Firstly though, I wanted to defend Mitchell against Mia Freedman, who is angry because she was quoted, accurately, in the book. Let’s be clear: all of Freedman’s explanations about the subsequent meetings she had with Abbott where she “learned” that she was “mistaken” – all of that is outlined in Mitchell’s book, on pages 123-4. The publishers should not have put the quote on the cover in a way that implies a review of the book. But that is not Mitchell’s fault. If Freedman really believes Abbott’s “charming” explanation that he is not really against all the things he has spent his life opposing, then perhaps she should remind herself of Abbott’s “only if it’s in writing” understanding of truth.

However, that clarification aside, there was a lot to be disappointed in. For instance, seeing Gerard Henderson (ctrl F for “HISTORY CORNER”) correct a feminist writer about the difference between RU486 and the morning after pill, is not fun. Mitchell confuses the two twice, the first time on page 3. This is frankly an unforgivable error in a book that is all about a major threat to women’s reproductive rights. There are a number of other errors outlined in Henderson’s list, such as the dates of Gillard’s swearing in as PM, and the claim that Don Randall is a Queenslander (sadly, we Western Australians get to claim him). These small errors are frustrating because none of them have any impact on the main argument of the book, but they allow Abbott’s supporters to call into question the most important information, which is accurate.

Factual errors aside, the most disappointing aspect of the book is the tone it’s written in, which is snarky, but not very funny. I love snark, but I like it when it adds to the point, rather than just repeating it. For instance, on page 45, Mitchell tells how Abbott missed most of* the birth of his daughter because he chose to play football instead – he sent his mother to be with his wife. This is an appalling story, and nothing is added to that with asides such as: “Eventually, at 3:00am, Louise Abbott was born – without much help from her father.” It’s a small complaint, but the book is full of such asides – they add little to the story, and if they annoyed me, a committed Abbott-hater, then I can’t see how they would be helpful in convincing the undecided.

The tone only gets worse in Mitchell’s conclusion. On page 172 she writes: “Even though he is married with three daughters, he freely admits he has been mostly absent from the housework and childrearing. Is it any wonder that he has no understanding of what Australian women, who are more than 50 per cent of the current population, expect or need from a wannabe prime minister of their country?” Julia Gillard has probably also been mostly absent from housework and childrearing. So have I! Does that mean we are not prime minister material? Abbott has been an MP since 1994, and a government minister for much of that time. Despite a popular conception of MPs as lazy, it is a job that requires long, long hours. Of course he hasn’t pulled his weight around the home. What’s relevant is his view that women are less suited to leadership, not how much housework he happens to do. I’m sure, too, that most women wouldn’t put “knows how to vaccuum” at the top of their list of desirable prime ministerial skills.

I really wanted to write a good review of this book. I’m really glad that it came out now, as a hook to remind people of the kind of nation Abbott would like to mould us into. But this was not the book to do it, sadly. As someone who already sympathises with her thesis, I should have found a polemic against him an enjoyable read. More importantly, for it to achieve its stated aims of warning Australian women who don’t follow politics as closely as I do, it shouldn’t induce sympathy for the subject it seeks to attack. Abbott is a conviction politician, no matter how angry certain commenters may be when I say that. He wants power, yes, and he is ruthless in his pursuit of it. But he wants power for a reason, not just for its own sake. I just hope that the debate this book sparked gets people talking about what those reasons are.

*My bad.

“If you don’t like what they’re asking you don’t accept the premise of the question.”

– Annabeth Schott, The West Wing

‘Boring’ is not a demonstrable intrinsic quality of anything. It’s not that it is boring, it’s that you are bored.

– Pavlov’s Cat

In thinking about the SlutWalks and what they mean, these two quotes keep coming back to me, as getting to the heart of what, for me, is their main point. The SlutWalk is not an argument that calling someone a slut is OK. It’s about demonstrating that the word slut is a meaningless concept, which refers to nothing more than behaviour that the accuser disapproves of. As Clementine Ford argued, the difference between expecting women to wear the burqua and expecting them to go around in “mom jeans” is one of degree, not kind.

