Reading an article in The Age this morning about the death of Pamela Bone I was struck by the following paragraph:
She married young, and between having four daughters and working such jobs as night shift in a fruit cannery, she read Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer. She went back to school, left an unhappy marriage, and brought her girls to Melbourne and a job as a court reporter at The Age. Her journey fuelled a lifelong interest in the question of personal resilience — where it springs from, and how it might be encouraged.
At a time when affluent societies seem obsessed with the notion of self-esteem (happy, happy, joy, joy), Bone’s “interest in the question of personal resilience” is something that should be promoted. Here’s hoping her story will serve as a model for other women who find themselves stuck in a “fruit cannery” (literally or metaphorically speaking) when they’re capable of so much more.
I read on this very blog that her cancer was in remission. Oh well.
Bone unfortunately shared the humourlessness of her generation of feminists. But what she lacked in humour she more than made up for in self-righteousness. She was a mediocre intellect who traded in half-baked generalisations and found her true calling as a second tier columnist at the home of half baked generalisations, The Australian.
Spiros,
Pamela wrote for “The Age” too: one of the homes of self-righteousness in the MSM.
Vale Pamela.
Liked your columns (and campaign) against African poverty and hunger.
Didn’t care much for your deciding that you knew better than Muslim girls and women, what clothing they should wear in public.
cheers
I’m not sure about that feminists lacking humour thing: that’s a bit of a generalisation in itself.
Really my intent was to point out that Bone had come from difficult circumstances to achieve something with her life, which I think was difficult for women from her generation (and frankly if you are working in low-skilled labour it’s still bloody difficult).
Darlene
Some stereotypes are true.
On your msin point: Bone got to be deputy editor of the Age. Good on her. A lot of people who start out with more achieve a lot less.
That’s a good point Darlene about personal resilience. So many people today carry on with their lives in the face of chronic or even terminal illnesses. We lost Matt Price last year, and we know Tim Blair is battling some form of the big C.
My personal hero in this regard is Carl Sagan, who battled his rare form of bone cancer for well over a decade, if not two, remaining productive even though his health oscillated between various stages of illness and then into years-long remissions, before finally succumbing.
And of course for every Carl Sagan or Pamela Bone, there are millions whose names we will never know who are just as courageous.
I can’t fully fathom what kind of resilience that takes, even though I’ve seen it up close in my family. I doubt I would have the same resilience in those circumstances.
Adversity is a tricky beast. Some people can put their troubles aside long enough to carry on that little bit further. Many cannot and suffer additional torment in the form of despair or depression. Unfortunately for me, I think I’m in the latter category, along with many others. If more could cope with such difficult times, we wouldn’t call it “adversity”, we’d call it “easity”!
Darlene and All:
Whether you liked what she wrote or not – she deserves praise and respect for rising above her circumstances …. and in that, she showed a hell of a lot more of the true ANZAC spirit than some of the drunken slobs I’ve seen in the past few days.
Yes she did, Graham, and that’s not easy.
It’d be a very strange world if everybody agreed with everybody else anyway.
It can be tough to be resilent, Mercurius (in the face of illness or just in the face of lifes many ups and downs). Keeping a sense of perspective is a good thing. It sometimes does my head in what people get upset about or carry on about, but I’m just as guilty of worrying about things that will come and go.
I admire Bone’s lack of fear of death, and note that she was a supporter of having the right to die at the time of one’s choosing.
I didn’t always agree with everything she wrote, but Pamela Bone demonstrated to me as a teenager that feminist women could get published in the Opinion pages of The Age long before I was ready to read real grown up feminist books. So I thank her for that.
I didn’t agree with her much either, but I’m sorry to hear of her passing.
I think that her willingness to discuss her health in public is itself an instance of what might even be called a feminist courage.
When she wrote about her own turf, she was wonderful.
I remember her article rebutting the common antifeminist trope that the right to work is something only beloved of the middle and upper classes, and that workingclass women don’t want the right to work in the more menial jobs.
Using the experience of her work at the fruit cannery, Bone wrote that the experience of having her own pay packet to budget as she wanted was a very different story, and much preferable, to having to wait for your hubby to fork over the cash (we hope – if he was a good’un, otherwise maybe not.)
Good point, Kate. I think reading the opinion pages are probably the first taste of feminism for many people. Certainly much easier to face than some feminist texts.
