Category: Feminism

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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.
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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.

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Open thread: technical difficulties

This article originally appeared on Geek Feminism.

You may have noticed that Geek Feminism has been regularly down this month displaying errors about “503 Service Unavailable”. We sure have. We’re working with our host to try and resolve the issue; hopefully we’re on our way. We wanted to let you know that we have noticed.

Chewed up network cable by Jeremiah Ro, CC BY-SA
by Jeremiah Ro, CC BY-SA

While we’re here, if you’re interested in following our new posts on Twitter, we’ve unfortunately lost access to our former Twitter handle @geekfeminism: you can now follow @GeekFeminismOrg.

Finally, this is itself an open thread for comments on any subject fitting our policy!

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 or Delicious with the “gffun” tag.

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Why is someone’s entire adult life relevant to their job application?

This article originally appeared on Geek Feminism.

Over at Captain Awkward’s advice column, there’s a question about how to deal with a recent name change when potential employees may call references that know you by a former name. The advice moves a little into how to deal with “resume gaps” in general:

Prospective employers will ask difficult questions about gaps in employment, changes of field, etc., but often they are doing it because they want to see how you react to the question before they decide if it is an actual issue. They want to make sure that you didn’t lie on your resume. They want to see if you have a coherent reason for whatever it is. And they want to see if you react with grace under pressure, or if you turn into a defensive weirdo… [P]lenty of people take time out of the workforce to care for kids, go to school, look after aging relatives, etc. and then are in the position of trying to get back into the workforce. If an employer is going to hold your years as a caregiver or student against you in making a hiring decision, that is their bad. Do not apologize! Do not talk about how your skills are “rusty”! If they say “I notice it’s been a few years since you’ve been working in this field, what’s up with that?” say “Yes, I was lucky enough to be able to take some time off to care for my mom at the end of her life,” or “Given the cost of day care, it made sense for one of us to stay home with the kids for a while” or “Yes, it was strange to be a grad student-by-day, bartender-by-night, but my customers were great and I learned a lot from having such a public-oriented position” and then ask a question about the position at hand.

It’s possible to disagree for pragmatic reasons with the advice to disclose here (see for example annalee’s comment on that post), but I wanted to move away from the question of what individual jobseekers should do — to be clear: I don’t fault Captain Awkward discussing that, it’s an advice column! — to the general question of why this comes up. Why do resume gaps matter, exactly? Why is a job candidate who has several unexplained years on their resume a worse candidate for a job?

Here’s my hunch about why it matters: because it’s a proxy for discriminating against (former or currently) ill or disabled people and carers, pretty much. And people with a history of institutionalisation, and others. So at an individual level you can disclose on the principle that while it sucks that there are powerful bigoted people out there, it’s better to find out that they’re bigoted against you before you’re working for them. Or you can not disclose on the principle that while it sucks that there are powerful bigoted people out there, you might be able to stay mostly under their radar when you are working for them. Not the most excellent choice in the world!

This seems in some ways hackable to me. This isn’t a new insight, but part of the problem with hiring is the need to choose one person (or N people), and, typically, having more than N applicants. You need some tools to eliminate people, so people come up with petty absolutes about resumes that are in the wrong font, or are one page long, or aren’t one page long, or that cover letters that use “I am writing to apply for” rather than “I am applying for” or whatever you like. And of course it’s easy to fall into bigotry too. The ideal worker bee is young and male and “flexible” and so on. If society has squashed someone down by keeping them out of the workforce, you don’t want your organization to have to pay the price for the squashing, so let’s require an age-21-to-present-time employment history too. Some people have that, after all.

There’s a real problem with resume gaps, which is that they might be actually relevant time that the person doesn’t want to talk about with you (for example, the employer they defrauded), but I think it’s at least worth questioning the idea of pushing down on everyone who has ever been out of the workforce in order to find them, and there’s definitely also a desire to ferret out “flakes” (people who you want to discriminate against) among some employers.

One possibility then is that by consciously letting go of the idea that your hiring skills guarantee getting the single best hire, or the belief that your resume filtering skills and interviewing skills are helping you past a certain point, and choosing randomly from the best M applicants as selected by your hopefully-consciously-avoiding-bigotry hiring process. And by letting go of your belief that you need total control in order to select The One, perhaps you can let go of at least some received wisdom about seeing “red flags” in any sign that someone may have done something with their weekdays other than work, and that they may not want to talk to you about that.

