Posts by anjum rahman
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And .. awesome thread! I was biggin' y'all up when I spoke at the Access and Community Broadcasters conference today.
can confirm, and it was great to meet you too russell. also got to meet jane clifton in the afternoon, so a pretty good day all round...
re our first game: i suggest we have a rule that no-one on the opposing team can be more than 7 years old. stacking the odds in our favour? of course! we're playing to win, aren't we? aren't we???
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thrided!! i love the idea of having a captain that knows less about rugby than i do. it's the attitude that counts, and we basically just have to get the funny shaped ball to the other end of the field and put in on the ground. how hard can it be?
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i get to score - i mean "score"??? then i'm definitely in!
(sorry, never watched a full game of rugby b4, haven't got a clue what each position - i mean "position" - does...)
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can i be hooker? can't promise i'll dress appropriately tho'! (i'm 154 cm & no way am i disclosing my weight!!)
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i accept nothing!!! i'm an agent of cultural change... well i try to be in some areas, though i'm not sure i'm particularly successful.
but i don't think i'll take on the rugby culture. i was just expressing my feelings about it all - or my lack of feelings...
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i have to admit i was in the "thank god it's over" category when i heard we lost. i pretty much gave up on sport once the cricket match fixing scandals came out and now can never trust if a team is playing to win or playing to lose. i'll still watch tennis if i can though - it seems impervious to fixing cos the same guy/gal will keep winning most of the grand slams over several years.
anyway, i'm now firmly in the "can we please stop hearing about it now" category. i know it was sad, but there are more important things happening in the world, and the swiss right-wing party is one of those. can we now spend hours & hours of media coverage on how awful (some of) the swiss are for behaving like this. oh and on domestic violence too - maybe some of the $50 million (or whatever the figure was) that was spent on our national rugby team could be diverted on researching just what happens domestic violence-wise after the major matches.
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Tangentially, it really is amazing - and frightening - how many blog and website commenters in NZ and overseas actually think that these kinds of statistics are just dreamed up by a rabid feminist cabal in order to make men look bad. Maybe it's a whole lot of the same people repeating themselves in various places, and I don't need to worry about it as much as I do... but wowee.
i've been frustrated by this as well - particulary that researcher in canterbury (or is it otago? sorry, you mainlanders all look the same to me...) who claims that women are equally violent to men in relationships.
there was an excellent piece by neville robertson (again!) in the waikato times a few weeks back pointing out the weaknesses in that research. i can't find a link on the stuff website, but the main points i can remember are:
1. the research tool used would award equal points to an incident where a women struck her partner when he attacked her. the fact that she was acting in self-defence doesn't register in the research.2. there was no measure of how each of them was feeling when the violence was occurring. so while the woman would feel intimidated and afraid, it is far less likely than the man would feel the same way. in any case, this was not taken into account.
3. the research only took into account violence while the relationship continued. the fact is that the a lot of the more vicious stuff happens when the victim is in the process of leaving, or has left. she is definitely at greater risk at that time, yet the violence during this period was not measured.
and of course, even the original researchers agree that when it comes to serious injury or death, women far outnumber men. but the level of denial out there is truly amazing, and that's why it's so great that guys like russell are speaking out with the "it's not okay" thing.
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But then we're back to that circular argument: is there no legitimate reason for a woman to strip/do porn/prostitute herself? Must she, by definition, always be an exploited person?
i don't think i said that? don't think anyone else did either but am too lazy to go back and check. what i was interested in was the proportion of women coming in from a low socio-economic background etc etc. i'm sure there are some women who aren't exploited, but how many? then there would be the ones who say they aren't exploited but are afraid to say otherwise (either from external pressure or because they personally don't want to admit to it). then there would be those who might change their mind about whether or not they are exploited if they had more information or had gone through the kind of debating process we're having here. then there would be the ones that are genuinely exploited and know it but are unable to get out due to financial circumstances/poor self-image or some other reason.
so how do you know which category the particular one you're watching falls into? i'm pretty sure nobody goes through any kind of investigative process before watching porn/strippers about the women involved - it wouldn't be practical for a start, and you're probably not in that frame of mind. i guess the fair trade analogy is quite apt - by choosing to buy cheap products without doing any investigation, we in effect endorse sweatshops & the like. similarly, if we fail to ask the questions, we are endorsing the exploitation of some unknown percentage of women in the industry.
there is then the question of the wider societal effects. the individual woman may be empowered but what does the industry/culture do for women as a group? what are the unintended effects of what she does, and how well do we understand these?