I should perhaps have put that line about the cannery better. Many women do want to work in such jobs because of the independence it gives them, and the chance to work with others (all the usual things one gets from a job). It’s when a person (male or female) can’t move out of certain jobs because of their background (read social class) that it becomes wrong.
I wasn’t referring to your post, Darlene, it was a reference to a talking point recycled ad nauseaum in the last couple of decades, as I recall. The “women really want to be at home” argument. Because some people truly hate their jobs; but a lot of those people are… men. And the poorer the stratum of society you come from, the less likely it is that teh feminists are forcing you to work; chances are you’d have been doing the equivalent in the nineteenth century, too…
Good point, Kate. I think reading the opinion pages are probably the first taste of feminism for many people.
My first taste of feminism was my Grade 9 english teacher, Ms Andrews, who died in a car crash just a couple of years later.
I don’t think there is any great secret to resilience. I do think there is such a silence about the regular occurence of tragic events in people’s lives that those who have not yet had the wheel of fortune spin that particular way think that there must be some tremendous courage needed when really it is just a case of putting one foot in front of the other until things either get better, or they get used to the new reality or they die. What a wet blanket I am. Also suffering is not ennobling. And there are no such thing as fairies.
When reading critique’s of Pam Bone’s anti-feminist, anti-Muslim diatribes I get the feeling that many are unaware of the many years of op-ed writing she did for The Age which did not carry such one-eyed messages. For most of the nineties i recall her pieces on a variety of social issues as coming from a left-leaning or progressive perspective. She wrote with a refreshing clarity, brightening up the stodgy, male-dominated op-ed page (not enough has changed on that score!) She also edited the Accent page on women’s issues for some time -ah, what a pity that Accent had to go, women don’t need their own forum anymore cos apparently we’re everywhere.
I also can’t help wondering whether an older woman would have such an opportunity these days to get a cadetship at The Age, or whether being a youngish graduate from the Eastern suburbs is the preferred demographic for short-list consideration.
“Also suffering is not ennobling”
Actually it is, but that’s not a good enough reason to go through it. Conversely, as someone or other said:
“There’s no shame in being poor, but there might as well be.”
Maybe. Have you got some examples in mind? I think that more often it is the cessation or amelioration of suffering that is ennobling. Then we start wittering on about what we have learned and so on. Suffering itself tends to drain so much energy and it can make people wilfully cruel. Perhaps noble people suffer nobly?
“I think that more often it is the cessation or amelioration of suffering that is ennobling. Then we start wittering on about what we have learned and so on.”
Very good point Su. We don’t hear much about the lessons learned from hardship from those without 20c to scratch their arse, do we!
“Perhaps noble people suffer nobly?”
Such is no doubt the conceit of the self-annointed noble sufferer. But when (and to the extent that) turning suffering into success is a triumph of intellect over circumstance, I can forgive them this indulgence. Just.
A tribute on 774 now -
su opined “What a wet blanket I am. Also suffering is not ennobling. And there are no such thing as fairies.”
su, a wet blanket you are not. You raised good points to ponder. Sometimes I think the person with a serious illness may have less distress than those close to her, since they see the illness as harbinger of loss, or can’t bear to watch the slowing down or wasting away; while the ill person is coping and calming and thinking….. “not her old self” but a new self with new experiences to live. I don’t mean those who are in terrible pain.
Suffering can lead someone to have a new viewpoint on life and re-order priorities: perhaps turn more to loved ones and away from career, flim-flam,… perhaps turn to volunteering or caring or reflecting.
Those who claim nobility exercise futility, IMHO. Nobility is in the eye of the beholder, not the holder.
Fair enough, Su, but it is the case these days that some people don’t know that (or won’t recognise). There seems to be an increasing belief that children should be protected, constantly happy blah blah blah. Perhaps there have always been parents who molly coddle their children in such a way.
I think you’re right, Matilda. Bone was around for a long time writing about lots of different stuff. I don’t think it’s fair to say that some of her writing was “anti-feminist, anti-Muslim diatribes”. Don’t want to speak for Bone (and I didn’t really want to make this post about that topic), but I think that she felt that her discussion about the plight of Muslim women was feminist. While she failed to acknowledge that Muslim women are more than capable of speaking for themselves, that many Western feminists are interested in issues to do with their Muslim sisters and that there are many Muslim feminists (or perhaps she did, I didn’t read everything she wrote), she certainly had a point about the lot of a lot of women living in Muslim countries. As a non-believer religiously speaking, I think all religions deserve to be scrutinised(and when culture, nationalism and religion intersect it can be bloody awful for everyone who doesn’t fit into the ruling elite – blokes mainly and rich blokes at that).
