Men and boys first

This short take, printed in September's issue of Time magazine, as the lead-in item to the refugee crisis in Europe - the cover story (of the European issue) - is deliberately misleading and misogynist.

The husband and father of the drowned woman and boys whose story sparked western sympathy and support for the Syrian refugee crisis, did not exclude his wife when he said all he wanted was to be with his family. He said 'children and wife' (my emphasis).

Time deliberately left the 'wife' out of the headline, as most all media coverage of the story has done, either not mentioning her drowning - probably as she tried to save her young sons while struggling with excess clothing-drag, because even when you're fleeing by sea woman must be covered up - or mentioning it in passing - 'along with their mother' - to make quite clear that her death is incidental or, at best, secondary to the death of her sons. Females - women and girls - are the second, incidental sex. So what's new.

What bothers me most is that all news agencies seem to know and accept this; to know that the death of young boys and their grieving father is a story, a tragic story, where the death of their mother is not; indeed her drowning detracts from the otherwise tragic story and is better not mentioned at all. That they know this, and would seem to be right, is evidence of the most shameless and widespread misogyny imaginable, worse - when you stand back and try to look ahead to a better world - than the refugee crisis itself, which is caused, after all, by the age-old battle for power, at any cost, between men that renders life nasty, brutish and short.

The Syrian civil war started as resistance to yet another autocratic man who forced his way to power against the will of the people. These power-mad, compassionless men, who also head up repressive religious orders around the world, will continue to find their way to power and wreak misery when they get there, as long as we continue to let them, by not speaking out about the perpetuation of male arrogance and pride by the excusing and reinforcement of misogyny when and wherever we find it, all over the world. We are all refugees looking for a brighter world until that happens.



  

Refugee in PM's clothing

New Zealand's Prime Minister, John Key, is the son of a Jewish-Austrian refugee. As well, his family was a substantial benefactor of New Zealand's once world-leading, generous and fair-minded welfare system, a system increasingly lamed by successive right-wing governments.

Key is right-wing and until that sad Syrian child drowned on a beach in Turkey, he, like his right-wing Australian counterparts pictured here, had not one cent worth of concern or compassion in their well-tailored pockets for the plight of Syrian, or any other refugees. But shame on Key especially, as his mother was a refugee.

Now he's done a U-turn on the refugee issue in response to the media attention and public outcry - not the long standing left-wing cause based on the values, over and above economics, economics, economics, of respect for human life - the same U-turn he did on the left-wing gay marriage initiative, originally opposing the Civil Union bill.

He promised, prior to his first election success, not to increase GST, a flat tax that increases inequality in an already much more economically unequal country than it has ever been in history, and increased GST the minute he was elected. He also cut taxes for the rich, this during an economic crisis caused by the rich. He sold off state assets to rich investors in the face of a public referendum result saying New Zealanders were 2 to 1 against the sales.

When he worked in investment finance, making his millions, he was known as 'the smiling assassin' for firing people, hundreds of people, with a smile on his face. And it's largely thanks to these sorts of honourable actions that he now boasts the dubious title of New Zealand's richest politician.

For good measure, addled by his easy-won power or the difficulty of keeping track of the lies, he pulls pony-tails, repeatedly, with his wife standing embarrassed at his side, asking him not to, as well as the owner of the pony tail. Still people - other than the grovelling-with-gratitude rich - continue to vote for the smiling assassin, falling for his Mr Moderate, boy-next-door act.

Today Australia, my former home land, celebrates their new PM, by likening him to John Key. Good luck with that, guys. He couldn't be any worse than Abbott, right? Wrong. If he's anything like Key, and I'm hoping for your sakes that he's not, he'll be worse than Abbott by being 100% more cunning. Watch your backs - and your pony-tails.  

   

It all began with bloomers...

It all began with bloomers. And by 'all' I mean changes in women's fashion from more to less and less is more, and the resulting never-ending furore, at least in the west, over what women wear - or don't wear - as the case may be, and how that affects the bigger battle for gender equality of which women's fashion 'freedom' and self expression is but a part...(Prepare for an essay).

The bigger battle, surely, is for women to be fully respected and valued as equal human beings alongside men and not seen as the second sex, creatures of lower intelligence, morality and strength, who are born - second - to serve as men's titillating and obedient assistants, as almost all men of power with the self-proclaimed capacity to write and rewrite gender norms throughout history and across all cultures, have defined us - until now. Maybe. Some things never change.

Believe it or not these dashing 1850's "bloomers" that were named after American Amelia Bloomer who introduced the fashion, were radical and daring in their day, being a substantial modification on the full length, many layered starched skirts they replaced, giving women not only more freedom of movement but more choice - as opposed to no choice - about what they wore. The bloomers also did away with the mandatory long-waisted corsets worn so tight they rearranged women's internal organs such that medical professionals lamented what useless cadavers (corpses) women made for study. Hmm...

