Posts by Emma Hart
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OTOH, Spain.
the Government will ensure that we get moral fibre to our doors.
I LOLed.
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Er... ancient Greece?
Better for teh gayz, not so grate for the chicks.
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My logic is much more fiscal. Filtering costs, and would require a significant bureaucracy to be implemented. That goes totally counter to Act's positions and policies.
Not that I'm dying in a ditch over this, but locking people up for life is WAY more expensive than proper rehabilitation.
Is there anywhere nice we can go, somewhere with sunshine and liberalism?
According to my unwritten thesis It's Cold Eh: Let's Socialise the Health System, sunshine and liberalism are incompatible. The hotter the climate the more reactionary the regime. Democratic socialism is for countries like Canada and Sweden.
Our laws spring from a judeo-christian base where you may have one (official) partner only and the laws of the land are the laws of the land. If we allow people to bring with them their standards of law how can this be selective.
Well, see, that's not really a dilemma for me. I think it would be nice if, as a country, regardless of where people came from or whose laws they brought with them, we could have a discussion about where the law intersects private life, and if there's any reason for the state to legislate the number of partners you can have.
That Judeo-Christian 'our laws are based on the ten commandments' thing? Not so much really true. I believe our legal system owes as much to the 'pagan' traditions of Greece, Rome and the Hammurabic Code as it does to the Bible.
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I think expecting Act to be our bulwark against social authoritarianism is a bit hopeful, really. Some of them might have these libertarian ideas, but when it comes down to it they're just another bunch of hangers and floggers.
Yeah, if you look at ACT's voting record on the big conscience votes of the last term (and I wonder if we'll get any of those this term) they're not really a socially libertarian party at all, just fiscally.
Likewise I think there's a bit of a disconnect in people's perceptions of 'the left', in that they assume they ARE socially progressive, because they're left-wing. But if you look at the Chris Trotter Jim Anderton type socialists, they're very socially conservative. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Jim thought filtered internet was a great idea.
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Yeah, and I'm fine with that. The day we start making special laws that allow people to do stuff others can do just because of their religion, I'll leave this merry country in a dinghy. I'm open to legalising marijuana and making marriage illegal regardless of the number of spouses, but let's not make special cases.
It's a dinghy with a motor, right? Because I'm with you on that, but I'm so not rowing. I was just trying to point out that you can make something very difficult without actually banning it. Like in Alabama (I think it was Alabama) at the most recent election, where they couldn't ban gays from adopting, so they passed a proposition restricting adoption to married couples.
I should also point out that the Sex Party now has policy on their policy page. They're advocating a referendum on mandatory equal numbers of women in the Senate and State Upper Houses.
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Yay, Keith's back from his re-education program!
I'll get my coat.
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Emma, I commend you on your diplomacy and restraint - certainly couldn't have done the same myself - far far far too easy.
Thanks, Ngaruna. That may be the first time I've ever received that particular compliment.
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immigration (really? is that about how many spouses they can bring on family reunification?)
This was something I picked up on while listening to National Radio in the car, which isn't always best for details. They were interviewing a woman who works with Malaysian immigrants in Auckland. It sounded like they'd been allowed to bring all their spouses in, and then after immigration were being asked to pick one wife, and ditch the rest. They could still all live together and everything, but the law says, just the one spouse/civil union partner.
I found this hugely distasteful. People entering into a polygamous relationship in Malaysia receive mandatory and extensive counselling first. Now they're being asked to say which one is their 'proper' wife - with all the loss of benefits and legal status for the discarded spouses that entails.
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Certainly nothing even remotely sexy about this website, looks more like DHL or Express Couriers - pony anyone?
Also, in this picture, does Patten remind anyone else of Deborah Coddington? Or do I just need a whole bunch of therapy?
The problems I see are the secret lists. That means no accountability. Not good.
Well, the problem with making the lists public is the idea that then paedophiles could use them as shopping lists for child pornography. This assumes they don't already know where to find child pornography, and that the entire content of the list is paedophilia-related, which it isn't. But I do see the validity of that argument.
The vanilla privilege thing... I don't know. Isn't it just another way of segmenting others?
Yes, it is. I think vanilla privilege, though, is one area of privilege where people who have it still aren't actually aware that it exists.
But it's not as if non-vanilla sexual practices are illegal, are they? Nor is practicing the muslim religion. It just puts you in another box.
Well, it's not illegal to be a practising Rasta, but it is illegal to smoke marijuana. And it's not illegal to be a Mormon, but it is illegal to have more than one spouse. Except in Britain it's not illegal to practise BDSM, but you can see from the links in Ren's piece how the legal system treats practitioners differently, so their sexual predilections become a defence in cases of rape and even murder. So it's more than just not wanting to invite the people next door to dinner when you find out they're swingers.
And Emma... could you try in the future to write posts that don't stick in my brain for hours on end? I've got work to do, you know.
*places tick next to Giovanni's name*
On the positive side, my daughter came home yesterday and told us how her teacher had spent some time explaining to them the difference between a transvestite and a transsexual. Since a change of principal last year, the kids are now receiving Family Planning's sexual education program, and it's been great. A pity there's not some kind of, y'know, compulsory national sex education program...
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That whole vanilla privilege thing is giving me a lot to think about because there are a bunch of sexual and lifestyle (for want of a better term) practices that I am profoundly uncomfortable with for reasons that feel very valid but may also be built on just not getting it.
I do have some of my own. I'm perfectly happy, for instance, with BDSM that's Safe Sane and Consensual, and okay with RACK, but I have real reservations about Total Power Exchange. They're to do with safety and genuine consent, though, not squick.
I guess what really bothers me about vanilla privilege is not just the change in atttitude to a person when you discover what they're 'into', but also the refusal to believe that they know what they like, this patronising view that they're deluded or brainwashed.
I don't think we're as open and liberal about sex as we like to think we are, either.
I didn't realise we thought we were, to be honest.
I was sort of referring to B's comment about 'just getting on with it' in reference to free love. So perhaps a belief that 'we're better than we were' becoming 'we're okay now'. I don't for a second think NZ is a society that's accepting of alternative sexualities. We even make immigrants divorce down to the correct number of spouses.