In a strange land

Via the Hoydens, I found this list of the 106 books most often sitting unread in people’s bookshelves, to make them look smart. The idea is that you bold the ones you have read, underline the ones you read at school, italicise the ones you started but didn’t finish.

Hmmm…. underlining is too complicated, so I’m going with bold for the ones I’ve read, whether it was at school or elsewhere (I’ve mostly reread the books I read at school and university anyway), and italics for the ones I started, but then thought, life’s too short for bad, boring or dense books! Or books with impenetrable prose. I’ve put my comments in italics too.

The list is over the break.
Keep reading →

On Mother’s Day, we had a family outing to what is regarded as one of the best, if not the best, playgrounds in Adelaide. I had told the girls that we were having a picnic lunch, with family friends, at a boring playground; I’m a firm believer in not building up children’s expectations, especially when they judge all playgrounds by comparison to the magificent Kowhai Park in Wanganui. So they were looking forward to the picnic, but anticipating just a swing or two, and maybe some slides, in the usual boring plastic constructo-mazes that seem to be standard playground fare these days (see generic example above right).

But as it turns out, the St Kilda playground really is marvellous fun. And dangerous. It’s the sort of playground that wouldn’t get built now, for fear of safety inspectors and accident liabilities and all that jazz. I can’t find when it was built, but it looks and feels quite old - wooden handrails have been worn smooth, and the edges of railway sleeper steps are cracking.

We arrived just on lunchtime, so we told the girls that they could play on one set of equipment, and then we would have lunch, and get fueled up for some serious after lunch play. So, they started out on these slides.

Huge. Long. Fast. Even faster if you sit on a towel or some polypropylene or even some cardboard. Even even faster faster if you are aged say, fortyish, and you weigh a little more than your daughters.

After lunch the serious play began. For the grown-ups, that is. We started on the wavy slide, which the girls enjoyed too. But the real thrill was the twisty round and round slide, that goes straight down, in a twisty sort of way, inside a hill. The entrance to the twisty round and round slide is right at the top of the hill, about twenty metres high, I think (I have no eye for heights). It’s the same hill that the wavy slide goes down from. There is a great hole straight down inside the hill, covered over with a grill, and the only way down is by slide. At the bottom, there is a tunnel to get out. There are two slides, one coiled around the outer wall of the hold, and one twisted tight in the centre. You sit at the top, and slide, and go round and round and round in a mad whirl to the bottom, then stagger out of the tunnel, shouting with laughter, and keen to do it all again.

I can personally attest that both twisty slides are enormous fun. The outer slide has about three large complete circlings around the hole on the way down. You swoop and swoop and swoop down, feeling as though you are flying. Fantastic. And the inner slide is even better: three tight circles around the very centre of the hole. You go tremendously fast, and get up dizzily at the end. You get the best ride if you can position your body at about a 45 degree angle, so that you whizz down faster than ever. I had most fun of all when our friend, also a woman of a certain age, went down one slide while I went down the other, both of us shrieking with delight, and giggling madly as we got off.

The children enjoyed the slides too.

Then there was the pirate ship. No slides this time, but it is perched right on the edge of the sea. The tide was out when we were there, but it must look very real when the water is up near it. As it was, it looked for all the world as though it really had been wrecked there. It comes complete with a brig, ‘though not a very effective one. My daughters could all get out through the bars, and even Mr Strange Land and I, and our friends, could manage to get out through the gap by the bent bar.

To top it off, two long and very fast flying foxes. The girls started out on the shorter one, but they graduated to the longer and faster one. Alas, I didn’t get a turn - I was busy catching children at the end, and taking the seat back up for the next child. By the time we had worked our way through our children, there was a long queue of other children there too, and it just didn’t seem right to push in ahead of them all, even though I was running back with the seat.

And then our friends’ pre-school daughter got lost. We had a panic stricken search for about five minutes before we found her. She had wandered off to the toddler area, in part because she has been there before and knew where to go, in part because she was asserting her independence, as children do. It was frightening, especially for our friends. So we ended up in the toddler area, which alas, is not nearly as much fun as the rest of the playground; it’s a plastic constructo-maze.

So how does it compare to the best playground in the world? Very well indeed, and our girls are very keen to go back sometime. Visually, it’s bare and bleak; it doesn’t have the soft greeness of Kowhai Park, but then again, Kowhai Park is often unusable because of the rain that creates the soft greeness in the first place. It’s not so well suited for pre-school children, although the little ones are well catered for, but I suspect that the play equipment is much more appealing for 11 and 12 year-olds, and even early teens. Kowhai Park might be just a little babyish for them. The constructions are fantastically proportioned - there’s no skimping on making St Kilda’s playground a place that gives children (and adults) a real thrill. There are the usual swings and see-saws (or teeter-totters), but they are rather dull - none of the mad joy of Kowhai Park’s octopus and whale and nursery tale constructions. Nevertheless, it’s worth visiting, and even worth making a special trip to get there (it’s about 30km from our home). We will be going again - I want a turn on the flying fox.

It’s Mother’s Day down under in New Zealand and Australia (and elsewhere?). We don’t go in for Father’s Day and Mother’s Day much around here, or more precisely, as I wrote last antipodean Father’s Day, we don’t go in for the crass commercialisation that surrounds them. Coffee and breakfast in bed, and home made cards from the girls.

But the girls are getting rather more sophisticated about it. They organised their roles last night. Mr Strange Land would assist them by doing the actual cooking, the elder Miss Six would be the assistant chef, the younger Miss Six would be the waiter, and Miss Nine would make the coffee.

