Welcome to the August edition of the Down Under Feminists Carnivale! My sincere apologies that it is up a couple of days late. Yeah...that was basically always going to happen. I'm so terrible when it comes to deadlines. Between you and me, I'm secretly proud I managed to only be two days late.
Now I have a weekend in warm Brisvegas to look forward to; that is, after I speak at a debate at Adelaide Town Hall tomorrow night for IPAA. It starts at 5:30 if you're interested in coming along. I'm second speaker for the affirmative side arguing that women will not realise the dream of sharing 50:50 ratio in the public sector. I'm basically speaking and then ducking straight out to catch my plane, which gives me an enormous sense of 'on-the-run'ness and being a jetsetter.
Anyhoo, on with the linkies! I have arranged them in no order of importance other than the order in which they were sent to me, and have included some comments here and there. There are no 'Top Ten' selections, though I've pointed out where I've been particularly moved and/or tickled. En-joi xo
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Queen of Thorns writes about the recent sexual assault allegations made by an 18 year old NZ woman against four members of the English Rugby Team, and specifically the language often employed by media outlets when describing these cases. I remember reading an interesting Canadian article some time ago - for the life of me I can't track it down - that discussed the passive voice used when talking about assault, especially with women. EG "A woman WAS raped" as opposed to "A man RAPED a woman". On a different note, she lambasts here the argument that it's a betrayal of feminism to foster some kind of interest in your own appearance.
Lauredhel awards the Order of the Douche Savant to MJA forced birther Edward D Watt. I disagree slightly with her closing argument regarding Watt's apparent disregard for people with disabilities. We offer our symbolic support to women who choose abortion. Many choose to abort when tests demonstrate abnormalities or disability in the baby. Therefore, why is it bad for Watt to question whether or not he has the right to conceive should there be a strong likelihood the child will be seriously disabled? I personally would not like to have a seriously disabled child either. Is it wrong for me to say that? Does it make me 'disabled-ist' or something? Because I really don't think so, and I think if we defend women's rights to choose we have to accept and support the fact that some of them will abort babies with disabilities or deformities - and that doesn't make them bad, ignorant people.
But I have to admit that I don't spend an awful lot of time thinking about disabled people. That's why it was so valuable for me to read this post by Ricky Buchanan (and cross posted at Hoyden About Town). Ricky, who is bedridden, wrote a letter to Sharon Granek, the Disability Advice/Resources Unit (DARU) coordinator at VCOSS (Victorian branch of the Australian Council of Social Services, ACOSS) about how difficult it is for bedridden/housebound people to access advocacy information.
On the back of a very silly newspaper advice column regarding breast milk in the work fridge, Lauredhel asks what's the silliest etiquette advice readers have received. The 57 deep comment thread focuses rather less on advice and more on the feelings of one commentor in particular that such an act was 'gross' and she didn't like the idea of people storing bodily fluids in a communal fridge. The thread itself yields more than the original post, it mostly being a reproduction of the advice letter. While I completely understand the position of Lauredhel and most of the other commentors, I did feel slightly uncomfortable by the onslaught BeccaTheCyborg took over her statements..
Lauredhel pays tribute to Olive O'Riley, the world's oldest blogger and coolest senior cit. Olive died earlier this year at the plum age of 108.
More from Lauredhel: Target's toy catalogue. And as you would expect, it's full of pink frilly domesticity for the girls and devil-may-care cool blue outdoorsy shit for the boys.
Tigtog experiments with Picasa's new slideshow embed feature, and puts together a nifty LOLpology from the Pope.
Stephanie writes a guest blogger piece for Hoyden About Town about white privilege and unintentional racism. As a Chinese Australian, Stephanie reveals in the comments thread that she is tired of being expected to educate white people about these things simply because she's the 'other'.
Tigtog suggests that it is felonious to assume women undertake cosmetic surgery simply to please their menz. She also takes issue with TV writers and the stupidity of writing smart, capable women only to have them do ridiculously stupid things that are completely out of character.
