Category: Feminism

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Call for Submissions: Seventy-Ninth Edition @ Hoyden About Town

I’m the next host of the Down Under Feminists’ Carnival! Here’s the call for submissions:

The next edition of the Down Under Feminists Carnival is planned for 5 December, 2014 and will be hosted by Mary at Hoyden About Town or perhaps puzzling.org, as circumstances permit. Submissions to mary-carnival [at] puzzling [dot] org.

Submissions must be of posts of feminist interest by writers from Australia and New Zealand that were published in November. Submissions are due on 2 December at the latest, but it’ll be easier on Mary if you submit sooner rather than later. So submit early and often, please, and spread the word!

Submit away, please!

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Code of Conduct timeline and postmortem

This article originally appeared on Geek Feminism.

Last week, Geek Feminism announced we’ve adopted a Code of Conduct.

As Annalee said in that announcement, this comes long after adoption of codes in other communities, especially events:

You’ve been promoting Codes of Conduct for years. Why didn’t you adopt one of your own sooner?

We dropped the ball in a big way here. We’ve known for at least two years that we needed a Code of Conduct internally. We’re sorry for the inexcusable delay.

We thought it would be useful to other communities to discuss how this happened.

Timeline

May 2008: Skud founded the Geek Feminism wiki, two and a half years before anti-harassment policies and codes of conduct began to be promoted by geek feminists.

August 2009: Skud founded the Geek Feminism blog, more than one year before anti-harassment policies and codes of conduct began to be promoted by geek feminists. At the time of launch. the blog had a strong comment policy which remains in essentially the same form (albeit expanded since). We weren’t the first by a long way to have such a policy (in fact it was based fairly closely on that of Hoyden About Town) but this was at the time unusual among the technical blogs and forums that many of the original bloggers frequented.

November 2010: Warning for assault Nóirín Plunkett was assaulted at ApacheCon. Within the month, Valerie Aurora had released a draft anti-harassment policy for events and finalised it for events to adopt. This is the policy that is now maintained on the wiki.

I have not found any discussion of Geek Feminism adopting such a policy internally at this time, which isn’t surprising considering it was envisaged as being for in-person events.

Early 2011: there were person-to-person complaints within the Geek Feminism community that an individual within it is harassing people when Geek Feminism contributors meet up in person (as sometimes happens at conferences we attend and similar).

January 2012: AdaCamp Melbourne (the first event I know of run by Geek Feminism community members that occurred after the development of the event anti-harassment policy) has an anti-harassment policy.

July 2012: Blogger Nice Girl reported harassment at OSCON by attendees identifying as geek feminists and using terminology from our wiki. (We do not know the identities of these people.) In August, Skud wrote on the blog:

We are taking a few different steps to address the specific concerns raised. One is that we are reviewing our wiki pages to make sure that we have information on slut-shaming and that it is appropriately cross-linked with articles about sexualised environments at geek events to help reinforce/educate people that criticising an individual woman’s choice of clothing is very different from criticising (for instance) a business that uses booth babes as a marketing device.

The second thing is that we are setting up a process so that people can contact us if they experience harassment by someone associated with GF. This is a work in progress, especially since GF is (as mentioned) a loose affiliation with no official membership, and because we may be asked to deal with harassment that occurs outside our own spaces. However, if someone is harassing another person under GF’s name or in a way associated with GF, then we want to provide a private way for people to contact us, and respond appropriately.

On the same day, Skud wrote the first version of the wiki’s Slut shaming page.

At around this time, Skud founded Growstuff, reducing her available volunteer time; her participation in the blog and other Geek Feminism activities dropped drastically over the next few months.

July/August 2012: Emails about the harassment by a Geek Feminism member discussed earlier began to circulate among Geek Feminism bloggers, presumably with our awareness of internal harassment risks heightened by the public and private discussions of Nice Girl’s reports. More than one person reported feeling unsafe and no longer recommending our backchannels as safe spaces. Skud first became aware of these reports at this time.

Given the seriousness of a known harasser operating in a community central to anti-harassment policy promotion, it didn’t seem appropriate to wait for a policy and response group as mooted by Skud to be in place and instead Valerie Aurora spearheaded a letter asking this person to leave the community, which was signed by several others including myself. The person left our community.

After this, I cannot find any further internal discussion of an anti-harassment policy for approximately another year.

April 2013: Recognising her lack of availability for volunteering due to work commitments, Skud formally announced she was stepping down as a Geek Feminism administrator. There was a discussion about handing over various technical responsibilities but not (that I can find) about the anti-harassment status.

July 2013: I sent an email to the blogger backchannel reminding them that an anti-harassment policy is still to be developed. There was a short and inconclusive discussion.

October 2013: Annalee produced an early draft policy document with many unresolved questions, particularly who the policy was intended to apply to, and how reports would be resolved. Comments on the document were made by several community members.

November 2013: Rick Scott began to formalise existing editorial practice on the wiki in the Editorial guidelines page, which was revised over a few months by a small group of wiki editors. It is intended more to communicate norms to newcomers and onlookers than to protect wiki editors from each other.

January 2014: Discussion had died down on Annalee’s draft. I sent an email with some open questions but no one including myself follows up before May.

May 2014: Annalee produced a new draft anti-harassment policy and circulated it for discussion. Skud, Tim, Valerie and myself all commented and edited substantially. Annalee asked for consensus on adopting it, Valerie suggests she JFDI, and I ended up proposing a timeline through to late June for circulating it more widely, giving people time to familiarise themselves, appointing the Anti-Abuse team, and then making the document public.

