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.

From Stuff

His pending tour of duty in Iraq has split world opinion, now Kiwi monarchists are urging British authorities not to send Prince Harry to war.

The Monarchist League of New Zealand said it was wrong to send the third in line to the throne to an “unpopular and futile” war in Iraq, and has urged the Blair Government to reconsider his deployment.

It will come as no surprise that I believe that every British soldier should be withdrawn from Iraq immediately.

But if there are going to be British soldiers in Iraq, then they don’t come more dispensable than Prince Harry. I’m not commenting on his worth as a person to those who love him, which I’m sure is very high.* But I would be hard pressed to think of anyone more useless. Unlike his older brother, he won’t even get to wait, to wait, to become a figurehead.

Almost all of the US and British soldiers who have died in Iraq would have had far less choice in their profession than Prince Harry. The Iraqi people who have died during the invasion and occupation, have even less choice still. Every day in Iraq there are tragedies that are far greater than the hypothetical death of Prince Harry.

* Although I have to say wearing a Swastika at a Colonials and Natives Party? Not OK.

I’ve written very briefly about climate change once before. It’s not an issue I follow much, because it often invokes an “ARGH we’re all doomed lets spend these last few days we have watching Buffy” response in me. But what has really frustrated me is how easily efforts to fight climate change have been co-opted by industry.

On Tuesday Checkpoint (a national NZ radio show) had an interview with someone from the trucking industry, about how the trucking industry thinks we should fight climate change. Now lets take a moment to point out that if we’re going to move cargo in the most efficient way possible, then trucking is pretty much out.¹ The only things worse than trucking is flying; rail and sea are much more efficient.

So if the trucking industry shrank considerably then that would help lower carbon emissions straight away. What did the trucking industry suggest?

1. The government should change the depreciation rates on trucks so that trucking companies can buy newer, more efficient, truck soon.

2. The government should invest in the road system, because if trucks are in traffic they’re wasting carbon.

3. Change the safety rules so that trucks can carry more cargo and be more efficient.

What do we notice about these rules. Well the first thing is that 1 & 2 would only save carbon emission if you were able to make truck and road building carbon neutral. I don’t know what sort of carbon emissions road building creates, but I do know that metal production creates a shit-load of carbon emission.

But as well as not being at all useful, all of these changes are things the industry were wanting anyway, and have just dressed up as helping reduce emissions (which they wouldn’t).

Note for comments, this is not supposed to be another generic thread on climate change. The topic is how (or whether) industry co-opts ideas of climate change

1. To what extent can we afford to move cargo at all? Is it another part of our lifestyle which will result in the sea rising and the penguins dying? I’m not even going to begin to answer those questions. But would recommend watching Innocence while you still can. (back)

April 25th is ANZAC day; the day New Zealand does the ‘yay soldiers’ thing. While I’m writing these thoughts in the New Zealand context, I think they also apply in other countries where commemoration and celebration of war are never far apart.

Anarchafairy and Span have both written about how left-wing people should respond to ANZAC day. I’m going to write more about that tomorrow. But Span’s comment thread puzzled me, and I wanted to respond to the predominant feeling there first.¹ As Stef said:

I think that ANZAC day is about honouring the soldiers, not the politics of the day.

I don’t understand why it is we honour soldiers, when we don’t honour so many other groups of people. We don’t honour the people who died in the influenza epidemic, that followed the war. We don’t honour people who die in their workplace. Those deaths are just as senseless, just as cruel, and just as much a result of our fucked up system, as the ANZACs.

We don’t have an annual holiday to honour all the women who have died in childbirth. Who really did die so the next generation could live.

Why are soldiers special?

1. I’m not even going to go near the idea that we need to honour the ANZAC soldiers because they died so we could be free. I understand (and don’t necessarily agree with) the argument when it comes to World War 2, but World War One? What freedoms is that supposed to have won? (back)

I’ve been reading a bit of dingbat spiritualism (The Secret - I’m looking at you), and I’ve been wanting to write about why I think I’m more anti-spiritualist, than an atheist (or maybe agressive materialist would be the best way to describe it). But before I do that I have a rant I have to get out of the way first.

One weird feature of the left, probably going back to the 1960s, is a completely inexplicable view that Eastern religions are in some way better than Abrahamic religions. While this is less strong than it was, you can still see it, particularly in the way the Dalai Lama is treated.

