Rosanne's Lounge

For those who haven’t seen this segment on the Gruen Transfer, go and watch it first. Be warned, it’s offensive and designed to be. (For overseas readers, the Gruen Transfer is a TV show analysing advertising with competitors creating ads for outrageous briefs.)

The discussion following this segment is terrific: robust, serious and exactly what is needed about these issues. At first I thought the issues were too complicated for me to distil into a post but I’ve just realised something vital. The first three jokes in the ad — about blacks, gays and Jews respectively — centre on the habit racists/homophobes/anti-Semitics have of murdering those they despise: they refer to historical events, sterilisation and forced abortion; ‘poofter bashings’ that lead to death; concentration camps. The fat chick joke — the ad aims to end shape discrimination by equating it with other forms of discrimination — centres on someone not sleeping with her, which is very different from kiling her.

The ad not only fails to make its point because its viewers are either too shocked bythe first jokes to make the needed connection or so prejudiced their views are simply reinforced but also because the equation is not actually made in the ad. Fat jokes are NOT equivalent to the other jokes because they do not call for the extermination of the target. Shape discrimination is enormously problematic and has similar emotional impact on the recipient; it may even be more isolating because there is no equivalent community to turn to as a haven in the way that blacks/gays/Jews have insular communities where they can reinforce positive psychological tropes; but it is not the same thing and I don’t think this ad works for all these reasons.

It’s official…

Please spread the word. The message is important!

by

pope_guilty

 , via  .

Went to the Human Rights Charter consultation in Dandenong today. Was very interesting — lots of discussion at my table on political rights vs social and cultural rights, the framework for rights in Australia (constitutional vs legislative), discussion of the need for remedies and enforceability and so on and so forth. Not enough brain to detail at the moment… besides, I plan to write a submission to the consultation (you can too: submissions due May 29, and don’t use the GetUp site to do it unless you’re really time poor — write your own, considered, multi-page submission).

I’m involved with this for a number of reasons: it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to participate in the establishment of a human rights charter in this country; I’ve always been interested in global governance and this is a stepping stone to helping shape my world; I want to be able to tell Harper I was involved with it and didn’t sit by and let others do it; I strongly believe civic participation is a duty we all share; even more so after yesterday, I’m worried about those who argue we don’t need a charter, either because they think God will take care of it or because they think we are subjects of the Crown or because they think that laws restrict rights (yes, all of these points were raised by people at the consultation) [1]; and selfishly because I hope my participation may lead to a career change that I find fulfilling and challenging.

Still on the human rights theme, it turns out I won the video competition! Since I don’t own the rights to the Bob Marley song I used, I have to replace the music by next Tuesday so they can play it everywhere and promote the human rights charter. To say I’m thrilled is an understatement of massive proportions.

[1] Well, what do you know? I’m less of a libertarian than I thought. I’ve been comfortably aware that I’m more an anarcho-syndicalist than a ‘pure’ anarchist for many years but recently I’ve been moving more towards liberalism on some issues, at least for the duration of my lifetime, as I can’t see a complete lack of laws as workable *yet* given stuff like honour killings and child brides. I still believe education and not punishment is the key to eradicating these things but I think having these things be ‘legal’ or having no laws made about them gives the wrong message. It’s very complicated.

  linked to this precis of a report into the false accusations of rape. It reminds me I’ve been meaning to write a post on the false rape accusation that is central to To Kill a Mockingbird. We watched the film of it recently (having named our daughter after the author of the book it was based on, it seemed appropriate).

I remembered it as a story about racism and about class (well, poverty and education levels in America, which amounts to class). If there was a feminist aspect to it, I would have said it was in Scout as the narrator, a young tomboy who Harper Lee is supposed to have based on herself.