June 2014: The Anti-Abuse Team was appointed after an internal feedback process. Annalee announced our Code of Conduct publicly. I made our policy made available for reuse and promoted adoption by other communities.

Post mortem

Things we did right

Skud established best practices (particularly the comment policy) at the time our community was founded.

When it became clear that harassment in our community was a periodic problem, we acknowledged publicly that we had not put best practices into place (a anti-harassment policy) and began discussing one suitable to our community.

We returned to the issue periodically without further external prompting or known (to me) incidents of harassment and eventually got a policy in place. In the process, we hope we have developed a new best-practice policy for communities to use so that others do not have to go through this process.

Our new policy has a pretty sophisticated description of various types of harassment, based on a wide variety of personal experiences and reports of harassment received by those of us who do anti-harassment action or advising in other communities. It is better adapted for a long-lived community than the event policy is, by, eg, considering incidents of harassment in the past and in other communities. It has a more explicitly feminist stance in, eg, stating that it centres the concerns of marginalised people, and that tone-policing will not be regarded as harassment.

Things we did wrong

Various individual members of the community were slow to recognise harassment in our community based on first-hand reports from victims.

We were very slow at responding to the known need for a policy, especially for a group which was among the leaders in advocating that in-person events adopt policies. Even on the most generous reading of this timeline, there was explicit discussion of an internal anti-harassment policy in August 2012, at the time Skud discussed Nice Girl’s harassment, meaning that nearly two years passed between us explicitly committing to it existing and it being put in place. We seem to have been caught in a common problem here: we had no active need for the policy (that I know of personally), and so we did not push ahead with it.

Less central members of our community report that they wondered why we didn’t have a code of conduct, but did not feel empowered to ask about it.

Where to from here?

It is far better to have clear documentation concerning safety in particular, and common problems in general, before they are needed. We hope our reusable policy gets adopted by other communities or assists them in drafting their own, to avoid some of the slowness involved in starting from scratch.

Skud reviewed our community structure and documentation in the lead-up to her Open Source Bridge talk and found various inadequacies. She and Annalee have each raised the issue of reviewing our community’s processes,. We would need to look at questions such as:

  • are we following best practices in anti-harassment, anti-abuse and establishing safer spaces?
  • is our group unusually reliant on certain individuals and if so (it usually is so in any community), how can we share knowledge and resources so that there are less single points of failure?
  • is our documentation sufficient for a newcomer to the community?

Does anyone have pointers to similar review processes in other groups? That would be really handy.

Skud suggests that in addition, with important projects like a code of conduct, a relatively structureless group like ours explicitly appoint people to the project, so that they feel empowered to act on it. We particularly need to be alert to Warnock’s dilemma (does silence signify consent, ignorance, lack of understanding, lack of interest or contempt?) in discussing changes to our community. We also need to be alert to hidden hierarchies, to, eg, the sense that nothing can go ahead without approval from, say, Skud as founder or myself as the most frequent poster.

Annalee suggests that we need to improve our institutional memory with documentation like that above, together with internal private documentation where it is impossible to make things public. This helps identify when things were done for a very good reason, versus having emerged essentially by accident, versus never having been done at all by anyone. We also need to clarify (probably continuously) about whether we are a JFDI community, or whether projects must have people appointed to them, or other.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Annalee, Maco, Skud, Valerie and one of the linkspammers for their review of this post. Except where explicitly attributed, all opinions herein should be taken to be mine, informed by discussion with others in Geek Feminism but not necessarily co-signed by them.

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Is harassment in your community unwelcome? Adopt a Community Anti-Harassment Policy!

This article originally appeared on Geek Feminism.

Last week, the Geek Feminism community announced that we’ve adopted a code of conduct in our community. Our code begins:

The Geek Feminism (GF) community is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.

This code of conduct applies to all Geek Feminism sponsored spaces, including our blog, mailing lists, and wiki, as well as any other spaces that Geek Feminism hosts, both online and off. Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from these spaces at the discretion of the Geek Feminism Anti-Abuse Team.

We took quite a long time to do this, after two harassment incidents associated with the Geek Feminism community (albeit, one probably not by people who are actually active in our spaces and who therefore can’t be excluded from them). We’d love it if others learned from our example and adopted a policy within their own communities. To that end, as of today, our Community Anti-Harassment Policy is available for re-use under Creative Commons Zero/public domain and we are beginning to develop associated resources, just as we have done over the past few years for the Conference anti-harassment policy

Here’s what you need:

  1. a policy (remember, ours is available for re-use, either as is, or in a modified form)
  2. a contact point where harassment reports can be received
  3. a group of responders who receive reports and have the power to act on them up to and including excluding harassers from your community

If your community does not have an obvious way to create a group of responders, start discussing how you can create one. In many communities, there is likely to be an existing volunteerocracy at the very least. Can these people reach consensus that your community should be safer from harassment, and that they are unwilling to work with harassers? Simply announcing to people that they must cease a behaviour, or they must leave the community, is in fact very effective as long as there is basic consensus around community norms. For online groups technical structures can help, but social structures are in fact the root of anti-harassment. You don’t need ops or admin power or the crown of the ancient rulers to enforce anti-harassment policies in your community, you need consistent anti-harassment responses by people with social power.

If you don’t know that your community has concensus on being anti-harassment. as a start you can declare your own personal anti-harassment stance, and publicly call for your community to adopt a anti-harassment policy, and a structure that enables the response team to exclude people from the community.

