the down under feminist carnival is a go-go

The latest installment of the Down Under Feminist Carnival is up at Wallaby and I’d like to congratulate Jo Tamar on an excellent round-up. (Not to mention once again hang my head in shame at my own failure in helping her out by contributing some posts.)

The next carnival is at The Professional Lap Cat and the theme is Invisible Sexism – the elephant in the room, which I’m sure is something all of my regulars will have some thoughts on. I urge everyone (including myself) to nominate some posts. You don’t have to be a blogger to add suggestions and it’s really easy with this carnival site. More information is available at Hoyden About Town.

“other” and the reasons for fear

I am an incurable cynic and as such I can’t shake the feeling that Australia will never change. Our society will always be unequal on racial, economic and a myriad of other grounds, we will always fear the “other”, we will always be entirely unwilling or incapable to hear any differing opinions.

But, interestingly enough, judging by the letters and comments that spew out of the cesspool-minds of the populace at the slightest provocation, the reasons for the fear seem to be changing. Not on all subjects, of course. There was a quite farcical thread on news.com.au earlier in the week about celebrities backing same sex relationship equality that came out with the same tired fears, non-arguments and unthinking prejudices. Whenever some misguided columnist trots out a “battle of the sexes” type meme the comments are so predictable you could dance to them.

Indeed, the responses to any immigration argument also seem to follow the same lines every time. It’s usually a selection of Muslim bashing, laments about the Australian way of life being under threat and some misguided notions about Sharia law topped off with the old refrain about learning “the language”, by which we assume they mean English. But hasn’t that changed in the last ten years? What about immigrants taking jobs that should go to good honest, hardworking “Aussie battlers”? How about the marked shift in which immigrants Australians fear, from those from Asian nations we all remember being decried in the Howard/Hansen era to the untrustworthy Muslims from the Middle East. What about the way in which they’re viewed? It’s gone from industrious people who will undercut wages and thus threaten workers to a shadowy burka-shaped threat of suicide bombings and complete social collapse. It’s as if people who want to hate immigrants have decided a physical threat of destruction lurking around every corner will gain more traction than an economic threat. Like they’re running an awareness campaign. Eventually they’ll put out a ribbon for sale at post offices and supermarket checkouts.

Am I wrong? Is this just a new way of expressing the same fear that the White Australia policy was based on (which, of course, we can assume was nothing to do with race because there is no racism in Australia, that’s just for other countries)? Or has there truly been a shift in the way Australians express their xenophobia?

The thing is, I really believe in multiculturalism. It’s true that it is problematic in so many ways.  It’s true that prejudices and fears and oppressive forces against people viewed as “outsiders” will take generations to overcome, if they can be overcome at all. And more than anything, it’s true that as all these immigrants jostle for position, Aboriginal Australians continue to be erased and silenced. But I can think of nothing worse than living in a world in which everyone is identical. I don’t want to live in a place where there are no different languages, cultures or ways of thinking. To those who demand people learn “the language”, I constantly want to ask what efforts they’ve made to learn another language. Perhaps an Aboriginal one? Imagine how the world would be different if everyone learnt the language of the person at their local shop. Saying goodmorning or goodafternoon in the native tongue of someone you don’t know, but who you see every day. That, my friends, is community. As a continent of immigrants and a nation of constantly competing prejudices we cannot presume to value what we consider to be “our group”, whatever that may be, over any other. That is multiculturalism. Respecting that everyone is different and that society is better for those differences.

The fact is Australia is still in the very early days of being a multicultural nation. When my grandparents were my age, it wasn’t even heard of. Surely we can hope that in a generation’s time a lot of these old fears will be a thing of the past? But what worries me is that if in just ten years the focus of that hatred has shifted to become more seductive to an unthinking dominant group, will Australian xenophobia be a shape-shifting ugliness we will forever be glimpsing out of the corner of our eye?

Update: I thought I’d add some thoughts based on a conversation I had with eleusis7 on Twitter. He said that as an immigrant he’s wary of people who presume to talk to him in a language he might understand. And that was an angle that I half considered when Meggy commented about traveling and speaking the local language but couldn’t quite put into words. There’s a specific kind of arrogance in the presumption that you can guess a person’s culture based on the way they look. As eleusis7 said “it’s a special kind of racism, ie you look different, maybe you’re not one of us, maybe I’ll try speaking in a different language that you might understand”. That is such a great point I couldn’t not add it. For the record I realise how arrogant that would be and it’s a matter of privilege that I didn’t consider that in my post. I was working with a utopia notion of a world in which people talk to each other in their neighbourhood, know each other and are able to converse in an appropriate language. There’s no reason that English speakers should only speak English, is the point I was trying to make. As eleusis7 said, it’s not so much the requirement to learn English that is the problem, it’s the lack of respect with which that message is delivered.

