here. They have no money for their transportation, for they are receiving starvation wages, or no wages at all.

In good conscience, we cannot support wholeheartedly the administration’s civil rights bill, for it is too little and too late. There’s not one thing in the bill that will protect our people from police brutality.

This bill will not protect young children and old women from police dogs and fire hoses, for engaging in peaceful demonstrations: This bill will not protect the citizens in Danville, Virginia, who must live in constant fear in a police state. This bill will not protect the hundreds of people who have been arrested on trumpedup charges. What about the three young men in Americus, Georgia, who face the death penalty for engaging in peaceful protest?

The voting section of this bill will not help thousands of black citizens who want to vote. It will not help the citizens of Mississippi, of Alabama and Georgia, who are qualified to vote but lack a sixth-grade education. “ONE MAN, ONE VOTE” is the African cry. It is ours, too. It must be ours.

People have been forced to leave their homes because they dared to exercise their right to register to vote. What is there in this bill to ensure the equality of a maid who earns $5 a week in the home of a family whose income is $100,000 a year?

For the first time in one hundred years this nation is being awakened to the fact that segregation is evil and that it must be destroyed in all forms. Your presence today proves that you have been aroused to the point of action.

We are now involved in a serious revolution. This nation is still a place of cheap political leaders who build their careers on immoral compromises and ally themselves with open forms of political, economic and social exploitation. What political leader here can stand up and say, “My party is the party of principles?” The party of Kennedy is also the party of Eastland. The party of Javits is also the party of Goldwater. Where is our party?

In some parts of the South we work in the fields from sunup to sundown for $12 a week. In Albany, Georgia, nine of our leaders have been indicted not by Dixiecrats but by the federal government for peaceful protest. But what did the federal government do when Albany’s deputy sheriff beat attorney C. B. King and left him half dead? What did the federal government do when local police officials kicked and assaulted the pregnant wife of Slater King, and she lost her baby?

It seems to me that the Albany indictment is part of a conspiracy on the part of the federal government and local politicians in the interest of expediency.

I want to know, which side is the federal government on?

It’s a great speech, but it also makes me appreciate Mary King and Casey Hayden and the women who came after them.

There are lots of things I don’t understand about this world, many of which are the number of intelligent, awesome, analytical feminists who support the Democrats. From Katha Pollit:

So now you know. It really does matter who’s President and which party controls Congress. A Democratic-controlled Congress would never have passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Act, which banned intact dilation and extraction abortions and, in flagrant violation of Roe v. Wade, lacked an exception to preserve the health of the woman. A Democratic President would never have signed such a bill. Nor would he have nominated the extremely conservative antichoicers John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, which on April 18 upheld, in Gonzales v. Carhart by a 5-to-4 vote (Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas–all GOP nominees), a ban essentially identical to one rejected 5 to 4 in Stenberg v. Carhart seven years ago, when Sandra Day O’Connor was on the bench.

A Democratic president may have never signed this particular bill, but that doesn’t make them staunch upholders of abortion rights. Poor women’s right to abortion were extinguished with the 1976 Hyde Amendment. The Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate, when the Hyde Amendment was passed. Then Democratic Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter indicated that he would support the amendment, and this support was one of the reasons Ford backed-down on his threat to veto the legislation. In 1980 the supreme court ruled on the constitutionality of the Hyde Amendment; at this time there were two justices who had been appointed by Democratic presidents. If both of those justices had supported poor women’s rights to abortion then the Hyde Amendment would have been ruled unconstitutional, but they did not.

I am not meaning to downplay the seriousness of the latest decision when I say that the effect it will have on women’s lives is extremely limited, when compared to the effect of the Hyde Amendment. The most serious attack on American women’s right to an abortion was a bipartisan effort, and the Democrats more than played their part.

Updated Since writing this post I have learned that the Hyde Amendment (which needs to be authorised every year, so has been supported by every democratic controlled house and senate, and every democratic president since 1977) was debated in 1994. At this stage the democratic controlled house and senate upheld the ban. They added rape and incest exceptions (the original amendment already had a life of the mother clause), but did not add a health of the mother exception. The Democrats support of the Hyde Amendment is not history.