What received truths of hiring do you think are bogus or discriminatory?

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Discussion starter: Reddit, Predditor, and outing bad behaviour

This article originally appeared on Geek Feminism.

So there’s Reddit. For the Reddit abstainers like me (I’m also not on Tumblr or Facebook, I’ll move on and set up neo-Luddite Feminism Blog any day now), a quick intro: discussion forum, encouraging the creation of Reddit subforums (subreddits) around any topic you can think of. Hugely popular: the mainstream press tends to cite Barack Obama’s Ask Me Anything thread as proof.

Reddit is strongly committed to what their users call freedom of speech, but that isn’t a very specific term on the Internet: it can mean anything from “I believe governments should not restrict expression” to “I believe that never deleting comments* from a forum improves the quality of discussion” to “I believe that never deleting comments from a forum is the only ethically correct way to run a forum.” (Or the disingenuous version: “I believe that I personally should be able to say what I want in any forum.”)

In Reddit’s case, freedom of speech basically amounts to “we believe that any user should be able to create a subreddit and moderate it how they and fellow moderators choose.” They host, for example, hate speech subreddits. They also until recently hosted r/CreepShots, a subreddit for sharing non-consensual photos of girls and women (up-skirting and such).

Over the last week, there’s been several eruptions around Reddit. Recently, Samantha** set up Predditors, which posts publicly available information about contributors to r/CreepShots, gathered from other sites linked to their Reddit pseudonym. It’s up and down: right now the first entry lists the full name, date of birth, employer, marital status and several photographs of one Eric Gore, Reddit username “ocbaud”, who submitted covert shots of women taken in his workplace. Jezebel posted about Predditors on October 10: How to Shut Down Reddit’s CreepShots Once and for All: Name Names. Predditors was temporarily closed by Tumblr shortly after, although at time of writing it is back with two profiles of Reddit users.

“Reddit’s defense of [CreepShots] is that it’s ‘technically legal,’ [Samantha**] explained. (The subreddit’s bio mansplains it well: “When you are in public, you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. We kindly ask women to respect our right to admire your bodies and stop complaining.” You can also click here for information on how little Reddit’s administrators seem to care about policing the subreddit.) “So I’m doing something that’s technically legal, but will result in consequences for their actions. These fuckers think they can get away with it scot free, which is one of the reasons why sexual violence is so prevalent around the world.”

In addition, on October 12, Gawker published Adrian Chen’s Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web, identifying Reddit user Violentacrez, a moderator of r/CreepShots and several other subreddits hosting racist, misogynist and/or sexually abusive content, as Michael Brutsch, a computer programmer in Texas. Brutsch apparently moderated most of the subreddits out of a commitment to a “I believe that never deleting forums from Reddit is the only ethically correct way to run Reddit” version of free speech, but was more personally interested in r/CreepShots, regularly contributed content. Chen also describes a reasonably close working relationship between Reddit staff and Brutsch, who was active in training other moderators, and in identifying illegal content so that Reddit could remove it (that they don’t want to host).

It’s not yet clear how things will go from here: will Predditors survive, will Samantha** survive burnout, will creep shots remnants pop up all over the web like zombies? (The last is already happening***.)

Some of Geek Feminism’s authors have had a backchannel discussion over the last year or so about various Database of Harassers proposals. The proposal there is for documentation of in-person harassment incidents, for people who would rather not make their harassment accusations public in a blog entry or etc for the usual reasons We’ve taken a pretty skeptical view of the likely success of such a project. What do you think? Does the success of the wiki’s own incidents listing (which relies on third party public reports) or Predditors change your opinion?

* No one seems to believe this about spam.

** The pseudonym that was used in the Jezebel article.

*** Link is to a Jezebel article, not directly to a creep shots site.

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Sunday spam: porridge and honey

What is cultural appropriation?

The problem isn’t that cultures intermingle, it’s the terms on which they do so and the part that plays in the power relations between cultures. The problem isn’t “taking” or “borrowing”, the problem is racism, imperialism, white supremacy, and colonialism. The problem is how elements of culture get taken up in disempowering, unequal ways that deny oppressed people autonomy and dignity. Cultural appropriation only occurs in the context of the domination of one society over another, otherwise known as imperialism. Cultural appropriation is an act of domination, which is distinct from ‘borrowing’, syncretism, hybrid cultures, the cultures of assimilated/integrated populations, and the reappropriation of dominant cultures by oppressed peoples.