So first thing this morning, the younger Miss Six came in with a ‘napkin’ draped over her arm (actually a small yellow batik cloth) and glasses of juice for both of us. She came in very solemnly and handed the glasses to us carefully, but then skipped out of the room. Miss Nine followed a few minutes later with coffee. And then they all gave me the cards and books they had made.

Miss Nine made a lovely circular card. There are two circles of card, joined together with a pin at the centre. The upper card turns around, and a slot in it reveals words underneath on the lower card. The note on the upper card says, “Dear Mum, a brumby forgets her mother after she leaves. But I’ll always think of you as my mother. You are…” And there follows a list of adjectives, each shown one by one in the slot. “Impressive, wonderful, kind, fun, amazing, funny, nice, unique, pretty, marvellous, delightful, enchanting, enjoyable, lovable, pleasant, attractive, reassuring, sympathetic, encouraging, exciting.”

The younger girls made books at school, titled, “My Mum”. Each page has standard text, with space for the children to write in their own words.

My mother wears many hats in my family (accompanied by what I assume are pictures of me, with hats perched all over my head, arms, shoulders, wherever they could squeeze one in.)

My mother is a chef. I love it when she makes me…. cooked pig, it is good / lamd pie.

And so on. My favourite one:

My mother is a cleaner. When she sees my room she says it is good today / wot a pig sty.

The Miss Nine played a piece on the piano that she had composed especially for me. Mr Strange Land made poached eggs on toast, and the assistant chef found a flower in the garden to go on the tray.

It has been a very satisfactory Mother’s Day. I’m still in my pjs, ‘though sooner or later I will get out of bed, and we’re heading out for a picnic with friends at what is said to be the best playground in Adelaide, on what is a beautiful autumn day. We have not told our girls about its reputation, because their previous experience at what I think is the best playground in the world might result in disappointment.

Later on, I will call my own lovely mother, and think again about the connection from my beautiful girls to me to her, to her own mother and foremothers before her. That, for me, is the best way to mark Mother’s Day.

Cross posted on The Hand Mirror

More Iris Marion Young, because of this.

What makes violence a face of oppression is less the particular acts themselves, though these are often utterly horrible, than the social context surrounding them, which makes them possible and even acceptable. What makes violence a phenomenon of social injustice, and not mererly an individual moral wrong, is its systemic character, its existence as a social practice.

Violence is systemic because it is directed at members of a group simply because they are members of that group. Any woman, for example, has a reason to fear rape. Regardless of what a Black man has done to escape the oppressions of marginality or powerlessness, he lives knowing he is subject to attack or harrassment. The oppression of violence consists not only in direct victimization, but in the daily knowledge shared by all members of oppressed groups that they are liable to violation, solely on account of their group identity. Just living under such a threat of attack on oneself or family or friends deprives the oppressed of freedom and dignity, and needlessly expends their energy.

Violence is a social practice. It is a social given that everyone knows happens and will happen again. It is always at the horizon of social imagination, even for those who do not perpetrate it. According to the prevailing social logic, some circumstances make such violence more “called for” than others. The idea of rape will occur to many men who pick up a hitchhiking woman; the idea of hounding or teasing a gay man on their dorm floor will occur to many straight male college students. Often several persons inflict the violence together, especially in all-male groupings. Sometimes violators set out looking for people to beat up, rape or taunt. This rule-bound, social, and often premeditated character makes violence against groups a social practice.

Group violence approaches legitimacy, moreover, in the sense that it is tolerated. Often third parties find it unsurprising because it happens frequently and lies as a constant possibility at the horizon of the social imagination. Even when they are caught, those who perpetrate acts of group-directed violence of harrassment often receive light or no punishment. To that extent society renders their acts acceptable.

Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 1990

As promised (scroll through to the end), the first report from Narnia. I started reading the Narnia books to my three girls a couple of weeks ago. I’m hoping to get through to the end of Prince Caspian before the film is released; not only do I want them to know the story first, or it could be a bit too much for the Misses Six, but I want them to regard the book as the ‘true’ story, and the film as an interpretation.

We read The Magician’s Nephew without a single comment about the metaphysics of possible worlds, which I found terribly disappointing. The girls accepted the story, lock, stock, and rings - no questions asked. This is probably a good thing; they had no sense that Aslan ought to be identified with the god of the Christians. And having brought them up with a creation story that begins with the big bang, goes through the formation of the galaxy and the solar system, and then proceeds through evolution, all courtesy of Mr Strange Land, my guess is that they have no propensity to buy into myth-making anyway.

They find The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe much more engaging. No doubt they all think they are Lucy. And this evening, just after we reached the point where all the children leapt into the Wardrobe to avoid Mrs Macready, the younger Miss Six found a perfect way to torment the elder Miss Six.

We had read the nightly chapter, and I shooed them all off to take out their hair ties, and get into bed. A few minutes later, I followed them, to sing the nightly lullaby and tuck them in. (Alas, Miss Nine no longer wants me to sing to her, but she still likes me to come by, and as a matter of ritual, instruct her not to read too late.)

As I went into the Miss Sixes’ bedroom, I found the younger Miss Six scrabbling around in the wardrobe, pushing her way past the dresses and shoes, and obviously hoping, just hoping. She scrambled out, and hopped into bed. “Hoping to get into Narnia, were you?” I asked her.

“Oh no,” she replied. “I was there.”

“No you weren’t,” half-scoffed, half-yearned the elder Miss Six.

