Great piece in Jezebel about rape culture

This article in Jezebel, about rape culture in the student community of Missoula, US, and the attitudes from local police that support it, was written thoughtfully and with effort put into the research. The reporter, Katie J M Baker, approached it in  adirect but nuanced way, and managed to disntinguish her own feelings and thoughts from the interview subjects. This is really hard to do when writing about justice and violence against women, particularly sexual assault.

Not sledging, not joking, not expression, not political point-scoring, plain old violence against women

It's so much part of the landscape that it seems nobody at the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age or anywhere for that matter is calling out about it.

Why is it okay to for Grahame Morris to joke about kicking a woman to death? Why is that funny? Is it funny like the famous Alexander Downer line, 'the things that batter'?

Why do we go along with the idea that it could, possibly, very likely, be just a bit of fun? For those of you who don't understand we are calling you on your misogyny, here's an update by Clementine Ford, just published today, just in time to help you figure out if us feminists really are being wowsers or sour bitches or have gone too far.


I say 'gone too far' is saying the Prime Minister should be kicked to death. Who among us would say Tony Abbott or Joe Hockey should be kicked to death?

The headlines in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald claim that Grahame Morris has apologised, so it looks like the story has had its day and everyone's moving on. A thing that us women are always being told to do, whenever we complain about threats of violence, sexual assaults, etc etc.

The problem is, he hasn't done anything of the sort. The person who apologised is David Speers, on Morris' behalf. I can picture how that conversation went:

"Shit, mate, what did you say that for?"
"What? Well she does deserve a bloody big kicking"
"We know that, mate, but you just can't say things like that"
"OK"

Blokes know it's not a joke

Girls, don't swallow that tripe about it just being a bit of fun. The blokes do actually know and understand the impact of their violence. They know it's not funny. They take it really seriously, when we're not talking about women.

Just have a look at the weekly AFL tribunal commentary if you're in any doubt. For example, yesterday The Age was showing this graph. Note that almost 1,000 people had voted. There was extensive coverage of the minutae of striking charges, how much pressure was applied in the strike, who was standing where when it happened. Exhausting stuff.

The Australian also displayed a similar obsession.

But of course we don't notice anything unusual about this, because it's footy, and it's normal. Just like wanting to kick a female political leader to death is normal.

PS Here is an article in Wendy Harmer's The Hoopla about some of the worst comments about the Prime Minister.

Messing around with Empire Avenue

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This post is just me messing around with Empire Avenue.

Many social media commentators agree that 'gamification' will be the next thing to happen to marketing and social media, as the two things converge and the rocket fuel of games is added to the mix.

What does that mean for art, for the expression of authentic identity? What will it do to political expression? What would happen if Clive Palmer (for example) bought a major instrument in it?

This is the link if you feel like joining the experiment...

Sexism and retaliation

In a post in Forbes about sexism in the workplace, the author, Meghan Casserly, discusses the question of how (or whether, even) women can speak up about it at work without retaliation.


She did her homework and asked women to respond, and the story was quite interesting because of the colour of those responses. She found two women who had successfully raised it as an issue, and, not wanting to give up yet, is carrying the conversation on in Twitter and Facebook.

What bothers me, though, is that the article has missed the point about sexism in the workplace: sexism is designed to remind others that there are two groups, and that one is not as good to be in as the other one - to use a really blunt pencil. The article, however, uses a very common 'female' way of interrogating meaning: it assumed that the actual words the women used to call out sexism were some kind of magic medicine, which needed the correct dosage applied at the right time and the right place.

For example, the reason that the first successful caller-outer had not received backlash was because she had been really informal about it, and had used a light touch. She had just said "inappropriate" in passing, without making a big deal out of it, and it work. In other words, the right medicine at the right dose.

The second successful caller-outer said her successful technique was to speak to the two sexist-comment-makers one-on-one, privately - that way, they did not lose face. The right medicine, administered in private.

