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.

Fundies Ineffectual in Aid Relief: Send Help, Not Prayer, says QLD.

This was originally written at the height of the Queensland flood coverage back in January 2010 for release on www.threesixfive.org, a site devoted to the satirisation of current affairs from an Australian perspective. As TSF appears to have had a life-cycle shorter than the average double-glazing start-up company, I've reproduced the article here for your general amusement.



Fundies Ineffectual in Aid Relief: Send Help, Not Prayer, says QLD.
The wrath of God is upon Queensland in the form of a shit-tonne of water because Kevin Rudd "not only called on Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but said it should open all its nuclear facilities to UN inspectors", according to Catch the Fire Ministries’ Pastor Nalliah.

Authorities have not responded to what Nalliah refers to as "floods of biblical proportions" by constructing a large wooden boat and plotting the slow death of every species on the planet through the sorts of genetic diversity failures that happen when an entire species is descended from just two samples. Evacuation and relief funding are, controversially, being considered more responsible state responses than constructing an Ark.

Authorities also urge concerned Queenslanders not to go rounding up two of every animal just yet, (especially since locating the dinosaurs will be pesky), citing implausibility that God came out of aeons of retirement purely to dampen some bogans. Nalliah, who frequently blames and praises God for various atmospheric and physical conditions causing natural disaster in Australia, denies that his God is not that petty, saying He absolutely would.

However, despite these massive, Mel Gibson reminiscent, fits of pique utilising the full force of natural disaster, God was apparently powerless to stop satanic rituals/teenagers drinking goon on a mountain near parliament from promoting parliamentary discussion of equality for homosexuals. In early 2010, these events prompted an evangelistic roadtrip from Nalliah’s congregation, who hoped daubing olive oil and babbling in tongues on said mountain would solve the whole ‘evil female Prime Minister’ problem for God.

To be fair, He has probably just been too busy reading the minute details of every press-release our Foreign Minister has ever put out in relation to Israel. It's not like being an omnipresent dude means you can be everywhere at once. Hang on a second...

Nalliah also takes credit for the "saving of Rockhampton", claiming that this was the result of “answered prayers”, exulting “We have a God who answers prayer!”. The nature of such a "miraculous" escape for the citizens of Rockhampton is questionable, given the context in which it occurs, with a rising damage bill and more than eight people confirmed dead across the state - but hey, Rockhampton's okay! Thanks, God!

Except... well, Rockhampton's really not okay, is it? It was submerged under six feet of floodwater, and remaining survivors are having to deal with venomous snakes driven into populated areas by rising floodwater.

If we assume the correlation implies causation logic which works so well for CTF Ministries' press releases, then the real culprits become apparent - adherents to the faith are simply not praying hard enough. Certainly things appeared to go backwards for Rockhampton after Pr. Nalliah’s announcement.

And if their prayers are being heard and answered, then what precisely does CTF have against the rest of Queensland, that it refuses to use this apparently magical line to divine emergency assistance to help Brisbane, Theodore, Dalby and Bundaberg?

Not to be too picky, but if one has a direct personal relationship with an interventionist metaphysical being capable of exercising supernatural power that can't be explained by mere climate physics or meteorological science, why be so half-arsed about it as to ask that it be slightly less of a bad situation than in other disaster zones? Why not ask, while you're at it, that the floodwater be turned into something useful?

There's biblical precedent for this with the whole 'water into wine' miracle. In this reporter's experience of Queenslanders (ed: schoolies), they are a people uniquely placed for the challenge of drinking away the flood, provided the floodwater was turned into mediocre beer (wine being something more of a challenge to the palate to the average Toowoomban, if I recall correctly - these are a people who will drink Mebourne Bitter even when there are other beers available).

Kevin Rudd has had a pretty crappy year, Pr. Nalliah, and it seems a bit of a stretch to argue that the mere suggestion by Rudd that Israel should be compliant with the sorts of international standards we apply to any nuclear state would cause God to wash away half of Queensland. I mean, sure, the Labor Party blames him for things which are also only slightly correlational, like hung parliaments, but at least if you squint there’s a causative link.

On the other hand, Pr. Nalliah want us to believe God answers his prayers sufficient to ‘only smite Rockhampton a little bit’, on his instructions, which suggests that Catch the Fire Ministries presumably also in some way instructed God to flood the rest of the sunshine state.

If someone has access to supernatural forces which can wash away entire towns, cause untold damage to the economy and potentially kill hundreds of people, and that person is prepared to use that influence to influence political outcomes (such as letting Israel construct an unregulated nuclear force in order to hasten the Armageddon that CTF believes will bring on the return of Jesus and the rapture), that person is at least one of three things. They are either dangerously deluded, someone who ought to be detained under anti-terror laws by using the threat of violence for political ends, or they are cynical and manipulative assholes seeking to gain through the misery of others.

Clearly, the only way to avoid any of the above charges is to harness the glorious power of prayer to turn the snake-infested rivers into rum, or to deliver a heavenly bounty of enough Sham-wows to soak up the equivalent of two Sydney Harbours.

In the alternative, perhaps Pastor Nalliah and his rabid flock may be persuaded to leave the floods analysis to the experts and stop seeking credit for things they can in no way meaningfully influence through telepathic conversations with their apparently petty and vindictive imaginary friend.


--> Addendum: Since posting, there has been some more crazy, nicely summarised and snarked by PZ Meyers over at Pharyngula.
----

P.S Since there’s unlikely to be a divinely alcoholic intervention anytime soon, I heartily endorse supporting the Flood Relief Appeal, here. It's getting a lot less coverage than it was at the height of the floods, but the clean up continues and funds are still desperately needed.