Feminist Failures and Feminist Bargaining: Negotiating Hetero-patriarchal Culture while being Feminist

I’m reflecting on Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett‘s piece in The Guardian yesterday about how she experiences serious self-loathing about her body and has a disordered relationship with food while simultaneously being feminist and promoting body love amongst her peers. Cosslett talks to Susie Orbach, who of course points out how incredibly pervasive distorted representations of women’s bodies are within patriarchal culture that feeds huge industries aimed at changing women’s bodies. Orbach questions Cosslett about whether she’ll continue to put up with it. Cosslett writes:

This question stuns me. I wasn’t aware that not putting up with it was even an option. “Become a refusenik!” she says, and I want to: I really want to.

Part of the complexity of Cosslett’s issue is that it feels shaming amongst her feminist, educated peers to admit that that eating is so problematic for her.  She says:

I was embarrassed, and furious, that I couldn’t seem to escape the cycle of self-loathing that I have railed against so often as a writer and editor.

The complexity of striving to adopt a feminist positionality in a context of both a subculture of feminist peers and pervasive messaging within hetero-patriarchial culture stuck a chord with me. There are a multitude of behaviours and heavily compromised “choices’ that we negotiate everyday in-between the poles of patriarchal subjectivity and what might be an idealised feminist subjectivity. All of which do not contain actual, equal, possible choices, because the social terrain we fight them on is so uneven. Should we have children? If so, can we raise them with pro-feminist consciousness but still have them invited to birthday parties? Should we ‘choose’ to be married, de facto, monogamous, same-sex monogamous, polyamorous or single? Should you shave your legs or not shave your legs? Can you ‘choose’ whether to lead in a male-dominated profession or fiercely advocate in a feminised profession; or stay-at-home doing hard nurturing labour with your pro-feminist genderqueer child; or not work within the capitalist system? Do you only fuck feminist-identified women; or only fuck feminist-identified men; or try to change the misogynist ideas of the man you end up fucking? I mean, none of these are really, in practice, experienced as “choices” because often our decision-making is so compromised by the plethora of intervening factors. And yet, they can induce self-judgment. There are many, many times when I’ve felt like I have failed at being a ‘good’ feminist.

Feminism is probably at it’s least useful when it becomes another means for women to police their own behaviour or other women’s behaviour in relation to a group ‘ideal’.

To draw on West and Zimmerman’s (1987) well-known paradigm of ‘doing gender’, it’s worth pointing out that the heteropatriarchial gender system works in part through ‘accountability’. The concept of ‘accountability’ is that when we make decisions about how we ‘do’ gender we know we are being held accountable to gender norms. There are privileges or ‘rewards’ for doing gender in a normative way. There are punishments when we don’t. Wanting to be ‘a good girl’ – or be valued in our culture – goes to right to the heart of ‘being’ a girl. Our early gender ‘interpellations‘ where we take on what it means to be gendered are often really about a desire to be good or loved.

So what happens if Cosslett takes on Orbach’s advise and becomes a ‘body image’ refusnik? It might mean she loses the some of the rewards she currently experiences for being thin. She might not experience the same level of praise, attention, desirability, be invited to the same parties, be able to wear the same clothes, or have the same sexual and romantic relationship options. She is likely to experience social policing and punishment for being fat. She might have friends, family and even strangers commenting on her body. She might be seen as less professional, not be promoted or not be employed. None of these outcomes are fair. All of these possible outcomes are misogynist. But they are realistic outcomes of not being compliant with body norms.

When I was in my early twenties I had disordered eating. Not because of adopting normative body ideas, but because the impact of non-consensual sexual acts in my teenage years made putting anything inside my mouth feel physically repulsive. I struggled with self-loathing, but I experienced an ongoing stream of praise from friends and family members and lovers about how good I looked. Thin meant beautiful. As I went through recovery and my body finally settled on being about a size 14 instead of a size 10, I stopped getting praised for my attractiveness. In my case, being on the other side of the terror I felt around eating was worth it but there was still a social cost for me.

There’s an interesting, complicated, old-fashioned feminist idea called ‘patriarchal bargaining‘ that seems useful to play with here. Patriarchal bargaining was a term coined by Kandiyoti (1988) when women fit in with a patriarchal norm – accepting a norm that disadvantages women overall – in order to increase their own individual power. So in this case, women might adopt beauty practices that continue to promote the hierarchialisation of women based on their bodies, because in reality it gives them more access to wealth or desirability on an individual basis.

It’s a useful idea, but it seems a little harsh when we consider what our options are. Isn’t that really what we are all having to do most of the time? Sometimes gaining status through privileged femininity might feel like ‘any means necessary’ when you are still socially devalued because of your gender, class and race.

So I propose the concept of ‘feminist bargaining‘. Feminist bargaining could be when you have feminist beliefs but also know you have to survive in hetero-patriarchal culture. So you make decisions about where you can live your feminist beliefs, and make decisions about how to survive when you can’t. And really this looks like a series of compromising negotiations with hetero-patriarchy, where most of the time hetero-patriarchy wins because it’s a powerful system of meaning-making supported by global capitalism, not just your high-school dean or your mother. In fact, some of the feminist bargaining you do in some areas of your life probably make it possible to fly the feminist flag in others.

You have to think about whether you are adopting particular practices to survive hetero-patriarchy, or whether you are adopting them to keep thriving while others experience violence or extreme marginalisation on the same scale. I think wealth is a good example here. Are female CEO’s of multinational corporations good feminists? I would say no. Even though they might be using masculinist tactics to swim within the corporate system; it is still too abhorrently unethical. They cause too much harm towards poor, working women, the environment, and other marginalised people.

