She who stumbles

I made my blog private for a short while because I have a paper to write, and the blog world is just too distracting for me to avoid. The paper remains unwritten, but I decided to make SWS public again because today has been an eventful day and I feel the need to say something about it.

1. Today hundreds of Melbourne taxi drivers blocked off streets in the centre of the Melbourne CBD

I walked into work today to see the TV covered in images of shirtless, shouting brown men in the middle of Melbourne and wondered what was going on.

Notice how I highlighted race first? Apparently it never occurred to the news media, who framed it as an issue about safety, about cabbies wanting safety screens. According to the mainstream media, this is not about the fact that Jalvinder Singh, an international student from India, was stabbed while doing one of the few jobs available to international students and that mounted police were called in. If it’s about anything else, it’s about the mental health of his attacker.

Which brings me to my final point: are student organisations going to take this up? I have a feeling they won’t, despite being in one, and despite the fact that May Day is tomorrow.

2. There has been a massive bust at the Block in Redfern hot on the heels of the unveiling of a new plan to upgrade the train station and build new high-density apartments in the area

I don’t have time now to go into the entire history of Redfern, the 2004 uprising, or the State government’s triple-pronged attack in the form of: ghettoisation, gentrification, and police brutality (perhaps adding co-optation of the local Aboriginal Housing Corporation into the mix). Suffice it to say, this is convenient timing for a drug raid, when anyone who walks through the station knows that police can see everything that’s going on from the top of their tower down the road.

This is not something the newspapers will tell you, though they’ll happily print the two stories side-by-side.

3. The Rudd government plans to remove unequal laws regarding de-facto relationships, so same-sex couples can enjoy the same rights as heterosexual couples

I have to confess to being somewhat blind to the legal aspect of this, and to the implications for queer politics (who’s advocating for what model of rights for same-sex unions, who’s likely to feel how), but I have to say it looks pretty ambitious. De-facto relationships have many of the privileges of marriages… which is why I’m wondering what the Opposition’s response will be (not that it’s terribly relevant, given that the ALP has a majority in both houses of parliament).

4. [Something I should've blogged about before, but:] A refugee family from Sierra Leone is being kept apart because of the prohibitive costs of DNA testing, which the Department of Immigration demands before they can go ahead and reunite the family

Regarding the families of people of colour, I was thinking about something Brownfemipower was talking around with regard to feminism, women of colour, and families. It seems like Bfp’s focus on this issue was informed by critical engagement with racial issues as a parent and a feminist (notice that I say was). As a young, unmarried, childless woman, that stands out to me. It’s something I think needs to be engaged with more, at least in the feminism I’m exposed to and practice with my peers.

I want to explore this more: violence against families of colour and other social bonds between people of colour, not because I think those bonds are inherently virtuous (hell, they can be oppressive and downright abusive at times), but because of how white supremacy constitutes itself through enacting these forms of violence. How are white families constituted when they’re not subjected to the same kind of institutional violence? At the risk of ending up with a heavily functionalist analysis, what is white supremacy doing, when it’s attacking familial structures this way?

Secondly, as it pertains to women of colour, as women, what are these politics — of fertility, of sexuality, of bodies — producing in the consciousness of women of colour?

It might seem like I’m asking these questions because nobody is answering them, but I know that isn’t the case. I think I’m highlighting my own ignorance more than anything. Or perhaps the way that important voices are silenced, so we go over the same problems again and again.

I’m being brief and rather more simple and direct than I normally am, because I don’t have much time. I did want to mention these things, though.

So I was all excited about being able to find new blogs/posts through the new WordPress feature that adds related posts to the end of each post.

Then I found out that it was linking my blog with a blog by a white guy who claims to be a “racial realist” and writes a bunch of racist shit. Given that The Angry Black Woman has just gotten over a white supremacist attack, I’m pretty wary of any link between SWS and anything white supremacist.

So I left a comment on the announcement post, and came back to my dashboard to find a troll comment. Note the obviously fake email address and banal sexism.

CaptainReality
fake@ibm.com | 121.45.94.116

Feminists are irrelevant losers. Their ideas die with them, because they’re invariably childless. They’re all so miserable and dour.

Anyhow, I’m off to make sure my daughter has dollies to hug and toy prams to push around so that she doesn’t become a miserable spinster like most of you lot.

So women of colour are, yet again, forced away from using a powerful networking tool because of actual or potential attacks. Hm.

Anyway, I’d suggest that most of you disable the feature. You can do so by going to the Design tab in your dashboard, clicking on Extras, and then checking the box that lets you disable the possibly related posts feature. I’ve also posted about it in the announcement thread (currently waiting for my comment to come out of moderation) and in the forums (if any shit starts there, I will start throwing knives), so maybe WP will change the feature altogether.

I’m going to make a comment policy too now, cos I now feel I need to specify that if you’re arsehole enough to use a fake email address your words must not be worth much in the way of dialogue, so you’ll be treated as a troll and blacklisted. And because this blog seems to be getting heaps more traffic lately, just off the whole feminist blogsplosion.

Edited to add: The comments policy is here. It’s not ideal, but it’s something. It’s also very late for me and I want to go to bed.
You might also notice a new Creative Commons License on my sidebar over there. Don’t be a jerk in comments and don’t steal my shit. That is basically it.

Edit #2: I’ve disabled the ‘Possibly related posts’ feature, but it doesn’t seem to be working. My blog is still showing up on the links at other sites.

A number of things in the news have been upsetting me this week for their sexist, oppressive nature and the potential consequences for women generally, and women of colour in particular. I’m going to write about the ones which got the least attention from the blogosphere first.

1. A rape charge against rugby player Anthony Laffranchi has been dropped because there was “no direct evidence of lack of consent”

Needless to say, this is fucking appalling. A woman who was so drunk that police “estimated her blood alcohol content at the time she arrived at the apartment at between 0.145 and 0.168 - a level at which most social drinkers would be “in a stupor and may be unconscious”" can not be said to be in a fit state to give “consent” to sex*, and if she says so after the fact then she should be believed. I’d say that her choice to go ahead with charging and prosecuting the assaulter speaks to a sense of believing this, but of course her voice is completely silenced in all the reporting about the case.

The disturbing thing about the magistrate’s decision is that it takes the capacity to withhold or withdraw consent completely out of the hands of the woman. Unless there’s “evidence” that she did not consent, it’s assumed that she did, or at least the outcome is the same as if she did. And because she got drunk, her testimony is positioned as inherently unreliable, so that the actual act that’s being punished is getting drunk, rather than rape. Hear that women? “If you’re gonna get raped, don’t get drunk first. Rape is your own fault, and you invite it if you get drunk. Don’t expect anyone to care if you’re drunk and raped. P.S. Men: you can rape all the drunk women you like!”

I’m also really sick of female judges and magistrates who punish other women who are raped. Again, proof that professional feminism/liberal feminism does not work.

I’d also say that it’s a clear case of why a “Yes Means Yes” approach to consent doesn’t work either. When the power to give consent, to withhold consent, and to withdraw consent once it’s given, is out of the hands of women, then exploring the hows and whys of women’s choices to consent to sex is inherently limited. Instead, perhaps what should be explored is how to convince the law (especially white female judges) that “no means no,” since it seems to have a really hard time with that concept. Or even how to dismantle rape culture altogether, since this entire disempowering framing of consent seems to be a key element of it.