The problem with this whole way of conceiving the solution to sexism in the workplace is that it ignores the element that is central to sexism: the maintenance of power. The variable not controlled in any of the interactions described was whether the woman who did the calling-out had power over the person being sexist. In other words, what man is going to tell his female boss - or even someone a bit higher up in the social pecking order of the office - to get lost?

Sure, it seemed to solve the problem for those two women, but another woman in an identical setting saying "inappropriate", no matter how quietly, could be inviting serious retaliation.

For example:

Male supervisor in restaurant: I want all of you fillies out on the floor now, or you're sacked.
Woman waitress (to his disappearing back): Inappropriate.

or


Male supervisor in restaurant: I want all of you fillies out on the floor now, or you're sacked.
Woman waitress: Inappropriate.
Male supervisor: What did you just say to me?
Woman waitress: Inappropriate.
Male supervisor: How could it be inappropriate for me to tell you to get out on the floor?
Woman waitress: It's inappropriate language, because we're women, not 'fillies'.
Male supervisor: What? Look, I don't have time for this. Do you work here or not?

Rape culture v fathers' rights

Google Ngram viewer

After some inspiration from a guy called Ben Schmidt - who is a historian who specialises in looking at the enormous data sets that have been created since the world started digitising its history, geography, literature and so on - I started exploring the Google Ngram Viewer.

You can see more about Ben's work here - a more accurate description of the field is 'digital humanities research'. You can also see a bit of wicked historical geography (or geographical history?) at Spacial Analysis blog. End of digression.

The dataset and the graphing tool available at Google Ngram Viewer represents a 'big picture' view of what we think and how we think, which is of course one of my smaller obsessions.

For example, in the gay marriage rights debate, it is often argued by conservatives that legalising gay marriage would mess with an ancient tradition. Yet I suspect that in the thousands of years of human history, most couples have got together, had children, built a house, got on with life and so on without it, so to make marriage sound 'natural' or a default position of any kind is not at all accurate. If I could just figure out two approximately equally important phrases that represent 'married' and 'de facto' (sic, de facto can refer to lots of things) over 200 years, I could do a graph of it right now.

Instead, I made one which compared the phrase 'rape culture' with 'fathers' rights' from 1990 to 2000. And this is what it looks like:

To use a music metaphor, it looks like a jaunty little duet. It's not even a fugue or a call-and-response. It's two voices a third apart, rising and falling, but mostly rising. So I wondered if that was just a blip, and decided to try 'rape culture' against 'female graduates'. That graph produces another duet, but this time a fifth apart:

There are no controls, so weighting, and absolutely nothing else to tell you that this is some legit piece of research that you should bring up in polite (or even drunken) conversation. However, we now have ways of testing our ideas about things and looking more clearly into the deep pool that is human (literate) culture. We should use it not only for advertising, but also to settle arguments about Downton Abbey.

Find a husband and STOP having babies part 2:

:"It's the Inequality, Stupid."

The eleven charts created and shared by Mother Jones' Gilson and Perot show the other side of the story; the privilege enjoyed by the writers of the assholery in my previous post.

Find a husband and STOP having babies

Tenderness and bullshit side by side on the New York Times...

There's a long feature about the welfare system in the US and how it looked like such a good idea during the boom to cut back on cash payments and apply a bit of tough love. Various researchers put poverty at different numbers, but the article nominated four million women and children having no financial support - no income at all and surviving any way they can. It's a well-written and not too 'worthy' read.

What's fascinating is the very high quality commentary side by side with (seemingly not deliberate) conservative trolling in the comments section. Of course, the NYT was de facto trolling everyone in the first place by having the audacity to run an article about how America was treating its poor, huddled masses with disinterest or contempt. But the thoughtful comments far outclass the trolls. There are some genuine Christians (in other words, trying to live the commandment 'love one another as I have loved you'), arguing with care and persistence alongside others who are clearly not religious but who are committed to compassionate living.

