green violet red: 2016

Monday, December 12, 2016

Resolve

Close the door, dear self; stride into the night.
Blow out the candle that burned hot and bright.
When your gift is a burden to weigh down his heart,
Don't look back - it's time to depart.

Sunday, October 30, 2016

A piece I've been working on since mid-2016.

See my earlier post for references.... the reference to condo's to withstand the "inconvenience" of a superstorm is a reference to a real thing. (Some of the craziness of capitalism, the head-in-the-sand response to climate change... you just couldn't make it up.)

Climate Fate 气候·命运

By Kamala E
Translation by Christie Dai

I was sitting in the waiting room when you flashed across the screen
我坐在候诊室里，你闪现在银屏 A heatwave smothered India and you were on the screen 热浪吞噬着印度，你出现在屏幕 As you tried to cross the street, your shoe stuck to the road 你想要穿过那条街，路面却粘住了你的鞋 So you ran on scorched bare feet, as the black tar slowly flowed 你只好光着烧伤的脚，跑过已熔化的黑柏油 Where there once were straight white lines, a crazy pattern morphed and swirled 原来笔直的白线，呈现出疯狂的弧度 As if a giant with a paintbrush splashed out and dwarfed the world 有如怪兽用大刷子胡乱泼墨，将世界一番蹂躏 You long for cooling rain, but the monsoon will be late 你渴求雨水的洗去热浪，但雨季却姗姗来迟 And this is how some people face their climate fate 这就是有些人面对的气候带来的命运 You're a woman of Maharashtra: farm life is what you know 你是马哈拉族女子，一辈子都在田地里打滚 With the earth so cracked and bare, nothing green can grow 大地变得如此干涸贫瘠，无一物能生长 As the debt piles up for the chemicals and seed 种子和农药令你举债重重 As you wonder how to fill the many mouths you have to feed 你也为那一张张嗷嗷待哺的嘴而忧愁 As you turn to your husband to say somehow you will cope 你望向他，跟他说我能行的 You see in his eyes there's no room for hope 你注视着他的双眼，希望却已然泯灭 Your nightmare just gets worse, the day you lose your mate 噩梦延续，那天你终于失去了他 And this is how some people face their climate fate 这就是有些人面对的气候带来的命运 You've lived in Karachi all of your life 你一辈子都在卡拉奇 There with your kids, your parents, your wife 与孩子、父母和妻 Last year the heatwave rolled in and swept a thousand lives away 去年热浪来袭，上千条生命被掳去 Overwhelmed the morgue, corpses left out to decay 连陈尸的当所也满患，只能任其腐烂 This time you swear you will be ready and not have to face that smell 你说这次准备好了，一定不会再有那味道 Of those left to rot in the very place they fell 那些倒下便就地腐烂的身体 So you dig out mass graves and pray for rain while you wait 于是你挖了大坑，等待祈求降雨 And this is how some people face their climate fate 这就是有些人面对的气候带来的命运 When Sandy struck New York, you'd left for somewhere calm 龙卷风珊迪席卷纽约时，你选择风平浪静之地 Flew back when it was over, once you knew you'd meet no harm 她走了你再回来，一旦知道风险已过 Another super-storm to hit won't be so inconvenient 再一波来袭也不无妨 Even if next time, Mother Nature is less lenient 就算下次，甚至比这次更猛 For you've bought yourself a condo with rooms sealed water-tight 因为你买了防风抗雨的高档寓所 Floodgates, pumps, power and emergency light 一应俱全的防洪设施 So you gamble on oil stocks, knowing you'll be all right mate 所以你继续哄炒着燃油股票，明白自己的生活不坏 And this is how some people face their climate fate 这也是有些人面对的气候带来的命运

Thursday, October 6, 2016

Health (Abortion Law Reform) Amendment Bill

The Queensland Health, Communities, Disability Services and Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Committee has been tasked with looking into the Health (Abortion Law Reform) Amendment Bill, put to Qld parliament in August 2016 by MP Rob Pyne. It's a private member's bill, and can be found at. It followed his introduction of a simple bill to decriminalise abortion, which the committee recommended against passing alone.

A summary of the second bill from the committee's website shows it includes provisions to legislate that:

only a doctor may perform an abortion: a person who is not a doctor (or a registered nurse administering a drug to perform an abortion under the direction of a doctor) would commit an offence.
a woman does not commit an offence by performing, consenting to or assisting in an abortion on herself
an abortion on a woman who is more than 24 weeks pregnant may be performed only if two doctors reasonably believe the continuation of the woman’s pregnancy would involve greater risk of injury to the physical or mental health of the woman than if the pregnancy were terminated
conscientious objection: no-one is under a duty to perform or assist in performing an abortion; however a doctor has a duty to perform an abortion if it is necessary to save a woman’s life or prevent serious physical injury. Also, a registered nurse has a duty to assist in such circumstances.
patient protection or ‘safe zones’: a protected zone of at least 50 metres must be declared around an abortion facility; certain behaviour, e.g. harassment and intimidation, is prohibited within a protected zone. Publishing images of a person entering, leaving or trying to enter or leave an abortion facility is prohibited.