* This is not to say that all women who get drunk and have sex are actually raped. I want to challenge the notion that women who combine alcohol and sexual activity shouldn’t be believed when they say they’ve been raped. Because the notion of an unreliable drunken woman is such blatantly slut-shaming one that it endangers the capacity of women to enjoy sex, of the drunken variety or otherwise.

2. Noellee Mowatt, a 19-year-old immigrant woman from Jamaica, was jailed in Canada because she refused to testify against her partner, who allegedly abused her

Credit for this story goes to Aaminah Hernández, Professor Black Woman and Ilyka Damen.

Earlier this month it was revealed that Noellee Mowatt was jailed under a law generally reserved for gang members who don’t testify against collaborators because she refused to testify against her boyfriend, who she alleged was abusing her. “Mowatt told the court she made the abuse statement after Toronto police Det.-Const. Mandy Morris threatened to “lock her up” for public mischief if she didn’t corroborate the 911 call.”

She says:

“I only made a mistake by calling the cops,”

“This is what I get. … I’m never calling the police again – even if I’m dying, I’m not going to call them.”

She has since testified that she made up all reports of abuse, and that the bruises and abrasions she had were self-inflicted. She said that she made up the allegations to punish her boyfriend, who kicked her out of their apartment after an argument.

Mowatt seems to have no source of support in Canada other than her boyfriend. Her mother and 2-year-old daughter are in Jamaica, and her father, who she moved to Canada to live with, died last year. She was living in shelters and a boarding house in the months before she was arrested.

And it turns out that Christopher Harbin, her boyfriend, was already in breach of the conditions of his probation for a previous domestic violence charge.

Now, the Toronto Children’s Aid Society is planning to take custody of her child because of “her inability to be able to offer proper care to the child when the child is born, and one of the factors is the domestic violence situation surrounding her circumstances”. Yet neither Ms. Mowatt nor her lawyer heard anything about this.

I’m completely shocked and appalled by the way the entire policing and legal system have handled this case, and the dehumanising media reporting about it. Each self-righteous attempt to “help” seems to have been designed to coerce Noellee Mowatt into behaving in an appropriately “victimised” way. Which is to say: having no will of her own, no sense of her own prospects for survival and presenting no challenge to the restrictive attempts to aid her. There’s also a complete lack of any reporting on her circumstances since emigrating from Jamaica, or how her race and nationality shaped her choices about work, family, or her safety and that of her child. She may have made up the testimony, and she may be clumsy, but the erasure of her agency seems to be the worst aspect of the entire scenario.

3. The implicit racism of singling out and homogenising the voices of people of colour in a protest situation

BlackAmazon has talked about this repeatedly:

TO mention your name once and magically turn you into women of color while expressing sympathy for people who flat out made you cry. To turn one SINGULAR you into this monolithic beast as if the people who agreed with you couldn’t possibly be diverse interested in their own realities but some side that is being ‘counterproductive” and not ACTUALLY wounded?

The phenomenon whereby the blackness of a person who is vocal and vehement in their protest at something is singled out as “colouring” that action as racial, and is used a sort of code to delegitimise the concerns raised by the protest action, is something I’ve noticed in the past with regard to social movements.

For instance, in an action taken in October last year to oppose the nexus of mining interests and dispossession of Aboriginal people by the Northern Territory intervention, the protest was branded as “violent” (because an old white man was scratched by a placard) and one of the few Aboriginal people who was there was depicted as “the most vocal of the protesters”.

Now, having been at the action myself, and helping to organise it, I know that it ended up having very little to do with the Northern Territory intervention at all. It was actually meant to be a protest in solidarity with women in the Territory who were protesting the intervention. Environmental activists who were involved with organising suggested protesting the Australian Nuclear Association conference, and invited speakers who hardly said anything about the intervention. The linking of “violence” to Aboriginality (when in fact many older white men were shouting in the faces of younger women) in this case, without any reference to the actual politics of Aboriginal resistance to the nuclear industry (which has a long history in Australia), is blatantly racist.

But white activists never do anything about it. Often they do the reverse, claiming legitimacy with other activists because of the involvement of people of colour.

It plays into a protest dynamic whereby many people of colour at protest are put in unsafe situations because of the actions taken by white protesters. For instance, a Persian friend of mine was called a “terrorist” for starting a chant in a heavily-policed protest situation, when it’s widely known that ASIO have been monitoring her. This is a rather extreme example, but it highlights something I want to bring up, which is the privilege inherent in some kinds of action being taken by white protesters. While we’re on the subject of people of colour distrusting police, it really needs to be said that there’s an uneven distribution of risks across racial lines in a protest situation. White activists deciding that certain types of action are appropriate and not taking into account how they affect people of colour differentially is a huge problem which I think needs to be addressed.
I really wish I could link to the great discussions of this issue at Brownfemipower’s blog, but of course it’s been shut down.

Delegitimising a protest through racialising and homogenising its interlocutors is something that Hugo Schwyzer, a self-proclaimed “pro-feminist man” has done repeatedly:
“Certain radical women of color bloggers (RWOC) are accusing…”
“…my critics in the “feminist/womanists of color” blogosphere…”
“Many of the prominent “women of color” bloggers in the feminist blogosphere clearly don’t read my blog regularly.”
This is while many white feminists were raising the same issues.

He’s by no means unique in this respect, and I bring his posts up as examples illustrating a more general point rather than to represent him as The Bastion of Race-baiting in the “feminist” blogosphere. I have no desire whatsoever to start any kind of argument with him about this (and he’ll probably ignore this anyway, since he’s never ever answered me before). Certainly there are white women who make the same mistake, invoking “women of colour” as a homogeneous batch in an affirming way, which tends to play into a logic of “best ally in the room” by oversimplifying race issues.

Ultimately, I’m writing about this as a consciousness-raising exercise. I would like to see more white “allies” discussing this, and perhaps keeping it in their awareness when they organise, write, and interact around issues of race, with an view to avoiding, overcoming or dealing with it.

4. A bunch of geeks get together at a convention, and initiate what they call an “Open Source Boob Project” (OSBP), in which women are offered badges that designate whether they would welcome having their breasts groped or not

There have been many, many analyses of this already, so I won’t offer any more. There are some good round-ups of the posts about the subject, including one at Hoyden About Town, and one by a woman who participated in the original situation. I haven’t had time to read through all the posts and comments, but I wanted to add my own take on it. I have to say that my opinion of it was heavily influenced by this post by Springheel Jack (through skywardprodigal), which was pretty much the first I heard of it. I also want to point out the unspoken whiteness of both the original ‘project’ and a lot of the feminist and feminist-inspired criticism of it, which Delux Vivens has outlined.

Stuff like the OSBP is why I absolutely hate “geek culture”.

What I want to talk about, instead, is a personal experience of a party where there was a similar level of sexual liberality, initiated by a group of men and one or two women. It was a costume party where skinny white women played on sexual stereotypes to get men’s attention, which eventually ended in one woman offering to strip in exchange for a lift, while a group of men looked on. This was while I was ignored in a corner by those men, who I’d known longer than this white woman, and assumed I was friends with them. Funnily enough, it was at this party that I declared “patriarchy ruins everything” and was met with jokes about how it’s great cos it benefits men.

Now, I don’t hold it against any woman who strips in exchange for anything. I felt kind of uncomfortable with passing judgement on this behaviour because I felt I might be slut-shaming. I realised, though, that my problem wasn’t with anyone’s behaviour in particular, but the uncomfortable dynamics whereby “winners” and “losers” are created in a sexualised economy. I did feel that as soon as sex became a currency by which women got attention from men, I was on the “losing” team because I didn’t want to play.

