You are not entitled to my attention

Ignoring someone can be the most powerfully feminist action anyone can choose to take. There’s situations and types of entitlement it’s especially effective against, especially when women receive unwanted attention from men. Dear attention-seekers: I know it’s hard being you. There’s really very little attention to go around these days, what with advertising everywhere, cellphones, [...]

Abor- wait, I can’t say that anymore?

Feministing has an article about google dropping ads for abortion services in some countries. While I’ve said many times I’d like to see less abortions, somehow I think this is more of an attempt to silence discussion of reproductive rights for women. Given some of the other ethically controversial stuff served by AdWords, I can’t [...]

Now who will pick it up…

I/S has a great, uncostly way to make some strides towards pay equity published over at progbills- average wage disclosure. Any thoughts? Particularly on who should pick it up as a member’s bill?

Why Labour are also fuck-ups

So, seeing I’ve been strongly critical of national on women’s rights, let’s do a retrospective of similar areas where Labour fucked up on identity politics, political freedom and non-discrimination. I have the feeling this is going to make me temporarily popular with certain other Greens who share with me a deep distrust of Labour, and [...]

More philosophy: The Universal Right to Life

So, having been drawn into the topic of abortion lately by the comments, I want to wax philosophical1 about the antecedents to2 my beliefs about abortion. One of the reasons I turned away from believing that abortion was largely wrong to seeing it as very difficult to understand (and eventually from there to believing that [...]

Hey, at least we didn’t fuck things up last time

While I think they’re making things go disastrously wrong in terms of pay equity, I have a small amount of sympathy for National on Women’s Affairs. Not because they’re any good on women’s rights, (oh, they realise that they’re important, hence the $2 million funding increase for the Ministry of Women’s Affairs) but because Pansy [...]

John Key fails to manage sexual harassment

So, people elsewhere have covered the Worth saga pretty well covered. I think the Hand Mirror covered it pretty well from the perspective that I would have. What I instead want to talk about is what this means for the Prime Minister, and a National Party that’s trying to be Not Quite Labour™ and do [...]

Pay Equity Fired

Just a quick link- those of you who don’t already follow THM should take a look at Anjum’s piece there about the Ministry of Women’s Affairs firing its staff handling pay equity issues. Not a good look, National.

Christine Rankin to the Families Commission

You can see her defending her appointment on TVNZ Ondemand. While there is considerable reaction to Christine Rankin being appointed to the families commission, a lot of it is misguided. One of the tragedies of accepting any significant part of feminism is that it motivates you to defend women whose values greatly contradict your own, [...]

Would the other ex-partners please stand up?

So, I’m going to issue an ultimatum here: I don’t care whether Pauline Hanson really was photographed nude by an ex-boyfriend or not, and it has nothing to do with her being from over the ditch. But what I do care about is this: How is it not trying to dismiss her career because she, [...]