As Geek Feminism shows, activist groups or groups that have advocated for anti-harassment are not safe from internal harassment and still need a policy. And groups with no known harassment incidents are also not safe; it’s quite likely that people in your community have experienced harassment they felt unable to identify or report. Take steps to ensure harassing behaviour becomes known, and that it is known to be unacceptable.

One specific model we encourage you to avoid is the Our community is amazing! So wonderful! We rock! PS no harassment model in which you spend a lot of time affirming your community’s goodness and make a general statement about anti-harassment in passing. We discourage putting this in your anti-harassment policy for these reasons:

  1. you probably do not know the extent of harassment in your community without a policy and a reporting mechanism, and may not rock as much as you think
  2. stating that you are “anti-harassment” without saying what harassment means to you doesn’t give your existing community and potential new members the information they need to find out if their safety needs are a close enough match for your community’s norms

Stating your community’s great work or exemplary behaviour can be really useful for establishing social norms and letting people understand what joining your community means. They form a good basis for specific policies. But don’t make such statements in your anti-harassment policy, make them in a separate document listing your community’s values and goals. And it may be best to say that you aspire or intend to create an amazing space, rather than that you have definitely attained that goal. Statements that you are definitely no questions amazing may be used to silence people with critical feedback and in the end reduce your amazingness.

We also discourage private anti-harassment policies (shared only within a community or within its leadership), for reasons outlined by the Ada Initiative [disclaimer: I co-founded the Ada Initiative].

Do you already have a community anti-harassment policy, or have we convinced you to adopt one? List your community on the Community anti-harassment adoption page! And thank you.

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Happy 100th, Galactic Suburbia!

This article originally appeared on Hoyden About Town.

I first heard of the Australian speculative fiction podcast Galactic Suburbia here at Hoyden About Town in 2011 and then promptly didn’t listen to it for a further three years, until I found myself doing just enough driving and sitting around watching children’s swimming lessons to make podcasts worthwhile, at which point I promptly subscribed and it became a fave.

And a great time it was to subscribe too, because they were in the countdown to their 100th episode, which has been up on their site for nearly a week. I probably will never count as a real Galactic Suburbia fan, because I don’t intend to go back and listen from episode 1 as many new fans apparently still do, and I am not making an actual Galactic Suburbia-themed cake for their contest (but perhaps you should! entries close 27th May), but here’s the next best thing.

First, a picture of a cake! Not my cake! But a cake!

Cake decorated with a rocket ship and aliens
Rocket Ship Cake, CC BY-SA, mags @ Flickr

And second, a note that you can pick up the Galactic Suburbia Scrapbook at Twelfth Planet Press, including several interview transcripts. (Accessibility note: as Lauredhel noted in 2011, Galactic Suburbia is not regularly transcribed.)

Happy 100th!

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Quick hit: when non-macho guys are on top of the heap

This article originally appeared on Geek Feminism.

There’s a discussion around the journalism startups that well-known journalists are involved in, and the extent to which they are yet another set of startups full of white men. (Basically, yes.) Emily Bell wrote Journalism startups aren’t a revolution if they’re filled with all these white men.

I thought readers here would especially enjoy Zeynep Tufekci’s contribution, No, Nate, brogrammers may not be macho, but that’s not all there is to it. An excerpt:

Many tech guys, many young and recently ascendant, think something along these lines: “Wait, we’re not the jocks. We aren’t the people who were jerks. We never pushed anyone into a locker and smashed their face. We’re the people who got teased for being brainy, for not being macho, the ones who never got a look from the popular girls (or boys), the ones who were bullied for our interests in science and math, and… what’s wrong with Dungeons & Dragons, anyway?”

In other words, as Silver puts it, “We’re outsiders, basically.”[…]

[L]ife’s not just high school, and there is not one kind of hierarchy. What happens when formerly excluded groups gain more power, like techies? They don’t just let go of their old forms of cultural capital. Yet they may be blind to how their old ways of identifying and accepting each other are exclusionary to others. They still interpret the world through their sense of status when they were “basically, outsiders.”

Most tech people don’t think of it this way, but the fact that most of them wear jeans all the time is just another example of cultural capital, an arbitrary marker that’s valued in their habitus, both to delineate it and to preserve it. Jeans are arbitrary, as arbitrary as ties[…]

How does that relate to the Silver’s charged defense that his team could not be “bro-y” people? Simple: among the mostly male, smart, geeky groups that most programmers and technical people come from, there is a way of existing that is, yes, often fairly exclusionary to women but not in ways that Silver and his friends recognize as male privilege.

Tufekci’s whole piece is at Medium, come for the Bourdieu, stay for the Dr Seuss!

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Sunday spam: muesli bars and gummy snakes

Muesli bars and gummy snakes are what I ate at about 7am before my recent 9am childbirth… thus thematically appropriate for this small collection of links, some of which I’ve had sitting around for a while.

Using WOC in the Natural Childbirth Debate: A How-To Guide.

If you are a progressive in the Natural Childbirth Movement (or any other, for that matter), use Africa City women to promote the idea that “natural is better.” Talk about women who toil in the fields, squat down to give birth and return to picking rice. Or peanuts. Or anything else that can be picked. After all, the women of Africa City are resilient! Strong. So strong that they do not even require support from the other women of Africa City. Or medication. Or comfort. This example–of giving birth in the field–illustrates how over-reliant “we” have become on useless technology. Of course, you don’t expect “us” to be quite that strong. We are not beasts of burden, after all…

If you oppose the Natural Childbirth Movement (or any other, for that matter), use Africa City women to remind “us” of how bad “we” used to have it, before all of our live-saving medical advances. If women die in childbirth in Africa City, it is only because they lack the Modern Technology we should be grateful that every last one of “us” has unfettered access to. Use infant mortality statistics from the most war-torn countries to argue why a healthy woman from Portland shouldn’t give birth in her bathtub with a midwife who carries oxygen and a cell phone. Redact all mentions of Africa City women who are not hopelessly impoverished. Ignore those who are systematically abused with Modern Technology, sacrificed as Guinea pigs on its altar. All bad outcomes in Africa City are due to the lack of Medical Technology, never unrelated to it, and certainly never caused by it.