Germaine Greer attacked the concept from a different angle, pointing to the word’s origins as referring to a woman who was dirty, unclean:

In mixed digs in our tolerant universities, it’s the women who are forever cleaning the shared facilities, because the men won’t. The con is a simple one. If you don’t mind that the toilet’s disgusting, then don’t clean it; if you do, then do. Girls don’t have the option of not minding. Dirty house equals dirty woman equals tramp.

It’s about the fact that a man can be dirty or sexually promiscuous and generally society gives it no extra significance. He is still assumed capable of being good at his job, fun to have a beer with, and he is always assumed to retain the right not to be assaulted. SlutWalk seeks to address the idea that a woman’s behaviour in one sphere of life should have no bearing on how she is judged in other spheres. She can be a “slut” and manage a business, and she can be a slut without giving up her legal rights.

Of course the concept is messy, hard to pin down, because it is one that is deeply embedded in our culture. But at its most basic, the SlutWalk is where people march in short skirts, business attire, or exercise gear; the word slut is hurled at women in all of those outfits, because it is never really about the clothes.

This is what a slut looks like.

I hesitated in writing this post, because the concept of “slut” is so broad that it is open to many interpretations, not just from the people who would use it to insult a woman, but also by the women who choose to either reclaim or demolish the word. When I saw that the Perth SlutWalk was going to be sponsored by Sexpo, I was troubled, because it felt like missing the point, but I also understand that because the concept is so huge and so subjective that it’s OK that I don’t identify with everything that progressive/feminist activists do (and also because I am not doing the work, and my attitude is that if you’re not helping you should think very carefully before jumping in to criticise those who are).

But now they have announced “HOVEMBER – a month dedicated to promoting the true aims of SlutWalk” and I now I want to say no. I am not interested in critiques of SlutWalk that say we shouldn’t use the word slut because it is divisive and off-putting to “non-sluts”. I recognise that the attitude that a slutty woman brings rape upon herself is the same attitude that causes governments to ignore centuries-old principles of the rule of law in order to punish those who do not conform. I strongly agree that part of the aims of SlutWalks should be to oppose taking away the legal rights of prostitutes in the same way as it is about using sexual “morals” to take away the rights of any woman who is not sufficiently chaste. It is the same fight.

But a month of burlesque and pole-dancing to protest slut-shaming is accepting the premise. Yes, part of the aim is to make it clear that women should be free to do any of those things. But it also needs to be about breaking down the us-and-them dichotomy. The idea of women being free to have sex “like a man” should not be about replacing one stereotype with another. Women should be free to have sex like men in the sense that a man’s sexuality is seen, accurately, as just one facet of his character. The response to those who want to force women into one specific role is not to spend a month focussing on another specific one.

Whenever I look at Australian politics, I’m constantly reminded that the Australian Labor Party is neither as progressive or liberal as its New Zealand equivalent. I’ve had another such reminder today, with Kevin Rudd categorically ruling out any move to introduce civil unions in Australia. His reason? American-style bigotry:

The Government’s response equated the proposal with same-sex marriage equality, saying the no gay unions policy “reflects the widely held view in the community that marriage is between a man and a woman”.

The furtherest they’ll go is to officially recognise gay de facto couples. And this in a country which has not yet outlawed discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation at a federal level.

Civil unions are not full equality – they are “seperate but equal”, which never is. At the same time, they are a marked improvement, and a step on the road to full equality. Rejecting even this half-measure is the sign of a party – and a country – which is still deeply bigoted, and does not yet accept the fundamental principle that everyone is born equal and should be treated as such. We expect that from the right; to see it from the left is deeply troubling.

On Thursday, 66 countries supported a landmark declaration in the UN General Assembly calling for full equality regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, the legalisation of homosexuality, and an end to “violence, harassment, discrimination, exclusion, stigmatisation and prejudice” against gay, lesbian, bi and transgender persons. The declaration was widely supported by European and South American countries (who are leading the struggle for human rights at the moment). Notably absent from the list of supporters? The United States. They were the only country in the civilised world who refused to sign.