Rebecca's amazing post talks about the treatment she's received from doctors at Monash in relation to her gender reassignment surgery. Far from being a positive experience, she finds their behaviour stymied by 1970s misconceptions about trans people that are essentially rooted in homophobia.
Hell On Hairy Legs offers up a short account of a World Youth Day protest. I've linked to it because I think her comments are important and indeed protest against the Catholic Church (or rather, a state funded sham of an event that wholly disregards all the fucked up things the Church is responsible for) is completely valid. However, since all these WYD protests happened and the right was won for people to protest without fear of legal action, I've been wondering. If there was an Islamic festival on par with World Youth Day and it attracted the same kinds of protests (presumably from people on other sides of the political fence) where would all of us liberal lefties sit then? I can't imagine we'd be jumping up and down for these people's rights to protest. Rather, there would be a lot of cringe worthy, earnest declarations of support for Muslims and their right to congregate, and a lot of accusations about how these protesters were simply small minded bigots. But really - if we're going to talk organised religion, both Catholicism and Islam are responsible for fucked up shit. Thoughts?
Richie's post on Crimitism about the inclusion of women in World of Warcraft is one of my favourites in this here carnivale. I've always enjoyed Richie's writing, and here he's especially impressive. I don't know if it's because I grew up with a massive gaming brother and so have a minor insight into the overtly male gaming world or if it's just because Richie is so unashamedly geek about the whole WoW thing YET genuinely put out by the exclusion of females both within the world and within the gaming community as represented by WoW - despite the fact they have proven on more than one occasion that they're capable of creating realistic and fair female characters. Anyhoo Richie - TOP POST. And wow was that a long run on sentence in there. Sue me. It's 2:30am.
One of my favourite bloggers ever Blue Milk writes (in naturally beautiful style) about mummy blogging. She justifies her decision to blog about her daughter and post photos of her because the blog is a labour of love. Blue Milk's reflectiveness and patient thoughtfulness always inspire me. Here she is on nappy commercials and white privilege dressed up as philanthropy.
Helen from Blogger on a Cast Iron Balcony takes on parental leave, and the importance of encouraging men to take it.
Rayedish discusses the Bratz and My Scene dolls, and despairs at the kind of world that designs plastic dolls to embody our crude modern understanding of 'sexy' and target them specifically to little girls. Here she is on the story of FTM transsexual Thomas Beattie's pregnancy, and the concept of whether or not birthing fathers would increase the status of child rearing.
From newly created feminist website The Dawn Chorus comes these three posts. Mel Campbell writes about 10 year old bodybuilder Maughan Wellham. Mel's concise arguments and clever word play are always a joy to read, and I particularly liked this post from her. Clem Bastow also discusses the constructed language employed by the media when discussing rape cases, citing this heartbreaking example of a 13 year old girl in the NT. Here, Clem muses on photoshopping and airbrushing with a visual example. Elsewhere, she grows tired of the lazy photo editing team at The Age and their fondness for disembodied women's parts. I meant to email her the other day and cyber sigh about The Age choosing to use half a woman's head eating a block of chocolate under the banner "How to get your dream job". But I watched The West Wing instead and thought dreamily about visiting Washington DC in a few months and speaking to a handsome, clever man about the choices between what is right and what is easy.
Emervents has an interesting post on pro-lifers (I prefer the term anti-choicers, but pro-lifers is the one she used) who, when suddenly faced with their own birth dilemma, abandon their moral judgement and choose abortion.
The Hand Mirror has a great post here about the recent debate on polygamy. I encourage you all to read through the comments as well. It's such an emotive issue and one I wrote about recently for my Sunday Mail blog. The Hand Mirror also writes here about the effects of bullying and how what is required is more focus on a community response rather than just individual methods.