Ambigulous, such good points.
Helen Garner’s latest book raises issues to do with a dying woman and the reactions of those around her. The emotions surrounding a dying person must be very complicated. I’m guessing lots of people who read this blog have experienced that (it must be even more complicated if the relationship was fractious when the person was well). Most of us aren’t noble in anything we do, we just try our best. Nobility is overrated in some ways.
At any rate, whatever people think of Bone and her beliefs, I think you’ve got to admire what she achieved given where she came from (quote from The Age article linked above):
Yeah, i was slightly hesitant to label her more recent, controversial writings in that way, but she has got so much criticism for her attacks on Western feminists, I think partly as she believed they should have been highlighting the Muslim practice of clitorectomies (possible wonky spelling there). There was a big thread here which last time i looked i couldn’t find, possibly as it was only located at the temporary LP. An example of this Bone-feminist polemic is mentioned here: http://castironbalcony.media2.org/?cat=4&paged=2
Pamela Bone was one of those who was involved in the left movement of the 60’s and 70’s and , unlike so many others including many feminists, she moved on.
As the old Buddhist statement one sees in SE Asia says “Modernise your Wisdom” and that is exactly what Pamela Bone did.
She will be missed, so much ,as there are so few great women journalists left today.The current crop at the Age and the Australian prove that.
Su @ 13: This is a bit OT, but I, too, had an English teacher by the name of Ms Andrews who died in a car crash — I think in the early or mid 1980s. She taught at Pimlico High in Townsville.
G*ddamn beej. We went to school at the same place then. I started there in 1980 and I am pretty sure she taught me the following year. I found her incredibly inspiring. I was a total fangirl but never really got to say so.
beej and su: good on you…. interesting that Ms Andrews inspired you both and she’s been gone almost 30 years. There’s nobility.
Likewise it seems Pamela Bone inspired many over a long period. Good on her too.
Darlene, thanks. I admire what she achieved, but I don’t think social background (poverty) has to be crippling. In Australia today there are many opportunities that many seize. She’s one of thousands in that regard, isn’t she?
From today’s online Age:
I appreciated her columns very much over the years. She was a good writer. Then came Iraq, of course. In retrospect I at least can admire admire her courage in going against her pack.
I also admire her courage in saying, recently, that given how things have turned out in Iraq she could no longer justify the invasion.
And by all accounts, she was indeed brave.
Interesting thread. Gutsy lady.
Helen, I agree w/ you that plenty of men would luv to stay at home w/ their children. I was watching a certain news channel from Britain today & the fella who yaps on about the “front page” stuff mentioned he was driving to work early in the morning when he saw a man carrying a young child…he connected his fear to that Madelaine abduction case over there…& said he was relieved or such, to see a police car pull up & question the man. He kept driving.
Yep, regardless of how innocent the man was…regardless of his civil rights…it was stated as a GIVEN that the police should interview him. Is it possible that this is part of yet another campaign of MORAL PANIC & fear-mongering to put men off hanging out with…& strolling/walking outside w/ their toddlers?…& in turn, creating a distrust of Fathers/Guardians who are to close to their children…& consequently push polling outcomes that lead to dissuading govts supporting allowances for stay-at-home Dads…who might enjoy taking their baby down to the sisters in the morn?…or to get some fresh air in the park?
BTW, i borrowed the term “resilience” over at RTS for a comment Darlene…:)
Interesting, nasking.
I was down in Sydney in November last year, and caught up with a high school friend who lives there. Because of her schedule and mine, we had to chat while she had her young son with and we went to Centennial Park to the kids’ play area. At one point she ran into a friend, and I wandered off while she chatted to have a ciggie (I didn’t want to smoke in front of young kids) and I remember feeling people were looking at me a bit oddly. Hard to say whether that was so, or whether it was something I imagined because I imagined they thought they saw a man alone near the childrens’ play area, not someone who’d gone there with one of the kids’ mums.
Robert, I actually Bone believed she was staying true to those old feminist ideals (i.e. that feminists in days gone by would have been outraged by the notion of women being veiled to protect their modesty).
Matilda, I think that’s where Bone was wrong; I think feminists do still care about those things, although there has been, among some, a willingness to let anti-Americanism cloud views about some issues.