However, although the suffragettes of the day were some of the first women to wear these liberating bloomers, corset free, they eventually gave them up and went back to the the dresses and corsets when they saw how the bloomers had become more of a talking point at their rallies than their campaign for the vote. And so the bloomers went out of fashion for another forty years in order that those women campaigning for the vote could be taken more seriously. Was it worth it? Yes and no.

Eventually bloomers came back in vogue and with the help of two world wars and a second, and perhaps a third wave of feminism, campaigning for much broader freedoms for women, women's fashion went through a series of increasingly radical changes, largely from more to less, and from skirts to pants and, eventually, underpants, such that women in the west today are now more or less free to wear what they want in public. And what they want to wear, at least some of them, is very little indeed. Exhibit A: Miley Cyrus.

The question is: Is this apparent fashion freedom real and empowering for women? Well, yes and no, in my opinion. Miley looks happy enough in this picture and seems to be saying 'I like my body and I'm free to show it in all its feminine - if super-skinny-feminine - glory if I want,' which is her right to do. She seems free, even empowered.

On the other hand, some women, most recently, singer Chrissie Hynde, feel, and I agree to a point, that this near-naked exhibitionism that is increasingly favoured by female pop singers distracts from the music they produce and perform, such that women singers are not taken seriously as artists and even perpetuate a 'pornographic culture' beyond the world of music, if not 'asking to be raped', just as the first suffragettes worried that wearing daring bloomers distracted from their political campaigns.

For these reasons, Hynde also objects to these singers calling themselves feminists, which most of them do, though that is very much a recent development, with Taylor Swift doing a late U-turn on her previous denouncing of feminism, partly in response to our own Kiwi singer, Lorde, who hit the charts as an unashamed, and not so scantily clad, young feminist singer as recently as 2013.

Personally I think it's a good thing that young women are embracing the term 'feminist' more than they have done for many years, perhaps more than ever. But I do think Cyrus and others go too far to look sexy by drawing explicit attention to their genitals, bum and bust, which probably contributes to a dumbing down of their image and art, which in turn feeds the age old sexual objectification of womanhood such that women are seen as sex objects and nothing more. For this reason I, and I think a lot of young women too, prefer Lorde's version of free expression and feminism than the slightly knee-jerk, convenient and lightweight version of other young self-proclaimed, scantily clad, singing feminists.

At the same time, the 'asking to be raped' assertion of Hynde's is deeply problematic, not least because accused rapists are routinely let off if their victim was wearing anything less than a burka. The responsibility and blame for rape should be entirely on the rapist and this responsibility is something that feminists have been fighting hard to establish for SO many years, and are still a long way from winning. It's the ultimate uphill battle that women, much less young women, should not have to fight alone by deciding what to wear when they go out. Rape is not about what women wear or don't wear. Men must know this. Women should not have to cover up in public to stay safe from men; men should have to learn to respect women's right to look sexual - most young women don't need to do much to look sexual, after all - without this being seen as in any way inviting men's hands on their bodies, let alone an invitation to rape.

Meanwhile, in the music industry, there is a lot of pressure on young women artists to 'sex up' their image, and this industry is largely run by men. Some women artists have resented this pressure, not many have successfully resisted it, however. Lorde, so far, is a notable exception. So there is the possibility, even the likelihood, that Cyrus and her ilk are not really dressing, and undressing, for themselves so much, as a matter of choice and an expression of their freedom, but rather to please the male music execs who know that the less their young women artists wear the more records they sell. As Hynde says, they have become 'sex workers' of sorts. This is exploitation, pure and simple, and I think there is definitely reason for feminists - those who care about women's lasting freedom - including Hynde, to worry that this apparent freedom will come at the cost of the more lasting sort of freedom on which substantive gender equality is built.

Add to this the concern many feminists have about the prevalence of eating disorders in young women and its genesis in the increasing cultural pressure to be thin, a pressure that seems to have increased the less women in public have worn - and weighed - from models to actors to singers, and you have even more reason to worry, as a feminist, about the influence of the semi-naked, over-sexualised female pop singers of the day distracting a generation of girls from finding and fighting for their substantive freedom while they focus instead on what they look like and weigh.

In short, it's damn complicated for women, as it has ever been and possibly always will be. Certainly a totally happy marriage between female fashion and women's substantive freedom seems beyond our grasp still. But that doesn't mean we can't keep fighting for ways forward, especially those that don't divide women quite as much as Chrissie Hynde's recent outburst has done.

Personally, being slightly biased as a New Zealander perhaps, I think Lorde's example has the potential to lead feminism in a promising direction by suggesting to young women that they can be substantial and successful and sexy (and feminist) without having to be skimpily clad or, indeed, super skinny. And as she recently fired her management team, I am inclined to think - and hope - that she did this at least in part in resistance to their efforts to get her to conform her music and image to that narrower, skinny-sexy-girl-singer stereotype. She is a genius and a major musical talent, so fingers crossed this will be enough to secure her artistic freedom and success. I am holding my breath.      