Every major religion, every religion that has ever had any power, served the interests of the ruling class. Religions can and do justify existing power structures and give people reasons not to fight back. While most religions also have ideas that undermine those power structures, all major religions spend most of their time upholding existing power structures. If you like meditating then go for it, but don’t pretend it’s that different from saying the rosary.

Having got that out of the way, I should be able to get on to why I really hate religion sometime in the next few days.

I haven’t had much energy to read about the latest disaster from the US supreme court. Back there I used the word ‘disaster’ which is about the extent of my analysis (although it does cover lots of issues quite well).*

But I was reading Phantom Scribbler’s excellent post What the Mommy Bloggers Know

If you’re mainstream media or one of the major political blogs, and you’ve just put together some sort of roundup of the blogs’ discussion of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision, we, the legions of irrelevant mommy bloggers, would like to let you know that we have found it lacking. What, you say? Surely everyone knows that mommy bloggers are only good for talking about naps, dirty diapers, and Linda Hirshman. Far be it from me to assert otherwise. But on the other hand, the mommy bloggers all know that the blogger whose voice is really essential to this discussion is Cecily.

Cecily writes at and I wasted all that birth control, and her post on the supreme court decision should be required reading:

Personally, I do not know which procedure I had. At 22.5 weeks gestation (when my pregnancy ended–and that is based on my last menstrual period, remember, not the date of implantation, so the fetuses were really 20.5 week along) I was right on the line between trimesters. Plus the fact that there where two fetus (one barely alive, and one dead) could have impacted which surgery I had.

Other than having a medical termination, the options open to someone in my position are usually either a) emergency c-section, and b) induced delivery.

My doctor believed–given my particular circumstances–that it would be better for both my short term and long term health to not cut open my body if at all possible. My health was in a precarious state, and the option of a medical termination was the fastest, safest, and least complicated procedure to use. It also preserved the health of my uterus for future pregnancies.

I’m not a parent, but I read some ‘Mommy blogs’ written by feminists, because they have some of the best feminist analysis on the web.

Two days ago an All Black1 who had been discharged without conviction after he assaulted his wife, because if he did that would make it harder to travel and he wouldn’t be able to play in the rugby world cup. One fan said:

Fan Craig Clapson, at the match with his son, said Sivivatu should be able to play. “I can’t condone wife beating, but from what I’ve read, it was basically a domestic that got a little out of hand and they’ve reconciled.”

Yesterday, the NZ Herald used the following headline: “‘We thought first shooting just domestic,’ authorities say” (it has now been taken down, but Audra wrote about it). [Note this appears to be just paper assholishness and not necessarily the opinion of the university or the police, although it wouldn’t surprise me]

‘Domestic’ is such a tidy way of saying ‘what men do to women who are in a relationship with them doesn’t matter.’

**************

World Socialist Website has an article: The Virginia Tech massacre–social roots of another American tragedy. Lenin’s Tomb covers some of the same ground

Do you want to guess what they don’t mention? Do you want to guess what they don’t think might be relevant?

It’s not actually that hard to include some feminist analysis, even if you’re a Marxist. It’s true that better minds than mine have been defeated in trying to understand reproductive labour within a Marxist economic framework. But looking at the history of school shootings, and some of the details that have come out about this one, you don’t have to rewrite any Capital to understand that maybe a deeply misogynist society might be playing a part.

Edited Updated to reflect more accurate information - bloody New Zealand Herald.

1. Member of the NZ rugby team & God of masculinity in these parts (back)

I’m vain enough to check the stats on my blog reasonably often. Not as much as when I first started writing, when ever reader was a victory, but a few times a week I check how people found me.

Usually they’re searching for Brad Shipton, Clint Rickards or Bob Schollum. That people who want to know about those men find what I’ve written satisfies me.

There are always some upsetting searches which manage to convey a weight of racism or misogyny in so few words. I think most feminist bloggers have it worse than I do; I don’t write much about pornography.

But a few days ago someone found my blog by searching for: “rape a woman” “get away with it”.

I’m on the second page. He hadn’t found what he was looking for in the previous 18 sites, so he checked me out. This is what he read:

For most rapists, there are no consequences, formal or informal. There are consequences for all too many women out there who try and pursue justice and safety.

So any men out there, know you can rape women with impunity, know that there is no need to treat women as human beings. I don’t know if you can imagine what it’s like to live as a woman knowing that, maybe you could try.