As a woman of colour who was told repeatedly when I was young that brown is unalterably ugly and undesirable, I have a bit of a complex about this. There are two extreme sets of stereotypes that woc can fall into: the asexual hard worker, and the oversexed ‘whore’. I think they play off each other, because they’re predicated on erasing a woman of colour’s capacity to negotiate both meaningful work and sex. A lot of the suspicion around the work of woc revolves around a suspicion of the sexuality of woc. The agency of woc is never recognised outside its sexual dimension, rendering the sexuality of woc one-dimensional, and erasing the reflective, reasoned decision-making capacities that go into work.
I’ve felt pressured to perform either, or both, stereotypes in order to get recognition, depending on the situation. The alternative would be to disappear altogether. “Geek culture” has its own roles for woc to play, often as the ‘whore’, since it is by definition a leisure/hobby culture. Often, the sexism of this culture lies in reifying women’s sexuality which is especially harsh on woc. The result has been that I have at times felt that my sexuality is out of my own control.

Clearly, valorising women when their sexuality falls into a set of predetermined outcomes has its own inequality built into it, since it reduces socialising into a two-dimensional space.

I think it relates to capitalism, and the creation of value. (I’m getting all Marxist on your arses because I’m studying it right now.) Without going into elaborate detail, I think the Marxist notion of labour markets involving an unequal exchange is really important here, as well as the notion of a homogenisation of values across a commodity-producing sector. Capitalism rewards some workers over others, for producing things which are more conducive to its interests, in similar ways that patriarchy rewards women who comply with its interests (and of course, these are interconnected systems). It tends to mean a reproduction of those modes of activity over any given social space. I.e. women’s sexuality is homogenised into a set of repetitive forms — stereotypes.

But it doesn’t mean that women who do take up those positions of privilege are inherently bad for doing so, or that the solution — as some feminist strategies would have it — is to refuse those positions. ‘Reforming’ them is obviously rather problematic, since that process will be exploitative and unjust. The solution is for all women to organise together to work against the oppressive conditions faced by women, in all their different forms. And this is what women of colour seek when becoming involved in the women’s movement — it’s not about “jealousy” of white women’s privileges, or ressentiment towards them. Obviously this is an idealisation of the women’s movement(s), but I do want to outline an ideal here without compromising an oppositional stance towards the multiple forms of injustice that women face.

… so I guess what I mean when I sometimes tell male friends that they wouldn’t understand something because they’re men (which one friend tried to argue was “abusive”), I really have a point. There are so many things which are poorly understood in our society, but the “poor understanding” actually produces false forms of knowledge that are predicated on reproducing racist and sexist stereotypes which leave huge gaps in understanding. I write in this blog to sort those gaps out.

First of all, I have to sigh and restate my desire to get away from blogosphere conflicts that centre around white North American women. I consider the conflict itself a waste of time for me, since I don’t think I’m going to make a difference to the business of the US feminist blogosphere by contributing on white peoples’ blogs.

I am appropriating from this conflict a few specific issues which I want to address, because they caught my attention and jibed with a few other things I’ve been thinking about. But they do involve criticism of another blogger, who is being criticised for a few other things at the moment. If that hurts her feelings, well, ok.

I want to talk about the blogging v. book publishing and how the divergence between these two modes of communication reflects divergences in social justice work in general. My ideas about his have been informed by the work of Brownfemipower in writing about the nonprofit-industrial complex and blogging as a tool for liberation. (And yes, I’m referring to the Incite! Women of Color Against Violence anthology with a similar title, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded.)

I guess my other deleted comment* from the Feministe thread is a good place to start:

I don’t buy that in the years of reading and commenting at Bfp’s blog, Amanda didn’t notice that Bfp was working on dealing with immigration as a feminist issue. I can remember, last year, Bfp blogging about every single issue that Marcotte mentions in her article. If Amanda wants credit for not being stupid, then she has to own up to paying attention to a blog she claims to read.

I also find the article in question highly bizarre since it doesn’t mention a single immigrant women’s/women of colour organisation which is working on the issues, despite Marcotte’s willingness to make ambiguous statements about the relevance of feminism and intersectionality. Returning to Jessica Hoffmann’s piece, it’s clear that the state of feminism is such that it’s women of colour who are the innovators and doing the most cutting-edge work. Hoffmann is one white woman who isn’t afraid to credit specific woc for that work. So why the disappearing act with woc in Marcotte’s article? Why do woc appear only as victims, but not the originators of the concept of intersectionality — one of the ideas which woc use to push for liberation?

It points to a common practice whereby white people render women of colour, especially radical woc activists, invisible. Where white women take credit for the innovations of woc. This is harmful to women of colour. It reduces the visibility of the resources which are out there, and it limits the growth of woc-initiated initiatives.

I for one don’t trust Marcotte’s judgement in deciding who is out to get her and who has genuine criticism. It’s common for her to claim that her critics are jealous of her book deal. I find it interesting that accusations against her are egregious and unethical because she’s a professional, but that she can attribute all kinds of motives to people who don’t have book deals, and that’s okay because writing isn’t their livelihood. So accountability in the feminist movement has to go out the window to support those privileged women who get into positions of power? So the work of women of colour is less valuable than that of white women because woc are unpublishable (then again, Marcotte’s publisher is Seal Press)? Again, I would expect that from conservative feminist organisations like NOW, not from people who are familiar with and accept the work of radical women of colour like Brownfemipower. I don’t accept the implicit vanguardism in that formulation.

If it’s personal and about Amanda Marcotte’s livelihood, then it should be equally personal for Bfp and all the women of colour involved too. If Marcotte stands to have her means of making a living damaged by accusations of “stealing,” what do woc stand to lose? And the answer is no less personal, no less vital, than the means of our existence too. Woc might not make our bucks by blogging, but woc have long criticised and resisted co-optation by capitalism as the strategy for achieving justice (and yes, Bfp blogged about this as well). For radical women of colour, blogging in itself is a tool for change, used in different ways than it is used by white liberal feminists.
Hence why white liberal feminists who do deal in capitalism have to face up to the onus of dealing justly with these alternatives. And that means not appropriating, and giving support to woc initiatives whenever possible. I do not see that Marcotte has done these things, and in fact has made a series of excuses to avoid doing them in the future.

The fact is, ‘professionalisation’ in feminism is not a new issue nor an issue specific to white US feminists. I have had a number of conversations with women around the world who have criticised the women who take up “leadership” positions in their regional/local/national feminist movements through a combination of class/ethnic/race/sexual/able-bodied privilege and professionalisation of feminist work.

The criticisms — that these women represent only a narrow agenda based on an even narrower conception of the problems, that they are self-serving and unresponsive, that their work is compromised by the agendas of business, academia and the state — are predictable and well-worn, but still have yet to be addressed or dealt with.

However, there’s a bigger criticism out there. It’s an elephant-sized issue, and hardly anyone talks about it. Anne Summers mentioned in a speech last year, but it’s the first I’ve heard of it, and I want to explore it more.

That is, when you rely on bureaucratisation and incorporation of high-level leaders into the state and business, once the state decides it doesn’t want to deal with women’s issues any more, you’re basically fucked. And this is what has happened to the Australian women’s movement in the eleven years that John Howard was in power. Women’s government agencies were consistently de-funded, attacked ideologically and dismantled, while sexist policies around abortion, welfare, family, childcare, maternity leave and workplace relations were put into place.

