Sacha Jones's Blog, page 15

While whales beach

1 day ago While more than 400 pilot whales beached themselves in the remote far north of Aotearoa and as many human volunteers rushed from all over to try and save them, only for another pod of more than 200 to beach nearby two days later, with more than 300 whales lost in total so far, I have been busy beaching myself on the dry shores of my own self pity about problems that seem bigger than whales to me, but to others are no doubt not even the size of a slug washed up, after a long life well lived, on the back porch in the shade. Just as well those whales weren't counting on me.

Some problems are whale sized, others are slug sized or smaller, and it doesn't hurt to put your slug-size problems into perspective now and then. And when whales beach themselves in your neighbourhood, that's not a bad time to set aside your personal slugs and do what you can to help, even if it's only writing a blog about it instead of the woe-is-me blog you had in mind to write instead (I'll save that for later; I'm sure the woe will keep).

So for now I want to wish all power to those women and men who are still fighting to save the whales up north and thank you for the long hours of time given to making our world a kinder, bigger-hearted place.

PS: No slugs were harmed in the making of this blog or suggestion made that slugs are in any way less valuable than whales, just that they are rather smaller - and slimier.

Pussy power

It's my birthday and I can celebrate pussy power if I want to.

Last month's TIME cover delivered Trump air fisting - that eternal symbol of peace and love - so I am glad that the cover in my birthday month is one more fitting and less fisting.

The whole reclaiming of 'pussy' as a term of women's empowerment and unity rather than denigration by sleaze balls like the pussy grabber and fister in chief, and as neatly symbolised by a pink 'pussy hat' - because it is pink after all - fills me with a sense of sisterhood that I can honestly say as a feminist I have not felt in my rather long lifetime before.

So happy birthday me, thank you TIME, and pussy power to one and all!

And if you're wondering what to get me for my birthday, even if it is summer here, please feel free to take the hint. Purr, purr... (I can't knit).









 

Facebook "feminism"

So a woman who calls herself The Kitsch Bitsch posted this newspaper article from 1963 on Facebook two days ago and since then it's had over 800 shares, a friend of mine among them, which is where I came across it.

Cultural causes of/responses to domestic violence was one of the subjects of my PhD thesis but only up to 2007, so not quite capturing the phenomenon of 'Facebook "feminism"' which has taken off in the last decade. I could have found this article though, pity I didn't. It's fairly telling.

I qualify "feminism" here because most of what gets posted and discussed on Facebook tends towards making light of the problem raised and at worst, openly mocking it, which perpetuates anti-feminist thoughts and deeds, however innocently intended, and cannot really be called feminism - that which works towards reducing male privilege by strengthening women's voices, rights and freedoms - unlike this article.

The KB herself states in response to some of the angrier male comments to her post that her Facebook page 'is a place for fun and escape from politics' and this was merely intended as a retro look back for purposes of amusement. Many of the ensuing comments, by women, said how amusing they found the clipping.

The few responses to my friend's share of the clipping were in this light-hearted vain, so I posted this comment: 'In the English common law practised in all English-speaking countries until relatively recently, husbands had the right to 'discipline' their wives with a stick provided the stick was no thicker than a man's thumb (pretty effing thick).'

My friend and another female friend of hers responded with disbelief (in brief) then a male friend of hers (Adam) responded thus: 'I soo want to comment on this thread... but I'm a scaredy pants so I won't'. Suspecting he wanted to make fun of my comment I replied: 'You just did', because that sort of comment says a lot - as he well knew - which then got my friend and her female friends goading him coquettishly - 'come on, we won't bite' - to make his comment and him replying again 'I am so tempted...', then more goading, until he finally mentioned BDSM.

Then followed a fun little exchange between them about spanking and BDSM, which ended with our original man Adam exclaiming 'Nurse!!!!' I'm sure he's a natural born comedian.

I didn't respond again but thought hard about telling my friend that taking the male point of view to be cool in the eyes of men at the expense of making light of violence against women is a very powerful anti-feminist force that has been feeding misogynistic sentiment and violence for centuries, but didn't. I went to bed instead.

