Posts by Lucy Telfar Barnard
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Actually, at that stage, I feared the worst.
Yeah, you're right. It would make a much better story if it turned out I actually was his sister...
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So, at high school I "dated" this guy for a little while. We never got past first base, and eventually we broke it off very amicably when he admitted that "it's weird, but kissing you somehow feels like kissing my sister."
'Course, you all know where this is going, though it took me till my school reunion 10 years later before realisation dawned. Then I kind of wondered why he'd gone there at all, till I realised that at the time I had a short-back-and sides and not much in the way of curves, and he found me particularly attractive when I wore a tuxedo...
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succame (is that a word? It should be)
No, it's not. Succumbed is what you're after. And succame shouldn't be a word, because silent `b's are awesumb.
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Why don't the abused disclose it? Well, having otherwise apparently intelligent people say they are "genuinely sceptical" about the stats they hear doesn't help. Put it this way. Think of your skepticism, put a look on your face that illustrates it, and imagine that face as the reaction you're going to get when you tell someone about what that man did to you (who everyone thinks is such a lovely, caring old chap, great with children!).
Also. When I feel the need for a good story in a conversation I'm quite happy to talk about the time I surprised a burglar in my home. I can describe how I saw the burglar, and screamed, and he ran away, and I called the police, and so on. I didn't particularly enjoy it at the time, but it makes a good story in retrospect, perhaps because it is a story in which I win, and also, on a mundane level, because burglaries are about stuff (whereas sexual abuse is about power).
I'd also probably tell you quite comfortably about the time some guy in the park popped his junk out and wanked at me, because I was old enough and feminist enough by then not to internalise it, so I didn't feel disempowered, just sort of annoyed.
I'd probably also feel comfortable talking about the time in my late teens when some boy plied me with alcohol till I put out.
But (deep breath) I don't tend to talk about what the paedophile did when I was a child, even though I did "disclose" at the time (though it took the "adults" at least six months to do anything about him, and even then they adopted a hippie version of the Catholic church's "Pacific solution") and again some 12 years later, which resulted in him going to prison (though that took another two years, and he only got four). And although I can talk almost with glee about seeing the burglar, in his jeans and leather jacket and panicked expression, standing behind my bedroom door where I was about to hang my coat, I certainly don't volunteer the details of exactly when the paedophile put what where, or what he said when he did,
Nor do I talk about the time a a previous partner held me down and forced himself on me (such a lovely old expression that one).
Why not? In the first case, because it makes me feel exposed, even 30 years after it happened, even though he went to prison for it, and even with the good things that came from disclosure (like another childhood friend discovering that the flashbacks and nightmares she'd been having about him were real and she wasn't going crazy).
In the second case, perhaps I don't like remembering that I couldn't fight him off so I just lay there and took it, and then carried on living with him for some months afterwards. It doesn't gel very well with my self-image of someone old enough and feminist enough not to internalise it.
Also, it doesn't tend to come up much. You know, you might say "so, have you ever been burgled", or even "did anyone ever flash at you" and it would just be taken as slightly morbid curiousity. But asking "so, have you ever been raped" in the same tone of voice will tend to make people wonder why you want to know, and whether the answer will give you jollies.
However, on the rare occasions it does it come up, it is similarly rare to find a woman who cannot recount her own story of assault, or near assault, or threat narrowly averted. So excuse me if I find your "genuine scepticism", however honestly meant, slightly insulting to my sex. To me it reads like just another example of "oh it wasn't really that bad was it? Surely you're exaggerating?"
Maybe I'll be kind, and assume you meant to say "genuinely ignorant" instead.
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What I'd like to know is about the ones who are having babies and how they're managing that and what the lab's doing to accomodate it.
Being ever-so-close to finishing the fid (if my supervisors would just be so good as to get their comments back to me...): I enrolled when my two children were 4 1/2 and 1 respectively. However, it can work other ways too. Of the many other women doing PhDs at round the same time as me, three others (like me) already had young children. One of these was a solo parent, and one had another (third) child during the PhD. Two other women had their first during (you just take a bit of time off in the middle), and one gave birth about a month after submission. The difficulties are the same as for any other working mother, i.e. the main issue is childcare; and in some ways it's easier, in that your working hours are a little more flexible than many work places, and you don't get limited sick leave.
As for Ian Grant's advice, well, yes, I suspect what he wants to say is "people should get married younger because then they're less likely to do sex with other people first, and Doing Sex before Marriage is Bad.". Personally, I'd love to see some numbers showing likelihood of a first marriage (or perhaps relationship with issue) ending in relation to age at marriage (I mean, I don't think marriage/civil union is the be all and end all, I'm just not sure how else you'd distinguish relationships where the partners were intending it to be permanent from those relationships you have that are only meant to be a bit of fun for a few months or so. Or those ones where you spend three years figuring out that you really don't want a long term relationship with that person.). 'Cos I'm all about the statistics. I wouldn't be at all surprised if younger marriages were more likely to end in divorce, which would rather stuff up Mr Grant's recommendations.
Oh, and hi back to Danielle (from a few weeks ago...)!
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I used to be a supporter of compulsory membership, back in the last century when I was an undergraduate. I still might be, if I could at least choose which student to be a member of. Mind you, I thought that "compulsory church membership piece" made quite a compelling argument, so maybe my reason bone's a bit broken or something. Anyhow, the purpose of this post was mostly to have a winge: as a student of the University of Otago, ... Welllington, I have to pay for membership of an association from which the only benefits I receive are... um... well, maybe that "student voice" thing, if I needed it, which so far I haven't. All the other stuff (you know, the stuff that I might actually find useful - a gym, cheap medical services, etc.) is in Dunedin, where I have spent exactly two days in my four years of study. So I begin to see how voluntariness might have something going for it.
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Sigh. I guess I didn't make myself clear enough. I think provocation is a nonsense defense. The thing that irks me is that so many people are jumping up and down for it to be removed now, and jumping up and down loudly enough that the politicians see some votes in doing something about it. It was just as nonsense a defence in the "homosexual panic" cases, but the voices calling for its repeal were much fewer, or quieter, or something, and didn't generate the same sense of urgency as this case has.
So although I will be glad to see the defense go, I will be extremely disappointed that it will only be because someone finally tried to use it to get away with murdering someone straight.
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Y'know, I think this provocation defense should stay. After all, getting rid of it isn't going to change what happened in the Weatherston trial. I think it should stay till the next time it's used, which will presumably be (as it usually is) as an excuse for killing some man who fancies men. Then when the politicians jump up and down calling for the law to change pronto, I might actually think they were doing so from some position of principle, rather than just because it's popular.
Alternatively, I could be kind and blame the public instead. Maybe the politicians are thinking "oh thank goodness it's some nice young girl this time, now we can get rid of that ridiculous law without the talkback voters realising we do care about gay people too."
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Only slightly off-topic... That Ezi-Rider wheelchair looks awesome, but if I'm reading it right, the maximum weight it can carry is 60kg. I don't think I've weighed that little in, erm, some years. Guess I'll just have to hope that if my genetic coin toss falls that way, it drops me a few kgs before I need wheels...
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Hey Damian, please say hello to Marianne from me.
Because New Zealand really is that small.