“I was too,” the younger one replied. And she continued to insist that she had been there, and it had only seemed like a moment in our world, but she had been there for hours and hours. The elder Miss Six was quite put out. On the one hand, she knew that the younger Miss Six couldn’t possibly have been here; on the other, she would like to believe it was possible; on the gripping hand, why on earth should the younger Miss Six go when she hadn’t! The elder Miss Six has a very finely attuned sense of justice, when it comes to her entitlements.

I think I will have to find a poster map of Narnia, and pin it to the back wall of their wardrobe. Or two copies; I think Miss Nine will want one too.

Cross posted on The Hand Mirror

Angry Black Woman has called a Carnival of Allies, in response to the astounding dust-up in the feminist blogosphere in recent weeks.

I have been thinking about it, wondering what to write, reluctant to write something just for the sake of it, when so many people across the blogosophere are writing wonderful posts. But last night and this morning, a couple of things occurred to me, that I hope will add to the discussion.

So, where did you learn your feminism? It’s a common question in feminist circles, and indeed, I have answered it myself.

But we can’t ask the same question about racism. “So, where did you learn your racism?” is not a question asked in polite circles, or in any circle that I know of. When I was thinking about this, I realised that we have no word for the struggle against racism. Feminism is the response to sexism and misogyny, but what is the name for the response to racism? I can’t think of one.

Still, it makes for an interesting question. Where did I learn my racism?

Everywhere, of course. In the institutions of society which put white people at the top. In the way that the ‘baddies’ in movies are more likely to be black or brown. In the children’s story books where all the characters are white. That’s changing now, but when I was growing up, the only non-white person in a story book was Little Black Sambo. In the almost total lack of brown people around me. We all knew who the Maori kids at school were, because they were the unusual ones, the different, the other. In the pronunciation of Te Reo, Maori language, where it was thought to be just fine to say, “Mar-ree” with a flat “a” instead of “Ma-o-ree” with a rounded sound, and a roll on the “r”. In the way that the hard physical jobs, the ‘dirty’ jobs, were done by Maori. The dust collectors and the wharfies and the cleaners were predominantly Maori. In the unspoken acceptance that white people were entitled to the land, because Maori didn’t know how to farm properly anyway. In naming the magnificent volcano that towers over the province where I was born and where I grew up, “Egmont”, the name that Captain Cook gave it, not “Taranaki”, the name it had borne for hundreds of years before Cook came along. That’s the world I grew up in, and it’s where I learned my racism. And I learned it despite the best efforts of my parents.

I can also recall my first click moment with racism, the first time I realised that something was wrong. I went to convent schools, and for the most part, the staff there did their best, as loving followers of Christ, to be non-racist. But there was the day when my class teacher told us about the brown eyes / blue eyes experiment. She was trying to explain to us why racism was wrong, why it was unfair to treat people differently based on their skin colour. So far, so good. Simplistic of course, but at least a start, and not a bad one, back in 1977. Then she stood in front of the class and said, “I’m not racist. I treat every girl in this class the same. I couldn’t even tell you who the Maori girls in this class are.”

Let’s leave aside whether or not she was lying - I pretty damned sure that she knew very well who the Maori girls were. I know that my reaction was to be puzzled. “But if she doesn’t know who the Maori girls are, then that means she doesn’t even see them. She’s not understanding who they really are. She’s treating them the way she wants to treat them, not the way they want to be treated.”

As an eleven year old, I didn’t have the capacity, or the courage, to challenge her on this. (I can recall one other occasion when I didn’t have the courage to challenge her, when she asserted to the class that evolution was wrong, and really the Bible was right. That was equally puzzling to me, when my brothers and I had spent hours poring over a wonderful book on the origins of life that my parents had bought for us.) However, even back then, it was clear to me that being not-racist was not a matter of treating people with black and brown skins as though they were white people in disguise.

Women get feminism from the inside. We experience the sexism, the misogyny, the subtle and not-so-subtle putdowns, the on-going fear of violence, being weaker in a society where being stronger is privileged, and so we learn to be feminist from the inside. But I can’t access any understanding of racism from the inside, because I am white. To be sure, I can feel what it is like to be different, to be stared at and marked out as a stranger, but only when I choose to travel to places where brown skins, not white skins, are the norm. And even there, my white skin is a passport to acceptance and privilege.

So when it comes to understanding racism, to fighting it, I think that like my teacher, sometimes as a white woman I just don’t get it. I don’t see it, I don’t feel it, and I certainly don’t experience it, from the inside.

But what’s the practical thing to do? I can sit here and waffle on about racism all I like, but it doesn’t give me a way of going ahead from here. However one thing I have been thinking about is what feminist theologian Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza calls a “feminist hermeneutics of suspicion”. She approaches all scripture with suspicion, asking always what has been left out, what is hidden by androcentric language, what unconscious biases are there.

The contributions of our early Christian foresisters to early Christian faith, community, and mission can only become historically visible when we are willing to abandon our outdated androcentric models of historical reconstruction. By highlighting the often unconscious bias of established so-called objective scholarship as well as the obfuscating functions of androcentric language of biblical sources, a hermeneutics of suspicion is able to recover glimpses of the discipleship of equals in the beginnings of Christianity as a heritage and vision for all of us.

Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, “Missionaries, Apostles, Co-workers: Romans 16 and the Reconstruction of Women’s Early Christian History”, in Ann Loades (ed), Feminist Theology: A Reader, SPCK: London (1990)

I have long since abandoned Christianity as a bad job, metaphysically, epistemologically, and morally. But I have long remembered this “hermeneutics of suspicion”, and applied it in all sorts of situations, trying to think about what has not been said, what has been ignored, what is informed by bias and prejudice. Now I think it is time to apply that hermeneutics of suspicion to myself and in particular, to my own participation in racism. I’m not about to flagellate myself over it; I didn’t create the racism that permeates our society. But I can refuse to participate further in it, and the first step to doing that will be to recognise it, even in myself.

So, where did you learn your racism?

It’s budget season in the great southern land (and no, that wouldn’t be New Zealand, not yet). The Australian Federal government is due to deliver its budget next Tuesday, and in line with recent fashion (no surprises for the markets, and a healthy dose of keeping the approval ratings high for as long as possible), it is doling out the budget announcements now, one at a time. Or leaking them strategically. Whatever. The effect is the same.

Over the last couple of days the Rudd government has made some announcements about childcare, seemingly with the aim of getting more women into work. Like other Western liberal democracies, they have noticed that there is a shortage of workers, and at the same time, there is a whole pool of potential workers, doing nothing except sitting around at home looking after children. If only those people would get out and do real work, we could solve a couple of problems at once. Ordinary families would have more money in hand, to meet rising household expenditure, and businesses would at last be able to get the employees they need.

Except there’s one huge fly in the ointment. (Or maybe one of those flocks of pesky little Australian flies which will hover around you and go with you wherever you go, like peculiar ornaments.) As it turns out, lots of women (and some men) choose not to go back into paid employment because by the time they have paid for childcare and taxes, then there is nothing left in their pockets. They end up working for virtually nothing.

The clever Treasury boffins in Australia have been working away on this problem (and believe me, all sarcasm aside, those people are indeed very smart and able), and they have come up with a critical point. For most women, there is very little point in increasing their days of work from two days a week to three days a week. The net gain is just seven dollars for the extra day of work.

So they have put their thinking caps on, and come up with a suite of measures that should help - increasing personal tax thresholds, increasing the low income tax offset, and raising the childcare tax rebate. The net effect of these? A mum who takes on that third day of work will now take home $23.

Treasury modelling obtained by The Sun-Herald shows a middle-income mum with two children in child care who moves from two to three days’ work a week gains just $7 for the extra effort. From July 1, she will keep more than triple that, with a take-home gain of $23.

Big sum, huh. That is of course, an after tax figure, so let’s gross it up to a possible pre-tax figure. If you work only three days a week, then even if you are in a high-powered job, chances are you will be in one of the lower tax brackets. So, to be on the safe side, I’m going to assume an average tax rate of 30% across that $23 (after tax). That means that the pre-tax income would be about $33, or for a 7.5 hour day, $4.40 per hour.

If the numbers are crunched another way, then a woman who takes on another three days work will take home $121, instead of $63. Converting that into pre-tax terms, using a 30% tax rate, and assuming 7.5 hours per day, I get a pay rate of $7.68 per hour.

How tempting is that? Would you really take on extra day’s work just for the sake of $4.40 per hour? Or an extra three days for $7.68?

No matter how you juggle the figures, and juggle household budgets, it turns out that for many mothers, working in paid employment just isn’t worth it. The marginal gain to a family’s budget simply doesn’t outweigh the intangible cost of working.

And that’s something that the Treasury boffins haven’t taken into account. Indeed, they can’t. Our ways of measuring gain and loss simply don’t accommodate non-monetary costs like lack of time with children, tired children who are in daycare for 8.5 hours a day (to allow 30 minutes commuting time each way for parents), stress managing the daily routines, stress coping with sick children, stress getting to and from work and childcare centres and the rest. Add to that increased household expenditure, for say, someone to clean the house, or for more pre-prepared or bought-in meals, because when both parents are working, there’s simply no time during the day to do all the work that’s required to keep a household ticking over. Alternatively, parents who have spent the week in paid employment spend their weekends doing housework, cooking meals, getting the supermarket shopping done, and get to spend very little time with their children, or indeed, very little time resting. For them, on Monday morning it’s back to work in order to rest.

From a policy point of view, none of this matters if having both parents in paid employment is simply a matter of people’s personal choices. But if the government and their advisors think that they will be able to tempt women into work, and thus solve some of Australia’s workforce woes, by the grand sum of $7.68 per hour (before tax), then may I suggest, respectfully, that they spend their time talking to the Mad Hatter. It’s likely to be just as effective as crunching more and more numbers. Or maybe they could talk to some real life parents, and try to find out what it is that would really make a difference.

So nice to know that dinosaurs live here in Australia too, as well as back in New Zealand, ‘though I always suspected that would be the case. It’s when they get a public platform to spread the dinosaur word that I feel a little dismayed.

Today’s dinosaur offering? A retiring family court judge opining that in some cases, where one partner has made a special contribution (read: made lots of money) to a marriage, then if the marriage ends in divorce, the person who made the special contribution lots of money should get a greater share than the support partner.

THE legal notion that sports stars, artists and professionals with exceptional talent deserve better than a 50-50 split in divorce settlements is being watered down under pressure from the equal rights lobby, a top judge has warned.

Speaking before his retirement yesterday from the Family Court, judge Paul Guest said failing to take into account a husband or wife’s exceptional talent or skills in divorce settlements risked the “dumbing down of family law”.

Nice that he gives us the equal opportunity line, implying that it’s just as likely that it will be the wife who has the exceptional talent, but really, we all know just how gender differentiated the rewards for exceptional talent are likely to be.