I’m scared he read my words and ignored what I was saying. I know that most men who rape face no consequences. I’m terrified that this man is now going to add to that number.

I’ve decided that the problem is that comics are too short. 24 pages a month is not enough, if you’ve been used to 42 minutes a week. A month is a long time between mouthfuls.

At the moment all I can say is that I’m enjoying the Buffy comic.¹ It feels foolish to pass judgement on any of the major plot-lines yet (although I’m not OK with any of the potential candidates for Buffy’s true love except Willow), since I don’t know where they’re going. Generally I’m excited by Giant Dawn, and the evil army, and everything else I’m going to wait and see.

It’s pretty cool to have the old characters back (and their dream sequences - I love a Joss dream sequence). I’m even beginning to like some of the slayers, which I never did with the potentials.² Although one of them has terrible taste in men.

The art bothers me more this issue. Mostly because Joss randomly set a scene while Dawn is washing in a water hole that won’t fit all of her. But apparently if Georges Jeanty ‘two women in their pyjamas attacking an intruder’ he thinks ‘butts, waists and thighs’. What he thinks when he hears ‘Buffy chained to a bed’ is even more predictable.³

1. Did you see Amp now has a ‘Buffy’ category - I’m so proud (back)
2. Except Milly from Freaks and Geeks, because Freaks and Geeks was awesome. (back)
3. I didn’t understand that at all actually, the bed looked like it had holes for her arms and what was this mystical protection that stopped her being stabbed, but didn’t stop her being tied up or enchanted? (back)

Last Wednesday I think I doubled my life-time total of geek points. It went something like this:

1. I bought a single issue comic book
2. that I’d pre-ordered,
3. from a comic book store,
4. on the first day it was released.
5. I had a conversation with the guy in the store about the quality of the book
6. that ended with me saying “of course it’s good it’s written by Joss Whedon.”

I am now the proud owner of the first issue of Buffy: Season 8. I even have it in my hands, which is rare - it’s been lent out to various people pretty constantly since I bought it.

I’ve never tried to review a comic book before, and it seems to be quite a difficult exercise. I’ve only got a very small part of the story. It’s like reviewing a TV show at the end of the first Act

I’ll start with the art-work - it’s not as bad as I’d thought it would be. The preview art showed the most obvious distortions of women who already have a body-type. It helps that I like the cover, while the proportions are annoying, the basic image is of Buffy strong and confident. Or maybe I’m getting desensitised already

As for the words (far more important to me, since they were the bits done by Joss), I’m excited. There’s not much there, and I’m nitpicking all over the place. But it’s definitely worth reading, and I’m excited about what’s going to happen next.

Now the problems:

• Xander the general of the slayer army - it’s not OK to have only one man in an organisation and have him in a leadership position. I’m fairly sure that goes against the message of at least two season finales (3 and 7).

• Amy? Really? That really disappoints me, and makes it clear that Joss’s thinking of her more as an object than a character - hey she’s someone we can bring back - people have heard of her so they’ll be excited. In the high school episodes Amy was a great character, and The Witch is one of the most successful metaphors they ever put together. I don’t see why they had to do this to the girl who was so excited about eating brownies. I’m aware that this is actually an objection to Season Six - so I’ll add, I didn’t actually need to be reminded of the Magic!Crack plot-line - I’m doing a good job of blocking that out - just like I block out Spike’s existence post Seeing Red.
• I trust Joss enough to believe that Dawn didn’t actually become a giant by having sex with a thricewise, because we really don’t need to go there again.

So those are my gripes. I love the dialogue (of course I love the dialogue, Joss wrote it). I’m very excited that the US military are treating Buffy like a terrorist cell - definitely a plot with a lot of potential.* I like where Buffy is emotionally, it seems quite realistic to me - the thing about changing the world is that when you do it the world’s all different. Sounds like a good starting point.

* Although hopefully less annoying than the actual potentials.

My friend Rowan and I have a bit of an Emma Thompson thing going. We’re planning a grand rewatch of all her movies (except Maybe Baby and Henry V) that will end with Sense and Sensibility. Tonight we were watching Much Ado About Nothing. I don’t think I’d seen it since it came out when I was 15. It was the first movie I ever went to see twice at the cinema - I loved it.

Seeing it tonight was a little different; I no longer consider Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh the perfect celebrity couple (which is good because neither do they). But we found one plot-line distressing.