Early Labour and Mixed Messages

The emphasis on hospital as a place of safety whilst also encouraging women to stay away results in some very contradictory messages and ideas (please note these statements do not represent my own views)[…] We are the experts in your labour progress, our clinical assessments can predict your future labour progress… we will send you home if you are found to be in early labour… if you then birth your baby in the car park it is not our fault as birth is unpredictable[…] This is a safe place to labour…. but you can only access this safety when you reach a particular point in your labour… preferably close to the end of your labour i.e. you should do most of it on your own away from safety.

Warning for discussion of pregnancy loss. The Peculiar Case of Miscarriage in Pop Culture

Miscarriage is a tricky cultural thing, pop culture or not. It’s a deeply forbidden subject, much like many other things deemed ‘mysteries of womanhood,’ like menstruation, like pregnancy itself. People don’t talk about miscarriages and that discouragement means that many people aren’t aware of how common they are, let alone how devastating they can be. When people lose a child, they can reach out to their community for help and they are given space and time for healing. When they lose a fetus, they’re expected to keep it to themselves.

Sadly, sometimes pro-choice people can be the most vehement about this, concerned about blurring the lines between fetus and child, and saying that claiming a fetus is morally or ethically equivalent to a fully-developed, extrauterine human being could be dangerous. This makes the mistake of applying broad strokes to the issue, though. Legally, of course, a fetus should not be equivalent to a child. Personally, however, losing a wanted pregnancy is an intensely emotional experience and it can feel on some level to the parents like losing a child, with the added burden of not being allowed to acknowledge it, talk about it, or ask for help.

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Reproductive rights round-up: NSW, Vic, SA, Tas

This article originally appeared on Hoyden About Town.

There’s a lot going on right now in terms of trying to implement fetal personhood provisions and wind back legal abortion around Australia. Here’s the news from four states, anything we’ve missed? What actions are you taking in response?

New South Wales: Crimes Amendment (Zoe’s Law) Bill (No. 2) 2013 has passed the Lower House

Discussion of this has previously appeared on HAT. Since that post, this bill has passed the Legislative Assembly (lower house) following a conscience vote and by a large margin (63 to 26). It will be read in the Legislative Assembly (upper house) in 2014, and if passed there, will become law. Coalition and ALP MPs have been granted a conscience vote by their parties. The Greens oppose the bill. This bill is opposed by the NSW branch of the Australian Medical Association, and by the NSW Bar Association. The campaign against this bill is at Our Bodies, Our Choices.

I’d love to publish transcripts of the Greens community forum on this bill (held prior to it passing in the Assembly), but am unlikely to have time to transcribe an hours worth of video for at least another week. If you’d like to help out, here’s the Amara links for subtitling: Julie Hamblin’s speech (about half subtitled to date), Philippa Ramsay’s speech (not subtitled) and Leslie Cannold’s speech (not subtitled).

South Australia: Criminal Law Consolidation (Offences against Unborn Child) Amendment Bill 2013 not passed

A bill with fetal personhood provisions in the case of grievous bodily harm to the pregnant person was recently before South Australian parliament, but was rejected. Information is being made available by Tammy Franks, Greens MLC, see Stop the Misguided Foetal Personhood Laws and the transcript of the reading in Parliament. Unlike in NSW, it appears that the ALP did not allow a conscience vote. The debate opens with Kyam Maher, government whip:

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (00:11): I will be extraordinarily brief. The government does not support this bill.

Victoria: early proposals to remove Section 8

At present, the Abortion Law Reform Act 2008 requires (in part):

SECT 8

(1) If a woman requests a registered health practitioner to advise on a proposed abortion, or to perform, direct, authorise or supervise an abortion for that woman, and the practitioner has a conscientious objection to abortion, the practitioner must—
(a) inform the woman that the practitioner has a conscientious objection to abortion; and
(b) refer the woman to another registered health practitioner in the same regulated health profession who the practitioner knows does not have a conscientious objection to abortion.

A Victorian doctor, Mark Hobart, is facing deregistration over defying these provisions, and a group of Victorian doctors and nurses called Doctors Conscience opposes Section 8 and advocates for its repeal. The Age reports that Labor MP Christine Campbell intends to table the Doctors Conscience petition in Victorian parliament. (A second Victoria doctor, Dr K. — not Mark Hobart — is discussed in the article, who not only defies Section 8 but has been quoted as expressing the opinion that women who seek abortions deserve death. This is detailed in Daniel Mathews’ blog post which provides quotations allegedly from Dr. K. Doctors Conscience has issued a press release stating that they do not advocate for or support harm to pregnant women for any reason.) The Age also reports that the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association supports the repeal of Section 8.

Today The Australian reported that premier Denis Napthine had advised independent MP Geoff Shaw on what would be involved in overturning (or perhaps substantially revising) the Abortion Law Reform Act in Victoria. The ABC reports that Napthine describes himself as having issued pro forma advice on legislative process.

Bills to repeal Section 8 or make wider changes to the Abortion Law Reform Act 2008 are yet to be proposed.