This is also occurring in the environmental movement, where large NGOs are becoming more conservative so as not to lose lobbying access, while ineffective and even dangerous policies are being pursued (e.g. increasing reliance on nuclear energy, carbon trading, bio-fuels, carbon sinks, ‘clean coal’, electricity privatisation).

It is not a new observation I’m making (regrettably, I’m at a loss for who to link on this, other than Paula Rojas, who I found via Bfp), but I would like to explore it further than it seems to have been. Specifically, I want to explore what kinds of consequences it has on social movements when relatively fragile (and I use the term relatively here, for contrast) social movements must interact with the agendas of the state, of business, and academia. For it seems to me that these interactions are often toxic, producing a huge level of division, disorganisation and ultimately, in destroying fragile coalitions and organisations.

The much larger apparatus’ of the state, business and academia seem to appropriate the best energies of the activists whose genuine ingenuity and passion are co-opted into ossified hierarchical structures. And the movement responds by rallying support for those activists because they command unprecedented levels of power and mainstream credibility. Yet that credibility is premised on an overall tokenism about the issue at stake, be it ecological justice, women’s liberation, racial justice, disability rights, or queer rights. The hierarchical accountability structures which authorise that credibility can muzzle the most radical activist (e.g. Peter Garrett).

In many cases, a lack of political will at the top co-exists with fluctuations in activist work in creating alternatives around an issue or set of issues. Howard’s ruling out same-sex marriage rights hasn’t stalled queer community-building, and the announcement of a “new paternalism” in Aboriginal affairs hasn’t stopped Aboriginal activists from organising their communities. But when equal access to elite status becomes the goal of a political movement, it becomes apparent that it is no longer concerned with justice, and it develops a parasitic relationship with the grass-roots of that movement.

This is why I’ve started to believe in the concept of ‘revolution’, if not the actuality of a national revolution. It’s because optimism about piecemeal change relies on putting your faith in incrementalism — the model where small changes accumulate on top of each other to eventually lead to a situation of greater justice. But the strategies of the system only reproduce injustices and inequalities in different ways. If you abolish legislative racial segregation without ousting the agents whose interests lie in certain types of labour and certain types of housing being devalued, then they will continue to be devalued. If you abolish nuclear energy without ensuring more ecologically sound energy production, you stand only to strengthen fossil fuel industries and pave the way for re-nuclearisation.

Ultimately, incrementalism only works insofar as goals stay the same while everything else changes.

We may be able to make a difference by initiating reforms which work against the logic of the existing system. But that requires deliberate and very considered work, involving a great variety of groups, to achieve. And to achieve that, we need spaces in which radical forms of democracy operate, so as to establish a level of independence from outside agendas.

This is why the most path-breaking work is outside most of the power structures in society, and why non-profit/non-governmental organisations, government agencies, and for-profit corporations lag so far behind in transforming society in the shape of radical justice. It’s why the revolution will not be published, and certainly not by Seal Press. It’s because the most groundbreaking feminist work isn’t being published at all, and in fact is in an antagonistic relation to the publishing industry and the academic-industrial complex.

Perhaps grass-roots radicalism will frame the shape of a new, just society, because it needs to frame new ways of being to survive. Or perhaps those new ways of being are only transitional forms, or maybe they’re just instrumentally useful. I’m not a soothsayer, so I don’t have the answer to that. I do, however, believe that I need grass-roots radicalism to survive, and that I can see changes occurring because of what I do. That’s good enough for me; I don’t need a book deal.

* With Feministe and the thread in question I can readily believe it was just a case of caught-in-moderation, but it doesn’t seem to have affected anyone else, and the mod restrictions seem lax enough that a pointless provocateur got through when I didn’t. After the Seal Press imbroglio, I’m just a little bit sensitive to being censored for making reasonable criticisms, so excuse me if I need to joke about it to blow off steam.

I have to say, after the whole Yes Means Yes imbroglio, I swore to myself that I would never ever get involved in another US feminist blogwar. If US women of colour — who clean up after white women, who take care of white women’s kids, who cook white women’s food, who teach white women in schools, etc. etc. — are invisible to white women, then international women of colour must really be off the radar! And I’m okay with that, because there’s not much I need from white North American women, nor do I want to be part of their “feminist” movement, and I’m sure as hell not gonna fight them for it. I have my own battles to fight, and plenty to gain, right here.

[Notice how I've just given up on promising posts that I know I won't deliver on? Blogging is just not my priority lately. This one only appears because it's a very spontaneous response to some web shenanigans.]

But I did get involved. After seeing the asinine behaviour of Brooke Warner and Krista Lyons-Gould, editor and manager of Seal Press (the people who brought you Full Frontal Feminism and Love And Consequences), I made a comment on their blog post about the issue. (In case you didn’t catch it, they were incredibly racist and rude on Blackamazon’s blog.)

Along with other comments made by other women of colour, mine was deleted. Discussion in closed forums revealed tales of others’ deleted comments.

My comment was about the gross double-standards being perpetuated by Brooke and Krista, and the Seal Press “team”. In The World According to Brooke and Krista, only they are allowed to have feelings, and they get to lash out at anyone they want to when their feelings are hurt. They don’t have to face any consequences for lashing out, because they’re more important than everyone, especially women of colour, on account of they own the means of production. Women of colour should be grateful to Brooke and Krista for even condescending to speak to us, because they’re so busy running their press that they have no time to try to work with women of colour, who are basically unpublishable anyway, their books will never sell. Oh, but when they do publish women of colour, they get to use that work to flounce around proclaiming how virtuous and anti-racist they are, because clearly women of colour are choosing to work for them and not those other white people over there.

Secondly, my point was that they basically got a whole lot of business advice for free in the comment thread on their blog. People were critical, but many came with a genuine spirit of engaging and educating, and gave a lot of professional-quality advice to the Seal editors. I wanted to emphasise that they should at least acknowledge the people who gave them this advice, since appropriating and then taking the credit for the contributions of women of colour tends to be somewhat endemic amongst white feminists. It’s a bit of a hot-button issue right now.

Now, it hardly needs to be pointed out that deleting comments that are critical of you and that put pressure on you to act in a certain way really really doesn’t inspire trust in people who you just insulted. In fact, it might even be called a negative discourse that is engaged by haters.

…

Ohnoes, it looks like only white women can affect the precise level of whiny melodrama that it would take to make assertions like that. I’ll have to settle for actual critique.

In that vein, I’m going to invite anyone who’s had their comment deleted to post it here. Say what you think about Seal Press!

Me, personally, in the spirit of skewering double standards, I’m gonna settle for the immortal words of Blackamazon: Fuck Seal Press. You just made yourselves irrelevant.

I have a feeling that if the irrelevant feminists are the ones getting book deals, then pretty soon all the feminists doing groundbreaking work will stop paying attention to what gets published in books and start looking at other media that feminists have used to express themselves. I mean, that’s what feminist historiography has done — find women outside the malestream and analyse their strategies for survival, growth, change and challenge. Radical woc internationalism may have a ways go, but compared to this crap we’re basically on fire.

Edited to add: And in the spirit of acknowledging your sources, I want to quote Jessica Hoffmann’s An Open Letter to White Feminists:

[The] dominant, white-led feminist movement is consistently unresponsive to the grassroots while it works within and strengthens the very structures that violently maintain social hierarchies.