Like most Shakespeare plots it’s quite ridiculous. Claudio and Hero are betrothed and the villian* sets it up so Claudio will think that Hero is having sex with another man. Claudio confronts Hero at the wedding, throws her across the room. Her father is also abusive. Hero then pretends to be dead, but than makes no sense at all.

We couldn’t listen to it; we changed the language to Polish so we wouldn’t have to deal with how awful Hero’s situation was. There were some nice moments - Emma Thompson was taking it all seriously, and Kenneth Branagh was backing her up, and choosing the abused women over his abusive friend.

But then Claudio and Hero marry - and we’re supposed to be joyful about it.

There is a version of this play that I could watch - where the horror of Hero’s situation was given weight, where their marriage is not a joyful event, but one the audience dreads. I feel the same way about Taming of the Shrew, from what I’ve read a feminist version of the play is usually one where Katherine implies she has some sort of power. I disagree, a feminist version would be one that played those events absolutely straight. Taming of the Shrew is a tragedy; a tragedy that occurs far more often than young lovers commit suicide because their parents don’t like each other.

* Played by Keanu Reeves! He’s only the second worst actor in the movie too - Robert Sean Leonard plays Claudio and we cracked up when he tried to act sad when it was revealed how wrong he was.

I was disappointed and upset to see that this case resulted in an acquittal. It’s hard to be surprised, the woman was drunk, and it’s hardly news that there are people who believe a drunk woman automatically consents to sex. But what really upset me, was the effects this is going to have on her life:

The complainant, who is also a student at the polytechnic, told the Nelson Mail that she planned to pull out of her studies at NMIT and transfer to another polytechnic, because she felt she could not return to the campus if Mr Singh was there.

NMIT chief executive Tony Gray said the polytechnic would continue to manage the situation if both students decided to stay there, as it had done previously by making arrangements to limit their contact on campus.

Without a guilty verdict this woman has nothing. Her polytech can’t even guarantee that she won’t have to see the man who raped her. To do this is to choose the abuser over the abused, because it is those who have least power who will feel compelled to move on.

The justice system don’t care what survivors of sexual violence want, or what they need to get on with their life. There is no way for a woman to say: “I want to live a life free of the man who raped me” without first proving that he raped you beyond reasonable doubt.

We all know that most rape cases will not result in convictions. We must be able to offer those who have been raped something more than the responsibility to avoid their rapist.

This post is open for feminist and feminist friend commenters only.

The next article is hard to translate, because so much of it is based on specifically New Zealand references, but the idea of comparing urban, liberal, middle-class people with conservative, rural, working class people isn’t limited to New Zealand.

Chris Trotter’s column on Friday made connections between 1980s police rape cases and the tour.¹. I’m not willing to concede that police rape belongs to a by-gone era, but I do think there’s probably a point there. These men’s obsession with using their batons to abuse women, clearly comes out of the same culture that created the red squad.²

The first part of Chris Trotter’s article, which covers the incident in some detail, is very interesting. But I disagree with most of the conclusions that he draws from it:

The thing about the 1981 Springbok Tour that made such vicious confrontations inevitable was that people who would normally never come within half a mile of each other were suddenly arriving at the same place. The New Zealand of The Listener and film festivals and feminist consciousness-raising was on a collision course with the New Zealand of the TV Guide and “adult” videos and steaming male bodies in the rugby club changing- room.

On the surface it might have been a case of “liberals” and “progressives” meeting “reactionaries” and “racists”. But, beneath the political veneer, a deeper, more visceral, dynamic of cultural attraction and disgust was at work. In some part of their respective psyches, “Pro-” and “Anti-” responded to the Springbok Tour like a carnival freak show at the edge of town with each group defining the other as the geek.

This simplistic analysis is a reasonably common explanation for what happened in 1981. There’s enough truth in it to sound plausible, but it ignores more than it explains. It was the connections that he drew between this and the police rape cases that I strongly disagreed with:

In its essence, the public outrage surrounding the acquittal of Clint Rickards, Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum represents the moral collision of two mutually incomprehensible sub-cultures. Like Banquo at the feast, the ghost of 1981 pro-Tour provincial New Zealand has returned to trouble the consciences of the morally, politically and socially victorious veterans of the anti-Tour protests.