Ambigulous, absolutely right. Lots of people do make it out and do well. However, there has been a shift in recent years in which some people have moved from the working class to the “underclass”. It’s a lot harder to get out of there.
Gee Nasking, that’s really quite sad about the bloke being stopped. Fathers should be being encouraged to be more a part of their kids lives (and kids lives in general) these days.
Borrow away, Nasking : )
I seem to recall Pamela Bone coming to my notice for the first time through the column Helen referred to. It would have been around 1999. In the first instance it was a response to Robert Manne on one of his bad days, but it also addressed an anti-feminist line of argument that was then current in the Labor Right (courtesy of Michael Thompson’s Labor Without Class) and the Labor soft left (courtesy of Martin Ferguson’s approving foreword to the said shitty little tract). It was a very good article.
As for Iraq, my view has always been that Bone (along with a non-trivial number of others on the Left who supported the war) was wrong for the right reasons, and that such people’s positions were more deserving of respect than opposition to the war based on essentialist “anti-imperialism”.
Vale Pamela Bone.
Yes, that sounds right Paul. 1999 or so.
Robert, I actually Bone believed she was staying true to those old feminist ideals (i.e. that feminists in days gone by would have been outraged by the notion of women being veiled to protect their modesty).
Although I’m going to stick to the “if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all” idea in this particular thread, let me just say that this concept was an incredible strawfeminist wedge. The most cursory glance at the femoblogosphere and a short conversation with ones’ feminist-identified friends would establish that a great number of feminists would object strongly to being veiled themselves, and would object strongly for veiling to become the norm in their society. That said, they do not think that carpet bombing and starving a nation into submission is the way to achieve non-veiling, and they do not think that ripping the veil from female migrants and their allies who have not learned to feel comfortable without a veil is a humane or feminist action.
Matilda, I think that’s where Bone was wrong; I think feminists do still care about those things, although there has been, among some, a willingness to let anti-Americanism cloud views about some issues.
No, it’s not a clouded view, it’s a more nuanced view that that of the “decents” and hawks. As for being anti-American, many of the people we converse with on the subject are American. Feminist, Fauxrealtho, Shakespeares Sis, BFP (vale), and many others
Ah yes, Labor Without Class. That book supported the idea that the working class is “male” (which was always not true). Latham was very much influenced by that line of thinking. Such views make working class women invisible.
I was making a comment about Bone’s opposition to the ill-treatment of women in Muslim countries, not to her support (later withdrawn) for the Iraq War. Your assessment of the feminist blogosphere is quite correct. Who would support ripping the veil off anyone?
There are always people who don’t appreciate that the “enemy of my enemy” and all that etc. I’m sure the majority of activists do have a more nuanced view.
I’ll have a look at those blogs.
Latham published at least one long article at around that time — actually, now that I think about it, it might even have been about Bone — that was specifically, actively and viciously anti-her in particular and anti-feminist in general. Sorry to have no reference, but it would take a whole afternoon to track down. I just remember being quite shocked by it, and completely appalled when he became leader of the ALP a few years later.
The whole “crisis of masculinity” thing was a huge worry too!
Absolutely agree about Latham. Honestly that period was very instructive when it came to revealing the darker side of labour/Labor beliefs. I’d be interested to track down that article, although perhaps it’s not online.
It was seriously disturbing the way he saw things like assaulting other people as acceptable and something working-class blokes do (as someone who grew up with that kind of working-class bloke, I was particularly annoyed with the silence that greeted that view).
Agreed, Darlene. I think my first published thing was a negative review of Latham’s book in Overland in 1998. I spent quite a few years pointing out what was wrong with his authoritarian style of communitarianism, and his macho boofy masculinity. Not always the most popular position to take in the blogosphere during the 2004 election campaign, but I’m really glad he never became PM. I think some people in the ALP were seriously trying to work out how to topple him if they’d won the election.
Helen:
I don’t think you can say whether your views are “clouded” or not, simply because you hold them personally – and thus self-criticism of them would be difficult
Your use of the terms “decents” and “hawks” indicate you aren’t that open to changing your viewpoint
In comments, one often uses shorthand, I know
My idea of Bone’s writing isn’t easily condensed, there is a lot of detail to be lost.