[...]

In the summer and fall of 2007, I found myself invited to participate in a slew of meetings and conference calls organized by small, new majority-white “feminist” groups around the United States; over and over again, members wondered earnestly how they could draw more women of color to participate in their projects. Around the same time, I read and heard a whole lot of white feminist media makers explaining that “we” need to show young women “why feminism matters.” Sometimes I asked them why, in the face of a series of egregious, in some cases highly publicized examples of state violence against marginalized people (e.g., Jena 6 and the New Jersey 4), prominent white feminists are MIA in and largely ignorant of the work and analyses of major, often feminist-of-color-led movements against state violence? And, I wondered, what is your feminism for, and why does it matter? Because feminists of color don’t seem to need convincing on that point — they’re engaged in profound, intergenerational, cross-cultural grassroots work that is transforming not only feminist movement but all social-change movements. [emphasis mine]

It’s not just the “haters” saying this. So does it make it easier to digest if a white woman says it?

From a mailing list:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/27/2174099.htm

Welfare restrictions for WA Indig families

Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin has announced welfare restrictions for some Western Australian Aboriginal families in the same way they apply in the Northern Territory.

A Western Australian coroner recently delivered a scathing report into service delivery for the state’s Aboriginal people and called for welfare restrictions.

Ms Macklin has announced that she will adopt his recommendation.

“I am announcing that the Australian Government will proceed with a trial of welfare payment conditionality and income management to combat poor parenting and community behaviours in selected Western Australian communities including in the Kimberley,” she said.

Ms Macklin says the WA Government will be partners in a trial and will fund parent responsibility teams.

“[They will] work with Centrelink to improve parenting where children are being neglected and are at risk of abuse,” she said.

“As part of the case management of a family, Western Australian child protection officers will be able to request Centrelink require that a person be subject to income management.”

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23249316-5013172,00.html

Outback taskforce gets star chamber

Simon Kearney | February 21, 2008

A FEDERAL investigation into child sexual abuse and violence in Aboriginal communities has been given star chamber powers to imprison unco-operative witnesses after its 18-month investigation hit a wall of silence in the outback.

The granting of the status of a special intelligence operation is a significant upgrade of the Alice Springs-based taskforce running the investigation, and came only after members had to argue its case in front of Australia’s eight police commissioners.

The new powers put violence and child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities on a par with outlaw motorcycle gangs and international crime syndicates as priority for law enforcement. The powers investigators will use are similar to those granted to people investigating a terrorist plot.

The Australian understands that investigators, while having significant success uncovering information, have been frustrated by the unwillingness of non-government organisations to provide formal disclosures.

In addition, people in Aboriginal communities are often intimidated into not disclosing crimes, such as child sexual abuse and domestic violence. Critically, the investigators have uncovered many communities run through intimidation and standover tactics by men involved in criminal activity, including abuse.

Anyone questioned in what is known as the star chamber is legally prevented from revealing that the interview occurred, except to their lawyer.

Australian Crime Commission chief executive Alastair Milroy told The Australian yesterday the aim of the new powers was to obtain specific intelligence relating to violence, child abuse and related offences of substance abuse and pornography.

“Coercive powers will provide a clear legal basis and protection for non-government organisations, state and territory authorities, service providers and individuals to provide confidential information, as well as an environment that is more conducive to gathering personal testimony,” he said. “The approval of coercive powers was considered essential to overcome impediments in accessing information collection relating to indigenous violence and child abuse.”

Mr Milroy said the powers would not be used to target victims. The star chamber may travel to communities, if necessary, taking into greater account the need in many cases to protect the identity of witnesses being questioned.

The 31-strong National Indigenous Violence and Child Abuse Intelligence Task Force has made significant inroads exposing an epidemic of child sexual abuse and violence similar to revelations contained in the Little Children Are Sacred report, which was released in June last year and prompted the Howard government’s emergency intervention in the NT.

As of Tuesday, the taskforce had provided police and child protection authorities in every state and the NT with 236 reports that could be used in subsequent investigations.

The star chamber inquiry is carried out by an independent examiner.

The findings of inquiries cannot be used in court but the disclosures can be passed to police to investigate later.

Initially, the powers would be used to force organisations and individuals to produce documents from which further inquiries would be launched, Mr Milroy said.

“The ACC will utilise coercive powers in a culturally sensitive manner in order to identify offenders and obtain specific intelligence relating to violence, child abuse and related offences of substances abuse and pornography,” Mr Milroy said.

The taskforce is expected to continue its work until the end of this year before presenting a comprehensive report to the nation’s police commissioners in the middle of next year.

There are NO WORDS.

None.

I absolutely cannot believe that they would do this and have the nerve to try to cover themselves in glory by “apologising” for kidnapping Aboriginal children at the same time as imposing this authoritarian, racist horror on Aboriginal children now.

Here’s a newsflash, Kevin: if you apologise, but keep doing the same harmful things you were doing that you had to apologise for, then it becomes clear that you’re not only insincere and untrustworthy, but also an opportunistic, manipulative abuser.

A message forwarded over e-mail lists:

26th January 2008

PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT

TO ALL AUSTRALIANS

On this 26th Day of January 2008, in commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of the proclamation of SURVIVAL day, it is hereby announced that the month of JULY 1-31st is now proclaimed BLACK history month in Australia.

From this day forth and for all years to come, JULY will remain a month of significance and symbolism for the unity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nations, in celebration of Australia’s rich, vibrant Indigenous histories and cultures.

JULY will provide an opportunity for ALL AUSTRALIANS to recognise the true Australian identity, giving Schools, Government, Multicultural Australia and most significantly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities the opportunity to respectfully promote greater awareness of the diversity, innovation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander splendour.

Australia’s BLACK history month, will join the worldwide celebration of Black History Month, giving a greater international profile to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations, alongside Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

The Australian community is hereby advised to BLACK out JULY in their diaries annually as a month of pride and celebration of all tribal groups and people throughout Australia and the Torres Strait.

1st JULY ­ 31st JULY AUSTRALIA’S BLACK HISTORY MONTH

WE HAVE SURVIVED

Stand up for Aboriginal rights on the first day of the new parliament!

Tuesday, February 12 2008
Meet Aboriginal Tent Embassy 11:30am
March to Parliament for 1pm rally

Turn back Howard and Brough’s racist legacy!

- Reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act
- Demand immediate review of the NT intervention
- End welfare quarantines, compulsory land acquisition and
‘mission manager’ powers
- Implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Aboriginal People
- Aboriginal control of Aboriginal affairs

In the final months of government, John Howard introduced a package of discriminatory, unfair and punitive measures against Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. Aimed at controlling Aboriginal lives and land, the legislation was a stark violation of basic human rights and dignities.

Federal Labor is promising a new era in Aboriginal affairs. They are pledging to say sorry to the stolen generation and to sign the UN declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. They have promised to restore both the CDEP (Community Development and Employment Program) and the permit system, which will ameliorate some of the worst effects of the NT intervention.

Unfortunately there are aspects of ALP policy that is still disturbingly similar to the Liberals’. Plainly discriminatory measures such as mandatory welfare quarantines, compulsory land acquisition and the presence of non-Aboriginal “business managers” with extraordinary powers are being suffered under right now. There has been no move to allow the operation of the Racial Discrimination Act. The cry for immediate review of the legislation coming from across the NT has been ignored.

