Election Retrospective:- The Feminist Vote

The suffragettes knew what I’m talking about. They faced, in their fight for the right for women to vote, the fear that women given the vote would vote in a conservative bloc. That it would be effectively giving married men twice the vote of single men. That women were frail and delicate creatures not capable of rational consideration. Oh dear me no. If we had the vote, something something ovaries overheating, something something end of civilisation.

As a woman, I am surrounded by men and women who think they are better placed to tell me what my feminism should mean. People like Australia’s new Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Women - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD1Lvds3N9g] - who think feminism is a stick to beat other women with. Our Cabinet representation is now a man who has said that he believes women are maybe just physiologically unsuited to being equally represented in high office - and he has demonstrated this by being unable to appoint more than one female colleague to his Cabinet. Because apparently the Liberal Party is entirely filled with women who are merit-less hacks (aside from their rampant sex appeal).

Faced with the claim that women especially should not have voted for Tony Abbott, given the constitution of his Cabinet and his well-known views on the role and status of women, I find myself perplexed. As a woman, I’d like the freedom to have voted against the LNP because I am terrified of what their immigration policy is going to mean, or because I want my gay and lesbian friends to be able to have the same rights I have. I’d like to be allowed to make up my mind based on the proposed defunding of the community legal sector, on which party will leave indigenous defendants in front of hostile and confusing courts without representation. I’d even like to be able to be like the whingey half of the internet who apparently voted exclusively on the issue of FTTH versus FTTP.

Election 2013 fortunately did not force me to decide between voting for a candidate who respected feminism and one who was going to support other values dear to my heart. It is luck that my feminism got to align with the other things that matter - rather than having to trump my compassion for stateless refugees or people from LSE backgrounds whose choices have been so much more limited than my own.

I think voting purely on self interest when you know it will disadvantage others is heinous. I must acknowledge that the pay differential between men and women, the difficulties in career progression, the chances of discrimination and assault, the ongoing challenge to the right to terminate a pregnancy - whilst all things women in Australia need to continue to fight for - are surely less urgent battles than fighting for something better for refugees. We’re offering them a lottery where the best possible outcome is a favourable first-instance administrative decision that says they can stay in limbo and reapply for a safe place to live every three years, and the worst outcome is being deported to the persecution and death they were fleeing. The plight of women in Australia may be difficult at times, but it is not desperate.

Thanks to my suffragette forebears, I had a choice. I could choose between the conservative white male candidate who undermined our first female prime minister and only begrudgingly acknowledged her contribution to the party and the nation - or the even more conservative white male candidate who thinks my whole gender is physiologically unsuited for high office. I could vote informally in disgust at the whole system, if I wanted to, and draw a phallus on my ballot paper like a surprisingly high number of my compatriots. Yet another dick option.

The right that was fought for was mine to exercise, and if I choose to be like the rest of the country and rank my genders’ equality well below my views on immigration, climate change, public education and access to justice - then have I betrayed feminism? Or is it when we let someone else’s idea of female self-actualisation dictate how women should exercise their right in fact the betrayal? We are not a monolith and we may well vote against our own interests with nary an incident of overheated ovary or internalised misogyny.

P.S - Anyone who thinks Sophie Mirabella's electoral defeat was celebrated primarily because she is a woman clearly doesn't remember  the much more substantial reasons for rejoicing in her defeat, like the views on public record, the comparison of Gillard's pricing carbon with Colonel Gaddafi slaughtering Libyan citizens,  that time she was the darling of the No Carbon Tax rally crowd and followed men with signs saying "Ditch the Witch" around the country. and the fact she wasn't actually much good as a local member for Indi.

The Australian gets it wrong on science journalism

 

The Australian this morning made science journalist baby Jesus cry.

Thankfully, the Guardian has done the best part of the necessary analysis of this for me, because clearly like News Corp websites, no one is coming to Blogspot (or tumblr) for scientific exposition from the largely unqualified. Thankfully.

Journalism struggles with technical fields. It seems like as the resources for print and investigative journalism have declined, the level of expertise required to cover the science and technology beats has only increased. For the average punter, this means a higher proportion of  press-releases making it barely altered into the mass media, it means more break-through stories about obscure foods curing cancer, and it means more science debate/proclamation by media release. It means more thinly-veiled advertorial posing as breaking scientific news.

Science journalism also suffers from the infliction of journalistic ideals which are appropriate only for other beats. I want objectivity in my news and current affairs. I want equal time given to equally weighted but alternate viewpoints. I don't, however, need to see a flat-earther on the program every time someone makes the point that the Earth is spherical in the pursuit of mythical balance. Some controversies are well and truly resolved. Being objective in a scientific field means being able to adhere to the scientific method, considering the weight of peer-reviewed evidence, and coming to a view informed by these things.