“I’m really glad he never became PM”
Which means you glad that John Howard won the election, which had a lot of consequences, all of them bad, from late 2004 to late 2007. Here’s a select few, in no particular order: WorkChoices; deeper involvement in Iraq; no ratification of Kyoto (the three last years are going to make it much harder to get on track); continuation of the Pacific Solution; authoritarian anti-terror laws; the Kafka-esque despoilation of our justice system that Andrews attempted with Haneef.
“I think some people in the ALP were seriously trying to work out how to topple him if they’d won the election.”
I call bullshit. Latham would have been a Labor hero, having beaten the man who won the previous election with the vile anti-refugee campaign. What’s more, Howard in 2004 was still on his game. He was not the shop worn geriatric that he was in 2007.
Latham was the hope of the side in 2004. His macho posturing, as revealed in the taxi driver episode, were brushed aside by anyone to the left of the Liberal Party as no big deal, certainly not in the context of the times.
Of course, none of this is meant to imply that anything positive would have occurred had Latham become PM, and there would have been a lot of negatives, but we wouldn’t have had the Howard negatives.
The tragedy is that when Simon Crean imploded the Labor had the choice of only Beazley and Latham as leader.
No it wasn’t. I first started commenting on Australian political blogs in 04. I can assure you a large number of people “to the left of the Liberal Party” were wary of and critical of Latham.
Mmmm, I don’t think it had to be either/or Spiros. I was a member of the ALP in 2004 and this is what I had to say about Latho in January 2004:
Mark Latham’s winning of the federal Labor leadership last December can be understood as a twofold commitment to the new. That is, the defeat of Kim Beazley has been read as a break with the old ALP, while the relatively youthful Latham has vowed to become a changed man, at least when it comes to cutting “crudity” from his public routine.
Latham as modern front person rings true in relation to his advocacy of a politics that transcends the left/right binary. There have, however, been times when his working-class persona has left him sounding as anachronistic as Prime Minister John Howard’s version of white-picket fence suburbia.
When Andrew Denton tried to coax the then Shadow Treasurer to sing his former football team’s song on Enough Rope, his hesitation was blamed on the “… matrons at Mosman,” who he assumed would be offended by the ribaldry of the lyrics. Leaving aside Latham’s connection of the feminine with Sydney’s North Shore, there is something quaint, not to mention derogatory, about his view of women of wealth.
So these “ladies” do not, and supposedly never, cuss, curse or enjoy bawdy humour, and was he implying that all working-class women do?
A brief look at the role of women in the Liberal Party reveals that money does not always guarantee an easy ride up the “ladder of opportunity”.
Conversely, Latham has ascribed a profane ruggedness to Sydney’s western suburbs, and consequently to himself. “It’s tough on the streets of Bankstown,” he told Denton in partial defense of the time he crash-tackled an allegedly less-than-professional taxi driver. “[Arse-licker is] a standard working-class term”, he schooled the Parliament, as if no affluent adolescent catching a bus to school ever uttered a rude word.
More than two decades ago in Labor Essays, R W Connell described the machismo some blue-collar men practice to compensate for being in thrall to a boss. Latham has uncritically accepted that identity, even though, or perhaps because, it has been a long time since the economics graduate and former Labor staffer turner politician could truly own it.
As the emergence of post-materialist movements such as environmentalism and queer rights indicates, the centrality of class cleavages to the way we view our political allegiances and ourselves was already diminishing by the time Latham joined the ALP in the 1970s.
Glenn Milne argued in The Australian on 22 December 2003 that “[Latham’s] personal tale is invariably described in the class rhetoric of the 19th century”. This could hardly be assumed to be popular with today’s electorate, and it is not in tune with his post-industrial “Third Way” stance.
This is not to argue that a person’s financial position is not, even today, an indicator of social rank. Young people growing up in families where unemployment is constant and intergenerational have a tough time transcending their circumstances. Often envisioned as the “unworthy poor”, they do not fit into Latham’s “aspirational voters,” those hard-working Australians who, like himself, strive for a better life.
The blokey stereotype Latham uses can act as an impediment as much as a lack of material assets; it renders invisible those who found a working-class upbringing an alienating and sometimes painful experience. Women who have encountered the unfunny side of some “larrikins” have less reason to romanticise a culture than someone who can indulge in it when he wants. Limited self-confidence, which can be a by-product of exclusion and abuse, is a major obstacle to the achievement of upward social mobility.