Aircraft Carriers in Space

An article about naval metaphors in fictional space warfare. Sometimes I suspect that I like science fiction meta way more than I like science fiction.

“I’m not like the other girls.”

A quote I saw making the Tumblr rounds, which said, “I’m not like other girls!” It went on to avow wearing Converse instead of heels, preferring computer games to shopping, so on and so forth. When I saw it, about 41,000 girls had said they weren’t like “the others.”

Is Australia in Danger of Becoming Greece? Austerity and Blackmail Down Under

It is not enough to respond to this ongoing rhetoric about Australia’s supposed calamitous future by pointing out, as Ms Gillard correctly did, that these comparisons are ridiculous given the state of European periphery countries. Yet the ideological blackmail is strangely telling, precisely because the financial sector in the form of the troika (the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank) has held Greece’s politicians hostage, forcing a slashing of the government in exchange for “bail-out” loans.

The Start-to-Hate Review System

The concept is simple: Rate media based on how long it takes to encounter something bigoted. The longer it takes, the better the media.

An Investigation Into Xinjiang’s Growing Swarm of Great Gerbils

I am subscribed to two “long form” websites: the picks of Long Reads, which focuses on newer pieces, and the editor’s picks of Longform, which tend to skew a little older. Hence, this, from McSweeny’s in January 2005. I always like a piece that clearly ended up not being about what the original pitch was about. In this case, the writer wanted (or supposedly wanted, I guess) to investigate a gerbil plague, and ended up writing an article about gerbil social structures, text messaging on Chinese phone networks, and, several times, the Black Death. Which is how I ended up reading Wikipedia articles about pandemics the same night I was getting sick with the first illness I’ve had since I got out of hospital.

Mariana Trench Explosion

I think of Randall Munroe as a science writer who happens to be funded by merchandise sales from a comic. I don’t regularly look at the comic any more but I follow his blag and his What If? Answering your hypothetical questions with physics, every Tuesday writing more closely. This What If? is one of my favourites to date, although it’s hard to beat the first one. However, this one features an excursion into unpublished work by Freeman Dyson. SO HARD TO CHOOSE.

Do bicycle helmets reduce head injuries?

It’s impossible to follow Liam Hogan on Twitter without becoming interested in urban transport issues. At the moment the big conversation is helmet laws in Australia, which are arguably interfering with take-up of bike share schemes (if you’re going to have to get hold of a helmet, you don’t just jump on the bike, hence, scheme falls apart), although see Why is Brisbane CityCycle an unmitigated flop? for several other reasons that scheme may be failing.

Anyway, this one: A new study reports the rate of hospitalisations for cycling-related head injuries in NSW has fallen markedly and consistently since 1990. The authors say it’s due to helmets and infrastructure.
The drugs don’t work: a modern medical scandal and Ben Goldacre: ‘It’s appalling … like phone hacking or MPs’ expenses’

Reboxetine is a drug I have prescribed. Other drugs had done nothing for my patient, so we wanted to try something new. I’d read the trial data before I wrote the prescription, and found only well-designed, fair tests, with overwhelmingly positive results. Reboxetine was better than a placebo, and as good as any other antidepressant in head-to-head comparisons… In October 2010, a group of researchers was finally able to bring together all the data that had ever been collected on reboxetine, both from trials that were published and from those that had never appeared in academic papers. When all this trial data was put together, it produced a shocking picture. Seven trials had been conducted comparing reboxetine against a placebo. Only one, conducted in 254 patients, had a neat, positive result, and that one was published in an academic journal, for doctors and researchers to read. But six more trials were conducted, in almost 10 times as many patients. All of them showed that reboxetine was no better than a dummy sugar pill. None of these trials was published. I had no idea they existed.

Given that I favourited two separate articles about this, I’m going to buy the book. Now you know.

Going blind? DRM will dim your world

[I]t turned out I needed Adobe Digital Editions to ‘manage my content’… It tried, of course, to force me to give Adobe my email and other details for the ‘Adobe ID’ that it assured me I needed to get full functionality. I demurred… and was confronted by a user interface that was tiny white text on a black background. Unreadable. Options to change this? If they exist, I couldn’t find them.