Below is the submission I made (half at the deadline, and half, just afterwards in the hope that it would be considered).

Submission to the Queensland Health, Communities, Disability Services and Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Committee regarding the Health (Abortion Law Reform) Amendment Bill

Dear committee members,

I am writing as a woman who grew up on the Sunshine, Gold and Tweed Coasts, and as a doctor who has worked as a junior doctor in obstetrics, gynaecology and paediatric emergency, and as a general practitioner with over 20 years' experience working in women's health, sexual health, family planning and abortion services, in NSW, Tasmania and Western Australia.

I did not make a submission to the committee regarding the associated Abortion Law Reform (Woman's Right to Choose) Amendment Bill. However, I read the committee's report with interest and was disappointed with the decision not to recommend immediate passage of the bill to decriminalise abortion.

My daughter and I will be moving to Queensland next year, and these two bills, important for all Queensland women of reproductive age, will have a bearing on us, on my patients and on my medical practice.

Like so many who gave written and oral presentations to the committee, I am in favour of immediate complete decriminalisation of abortion.

I am writing this submission to give qualified support to the passage of the Health (Abortion Law Reform) Amendment Bill 2016, only in conjunction with passage of the Abortion Law Reform (Woman's Right to Choose) Amendment Bill.

I believe this bill is too restrictive, however, I believe that on balance it would be better to be passed (in conjunction with passage of the Abortion Law Reform (Woman's Right to Choose) Amendment Bill), rather than having the Abortion Law Reform (Woman's Right to Choose) Amendment Bill not pass at all. I believe this bill makes substantial concessions to alleviate concerns raised in the committee's report, and should be seen as an attempt to introduce legal reform that will be generally workable, introducing legal protection for Queensland women seeking abortion and for health care professionals providing abortion-related services to women in good faith.

I would like to address each of the key elements of the bill in turn.

Only qualified health practitioner may perform abortion

This section of the legislation must be understood to be intended to protect women from unsafe procedures, and as such, is laudable.

Read in conjunction with the conscientious refusal provision, however, this section restricts abortion provision (apart from medication administration) to doctors only, while allowing doctors to refuse to perform a service that a substantial number of women in Queensland require (whatever figures we rely on for that estimate).

Experience from abroad indicates that first trimester aspiration abortion can safely be performed by appropriately trained nurse practitioners, physician assistants and nurse midwives¹. Although I am not aware of any jurisdiction in Australia where first trimester aspiration abortion is carried out by nurse practitioners or nurse midwives, there is no reason why, if proper training were introduced for willing clinicians, such an initiative should be ruled out in Queensland by a ban with a ten-year imprisonment penalty. Many women in remote and regional centres are unable to access first trimester abortion close to home. A new law shouldn't make it impossible to implement an initiative to reduce the number of late abortions by improving access to early abortions.

It has taken over a hundred years of the operation of criminal law restricting abortion for abortion law to be seriously revisited in Queensland. Medical, nursing and midwifery practice is continually evolving. It makes most sense for regulation of who can perform abortion, to ensure public safety, to be overseen by the medical and nursing/midwifery boards and by existing general laws restricting health care practice to only those who are properly qualified.

It would be preferable for this section to be amended to include reference to other appropriately trained clinicians, or to be omitted altogether, on the understanding that Queensland already has effective laws prohibiting untrained people from providing health care for which they have not undergone proper training.

Those objections notwithstanding, if this section is passed as it is, it would not restrict existing practice and would provide legal protection to doctors and nurses currently providing abortion-related services. If it's the best that can be achieved, I support it.

Abortion on woman more than 24 weeks pregnant

The notion that decriminalising abortion without restriction as to reason and gestation will result in a rash of third trimester abortions overtaking Queensland is an invention of those who are opposed to abortion on non-scientific grounds.