Tasmania removes abortion from the criminal code

On November 22, Tasmania removed references to abortion from the criminal code. In addition, like in Victoria, legislation now requires that doctors (and counselors) who conscientiously oppose abortion refer pregnant people to others who they believe do not have such an objection. A PDF of the Reproductive Health (Access to Abortion) Bill 2013 is available.

Bonus USA

NPR recently reported on the findings of Paltrow & Flavin, Arrests of and forced interventions on pregnant women in the United States (1973-2005) who report:

  • Arrests and incarceration of women because they ended a pregnancy or expressed an intention to end a pregnancy;
  • Arrests and incarceration of women who carried their pregnancies to term and gave birth to healthy babies;
  • Arrests and detentions of women who suffered unintentional pregnancy losses, both early and late in their pregnancies;
  • Arrests and detentions of women who could not guarantee a healthy birth outcome;
  • Forced medical interventions such as blood transfusions, vaginal exams, and cesarean surgery on pregnant women;

… Analysis of the legal claims used to justify the arrests of pregnant women found that such actions relied on the same arguments underlying so called “personhood” measures – that state actors should be empowered to treat fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses as completely and legally separate from the pregnant woman. Specifically, police, prosecutors, and judges in the U.S. have relied directly and indirectly on… [f]eticide statutes that create separate rights for the unborn and which were passed under the guise of protecting pregnant women and the eggs, embryos, and fetuses they carry and sustain from third-party violence… [my emphasis]

I think this point bears repeating: provisions that were introduced allegedly for the protection of pregnant people and fetuses from third parties have been subsequently used to police the behaviour of pregnant people, including but not limited to those seeking abortion, and including forcing medical procedures on them, and confining them. Fetal personhood provisions are designed to control the bodies of pregnant people.

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Fetal personhood (“Zoe’s Law”) before NSW Parliament

This article originally appeared on Hoyden About Town.

The NSW Legislative Assembly (lower house) will shortly be voting on Crimes Amendment (Zoe’s Law) Bill (No. 2) 2013, a private members bill introduced by Liberal MP Chris Spence in the lower house and (if passed) to be introduced by Christian Democratic Party leader and MP Fred Nile in the upper house. This Bill proposes to insert Section 8A into the Crimes Act 1900 No 40, where Section 8A would read in part:

8A Offences in relation to the destruction of or harm to the foetus of a pregnant woman

(1) In this section… unborn child means the foetus of a pregnant woman that:
(a) is of at least 20 weeks’ gestation, or
(b) if it cannot be reliably established whether the period of gestation is more or less than 20 weeks, has a body mass of at least 400 grams.

(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.

(3) For the purposes of an applicable offence, the destruction of the foetus of a pregnant woman (not being an unborn child) is taken to be grievous bodily harm to the woman, whether or not the woman suffers any other harm.

(4) This section does not apply to or in relation to:
(a) anything done in the course of a medical procedure, or
(b) anything done by, or with the consent of, the pregnant woman concerned.

A woman standing in front of the US Capitol building holds up a sign displaying a stylised uterus and reading 'Is this mine yet?'
“Is this mine yet?”. Photo by Ann Harkness.

The stated intent of the bill is to allow separate prosecution of injury to a fetus, following the death of Zoe Donegan (stillborn at 32 weeks gestation) in 2009 after Zoe’s mother Brodie was hit by a van driven by Justine Hampson. Hampson was convicted of grevious bodily harm with regards to Brodie, but not with injuring Zoe or causing Zoe’s death.

However, the bill has been introduced by an anti-abortion politician, and there are grave concerns about its potential interpretation, particularly “an unborn child is taken to be a living person”. Concerns about fetal personhood in general include:

  • potentially allowing the prosecution of abortion (or, in NSW, where abortion is already criminalised, extending the circumstances in which it can be prosecuted)
  • potentially allowing the prosecution of pregnant people who do not act in the best interest of the fetus (which could include activities with a risk of physical injury, self-harm attempts, drug use, dietary choices, failure to follow medical advice)
  • potentially exposing pregnant people who have a late pregnancy loss to the additional trauma of a legalistic investigation as well as any medical one
  • potentially compromising the pregnant person’s medical care when it is at odds with the best interests of the fetus (say, in cases where early delivery might be beneficial for the pregnant person)
  • potentially coercing the pregnant person into medical intervention against their wishes, if judged in the interests of the fetus (eg coerced hospital births or coerced Caesareans)

The fourth clause appears to try and answer these objections, but given the source of the bill and the outcome of fetal personhood laws elsewhere, we should be very worried. In addition, the media reports concerns and objections from many groups including the Australian Medical Association NSW; the NSW Bar Association; the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (previous three mentioned in SMH: Another minister to battle foetus bill); Family Planning NSW; Women’s Health NSW; Domestic Violence NSW; Rape & Domestic Violence Services Australia; the National Foundation for Australian Women; Reproductive Choice Australia; and Children by Choice (previous seven mentioned in Guardian: Abortion rights under threat from ‘Zoe’s law’, say Australian women’s groups). Coalition MPs opposed include Health Minister Jillian Skinner; Environment Minister Robyn Parker; and Nationals whip John Williams (SMH).

Commentary includes:

Legislative arguments that incorporate words like ‘personhood’, ‘viability’ and ‘fetal rights’ are code for anti-choice sentiments that are always used as an attempt to limit the fundamental right for those born biologically female to control their reproductive choices, if not reverse them entirely.

Clementine Ford: The bill that could criminalise abortion in Australia

Spence has repeatedly argued that the exceptions provided in the Bill, concerning anything done in the course of a medical procedure or with the consent of the woman, guarantee that his amendment would not infringe upon a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. However, the exceptions do not meaningfully buffer against the overarching conceptual change represented by the Bill.