If nothing else this issue reveals how limited the terrain of individual feminist decision-making is. When we think of feminist actions as the decisions we make in our individual lives, we are clearly facing an impossible tide. We need to move beyond neoliberal versions of feminism focused on the transformation of the ‘self’ – where feminism becomes just another way to govern your own body – to collective actions and goals.

Protest Challenges Police Handling of ‘Roast Busters’ Case.

Three young women wearing black chained themselves outside Auckland Central Police Station in a direct action against the police’s decision not to prosecute in the Roast Busters case. Their spokeswomen Genevieve Wilson explained that they were seeking accountability from the police, and recognition that the actions of the police have supported rape culture.

They called for a formal inquiry into the handling of the case, including the treatment of the female complainants by police. Their message to the female victims of the “Roast Busters” was that “We support you. We think you are really brave”.

The protest, that used the hashtag #silentVigil, was a powerful challenge to the New Zealand Police to be accountable for their inaction, and to be responsive in changing police culture and handling of sexual violence cases.

The protest of these three young women speaks to a much larger sentiment amongst New Zealand women that the New Zealand Police are failing us when it comes to sexual violence cases.

There’s a few complex and linked issues we could unpack about Police handling of the Roast Busters case. We need to ask questions about police actions, their knowledge about sexual violence and non-consent, and their handling of the case in respect to the kinds of messages they gave complainants and suspects.

Institutional sexism occurs through both overt mechanisms (like policies) and more obliquely through commonly held stereotypical beliefs. In this case, we need to think about whether the police culture is susceptible to some of the broader, pervasive sexist thinking that supports ‘rape culture’. Research by Shannon Chan (2013) points out that women are a minority in the New Zealand Police force, particularly at senior ranks. Shannon Chan’s research with female officers suggested that while they enjoyed the positive aspects of the force – like camaraderie – they tended to downplay sexual harassment and unwanted banter in order to ‘fit in’ and ‘be one of the boys’ within police culture. So, with a force where even female police officers need to ‘fit in’ with misogynist attitudes toward women, we have a problem.

Going forward, the key issue for the New Zealand Police is trust. Do the Police handle interviews and interactions with young women sensitively, and in a way that encourages them to make complaints and trust that their testimonies will be taken seriously? Can we trust them with our painful stories? Can we trust them to understand that liking a boy or going to a party or underage drinking is not the same thing as wanting sex?

The issue now is that the inability of the NZ Police to prosecute – when this was such a well publicised case, and when images of the boys and their Facebook messaging has been seen by most of the country – sends a far more damaging message to future victims and future perpetrators of unwanted sexual contact.

For women it reinforces the sense that we will not be taken seriously by the New Zealand Police, and that the experiences of women and girls are not as respected or valued. For boys and men it sends a message that the words of women and girls are not taken seriously. A message that some act of opportunistic, unwanted sexual contact with a girl is a risk that you can probably take.

To understand ‘rape culture’ we need to make sense of what beliefs and ideas allow rape to occur. To my mind, it’s really ways of thinking about girls and women where our lives and bodies are less valuable than the lives and bodies of men. So when the young men involved in the ‘Roast busters’ could put the esteem of their mates ahead of the feelings of the young women in front of them, that’s a rape-supportive culture. When young women don’t make statements because they are afraid of the reactions of their peers and families, that’s a rape-supportive culture. And when the New Zealand Police can lead a year-long investigation into the ‘Roast Busters’ and fail to hold the perpetrators to account, that’s a rape-supportive culture.

Meanwhile, bravo to the courageous young women that protested outside the Auckland Central Police Station today. It was an unsettling visual image to see young women with black gaffer tape across their mouths, an image that brought the silencing of young women to the fore. One woman held a sign that simply read “You failed us”.

A mass protest against rape culture and calling for police accountability is planned for the 22 November outside of the High Court at 1 pm.

Red Post-Election Blues.

There was a kind of depressed lull after the Sept 20 election, none of us on the left had much to say. I was overtaken with post-election blues; a kind of energy-sapping disappointment, frustration and despair. One of my friends posted a fb note saying that he was still processing, so could we please not talk to him about the election. I got together with a group of friends that week to provide mutual solace, and ended up kissing an environmental activist who walked me to my bus-stop. So clearly, there are always silver linings.

But overall I’ve felt that there is more to say –

We are facing an emerging picture of the impact a third National term will have. John Key has come out backing the so-called ‘child poverty’ advice of the Ministry of Social Development, even though MSD officials disregarded the main recommendations of the report. Ignoring research-based findings in favour of right-wing discourse smacks of arrogance, but clearly Key’s government feel they have a clear mandate from the election to keep rolling out quasi austerity policies.

I’ve felt disappointed by the election summations of the left. Chris Trotter gnashed his teeth about the gender quota issue in the Labour party, complaining that less than 1/5 New Zealand men gave their Party Vote to Labour. It’s interesting that even amongst the left, scapegoating marginalised groups – like women – who are more exploited for their labour is an acceptable practice. The failure of New Zealand men to vote Left speaks to the uneven distribution of  emotional labour and nurturing in our culture (i.e. that women are more often responsible for children and elderly) not the failure of feminism. It means New Zealand men largely voted in their own self-interest, rather than voting for the good of dependents. It also reflects New Zealand men’s greater earning power.

Labour is facing a four-way Leadership race between Nanaia Mahuta, David Parker, Andrew Little and Grant Robertson. I’ve felt really irritated by social media calls for people to vote on merit rather than ‘special interests’ or ‘political correctness’. It’s just really embarrassing that left-wing commentators have such a poor understanding of how structural inequalities work. Even if you are a die-hard old-school Marxist who puts the exploitation of the worker at the centre of your analysis, you should know that capitalism effects different groups of people differently, i.e. some workers are more exploited and exploitable than others. Because of the impact of structural racism (in education and the justice system for example) Maori and Pasifika peoples are more vulnerable to exploitation as low-paid workers. Even without that level of analysis, Maori and Pasifika voters did turn out for Labour, and deserve party accountability. That’s not even going near the politics of indigeneity, and what I would want to say about colonisation and Te Tiriti. So pull your heads in.