The experience of the ACT, where there is no gestation limit in law bears this out. The only free-standing clinic where abortion is available in the ACT provides procedures under 16 weeks' gestation only.²

In Canada, where there is also no legal gestation on abortion, it is estimated that abortion after 20 weeks makes up 0.86% of all abortion.³

The vast majority of pregnant women seeking abortion do so as early as they can. Reasons for presenting late for termination have been explored in the medical literature and may be complicated. They represent a tiny minority of abortions, but the women undergoing abortion late are no less competent to make decisions about their pregnancies than women requiring abortion who are able to present for medical care early. Late abortion is generally harder for women to undergo and clinicians to perform; no-one directly involved in the decision-making process does so lightly. There is no need for the additional restriction of law, in the way of restrictions as to reason beyond 24 weeks' gestation. If a woman 24 weeks pregnant or later determines that she requires an abortion – whether because in the opinion of her doctors it is necessary for her physical or mental health – or whether she determines it is in the best interest of the foetus, or for some other reason or set of reasons – there shouldn't be a legal restriction preventing her doctors from performing it for her.

As with the previous section, if the law will only be passed with this proviso, it is better than not decriminalising abortion. However, it represents an unnecessary interference in a woman's right to decide how and whether to proceed with her own pregnancy.

Patient protection

I support this section of the bill. I believe the protection zone should be greater, probably 150m, in keeping with the ACT legislation.

Protesting and expressing minority views about the morality of abortion can have a place in a democracy, but there is no absolute right to such political communication that outweighs women's right to privacy in seeking medical care. I have witnessed the impact of distressing, hostile protest actions outside abortion facilities on women seeking care and am in favour of measures to prevent harassment of patients and staff.

Duty of care

Most health professional codes of conduct recognise a right to conscientious refusal of care. The impact of this on restricting reproductive health care is not well documented, though an attempt to begin this work has been undertaken.⁴

What is important to note is that in general, where a right to refusal of care is acknowledged, it is not considered to outweigh the right of women to access needed healthcare. This generally includes an obligation of practitioners refusing to perform abortion to refer women to others who will provide services.

Again, it seems to me unnecessary to include this assertion of the right to refuse care in the law when it is already accepted in practice, but particularly without the inclusion of the complementary obligation to refer to a practitioner who will provide care. As I outlined in the section on who can perform abortion, when only doctors may lawfully perform or prescribe abortion medication, but they may refuse, if this is not combined with a safeguard obliging referral to a practitioner who will provide services, it could operate as a practical barrier to access.

In Western Australia where I currently practice, and where there is a restriction requiring a woman seeking abortion to be given information by a doctor not participating in the abortion, it is not unusual for women to see more than one practitioner; I have had patients who've needed to see 3, 4, even 5 doctors before being appropriately assisted to obtain an abortion. This clearly results in delay and later procedures. It is not known whether it ever results in women being unable to obtain abortion at all, but this possibility can't be discounted. I am concerned that the uneven emphasis on the right to conscientious refusal of care in the bill, if not balanced with the internationally recognised obligation to refer to a practitioner who will provide care, will result in unnecessary and unfair difficulties for women seeking abortion services, depending on the availability of clinicians who support women's access to the full range of reproductive healthcare services.

These are the concerns I have about the Health (Abortion Law Reform) Amendment Bill. I believe the bill should only be passed in conjunction with the passage of the bill to decriminalise abortion, that its provisions don't represent the best for the women of Queensland, but that they should be supported as concessions to enable recommendation of decriminalisation of abortion, which would certainly be a step towards the 21^st century.

1 Safety of Aspiration Abortion Performed by Nurse Practitioners, Certified Nurse Midwives, and Physician Assistants Under a California Legal Waiver

Tracy A. Weitz, Diana Taylor, Sheila Desai, Ushma D. Upadhyay, Jeff Waldman, Molly F. Battistelli, and Eleanor A. Drey. American Journal of Public Health 2013 103, 3, 454-461

2 http://www.shfpact.org.au/sexual-health/pregnancy-options accessed 6/10/2016

3 http://www.arcc-cdac.ca/backrounders/statistics-abortion-in-canada.pdf accessed 6/10/2016

4 http://globaldoctorsforchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/GDC_White-paper-on-CO-in-reproductive-health_ENG.pdf accessed 6/10/16

Thursday, September 22, 2016

"Snowden"

Directed by Oliver Stone

In cinemas now

How often in real life do people stand up to the behemoth that is the mighty US spy/war apparatus and get away with it? Not often enough. But if you count living in limbo in Russia – unable to fly to asylum in a third country once his passport was cancelled, unable to return home to the USA without fear of a rigged, secret trial on espionage charges – as getting away with it, Edward Snowden not only did that, but in a massive leak of classified information, gave the US and world public information about the unprecedented surveillance of US and global citizens, information essential for public discussion about privacy and the reach of government and corporate data collection.

Oliver Stone's newly released film “Snowden” recounts the story in a dramatisation that takes us on a journey from Snowden's administrative discharge from the military with fractures in both shins in around 2004, into his career in the CIA and then as an intelligence contractor, up to the momentous events of 2013 when he passed information about the PRISM program and other surveillance activities to journalists Laura Poitras, Glen Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill.