I still stumble, though: why do people who leave the trolly comments assume there are going to be others who agree with them? Maybe since the boom, there are just as many Americans who would have once been poor who are now privileged, and this privilege is confusing to them.

Here are some jems from the assholery that is the comments section to this high quality, accessible piece of journalism about the poor:


Supporting illegal immigrants is BIG part of the problem. They sneak into the U.S.A. to have their babies (Who automatically become citizens). I can just now see the hordes of pregnant women camping in the Mexican dessert until the time is right...
Then collect money from the Social Security Admin., Welfare program & work under the table. All without contributing anything. No, they don't start businesses, they don't work cleaning toilets, the don't raise engineers to build roads.
Meanwhile we the American citizens & LEGAL immigrants foot the bill. Meaning, male, non-pregnant immigrants.


Actually, the article is about how America is not footing the bill.


And we may just have to accept that some people will willfully make such bad choices that they will be faced with destitution. It is sad and hard but you can't save everyone. That one had 17 thumbs-ups.


Why do these single (unwed I bet rather than widowed) women have kids they can't afford?????? That one had 30 thumbs-ups


Find a husband and STOP having babies. Its a very simple formula actually. 21


It's the women who had the children not the fathers. [...] Women should be the sole ones responsible for the kids. It would also eliminate most of the controversy over abortion.  From a reader unacquainted with the concept of conception, sperm, eggs etc. The reader went on to repeat gleefully the conspiracy theory of unwanted pregnancy.

But there is lovely kindness as well. Heartening reading for anyone who is thinking that this world is full of selfish, narcissistic voters-as-supporters rather than voters-as-policy-choosers. My fave is this one (there was a graph showing the rise in food stamp use mirroring the rise in unemployment and the (almost) flatlining of cash welfare payments:

There should be a graph that plots the growth of the number of mean, greedy people in the USA. It would look just like the one that reflects the number of persons receiving food stamps.

Trayvon Martin & Shaima Alawadi: hat crime becomes hate crime

And privilege gets privacy.

People interested in social justice will have no doubt noticed two stories in the world media recently, both coming from the US: the Florida shooting of young African American, Trayvon Martin, and the savage beating of a muslim woman in California, Shaima Alawadi, that caused her death. 

In the case of Trayvon Martyn, a neighbourhood-watch-style security patroller shot him dead, saying he thought was some kind of dangerous gang figure because he was wearing his hoodie with the hood up at the time. The police had refused to charge the shooter, even though just before the incident they had previously ordered him to not follow Trayvon. The issue became a runaway social media meme and sparked protests across the nation, including demonstrations in the Senate and in cities around the country, at which everyone wore hoodies to show solidarity and to mock the absurdity of judging a person dangerous and shooting him based on his clothes in combination with his race. Make no mistake, this national protest was organic, organised and sincere. It was called the Million Hoodie March.


In a very different part of the country, Shaima Alawadi, a 30-something mother of five, was beaten to death in her own home, with the perpetrators leaving a note to confirm the reason was her culture. A friend of the family told journalists the note said: "Go back to your own country. You are a terrorist". Shaim wore a hijab, like the women in the photo to the left. She was found by her 17-year-old daughter. There is a Facebook group called "One Million Hijabs for Shaima Alawadi" (with 8,600 members and counting) - members wear a headscarf and post a picture to the group to draw attention to hate crimes. There are many photos of women from other cultures and religions wearing the hijab in protest.

One really interesting feature that the two victims have in common was their wearing of a garment designed to cover their heads and partly obscure their faces. Neither was wearing a pair of cut-off pantyhose, balaclava or motorcycle helmet, which are the traditionally alarming headgear that bank clerks fear (nor burka, not that it should matter). Should someone wish to speak to Trayvon's or Shaima's face, all they had to do was to stand face-to-face with them, as in any respectful, everyday exchange between human beings.