It’s as if we’ve all been trapped in an episode of Life on Mars with a New Zealand twist. Here, we don’t have to travel back in time to discover a world governed by sexism, racism and homophobia – we have only to take a trip across town.

When I read that Brad Shipton’s brother had described Louise Nicholas as “that maggot-lying bitch”, all I could think of was the scene with the placard 26 years ago, and wonder how many Kiwi blokes still think of courageous, outspoken and assertive women as dogs to be kicked, punched, raped, intimidated and cross-examined into a proper appreciation of male power.

The first problem with this argument is that he’s wrong. I’ve talked to lots of people about the police rape cases over the last year, middle-class, working-class, urban, provincial, progressive, conservative, and the vast majority have believed those women. I think this issue has united people across usual boundaries, not polarised them.

There is a more fundamental way that Chris Trotter is wrong. He is arguing that objectifying, abusing and degrading women is intrinsic to working-class provincial masculinity, and alien to middle-class urban masculinity. I’ve addressed this argument before, in a slightly different form.

This idea is one that I’ve only ever put forward by middle-class men, and you can see why - because it is in their interests. Either they can use it to argue that women shouldn’t fight sexism, because to do so would alientate the working class (who are inevitably entirely male). Or they can use it to distance themselves from men who abuse women and so not examine their own behaviour, or that of their mates.

In reality Chris Trotter wouldn’t even need to cross town to find men who “think of courageous, outspoken and assertive women as dogs to be kicked, punched, raped, intimidated and cross-examined into a proper appreciation of male power.” I’m sure he knows some (as Span says “Of course I spotted one particular man who really shouldn’t have been on the march, given its focus, but then activist circles aren’t necessarily less sexist than general society, and sadly I suspect he wasn’t the only hypocrite pounding the tarmac for International Women’s Day.”). Most abusive liberal men are probably smooth enough not to call a rape survivor a ‘lying maggot bitch’, but they’ll discredit her just the same.

I’ve never heard a woman express this idea, whatever her class background. You don’t have to have much experience with middle-class men to know that some of them are abusive misogynist assholes. You also don’t have to have much experience with working-class men to know how much some of them respect and support women.

1. I’m not sure I can explain what the tour means, although I’ve written about it on my blog - possibly comparing it to the anti-vietnam war movement is the best term of reference, if the anti-vietnam war movement happened in 1981 over a period of 6 weeks (back)
2. New Zealand police brigade used during the tour (back)

The New Zealand Herald, the NZ newspaper with the biggest circulation, nominated Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty the blog of the week for capturing the public mood (and quoted from this post - I was pretty happy), which gives you an idea of how widely felt the anger is.

I’m going to repost a couple of the posts I’ve written here, edited slightly to make sense All you need to know is the basic details of the case. Clint Rickards (one of New Zealand’s top police officers), Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum were police officers together in Rotorua (provincial New Zealand) in the 1980s. They used police power to rape and abuse women. Over the last two years they have stood trial for sexual offences three times. In the first trial Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton were convicted of rape. The next two juries were not told about these convictions, and each case came back with verdicts of not guilty. The women told very similar stories of being raped and abused by these men, and I believe all of them.

This post is a response to something Russel Norman, co-leader of the NZ Green party, wrote. Their focus is on the environment, and they’re usually the most left-wing party in parliament in terms of social issues. I voted for them reluctantly, but it’s very unlikely that I’ll do that again.

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Today Russel Norman wrote about the police rape trials on frogblog.

I don’t see that being involved in consenting group sex is any reason for him not to go back to work. And people use sex aids so using a police baton in a consenting situation doesn’t seem grounds for refusing him his job back.

What the fuck is anyone who has ever heard of the existance of feminist analysis doing suggesting that these incidents involved consenting sex?

I understand that most people have more to lose than I do, and would face consequences if they said “Clint Rickards is a rapist piece of scum” at every opportunity. But just because the jury believed that the case hadn’t been proved beyond reasonable doubt, that doesn’t make the sex consenting. Two women have come forward and said that they were raped by these threemen. Anyone who states categorically that Clint Rickards had consenting group sex is saying that they don’t believe those women.

Usually that’s what you’d expect, but all the female Green party representatives are feminists and one has talked bravely and publicly of her experience of being raped. I would have expected him to pay attention to these women, and their experiences, and not choose the words of rapists over the words of rape survivors.