The Labor Government must comply with accepted international human rights laws and standards of non discrimination, equality , natural justice and procedural fairness. Legislation being implemented in the NT breaches commitments Australia has made as a signatory to major human rights treaties and conventions; such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The Human Rights Commission must immediately review the legislation to ensure compliance with these obligations.

The federal election revealed overwhelming opposition to the intervention among Aboriginal communities. When Labor MP’s in affected areas emphasised political differences to the Coalition they consistently received over 80% of the vote; with 95% in the town of Wadeye.

Despite government claims that the intervention is a response to the Anderson & Wild “Little Children are Sacred” report, no new community-based services to ensure the safety and protection of children have been established, and there has been a notable duplication of services - particularly in the area of child health checks. There is an urgent need for delivery of essential services, infrastructure and programs genuinely targeted at improving the safety and well being of children and developed in consultation with communities. Huge amounts of public money have been wasted, with $88 million alone going towards bureaucrats to control Aboriginal welfare.

Moving Forward
A vibrant, mass convergence Canberra on the first day of parliament will be an important step in challenging the lingering legacy of Howard’s racism. We can strongly push for an immediate end to what Aboriginal communities have themselves described as an invasion. We can send a strong signal to Kevin Rudd and his new government to put Aboriginal rights at the centre of their agenda; to massively increase the resources available to communities across Australia and to respect Aboriginal control of Aboriginal affairs.

How to get there!
Buses will be leaving from the Block, opposite Redfern Station, on Tuesday 12 February. Get there at 7am for 7:30am departure.

Ring Janene to book a seat on the bus – 0416 490 481 - $20 ($10 concession).

If you are interested in going down to Canberra on Monday 11 Feb, let us know that as well. Bus times for Monday are still being confirmed.

Initiated by the Aboriginal Rights Coalition, Sydney. Come to the meetings 6pm every Monday at Redfern Community Centre, Hugo St.

Contact:
Shane Phillips 0414077631
Greg Eatock 0432050240
Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to try to write more about this later, in response to Bfp’s post about identity politics. I want to unpack the notion that women of colour feminism is a “home” to which we can return after fighting injustice on several fronts. The best unpacking of those dynamics is Bernice Johnson Reagon, in her piece ‘Coalition Politics: Turning the Century’. The piece is about the dangers of coalition work, and of working across difference. I like to read it alongside Chela Sandoval’s ‘U.S. Third World Feminism: The Theory and Method of Oppositional Consciousness in the Postmodern World’. I think what these two texts highlight is that women of colour feminism is about more than ‘woc issues’ or about creating a space for women of colour excluded from other communities and movements, that it involves distinct methodologies. I think it’s especially pertinent to point out that women of colour feminist traditions centralise issues differently than other social movements, define subjects differently than other social movements, and operate differently than other social movements. This isn’t to say that women of colour feminism is perfect. But the conversations on alliance and difference have a bit of history amongst women of colour, and it gets beyond 101 level.
To me, Bernice Reagon’s piece is a logical — and less intellectualised! — extension of Audre Lorde’s comments about difference in ‘The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House’. These texts describe the creative, and terribly difficult, engagement across difference that needs to occur when we come together under the banner of ‘women of colour’ only to realise that there are still many differences dividing us.

Enough of my prattling. On with the show.

Coalition Politics: Turning the Century*

(*based upon a presentation at the West Coast Women’s Music Festival 1981,
Yosemite National Forest, California)

BERNICE JOHNSON REAGON

I’ve never been this high before. I’m talking about the altitude. There is a lesson in bringing people together where they can’t get enough oxygen, then having them try to figure out what they’re going to do when they can’t think properly. I’m serious about that. There probably are some people here who can breathe, because you were born in high altitudes and you have big lung cavities. But when you bring people in who have not had the environmental conditioning, you got one group of people who are in a strain—and the group of people who are feeling fine are trying to figure out why you’re staggering around, and that’s what this workshop is about this morning.

I wish there had been another way to graphically make me feel it because I belong to the group of people who are having a very difficult time being here. I feel as if I’m gonna keel over any minute and die. That is often what it feels like if you’re really doing coalition work. Most of the time you feel threatened to the core and if you don’t, you’re not really doing no coalescing.

I’m Bernice Reagon. I was born in Georgia, and I’d like to talk about the fact that in about twenty years we’ll turn up another century. I believe that we are positioned to have the opportunity to have something to do with what makes it into the next century. And the principles of coalition are directly related to that. You don’t go into coalition because you just like it. The only reason you would consider trying to team up somebody who could possibly kill you, is because that’s the only way you can figure you can stay alive.
A hundred years ago in this country we were just beginning to heat up for the century we’re in. And the name of the game in terms of the dominant energy was technology. We have lived through a period where there have been things like railroads and telephones, and radios, TV’s and airplanes, and cars, and transistors, and computers. And what this has done to the concept of human society and human life is, to a large extent, what we in the latter part of this century have been trying to grapple with. With the coming of all that technology, there was finally the possibility of making sure no human being in the world would be unreached. You couldn’t find a place where you could hide if somebody who had access to that technology wanted to get to you. Before the dawning of that age you had all these little cute villages and the wonderful homogenous societies where they everybody looked the same, did things the same, and believed figure out the same things, and if they didn’t, you could just kill them and nobody would even ask you about it.

We’ve pretty much come to the end of a time when you can have a space that is “yours only”—just for the people you want to be there. Even when we have our “women-only” festivals, there is no such thing. The fault is not necessarily with the organizers of the gathering. To a large extent it’s because we have just finished with that kind of isolating. There is no hiding place. There is nowhere you can go and only be with people who are like you. It’s over. Give it up.
Read the rest of this entry »

Deep apologies to everyone I have ongoing discussions with and those whose comments were left in moderation. My internet access at home is down and due to the public holidays there’s not much chance of it being fixed this week.

There won’t be any updates until it’s back up again, since I can’t do much research when I’m offline.

Have a happy holiday season, everyone, and if I don’t exchange greetings with you before then, have a happy new year.

I’ll be posting more on the Aurukun case in a little while. I’m slowly easing myself back into blogging… I have no idea how people with full-time jobs can make time for it, honestly!

But for now I have a bit of a commentary and critique of other things happening in the feminist blogosphere.

Jessica Valenti has announced that she has a new book contract and has put the call out for an anthology on rape culture that she’s co-editing with Jaclyn Friedman.

Co-editors Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti are seeking submissions for their anthology on rape culture, Yes Means Yes!, to be published by Seal Press in Fall 2008.

Imagine a world where women enjoy sex on their own terms and aren’t shamed for it. Imagine a world where men treat their sexual partners as collaborators, not conquests. Imagine a world where rape is rare and swiftly punished.

Welcome to the world of Yes Means Yes.

Yes Means Yes! will fly in the face of the conventional feminist wisdom that rape has nothing to do with sex. We are looking to collect sharp and insightful essays, from voices both established and new, that demonstrate how empowering female sexual pleasure is the key to dismantling rape culture.

Potential essay subjects could include;

* Revamping how public sex education is taught, and to whom.

* The new backlash against rape survivors (i.e., media obsession with drinking, Girls Gone Wild culture being to blame for assault)

* Bringing men back into the conversation, making men leaders in the movement to end rape culture

* Thoughts on “enthusiastic consent”

* Taking Back the Porn: How changing the pornography industry can stop rape

* The power of language (naming rape for what it is, or the new myth of “gray rape”)

* A primer for men on sexual assault

* How good sex (where women’s pleasure is central) can mean an end to rape culture, and how a society that values genuine female sexual pleasure will make it easier to identify and prosecute rapists.