It speaks volumes that we automatically think a hood or a veil is hiding a threat rather than  being a garment of privacy. When muslim women who wear a hijab or a burka say they are being modest, I sense that many people equate that to being prudish and think of it as hiding something vaguely insincere. Modesty in the mainstream white Christian culture is the same thing as 'humility'. But for many people (including many white Christians, I am sure), modesty means 'good secret' or 'privateness'.

Secondly, it also looks as though we as a society think some types of people are entitled to privacy and some types of people are not. This may mirror our beliefs about whom is entitled to be protected by law enforcement agencies - the middle-class army does not just distinguish between classes, but based all kinds of other features such as race and gender, which is the fuel behind the Million Hoodie March and the Million Hijab campaign. Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon Martin, thought he was entitled to follow Trayvon and snoop into where he was going, and that the racist neighbours of Shaima Alawadi thought it was okay to leave the nasty, racist notes at her home.

It's not just the presumption of who gets to be the victim and perpetrator of violence, and who gets arrested and charged, it's also what rights we believe others have to keep their own faces kind of private.

My Be(a)stie is a feminist bitch

My be(a)stie is a feminist bitch

That is not a rude thing to say. She is, in fact a bitch. And, being 90% blue cattle dog, she is also a blue. And being unaffected by competition or domination from other (male) dogs, she is a free and happy female. This makes her a bluestocking, even though stockings and socks are more likely to be buried in the garden by her than worn with pride.

I have always sat on the fence with regard to those books that start out with the premise, 'Everything I learned in life I learned from my dog/cat/ferret', but as I was walking alongside her this afternoon, chillin' out and watching her sniff, I realised what a great example of young womanhood she is.

Qualities as a feminist

1. She farts freely and unapologetically.
2. She doesn't care what she looks like
3. She is a career girl - every now and then she gives a good 'Woof' at someone walking past our house, then comes back to the back door, wagging her (stumpy) tail as if to say, "Just reporting - a small fluffy thing walked past so I told it to stay away, and I did a really good job". Part of the career girl thing, I admit, was chosen for her, but I can assure you I was liberating her rather than oppressing her when we got her spayed.
4. She's up for anything, regardless of how ridiculous it might look. This includes jumping high to catch balls, throwing herself in stinky creeks, eating raw (quite manky) casserole meat, licking herself freely and frequently in the privates.
5. She stands tall and proud in public, even if another dog walks past yapping, snarling the dog equivalent of "your mother was a whore".
6. She asks for what she wants, using her paws, her nose, her shoulders, her voice, her besotted brown eyes. And she often gets it.

Qualities as a best friend

1. Total loyalty, including lying in whatever room I am in, at all times if at all possible. Some people might say that was not so much loyalty as stalking, and I often felt that way with my previous dog, Robbie, who was a staffy, but not with Gracie.
2. Sympathetic companion - when I'm sad, she follows me more closely, offering her company. When I'm happy, she follows me more closely, asking for a game. Rest of the time, just follows me around regardless of what kind of boring day I'm having.
3. Forgives me all the time for forgetting to take her for walks etc.

Trolling... some further work by other people

Still fascinated by the spread and ubiquitousness of vitriolic trolling, I found these two articles today on the BBC News site, by Richard Bacon - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17399027#TWEET107116 - and Tom de Castella and Virginia Brown - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14898564 .

My friend and past colleague, Jack Yan, also pointed me to the existence of the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Arcade_(webcomic)#John_Gabriel.27s_.22Greater_Internet_Fuckwad_Theory.22.

However, I have not yet got to the bottom of this trolling mystery. Why is it such an attractive idea? Are we human beings seriously and naturally attracted to destruction? Or, in the act of destroying someone else, do we actually create identity? (Yes, we do...) But what then happens to that identity? Does it become permanent?

Richard Bacon says there is research that suggests perhaps 50% of the trolling is by people who know the target. I wonder how reliable that research is.

The Uniqueness of Trolls

A friend recently pointed me in the direction of the physically exhausting (because it is so funny) blog of David Thorne, http://www.27bslash6.com/.