Getting this far had taken me half an hour fighting my way through a nest of misery and frustration with broken eyes and a sinking heart. Along the way, I’d been bombarded by marketing messages telling me to “enjoy the experience” and “enjoy your book”.

Reader, I wept. Marketing departments, here’s a top tip: if your customer is reduced to actual, hot, stinging tears, you may wish to fine-tune your messaging.

5 Plans to Head Off the Apophis Killer Asteroid

Friday the 13th of April 2029 could be a very unlucky day for planet Earth. At 4:36 am Greenwich Mean Time, a 25-million-ton, 820-ft.-wide asteroid called 99942 Apophis will slice across the orbit of the moon and barrel toward Earth at more than 28,000 mph. The huge pockmarked rock, two-thirds the size of Devils Tower in Wyoming, will pack the energy of 65,000 Hiroshima bombs–enough to wipe out a small country or kick up an 800-ft. tsunami.

On this day, however, Apophis is not expected to live up to its namesake, the ancient Egyptian god of darkness and destruction. Scientists are 99.7 percent certain it will pass at a distance of 18,800 to 20,800 miles… Scientists calculate that if Apophis passes at a distance of exactly 18,893 miles, it will go through a “gravitational keyhole.” This small region in space–only about a half mile wide, or twice the diameter of the asteroid itself–is where Earth’s gravity would perturb Apophis in just the wrong way, causing it to enter an orbit seven-sixths as long as Earth’s. In other words, the planet will be squarely in the crosshairs for a potentially catastrophic asteroid impact precisely seven years later, on April 13, 2036.

It turns out that with current technology we might be able to move the asteroid prior to the (potential) 2029 entry into the gravitational keyhole, but if it did so we would be unlikely to perturb the orbit sufficiently after that point to avoid a civilisation-ended impact. So it’s the question of how many resources to spend on a low-probability but enormously catastrophic event.

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Sunday Spam: toast and vegemite

This week, I feel the need to emphasise that linking does not imply uncritical endorsement!

Philip Roth and Wikipedia

There’s only one problem with this: Roth’s open letter is at best the (justifiably) aggrieved and confused ramblings of a man ignorantly discussing what he does not understand or remember, and at worst a deliberately malicious act inspired by nothing more than a misguided desire to flip us the Vs and maybe get paid by the New Yorker on the way.

In Response to Amanda Palmer

Is it noble to volunteer for a cash-rich for-profit enterprise? And what about when taking the gig means that you’re taking food from the mouths of people whose day job it is to play these kinds of high-pressure, high-profile concerts and ensure that the audience won’t be let down?

Is it noble to devalue the role of musicians by suggesting that their years of training and their tens of thousands of hours of practice is worth little more than a beer and a high-five?

Headspace withdraws support for RU OK? Day

In a statement released this afternoon, the organisation said it was uncomfortable about the support RU OK? Day was receiving from Gloria Jean’s because of the coffee chain’s $30,000 donation to the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL).

Girls gone Wilder

Rose Wilder Lane’s life story is arguably way more interesting than that of her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Owen Jones: William Hague is wrong… we must own up to our brutal colonial past

As India became increasingly crucial to British prosperity, millions of Indians died completely unnecessary deaths. Over a decade ago, Mike Davis wrote a seminal book entitled Late Victorian Holocausts: the title is far from hyperbole. As a result of laissez-faire economic policies ruthlessly enforced by Britain, between 12 and 29 million Indians died of starvation needlessly. Millions of tons of wheat were exported to Britain even as famine raged. When relief camps were set up, the inhabitants were barely fed and nearly all died.

Philosophy gender war erupts after call for larger role for women

It began with a private email last month from one established male philosopher to four others: Proceed with a Berlin-based conference that features 14 male speakers and no women, the writer said, and I will essentially launch a campaign to take you down professionally.

How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything

Or as my friend and sci-fi novelist Robin Sloan put it to me, “I maintain that this is Google’s core asset. In 50 years, Google will be the self-driving car company (powered by this deep map of the world) and, oh, P.S. they still have a search engine somewhere.”

Legal myths about the Assange extradition

Whenever the Julian Assange extradition comes up in the news, many of his supporters make various confident assertions about legal aspects of the case.

Some Assange supporters will maintain these contentions regardless of the law and the evidence – they are like “zombie facts” which stagger on even when shot down; but for anyone genuinely interested in getting at the truth, this quick post sets out five common misconceptions and some links to the relevant commentary and material.