The information is publicly available, so it's no spoiler to speak of Snowden eluding capture in Hong Kong and being granted first one then three years' asylum in Russia, where he remains now.

The film is well made, acted and scripted. It portrays Snowden's transition from a patriot who believes in the rightness of his country and his commander-in-chief's decisions, to one deeply troubled by the impact of surveillance activities justified in the name of counter-terrorism but in reality, designed to ensure US government supremacy. The final straw for Snowden is the realisation that unimpeded data collection by US federal spy agencies and their contractors is primarily focused, not on the USA's rivals or enemies, but on US citizens.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as a convincing Snowden, and Shailene Woodley, as Lindsay Mills, Snowden's partner. Their political differences (she's a liberal who signs an anti-war petition; he's a conservative who is sure the Iraq war is right) make for an amusing foil to show that Snowden was no radical, intent on harming US security. It pitches him to a US audience as someone who simply takes seriously the US constitution's fourth amendment (against unreasonable searches and seizures), and who was prepared to defend it at great personal cost. The impact of the life of a spy and even more, of a spy who becomes convinced his government is doing something fundamentally flawed is played out in the strain on their relationship and in Snowden's decision not to tell Mills what he has found or what he is going to do, in order to protect her from being an accomplice in his data breach.

Snowden's relationships with others in the spy community add another interesting, and personal dimension, though it's the nature of the biopic genre that we're left wondering where creative license begins and ends. The portrayal of macho culture in the military and casual sexism in the spy community seems undoubtedly realistic. How Snowden copies and smuggles the all-important files out makes for great drama and suggests loyalty of like-minded friends.

This film has already begun to have an impact on audiences. It is likely to be more powerful for those not already familiar with the story, particularly those who haven't watched Laura Poitras' documentary, Citzenfour and perhaps other films. But even those who've seen Citizenfour may enjoy the background provided by “Snowden,” and the personal dimension it provides, even as it breaks down what's wrong with what the spy agencies are doing, in ways that non-geeks can understand.

Towards the end of the film, news headlines are used to indicate the extent of legal reform triggered by Snowden's leak. It would be too much to ask the film to delve into how much these laws are window dressing for public consumption and whether they have resulted in any changes in mass surveillance in practice, and it really doesn't go there. But what is clear is that Snowden's brave actions triggered a global discussion. And a US federal appeals court finding that the surveillance program was illegal is certainly vindication of his rationale for his leak.

In an unusual twist, Edward Snowden appears as himself at the end of the film, responding to questions in a forum connecting him by videolink to a live audience. It provides an extra dose of realism: it's a dramatic story, but true, and still being played out by a person still at risk from the secret government he exposed.

The release of the film is well-timed for the campaign for Snowden's pardon. Obama came to power promising whistleblower protection, but instead has made history as the US president whose administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than any other. As the campaign gears up to call on Obama to use his last days in the presidency to pardon the best-known US whistleblower of the 21^st century, “Snowden” has potential to entertain, inform, and call to act.

More information about that campaign can be found at PardonSnowden.

In song: Prism

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Qld pro-choice bill faces set-back

Pro-choice activists in Queensland have expressed disappointment at the release of a parliamentary report on August 26^th that failed to support the bill before Qld parliament to decriminalise abortion.

In a public statement, advocacy group Pro Choice Queensland said, “the bi-partisan Health, Communities, Disability Services and Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Committee’s report into abortion law reform concludes reform is needed, but is unfortunately indecisive about what that reform should be.”

The bill was introduced into parliament in May this year by independent MP for the Qld seat of Cairns, Rob Pyne. It was referred to a parliamentary health committee to consider.

After reviewing over 1400 submissions and hearing over 31 hours of evidence and perspectives, the committee compiled a comprehensive report on current abortion law in Qld, laws in other Australian jurisdictions, regulation of abortion by medical professional bodies and the Qld health department, and relevant international human rights law. It describes current abortion practice in Qld, community attitudes towards abortion, approaches to reducing the need for abortion, the health effects of abortion, abortion and young people, counselling, conscientious objection to providing abortion, and other issues.

Key findings of the report include that the current law, which makes abortion a criminal offence except in the case of serious medical or psychological risk to the woman, is out of step with current medical practice in Queensland. It points out that there is majority support for abortion to be readily available to women who seek it, although that support declines with advancing pregnancy duration. The report found that decriminalising abortion would bring Qld into line with Australia's international treaty obligations regarding the rights of women and children. The report described the existing codes of medical conduct that both affirm the right of conscientious refusal to participate in abortion, while balancing it with the duty to ensure that that refusal doesn't interfere with patients' right to care by practitioners who don't have such objections. It also outlined existing codes of conduct and guidelines for performance of abortion late in pregnancy.

