… on women’s issues in Australia in reforms to the treatment of victims in sexual assault cases:
The historic reforms will include specially devised sex assault educational courses for court staff including judges, new consent laws and “objective fault” laws, which will require the accused to detail the steps taken to ensure consent was given.
Mr Debus will also change committal procedures to reduce the number of times victims must give evidence and be cross-examined.
The British mainstream media, the blogosphere, the radio … everywhere seems to be full of the veil debate (eg here and here).
Should you be on another continent, ths short version is that Jack Straw, leader of the House of Commons, wrote in his local paper that he asked Muslim women who veiled their faces to remove such veils during meetings in his office in the interest of improving communication. (That this column might have had more than a little to do with the Labour leadership struggles I’ll leave to the Kremlinologists to discuss.)
I was chewing over the issue over a very late lunch, and I came to the conclusion that I agree with Straw on this – or at least would entirely defend his right to request of a visitor to his office an action that he thinks will assist the work.
Maybe he had a Hindu yogi visiting who liked to hold consultations while standing on his head. If Straw found this difficult, he could reasonably ask the yogi to sit on a chair. Or indeed, if someone arrived in a bikini and Straw found this uncomfortable, he could ask that visit to wrap up in a beach towel. It is his office, and he can make reasonable requests of visitors.
Of course there is a power imbalance, so he should be very careful of what he asks, but this isn’t unreasonable.
The issues is stewing further since Straw said that he would prefer no women wore the niqab anywhere.
Well, yes. So do I. Of course grown women who have sufficient independence in their life to have the freedom to genuinely make their own choice should be able to choose to wear the niqab if they choose (some very large ifs there), but given that the ideology behind the niqab suggests that women are dangerous, dirty, and do not belong in public spaces, to say that you would prefer them not to be worn anywhere is perfectly reasonable.
… and the occasional slice of critical thinking.
From the New York Review of Books, which really should know better, a potentially interesting review of two books on paleolithic art. But then you get to this:
Cold temperatures, along with scant precipitation, sustained very few plants suitable for human consumption. So however important gathering vegetable food may have been in warmer places, it became trivial on the Mammoth Steppe. Women’s work concentrated instead on tanning animal hides, sewing warm clothing, maintaining campfires, and tending children, while men went off to hunt large-bodied, hairy herbivores that fed on the moss and grasses of the steppe.
So here we have nice little housewives staying home and making the cave nice for hubby, while he goes out and collects the mammoth bacon…
Except of course there is no evidence for such a gender divide in paleolithic times, and it would seem both author and reviewer don’t think this is is a claim they need to justify or explain in any way. That’s just how it was – they feel it in their (male) bones…
Interesting piece in the Guardian (web only) about a Palestinian lesbian group – perhaps the only “out” such group in the Arab world:
“We realised we had a great responsibility towards other women in our community,” Ms Morcos continued. “We tried to contact many organisations and sent out letters but the only reply came from Kayan [“Being”], a group of feminists in Haifa … Many NGOs don’t count it as a human rights issue or want to be associated.”
Three years on, though, Aswat is firmly established with more than 70 members spread across the West Bank, Gaza and Israel (where the organisation is based). Only about 20 attend its meetings; the need to keep their sexuality secret, plus Israeli restrictions on movement, prevent others from attending but they keep in touch through email and an online discussion forum.
Beyond the group itself, there are also signs of acceptance in a few places. “We do a lot of work within the community, for example with youth groups, counsellors, and so on,” Ms Morcos said. “That proves to me at least that the gay/lesbian movement has started for us as Palestinians.”
It reminds me of the sole, small lesbian group in Thailand (at least when I was last there about seven years ago). There might not have been the same threats of violence, but there was similar levels of ostracism.
Having just come back from theGreen Party conference I’m feeling both exhilarated by the time spent with lots of people passionately devoted to saving the human race from itself, and slightly daunted by the thought of the task before us. Ann Pettitt’s Walking to Greenham: How the Peace-camp Began and the Cold War Ended
Pettitt deserves the title of “one of the founders” of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, for she was one of the leaders of the walk out of which this genuine mass movement – hundreds of thousands of protesters were involved there over its 19-year existence. Yet the beginnings were so small. She and her partner had downsized before the term was even invented, swapping an intellectual London life for a smallholding in Wales, where in between raising two small children – struck by the fear that they might not have a chance of adulthood – she got involved in the anti-nuclear movement.
A year later I was trying to help write a leaflet in someone’s house in Kidwelly, about nuclear-free zones. I was feeling bored and stuck general with the way we seemed to be creating a re-run of the CND cmapaigns of the Sixties … What was the point of your local town declaring itself a ‘nuclear-free zone’ when what we were facing was the possibility of a nuclear war ‘limited’ to Europe. My eye caught an item in a Peace News magazine that was lying open on the floor; about a group of women walking from Copenhagen to Paris to protest about this threat. I no longer felt bored or stuck, I felt terribly excited.
In between childcare, struggling with the family smallholding and the lack of cash and resources – in rural Wales Pettitt couldn’t even drive – she organised with three other women (they had six pre-school-age children between them) a walking group that eventually totalled 40. Often they encountered disbelief that they could simply be women who’d decided to act:
“..this march thing, is too big to be just ordinary women, like you say you are, doing it. There must be some organisation begind you – I just don’t believe you’re acting on your own, that’s not possible.”
“Well, you’re just going to have to find out aren’t you? Just tell me one thing – are you going to organise lunch for us or am I going to have to find someone else?”
“Oh all right then. What do you call yourselves?”
“Women for Life on Earth. Thank you. I’ll be in touch.” Good, I thought, that’s another lunch-stop sorted.
But finally, with most of the lunches and sleeping arrangements sorted, forty women set out from Cardiff to walk to Greenham Common on August 26, 1981, to protest at the plans to place American Cruise missiles there. For many it was their first protest of any kind.
read more
Catherine Bennett in the Guardian today has a very good piece exploring the relationship between Tony Blair’s conference mother-in-law jokes (so c. 1950), and the fact that no woman is being even mentioned as a possible candidate to stand against Gordon Brown. (Despite the fact that all of the research shows that electorates warm more easily to women candidates.)
But if that’s a bit depressing, there’s also a profile of Ségolène Royal, who is a very serious candidate for the French presidency.
Let’s see … Germany has a female chancellor, France could have a female president … Britain has a … Foreign Secretary I suppose would be the highest Cabinet-ranked woman. Not what you’d call spectacular.
And rounding out the good news, in China, it has been decided to officially recognise female descendants of Confucius. Not perhaps likely to have much practical effect, but an important symbol of giving importance to females, and perhaps girl-children in particular.
About