So is there a better way to theorise National’s landslide win? What stands out to me is the level of saturation of neoliberal discourse after the previous two National terms, and in a global context of ongoing austerity measures. Chomksy’s recent comments about the business classes in America fighting a ‘class war’ to challenge opposition, and discussion of the decimation of the union movement, have made reflect me on the impact on growing income inequality in New Zealand.

What if the failure of Labour to secure voters was less about political claims-making along a mutable political spectrum, and more about the division of haves and have-nots without the buffering “middle-class” we’ve generally seen?  Marx argued that we act in our own self-interest. The interests of the wealthy elite is far removed from the social and economic needs of New Zealand’s working class; perhaps why Cunliffe’s gesture towards raising the minimum wage didn’t make a dent in political consciousness.

What does it mean if New Zealand’s political process has come to represent the interests of the business classes?  We are already in a global environment where corporations have more power than individual governments. The only solutions I can think of lie with mobilising globally across different disenfranchised groups (like the global poor), and directly challenging corporations instead of simply channelling our efforts through government.

I’m really interested in hearing other people’s views on how we can create meaningful social change. Do we need to get radical?

Rape Complaints and Dating Apps: Time to Talk to the Boys

Three New Zealand women have reported being raped after meeting with men via the dating app Tinder (See NZ Herald article by Anna Leask). The Herald article quotes a warning from Detective Sergeant James Watson, Head of the Adult Sexual Assault Team, about in-person meet-ups with people you meet on-line:

“Women need to be very aware of who they are meeting when they are alone and without their friends.”

Really? Huh. I’m fairly sure Detective Sergeant Watson has just described the plot of every b-grade horror flick since the 1980’s. It’s roughly the plot of Little Red Riding Hood. Girl, be aware! Don’t go alone! You may have guessed I have some problems with this advice.

Why didn’t Detective Sergeant Watson have a warning for men who use dating apps like Tinder? You know, like don’t rape! Or even, men need to be very aware when using Tinder that sexual coercion is a crime. Sexual contact that is non-consensual is rape, regardless of whether the woman has agreed to meet with you. The Police’s safety message to women reflects a culture where we are still loading women with the responsibility to avoid rape, instead of telling boys and men not to rape.

Sociologist Jaclyn Friedman has argued that these kinds of messages are linked to our understanding of women as ‘sexual gatekeepers’. That is, we portray men as having sexual desire (which is difficult to control), while women are held responsible for whether or not sex happens. In 2011, Constable Michael Sanguinetti, a Toronto Police officer, said “women should avoid dressing like sluts” to avoid unwanted sexual attention. This comment was what motivated the transnational movement ‘Slut Walk’, which protests against blaming rape victims, particularly excusing rape because of women’s clothing.

After the ‘Roast Busters’ saga last year, there is no doubt of the prevalence of rape culture, or that new social media has produced different possibilities for sexual violence. The prevalence of smart phones amongst young people simply means that of course loads of young women are going to meet people via dating apps or social networking. Telling girls not to go alone on dates seems pretty unhelpful, because it goes against the social logic of what a date is, i.e. an opportunity to get to know someone with the prospect of developing romantic feelings. This means by default that you aren’t going to know the person well, and that you are going to be alone.

Stopping rape means changing the context of heterosexual intimacy where men often engage in non-consensual sex with women they are dating, as social psychologist Nicky Gavey points out in her book ‘Just Sex: The Sexual Scaffolding of Rape’. Preventing rape means changing the ideas that boys and men have about themselves ( e.g. that they are entitled, that everyone else is getting it, that they are powerful or that they should be, that horniness is uncontrollable), and the ideas that they have about girls and women (e.g. that we are inferior or weaker, that our thoughts and feelings matter less, that our bodies are for their viewing pleasure). They need to know that a date does not mean she owes you.

It is already difficult for young women to come forward to police, and make complaints about sexual violence. The message the police should be giving women is that unwanted or coerced sex is never acceptable, and that if this occurs, they can talk to the police and be treated with respect and understanding.

Dear Lesbian

Dear Generic Lesbian,  Standing-in-for-all-lesbians Lesbian, Capital “L” Lesbian, Lesbian Captain Sir,

as a bisexual/ femme/ queer woman

via Facebook when I stumble across lesbian sites and lesbian events like http://www.lowdown.org.nz that extend an invitation to me as an afterthought “lesbians and their friends (of both genders)…” (and believe me this is not a new phenomenon)

I wonder if you have noticed that I have been out as long as you, marched on the same parades as you, danced at the same parties,  and fought the same fights. We have been lovers for a long time now, long-term friends, and once I even married you. There is no running away from this.

When I am invited, but the event or site is not “for me”, it is not “us”, I know that you do not see me as equal to you. A lover certainly. Perhaps even a partner. But not some-one that you need to recognise or give space too. Not “one of the team” in the same way you see your butch mates. That you see me as circumspect, able to slip away, able to “pass”, not someone who is worth investing in.

I am angry and I am over being polite. I have spent 20 years speaking queer politics out loud. I am femme and feminist and I have done my own work and I am not going to carry your butch insecurities for you.

So let’s get real clear about where this lies:

1.The fact that you forget me because I am not “the same” as you makes you the worst kind of lazy, egotistical lover.