Despite trying the “equal opportunity to be exceptionally rewarded for being born lucky” line, the two examples Justice Guest gives us are both male. (Do you think there might be something in that, m’lud.)

The tennis player:

But there comes a time when you have to look at other areas. If say, Pete Sampras’s divorce was coming through, is his wife entitled to half or did he make a special contribution?

And the geologist:

In that judgment, Justice Guest and another judge replaced the 65:35 division of a $36.7million asset pool with a decision to award 72.5:27.5 in favour of the husband, a geologist, who amassed considerable wealth through a series of business transactions.

The wife sought leave to appeal to the High Court, but her bid was dismissed.

Justice Guest told The Weekend Australian this week the husband “found a goldmine with his brains, his geological genius. He found the site. He put together the venture despite knockbacks. He got the finance. And he made a mine”.

“You’ve got to stand up for the doer, the one who tries, the person in the arena,” he said.

Well, gee, Mr Judge - did it ever occur to you that Pete Sampras’ chosen career, or indeed any sportsman’s chosen career, positively precludes his partner from doing anything other than tagging along behind. To be sure Mr Sampras has worked hard, trained daily, overcome the fear of failure, on a international stage, to become a top entertainer ( or sportsman, if you like, but really, they are just modern day gladiators, there to thrill the crowd). He was born with real talent, and he has applied the incredible effort needed to parlay that talent into a successful career. But the very nature of his job means that he must require any partner to allow his career to be the priority. His life-partner becomes very much the equal partner in his career, putting his career and his ambitions before her own, and as such, she should be entitled to an equal share of the rewards. That’s what partnership means.

As for the geologist, perhaps said geologist might never have been able to create the goldmine if he had not been able to rely on his wife to run the house, look after the children, do the washing, pay the bills, tuck the children into bed at night and reassure them that daddy really does love them but he just has to work late tonight / go on a business trip / make some important phonecalls / whatever and generally keep everything hanging together so that the geologist actually had the opportunity to make the mine. Moreover it’s certain that the wife would have shared in the financial disaster had the mine not eventuated; why then should she not share in the gains that came about through financial success.

Judge Guest takes refuge in the law. The 1975 Family Law Act (in Australia) says that:

In considering what order (if any) should be made under this section in property settlement proceedings, the court shall take into account:

(a) the financial contribution made directly or indirectly by or on behalf of a party to the marriage or a child of the marriage to the acquisition, conservation or improvement of any of the property of the parties to the marriage or either of them, or otherwise in relation to any of that last‑mentioned property, whether or not that last‑mentioned property has, since the making of the contribution, ceased to be the property of the parties to the marriage or either of them; and

(b) the contribution (other than a financial contribution) made directly or indirectly by or on behalf of a party to the marriage or a child of the marriage to the acquisition, conservation or improvement of any of the property of the parties to the marriage or either of them, or otherwise in relation to any of that last‑mentioned property, whether or not that last‑mentioned property has, since the making of the contribution, ceased to be the property of the parties to the marriage or either of them; and

(c) the contribution made by a party to the marriage to the welfare of the family constituted by the parties to the marriage and any children of the marriage, including any contribution made in the capacity of homemaker or parent; and

(d) the effect of any proposed order upon the earning capacity of either party to the marriage; and [some other stuff]

In English, what that means is that financial and non-financial contributions to a marriage shall be considered on their merits, whatever those are. And for Judge Guest, that means ’special talent’. It turns out that he has published a paper arguing that where one person has more natural talent than the other, then that person should get more on divorce. (PDF downloadable here - 56k) Mere money doesn’t amount to anything special, but natural skills and talent do. So on divorce, those born lucky get to stay lucky, while those who worked hard, in the background, to ensure that the lucky could develop their talent, don’t.

I suppose that it’s reasonable to point out that Judge Guest is, properly, reading and applying the law. That’s what judges are supposed to do, ‘though infamously, judges can make the law work to reflect their own views. However, by and large, if we want judges to start making different sorts of judgements, then we need to change the law. It seems to me that there is a case here for changing the law. When you invite someone to share your life, you invite them warts and all, and more importantly, you offer yourself, special talents and all. If it so happens that you earn a whacking great amount of money through your special talents, then that is part of what you bring to the marriage. And upon its dissolution, that’s what gets shared out. Of course, you get to keep your special talent - no one can take that off you. But in the period of your life when you were in a marriage, then whatever you earned through that special talent is part of the marriage. All the more so, if you could only deploy that special talent because your spouse supported you.

Part 3 of Who’s Counting

Part 1 is posted here, and Part 2 is here.

Marilyn Waring

Cross-posted on The Hand Mirror

After all the struggling and difficult arguing and talking and trying to understand each other, and sometimes trying not to understand each other, that has been going on in the feminist blogosphere of late, it’s hard not to feel dispirited, to wonder where to go next.

But here’s a post from Sudy, in which she talks about a word that was coined a few years ago by feminist theologian, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, “kyriarchy“.

a neologism coined by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza and derived from the Greek words for “lord” or “master” (kyrios) and “to rule or dominate” (archein) which seeks to redefine the analytic category of patriarchy in terms of multiplicative intersecting structures of domination…Kyriarchy is best theorized as a complex pyramidal system of intersecting multiplicative social structures of superordination and subordination, of ruling and oppression.

Sudy has an excellent analysis of the word, and why it might be a much more useful concept to use than “patriarchy”.

I am feeling a little out of sorts, as is Mr Strange Land, as though something is not quite right in our world.