The Australian suffered more from agenda than ignorance. We know this because frankly, even the under-resourced science beat writers know citing the Daily Mail as your primary source for some kind of credible science analysis is at best, a crude circle-jerk of ignorance. Putting "according to the Daily Mail" might be appropriate attribution, but you may as well put "according to my abusive drunken uncle who thinks the moon landing was faked and that women belong on page six and in the kitchen"... If you quote an idiot, you're responsible for giving an idiot further undue prominence. It does not absolve you of a duty to ensure what you're reporting actually bears some slim relation to the truth. Nor does it absolve you of seeking some comment directly from the people you're quoting as confessing they're wrong. You can do it here alarmingly easily.

"The IPCC was forced to deny it was locked in crisis talks" - because it wasn't in crisis talks.  This is the journalistic equivalent of beating your sister with her own fist, shrieking gleefully "stop hitting yourself, why are you hitting yourself!?" The writer of the Oz article is presumably forced to deny his paper is made predominantly from the excrement of rabid swine mixed with the leavings of mining magnates, or he would be if I put this question to him and it was not in fact the case.

If you didn't go there at the start of this article, go read what the 97% have to say about the tropes of climate denialism that have been on rampant display in failed science journalism across the globe this week, crudely and uncritically rehashed by the Australian.

The Australian (and the writers of the media releases uncritically reproduced by the Daily Mail and then republished to support the Oz's confirmation bias) achieved the linkbait success it was after. Since we all know the Strine's take on science is pretty clearly that it is a thing which can be won or lost by media prominence and not through any objective empirical method, today's climate denialism linkbait is the Australian's WIN FOR SIENS!

Zoe's Law: What Cost Extending Personhood Pre-natally?

A potential victim of crime.

Zoe's Law is a bill currently before the New South Wales Parliament to amend the section of the Crimes Act dealing with grievous bodily harm, adding a specific definition of 'unborn child' (being a foetus of twenty weeks or more gestation, or a mass of at least 400g).

Most troubling for pro-choice advocates, it includes this provision:-

(2) For the purposes of an applicable offence:                                         
(a) an unborn child is taken to be a living person despite any rule of law to      
                          the contrary, and                                                           
(b) grievous bodily harm to an unborn child is taken to include the                
                          destruction of the unborn child. 

(full text)

There are savings provisions to the effect that the section does not apply to medical procedures or acts by consent of the woman concerned. These exist to placate women worried about the erosion of their right to decide to legally terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Why we might be worried by this type of reform? We only have to look to Georgia, USA in 2011 - when a representative tried to pass a bill that put the onus on women who miscarried to prove they weren't guilty of murder. NSW Liberal MP Chris Spence, who introduced the bill, should be able to understand why women's advocacy groups are touchy on this subject. Granting personhood to a foetus is traditionally a legal position that has not boded well for a woman's right to choose to take a pregnancy to full term or not.

Mr. Spence has beseeched anyone with doubts about the intent of Crimes Amendment (Zoe's Law) Bill 2 (2013) to go read the second reading speech. Heavily doubt-laden, I did just that. I learned that the bill is a response to a case where a woman (Brodie) was crossing a road when she was hit by a drug and alcohol affected motorist. She was thirty-two weeks pregnant at the time.  The force of the impact caused extensive injury to her - shattering some of her bones. The previously healthy foetus, which she had named Zoe, was stillborn. The driver responsible was charged, and served jail time for the offence of grievous bodily harm of Brodie. Zoe was listed as an injury to Brodie, not a death in and of herself. The core part of this issue seems to be that the parents felt less vindicated in their grief because their unborn child was not treated as a person for the purposes of the Crimes Act.

Mr. Spence refers to a variety of legal mechanisms which apply only to a foetus lost after 20 weeks. The loss must be recorded with Births, Deaths & Marriages and certificates issued. The baby bonus is available. Maternity/grief leave is available. It seems an arbitrary line. In circumstances where a birth is happily anticipated by a mother, if the pregnancy fails at 19 weeks and two days we don't extend the baby bonus or maternity leave, and this feels arbitrary and wrong.  Does a matter of days or weeks make that much difference between the grief felt over a miscarriage? I suspect not. Drawing the line at 20 weeks for the state to include vengeance into criminal statute is similarly arbitrary and insufficient, if the goal is to give grieving parents satisfaction. It is an area which I think must be deeply personal and deeply subjective, and in such fields the law is an indelicate instrument.