* Rethinking sexual interaction as a private joint performance, as opposed to as an exchange of a commodity or service

* An analysis of the economics of female sexual alienation/oppression, and an economic model for resistance

* Holding the MSM accountable for torture porn, kidnapping crusades and faux feminism.

* Desegmenting the Market: overcoming commercially enforced sexual stereotypes to organize across race, class, gender, and difference

* On pulling out the invisible lynchpin of rape culture: homophobia

* Creating accurate media representations of rape

Women and men, published and unpublished authors, are all encouraged to submit essays. Be creative, be forward-thinking, be funny! Perhaps most importantly, we are seeking essays with a pro-active bent that offer new and insightful thoughts and actions on how to dismantle rape culture. No more “No Means No,” let’s think “Yes Means Yes!”

In general, I’m very supportive of exploring consensuality as an element of rape culture, and some of the proposals in the call-out are exciting to me as a feminist. I think that good sex education ought to be a big priority of feminism, to empower young people to make healthy decisions about their lives and bodies. I also think that sex education can be a life-long endeavour, that adult feminists have a great deal to learn, and young people a great deal to offer, when it comes to understanding sex and revolutionising sexual practice.

However, the way this anthology is being framed seems really limited to me.

I’ve seen pro-consent activism that went into a great deal of depth about the needs of a consent-based approach to sexuality. Groups like worldwithout in Melbourne have some great resources on sexual assault based on ongoing activism they’re doing around the issue. So I’m in no way unsupportive of the stated aims of this project.

But while talking about the IDA for community response to sexual assault, I also heard some criticism of consent-based work on sexual violence because of all the people who experience sexual violence without having the opportunity to give or withhold consent. Indeed, given that the majority of sexual assaults occur in institutions, not within the family or amongst intimate partners, this is a glaring omission.

The use of sexualised violence to dominate and control people isn’t addressed by consent-based activism, and often there’s no legal protection against this kind of assault because it occurs in government institutions or is otherwise mandated by the state. For instance, women in Australian prisons are subjected to daily strip searches and cavity searches, where no hygiene is observed. Evidence shows that these women exhibit similar symptoms to rape survivors. Sisters Inside, a women’s prison advocacy group, have a research paper about it here.

This data reminds me of some of Bfp’s writing about women’s experiences of sexual violence when crossing the US-Mexico border, women who are raped by border guards or in immigration detention facilities…

And I think that this kind of blatantly non-consensual sexual contact, which can either serve the purpose of sexual pleasure or not, occurring in institutional contexts has to be considered when defining the term ‘rape culture’ and deciding what “the key to dismantling rape culture” really is.
I don’t think that the call-out for the anthology deals with systemic and institutionalised sexual violence very well, and it seems to privatise the issue, so that partner and acquaintance rape is central to the understanding of ‘rape culture’ being employed.

So if “female sexual pleasure is the key to dismantling rape culture” in a world in which women are far from equal to each other, then which women’s orgasms are “the key to dismantling rape culture”?

That’s a very strong claim to make, and I have serious doubts that an anthology framed as it is in the call-out will be able to live up to that claim.

I think that this call-out is implicitly centralising certain kinds of women and certain kinds of rape by crowding-out many other kinds of women, and other kinds of rape. And I thought feminism, and Valenti, had learned enough from “identity politics” to realise how problematic that is.

And in that case, I don’t think it’s advisable to claim to “fly in the face of the conventional feminist wisdom that rape has nothing to do with sex” or to frame a pleasure-positive, consent-based sexual politics in opposition to an oversimplified caricature of older feminisms. For one thing, older feminists such as Betty Dodson have done ground-breaking work in promoting female sexual pleasure as a means of empowerment; for another, this newer work wouldn’t exist without that older work.

In fact, the only means I have of making sense of daily cavity searches in women’s prisons, or of friends telling me about the humiliation and fear they experienced when being strip-searched, is to divest myself of any concept of sexual consent and to return to the older feminist catchphrase: “rape isn’t about sex, it’s about power”.

Answer: when it happens to Aboriginal women.

Recently Cairns District Court Judge Sarah Bradley sentenced nine men, aged between 14 and 26, who pleaded guilty to the rape of a 10-year-old girl, to probation. I.e. no conviction is being recorded for this offence, according to Judge Bradley’s judgement.
One of the men has a prior conviction for child sexual abuse. Despite this, the Crown Prosecutor did not ask for custodial sentences for the men.
[***EDIT: Correction-- No conviction is being recorded against the juvenile perpetrators, who are getting probation. The adult perpetrators will have suspended sentences with convictions recorded. Articles were a little ambiguous on that point.***]

The lenient sentence was justified on the basis that the girl apparently “was not forced and she probably agreed to have sex with all of [them].”

Many of them are from powerful families in Aurukun, the remote Cape York community in which the rape occurred; the girl is not. She has now been placed in foster care.

The Queensland Attorney-General Kerry Shine is planning to appeal the sentence, although the appeal period of 28 days has expired, and the state Premier Anna Bligh will review all sentences handed down in Cape York over the past two years.

More details:

• Row over gang rape of 10yo - The Daily Telegraph
• Cape York sentences to be reviewed after rape judgement - ABC Online
• Qld A-G to appeal gang-rape sentences - The Age, Melbourne
• Indigenous leaders slam sentence - Courier Mail

The issue not being discussed in any of these reports is the whiteness of the judge who handed down the non-sentence. Why did she play havoc with the life of a young Aboriginal girl? Why is her life worth so little to this white judge? Why is she being kinder to rapists (black though they may be) than to young women? Isn’t it because Aboriginal women are considered worthless by the white legal system?

And why has this girl been removed from her family? In the Age article it suggests that the girl was initially placed in care in the Aurukun community.

I think Auntie Shirley said it best: for Aboriginal people, child removal equals paedophilia.

I think this case reveals the corruption and hypocrisy of Australian governments in dealing with child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities. While the state is enabling confessed abusers, it is also chastising the entire Aboriginal population of the Northern Territory with punitive welfare quarantines and paternalistic community managers. While Aboriginal leaders condemn the enabling of abuse and the malevolent neglect of governments, the state congratulates itself on taking military action. For eleven years John Howard let report upon report about abuse, poor health, inadequate housing, unemployment and poverty pile up and he did nothing but take a knife to the guts of Indigenous leadership and rights. And now all Aboriginal people get is their money quarantined and threats to roll it out to the entire country.

It looks like the ALP is tripping on whatever ideological sauce the Coalition was on. It’s the only way this kind of bullshit could possibly make any goddamn sense.

The government has announced that it will close the Nauru immigration detention centre and end the ‘Pacific solution’. 74 of the 83 asylum seekers on Nauru will be granted refugee status and full protection. The excision zone will be moved back to 2001 borders, meaning that new boat arrivals within Australian waters will be given legal protection.

However, the Christmas Island detention facility (which is currently not operational) will still be detaining refugees.

I’ve also heard that the ALP will abolish temporary protection visas (TPVs) and make substantial changes to mandatory detention arrangements, but those developments have yet to be documented. More updates as government moves!

December 17 is the International Day of Action to End Violence Against Sex Workers. I have a post in the works, but for now I’ll just re-post the call-out posted in the Feminist Sexuality Discussion LiveJournal community:

The official date is 17th December, but since we’ll have a bunch of out of town sex workers in Sydney on the 13th, we decided to do it then.