Moreover, it is outrageous that a woman’s legal right to terminate her pregnancy could be threatened by the law telling her that she is at risk of criminal liability until she can prove that she falls into a narrow exception. Zoe’s Law further pushes lawful termination of pregnancies to the fringes of legal debate, where it shamefully already lies as an exception to sections 82-84 of the NSW Crimes Act[…]

The Bar Association also argues that there are “legitimate concerns” about the broader implications of the bill. Once we adopt a definition of a foetus as a living person for the purpose of this bill, “it would be difficult to resist its adoption in respect of other New South Wales criminal laws”

Mehreen Faruqi: Why Zoe’s Law Must be Defeated

Coalition and ALP MPs have been granted a conscience vote on Zoe’s Law, so if you are a NSW voter, today is a great day to contact your MP expressing your concerns and encouraging them to vote against the bill. One way to do this is through the Our Bodies Our Choices email form.

Note: when I was discussing this post with other Hoyden authors, they wanted to discuss fetal personhood in Western Australia, and extended recognition of stillbirths in South Australia. Since the vote on the bill is pending, I wanted to get this post up, but feel free to discuss fetal personhood and potential threats to pregnant people’s bodily autonomy in any Australian state in comments.

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Open thread: never say “fake geek” again!

This article originally appeared on Geek Feminism.

Hello again! Hopefully everyone is enjoying our newly working blog (no one is seeing regular 503 errors right? RIGHT? no seriously, let us know if you are). We’re celebrating with an open thread for comments on any subject fitting our policy!

Feature item for this open thread is Nothing to Prove (subtitled version available in Amara) by geek sister musicians The Doubleclicks. The band talk about the song and video on their blog. Additional images can be submitted on geekgirlvideo.tumblr.com. Transcript at the bottom of this post.

(
{“video_url”: “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Rjy5yW1gQ”}
)

Various reminders:

  • (Re-)Follow us on Twitter! Our new, working, Twitter handle is @GeekFeminismOrg (follow); we’ve permanently lost access to @geekfeminism.
  • Sharing links: we no longer can access links for linkspams submitted via delicious.com. Currently most of our regular linkspam submitters are signed up to Pinboard.

About open threads: open threads are for comments on any subject at all, including past posts, things we haven’t posted on, what you’ve been thinking or doing, etc as long as it follows our comment policy. We’re always looking for fluffy, fun, silly, cute or beautiful open thread starters, please post links to Pinboard with the “gffun” tag.

Partial transcription of video:

Transcriber’s note: the video clip consists of many short videos of a geek or sometimes two geeks holding up a sign to the camera. for time reasons, I am only transcribing the signs, not giving a description of people’s appearance or their surroundings, other than noting geeks who appear to me to be men. I’m aware that several of them are geek celebrities, but I haven’t looked them up. Signs are in square braces.

[Opening credits: “Nothing to Prove”, a music video by the Doubleclicks.]

I entered this scene through rejection and honesty

[Two people: Hi there! We are geek girls.]
[I started playing DnD in 6th grade. I never stopped.]

Nerds weren’t mean, they were weird and that worked for me

[I learned to read with comic books.]
[I’ve been a gamer since before I can remember.]

After 10 years of teasing when social skills failed me

[I grew my hair out / so I could dress up as Princess Leia.]

Dungeons & Dragons cured all that ailed me

[I played Myst when it was released. I was 11. It was the GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE!]

We read books, we played games, we made art, we watched Lost

[My Transformers played with my Cabbage Patch Kids.]
[I received my first console when I was nine years old.]

We said things like “D20”, “shipping” and “Mana cost”

[My regular Saturday night “date” was the 5th doctor.]
[Comics taught me women can be beautiful & powerful.]

It felt good to be myself, not being mocked

[Founder and president of my high school Star Trek fan club.]
[I spend HUNDREDS of hours on cosplay.]

Still self-conscious, though, we whispered things about jocks

[Adult and child: I’m raising the next generation of Geek Girls!]
[Accounting associate by day, Elf Ranger by night.]

But one day, you grow up, come into your own

[I was obsessed with Star Trek: The Next Generation and had a super huge crush on Jonathan Frakes. / Now we’re friends. It’s weird.]

Now geek’s not rejection – it’s a label I own

[I write code for particle accelerators.]
[I’m in ur HOUSE OF IDEAS writin ur COMICS.]

Then ignorant haters come to prove me wrong

[Two people: being a geek girl is really awesome / … except when it isn’t.]

Tell me I’m not nerdy enough to belong

[I love video games but BOYS tell me I’m not a REAL GAMER.]

I’ve got nothing to prove

[That look of surprise when I talk about Star Trek? It gets old.]

I’ve got nothing to prove

[Why are you surprised I want to be an ASTRONAUT when I grow up?]

I’ve got nothing to prove

[I’m a SCIENTIST not a secretary.]

(rising music)

[I own a comic + game shop but people just assume I’m humoring my geek husband.]

Fake Geek Girl test – that’s a funny one, go ahead

[People say I only play video games because of my boyfriend but I owned over 200 games before I even met him!]

How many comic books are there I haven’t read?

[I work at a comic book store. Male customers tend to ignore me completely or ask if there is a man around to help them.]

I know it feels good to have a contest you win

[Being ASIAN and a GEEK doesn’t mean I have to like ANIME.]

It would feel even better if I wanted in

[I was told I traded my cleavage for free comics.]

So women aren’t geeks, so is that your conclusion?