Still, it could have been worse. At least they didn’t sign the competing declaration, backed by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the Vatican, which claimed that ending anti-gay bigotry could lead to “the social normalization, and possibly the legitimization, of many deplorable acts including pedophilia”. And people wonder why religion is associated in the public mind with bigotry…

The declaration isn’t any sort of official UN treaty. But now the issue has been broached (yes, really, it took them 60 years to start talking about it), and we can start pressing for real action. And hopefully soon we’ll see a UN Convention on gay rights, or an optional protocol to the ICCPR and ICESCR to bring gender identity and sexual orientation fully within the UN human rights system.

Elsewhere: [by Mark] More at The Global Sociology Blog.

Today, many social conservatives still blame Friedan and feminism for inducing women to abandon the home for the workplace, thus destabilising families and placing their children at risk. But feminism was more of a response to women entering the labour force than its cause.

In Western Europe and the United States, early capitalism drew huge numbers of young, single women into industries like textiles. Mill owners often built dormitories to house young female workers. Many of these workers became early supporters of both the anti-slavery and the women’s rights movements, while middle-class women were energised by (and sometimes envious of) working women’s vigorous participation in the public sphere.

By the time Friedan’s book was published in 1963, capitalism was drawing married women into the expanding service, clerical, and information sectors. Friedan’s ideas spoke to a generation of women who were starting to view paid work as something more than a temporary break between adolescence and marriage, and were frustrated by society’s insistence that the only source of meaning in their lives should be their role as housewives.

Wherever women enter the labour force in large numbers, certain processes unfold. Women begin to marry later and have fewer children, especially as they make inroads into higher education or more remunerative careers. They are also more likely to challenge laws and customs that relegate them to second-class status in the public sphere or mandate their subordination within the family. Often, governments and employers then find that it is in their interest to begin to remove barriers to women’s full participation.

The dramatic decrease in laws and customs perpetuating female subordination over the past 40 years has been closely connected to women’s expanded participation in paid employment. Societies where women remain substantially under-represented in the labour market, such as in the Middle East, remain especially resistant to women’s rights

A couple of observations are to the point.

First, there’s a very striking issue here for those who would argue that the status of women in Middle Eastern societies is to be primarily attributed to religion (a discourse which itself disempowers and disdains the validity of the choices many Islamic women make) and falsely attribute women’s gains to some sort of hyper-secularism, resembling French laicite much more closely than anything that goes by that name in countries with an English heritage. That – of course – completely ignores that the status and position of women in France and Turkey (the only other country that historically really does secularism in the essentially anti-clericalist way it’s done in France) is not particularly well correlated with public discourses and practices about the religious, but rather with economic and consequent social change.

In fact these same people – let’s call them “feminists of convenience” – are often most reluctant, to put it as charitably as I can, to endorse any legislative change which would expand women’s rights in the domestic workplace, and to want to simultaneously declare Western societies to be post-feminist and to blame “Western Feminists” for the absence of women’s rights in Middle Eastern societies (again completely effacing and silencing actually existing Middle Eastern women, except for a select few who provide object lessons in some sort of weird political game). Instead we get all sorts of back to the kitchen mantras, panics over fertility, and attributions of selfishness to women who want to lead a professional or vocational life, and generally function within the public sphere.

Secondly, the association of the needs of capitalism for an expanded labour force and various rights movements is not highlighted – neo-liberal “cosmopolitan” arguments are relatively upfront about the functionality for the economy of sucking in as much labour as possible – including that of women and often migrant women (as spectacularly in the US but also in many other countries including this one), but seek to deny that collective social movements and struggle have anything to do with our advancement once we get there. There’s a “business case”, but no feminist movement, or there shouldn’t be a feminist movement. In fact the historical dialectic of the expansion of the social relations of labour under capital is closely interlinked with working people’s own struggles for a fairer share, and feminism – historically – can be seen (but not reductively) in this light. But in the sphere of globalised human capital, it’s always enlightened employers who deign to grant rights, and the plight of many working women is completely overwritten and turned around by an exclusive concentration on the middle class professional women and her apparently selfish choices. The women who clean the CEO’s office and change the sheets in the Human Resources Manager’s hotel room conveniently fade from view.