If Latham has acknowledged women from poorer backgrounds it is to have a go at their work ethic. Helen Masterman-Smith, in her feminist critique of Civilising Global Capital in The Other Sydney: Identities and Inequalities in Western Sydney, was not impressed with Latham’s positioning of working-class women (at least the unmarried ones) as clueless drains on the public purse who need to be guided towards independence.
“The survival strategies and persistent attempts at self and community involvement and empowerment adopted by working-class women fly in the face of Latham’s condescending assumptions,” she said.
Even without the sad, if unnecessary in a privacy sense, revelations of his ex-wife, it is easy to come to the conclusion that Latham is not that fond of females. Women from across the economic spectrum would no doubt find agreement with her opinion that Latham’s gender gave him a preferred position in the family home when he was growing up.
It is hoped that women in the party and community alert him to the fact that he is no more than anyone else is “God’s gift to the universe”.
We regularly read and hear criticisms of the constricting nature of the more extreme manifestations of identity politics. For example, a female member of the Crikey! team recently found it necessary to distance her opposition to sexist advertising from that which emanates from “hairy-legged man-hating” feminists.
A little of this (sometimes-misdirected) energy might also be aimed at the belief that we are still defined by our class. Let us hope that Latham’s makeover goes further than the promise to no longer be vulgar to a reassessment of his attachment to tired constructions of plebeian manhood.
That’s a bloody good article, Darlene! Where was it published?
On Line Opinion. Ahhh, wish I had more time to write, write, write.
Spiros, you make a number of good points (which I agree with) as to why, knowing then only what we knew then, we should have voted (and did vote) for a change of government in 2004. However it’s also clear (albeit in hindsight) that there would have been a real likelihood of a Latham Labor Government self-destructing in its first term in full view of an electorate which had yet to be taught the salutary lessons of WorkChoices, and which would have had the option of turning to a made-over Costello-led Coalition.
And what Kim said. Latham’s combination of macho posturing, poor anger management and specific positions on feminism had not gone unnoticed by a number of people in and around Labor and the broad left.
Darlene, if I recall correctly there’s also a good discussion of this issue in Marilyn Lake’s chapter “A Question of Time” in Moving Left edited by David McKnight (1986).
You should be in the Age, Darlene! Except what you write is too intelligent. Oh well.
“I can assure you a large number of people “to the left of the Liberal Party” were wary of and critical of Latham.”
Wary and critical you may have been, but so what? You still voted Labor; you hoped that Labor would win the election; you were devastated by the result.
In other words, at the time, you desperately wanted Mark Latham to become PM.
Kev, we’ll never know how Latham would have turned out as PM. All the indicators are that he would have been terrible, but the responsibilities of the job might have tamed his personality flaws.
No, I voted Green. I know you’re going to make a point about preferences, but what else would you expect? We don’t have a democratic process in this country enabling us to have any input into who the Labor Party puts up as its leader.
Kim, my point was simply that given the choices on offer, you wanted Mark Latham to become PM after the 2004 election, despite his macho posturing.
Paul, unless I am hallucinating, your comment @48 showed on my screen as having been written by Kevin Andrews. Hence the sentence beginning, “Kev …”
In preference to John Howard, sure. But I’m in agreement with Paul as to the likely outcome of what would have happened.
Spiros, you weren’t hallucinating. I’d forgotten to change my displayed name back from my sinister alter ego!
The sub-thread about fathers and their children is just a bit bizarre. I must be some kind of freak, getting around looking after my kid two (working) days a week, and not being scorned, mocked, pitied or looked upon suspiciously. Maybe I’m just blithe to it all, or maybe there are more commonsense people out there than are given credit for. I had no problmes at work, no unusual conversations socially, no real pat on the back for my sacrifice, it’s just something that is the right thing to do.
OK, I obviously live in an unreal utopia.
“Darlene, if I recall correctly there’s also a good discussion of this issue in Marilyn Lake’s chapter “A Question of Time” in Moving Left edited by David McKnight (1986).”
Thanks for that, Paul (or “Kev”). Marilyn Lake is very interesting, so that would be good to have a look at. I’ll check my local library.
“You should be in the Age, Darlene! Except what you write is too intelligent. Oh well.”
Yes, I should, Kim, yes I should. Of course, who would want to get paid to write when one can blog away for nothing.
Your situation is quite unusual, wilful.