[I have to use a gender-neutral pen-name just to be respected.]

That this is some secret club based on exclusion?

[I was told I “sound smart for a girl in a pink skirt.”]

12-year-old dorks would say you’re being selfish

[A con vendor told me that the smaller dice sets were for women to wear and show off (accessories). The regular ones were for men to, you know, play games with.]

And then they’d go write in their journals in Elvish

[Two people: Here’s a message for the haters, elitists and bullies / from us, the geek girls and our friends]

I’ve got nothing to prove

[Man: No one gets to tell you how to be a geek.]

I’ve got nothing to prove

[Man: If someone has to pass a test to hang out with you / YOU’RE the problem. ]

I’ve got nothing to prove

[You think I do this for your approval? Mwa ha ha. / Get over yourself.]

(instrumental)

[Man: There are no fake geeks / … only real jerks.]
[Who died and made you Batman?! Wait. Was it your parents? / In that case I’m very sorry. / Never mind.]
[I don’t need you to tell me how much I like anything.]
[We’ve both been ridiculed for our hobbies. Be supportive. We’re on the same side.]

I’ve got cred but honestly, I shouldn’t need it

[I don’t need to go to a con to be a geek. I am & I haven’t.]

This world needs all kinds of folks to complete it

[Please don’t let my gender turn you into an elitist. We love the same things for the same reasons.]

You’ve got gamers, and artists and comic subscribers

[Don’t tell my daughters that Lego, Robots and Superheroes are for boys.]

Cosplayers, crafters and fan-fiction writers

[Geek equality equals geekuality now!]

You can stop – never say “fake geek” again

[I was a geek before I saw a cult film or played a game. I don’t need your approval in the end.]

Our club needs no bouncers – all who want in get in

[Be respectful and I won’t eat you.]

But go ahead, if you want, to own that role fully

[Men: Staring ≠ respecting. Men are women too!]

I ain’t got nothing to prove to a bully!

[I’m a geek and I’m awesome. / And I don’t need your permission.]

(instrumental)

[DON’T PANIC.]
[Man: Don’t be a dick.]
[I’m older than ‘your Mom’ and I still love MMORPGs!]
[I’m a geek. / Search your heart. You know it to be true.]
[I founded a camp to teach girls how to program.]
[I am a cardboard-flipping card gamer.]
[You can’t take the geek from me.]
[Buuugs!]

I’ve got nothing to prove

[I’m a geek!]
[I am a geek! (and I am good at sports)]
[I’m a geek!]
[I’m a geek]

I’ve got nothing to prove

[I’m a geek!]
[I am a RPG nerd!]
[I am a geek!]
[I’m a geek ♥]

I’ve got nothing to prove

[I’m a geek]
[Man: I will do anything for $5]
[I am a costume geek!]

(instrumental)

[I cosplay for attention. LOL NOT.]
[I’m me. NERD.]
[I’m a geek!]
[I’m a fraking NERD!]
[I’m a cosplayer.]
[(sign held off-screen)]
[I’m a NERD.]
[I am a geek grrl!]
[I am a geek]
[I’m a geek!]
[I am a GEEK]
[I am a GEEK!]
[I am a tabletop geek girl!]
[I’m a / Browncoat / Comic book collator / Convention panelist / Tabletop gamer / Fanfic writer / Geek]
[I solved the [Rubik’s] cube in 36 seconds on TV 30 years ago. Now I publish the card game Fluxx.]
[I just knew that one day Star Trek would be cool. Take that EVERYONE from junior high!]
[I turned nerd watching the 90s Xmen with my Dad.]
[Child and adult,: I am a geek girl in training. I love the Science Channel. / I am a scifi/fantasy book, gadget, games (before kids), science and technology, artsy fartsy geek. aka a general all-purpose geek girl.]
[Trek-obsessed cosplaying grammarian librarian.]
[I got my husband into GAMING.]
[I am a geek!]
[It’s not easy. But I’m a geek.]
[I crochet my own Elder Gods!]
[I have been playing video games for almost 28 years!]
[Two people: Geek friends = great friends!]
[When I ran a two-week line up for the first Star Wars prequel, my homeroom teacher called me an EMBARRASSMENT and said I was ruining my school’s reputation.]
[My Mom let me read her copy of The Jedi Academy trilogy when I was 10!]
[I was born making Vulcan hands.]
[I often contemplate the merits of a Hogwards education.]
[I got my PhD in electrical engineering with a research focus in computational neuroscience.]
[I am a Wizard, Jedi, Scooby, Xman, Baker Street Irregular, Companion, Brownvoat, Starfleet Officer, Dread Pirate, Walker, Wizard, Geek.]
[Ich bin ein Aussenseitern.]
[I’m geeky enough for me.]
[I teach robotics to kids, make my own cosplays, and I work as a professional NPC at my local comic book store. (And I watch lots of geek TV shows.)]
[I was the one who introduced my fiancé to D&D. To me he is the newbie.]
[I was BORN pulling things apart & putting them back together. Now I do science on a boat. #geekforlife]
[Write fanfiction. Do cute and sexy cosplay. BE YOURSELF. Do what you want.]
[Adult and child: I can be a ballerina AND kill cylons! / Why are you surprised I want to be an ASTRONAUT when I grow up?]
[When I was six my family brought me to PAX. I loved it!]
[I said I liked Illusion of Gaia. He asked me how many red jewels the game contained.]
[Chem teacher told me I would never make a good SCIENTIST. I start my PhD in biology in September.]
[Don’t worry if you haven’t read, watched and played everything, given time you will explore!]
[In high school and university guys were shocked that I played video games and read sci-fi/fantasy books.]
[I am a geek! YAY!]