It’s an interesting conversation about language, how society respects languages that aren’t dominant and the fact that even English is the language of the coloniser and hence far from politically laden. I also wonder how to reconcile the preservation of different cultures and languages with the fact that without a working language of English immigrants will be politically, economically and socially isolated. As the dominant group, I see that it’s the responsibility of Australians who speak English as a first language to make the accommodations for that. But I’m interested in your thoughts.

dude loses job, woman blamed

It’s never a dude’s fault if he loses his job. This is one of the rules of Dude Logic.  But if a dude loses his job and is replaced by a woman, well, clearly it’s just sexism, polical correctness and the apocalypse is nigh.

Lucky then that news.com.au has maintained its commitment to exposing this clandestine trend of underpaying white boys in visible jobs, where the option of hiring a woman at the expense of a boy will always be the first preference, when women far outweigh boys at business lunches and around boardrooms. This demonstrable sexism needs to be exposed.

Like, for instance, this poor bloke. Judging by his quotes, he’s not used to things not going his way. Poor bugger. And, taking into consideration hundreds of comments under the story ranging from “start your own show dude” to “sick of this PC shit”, the very angels in heaven are weeping over the constant inequities boys in television are faced with every day, just doing their jobs.

But the comment that really got me, and that really shows how entrenched the misandry in the world has become, is this one:

Err…sex sells……what’s new?

Posted by: Cly of Brisbane 2:41pm today
Comment 118 of 157

This is blatant sexism. Doesn’t Cly of Brisbane know that boys can be sexy too? Why are boys always considered to be nothing but logical, reliable and non-emotive? You know what, Cly of Brisbane? Boys can sometimes look nice too and want to be made to feel sexy. Boys walk down the street sometimes and just pray a woman would holler out of a passing car. It’s about valuing the entire person, not just how well they do their job.

what do these women have in common?

Sarah Murdoch

What do Sarah Murdoch, Mia Freedman and Kate Ellis have in common? Well the model, the writer and the MP are all Australian, they’re all white, they’re all thin, they’re all relatively wealthy, they’re all able bodied. Um, two of them have both been involved in fashion in some way (Murdoch is a model and Freedman is former editor of Cosmopolitan magazine). What else? Oh that’s right, they’re all remarkably good looking.

Australian Youth Minister Kate Ellis

I mean, this here is a pollie worth tearing your eyes away from Tony Jones on Q and A. (What? Oh, as if you haven’t thought Jones was a little bit foxy once or twice.)

So, there is a fair amount of irony surrounding the idea that the three band together to about talk rules encouraging more diverse body shapes in the media. But that’s exactly what they’re doing. According to the SMH:

“The Government will consider recommendations calling for standardised sizing on women’s clothing sold in Australia and a voluntary code of conduct calling on the media to show more diverse body shapes.”

Don’t get me wrong, this is a good idea. It is a great idea. I support it wholeheartedly. However, I wonder how much value there is in gathering together all the celebrity spokespeople in the world to raise awareness about body image when they themselves, quite physically, perpetuate the myth that only skinny, rich white women are going to be heard? Of course this is no fault of their own and I’m glad they are being heard on this issue, but it seems to make visible the flaw in the logic of “celebrity spokespeople”. The idea is that celebrities will use their fame to draw attention to a more marginalised issue. Which will raise awareness and hopefully generate funding or policy change if that’s what’s needed.

For example, Nicole Kidman recently spoke at the US Congress about violence against women in her capacity as a UN ambassador. When I read that article last week I thought, what if people doubt her authority to speak before US Congress? What if people mistrust her because they don’t know who her sources are? What if the people hearing her speak just plain don’t like her? Doesn’t that diminish what is a vitally important message?

I don’t know what experience Nicole Kidman has with violence against women (although I suspect it’s a fair bit because she is one). Sure, Sarah Murdoch probably has had misgivings about her own body. Who hasn’t. But allowing the thin, white, wealthy woman who makes a living from her body meeting social standards might not be the best way to raise awareness on diverse body shapes.