This was a timely gift, as I have recently been musing about comment trolls, and 'hate communications' generally, particularly since it has become a public issue that some high-profile women bloggers get overloaded with hate emails or comments, even to the point of being physically threatened. It is common wisdom that responding to trolls just makes them worse, so these women bloggers were making a brave protest by publicising what was happening to them - see, for example, Google and ilk can't shirk responsibility for ranters.

I had been also been musing about it because it was related to my work - setting up some communications systems and content for a gender research organisation. Feminists work there, and write stuff. In other words, whatever I am setting up is bound to be trollbait. How do I set things up so my clients do not become overwhelmed by it and give up on communicating all the wonderful things they do? How do I help them to choose to be active, 'organic' communicators, instead of relying on the occasional media release and static uploads to their website?

What is it about the internet that brings out the worst in people?

In the case of trolling, do people develop whole world views based on interacting with others online? ie, their identity as writers and thinkers is born in the crucible of rampant criticism and verbal warfare? Nothing but the once-democratic ideal of debate has shaped their views; their person and their persona is wholly shaped by the ideal of the successful attack and the destruction of a vibrant conversation somewhere?

Is there a book in that? And, if there is, is there a book in how the non-trolls respond?

There is a review in The Age today about Bruce Springsteen's new album, Wrecking Ball. I am not a Bruce Springsteen fan in the sense that I buy his music and listen to it over and over. But if I hear it played on the radio I give it my attention and I have a sense that I trust him as an artist to reflect the world authentically and to give me some insight.

I have sometimes been so disappointed when reading literary or music reviews that talk about the person's art as though it has no context in the world except for within its genre.

My heart beats for art that means something, even if sometimes the art is difficult to access, or if I find out after some thought that I don't agree with it. Even then, I feel as though my world has been made a little bit larger or my experiences have been validated in some way. 

Being courageous and writing well (reflecting and illuminating what is real as well as what might be) is so important to me that it doesn't really matter to me that it's not my style of music - what matters is people being authentic, courageous and speaking up.

I used to think that respect was something that the respected person benefited from, but the feeling of respect colours me as well; it's as though in some way the speaker passes on a bit of their courage, and out of that comes clarity and peace, like a present for me, a box of no-calory chocolates. It's the same feeling I get when a politician stands up to his or her own party out of principle - for example, Malcolm Turnbull - or when I see or read a story about someone who could have taken the easy way out and not made a sound, like Adrian Salter in the report on Four Corners on Monday (and of course I respect Quentin McDermott and Morag Ramsay, the journalists who told the story). I respect Springsteen, I respect Malcolm Turnbull and I respect Adrian Salter in the full sense of the world, and it feels great.

Wondering about what other people think and how they spell

I am fascinated with working out what other people think about themselves and how they form their view of the world and their own identity. For example, when I was in my 20's, I used to analyse what people were wearing on the tram and how they styled their hair, to figure out what period of their life it was when their 'look' established itself in their identity. For example, I saw this guy the other day who had a George Michael gypsy earring in one ear, a faded denim jacket and had layered hair,and thought, "Wow, that's an old-fashioned guy". He may have found his groove in the mid-80's, around the time of 'Last Christmas'.

This fascination extends to how people use words and how they spend their money.

Which leads to this experiment in finding bargains on ebay. I wonder if I would find more bargains by plugging in a few wrong spellings.

Spelling errors for common items.

'Draws' (drawers) = 616 results
'Chase lounge' (chaise longue) = 10
'Chaise lounge' = 439
'Lounge suit' (instead of suite - yes, there still is a place for lounge suits in modern life, possibly) = 26
'Dinning' (dining) (happens too often to be just a typo) = 426
'Frige' (fridge) = 15
'Vehical' = 21

Interestingly, 'Ed Hardy' is always spelled correctly - does this mean that Australians who like Ed Hardy are good spellers, or that Ed Hardy is so revealed one would never take that name in vain? It may, of course, just mean that Ed Hardy is easy to spell.