It’s very obvious why we are feeling this way. Our elder daughter is away, on school camp. Out of our sight, out of our control, out of our capacity to care for her, although very much not out of our minds. It’s not that we want to watch over her every moment, control her all the time, care for her for ever. As all good parents do, we want her to become an independent adult. But in the meantime, she is just nine years old, and we cherish her, and we are worried about her, because we do not know for sure that she is safe, and happy.

All part of the process of letting go, of giving her baby steps towards maturity, so that when she decides to leave home, she will be ready for it. She went off yesterday morning all bright eyed and bushy tailed, and no doubt when she gets home tomorrow evening, she will be exhausted, tired from having talked all night to the friends she is sharing a bunk room with, and wearied from the constant adjustment to dwelling with other people, instead simply settling into the pleasant routines of home. And because she is not in our care, we feel that she is at risk. But how could we have possibly have refused to let her go? She wanted to go, and when we are being rational, we know that it is a good thing for her to be away on this camp.

She has of course, been away from home before, staying overnight with friends, or having a few days holiday with grandparents and uncles and aunties. It’s a little different this time; it’s the first time she has been away overnight (in this case, over two nights) since we arrived in Australia at the start of the year. Perhaps that’s why I feel just a little more worried about her this time around.

We will be so glad when she comes home tomorrow, and our world is back to rights.

Update: She’s back, safe and sound, as I knew she would be, in my rational moments. She had a great time, but she was oh so tired. We had pikelets and sammies for afternoon tea - she needed feeding up because she didn’t like the skanky pizza that had been on offer for lunch that day - but she took herself off for a pre-dinner nap at about 6pm, woke up briefly at 10pm to say hello to her father, tell him about her triumph in the talent quest, and went back to sleep until 7am this morning, when she got up and made us coffee in bed.

Cross-posted at The Hand Mirror

I have been a bit slow on the posting front recently, because I have been trying to get my head around a Flying-spaghetti-monster-Almighty stoush in the feminist blogosphere. That’s a bit of an exaggeration; it’s mostly to do with US feminism, but US feminism does dominate world wide English speaking feminism, and more than that, the problems thrown into stark relief by the incredible dust-up are not just American problems. It’s a complicated story, and I don’t think that I can tell it well, nor do I even want to tell it. But as far as I can tell, it hasn’t made its way into the wider blogosphere, much, except on some leftie blogs - see for example, this thread at Larvatus Prodeo. So I want to bring this to the attention of my New Zealand e-friends and readers.

Where to start? Probably with a very general statement, that the stoush was, very roughly, between American women-of-colour (WoC) feminists, and American white feminists. Even the use of that term, WoC, tells you that this is a US-centric dispute; the term is not much in use in the parts where I live (that would be in Australia and New Zealand). And there’s history here. There have been disputes between American white feminists and American WoC feminists before, and disputes in the blogosphere. I’m not so aware of the previous history in the blogosphere; I read just a very few NZ-based blogs until about 18 months ago, and I only started blogging myself about nine months ago, so I know nothing myself of these old disputes, but I can see that the rumbles go on, and on, and on.

The basic cause of conflict lies in the extent to which feminism is a white, middle-class movement. Very roughly, white women are inclined to see feminism and gender issues as the base issues, and they subsume all other issues to them; WoC (correctly) point out that racism is one hell of an issue too, and the intersection of racism and gender is particularly vexed. Moreover, the way that white women approach feminism is itself racist.

No one (or at least, no one I know) likes being called racist. It’s a charge we reject, and for the most part, if someone calls us racist, our instinct is to get defensive, and to defend our behaviour, rather than to stop and examine what we have been saying and doing. So I’m guessing that if you are a white woman or a white man reading this, then you will be inclined to stop listening around about now. But please don’t.

Given this account of the types of discussions there have been in the past, you can imagine that the US feminist blogosphere was well-primed for a conflagration. So what went down?

Three things.

(1) Amanda Marcotte, a prominent feminist blogger, posted material on the intersection of feminism and immigration. It looked like her own work, but Brownfemipower recognised her own ideas in Amanda Marcotte’s posts. However Amanda Marcotte had not linked to Brownfemipower, nor given any recognition to her. So she seemed to have appropriated Brownfemipower’s ideas, and presented them as her own. Not plagiarism, exactly, but at least using someone else’s ideas without acknowledgment. Some people defended Amanda Marcotte, some people supported Brownfemipower, and other WoC bloggers chimed in. (I haven’t done a detailed textual analysis of Marcotte’s work and BFP’s work, but it does seem to me that Marcotte must have been at least influenced by BFP’s ideas. So, educated as I am in the academic tradition, it does seem to me that Marcotte ought at least to have acknowledged her sources, even if she didn’t quote them exactly.)

(2) Black Amazon put a single comment in a post, saying “Fuck Seal Press.” (I would link to the particular post and the follow-up comments, but Black Amazon has taken her blog private - see below - and although I suppose I could hunt around and find a cached copy, that seems to be a bit damned rude just now.) Seal Press is a feminist press, but they had been called on racism in the past. The Seal Press editors visited Black Amazon’s blog, and said something to the effect of, “We get that you engage through negative discourse” (I forget the exact words, but it was something to that effect), and then invited WoC to tell them what they should be doing better. (Umm… like it’s good to tell people that they are negative. And on top of that, why should people who are already subjected to racism have to turn around and educate people who are being racist. Surely it’s up to the people who are acknowledging that they may have gotten it wrong to do the hard yards of finding out how to fix the problem.)