2. The fact that I lose queer credibility because you are afraid that I might leave you for a man  is outdated, possessive and misogynist. We do not own our lovers. Who else I love is nobody’s business but my own.

3. If your sense of butchness/ masculinity is not enough for you regardless of who else I love or have loved, then that is your problem. And also the problem with butchness/ masculinity.

I respect and value myself enough not to invest in intimate relationships with people I can’t trust. That goes for political alliances too.  Until you can treat me as an equal, not as second-best, you can go your way and I will go mine.

Karangahape Road:The Need to Protect Queer, Trans, Migrant, Poor and Vulnerable Presence in the City

I’m nervous about discussing the dry and rectangular world of city planning, and more fluid, mutable worlds of spirit, community and creativity in one blog-post. And yet, I am called to action by my fierce loyalty towards Karangahape Road.

Wayne Thompson (no relation) wrote an article in the Herald on friday about the changes afoot for Karangahape Rd.

Auckland City Council is seeking feedback on their draft K’Road plan by 14th May, and are having a public drop-in feedback session with the council’s planning team this Monday 5 May 11am-2pm, Methodist Church, Pitt Street (It’s the last of four but I only found this out sorry).

Struggling through the policy-speak of draft plan (lots of vague words like ‘colourful’, a word I will come back to), the Council knows that Karangahape Road area is going to be a vital site because of it’s centrality to the future city rail link. Think lots of moving bodies. They also know as the city population grows, Karangahape Rd is going to need to accommodate a bigger population; think more businesses, more accommodation, more people wanting to have fun. They have already consulted with Karangahape Business Association, but to my mind there are other vital stakeholders whose views are obscured or missing from the current draft, and a risk that the jargon of planners will lead to Karangahape Rd being banal and soul-less.

Wayne Thompson writes:

“Karangahape Rd has long been known for its character – which includes everything from quirky stores and trendy cafes to a vibrant nightlife and prostitution.

For some, that mix is what makes the area unique and appealing. For others it’s a mix that needs to change. A road that needs to be cleaned up.”

His article usefully draws attention to the tensions expressed by Karangahape Road Business Association, who want to see the road cleaned up, and yet retain its current atmosphere. Thompson quotes Waitemata Local Board Member, Vernon Tava, who says:

“The problem is how to keep the colour and yet make it a safer place for business”

This statement is really the heart of it.

What bothers me most is that making it “a safer place for business” is not the same thing as making it a safer place for people, and even then, we need to think about which bodies we are protecting, and from whom. Making Karangahape Rd “a safer place for business” is not really about safety at all – it is about protecting capital, wealth and assets, for private business owners. Safety for people is a different matter all together. It is about the absence of harm or violence, respect, dignity and compassion. Some businesses the Herald article spoke to complained about “binge drinkers” and “sex workers” in their carparks and doorways; and one businessman complained about “the street people”.

I want the City Council Plan to protect city dwellers who live rough, sex workers and other vulnerable users from the micro-agressions inflicted on them by business owners. In fact, that’s only scraping the surface of what I would dream for Karangahape Rd.

I am reminded of the work done by queer theorist, Michael Warner (2002) who has described how attempts to “clean up” edgy parts of the city, privatises sex, and marginalises queer, gay, lesbian and trans visibility and culture. Warner described the rezoning of New York City in the 1990s, where these actions led to the loss of public expressions of gay culture, and a public space that was more mainstream, and heteronormative.

I want to tell you my own history of Karangahape Rd.

In 1997, I was 17 and had my first lesbian love affair with a girl who lived in a dingy flat above shops on K’road. She might have been 18 or 19. She had long dreads. Grunge was still in, and I can remember her wearing op-shop cardigans, smoking roll-your-owns and wearing doc marten boots. At the time it felt worlds away from the chaos that was unfolding in my conservative family. We could walk down K’road holding hands and feel safe, and ‘at home’. We could sneak into nightclubs like Legends, or the Staircase. Once I remember a girl took a photo of us at a party; she had never seen ‘beautiful’ lesbians before. Quite simply, Karangahape Rd was a Queer St. A street of glitter covered drag queens, of gay men in tight tee-shirts ,or else wearing leather and handle-bar moustaches. It was overtly sexual. It was the place you escaped to from the suburbs.

Now, I know that over 20 years gay politics have changed. Last year’s recognition of marriage equality would have been entirely unimaginable to my 17-year-old self. There’s been a shift from a politics of radical visibility, to a politics of seeking equal recognition. There’s no question that for many gays and lesbians, sexuality is no longer that important because of the high level of mainstream acceptance.

But I have a few concerns.

Firstly, when the current draft of the Karangahape Rd plan mentions “colourful”, or refers obscurely to it’s “character”, it doesn’t mention the significance of GBLT community. When it talks about preserving “culture” and “vibrant history” it doesn’t mention preserving the relationship between Karangahape rd and sexual and gender diversity. It’s frustrating that queer community has provided the bodies, the energy and creativity, but then are not explicitly consulted about it’s future, and our stake in it.

While there have been tremendous gains made for some members of the GBLT community over the last 20 years, there are still those of us that do not have the privileges of Pakeha middle-class gays and lesbians, and who have some way to go before they experience gender or sexual justice in their lives. Particularly young queer folk, including those who may be trans or gender-queer. I want Karangahape Rd to retain it’s character as a queer hub through the presence, safety and comfort of queer people. Currently, Karangahape houses Rainbow Youth, an organisation for GBLT young people. Community organisations like Rainbow Youth are enormously susceptible to the pressure of market rents. We need to future for Karangahape rd that maintains it’s connections to queer young folk.