*This* is not ok

Shame on the New Zealand Herald for reporting the brutal killing of this woman, Tara Brown, by her partner - for now allegedly; but he had a restraining order out against him for past domestic violence - using this image and captioning it: 'Ms Brown was described as "a beautiful girl with a beautiful heart"'.  The woman was beaten to death at the age of 24, leaving a young daughter motherless, and she is portrayed by the country's leading newspaper, on the very day of her death, with her tongue stuck out. Fuck that.  

I have done doctoral level research on the cultural representation of domestic violence victims and can tell you that this kind of passive-aggressive woman-blaming and disrespecting is not only standard fare for all media reports on domestic violence and homicide in NZ as elsewhere, but it directly contributes to the cultural - and so legal and political - minimising of domestic violence as a serious and fundamentally misogynistic crime.

NZ ran a 'domestic violence is not ok' media campaign some years back (2007) to raise awareness of the extent of the problem, but it portrayed women as perpetrators as well as victims, missing the point entirely. This was a fundamental (and typical) obfuscation of the issue and wasted opportunity to speak directly to the problem that affects almost one in three families in the Western world and is the number one killer of women across the world.

Ashamed to be a New Zealander today.



 

Turn the other cheek

... especially if you're squeamish.

Earlier this year I brought you an image of my other cheek as it looked two-thirds of the way through a six-week course of treatment for skin-cancer (not the lethal kind). That image, which I also shared with my faithful Facebook 'friends', scared young children, encouraged my enemies and aroused the ire of my own, not so young children, who saw it as a disgusting and shameless piece of attention seeking. So I pulled the image. I know when I'm beat.                                                                                                                                                                     But... you can't keep a good woman down. And this time I'm bringing you my other cheek, further on through the same treatment, so not quite as disgusting, and exclusively for your eyes only, my faithful bloggees, bypassing my soft stomached Facebook family and hopefully my children, who generally don't read my blog. You're welcome.

And as a reward for your faithful and forgiving, non-squeamish viewership, I'm including an 'After' shot of that other cheek to show you the value of perseverance and to prove that science beats religion every time in delivering true 'miracles', if using slightly less glamorous and sexy methodologies.   

Too Fat to Fly

Okay. So after much painstaking research in pursuit of the ultimate book title, I think I've finally found it: Too Fat to Fly. Pity it doesn't quite work for my memoir, which is set mostly during my skinny years and only involves a small amount of flying. But it might work for later volumes. Something to keep up my sleeve - while there's still room, or until there no longer is.

But for now, 'Too Fat to Fly' is not a book title - though the awesome Too Fat to Fish is, which is a shame, because if it wasn't, I would have made that work for my memoir somehow, even though there are no fish in it, though there is a frog. Never mind.

But back to flying...

'Too fat to fly' is a reported recent judgement of a China Airlines carrier of one of its stewardesses who had, perhaps, been eating too much fish. The story is only hearsay and probably untrue, as most Chinese women tend to be so light they could fly without the aid of a plane, but you never know with the Chinese. Here's the Daily Mail news piece to make of what you will.

Then there's the Swedes - on this issue of being too fat, which I'm carrying on with because it is frankly much more interesting than finding a title for my book.

Now, I've sung the praises of the Swedes for exposing sexism where others deny, hide and make excuses for it, but in this account of one young former model in that long blonde land, it seems they are joining the sexist rank and file of men and women the world over who believe women can never be too thin and pronounce most of us too fat to film let alone fly. And as this account comes from the model's mouth, as it were, there is no denying its truth.

And I've said it before, sort of, and I'll say it again: if this girl is too fat for anything, then I'm a goldfish. And I'm not a goldfish, truly.

And there's another possible title for my memoir right there. 'I'm not a goldfish, truly': A memoir.' In all good book stores soon.

   

Title Trauma

My memoir is finally wending its way to the typesetters, but still without a title! This makes me feel naked and nervous, as if I've sent a child into the world without a name...

Not that this was my doing, you understand. The book had a title when I first submitted it to publishers nine months ago, but that title went out the window in the first phase of the editorial process. Why? The pubs never really said.

The title wasn't Beans, by the way. But perhaps it should have been; one word titles are all the rage right now and there is at least one reference to beans in my memoir, beans and just about everything else. Memoirs are like that; they're not really about any one clear thing, but lots of mixed up things loosely strung together by chronology, which is the way of real life, hence the difficulty with finding the right title amongst a multiplicity of promising possibilities - at least I think they're promising. The pubs seem to disagree, rejecting my twenty or so alternative suggestions in pursuit of the ONE right title.

Good luck with that, I say. Meanwhile, here's a link to a funny and illuminating blog essay on the perils of the publishing process, including the troublesome quest to find the right title, a quest that is apparently quite standard. I am not alone. Evidently writers can write stories, creating characters with names - even memoirists who invariably make up names to protect the privacy of their real life characters - but they can't title their stories to save themselves. Who knew? I didn't.  Indeed 'Who knew?' could be the title of my memoir...

Excuse me; I have to see a man (woman) about a dog (title).