It outlined a number of possible approaches to the law, not arguing in favour of any of them directly, but merely against the adoption of the decriminalisation bill.

It seems that they lost their nerve at the point where it mattered.

In summarising their objections to the bill, the committee highlighted community concerns about the need to regulate late gestation abortion, even though acknowledging the existence of existing regulations, parallel to the current law. They also referred to concerns about protecting conscientious objectors. In light of existing regulations and codes, they don't stack up as reasons to maintain the existing criminal status of abortion.

“These regulations would not suddenly disappear because abortion was no longer a crime. Medicine, and particularly abortion, is heavily regulated by Health and Hospital Service Boards, professional standards and clinical guidelines, licensing, and medical insurers to name a few. Doctors need clarity, and we have been waiting too long for someone in Parliament to do something about it,” says Dr Caroline de Costa, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of the College of Medicine at James Cook University.

The report argues that decriminalisation alone would do nothing to improve access to abortion for children considered unable to provide consent for themselves (whose parents are not allowed to provide consent – not because of the criminal law, but other case law), and that it would leave the issue of protests outside services where abortion are offered unaddressed. These are important, and should be addressed. But without providing a clear way forward, these don't seem so much reasons not to pass the bill before parliament as reasons to support any additional legislation that may be put forward to address them – now, or at any time.

The bipartisan report's recommendation against the bill's passage makes it less likely to be passed at this time, however, an additional bill, which addresses some of the concerns about gestation raised by the committee – including gestational limits, safe access zones around abortion facilities and conscientious objection – was introduced by Pyne on August 17 and is yet to be considered by the committee.

Regardless, pro-choice activists are planning on continuing their campaign to ensure women in Qld have equitable access to legal abortion.

Published at Green Left Weekly, Sept 1, 2016

Saturday, August 27, 2016

Making rape unthinkable

'“It's only a penis” rape, feminism and difference'¹ is a fascinating piece of anthropology. In it, Christine Helliwell provides an account and discussion of an incident that vividly illustrates what it is to live in a society where rape is unthinkable. The incident, and the essay, provide much food for thought for feminists in the West, regarding how we might imagine our society without rape, the threat of rape and even the possibility of thinking of rape, and what steps we might take to achieve a society like that. At a time when Western feminists are characterising our culture as a rape culture, the picture painted by Helliwell of a society free of rape provides us with a contrast that can help us better understand our own society and what it is in it that makes rape possible, even inevitable.

Helliwell spent 20 months living with the Gerai, a Dayak community of Indonesian Borneo. During that time, she came across no accounts of sexual assault or attempted assault (which, because of the lack of privacy, she is sure she would have heard about if they'd happened). The closest was the incident she recounts, in which a man crept into a woman's house and bed at night, and told her to be quiet, intimating that he wanted to have sex with her. What to a Western eye looks like attempted rape, to the Gerai was something else altogether. The woman yelled at the man and he bolted from the house in shame, and actually left for another village for a period. She was angry, not because he had attempted to have sex with her against her will (he hadn't), but because he had assumed she had wanted to have sex with him (because she'd accepted his initiatory gifts) and hadn't discussed it with her before getting into her bed. In the loud and very public discussion that took place the next day, Helliwell's assumption that it had been a dangerous situation in which rape was averted, where the woman may have felt afraid of being coerced into sex didn't meet with any understanding among the villagers or the woman herself. There was no word for rape and no conception that it was even possible for a man to force a woman to have sex against her will.

In the essay, Helliwell explores what underpins this absence of rape from thought and practice among the Gerai.

The Gerai are a horticultural society reliant on rice cultivation, which both men and women participate in. Although the society is relatively egalitarian, both men and women speak of men being “higher.” In law this means a woman's testimony is worth 7/10 of a man's, and husbands have certain rights over women that women don't have over their husbands. Even so, the social inequality that does exist does not flow over into personal relationships, the construction of gender and conceptions of sex and what intercourse is, that can make rape possible.

Violence is uncommon but not absent from society as a whole, and aggression is not valued but derided as a mark of laziness and incompetence. But what really stands out is the way the Gerai experience and talk and think about gender and sex, all radically different from the dominant Western experiences and discourse (to, with apology, use a rather academic term).

Helliwell goes into a lot of detail, explaining the ways in which women and men are seen as mostly the same, rather than essentially different, and the crucial role of work (rather than sex) in determining gender. In emphasising sameness, men and women are seen as respectively better suited to some roles than others, rather than as polar opposites.