The Joke’s on You

[Jon] Stewart and [Stephen] Colbert, in particular, have assumed the role of secular saints whose nightly shtick restores sanity to a world gone mad.

But their sanctification is not evidence of a world gone mad so much as an audience gone to lard morally, ignorant of the comic impulse’s more radical virtues. Over the past decade, political humor has proliferated not as a daring form of social commentary, but a reliable profit source. Our high-tech jesters serve as smirking adjuncts to the dysfunctional institutions of modern media and politics, from which all their routines derive. Their net effect is almost entirely therapeutic: they congratulate viewers for their fine habits of thought and feeling while remaining careful never to question the corrupt precepts of the status quo too vigorously.

Pawns in the War on Drugs

Informants are the foot soldiers in the government’s war on drugs. By some estimates, up to eighty per cent of all drug cases in America involve them, often in active roles like Hoffman’s. For police departments facing budget woes, untrained C.I.s provide an inexpensive way to outsource the work of undercover officers. “The system makes it cheap and easy to use informants, as opposed to other, less risky but more cumbersome approaches,” says Alexandra Natapoff, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a leading expert on informants. “There are fewer procedures in place and fewer institutional checks on their use.” Often, deploying informants involves no paperwork and no institutional oversight, let alone lawyers, judges, or public scrutiny; their use is necessarily shrouded in secrecy.

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Sunday spam: French toast with bacon

The Myth of Looming Female Dominance

[One] should always be wary of raw numbers in the news. In fact, when you look at the trend as published by the Census Bureau, you see that the proportion of married couple families in which the father meets the stay-at-home criteria has doubled: from 0.4% in 2000 to 0.8% today. The larger estimate which includes fathers working part-time comes out to 2.8% of married couple families with children under 15. The father who used the phrase “the new normal” in [the NYT story] was presumably not speaking statistically.

Miley Cyrus haircut shocker: Short hair isn’t a cry for help

So just to remind you: A young woman changing her look in a way that doesn’t scream, “Please, world, love me because I am a Victoria’s Secret model,” right now, in the year of our Lord 2012, freaks people out. It actually makes them wonder if she’s lost her mind.

Scientists Claim To ‘Block’ Heroin, Morphine Addiction: One Skeptic’s Reaction

THe “one skeptic’s reaction” is actually along the lines of “this is very interesting research, that appears to have not much application to blocking existing addiction, but might to making opiates more effective for pain while being less addictive.”

Tribalism and locavorism

Why does the idea of “food miles” bug (some) freemarketeers while (some) environmentalists resist evidence that it’s not environmental friendly? This appears to be against both their stated ideological positions.

Why Aren’t Female Ski Jumpers Allowed in the Olympics?

Dating to the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) says the women’s exclusion isn’t discrimination. President Jacques Rogge has insisted that the decision “was made strictly on a technical basis, and absolutely not on gender grounds.” But female would-be Olympic competitors say they don’t understand what that “technical basis” is. Their abilities? They point to American Lindsey Van, who holds the world record for the single longest jump by anyone, male or female.

The foibles of flexibility

Since the average age of those studying for a PhD is 37 most of you will have some kind of family commitment, and yes – pets count. I find it mystifying that so many of the ‘how to get a PhD’ books offer precious little advice on how to cope.

Am I Black Enough For You?

I watched this case unfold with particular interest. Why? Because I am married to an Aboriginal man and I have an Aboriginal daughter (they are of the Ngarigo people and the Gunditjmara people). And my daughter has fair skin, dark blond/light brown hair and very blue eyes. She is one of these “white Aboriginals” that Andrew Bolt decries.

We’re not here for your inspiration

And there’s another one of a little boy running on those same model legs with the caption, “Your excuse is invalid”. Yes, you can take a moment here to ponder the use of the word “invalid” in a disability context. Ahem.

Then there’s the one with the little girl with no hands drawing a picture holding the pencil in her mouth with the caption, “Before you quit. Try.”

I’d go on, but I might expunge the contents of my stomach.

Let me be clear about the intent of this inspiration porn; it’s there so that non-disabled people can put their worries into perspective. So they can go, “Oh well if that kid who doesn’t have any legs can smile while he’s having an awesome time, I should never, EVER feel bad about my life”. It’s there so that non-disabled people can look at us and think “well, it could be worse… I could be that person”.