I don’t want to bang on about that because much cleverer people than I have already done so. But more generally speaking, the problem with using celebrities to raise awareness for a cause is that it does what activists aim not to do. It centres the privileged voice in a conversation that should be about the oppressed people in question. Even when when the kyriarchy nods its head towards equality it reinforces its own oppressions. This story about Murdoch having her image on the front of a magazine not altered has to add in a whole bunch of shame and fear, saying that Murdoch has done “what few women would dare”. But luckily her husband supports her in her mission to not surgically or chemically alter her already beautiful face. Well, whoop de doo. Even the Nicole Kidman story ran with a headline blaming Hollywood, and hence Kidman herself, for violence against women and girls. There’s the ultimate victim blaming right there. Kidman goes to speak on behalf of other women and girls who are victims of violence and is told that it isn’t men that do the hitting and raping. It’s women like Kidman. Makes you sick, doesn’t it?

they probably sleep on a great pile of money

I’m pretty sure developing the Lynx (or Axe as it’s known outside Australia) commercials would be the easiest job in the world. One recent one that springs to mind is the one where the dude is transformed into chocolate. It’s based on a few central premises: 1. all women are hetero, 2. all women are “hot” (or in other words adhere to all the beauty standards of the kyriarchy), 3. all women are filled with a blind craving for chocolate, 4. something something, 5. profit.  It’s the same basic rule book used in beer advertisements, just without the reference to sport.

[Unrelated aside: anyone notice how the new bird commercial for Pure Blonde completely fails to objectify women in any way? It also erases them entirely, but in a way I'm more comfortable with that. Maybe they've all moved to another planet, where peace and harmony reign, there are no traffic jams and all women are safe? Moving on.]

Well, Lynx has outdone itself this time with an ad that removes women’s ability control not only desires but bodies altogether. The new “Axe detailer” commercial literally straps the same het, “hot” and presumably unwilling women into machinery and forces them to wash the manly, manly dude with the foul smelling wash they sell by the bucket load. Apparently it’s selling an exfoliator, not the women themselves, but who can tell. Witness:

Creepy, yeah? Notice how this commercial removes desire completely from the equation. Women aren’t bewitched by this exotic aroma and forced to do degrading dances or run after a chocolate man (and really, there is no chocolate that good). They aren’t fun but ultimately disposable playthings. There are just machinery. They have no ability to do anything other than what the dude requires. Not drive, work, have friends, go for coffee or talk about anything. One assumes that women simply cease to exist when men aren’t present needing their butts washed (one at a time of course, otherwise it’d be gay). Actually, I think I’ve met men who wish that that was true.

While the chocolate commercial and the bom chicka wow wow commercial were bad enough, something sickens me even more about the detailer commercial. It’s that little thing that I like to call being considered “human”.

just like my Ken and Barbie doll, you dress up and play the game

I love the Smoo. Of course, all relationships have good times and bad times. But Smoo is my best friend and really it’s that simple. We each do things that annoy the hell out of the other, naturally (ahem, one of us more than others – that would be me) but ultimately there’s no-one else we’d rather be with when we’ve had a bad day, or a good day for that matter. (Also, I reckon he’s pretty cute.)

However, because we’ve been together for getting on towards seven years we’re starting to get massive hints that somehow our relationship isn’t good enough. Whenever the word marriage enters the conversation, in fact. Which doesn’t seem entirely fair, we’re the ones in our relationship and we’ll tell you whether it suits us or not thank you very much. Or maybe we won’t. Because maybe it’s none of your fucking business.

This isn’t to say I hate marriage, or I think it’s defunct, or I’m going all Germaine Greer on you and saying smart women shouldn’t get married. All relationships are different and they all go through tough times and not so tough times. It’s the expectation that irks the hell out of me. Because Smoo and I are happy. Except when we’re not. And really, what the hell has it got to do with anyone else? If feminism has got us as far as they say it has, why does anyone dare to give me or Smoo a pointed look or a snide comment with regard to our relationship status?

I don’t have an answer to that question I’m certain on but I’ll tell you what I suspect. The world has an idea of what a stable, long term, committed relationship looks like. And apparently a relationship in which you own a house together, look after each other when you’re sick, respect each other even when you’re annoyed with them and love each other is not it. For some reason the world has to involve itself in a relationship, which often should just involve the two people in it. I find it insulting that the terms of our relationship that Smoo and I understand and agree on isn’t considered enough to other people. Even worse than that petty insult, is that those people then force people in same sex relationships to be Other. There is a rule that says This Is What A Relationship Looks Like and then there is a secondary rule that says to certain people You Can’t Have That (but we’ll pretend you do in every way apart from the ways that matter). Why? Honestly, tell me, why? Why do humans need to divide & conquer?