So in work, while both men and women take part in rice cultivation, women are seen as better suited to the work of selecting and storing rice seed for the next year's planting, and men for clearing fields for cultivation, and it is these jobs that are considered the ones that determine gender. Women's role in procreation is considered to stem from their role in storing seed, and metaphors for growing grain and growing children are the same. That is, being someone good at selecting and storing seed makes someone a woman, and it is this that makes some (but not all) women able to become mothers.

This similarity extends to bodies and significantly, genitals. People are not considered as coming in two distinct body types, male and female, but as being basically the same. The only difference attributed to women's and men's genitals is where they are (inside the body for women – the safe place in a society where “outside” the village is unsafe – or outside, in the case of men, whose genitals are thought of as more vulnerable, therefore, than women's), but to be the same shape and essence. It is said that some men menstruate; some men offer their infants their nipples to settle them and it is said that some men lactate; there is even a myth of a woman who didn't want to carry a foetus, so that her husband made a container to carry it and gestate it until it was time for it to be born.

Just as sexual organs are considered basically the same, they are also thought of as producing the same kind of fluids. Sexual intercourse is thought of as a mingling of fluids, life forces and pleasures, while procreation is considered to stem from and require the mingling of likeness, not difference. Intercourse is considered to arise from mutual needs (in a society where needs that are not reciprocated are hard to imagine) and not thought of as something a person would engage in with someone who didn't need them, ie, by coercion.

To put it another way, in this setting of mutuality and relative male sexual vulnerability, the thought of a man forcing his penis into a woman's vagina against her will is something that just doesn't cross anyone's mind. As the woman at the heart of the anecdote Helliwell related exclaimed, “it's only a penis. How can a penis hurt anyone?”

While heterosexuality is the norm among the Gerai, maleness and femaleness (what Helliwell refers to as “sexed bodies”) and heterosexual sex itself are not constructed in the way that heterosexuality and heterosexual sex are in the West.

In this cultural context, conceptions and metaphors of male penetration, conquest and aggression are absent from the way sex is discussed and practiced, along with female passivity, vulnerability and self-protection. The phallus is not the signifier of power it is in Western culture. During intercourse, the penis is "taken into" the vagina – quite a different way of even thinking about what sex entails, than in the dominant Western model of active male dominance and female receptiveness (a model that even permeates the way ova and sperm are discussed).

All this together shapes the assumptions of the Gerai about sex, what it consists of and what is even both physically possible and for individuals, desirable, making forced sex something outside of Gerai experience and thought – including, I assume, even fantasy.

To Helliwell, the absence of rape in Gerai society contributes to the absence of difference in Gerai thoughts and experience of male and female bodies and sexualities. By contrast, the existence of rape in the West is part of the process of creating Western masculinity and femininity of the kind expressed in male aggression and penetration and female vulnerability and self-protection, just as much as that difference makes rape possible.

Helliwell's essay has many important implications and raises questions worth exploring.

The obvious implication is that rape, the existence of rape in a given society, is not a universal experience. Fear of rape is not a universal female experience, even if it is a universal or at least widespread fear (and if not fear, recognised possibility) of women in Western society. It is possible to live in a society equal enough and with an experience of gender, sex and sexuality that make rape impossible. Humans are doing that somewhere, now. So it's not some kind of a pipe dream. We could really try to build a society that emulates this experience. For all of us yearning for a society without this menace (for us, for our daughters, for everyone), this can be a source of great hope, on a solid, real basis.

That said, there's no way we could mechanically transfer what we see in Gerai society to ours. But we can use the understanding of sex difference, gender and rape that Gerai society provides us with, to start to imagine what might be needed to eradicate rape from our culture.

Like other feminists, I have assumed for a long time that it would be possible to create a rape-free society by raising the status of women so that the level of respect between men and women, based on social equality, would preclude the acceptance of the agression, dominance, violence and sexual entitlement that underpin rape. What the Gerai experience of life without rape suggests is that while the status of women may be important, the construction of gender and sexuality may matter even more.

To develop a culture that made rape inconceivable, would we need to revolutionise sex and gender to eliminate sex difference and end the connection of gender with sex? These are at the heart of what is different between our two societies, making rape possible in one and not the other.

As a society that doesn't distinguish between men and women in a fundamental way on the basis of bodies and sexual organs, Gerai experience challenges the assumption that sexual difference is (or must be) the basis of gender. The existence of a complete society in which the binary construction of gender derived from a binary construction of sex is just absent illustrates unmistakably the importance of culture in understanding and constructing sex and gender, and that there is nothing given or immutable about these categories or experiences.

The Gerai experience goes further than merely challenging the assumption that biological sex and gender identity may not be aligned – a conception that still maintains that there's a link (for instance, in those trans people who speak of their feeling of bodily wrongness, of there being a problem that their gender identity and sex assigned at birth don't match, that their bodies need to change to line up with their gender).