Instead of focusing JUST on the old demonising-clients victimising-workers stance that always takes precedence to the detriment of other, equally as important, issues, this year our focus is to be on other forms of violence, e.g.: the violence that comes from discrimination, unfair legislation, denial of basic human rights.

It is all these factors that actually create the environment in which physically and sexually violent people target sex workers.

SO. PLEASE COME AND SHOW YOUR SUPPORT, OPEN TO SEX WORKERS AND OUR SUPPORTERS.

4.45 for a 5pm start, Thursday 13th December 2006,
Local Council and Shires Association, corner of 28 Margaret Street Sydney,
corner of Margaret and York Street, 50 metres from Wynyard Train Station.
THIS IS A HIGHLY PUBLIC, PROMINENT PLACE IN THE CBDand will be taking place at peak hour as people start heading home orout for late night shopping! If identity is a concern to you, please feel free to wear a mask, or other disguisng clothing.

Sex workers and supporters in NSW are holding an end of year protest against the unfair brothel closures that local councils have led in NSW, thanks to the laws introduced by the Iemma Government in July thisyear.

Many Local Councils in NSW have discriminatory planning policies that make it impossible for the sex industry premises to be compliant. These Local Councils more recently have taken the extra step of enacting the new brothel closure orders against brothels, on the basis of complaints from larger brothel owners.
It gives councils the power to:
- shut off water
- shut off electricity
- evict people with no notice
- do all these things based on one complaint
and is a violation of basic human rights!
To register ‘legally’ as a brothel, the cost is prohibitive (over $20,000)and illogical planning policies make it difficult for small business to comply. Larger brothels who can afford the fees then target the smaller places. Under NSW legislation, an independent worker is defined as a’brothel’; meaning large brothels can also eliminate this sort of competition by making complaints against independent workers.
MOST INDEPENDENT WORKERS DO NOT WANT A BIG YELLOW SIGN ON THEIR FRONT DOOR STATING THEIR INTENT TO RUN A SEX BUSINESS, AS COUNCIL CURRENTLY REQUIRES!
There have already been several cases of council workers demanding bribes or sexual favours in exchange for looking the other way!!!!

The closures are anti-competition, anti-sex worker, and are the worst case of state sanctioned violence against the sex industry in Australia.

Stop State Sanctioned Violence Against Sex Workers
Carry a red umbrella for the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers
We demand local council policy INCLUDE the sex industry, and stop discriminating against sex workers
We demand an end to anti-competition collusion by local councils - stop the corruption erruption!

Wear red, bring an umbrella and see ya there!

So the Chaser guys have outdone themselves and are clearly desperate for laughs, because now they’re not only content to exploit Muslims, they’ve broken out the boot polish and actually gone for full blackface.

Who would’ve thought that some middle class white guys doing sketch comedy could be so unoriginal!?!

I can’t embed the video but it’s here on the ABC’s website, and is this week’s default video. You can also download the whole episode from the ABC site.

Howard made his concession speech, and Rudd has claimed victory.

So what does this mean for us now?

Will the military be pulled out of the Northern Territory? Afghanistan? Iraq?

Is it the world’s first step back from invading Iran?

Will it mean support for renewable energy sources?

A fair immigration and refugee policy?

The scaling back of imperialist intervention in Oceania?

Better working conditions?

A more accessible healthcare system — no more of this two-tier shit?

A fairer welfare system?

Recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty?

Will it mean avoiding nuclear proliferation?

Well, it better be.

Labor hasn’t impressed me. Their policies are deeply conservative and they haven’t distinguished themselves as an opposition at all except on WorkChoices. Most of the campaigning has been negative; and I don’t put much stock by election promises.

What I do care about is how Labor relates to social justice movements. In that respect, Labor works very differently to the Coalition, and I believe they’re more susceptible to pressure from social movements than the Coalition, which takes an oppositional stance to any social justice issue. The ALP is a party whose rank and file have campaigned extensively on various issues, from the war to RU486, and instead of handing down policy from above, its processes are much more convoluted.

So I’m pronouncing a cautious victory for the lesser of two evils. We’ve already prepared for this.

Labor has won the Federal election. With 68.9% of the total vote counted, most of the commentators are predicting a Labor victory.

I’ve been waiting for this day for half my life.

I am 23. The Howard Government was, until today, in power for 11.5 years. My entire political life has been lived under a conservative government.

And now… well, I want to leave the analysis and strategising for later, because right now I’m really emotional. This is so huge. The whole country is going to change.

Anyone interested in a breakdown of the results, and futher coverage can check the ABC election website.

For now, we celebrate!

The next CORA will be hosted by Elle, PhD, and the theme will be radical history:

Inspired by the wonderful M…

“Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.”

That is, according to my limited research, an African proverb that I first encountered at nubian’s site. But as a historian who minored in world history (with a focus on west central Africa) and specialized in the U.S. since 1945, I knew it to be true. Despite all that I learned in my African history courses, the Africans and their descendants whom I studied in my U.S. courses had no history, no background, no lives. They just appeared one day in Jamestown to serve English settlers. That was what the hunters’ history emphasized.

That is just one of the many reasons that for the sixth edition of the Carnival of Radical Action, Vox and I want you to explore making radical history. How do we create and participate in radical history? And how do we chronicle it? (This is a question that dominates my mind as I continually reflect on my long-term goals as a historian.)

Some food for thought:

• How do radical activists incorporate history into their activism?

• What are the processes involved in forming radical, history-shaping movements in our day and age (i.e. how do we initiate, shape, translate into action our responses to injustice and violence against and within our communities)?

• How do we learn from the past and incorporate radical themes in our work?

Vox and I are co-hosting the carnival here. You may submit posts here, use the Blog Carnival submission page, or contact Vox or me. The deadline for submissions is November 29, 2007 and the CoRA will be posted in early December.

So keep it in mind this month while you’re all acting in solidarity with Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory, and community responses to sexual assault!

EDIT: This report contains errors and is based on second-hand accounts. It was Northern Territory police (not Federal police) who conducted the raids checking outstanding warrants. The reports of surveillance cameras has not been confirmed, and the reports of the Muckaty station women has been questioned.

This letter circulated a few months ago, but it has resurfaced on some e-lists I’m on. I wanted to blog then, but I was on my hiatus and couldn’t justify taking the time to do it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Speaking of rape culture… I think that this document is really useful for understanding what feminists mean by the term “rape culture” and why a strategy of “protecting our women,” which doesn’t challenge the domination of women by men, really does nothing to eliminate rape.

It was posted at the Community Response to Sexual Assault blog, but the original URL is http://pubweb.ucdavis.edu/Documents/RPEP/rculture.htm — it’s unavailable right now.
I wanted to re-post it because it really is very comprehensive.

Defining a Rape Culture

This section will more closely examine the social and cultural conditions that intensify or perpetuate rape. The causes and reasons for rape are deeply entrenched in our social structure. Up to this point, we have explored some of the motivations and circumstances which lead men to rape. We have learned that men rape out of anger and a need to overpower, dominate, and humiliate. We have also looked at some of the historical attitudes from which today’s beliefs and stereotypes have evolved. However, we must look beyond both rapists’ motivations and history if we are to truly understand the act of rape.
Why does rape exist? What causes rape? What is it about our society that makes rape one of the fastest gro