In the plans there are a few references to public spaces that will be made “family-friendly”. Now, in general, of course I would want public areas to be family-friendly. But in the context of an area with a current and historic association with young, brown trans, fa’afafine, fakaleiti, and whakawahine sex workers, I don’t want the creation of “family-friendly” public space leading eventually to the pushing out of these street-based sex workers (who may be unable to get brothel work because of racism and transphobia) into areas that will make them more vulnerable.

Cities can have a creative presence that is difficult to pin down. It is something about the rub of different bodies, the movement, and the different textures that emerge from the juxtaposition of diverse worlds. A frission if you will. So Karangahape road has also been a home to artists and writers. The plan mentions consultation with creative industries, but I wonder whether the planners understand that the presence of artists and writers is also dependant on materialities (e.g. affordability of rent), exposure to diversity, cafe culture, and the ability to cultivate relationships with the eccentric, the non-productive and the under-employed. I can often be found drinking coffee and writing at either Alleyula in St Kevins, or at Revel. If it gets too commercialised, it will die.

Finally, lets talk about the relationship between Karangahape rd and people who live rough in the city. The draft plan for Karangahape Rd does mention the Homelessness Action Plan (I couldn’t find a live link to it on the council site) but from my limited understanding, it is a multi-agency strategy for assisting those people sleeping rough into long-term accommodation. This occurs on a case-by-case basis via support workers who can help them those sleeping rough access services (via say, WINZ and Housing New Zealand). Obviously I haven’t looked at the plan in full, but in terms of where rough sleeping intersects with Karangahape Rd, I still think there could be a more meaningful acknowledgment of the relationship between cities and rough sleeping, and an approach of explicitly acknowledging the safety  and well-being needs of the rough sleeper population and recognises they are likely to be a continuing aspect of the city. I imagine that plans to move people into long-term accommodation often have some kind of lag while bureaucratic wheels turn, and that there might be gap in meeting the short-term and immediate needs of the city-based people who are vulnerable.

I thought about how in Tory St in Wellington’s inner city, there is the is the amazing soup kitchen at the Suzanne Aubert Compassion Centre. Firstly, before people get worked up about the suggestion, Tory St is still a thriving and popular street which houses trendy cafes, graphic design companies and the like. The Suzanne Aubert Compassion Centre is an accepted and welcome part of Wellington inner city at least partially because the soup kitchen has been there (albeit in different forms and at different venues) for over 110 years. It has become part of the public culture of Wellington. Despite this, of course, it is only possible because of a group of nuns, and probably, private church wealth and low property prices.

In 2014, in a highly, secular culture, it doesn’t seem appropriate that we leave the role of public compassion to the work done by church organisations. There is no equivalent social body to say, buy inner city property to create soup kitchens (certainly not with the same level of public uptake). Which brings us back to the Karangahape rd plan of the Auckland Council. How could the needs of the most vulnerable street users be made more central?

Please get involved and give the council feedback by May 14. I want to leave you with an anecdote about a recent Karangahape rd experience. I drinking coffee and writing on my laptop at Alleyula in St Kevin’s Arcade a few weeks ago, and a kid came up to me. He must have been 12-14, but his skinny frame and oversized jumper made it difficult to tell. His skin was pale but the rims of his eyes were very red, and he had a very slight tremor. He asked me for two dollars so that he could catch a bus “to get home”. I looked at him and knew it wasn’t for bus money. I said, “Sure, dude” lightly, and reached into my purse to get change. He continued talking, “The other people won’t help me because they think I’m just a bum, like one of those K’road bums? But I’m not a bum”. I could see that he was trying to represent himself  – via an imaginary bus ride to an imaginary home – as someone I would help and speak kindly to. That we are often prepared to help those we are ‘like’; a kid who has plausibly forgotten their bus money, but not the same kid who has been living rough and using drugs to survive overwhelming distress. So I gave him a couple of dollars, but said, “Yeah, but you know, no one is really bum. They’re just people who are having really rough times”. He thanked me and moved on to asking other tables, evidence that he did not just need a trip home. But he turned and waved to me when he was leaving, giving a grateful smile.

Nearly twenty years ago, when I was a teenaged lesbian and when lesbians were still outsiders, Karangahape rd taught me about safety, joy and community you get from other outsiders, no matter how much of an outsider you are. Please lets protect Karangahape rd’s relationship to outsiders, queer folk of all stripes, migrants, artists, poor folk. If it has to be a “safe” place, let it be a safe place to be different and vulnerable.

 

 

 

 

4 Ways To Really Push Back Against Your Privilege

Mia McKenzie is a fab QPOC writer, but her post on “4 Ways to Push Back Against Your Privilege” totally irked me. The premise was great. She explains that privileged folks sometimes get as far as acknowledging their own privilege, but then think that is all they need to do. What was more difficult for me was that the strategies she outlines are very self-focused, they focus on reducing your privilege as if it is a private stash of social capital, instead of actually dismantling the structural systems of oppression we actually need to dismantle in order for things to change. The problem with seeing your own privilege as a guilty stash of opportunities that just need to turned down is that a whole lot of well-meaning, academically-educated, left leaning folk can do exactly that and the only tangible effect will be that they feel less guilty. The systems that bring about structural inequalities will still be in place. So here is my poor Pacific queer woman version of how you can really push back against your privilege.