So things were rumbling along under the strength of these two issues. BFP took down her blog and gave up blogging altogether (farewell post), and other WoC were at least unhappy, and in some cases renouncing feminism. The overall point was that a white feminist was appropriating ideas from WoC, WoC were being told they were negative, and then they were being asked to fix the mess up. In general, white feminists promised to try to do better.

Links for all of this - far too many to post! But the F-Word (UK feminist blog) has a post with helpful links, as does Feministe.

In the midst of all this, Amanda Marcotte published a book, with Seal Press. Some of the other leading feminist blogs put up posts advertising her book, and publicising her book-reading appearances. So despite all the furore, they still supported her (despite having earlier promised to try to do better). Understandably, WoC were upset by this. I guess it looked to them that white feminists, despite having read all their blog posts and comments, and despite having promised to try to do better, nevertheless turned around and supported the very person who had been at the centre of the storm.

Then (3). Amanda Marcotte’s book came out, complete with these images.

(Images lifted from Feministe, who lifted them from Dear white feminists: quit fucking up.)

Faaaarrrrrccccckkkkkk!!!!

I find these images incredibly racist. “Good white woman” will defeat “wicked black / brown / other people”.

Amanda Marcotte apologised, Seal Press apologised, Black Amazon quit blogging, one of the Feministe bloggers has quit blogging, and everywhere, or at least, everywhere in the US feminist blogosphere, people are upset and angry and unhappy. It’s a mess.

Which is why I haven’t been posting. I just can’t get my head around all this. Maybe that’s because identity politics doesn’t play out in the same way in New Zealand as it does in the US. The whole topic seems like something “over there” to me. Except that thinking that the problem is “over there” would be an easy way to duck thinking about it altogether.

So, I have been thinking long and hard about white privilege, from which I benefit. Here’s the original essay about white privilege. It’s something that I think is worth reading, and re-reading, and re-reading, to remind myself about the extent to which being born white means being born privileged.

As for the feminist blogosphere in New Zealand - well, there aren’t too many of us explicitly claiming feminism. There’s those of us blogging at The Hand Mirror, and THM has a list of other NZ women blogging too, but not all of these explicitly claim feminism. Of course, I’m not in New Zealand anymore, ‘tho for the time being, my heart is still there. (You can take the woman out of New Zealand, but…) I think it’s telling that I can’t explicitly identify any Maori women blogging, although I know that Maia at least has been explicit in her condemnation of the racism on display in the police raids on Ruatoki last year. I would like to think that we would do better on thinking about the intersection of race and gender, if only because our race and gender history is different from the history in the US, but that may just be a forlorn hope.

Some final words on this, from a WoC in the US, and a South Asian woman in Australia.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the wonderful kitchen garden project that Stephanie Alexander initiated in an inner-city Melbourne school, and of my resolve to start gardening at home with my daughters. I have been working hard, clearing the irises out of the space the girls and I intend to use for their gardens, and replanting them elsewhere. They surived the extraordinary summer heat here in Adelaide extraordinarily well, so they are definitely on my list of acceptable plants to use. I still have a little way to go on clearing and replanting, but Anzac Day provided me with the perfect excuse to make real progress on my own herb garden.

This is the space I started with - a good structure, but old, old soil, and just a few scraggly plants left. I thought that the best thing to do was to start again, clearing out all the pine needles, digging out the remnants of plants, getting rid of the onions (I don’t want to grow my own onions in any case). My Dad helped me to get rid of the pole in the middle. The previous occupants of this house had a dovecote atop the pole, but fortunately, they took it with them, sans pole, when they moved out. It took quite an effort to get rid of the pole - it was well concreted in - but Dad made short work of it once he had Mr Strange Land’s skill saw to play with. Once the pole was gone, I dug masses of compost into the soil, and watered it well (by hand and watering can, of course, in keeping with Adelaide’s water restrictions).

Then I planted it up - lemon verbena at the back, flat leaf parsley, curly leaf parsley, coriander, marjoram (thank you Mum, for the plant), oregano, and green sage. And thyme - lemon thyme, pizza thyme, and ordinary old thyme, all of which I value for different reasons. Lemon thyme for chicken, pizza thyme for virtually any purpose - its large leaves make it easy to use, it spreads into satisfying clumps, and it has a pretty flower - and ordinary old thyme for bouquets garni and bologneses and tomato sauces and because how could you possibly have a herb garden without common thyme? I want to find some purple sage - I like the flowers - and come spring, I will plant sweet basil. Any other suggestions for culinary herbs will be considered carefully, over a glass of wine and a stroll around the garden. Of course I will plant some mint somewhere, but in a carefully confined space; its rampaging habits would be a little hard to take in this beautifully ordered space.

The soil in the garden is very sandy, so borrowing a tip from my aunty who lives on the Kapiti coast, passed on by my mother, I put about a pot’s worth of compost in the hole I prepared for each plant before I settled them into the ground. After everything was planted up, and well watered, by hand, I covered the soil with mulch. And this is the starting product.

I’m not sure what to do about the centre section yet. I would like to have a small fountain there, just a simple upwelling of water into a bowl, but that seems wasteful, so I am thinking about a tiled bird bath, or maybe a sundial, correctly aligned for Adelaide, or perhaps a rose. Roses are incredibly hardy; of all the existing plants in my garden, they seem to have survived the hot summer best. In the meantime, the centre section is covered with small white stones, recovered from another spot in our backyard.

I have always managed to grow a few herbs, even when I lived in student flats. I love cooking with fresh herbs, and I find the process of planting and tending them soul restoring. It has been raining today in Adelaide, and as I have walked around my garden in the damp air, I can feel the garden growing.