Made In Melbourne pays tribute to Natasha Stott Despoja as she exits the Senate. I used to work for Nat and can testify to her complete professionalism and dedication. She may have been a savvy politician, but she was truly a class act. MIM is pleased to see Sarah Hanson-Young continuing to pave the way for young women to enter politics. I went to uni with Sarah and campaigned for her on election day last year. And in all honesty, while I find SHY's determination very impressive, and I think she'll make a great Senator, I personally find her to be quite charmless and rude.
Bec from Make Your Own Damn Sandwich didn't submit this to the carnivale, but I'm putting it in because it's such a good post and the topic largely went undiscussed by the media. Basically, Jeff Kennett likes gay men to pedophiles. And Bec is may-ad about it.
In conclusion, here are a couple of my own posts from July that I'll slip in. You can choose between that time I wrote about menstruation myths and euphemisms, or my dismissal of Sam Newman's latest tiresome jape.
EDIT: Tigtog did email me this link separate to the blog carnival and I apologise - I completely forgot to add it in. This is her favourite post from July, and it's all about the seduction community.
Peace out (if you at all value your sleep, I seriously do not suggest compiling one of these after midnight and five straight episodes of TWW.)
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Down Under Feminists Carnivale
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19 apples:
Great carnival, Audrey. I've read only about half the posts, so I'm looking forward to catching up with the ones I missed, especially those from bloggers who are new to me.
I meant to nominate this (long) post of mine - Cognitive Dissonance in the Seduction Community as well - I think it's the best thing I wrote this month, hands down.
Thanks for including two of mine and yes, really good carnival. Have already discovered a couple I hadn't known about. Plus it is kind of interesting to come back to a post after some time has passed when the comments have built up, so I re-visited some I'd previously read too.
Good job. Yikes, I'm up next to host. Was it much work? Wait, don't answer that.
mele says:
Hi audrey, what a great blog with fantastic links. So many issues that strike at my heart in one post!!! I love that someone with influence and a voice that reaches a big audience (via blog/sunday mail and all your other amazing work)is contributing to public consciousness on such issues. So here goes my rant...
I am very concerned about "doctors" assessing/making judgements upon those wanting gender reassignment surgery. Young people wanting the procedure may be an issue of concern to some, but I am not going to get into the semantics of that because my actual point is that AT THE VERY LEAST anyone over 18 is an adult and is therefore responsible for their own decisions. No doctor has the right to judge them as mentally ill or refuse them their procedures. Doctors who deny people their basic right to determine their gender (or anything else) are treating their patients as infants with no brains. The patient must live with the consequences (be they positive, negative or whatever)NOT the doctor. It seems to be some kind of paternalistic bullshit where the doctor determines what is best because they are somehow more "qualified" to predict the outcome...and we all know how well paternalism has 'worked' in the past (stolen children generation, for example????).
As a person with a disability that is often untreatable and does not have obvious precedents, I constantly face a succession of doctors who think they know best and patronise me at every turn...franzy and I seek women specialists where possible as this seems to reduce this. (My favourite specialist ever is actually a male doctor,so I am by no means deriding all male doctors, it's just that statistically female doctors seem to patronise me less.)
One of the other things that I've been thinking about in terms of things feminist is "mother guilt". I may have mentioned this before, but a good friend of mine recently wrote an entire thesis on this topic. Coincidentally, Franzy and I have also edited another thesis on "mothering and guilt" which featured a comparison between the experiences of mothers in Zimbabwe and those of Adelaide. One of the conclusions made was that women in Zimbabwe had less guilt about being employed mothers because they had community support and extended family assistance, and had less cultural pressure to be the end all and be all to their child (well, at least that was the case before the political and economic crisis in their country took hold).I have long maintained the view that the nuclear family one-woman-to-child scenario is inherently full of ideological problems...
oh, and here's my final rant...I too watched Big Love for most of the first season and some of the second, but I eventually had to stop watching it because it made me uncomfortable. It took me ages to work out why (I'm a leftie, so what's wrong with alternate models of the family, etc???) Finally I realised that my problem with Big Love was actually specific to the program and related to two points:
a) Bill is the one with the money. The wives rebel against him and stress him out etc, but it is still big bill with the cash in hand.
b) Bill can sleep with all his wives but his wives cannot sleep with each other, other men or introduce other men into the family or marriage.