1. Fight The Power

McKenzie’s first method to push back against privilege is to “Relinquish Power”, which on the surface seems quite good. I’m all for white, able-bodied, straight, cis-people thinking about the ways that the social ease they are given produces rewards they don’t really deserve, and then figuring out ways to redistribute them. My problem with McKenzie’s explanation is that it shifts privilege too simply into something which can be given up by an individual. She gives an example of a white manager “pushing back” by taking on the opinions of her POC workers. My problem with this is that even when white managers take on the opinions of POC workers, the structural inequalities that so often hierarchically position white workers above POC workers are intact. There is no real challenge to structural racism, or to global capitalism as a system that produces racialized hierarchies. If you really want to push back, you can’t just turn down the advantages that forms of privilege give you and think that you are doing enough. Why? Because structural inequalities (via gender, race, class, ability, sexuality or gender identity) reproduce forms of violence and harm for some at the same time as they reproduce privilege for others. The real issue is recognizing that when you are being privileged someone else is being harmed. And even when you are privileged by a system, that doesn’t mean you are the only winner. Class privileges middle-class, first world kids, but the real winner is capitalism. You can turn down your labelled clothing or your entry ticket to a top-notch university, but unless you are doing more to protest against multinational corporations, trade deals, the pervasive spread of neoliberalism or poverty, you are still part of reproducing the status quo.

2. Speak Out.

McKenzie’s second point is that when you have access to something that others do not, just don’t go. She gives the examples of not going to an event which isn’t wheel-chair accessible when you are able-bodied, or to a woman’s event that excludes transwomen. She’s pointing out that privileged people need to sacrifice things that they are used to being given automatically. And this is a fair call. But really, it’s not going to undermine privilege in any way because privilege is often institutionalised, and reproduced through long histories of exclusion. And while you might have the luxury of not going and therefore feeling good about your cis-privileged and able-bodied self, people who are marginalized don’t have the same opportunities to be heard. So instead, complain loudly to everyone who will listen about how such-and-such event is unjust. If an event you are interested in doesn’t have disability access, email the organisers and complain. Don’t just leave it to people with disabilities to have to fight for their own right to be included. Exclusion is about everyone.

3. Name it and Figure out how to Change it. Dialogue.

Okay, so this is really reiterating the last points. McKenzie suggests that people with privilege “Shut up” in those spaces where their privileged voices carry more weight. And I think that’s a great start. But so often what I find really challenging is when power dynamics are at play and one person or groups systematic advantage is not named. It’s not enough to be quiet. Here’s why. The way I’ve really witnessed male privilege being reproduced is when “nice, average guys” stay quiet and don’t name the way sexism or misogyny is playing out. Staying quiet can work covertly with the way privilege is made invisible. Recently in Aotearoa, there has been a lot of ongoing public dialogue about rape culture. It’s frustrating to me that women have been having to bear the brunt of this by talking out about our experiences of rape culture as survivors, while men have stayed relatively silent about the impact of rape discourses on their own actions.

4. Be careful about what ideas and structures you reproduce.

McKenzie’s final point is to “Be careful what identities you claim”, arguing that you shouldn’t claim a marginalized identity if you don’t have a marginalized experience. She uses this unjustly to challenge “white-presenting” POC who apparently:

” claim POC but by their own admission don’t experience oppression based on race”

This statement is scary enough to me that I’m considering writing a whole blog-post about oppression and being a fairly pale POC (admittedly as a Pacific woman in Aotearoa we are discussing very different contexts), but what I want to focus on here is the way that making sense of racial or ethnic identity as solely based on skin-color buys into the system of imperialism, colonization and racism that we are trying to undo. Like McKenzie, I think attending to marginalized experience is really important. But sometimes even in well-meaning activist talk, categories of people get reproduced in very binary, rigid and stereotypical ways. We need to be careful that we are not reproducing violence through perpetuating a system of meaning that was created by the oppressors. I get really frustrated with how well-meaning Pakeha (white New Zealanders) sometimes talk about the negative social indicators connected to “Pacific peoples” in ways that seem to reinforce messages of social futility. Likewise when middle-class people talk about people living with poverty, or when straight cis-privileged people talk about diverse gender expression in ways that naturalize heteropatriarchy. For example, it’s not ” respecting gender diversity” to give a masculine-identified trans-kid a toy gun. It’s reinforcing the heteropatriarchal ideas that masculinity is about the ability to use violence, and that force is a valid way to solve conflict.

Finally, challenging oppressive structures takes a lot of hard work over time, often for small gains. So often what we really need to do is to build a critical counter-public, and it’s hard to know how to work together. I’d love to get some feedback about these ideas and how to practically challenge privilege and the systems that produce them.

Gaga meets R.Kelly: Why Gaga Feminism is White Feminism

Near the end of last year, Clementine Ford called out Lady Gaga’s collaboration with R.Kelly as another example of when a celebrity woman who is seen as “fierce” and “fearless” collaborates with a man known for his (sexual) violence against women. Clementine points to a broader misogynistic celebrity culture, where violent men have been repeatedly excused for their behaviour. I think it’s also important to think about Gaga’s collaboration with R. Kelly in relation to the intersections of the institutional privileging of whiteness, the commodification of Black bodies, and in particular the devaluation of Black girls and women. More than anything, Gaga’s collaboration with R.Kelly speaks to me about how a Gaga-centric version of feminism is white feminism, a narrative that calls for recognition of white women’s sexual agency (and the sexual agency of gays and lesbians) but which continues to promote the privileging of whiteness and the degradation of women of color.

Jessica Hopper’s excellent interview with Jim DeRogatis, the journalist who has been responsible for trying to bring R. Kelly’s sexual violence against young Black women to the public eye, gives a profoundly disturbing account of the multiple accusations against R.Kelly. It’s worth reading in it’s entirety, so there are really two aspects that I want to draw on here. Firstly, that the ongoing accusations by young girls as meant that there has been an ongoing celebrity climate of suspected knowledge about this, which has been tolerated within the celebrity and music industries. It’s not that Lady Gaga wouldn’t be aware of the accusations against R.Kelly. Derogatis discusses the ‘vicarious thrill’ available to listeners who are aware of the accusations when R.Kelly’s lyrics repeatedly refer to sexual violence.