Coontz has something else interesting to tell us:

“The best hope for improving family life today is not to roll back women’s rights, but to further women’s economic and political integration. Increases in women’s power and resources are most threatening to family stability in societies marked by gender inequality, where successful women often rebel against marriage. In countries such as Japan, Italy, and Singapore, where the terms of marriage remain favourable to men, and women have a hard time combining work and family, working women postpone marriage and motherhood much longer than in the US, leading to declines in birth rates that threaten these societies’ future.

As women gain collective rights, and especially as men accept women’s changed roles, many of the disruptive effects of family change are ameliorated. In the US, divorce rates for well-educated women are now much lower than for less-educated women, and women with good jobs or who have completed college are more likely than more traditional women to be married at age 35. In the past, when a stay-at-home wife went to work, the chance that her marriage would dissolve increased. Today, going to work decreases the chance of divorce. In families where the wife has been employed longer, men tend to do more and better child-care, with measurable payoffs in child outcomes.

Of course, marriage will never again be as stable or predictable as when women lacked alternatives. But even where family change continues apace, it has far less negative consequences when women have access to economic rights than when they do not. In the Nordic countries, out-of-wedlock births are much higher than in the US, but children of single mothers are much less likely to experience poverty, and spend more time on average with both biological parents, because cohabitation there is more stable than in many American marriages.

In poorer countries, women’s access to paid labour is a better predictor of children’s well-being than the stability of marriage. In parts of Africa and Latin America, children are better nourished and have more access to education in female-headed households where the woman has a job than in two-parent households where the man earns the income. Children from female-headed households in Kenya, Malawi, and Jamaica, for example, do as well or better than children from male-headed households in their long-term nutritional and health status, despite lower household income.

Far from being a threat to family life, the further progress of women’s rights may be our best hope for well-functioning families.

I’m no defender of the “institution of marriage” as such, and indeed my hesitation about the campaign for same sex marriage relates to a belief that we should give voice to and name all sorts of pluralistic forms of relationship which don’t fit into the trad family mould, but it’s interesting to see that the “defence of marriage” in the United States should actually revolve around championing the rights of women to education and to careers. On the evidence. I’m not familiar with any comparable statistics or studies in Australia, and I’d be very interested if anyone could point me to any. But I’m not surprised to find further evidence for the proposition that most of the talk in the public domain about women is completely out of kilter with reality.

And I want to tip my hat to Betty Friedan! For her contributions to continued Enlightenment…

Elsewhere: Skepticlawyer picks up on Coontz’ work to argue divorce may be a good thing.

Poor Paula Wriedt is obviously having a difficult time at the moment. It’s hard enough to endure such times without media interest, so it must be even tougher with the media lurking about. Imagine how hard it must be when the reason for much of that media interest has come from the fact that you were the subject of one of Sam Newman’s comments. Newman just has to open up his ugly juvenile gob and he gets press in Victoria.  While some of the attention is negative, there’s often a ”Sam’s just a good ol’ boy with a sense of humour” thing not far from the surface.

Here’s some of the headlines from a couple of mainstream news sites about Ms Wreidt’s plight:

Sam Newman sexism row MP in health crisis

Sex slur MP rushed to hospital

MP at centre of Sam Newman ‘sex slur’ controversy in hospital

You can condemn anything you like except feminism and feminists.

What Rebecca Traister said.

So, I found this post from Liz Conor rather interesting.

Firstly, because this is spot on:

Monogamy is a daft idea any which way you look at it. When you put it with capitalism, it collapses under the weight of our collective work-induced exhaustion.

Actually, that’s something the Jensen brothers might agree with – an odd meeting of extremes – where both conservatives and lefties bemoan the influence of the commodification of labour on the stability of relationships, though in different language. It’s not just the exhaustion, though, but the increased mobility of labour necessary in this deregulated world of ours – and not just for the young(ish) and skilled. But Conor advances another thesis. I’m not sure I agree with her, and in many ways, I think she gives too much of a free pass to traditional (and male-centric) explanations for infidelity for this feminist’s liking. But, you know, I reckon we do need to talk more about what marriage is good for. And perhaps provocation is what it takes.