And I honestly think the discussion here moved in the direction it did because we simply don't have the experience or the data to answer anjum's questions
and this is something that i find really troublesome. why don't we have that data readily available to us? i think we should have it, but then we go into questions about who's going to fund it? who's funding the research around why men like porn & what porn women like, and aren't they interested in researching these other issues? now that is a whole issue in itself.
my sense is that we don't have data about the questions i raised in my previous post because there's not the demand for it. it could be because there's no effective lobbying for it. it could be because anyone who tries to raise the questions and push for some critical thinking in this area is written off as moralistic/judgemental/negative to women. it could be because we don't want to acknowledge or can't see that there is a problem.
of course i could be totally wrong - we do have the data, but no-one here has bothered looking for it (including me!).
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interesting that the discussion has gone back to the audience & who's in it & how it feels for them. is that because we're uncomfortable with what's happening for the ones that are on stage? i'd go back to my earlier comment that it doesn't really matter who's watching and why.
i'd be interested in knowing what life is really like for the strippers. what, for example, was their socio-economic status before they came to the job? if it's true that they are predominantly poor women, are the audience taking advantage of their poverty? how many of them are in long-term relationships? if they aren't, does it bother them? what's going on with their physical health - what proportion have std's/aids & how does that compare with the rest of the population? how many of them have had surgery, at what age, and how does that affect them 5 years/10 years/20 years after the surgery?
i'd actually be interested in the research around such questions. perhaps sir linkalot could help us out - i only say that because it seems to me that you enjoy this field of study much more than i ever could :).
Also, based on the idea that perhaps female stripping is starting to fall more into line with male stripping in the way it's becoming more of a "fun night out" - and I imagine this is one angle that'd be pushed by that branch of feminists who think we need to empower women in the sex industry rather than rescuing them from it.
i'm really interested in how exactly you "mainstream" this. does it mean that everybody accepts it as ok? or that everybody gets involved in it? would it be "mainstream" if rich & middle class women/men were equally stripping? do we need to have some kind balance of ethnic representation? would mainstreaming involve having this as an option at careers expo, and if not why not?
there you go, that's me. always the questions, never the answers...
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yes i russell, i completely disagree. i'll say it again. i'm not judging individual women and how they dress or behave. i'm judging the societal pressures that push them into making unhealthy choices, that fail to provide decent female role models, that make them feel they need to have invasive surgery that interferes with the natural functions of their bodies and can cause lifelong pain (ask women with heavy breasts about the constant back pain - then you'll understand why michael's female relatives had breast reduction surgery for health reasons). if i want young girls to widen their horizons, to love who they are without having to resort to a surgeon's knife, to see themselves as human beings that deserve more than spending their energy trying to fit into the mould that fuels male sex fantasies etc, and you see that as being negative to young women, then we are clearly talking past each other. and it's exactly the point i made earlier - that it's almost impossible to fight against raunch culture without taking the flak.
look at the examples you've given above. fergie of the "my hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely lady bumps"? all three fit into the predominant raunch culture image. so when they do sing the serious stuff, if embeds the notion that you have to be like that to be taken seriously. yes, there are some exceptions. but we talk in generalisations because that's what is predominant. when the majority of what you see is otherwise, then the exceptions tend to have little impact.
But if it's our mothers who screw us up, that makes it really easy to put right for our daughters. That's why, while I understand social conditioning as a reason, I'm reluctant to accept it as an excuse.
see, this would work if i, as a mother, were the only voice my daughters hear. but throughout her normal day, they are getting so many more message telling her something different, that my voice tends to get drowned out. i have to compete with television ads, billboards, music videos, magazines, etc. ok, at the age they are, i can protect them from night clubs and red light zones, but that's about it.
i'm constantly being told by my 15 year old that no-one thinks like me, that i'm old-fashioned, that she doesn't want to be different, that she wants to be like everyone else. i still keep pushing the message that who she is is more important than how she looks, in the hope that it will get embedded into her subconscious and pop out before the time that she's considering doing some major damage to her body.
for every person who is like jackie, who can withstand the pressures of the cultural frame in which she lives and come out whole & happy, there are many that can't and don't. the consequences for the ones that don't are severe enough for us to question whether the images women are constantly bombarded with are healthy for the individual women and for society as a whole.
my concern is not, russell, about how many girls are dressing to fit the raunch culture image. it's about how that culture is effecting their self-esteem, their choices, and their ability to achieve. i'm not interested in their moral state; i'm interested in their physical and mental well-being.