Secondly, Jim DeRogatis poignantly sums up what is at the heart of the music and media industries continued dismissal of the considerable evidence against R.Kelly. DeRogatis says:

The saddest fact I’ve learned is: Nobody matters less to our society than young black women. Nobody. They have any complaint about the way they are treated: They are “bitches, hos, and gold-diggers,” plain and simple.

So how is it possible that a celebrity like Gaga – who is largely read by a white feminist audience as someone who if not self-consciously at least conspicuously troubles dominant representations of gender and femininity – can collaborate with R.Kelly? Certainly, feminist and queer attention has preoccupied with our ability to give feminist readings of her visual aesthetics and at times, have offered ambivalent readings of aesthetic acts of cultural reappropriation. There is a broader need to bring deconstructive analyses more closely into conversation with analyses of media industry within contemporary global capitalism.

But what I want to focus on here is how Lady Gaga’s collaboration with R.Kelly, in the song and video for “Do What U Want” gives us insight into how whiteness continues to function as a privileged system of meaning-making that can be invoked in white women’s sexual agency, but that simultaneously continues to promote the exploitation of black women and girls. I’m deliberately not going to include a link to the song and video – obviously you can google it – but it would be too at odds with my stance to drive people to it.My contention is that in a media context where there has been ongoing speculation about R.Kelly’s sexual violence against young Black women, Gaga’s lyrics “Do what you want, what you want with my body” needs to be read in the context of a politics of differential consent. In the black and white video clip, Gaga is straddling R.Kelly who is standing. Gaga wears a black bikini, R.Kelly is fully clothed (including black leather pants and a kilt). The context of “Do what you want..” looks erotic, where the most obvious reading is Gaga giving permission to Kelly to enact his sexualized agency over her body-as-object.

Through the lens of white feminism, Gaga’s actions and phrasing can be read as a call for sexual agency. It almost slightly invokes a popularized bdsm narrative (think Fifty Shades) where Gaga is self-consciously occupying submission. It looks like Gaga is laying claim to sexual pleasure from the passive subject position that women are subscribed to in a way that subverts its imagined lack of agency.  At it’s most liberatory, the lyrics can be interpreted as a deliberate wink at the media’s representation of women’s bodies, her negotiation with the industry, and her perhaps less evidenced claim that “you can’t have my heart and you won’t have my mind”.

But we need to be able to read this as a racialized narrative. Recall bell hooks famous argument about the commodification of black bodies for white consumption, as bodies which as able to create a salient, edgy cultural capital for white people. Bell hooks points out that this ‘edgy’ representation is links to historical representations of black bodies as slaves. That is, black bodies are still made available as bodies-to-be consumed for white pleasure.

My reading of “Do what U Want” is that the extent to which a video where Gaga appears to be giving sexual permission to R. Kelly looks edgy and sexually liberating rests on  America’s social history of anti-miscegenation (which included anti-miscegenation laws in various states between 1913-1948) and white fears of Black masculinity as “hyper-masculinity”. The pervasive fear of Black men raping White women was invoked in the 1915 film Birth of a Nation and has been used to bolster white supremacy, and ongoing acts of institutional and direct violence against Black men. So at first glance, Gaga seems to be taking back white women’s sexual agency and decision-making from white men, and explicitly invoking the possibility of white women’s sexual desire for Black men. Yet this sexual desire is still transfigured through a rape story, that both the phrasing “Do what you want..” and the video positions Gaga and R. Kelly’s bodies as if his body were more powerful. The pleasure of the video then, for consumption by Gaga’s fan base, might be simultaneously in the consumption of R. Kelly’s body as a site of eroticized Black masculinity, and in the slippage between imagined desire/ sex between R.Kelly and Gaga as boundary crossing or rape fantasy.

When Gaga says “Do want you want…with my body” who is she speaking for? What kinds of permission-giving is she invoking? For white women, it certainly looks like increased sexual agency. But for women of color, non-white female bodies have repeatedly been invoked as a site of hypersexuality on one hand, and on the other have been subjected to ongoing bodily interventions by the state and it’s privileged players (forced sterilizations, genocide, slavery and so on). The consequences of “Do what you want..” are very different for white women and women of color.  What if we imagine the “you” invoked as a powerful you, as the narrative suggests, as a “you” we would rebel against?

Perhaps cynically, we can read Gaga’s collaboration with R.Kelly as a form of public permission-giving. It functions in celebrity-land as a means of signalling that despite the testimonies of the young Black women raped by him, that R.Kelly is okay and is respectable as an artist. It is effective because the testimonies of young Black women are worth so much less than the public consent granted by Gaga as a white celebrity.

Finally, as DeRogatis points out public speculation about sex with underage girl feeds into the subtext of R.Kelly’s songs and is part of what makes his lyrics that implicitly seem to refer underage sex more real, edgy and exciting. Gaga’s call to “Do what you want..to my body” reads like privileged sexual permission-giving that invokes other instances of (real and imagined) differential consent. Gaga can give consent to R.Kelly precisely because her ability to consent has not been impuned; she is white, over age, and economically powerful. Not so the young Black women that R.Kelly usually has non-consensual sex with, as per their testimonies. So Gaga can appear edgy and contentious precisely because of the sexual exploitation of young Black women, in context that further silences Black women’s experiences of sexual violence.

Pacific, Queer and Feminist All the Time? The Evolving Practise of What it Means to be Multiply-Situated.

The modus operandi of my blogging for the last year has largely been to add to the critical voices amassing around various Government and policy decisions in Aotearoa (and sometimes the UK and Canada), media speak, and corporate actions that have harmful consequences for those vulnerable to them. More broadly, I am critical of the globalised neoliberal agenda and global capitalism, processes of racism and imperialism, patriarchy, homophobia and transphobia. My viewpoint is multiply informed by being kai loma (mixed race) Fijian/ Tongan/ Pakeha, a second-generation Pacific migrant in Aotearoa, a woman who is also genderqueer, feminist and queer.