Russel Norman did acknowledge that there might have been a power imbalance in an addendum, but says:

My original comment above about group sex was in response to my perception that a lot of the reaction to the case was of a conservative moralistic nature about group sex rather than about an abuse of power

I’ve paid obsessive attention to all the media, and any reading which saw a lot of the reaction to the case to be conservative and moralistic is ridiculously inaccurate. I can’t imagine what sort of priorities you have if your response to everything that’s happened is to worry that people are condemning group sex.

Those paragraphs are offensive, the rest of the article just focuses on side-issues. Russel Norman believes that the two issues that come out of this case are:
1. Should the jury have been told that Schollum and Shipton were previously convicted of rape?
2. Should Rickards be allowed to be Auckland police chief?

Here are some of the questions that I think come out of this trial:
How many women’s testimony equals one man’s in the NZ legal system?
Is Brad Shipton the most vile man in New Zealand? (I’m really hoping the answer to this one is yes)
Why was Clint Rickards promoted within the police rapidly, even after a report stated he abused his power?
Why did no-one do something to stop these men?
I’ve talked to half a dozen women who have been raped by police over the last year, how many more are out there?
What alternatives ways are there that we can get justice for rape survivors where they don’t have to go through abusive cross-examination?
Are there actually any ‘reasonable doubts’ here aren’t they all just ‘misogynist doubts’ or is that considered the same thing?
Why is the past of the woman involved fair game in rape trials?
How many times do I have to yell “it’s not a ’sex trial’ at Sean Plunkett before he hears me?
Why are the police allowed to investigate their own?

Why did these women have to go through this?

How can we make this stop?

Generally his post made it clear that he didn’t think this issue was particularly important. He’d read some of the media it wasn’t something he was focusing on (given he didn’t know a lot of rather basic facts about the cases), but he thought he’d chime in.

To me, and to so many other women and men throughout New Zealand, this case is important. It’s important because we put ourselves in those women’s shoes, because we think about the pain and horror that those women went through, because we can imagine how it’s affected the rest of their lives, and the lives of the people around them. The way Russel Norman wrote trivialises all that.

I’m not saying that everyone must obsess about this case the way I have. I’m not bedgrudging people sleeping fine, and having time and energy for other things. Even I want to think and write about other things (the Air NZ redundancies are first on the list). But I do believe that anyone who considers themselves politically progressive should give this topic weight and reverence, and realise that they’re writing on women’s lives and women’s pain.

I’m having a nice night. I’m a borderline teetoaller so it doesn’t take much alcohol to make me happy (in fact being drunk is such an exciting rare event that I have to talk about my drunken state constantly to whoever is around). About 11.30 my friend is heading home, so I walk with him. We stop and admire the shop that has left alone the “Clint Rickards: Rapist Scum” graffiti and the fake recruitment poster.

We go to the dairy that is open until midnight and buy some snacks. I buysome chocolate and water; he buys some strawberry and cream lollies and a red licorice twisty thing. I make him sit down and talk with me for a bit, because I don’t want to walk up the hill just yet. We sion the corner and yell at the police cars that go by (”Clint Rickards is a Rapist”, “Stop Police Rapists” and a rather ridiculous “Police Rapists Suck”).

Then I say goodbye and head up the hill. I’m thinking to myself about the blog posts I am going to write when I get home (mostly about why the existance of the police are the problem, not a few bad apples). From about a third of the way up the hill there is park on both sides of the road and that’s when I became particularly aware of my surroundings. I notice the man walking behind me; I notice the cars going past.

I am about half way up when a car stops about 40 metres in front of me. No-one gets out. There’s nothing there. The car just stops.

What I usually do in these situations (because fear is regular enough that you have a plan) is unlock my cell phone. But I don’t have a cellphone so I just hold my keys (interlaced between my fingers) and a half empty water bottle (weighing all of half a kilo).

I just keep on walking; I don’t look at them. I try to keep breathing and wait to see what happens. I just get past them when they start moving again. They follow me slowly for a few steps, and then drive off.

I’m relieved; all these two men and their car wanted to do was scare me. I’m OK now.

I walk home and start composing a new blog post, about what just happened. Because all I can do is write about it. All I can do is register the power that fear has over me.

This post is open to feminist and feminist friendly comments only.

Update That should read feminist commenters only, not just comments - this is what happens when a teetoller writes after drinking.