Caveat Emptor: Team Abbott Confused Between Election Campaign and Guthy-Renker Infomercial

Source: Opposition Leader Tony Abbott revealed on Thursday evening that he would not be providing final costings and a full budget impact statement until deep into the last week of the campaign. [SMH]



$200 for relationship counselling for heterosexuals looking to legally marry? Thanks Tony! But wait, there’s more! Bailouts to the chocolate industry in Tasmania? Hey, Tasmania likes chocolate, *and* jobs! What a top bloke! But wait, there’s more! How would you like to be paid your actual wage to stay at home and have children, women who are usually on quite a good wage? How do you get this shiny, shiny, life-changing deal, I hear you ask…?

There can be no real sensible reason to refuse to price policy announcements, particularly in light of a promise to return to surplus with deadline. It seems like a sales tactic, an emotional mugging. Do they really think that voters will be so emotionally invested with, say, the prospect that they can start a family sooner without having to tighten the purse strings - that by the time the cost is announced they won’t even care how much it costs, and won’t be rationally linking it with job cuts in the public service, reduced infrastructure in health and education, and another long delay before Australia gets up to a global standard with internet speeds?

Does Australia want a puppy? C’mon, hold the puppy. Love the puppy. Give the puppy a name. Oh, look, the puppy loves you! How much for the puppy? Let’s not talk about that just yet, we haven’t told you yet that you’ll get a free lead! In *any colour* you choose. But wait, there’s more! Book now and get 50% more cute for *free*! How do you get this fabulous, life-changing deal that may also cure cancer and make you attractive to the opposite sex? Do you even care at this stage? Look at the cute puppy. You want the cute puppy? You *need* the cute puppy. Okay, for the low low price of 26 easy installments of $899.99, (what a steal!) the puppy is yours! If you call in the next fifteen minutes, we’ll throw in some plastic stuff that also looks pretty good at the moment. And another free puppy! And because no exciting infomercial package is complete without them, handy-dandy steak knives! They cut things! How can you live with yourself if you don’t take up this offer RIGHT NOW?

Worse, though - at least at 3am when you cave to the hypnotic tones of the Lifestyle channel and concede that you need a puppy, your 26 easy instalments are a capped and predictable final fee. Policy costings like vouchers for marriage counselling cannot really be subject to an accurate and finite figure. Costs sometimes blow out, and if the costings are not done independently and with sufficient time that they can be subject to critique - they are more likely to do so.

If nothing else, a group hoping to run the country should be expected to demonstrate that they are able to be upfront with the electorate about the realities of their policies, including the costs, in a timely manner that doesn’t look like a sales technique - so that rational decisions can play some part in the ridiculous circus that is the election campaign.

After all, unlike exercise equipment and beauty treatment pseudoscience, an election result can’t be mailed back within 14 days for a full refund.

The Biggest Bastards in the Bastardry Competition

Dear Major Australian Political Parties,

Refugees are real human beings fleeing awful and terrifying things. You seem to have mistaken them for child molesters, people who don’t turn their phones off during live performances, and Nickelback fans.

It is not okay to threaten/promise that, if elected, you will ensure people who are desperate enough to risk their lives to escape persecution, will be, variously, shipped off to developing nations which have their own issues, towed back out to sea to drown, or denied access to the protection of the legal system against wrongly decided administrative decisions (because “too many” people are being found to be genuine refugees). It’s not okay to bung them on Temporary Protection Visas, force them onto work for the dole schemes, and put more families onto unseaworthy boats because family reunification is impossible under legitimate means.

It’s not okay because we as a nation agreed to obligations under the UN Convention on Refugees to not be a douchebag of a global citizen, and it’s not okay because it goes far beyond what should decently be done in the names of an Australian public that can be better than this - that can be generous and kind to those in need, that believes in at least the rhetoric of a fair go.

If the best way to judge a society is by how it treats the least amongst it - how it treats the poor, the frightened, the huddled masses - then the politics played with refugees in the belief that it will score votes is an indictment on us all.

After all, if you wouldn’t do it to a Nickelback fan, why should you do it to a member of an ethnic minority, or a child whose parents risked everything to send them somewhere they would be able to grow up safe?

Enough racing to the bottom. No party that is determined to sell itself as being biggest bastards in the bastard competition when it comes to kicking some of the most vulnerable and defenseless people in the world deserves to win government and lead this country.
 
Yours sincerely,
CisforCurmudgeon