(This post is for my gardening mother, and for my e-friend merc, both of whom knew that I ought to be growing herbs.)

Part 2 of Who’s Counting

Part 1 is posted here, and I will post the third part next week.

Marilyn Waring

“Are you going to the Dawn Service?” my daughter’s friend’s mother asked me.

“No,” I replied. “I’m not religious.”

She was shocked.

I am a thorough going atheist, in large part because I simply find no evidence for the existence of any of the gods that humanity has posited, but in part also because I simply just don’t like the coercive nature of religion. I dislike being required to bow my head, to pretend respect, to participate in meaningless rituals. I find it especially repugnant to be in a group where I am expected to pretend reverence, and I am shunned, or if not shunned, I am the subject of sideways glances and odd mutterings if I don’t pretend obseiance to the god du jour. Spare me your pretensions and your posings, your praying in public but behaving as a bully, a liar, a thug, a hater in private.

Fortunately for me, for the most part the societies in which I live or have lived, are composed of irreligious people, who if not actively atheist, don’t really care about organised religion. Religion and belief is by and large a private matter in Australia and New Zealand, thank god the flying spaghetti monster.

Except for this one ritual in which we seem to be required to participate. Once a year, on 25 April, we remember the soldiers from Australia and New Zealand who have fallen in wars, and we honour their comrades who are still alive. The survivors, the veterans, march down the main streets of our cities and villages, brass bands play, and dignitaries lay wreaths at the war memorials that sprout like so many phallic symbols in every town in our countries. The ritual is well established, and everyone treats it as a solemn occasion. So solemn that all the shops are supposed to be closed until after the ceremonies are finished.

And what’s all this ceremonial about? Commemorating in particular the members of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps who died at Gallipoli, and in general, all the New Zealand and Australian soldiers who have ever died in service. Gallipoli was the most wretched affair, young men sent to assault a beach defended by steep hills, and tens of thousands of young men dying, Turkish, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, British, in both defence and assault, all to no good purpose at all, in that most futile of wars, the misnamed Great War.

I have no problem with commemorating the dead. For the most part, my response to religious ceremonies is irony. How could these people believe such things? But irony is exactly wrong for ANZAC day. Far better grief, for all the beautiful young men who died, for the young women who nurtured and nursed them, and sometimes in doing so died with them, for the young men who returned from the war, but were so maimed in body and spirit that they merely existed, rather than lived, and for the young women whose dreams, conventional though they were, of marriage, home and children, were ruined.

But I do mind the religious nature of ANZAC Day.

For those who doubt that ANZAC Day is religious, consider this. Think about the way that our businesses and schools are closed, so that there is time to attend the ceremonials. Think about how our news services provide blanket coverage of them. Think about the way that our political leaders, and even the most humble politicians, local body governors, ensure that they attend the ceremonies, and are photographed doing so. Think about the way that all the rhetoric around ANZAC Day makes it shocking to proffer a different view of the event. Think about the way people invoke their gods, offer prayers, march in parades, bow their heads, profess great reverence for the dead. These are all artifacts of religion, not just remembrance.

I especially mind the way in which people who get up to attend the dawn ceremonies seem to think that they have done something noble. Relatives of men who died in the wars, and of veterans who have since died, have taken to marching in the ANZAC Day parades, ostensibly to represent their fallen and dead forbears. In practice however, they puff out their chests, sigh mightily, and adopt an air of portentous nobility, as if they themselves had struggled to take Chanuk Bair, or fought on the Kokoda Trail. Get this, poseurs - you did not fight! You did not risk your life. You are no hero. And marching in the ANZAC Day parades will not make you one. If you truly want to memorialise the people from your families who suffered in the World Wars, in Korea and Vietnam, and more recently in Iraq, then you will stand quietly, watch the veterans go by, and weep for the people who are now gone. Above all, you will not thrust yourself into prominence, because THIS IS NOT YOUR DAY. Nor will simply attending the ANZAC Day ceremonies ennoble you, like some kind of mystical, magical, religious charm.

For me, ANZAC Day must not be about the corner of some foreign field that is forever England, or Australia, or New Zealand, or whatever, nor should it even be about age not wearying those who have fallen (I’m guessing that they would far rather have been wearied by age than killed in their youth). The best poems for ANZAC Day are Wilfred Owen’s Anthem for Doomed Youth, and Seigfried Sassoon’s Attack, with its harrowing final quatrain.

They leave their trenches, going over the top,
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!

If we truly want to honour the dead, then our resolve must be to make it stop. No more deaths of young men and young women in battle. That is the memorial that the ANZACs deserve.

Even if there were to be peace for ever more, I would find ANZAC Day difficult. We revere the men who died in battle, but where is the reverence for the women who died in childbirth? There is none, because after all, giving birth is just ordinary old women’s work, part of the quotidian round. Who cares that so many women have suffered in giving birth, so many have died, along with their babies, leaving young children behind them? No one, it seems, honours those who die in giving life. We only honour those who die in the battle to give death.

So what will I be doing this ANZAC Day? I will be sleeping in - I have no desire whatsoever to participate in any religious ceremonies. As always, looking after my beautiful daughters, who live in a free land, and for that, I will honour the fallen and the maimed, the boys who did not live to grow up, and the girls who lived their lives alone. Even if many of them went off to war as a great adventure, not in order to protect some high-falutin’ nonsense about freedom, the effect has been to protect the freedoms that I cherish. And I will be gardening.