This morning, when I took another look, someone (a woman) had mentioned Russia decriminalising wife beating so I looked it up and sure enough! So I posted this article  on that subject, which is sadly all too true, on my friend's page and then on the original woman's page with the comment: 'Not history, not fun'. On my friend's page I posted 'If he beats you it means he loves you', a quote from the article.

So much for always wanting to be Russian. So much for Facebook changing the world - for the better.  

Modern man

Ghandi once said the test of a society's humanity is how it treats its animals. But, as much as I can see the simple truth of this sentiment, as a feminist who has long studied men and women in various cultures, it is all too clear to me that the much more profound and ultimate test of our humanity is in how women are treated - by men; a test that all societies fail in some degree and most fail almost completely.

Men in all societies in some degree fail to treat women with the respect and dignity we deserve for all that we have done and continue to do for humankind. There are exceptions of course, and Obama is perhaps the best of these exceptions. In the genuine respect, affection and admiration he has for his wife, he has shown the world what a man should and could be in this first duty of treating women with respect. Trump is showing the world, in the most brazen and base way possible, the very opposite; the sadly much more common way that men mistreat and disrespect women, beginning with their girlfriends and wives.

If you want to know a violent man before he commits any actual physical violence, the research on domestic violence says look and listen to the way he speaks about women. Most male violence in the world is based first and foremost in misogyny.

This video  of these two men arriving with their wives to be sworn in as president of the US, with one waiting for his wife to exit the car and following her up the steps, the other charging up first leaving his wife - his third wife - to trail behind, says it all, really.

In this respect, Obama shows us the way forward to a fundamentally less violent world, Trump shows us the way back to the violent world from which we are just beginning to emerge. As I've said here before, it is possible that we needed to go back in this way to expose the reality that only marginalised and hated feminists have long recognised, to SEE what we cannot seem to believe otherwise, just how much hatred so many men have for women and womankind and how much damage this hatred inflicts on all of our lives.

Obama is the best of men, Trump the worst, it's as simple as that. And how poignant it is that one should follow the other into the most powerful political position in the world to accentuate the contrast and highlight the truth that our very humanity rests on exposing and eradicating misogynistic men like Trump and celebrating and encouraging men like Obama.    

This is what feminism looks like (Jan 21, 2017)

The nearly two million people who protested Trump's inauguration worldwide yesterday were mostly women, 500, 000 of them in the US capital here, the pink caps denoting 'pussy power'. That's quite some power alright, but sadly, it's nowhere near enough.

I marched too, here in Auckland, with more than two thousand others, and like all the other protest marches they were organised by women and mostly attended by women to protest Trump's misogyny and the corrupt way in which the first female president of the US was denied her rightful place in history, a place that was well overdue and promised all sorts of flow-on improvements in the lives of girls and women around the world. Sexism, and racism, but mostly sexism, screwed that chance and so we feminists, tired but not defeated, protest. The battle continues.

Unfortunately, all those women (and men) - and I know a fair few personally - who did not realise in time that this was the election to fight against sexism first and for an idealistic (unrealistic) equal and free world second - because gender inequality is the oldest and most damaging inequality in the book - and supported Clinton's opponent instead, were substantially responsible for this disaster. By the time it was Clinton v. Trump, much of the anti-Clinton hate on the left of the political spectrum had already done devastating damage to her reputation and left many who wouldn't vote for Trump deciding not to vote at all, which was effectively voting for Trump. Trump was elected by less than a quarter of the US population; over 40% of Americans didn't vote.

So here we are, wearing pussy-protest caps, marching and shouting into the freezing cold or blazing heat - in all weathers across the globe - while a blatant billionaire misogynist 'predator-in-chief' rides in his warm, bullet-proof car, on his way to take the reigns of power and undo so many of the hard-won gains that feminists before us have worked for and eventually won for women.

It's depressing, deeply. But perhaps a lesson was learned in the only way that it could be learned. Let's not make the same mistake again.