We’ve considered just doing the deed at a registry office without telling anyone. Then if we get those pointed stares we’d be able to say “yeah we did it, let’s move on”. What’s a wedding after all? But at the same time I’d still want to have a big party that says I Love This Person Thiiiiis Much. I’d love that! If that was all a wedding was hell, I’d suggest we have one every week. But it isn’t, is it? There’s a bunch of social understandings that underpin what a wedding is, that underpin what marriage is and that define who’s allowed to have one. Also, it’s expected it looks a certain way, will be done in a certain way and will cost thousands of dollars. I see my aversion to marriage as akin to my aversion to shopping at Coles or Woolworths. It’s a commercial arrangement and it feeds into a system of expectations that I fundamentally don’t agree with. This doesn’t mean that I disagree with being with Smoo forever, however long that may be, any more than I disagree with food. I just don’t want the world to make my decisions for me or for anyone else.

lazy blogger is lazy and that’s a good thing

I’ve sat down to write something or other a couple of times over the last week but all I managed to squeeze out was a quick hit on climate change that just linked you somewhere else. I know, I’m lazy. But you know what, I’m reminding myself that on the scale of things I should care about the number of insightful and interesting posts I write here probably should rank somewhere down with whether I’d really ride a scooter to work. That is, it’s a nice distraction but is largely irrelevant.

I’m also having a serious amount of trouble disconnecting these days. Not just from the blogosphere, which is quite sheltered in my little corner, but from the bad in the world. It goes without saying now that any comment thread on news.com.au or any other mainstream news site should not be read, ever, on any occasion. People are hateful, hurtful, they can’t spell and they just don’t give a shit. And they’re not just random pseudonyms on the web either, they’re everywhere, they’re sending me letters, they’re spamming news feeds, they’re crawling all over facebook. Instead of putting fluoride in the water they should be putting some chemical that forces people to think about the nonsense they’re about to spew before they say it. 

 Basically, I’m hearing hateful things so often that I’ve started interpreting everything in terms of what the hateful people will respond with. People don’t reconsider their bigotry, their internalised racism or their unthinking generalisations, they just reconsider who they can share it with. It doesn’t stop them believing Aboriginal Australians are all violent criminals, they still make rape jokes and they still honestly believe they’re “not a racist, but”. They just avoid getting caught holding those views. I honestly have no idea what to do or say about that. Suggestions are welcome.

Also, this inability to engage happened to coincide with me making a commitment to a weekly column in the meat-world. Awkward.

we need to think of this as war

According to German scientists, climate change is worse, much worse, than anyone anywhere had imagined.

Crikey has been running a series of stories on what they’re describing as the “oh, shit” moment that the world needs to have to make the huge sacrifices, like giving up meat, not driving, not breeding, using renewable energy, growing your own food, that the future will demand of us.  Please consider it required reading.

The thing is, the future is not good. And it’s not that far away, we’re talking within my lifetime. We need change the way we live now. Realistically we should have made those changes many years ago. But no politician will tell us this. It is not palatable for an electorate. We need to think way longer than an election cycle. As the scientist said, we need to mobilise as if for war.

And if you’re not thinking “oh shit” yet, read this from my Crikey subscriber email (the one women don’t subscribe to):

According to [German scientist Hans Joachim] Schellnhuber, the United States must cut emissions by 100% by 2020. Germany, Italy and other industrial nations must do the same by 2025 to 2030. China only has until 2035. The world as a whole must be carbon-free by 2050. Otherwise … a spiral of chaotic change.In Australia it is still popular to question the very notion of climate change in the popular press; common to put the line that the “science is inconclusive”. Economic consequences still rate in the political calculus above, say, the reduction of the lower third of this continent to a uninhabitable dustbowl within a generation.

It’s pretty fair to say that as a nation we are yet to have our “oh sh-t!” moment.

When that moment comes we may finally accept the possibility that resolving climate change may involve more than a half baked gesture toward polluter appeasement and market forces (that’s the Rudd CPRS). It will imply economic pain. There will be reductions in the standard of living; fundamental changes to the way we live. It is something we will have to approach as a people united, terrified and appalled … but ready to act. Think Curtin’s wartime Australia. Think the spirit of the London blitz … a shared acknowledgement of the need for sacrifice. We aren’t there yet, and no one in our political class has the courage to even murmur the awful truth. Oh sh-t.

Yeah.

you have no right

Smoo and I went to the pub for lunch today, which was nice.  Quite randomly while we were sitting there a whole busload of pirates walked in. They’d obviously been on a winery tour or pub cruise and were all fairly merry (read gross and obnoxious). But they got their drinks quickly and found  a seat and didn’t bother anyone.