But before I get started on how monogamy is an outmoded sexual regime designed purely to guarantee the agnatic bloodlines of property holding men, who thereby have never thought themselves as accountable to the Great Sexual Contract as women – here’s another great unspoken truth about monogamy. It isn’t women who breach the contract of sexual exclusivity by failing to fulfil their marital duties, night after night feigning headaches. It is men who are crap at monogamy, and not because they notoriously park themselves in other shade, but because they have no clue how to have decent sex long term with one beloved, most of them having porked themselves silly throughout their twenties and thirties and then rolled over and gone to sleep.

Go read the rest before you put finger to keyboard.

Most of the Senate focus has been on the importance of minor parties who will keep the majors honest. This argument often assumes that a vote for the major parties is a second-best option. But as with everything in politics, there are pros and cons to every decision, and there are some very good reasons for supporting the Labor party in the Senate, too – or more importantly, there are very good reasons for voting more progressive Labor MPs into the Caucus. So here’s why I’m going to be voting Labor in the Senate in WA, and why I think you should too.

There are two major benefits to having good, progressive Labor members in the Senate. Firstly, it adds to the depth of knowledge available to what will hopefully be the governing party, and secondly, it adds another progressive voice into the Caucus that determines the direction of the government.

The work of government requires in-depth knowledge of an incredibly wide range of subjects. No one person should be expected to be sufficiently across the entire range of bills that come before Parliament. That’s one of the main benefits of the party system, which ensures that votes aren’t decided by a collection of individuals, each of whom is expected to understand every single bill and make a considered decision about its merits – not to mention propose and consider amendments.

Senate committees perform a vital role in looking at the effects, both intended and unintended, of bills – as well as broader issues of importance to society. Of course, the minor parties are capable of performing this role as well – it isn’t limited to major parties. There are some excellent committee members, and there are some who join to put their names to reports without contributing much of value to inquiries (Stephen Fielding, I’m looking at you). If I were in Queensland I would seriously consider voting for the Democrats this election, because I agree strongly with Jason Koutsoukis’s argument that losing them will be a great and undeserved loss to the Parliament. I’m not convinced that the Greens are an adequate replacement at this stage – their populist, headline-grabbing style may be effective on particular issues, but their reluctance to engage, compromise and find ways to accommodate opposing views mean that their style would be almost as effective were they outside the Senate doing the same thing. (Given there is a chance they may get the balance of power this time, I hope I’m wrong, especially if they share the balance of power with one of the small conservative parties who are willing to negotiate compromise positions.)

It is for these reasons that it is to the WA Labor Party’s eternal shame that they dumped one of their sitting Senators down to the third and probably unwinnable spot on the ticket. First-term Senator Ruth Webber is the kind of progressive, hard-working Senator that the left needs. During her first term she played a significant role in inquiries into some of the most important issues for the left – such as mental health, RU486, transparency in pregnancy counselling advertising and stem cells. She co-sponsored the first stem cell bill with Natasha Stott-Despoja, which led to the Patterson bill that was eventually voted on by the Parliament.

Her role in organising wins in two conscience votes also highlights the benefits of having progressive people in the major parties – people who can advocate for progressive issues within the party, as well as within the Senate.

Yes, minor parties will vote on principled grounds more often than the major parties do. But their votes will mean little if neither of the major parties vote accordingly. I’ve said it before – while the downside of party solidarity is that progressives are sometimes forced to vote for a position they don’t hold, the upside is that other times they’re able to hold less progressive Labor MPs to their position. It’s unlikely that Labor will win control of the Senate, and I think that’s probably a good thing. Getting a more progressive Senate should be our main goal. However, when there is the option of electing a progressive person who can have twice the influence on government policy, and has demonstrated a desire and an ability to do so, then the choice is clear. So in WA, I’m advocating a vote for the ALP in both houses.

On voting below the line
With increased interest in the Senate election this time, there is also a lot of focus on voting below the line. It’s important to make sure that your vote is valid if you do this. Much of the confusion can happen in the middle of the page, where it’s unclear – and usually unimportant – which candidate is deserving of the 13th and 26th spot. So Anna’s top tip (apologies to arleeshar) for below-the-line voting: vote for your top choices, then your least favourites (for symbolic and enjoyment purposes) then number the rest of the boxes down each column in the physical order that they appear on the page. This is an easy method of avoiding double numbers and other mistakes.

Cross-posted at Larvatus Prodeo in exile.