I didn’t agree with much that Jessica Valenti wrote in her argument about the gap between older feminists and younger feminists (something that I’ve never experienced myself; I’ve had nothing but support and genoristy from older feminists). I felt that she treated older feminists as a homogenous group, as if all older feminists should take responsibility for the few who behaved rudely towards younger women. It’s exactly the same kind of thinking that leads some older feminists to be dismissive of younger women. Yes it’s wrong if an older woman takes an inane ignorant comment as a symbol of ‘young people today’. But it’s just as wrong for Jessica to take the comments of a few older women as standing for a generation of activists.

That’s not what I want to write about. I’ll acknowledge that I’ve had a bad day, but what Jessica wrote at the end of her piece made me really angry:

But the public face of feminism is institutional—Ms. Magazine, Feminist Majority Foundation, NOW—they’re what the world thinks of when they think of feminism.

As someone from the world, I have to tell her she’s wrong. Maybe Americans think of Ms. Magazine, Feminist Majority Foundation and NOW when they think of feminism. Although I would hope that women have more specific experiences of feminism, they think of the battered women’s centre their friend went to, their union’s women structure, their college women’s facilities, the local welfare rights organisation, or the rape crisis line they called.

Outside your country? Most of us don’t even know what the Feminist Majority Foundation is, nor do we care. We actually have feminism out here too. Our organisations, our magazines, the way we organise, and the issues that are most important to us, they’re not exactly the same as it is in the US. We don’t think of US institutions when we think of feminism, we think of what’s happened locally, the battles we’ve fought and won, and the battles we’ve fought and lost.

After long deliberations the jury returned today acquitting Bob Schollum, Brad Shipton and Clint Rickards of all charges. Clint Rickards is now trying to return to his job as Deputy Comissioner of the New Zealand police. Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton are returning to their jail cells, as both were found guilty of a historic rape case in 2005 (a fact that no other jury has been allowed to know about).

A friend of mine wrote a song about this:

JUST ONE MORE THURSDAY IN BLACK

Well the jury retired with a word from the judge
Not to go and do anything rash
And the lawyers withdrew, replenished anew
With undisclosed payments of cash
It was on a Wednesday that the jury retired
And on Thursday came dutifly back
There was nothing so special they had to report
It was just one more Thursday in black

There was no expense spared to make sure it was fair
There was even a guest star Allblack¹
But at closing the law showed who it works for
It was one more Thursday in black

Well if you¹re a pig and sufficiently big
And there¹s several of you in a pack
You can do pretty much what you like to a woman
And know that she can¹t hit you back
Right now somewhere unknown ,there¹s a woman alone
In pain and in fear on the rack
while grinning police ready bottle and grease
for one more Thursday in black

There was no expense spared to make sure it was fair
There was even a guest star Allblack
But at closing the law showed who it works for
It was just one more Thursday in black

Don Franks

There are two things that I choose to hold on to, from the series of cop rape trials. The first is that this it not OK. The legal system does not deliver justice for women, but more than that - this should never have happened in the first place. Many people knew that these cops were abusive, and no-one did anything about it, and these are not the only police who have used their power to rape and abuse. We must hold onto our outrage, because it is out of that outrage that the hope for a something better can be built.

What gives me real hope is the knowledge that I’m not alone. That all over New Zealand, in places I wouldn’t necessarily expect, people are thinking what I’m thinking, and feeling what I’m feeling. If we can get just some of these people together, who knows what we could do.

I’m sure I’ll have more tomorrow, but all that’s left to say tonight is to pay heed to the dignity of the women who sought justice against Clint Rickards, Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum. And leave the last words to Louise Nicholas: “We did our best. We did our very best. The justice system has let us down again.”

Note for Comments This post is for feminist and feminist-friendly comments only. If you want to doubt the word of any of the complainants take it somewhere else. I’m not hosting that today.

1. Member of the New Zealand Rugby Team - pinnacle of New Zealand’s sporting achievement. Clint Rickards was able to call a friend of his who was an All Black to testify. I always imagined that his testimony would start ‘as an All Black, I know something about rape’ (back)

I’ve just read two very irritating articles in the guardian. Both purport to be about feminism and dieting - but both make Linda Hirschman’s version of feminism look like it belongs in ‘Notes from the First Year.’ Zoe Williams article is called You’re Vain and Stupid and the first sentance says: “Women who fixate on their weight should relinquish their right to be taken seriously.” I don’t even know where to start with this - when did women even win the right to be taken seriously? But the real reason Zoe Williams argument is not feminist is because it asks the question ‘why do women fixate about their weight’ and answers it ‘because they’re stupid’.