Starting afresh in 2014, I’ve been reflecting on what aspects of my blogging practise I want to retain and what I want to change.

I’ve definitely enjoyed being able to respond quickly to emerging issues in New Zealand’s media landscape, and bring a feminist or Pacific migrant angle that might otherwise be absent. I’ve enjoyed the dialogue that has emerged between myself and other Pacific women as a consequence of our online presence. I’ve enjoyed challenging myself to write and then post poetry about social issues, which has meant making some of my emotional world very public.

A challenging aspect of blogging critically in Aotearoa is that you don’t have the same invisibility that I imagine bloggers in other parts of the globe might have. I didn’t anticipate that because people are mostly driven to the blog by readers sharing links on facebook or twitter, it gets read by people who would never intentionally read the blog of a Pacific queer feminist.

As I began anticipating a more “mainstream” readership, I started to write more events-based, shorter blog-posts in an more journalistic style, as opposed to taking risks with my writing by being more poetic/ creative, more self-reflexive, or offering more complexity. The frustrating thing is this process has been good for my blog, but not so good for me as a writer. I’m not really taking myself out of my comfort zone. It reminds me – as Sara Ahmed has discussed in Queer Phenomenology – that social ease is a consequence of accrued privilege, and some of us don’t have lives where we are made to feel comfortable. The public nature of blogging in Aotearoa has meant that I haven’t wanted to feel vulnerable in a site where I could be judged by mainstream New Zealand.

 I’ve started to fear the limits of allegiance. That readers who are left-wing and supportive of posts about poverty might not be down with my feminism. Or that Pacific readers who might share posts about Pacific or migrant culture might not be okay with posts about sexuality. And really, this comes back to how I am multiply-situated ALL the time, and I don’t get the privilege of treating ethnicity, gender, sexuality and class as if they are one-dimensional because ALL the time my lens is as a Pacific queer woman.

So this is what I’ve decided. Pakeha middle-class straight men don’t need another writer/ media commentator pandering to them and the things that they may or may not be able to withstand. It’s not helpful for my writing to feel stuck in “explaining” mode. I need it to get more complex and messy and personal in order to be more critically challenging for me. I need to be able to explore issues that run a mile from mainstream but which are rich and thought-provoking in my own life. And for that I need to feel fed and sustained by a critical community of readers and writers who are non-white, queer, and feminist.

So I guess what I’m saying is things are going to change. This might not be the blog you are looking for, and frankly, I’m okay with that. If you feel like sticking around, you can expect more poetry, more complexity, and lots more queerness. Imagine that evening has fallen and I’ve lit a few candles. There are less people but we can pull our seats closer. Everything is in shadow and more beautiful.

 

Yeah, Nah: On Satire, Survival and Why Good Allies Sometimes get it Wrong.

So social media is abuzz with Metro’s unfunny joke, and their explanation that it was satire aimed at drawing attention to the unjust way women and girls are blamed and shamed for rape, see: http://metromag.co.nz/editors-blog/on-satire-and-rape/#comment-1393.

So we asked, in our regular 20 Questions column: “After the Roast Busters saga, should there be a new criminal charge: ‘Drunk in charge of a vagina?’”

 I believe Simon about the intent. I found the previous editorial on rape culture perceptive and interesting (apart from the Taliban line, but that’s a whole different issue). In social justice speak, I definitely see Simon Wilson and Metro as an ally. I get that the intention was to satirize the conservative voices of those that victim-blame.

Here’s a deconstruction what left me uncomfortable. As a person with a vagina.

1. The humor relies on the shock factor of the word “vagina”. Most humor relies in someway on the unexpected, or an unusual juxtaposition. The phrasing “Drunk in charge of..” cues a vehicle, and the funny bit is vagina. Except, you now, vaginas aren’t so funny if you have one, because you are used to it being a part of your body. And you are used to misogynist culture where vaginas are seen as funny. And you know how funny vagina sounds to some people is probably because vaginas are often represented as being a bit gross.

2. You are used to the way mainstream popular culture has linked cars and women’s bodies, which are both represented as play things for men.

3. You notice “Drunk in charge of a vagina” has a disembodied woman in it. A woman who is just a vagina. You are tired of just being a vagina.

4. You know the joke is partially at police culture. You have heard the stupid stuff the police here and elsewhere have said that perpetuates victim-blaming. But it sticks in your throat when you have experienced it first-hand.

5. And if like me, you are actually a rape survivor, you might imagine someone else chuckling “Ha! Drunk in charge of a vagina. Good one, mate.” But the line seems to reverberate in your body. It echoes with the other things people say about rape, and the things that have been said to you. When am I going to get a sense of humor about rape? Yeah, probably not in this lifetime. Not when I live with the effects of trauma in my daily every day life.

What this issue highlights for me is the gap between being an ally, and being a woman or rape survivor on the receiving end of rape culture. Metro was well-intentioned, definitely not one of the bad guys. But the joke was still blinkered by the routine experience of male privilege, that is – men’s experience often stands in for what is considered “normal” or universal, and women’s experience is bracketed. He just didn’t anticipate that others might experience the joke differently, or have valid reasons for finding it uncomfortable.

It feels really hard to criticize the good guys, which is partially what prompted me to write this. Because rape culture is perpetuated by everyday sexism, and lot of it is not intentional or malicious. It’s just underpinned by gendered discourses that have different effects on men’s and women’s lives. We need to get more comfortable talking about how good folk do stupid stuff. And allies need to start asking how they can be good allies.