The Gerai experience illustrates that it's possible for a society to construct gender without reference (at least, primarily) to anatomical sex.

Helliwell alludes to the separation of gender and sex when she suggests that it would be better not to use the words men and women when talking about the Gerai, because those terms are so loaded with sexed assumptions – but that it would be more accurate to refer to “those responsible for rice selection and storage” and “those responsible for cutting down the large trees to make a rice field.”

If we sought to revolutionise gender and sex, would gender identity persist? What would it be based on? For the Gerai, it's derived from the division of cooperative work into an overlapping spectrum that's shared, with two necessary but distinct areas of gendered (but not sexed) expertise. But given the complexity of our society and the many contributions people can make to our economic and social well-being, what sort of gendering would be attached to work, and would this even be desirable? Feminists of various kinds have fought for women's work and capabilities not to be defined or confined by our sexed bodies or gender. If we should set ourselves the aim of challenging the connection of sex and gender and gender and work, would we picture there being any place for gender as an identity at all? Might it be replaced by work as identity, irrespective of sex or gender and without any connection to reproductive potential or role as parent?

None of this is to suggest that just changing what we call ourselves, or the pronouns we use will eradicate rape. I'm sure there are lots of angles from which we need to tackle changing society to allow rape to be eliminated. I'm sure that better domestic violence and sexual assault support services, equal pay, women's involvement in non-traditional work, comprehensive sex and consent education in schools, and psychological work with offenders are all components of a comprehensive social project to raise the status of women and eliminate or at least substantially reduce the threat of rape.

But in addition to the social, structural changes we need, do we also need to revolutionise what it means to be women and men? To transform what sexual intercourse even is – how we practice it, how we represent it in our culture, how we think about it? Will the movement to end the binary construction of sex and gender, which from different angles, intersex, trans and gender diverse activists have been working towards, also lead to the liberation of cis-gendered men and women from the practices, ideas and identities that make rape possible?

Having been sexualised in a Western society, experiencing ourselves (not all of us, but enough of us) as male and female, experiencing sexual pleasure and eroticisation of everything to do with sex as penetration, is there any hope for transformation of those who actually exist in our society today? Is it something to aspire to and lay the groundwork for, for future generations, while we settle mainly (but not merely!) for raising women's status and teaching men and boys (who will still be the men and boys of Western society) not to rape? Is the rupture with how we are sexed and gendered now that would be required to create men and women who don't know rape, so great, that even though the Gerai have that society, are such men and women, it's still unthinkable that we could create a rape-free culture in any meaningful timeframe?

I don't have the answers, but I think Helliwell's essay points to these questions, and many others I haven't been able to touch on (including the role of rape in policing racial as well as gender boundaries, and the colonialism/racism in the assumption rape is a universal experience). The essay is well worth reading, and I look forward to engaging with others in a discussion about it all – with those who've already done the challenging work of interrogating Western conceptions of gender and sex, those who want to eradicate rape and transform the elements of our society that make it inevitable, and anyone else engaged in building the sociopolitical movements or taking practical steps to liberate sex and our lives, from coercion and oppression, in thought and action.

1 Helliwell, C. (2000). "It's Only a Penis": Rape, Feminism, and Difference. Signs, 25(3), 789-816. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3175417

Published at http://links.org.au/making-rape-culture-unthinkable
http://znetitaly.altervista.org/art/20975
https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/making-rape-unthinkable-a-discussion-starter/

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Inside Every Princess

At the time of writing, bans on Wicked campers' slogans have been introduced by the Queensland govenment, and councils across NSW, and are being considered by the Tasmanian government, following a community campaign.

What is wrong with Wicked and what isn't, what are the limits of the campaigns so far, and where should these campaigns be headed? All these bear unpacking. In this post I intend to confine my comments to understanding one slogan.

“Inside every princess is a slut who wants to try it at least once” is just one of the many sexually-referenced slogans emblazoned on Wicked campervans available for hire and seen all over Australia. They're marketed at a young, adventurous tourist demographic.

So what exactly is wrong with slogan? Is it just a joke? Are people who object to it just anti-sex? Or from another angle, how does it even make sense?

I'd like to start here: what's wrong with it is not that it references sexual themes.

I get it that people have valid arguments about not needlessly, endlessly barraging ourselves and our kids with sexual messaging. But most people are sexual, for at least some of their lives, and there's nothing wrong with public acknowledgement of that, in itself. (Tying everything to sex, using sex and especially female bodies as a marker of sexual desirability, to sell everything, is worth critiquing – but if that was all Wicked was doing, it would just sit alongside innumerable other companies doing that.)