Feminism’s most basic tenet is women’s problems are structural and political, not individual. “Because women are stupid” is rarely a feminist answer to any question.

Even more annoying was India Knight’s reply to Zoe Williams (who are these people? I don’t know either - apparently they’re people that guardian readers would have heard of) titled It’s not anti-feminist to go on a diet (thanks to Big Fat Blog for the link). This is a misleading start, because India Knight didn’t just go on a diet, she wrote a diet book. At least part of her living now comes in telling other women how to lose weight. If this article is anything to go by she drums up business by making fat women feel worse about themselves (she asks “Why is it good to be pleased that you look like a pig?”)

What is so awful, so anti-feminist, about her article, is the narrative she tells about being fat:

You may occupy a great deal of physical space if you’re very fat, but in everyday life, it’s as though you weren’t there. Sales assistants stare blankly through you. Men pretend you don’t exist, or start calling you “mate”. You wonder whether your children are embarrassed to be seen with you in public (the answer to that one is yes, probably). You wish you could go for a bike ride with them, but you’re too self-conscious, because you look like a potato balanced on an ant. You can only buy clothes in specialist shops, and these clothes are as undesirable as you have started to feel. Your self-esteem - well, I was going to say “plummets”, but it’s hard to plummet when you’ve reached rock bottom.

She’s right - it sucks to be a fat woman in our society, it really fucking sucks. But every single example she gives isn’t directly about being fat, it’s about how people react to fat people. Her argument appears to be that men treat fat women like shit, so the solution is to stop being fat. That doesn’t resemble any kind of feminism I know.

She reaches a low point when she suggests weight loss as a solution for an abusive relationship:

just as I cheer for the woman whose husband puts her and her weight down every single day. One of these days, he’s going to have to stop. One of these days, she and her new-found confidence aren’t going to take it any more.

On first glance this is relatively trivial issue, which reminds me about everything that irritates me about the Guardian. But it’s actually about a much more fundamental issue, which is how we define feminism. This is what happens when we suggest individual solutions for collective problems. We all need to find ways to live as best we can with the problems that living in a misogynist world creates and I’d never criticise anyone else for feeling the need to lose weight or obsess about food. These sorts of survival mechanisms are neither feminist nor anti-feminist, they’re what you’ve got to do. It’s when your survival mechanisms make life harder for other women, for example if you denigrate fat women and reinforce society’s idea about the relationship between morality and food, then that’s anti-feminism. I think Emma Thompson summed up this dilema brilliantly:

As an artist, you can choose not to sell women down the river. When I decide, for instance, not to diet myself into a starved condition to play someone like Dora Carrington, then that’s a political act. And I was being lampooned by male journalists, saying: Who would want to sleep with her? She’s not that kind of shape. So I paid the price, but I would never betray other women in that way. I just wouldn’t do it and I’ve never done it. She pauses…. God, I’ve gone on every single diet under the sun, but I’ve never got slender in a very particular way for any role.

No being a feminist doesn’t give us magic powers to exit from a world that’s obsessed with our bodies. But it does mean, at a minimum, that we have a responsibility not to add to that pressure. For Emma Thompson that means she didn’t lose weight to play Carrington, for most of the rest of us it’s simpler, but possibly incredibly different, we have to stop talking about food and our bodies in any way that reinforces the hatred other women have for their bodies.

That certainly includes writing a diet book or saying that fat women look like pigs.

Imagine you’re a sixteen year-old girl. You’ve grown up in a small town where jobs aren’t getting any easier to find. Your boyfriend is a cop, which has its advantages. One night you’re at a friend’s house and have some drinks - you’d probably be able to get into bars, but alcohol is much cheaper from an off-licence. Some of your boyfriend’s cop friends show up, but they don’t object to underage drinking any more than he does.

Readers from New Zealand probably know where this is going.

25 years ago Bob Schollum, Brad Shipton and Clint Rickards dragged a 16 year old girl to a bedroom while she was struggling and screaming. They handcuffed her and indecently assaulted her.

What would you do? Where would you go? Who could help you?

Clint Rickards, Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton are standing trial for the crimes they committed agains this woman. They are rapists, who used the power their uniform gave them to abuse an unknown number of women.