Listening to Atticus’s closing remarks during the trial, I suddenly realised there was a very advanced feminist statement about female desire in there, about the way that society polices women’s desire and how Mayella’s father has punished her for having that desire. To cover up patriarchal violence against women and control of women (literally the rule of the father), Mayella falsely accuses the object of her illicit desire of having taken what she was profferring (or in those days, what a kiss promised to proffer). The issue I have is about this false accusation: is this a feminist defense of false rape accusations? I can’t imagine a feminist author today being comfortable having this as a central moment for a key character. Yet it’s hard to imagine another option for Mayella given her time and circumstances. An English teacher I spoke to on the weekend about this actually sees Atticus as defending his client using the "victim was actually asking for it" defense, which I hadn’t considered (mainly because I don’t think Atticus is implying that sex occurred and is clearly blaming Ewell for her bruises, so he doesn’t seem to me to say she was asking for anything).

Anyhow, I wonder if it would be possible to make the points of To Kill a Mockingbird without a false accusation and I wonder whether that is an artefact of the time or something else entirely…

And if Ewell is in fact a metonymic representation of the patriarchy, then who is the object women falsely accuse to disguise the battering we receive for daring to display our desire?

Jack & I went to Pure Baby’s factory outlet yesterday and I bought two organic muslin swaddles. They’re gorgeous. They’re also ridiculously cheap, as are all the other clothes there, despite being organic cotton. Why? They’re made in China.

The web site says that as of the winter 09 range, they’ll be using factories that have "social codes" which is terrific as I don’t want to choose between organic and labour conditions. It does make me curious about how others make these decisions…

I may have mentioned to some of you that there was a video competition to promote the campaign for an Australian Human Rights Charter.

Doug very kindly took care of Harper for a few hours so I could make this. I would have liked to do more, but there’s only so much you can do with a time limit of two minutes and no spare time in which to make the thing.

Another International Women’s Day and no rally in Melbourne. Hmmm. Do people think the work’s all been done? I don’t have time to do the sort of extensive research I’d usually do for a post like this and quote stats at you all and provide links for all my references; suffice to say violence against women is still an enormous issue, from men all over the world who beat their wives and lovers to men in Pakistan who throw acid at girls who dare to go to school or walk the streets unveiled to men in England who kill their daughters and sisters for daring to love or dress in a Western way to men in Brazil only this week who get their nine-year-old step-daughters pregnant and the priests who say that nine-year-old girl should have borne the children rather than have an abortion because it’s God’s will. I have the statistics somewhere for the percentage of teenage pregnancies in Brazil that are due to incest. I seem to recall it’s above 70%. It’s disgusting.

As usual, this is not about "man bashing". It’s not about all men — we need our allies. It is about a world that’s broken, a system that’s broken. It’s about needing to build relationships based on respect and helping girls and women grow to respect themselves enough to walk out, to stand up, to fight back.

Education is a huge part of that. Again, normally I’d get hard facts for this but educating women has one of the biggest impacts on development. That makes it even more important to help girls get to schools and help families understand that keeping girls in schools (rather than marrying them off in their early teens or bringing them back home to work) is really vital.

I’m looking at my sleeping six-week-old daughter in the arms of her father and I want a better world for her. She is so incredibly lucky — she has books already and lives in a country where education is free, right up until University (well, completely free till high school and almost free after that). Her father is so supportive of gender equality and helping her be her best self that this morning he reminded *me* that I should remember to tell her she’s smart and strong as often as I tell her she’s beautiful.

For all my amazing women friends, a glass of wine I raise to you. We still have work to do, perhaps not so much for ourselves now, with our jobs and our computers and our relatively comfy lives, but for our sisters elsewhere, maybe only next door, who are suffering still.

And a special shout-out to anthologie , who gave birth today to yet another little girl. Strength to you, Mama. Welcome to the world, baby girl.

Every week, a journalist somewhere is killed or assaulted for simply doing their job.

This extraordinary editorial by the murdered editor of the Sri Lankan Sunday Leader was apparently written just a few days before his death.

May these brave souls continue their work. May I one day be able again to help defend them through working, as I have in the past, on press freedom issues with the International Federation of Journalists. (Download the 2007-8 report on press freedom in South-Asia — I helped copy-edit the 2005-6 version.)