This is what democracy looks like (Jan 21, 2017)

Sydney Washington DC
New York
San Jose LA Madrid Auckland (by yours truly)

Behind every great Gosling

So I asked my daughter what she thought of Ryan Gosling's Golden Globes Best Actor acceptance speech in which he thanked his 'lady' for taking care of their daughter and being pregnant with their second child while also nursing her brother who was sick with cancer so that he was free to act, sing, dance and play piano in La La Land and she said it was great. It seems almost everyone else agrees.

Almost.

British journalist Narjas Zatat of the Independant does not (see link above). She says Gosling's speech reinforces the patronising notion that behind every great man is a 'great' woman doing the unglamorous heavy lifting of supporting and caring for her man - and his children - and sick and aged relatives to boot, work that is not actually considered great - or even work - whether women are thanked for it or not.

I'm not quite sure what I think. To be thanked publicly by your man for this usually invisible work is better than remaining invisible and being totally taken for granted, I guess. But it would have been nice if Gosling had added something about Eva's acting career (which never came up) having to be put on hold to carry and care for his children and how he can never return that favour in full but he will do what he can by trying to be the best partner and dad he can be and the caregiver in chief for their family when that is what she needs him to be. Something about them being in this greatest of jobs - of making and raising a family - together, as equals - not one great and award-winning, the other just good - would have given substance to his thanks for supporting me by doing womanly things speech.

You can't play a romantic lead when you are actually pregnant, after all.

For a feminist critique of La La Land see here .

Seahorse love, just because

I made these in high school and somehow kept them safe and well all these years, probably because I left them in peace. In fact I forgot all about them for aproximately 30 years and never wore them - they are earrings, but surely much too lovely for ears. 
A few years back I rediscovered them and decided to take them out of their long hibernation, at first barely remembering where they came from. But studying them closely the memory that was stored inside their intricate grooves and rustic red sheen came back to me all at once and I did remember; I made them in Year 8 Art, when I was 13.
Yesterday they found a home inside the cute little Trade Aid pot that my youngest gave me for Christmas this year. It is just big enough for them to fit together kissing, making a seahorse heart and, even more cosmically (great word from the 70s), the women's internal reproductive zone.  
It was all meant to be; they have found a home in the zone and will remain there kissing (well, almost) until they fall out of love. And as they can't fall far, being squeezed by the sides of the pot, that probably won't be for a while. They say you can't force love, I think it must be different for seahorses. And just as well for us, as there may be no cuter creature.  

Wishful Drinking (Carrie and me II)

This is not my copy.
So it turns out I didn't appreciate the full Carrie when I blogged about her recently here .

In particular, I didn't fully appreciate what a grand lady comedian she was, performing a one woman show based on the memoir she wrote with the genius title 'Wishful Drinking'  .

Shame on me. I blame the drink (and the pills).

I will read it asap (as well as her other books).

Just coincidentally, because this is not all about me, having written and published my own memoir this year I am now trying to put together my own one woman show, so I am essentially trying to do exactly what Carrie did only from a position of being a complete unknown who did not star in the biggest box office hit film series of all time and who is approximately a million years older than Carrie was when she did those things.

Never mind. I plan on coming up with a better title for my one woman show. I think I need a drink.

Meryl's broken-heart art

Accepting her Cecil B. Demille lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes yesterday Meryl Streep finished by quoting Carrie Fisher: 'You take your broken heart and make it into art'.

Meryl's heart (like many) was broken most recently by the man who mocked and mimicked a disabled reporter and became president. She showed the video of this 'man' mid-mockery, because naturally his favourite defence is the shameless denial and rearrangement of the facts.

By using the few minutes she was allotted to speak in acceptance of her award to call out this bigot instead of talking about herself and her 30-year career in which she has been nominated for more awards than any other actor in history, and won a whole bunch of them too, including other lifetime achievement awards, Streep turned her broken heart into the hardest of all arts - politics.

And in so doing she made Hollywood history. Hopefully more actors will follow her lead - if they can and if they dare.

Of course the mocker denied everything and called Streep 'the most overrated actress in Hollywood' on Twitter where all the trolls and bigots and president-elects hang out.

I guess he's just jealous, as he could, arguably, be called the most underrated actor in politics.