Posts by Emma Hart
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Hard News: Not doing justice, in reply to Danielle,
Did it ever occur to you that not everyone needs to rabbit on about their salt-of-the-earth working-class bona fides all the fucking time?
Can I, just for a minute? My mum worked part-time in a laundry of an old-folks home, and she was in every Shakespeare performed in Timaru for twenty years. I was in The Merchant of Venice when I was sixteen. My boyfriend was in Richard III: he worked in a bookshop. I could go on, but it would be boring and try-hard.
What you're doing, Tom, is perpetuating a bunch of really harmful stereotypes about working-class people, and erasing a whole bunch of people I grew up loving in the process.
I'm now a solo mother living off my ex-partner's benificence, but I still have a fucking degree in Shakespeare.
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Hard News: The silence of the public square, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Are such papers, whether they’re spoilt or left blank, actually counted? Do they have any effect on the outcome?
Yes, and no. So any paper whose voting intent can't be easily distinguished for any reason is put in a pile during first count, on election night, and the number of papers in that pile tallied, because the overall count of papers has to agree. But no distinction is made at any point as to whether that paper has been deliberately spoiled to make a political statement, or stuffed up because someone ticked two boxes, or drawn all over in crayon by a bored child.
Likewise, the percentage of people who don't vote is also counted, and is being used as a number of significance this time around. But in both cases, there is absolutely no way to determine whether the action is out of apathy, ignorance, bloody-mindedness, or whatever. As a political statement... I absolutely support anyone's right to choose not to vote for any reason. But as a political statement, it's a very quiet and muddy one.
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Hard News: Not doing justice, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Seems to be a difficult area, the Greens aren’t running a candidate there.
It's the electorate where I grew up, though it was Aorangi then and less rural than it is now, and it's really depressing. It used to have strong branches of both Labour and Values. Now it's unloseably blue, because it's not like Jo Goodhew is holding it by force of personality.
Gibson did not understand the full implications of what he said.
I find this very difficult to believe. Why would you choose that word unless you were using it as a racist insult?
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Speaker: A true commitment, in reply to Bart Janssen,
doesn’t some of this come under bullying as an accepted part of our culture. Abuse of power, the abuse of political power, the abuse of physical power to achieve your goal.
Domestic abuse is bullying. The motivations and the methods are the same. The pervasive effect on the victim is the same.
When the major issue in domestic violence cases is reporting, it may even have the opposite effect, making women more unlikely to report the offending for fear of the impact that could have on their partner and family.
This will absolutely happen. At the level where abuse first starts coming to the attention of the police and social agencies, victims want their partners to get help. Having your partner jailed, losing his income? Which becomes losing your home and struggling to feed your kids? It means women will wait until the violence escalates, until they're afraid for their lives, before they start to report.
I've already sat in a police station for nearly two hours because a witness said there had been strangulation, I was saying there hadn't, and they were waiting to see if bruises came up on my throat. Even when it came to court, the other witness - who was mistaken - was believed over me. Because I was the victim, and of course I would lie. You're going to get more of what we did then. Where was his hand? Was it on her throat, or on her chest? Was it a grab or a push?
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My cousin started teaching in the mid-seventies. She was assigned to a rural school near Whanganui, and the kids would cheek the teachers in Maori. She rapidly learned a lot of words you don't find in dictionaries.
In the mid-eighties, she was teaching in a small rural school on the West Coast. Once for assembly, she taught the kids to sing "Five Little Fishes" in Maori. After multiple complaints from the parents, she was taken aside and instructed never to do it again.
Maori became a language option at my high school in 1989, after Japanese. This despite us being a progressive school and all the buildings being labeled in Maori as well as English.
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Up Front: Tomorrow Lives Forever, in reply to linger,
Damn – beaten to it; so I withdraw in favour of the preceding addition. NB Emma: refreshing the page deletes unsaved comment text, so doesn’t help much in avoiding this kind of thing.
I'd have let both additions stand, as they weren't actually contradictory. And sorry, I have a browser extension that saves all text typed into a text box. C/p before you refresh.
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Speaker: Not even a statistic, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
And if anyone suggests the LINE is an artificial contruct….that, say a 15 year old CAN give consent to sexual activity…..then where would YOU put the LINE?
There's a long and thoughtful discussion about problems with the age of consent here. I don't really want to get into it on this thread, because this thread is about rape. The case we've been discussing would be rape regardless of the age of the victim.
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Speaker: Not even a statistic, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
In the case described by Abbie….the evidence was there. The victim was under the age of consent….end of story….surely?
Just to note, 12-15, it's unlawful sexual connection. For a rape charge, which carries higher penalties, you have to prove he didn't have consent.
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Speaker: Not even a statistic, in reply to bob daktari,
Is there anything males need to be taught, other than to just Stop?
Yes, and we’ve been through this all before. They need to learn what rape actually looks like. They need to learn to call their mates out when they keep pushing after a ‘no’. They need to learn that no-one is entitled to sex, that women should be able to wear any damn thing they want, that there are very good reasons why women don’t lay rape complaints.
And… look, I don’t want to be offending anyone, and I hope that it’s obvious that I’m not talking about the PAS guys who constructively engage on these threads. You guys are fucking awesome and giving us hope for humanity and all that crap.
But there are some guys here who aren’t, and this is what I want to say to them.
Women like me, like Katrina, like Lucy, we’re right here, in this community with you. We’re sitting right here, talking about what’s happened to us. When it comes to rape and rape culture, we are your experts. We are. On these topics, we’re your Ngs and Edgelers. Give us the same respect for our knowledge as you would them in their areas of expertise.
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Rosemary, I know you didn’t intend it that way, but I found your comment hugely distressing, and it looks like I’m not the only one.
The last time I was raped, which was not a million years ago, it was in my own bed, by my then-partner. Like so many people, I froze up entirely during the experience, and didn’t move or speak until it was over. There was only one person I told about it, partly because “didn’t fight back” becomes part of the “not real rape” narrative. Nonetheless, I am not in the least ashamed of how I reacted.
“Self-defence” is very focused on the ‘attack by a total stranger walking down a dark street’ rape myth narrative. Learning self-defence will not, as I said, keep you safe from being raped.