Watching all them and thinking about the way people interpret “pirate”, I was surprised by what the women had chosen. I would think if there had to be a theme pirate would be fairly okay because you could wear pants, boots, shirt, maybe throw on a bandanna or hat and call it a day. What I mean is it’d be easy and not require too much embarrassment should you need to stop to use the ATM on the way to the party. But some of the women had hired tiny little dresses, which they put with fishnets suspender stockings and the whole ensemble didn’t seem particularly practical for swashbuckling.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against tiny dresses per se, (and fishnets I’m totally cool with) I’d just wouldn’t interpret it as pirate. But, whatever, they’re young and having a good time (I sound a million years old saying that).

But as the women walked around the pub chatting and whatnot the gaze of almost every person there shifted towards them. The drunken dudes who were having a few too many after a morning’s work were visibly salivating. I think this is one of the reasons I get around in jeans and sneakers these days (also, I’m lazy). There is a certain kind of attention that I just can’t handle. On the odd occasion I’m going somewhere nice and I don’t mind wearing something revealing I’d probably go for cleavage rather than leg. There’s something about having a person look in the general direction of your face while they’re perving that is more . . . honest. A tiny skirt gives people the opportunity to gawk when you’re not aware of it. It feels sneaky and predatory. But this is just my personal feeling. I’m not the kind of feminist who tells women what they should wear.

As the two women left, they walked past the table of post work drinks dudes and a gust of wind blew up one of their dresses (or both, I wasn’t watching). The table of tradies roared with approval to their backs as they grabbed, and pulled and tried to get control. It was awful. The smug jeers, the leering, the notion that the women having a “wardrobe malfunction” were somehow a performance for their benefit. Ick.

Later today I read Melissa McEwan’s brilliant post on rape culture. You should all go read it, immediately. Go on. I’ll wait here until you get back.

Rape culture is tasking victims with the burden of rape prevention. Rape culture is encouraging women to take self-defense as though that is the only solution required to preventing rape. Rape culture is admonishing women to “learn common sense” or “be more responsible” or “be aware of barroom risks” or “avoid these places” or “don’t dress this way,” and failing to admonish men to not rape.

One of the saddest things about society is the way blame is apportioned. We saw it with the Red Faces skit last week, that wasn’t our fault, the performer’s fault or the show’s fault – it was all to do with Americans, Harry Connick Jnr, people being “too sensitive” and the rest of the bingo card. When women are assaulted they are told it was their fault for wearing that short skirt, for walking down the wrong street or alone too late at night. You’d think it would be basic human decency, but it’s only on feminist blogs that I read any reference towards men helping out by not assaulting women. Half the world is happy to forgive a film maker for drugging and raping a 13 year old girl but Kanye West interrupting a white woman at an awards night garners outrage.

Take that willingness to forgive the offenders one step further: women internalise it. We understand that wearing certain things, not walking down that street late at night, parking in a well lit area and all the rest is what we must do to keep ourselves safe. While rape culture doesn’t only hurt women, women are the ones who are blamed. Even as the two women were hollered at at the pub (while I imagined telling the men off like the billion year old lady I am), some portion men’s brains understood that they were allowed to treat complete strangers that poorly because of a) their gender and b) their dress. Probably many people in the pub figured it was an embarrassing thing that wouldn’t have happened if they’d dressed differently. The women just got out of there as quickly as they could.

The notion of bodily safety and which bodies are public property gets even more sickening as you look at all the intersections of race, disability, sexuality and gender. In other words all the multitudes of characteristics that make up three billion women around the world to varying degrees. Writing this post I can only know how I feel from the privileged position of being a white, cis, TAB woman, and there is a certain unearned safety in that. I can’t fully understand how the dangers of rape culture are felt by women with disabilities, trans women, women of colour or indeed anyone who is not me. There is a kyriarchy approved notion of which characteristics qualify as fully human, all other bodies are “fair game” to the people who wield the power. Or some women are disappeared all together and the crimes against them are forgotten about or hidden.

Here’s the thing, you don’t have a right to look. You don’t have a right to touch. You don’t have a right to so much as speak to a complete stranger. You *do* have a responsibility to think about your actions. You may just be planning to ask that woman who’s waiting for a lift on the street late at night for directions to the nearest service station, but if you’re two dudes in a car by the time you’ve approached her she’s quite possibly terrified. Who are you to think you have the right to unthinkingly, unwittingly scare someone? Who are you to think you can yell out of a car window or sound your car horn at a woman walking down to get lunch? She is not there for your viewing pleasure. She is a person. Treat her like a person. Or you’ll have to answer to me. And trust me I can be fracking scary.

hey hey, i have bingo!

So many things were wrong with the Hey Hey We’re Not Racist debacle that the sharply brilliant and softly spoken PharaohKatt has built us a bingo card.

[I already called bingo on a random FacePage dude (he probably thinks he won).]

Have at it readers!