Haters are gonna hate!

[Two people: Geek girls are awesome and we are not going away! / Deal with it.]

(credits roll)

Transcript notes: subtitling used the Amara tool, lyrics are available in the Youtube description for the video. In order to capture the signs towards the end that are only displayed for two frames, I downloaded the video with youtube-dl and stepped through it frame-by-frame using Totem and Máirín Duffy’s instructions for frame stepping.

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The 62nd Down Under Feminists Carnival

This article originally appeared on Hoyden About Town.

In blue on a white background, the DUFC logo: in a square with rounded corners, there is the female/feminine symbol; with the Southern Cross inside, above which it says 'Down Under' and below 'Feminists Carnival'.

Welcome! This post is the 62nd monthly Down Under Feminists Carnival. This edition of the carnival gathers together June 2013 feminist posts from writers living in Australia and New Zealand. Thanks to all the writers and submitters for making this carnival outstanding, amazing, sad, outraging and uplifting.

Highlighted new(er) Down Under voices

I’ve highlightede posts that come from people who began been blogging at their current home in June 2012 or later, such posts are marked with (new blog) after the link. I know this is a very imperfect guide to new writers, since some may have simply started new blogs or switched URLs, or be well-known as writers in other media, but hopefully this may be a quick guide to feeds you may not be following yet.

Also, this carnival observes the rule that each writer may feature at most twice. Apologies to the fine submissions that were dropped under this system.

Feminist theory

Cristy is kicking off a feminist book club, from historical feminism and first wave onwards.

Joanna Horton reviews Joan Smith’s Misogynies, twenty four years on.

Party politics and government

In late June, Julia Gillard was deposed as Australian Prime Minister. Feminist commentary on Gillard’s media portrayals, treatment in Parliament, and defeat in a leadership ballot included:

Orlando got in before the spill with the questions the governing Labor party ought to be asking itself (not about the leadership).

Julie found that potential women candidates for office can’t commit due to time constraints.

Orlando salutes Emily Wilding Davison and other radical activists for women’s right to vote.

Ethnicity, racism, colonisation

Utopiana discusses lateral violence in the wake of her critique of Indigenous beauty pageants. (new blog)

Kim Mcbreen recaps a talk she gave about understandings of gender and sexuality in Māori traditions.

LudditeJourno chronicles news stories about pressure on indigenous people to assimilate.

Barbara Shaw recounts more than five years on income management in the Northern Territory.

The Koori Woman blogs on hope after the apology and anger after the Intervention for Reconciliation Week 2013.

Celeste Liddle reflects on international gatherings for indigenous people.

Misogyny, sexism, harassment, assault

Hayleigh wants to go outside her house without being objectified (new blog).

AJ Fitzwater promises to ally herself with people who speak out or who can’t speak out about bad behaviour in the speculative fiction community or the SFWA.

Amy Gray argues that the treatment of Adrian Earnest Bayley, who murdered Jill Meagher, shows that the Australian legal system does not deal with rapists well.

tigtog explains that it is the very indifference of creeps to desire that makes them creepy.

newswithnipples takes the mainstream media to task for widespread fail of the highest order.

bluebec does not want to excuse the abuses perpetrated by the Catholic Church on the grounds that they also do good works.

LudditeJourno reviews the many lessons about rape that the Steubenville rapes show aren’t being learned.

Scuba Nurse points out that a rape, abuse or victimisation narrative resulting in the eventual victory of the survivor isn’t miraculously unproblematic.

Bodies

Hayleigh is tired of being chased around Facebook by weight-loss ads (new blog).

Eliza Cussen lists five mistakes she’s constantly correcting about abortion, including the myth that it’s legal throughout Australia (new blog).

Genevieve writes about healing after post-abortion trauma (pro-choice perspective).

Fat Heffalump debunks fat-shaming as a pro-public health act.

Workplace, employment and education

Anjum Rahman writes about the right to work, in the context of people with disabilities, and ethnic minorities (new blog).

blue milk writes about the Australian Coalition’s parental leave scheme and adds a followup in response to critique.

Rachael Ward asks why so many of the testing materials in the General Achievement Test in Victoria related to men’s achievements.

Arts, music, crafts and media

Holly Kench writes that stories with diversity don’t need to be about being different; they may be about belonging with difference (new blog).

The results of the Triple J Hottest 100, 20 Year Edition music poll aired in early June, and as with the all-time edition in 2009, women musicians were very badly represented. Commentary:

Chally is reviewing LGBT young adult books, check out her reviews of Is He Or Isn’t He?, Beauty Queen and more.

Transcendancing recaps Karen Pickering’s talk on the secret feminism of the Country Women’s Association (CWA).

Jo Qualmann analyses the disappearing women of Doctor Who in light of the season finale.

AlisonM observes how very different Facebook ads are, depending on your selected gender.

canbebitter analsyes Cee Lo Green’s Fuck You, concluding that Fuck You is misogynist. Later in the month canbebitter presents an alternative queer reading of Fuck You.

Scarlett Harris reviews Paper Giants 2: Magazine Wars in light of current developments in magazine wars.

bluebec criticises recent coverage of polyamory in the press.

QoT is unimpressed by “feminist” clickbait.

New blogs

Blogs started in or after June 2012 featured in this carnival were:

Next carnival

The 63rd carnival will follow at can be bitter in early August. Keep an eye on Down Under Feminists Carnival HQ for submission instructions.

Volunteers are needed to host carnivals from October onwards. Volunteer via the contact form.