Matilda,
As you can see people are not falling over themselves to direct you where to find the threads you refer to. If you go to the archive section and search a Bone to pick it will bring up a blog roll and then scroll down to the Bone to pick thread; also A Bone to pick 2; more bones to pick; and there are a couple of others around the time that are germane to the questions of the silence of western feminism on the treatment of Islamic women. (see Germaine Greer’s cultural relativism in the face of Pamela Bone’s questions)
Since participating in those discussions and largely defending Pamela Bone’s position on those threads I’ve boned up my reading and understanding of Islam and have now read Ayaan Hirsi Ali and feel it was definitely correct to defend her right to speak out internationally as an ex Muslim woman and her courage deserves our solidarity and not condemnation – regardless of whether we do or do not agree with what she says about immigration or at all. There are many worthwhile interviews with Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the net they tell a fascinating story of a female political figure who has had an interesting ride to ‘power’ and beyond.
I’ve never met Pamela Bone but i salute her trail-blazing courage and honesty – i have written b4 that it was Pamela Bone’s liberalism that let her down as it did not allow her to really extend her analysis confidently and so among other things we can consequently find in her final months the almost qualified about face in her views as to her support for the Iraq war. Not much other than she was struggling too hard to make it through the day to see the good news that is coming out of Iraq and that part of the world, and you know what? – she is not the only one!
Pamela’s children can be justifiably proud of their mother’s achievements and will no doubt sorely miss her love, humour and commentary in their lives, as will many other women in Australia and world-wide be the poorer for her passing.
Since I’m the author of some of those threads, I might mention that I didn’t think it appropriate to bring up my deep dissent to Bone’s views on the alleged silence of Western women, about which she was just wrong. Not on a thread devoted to her passing. As someone who’s had cancer, I felt for her, and I’m sorry to read of her passing. I’m sure she did much good in the world.
I find the suggestion that her ill health somehow devalued or invalidated her change of heart and mind on the question of the Iraq War rather repulsive, though, I must say, informally yours.
Informally yours, you’ve done with this thread exactly what I didn’t what done, and your presumption as to why Ms Bone changed her mind about the war is offensive and presumptious.
Take your culture war politics elsewhere. That is, take them somewhere other than a thread about a woman’s death and the fighting spirit that saw her transcend her difficult start in life. Also, I’ve read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book and have admiration for her, but, again, wrong time, wrong place.
Kim,
Pamela had no real change of heart even if she had a change of mind. Pamela was no phony pacifist but rather she supported the LIBERATION of the Iraqi people and wished things had gone better. My point was that people need to put in a lot of effort to research in detail and at depth in order to expose the good news about Iraq, and so nothing much can or ought to be made from the fact that in the final months she was taken with other more relevant pursuits and reached the conclusion that things were going badly there. The war being fought by the Iraqi government against Baathists; al Qaeda; and Shia death squad types, is now going very well.
Repulsive of me to say so? If you wish. But not as repulsive as a feminism that abandons the masses and hangs the poorest of the poor out to dry. Progressive women of Basra are now smiling because the reactionary men in black have been chased off their streets and they can now begin the struggle for female liberation (dress how they please etc) from a far stronger position protected by the growing strength of their Iraqi army.
Sadr is on the run and that is the way I like it, and so would Pamela Bone; and as things unfold in the coming months we could have again seen her revise her thoughts about the Iraq war. Sadly she has not lived to see the bright future emerge – but at the same time her family has no reason to be ashamed of her initial stance and nor do the mother’s of the Australian personnel who are there risking their lives to improve the position of others. They are armed forces involved in a war of liberation and they will win. Just as they will continue the fight that many at this site support in Afghanistan.
‘A month ago, any woman daring to wear bright clothing in Basra would have drawn the wrath of the militiamen.’ (by the extremely brave) Deborah Haynes, in Basra
‘Young women are daring to wear jeans, soldiers listen to pop music on their mobile phones and bands are performing at wedding parties again.’
http://www.lastsuperpower.net/newsitems/iraqnewsah2
Right, you obviously didn’t bother to read my comment, informally yours. I’m not feeling very well and am not in the mood to endure rants.
Presumably, you’ll be too busy today helping out at the local women’s shelter, fighting for abortion rights, joining up to Amnesty International and helping with their campaign against violence against women etc to compose another rant today.
I happen to be a member of the masses, and you don’t speak for me or Ms Bone or any other woman for that matter. Don’t ruin a respectful thread (and don’t be disrespectful towards what this post is about because I ain’t in any mood to be disrespected).