The pressures on women to appear not to be looking for sex have still not been eradicated, despite the definite gains of the sexual revolution and women's liberation movements. So there is something positive about the observation that many women who feel compelled to present a face of sexual passivity (the princess) really are or wish to be sexually curious, adventurous or assertive.

The problem is that Wicked's slogan completely reinforces the Madonna/whore dichotomy women face as we negotiate the challenging contradiction between being cast as sexually passive yet respectable on one hand, or sexually experienced, assertive, adventurous and confident – and stigmatised as sluts – on the other.

The generation that is seeking to re-value the word “slut,” to claim it proudly as sexual beings, rather than succumb to the shaming it is intended to induce, may as an act of determination be less vulnerable to the stigma attached to this particular slogan.

For many, however, the stigma retains its full force. And more than that, beyond the stigma attached to the word “slut” are the unstated assumptions of the rape culture this slogan comes from and perpetuates.

If inside every princess there's a slut who wants to try it, according to one set of unspoken assumptions, it's okay to ignore a woman who is saying “no” to a sexual experience – because she's probably just a princess who can't say “yes” but secretly wants to.

The trope of the woman who can't say “yes,” who has to be forced to acknowledge her desires, is an old one. It provides a self-serving narrative that lets men get sex they want while ignoring the lack of enthusiastic or real consent of their partners. But part of its power lies in the reality that – particularly among women influenced by conservative anti-sex currents in our culture – some women may find it challenging to acknowledge their sexual desires and needs (especially when doing so may get them labelled sluts).

But the corollary of this is not that such women should have their consent violated, in case otherwise they'll miss out on a sexual experience they were secretly longing for. To follow this path – which is where the slogan points – is to foster the culture and practice of rape that so pervades our society.

Rather, the corollary of this is that we need to affirm female sexual assertiveness as positive, not shameful; not to denigrate women who want to try “it” (however “it” may be defined); and in every way we can, from the classrooms to the street to the nightclubs and workplaces to the bedroom, insist on only fully consensual sex, that (in the words of the Reclaim the Night chant) “yes means yes and no means no.” (This shouldn't be taken to exclude consensual role-playing, which is another thing again.)

And if that insistence on real consent means that somewhere along the line some princess misses out on some fun, that's a pity – but far better that, and learn to take the steps to say “yes” (or go after what you want without waiting to be asked), than to learn from repeated experience, as so many of us have, that what we want, our “no,” makes no difference.

In this context “it's a joke” doesn't cut it. Not when this culture affects something as personal, powerful and fundamental as our autonomy a sexual beings; not when so many of us have our experiences shaped and develop as sexual beings in ways that subtly or resoundingly embed us in unequal and oppressive dynamics. If it's a joke, it's one that functions to cement those dynamics in place. I'm not laughing, and neither are others who see it for what it is.

That's why I support the call on Wicked to get the misogyny off their vans, and am glad to see people taking action to challenge them – not because sex is offensive, but because rape culture is intolerable.

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Climate fate

I was sitting in the waiting room when you flashed across the screen

A heatwave smothered India and you were on the scene.

As you tried to cross the street, your shoe stuck to the road

So you ran on scorched bare feet, as the black tar slowly flowed.

Where there once were straight white lines, a crazy pattern morphed and swirled,

As if a giant with a paintbrush splashed out and dwarfed the world.

You long for cooling rain, but the monsoon will be late.

And this is how some people face their climate fate.

You’re a woman of Maharashtra; farm life is what you know.

With the earth so cracked and bare, nothing green can grow.

As the debt piles up for the chemicals and seed,

As you wonder how to fill the many mouths you have to feed,

As you turn to your husband to say somehow you will cope,

You see in his eyes there’s no more room for hope.

Your nightmare just gets worse, the day you lose your mate.

And this is how some people face their climate fate.

You’ve lived in Karachi all of your life,

There with your kids, your parents, your wife.

Last year the heatwave rolled in and swept a thousand lives away,

Overwhelmed the morgue, corpses left out to decay.

This time you swear you will be ready and not have to face that smell

Of those left to rot in the very place they fell.

So you dig out mass graves and pray for rain while you wait.

And this is how some people face their climate fate.

When Sandy struck New York, you’d left for somewhere calm.

Flew back when it was over, once you knew you’d meet no harm.

Another super-storm to hit won’t be so inconvenient,

Even if next time, Mother Nature is less lenient,

For you’ve bought yourself a condo with rooms sealed water-tight,

Floodgates, pumps, power and emergency light.

So you gamble on oil stocks, knowing you’ll be all right mate.

And this is how some people face their climate fate.

References:

Independent: India's roads melt as record-breaking heatwave continues

New Indian Express: Farmer Suicides

Reuters: Pakistan digs mass graves

This Changes Everything (in Facing the Anthropocene)