Big love is just not progressive enough for me...
tigtog - My apologies! I forgot to include that link. I've edited it in now.
blue milk - I really liked the post about your daughter. You're such a charming writer. And sorry to be the bearer of bad news - but yes, it was a lot of word. Enjoyable though!
mele - Excellent points about mothering and guilt. I've long been of the opinion that we are far too individual in the west when it comes to child rearing, and the two people who suffer most are the mother and child. Unfortunately, we live in a society where people are selfish and the merest suggestion that a community might help to raise a child makes their blood boil. Ironically, they're usually the first people to complain when adolescents act out..
As for transgendered children, I wrote this blog for the SM back in May (so couldn't include it in this carnival). It's about the 12 year old in Victoria who won the right to begin medical treatment with the eventual view to obtaining surgery at 18.
As for Big Love, I TOTALLY hear your concerns. For me, this is not an ideal representation of polygamy at all. But watching it did definitely open my mind. The problem with BL according to my TV writer friend is that it's a show written entirely by gay men - and as we've seen with Sex and the City, that's a situation that trades on the subtle (and offensive) assumption that somehow gay men are equally as qualified to write about female experience because they're, you know, not really men.
Hi Audrey, and thanks for the carnival!
I should have elaborated more on Watt and his attitude to disability, perhaps - at the time I thought that his words spoke for themselves.
You're not necessarily ableist for thinking that you might personally not choose to continue to carry a fetus with a severe disability of particular types. That's part of what reproductive choice is all about.
Given your inclinations in this regard, I'm extrapolating and guessing that if you had a known genetic issue and wanted a bio-child, and if reproductive tech (like IVF and embryo selection) could reduce that risk dramatically, you'd like to have access to that.
Watt doesn't want you to be allowed to access that reproductive technology. He wants there to be laws against it.
Watt talks about whether women who are "likely" to carry a fetus with a disability are entitled (his word) to conceive any pregnancy in the first place. He wants to be judge and jury over which women are allowed to have children and which aren't. He wants women without known genetic issues to be allowed conceive "naturally" (and only naturally), and believes that women with known genetic issues are not entitled to conceive at all, and should therefore be denied access to reproductive technology that might reduce their risk of having a fetus with a disability.
That's totalitarian, patriarchal bullshit of the highest order.
Shorter me: women with disabilities, women with non-typical genes, and women carrying fetuses with disabilities get a choice too. Choice isn't a one-way street, and it's not just for some women.
"If there was an Islamic festival on par with World Youth Day and it attracted the same kinds of protests (presumably from people on other sides of the political fence) where would all of us liberal lefties sit then? I can't imagine we'd be jumping up and down for these people's rights to protest."
I think the context is really key here. Christianity is heavily dominant in Australia, and a congregation of Muslims in Sydney would not have anything like the same connotations.
To get a similar context, you'd need to hypothesise an enormous gathering of Muslims in a Muslim-dominant country, with small protests by people who had been seriously damaged by the Islamic hierarchy and their fucked-up prejudices (say, women who had been raped and beaten and had no access to justice), and with their government making unjust laws restricting the speech of those protestors.
I'm guessing we Aussie lefty-libs would support the protesters in that circumstance too.
Thanks for including me! I have to admit, I didn't know the carnival existed until I found the link in my self-google alert *blush*. I have had great feedback from the access-to-accessibility letter though and there's a meeting tentatively scheduled for the 19th of August on the topic! It feels like it's really making a difference.
- Ricky Buchanan
Oh God, sorry it's taken me so long to comment here! Thank you muchly for the inclusion.
Thanks for including me, and thanks for putting this together! It looks like I've got quite a bit of reading to catch up on...
Thanks for putting this together - looks like a lot of great posts (from the ones I'd already read, at any rate)
Lauredhel - Thanks for elaborating further on the Watt thing. I totally get where you're coming from now. I think the distinctions you've made regarding Islam and Christianity in the west are also very apt. Sorry it's taken a few days to respond - I was sunning it up in Brisbane. Now back in the cold.. Boo.
Ricky - That's great! Congratulations! And it was a pleasure to include you in the carnival - I think tigtog or lauredhel must have forwarded your guest post to me. It was very interesting.
Richie - Pleasure :)
rebecca - I'm assuming this is makeyourowndamnsandwich bec? Such a shame I missed you this weekend. Timing is rotten.
jennifer - Yeah, it took a long time to put together, but well worth the effort.
Hope you had a good time in Brisbane - it feels freezing here in Perth today too, with a stiff wind blowing in off the Antarctic.
I think it was me who threw Ricky's post into the ring.
hello - LOVE your blog and loving this carnival post - so many interesting articles out there.
keep up the great work!
can i also just add... i agree with your discomfort over the reaction to poor beccathecyborg over the silly breast milk post... having said that, i've now read a few of lauredhel's other posts and can see that she more or less reacts aggressively and gets disproportionately angry at anyone that so much as hints at disagreeing with her so maybe becca can take comfort from knowing she's not alone! (i might also add that tigtog generally is much more able to see two sides to one argument)
however... your blog and the links to the others are wonderful - thankyou!!!!!! after reading yours in particular i've started making a transition from being (as i thought of myself) indifferent to feminism to realising that, maybe, i'm a femnist myself... it all seems to make a lot of sense to me. thankyou for opening my eyes.
Thanks Ms Apple! That was an awesome post - had me busy reading for hours!
Again! Again!
lauredhel - Had a GREAT time in Brisbane. I'm so sad to be back in this ice fridge.
macca - Thank you for the kind words! It's awesome to know that in some small way I've helped in a person's transition from indifferent participant to interested feminist. That is very very cool. On Lauredhel - Hoyden About Town has a very clear commenting policy. I haven't always agreed with everything Lauredhel's written and she knows that, but I've never found her personally to be aggressive because of my differing opinion. I do get the impression that she has very little time for people whose opinion is rooted in what she sees to be offensive stereotyping (among other things). As some other feminists have expressed, I suspect Lauredhel doesn't feel it's her responsibility to walk people through the steps of why someone's position is offensive or just plain silly, and that's totally her prerogative. I've always enjoyed her posts regardless of whether or not I'm with her 100%. Really the only part of my comments policy that I try to enforce is that this blog not be coopted for other people to express displeasure connected to other sites run by bloggers who also visit here. So while I welcome you enthusiastically, I shall have to ask you very kindly to leave said displeasure at the door, or at the least email lauredhel personally. Basically, I just don't want to be the intermediary :)
epskee - Oh goodness, not for a little while I think.. But blue milk is hosting the next one on Sept 5 and I have far more faith in her abilities than I do in mine!
hello again - just a quick apology for my comment, it wasn't my intention to - in effect - have a bitch with u... just agree with u and illustrate somewhat... but it def came across that way and i'm sorry for that - also sorry to laurhedl - what i failed to mention is how much i do enjoy her posts and admire her writing.
next time i disagree with a blogger i'll tell 'em to their 'face' - sorry! love your blog!
Thanks so much for all your hard work, Audrey. It was great to be included (and in such great company... what a month!).
Sorry for coming to the party a little late, I've been suffering from an I-have-no-internet-connection malaise. What a nice thing to have waiting back in online-land.
Hi Audrey,
Thanks for including me. I just thought I'd let you know that I call the "anti-choicers", or "forced-birthers" (my personal preferred term) "pro-lifers" because that is what they prefer to be called. After all, I would prefer they called me "pro-choice" and not a "pro-abort".
It's one of the ways I delude myself into thinking that communication with them is possible.
Great Carnival!
Cheers
Emma
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