lip magazine: for girls who think feel create speak out live

It amuses me the things that people get upset about. I’m obviously queen of getting upset about the stupid things people say that are reported in the newspaper, but it amuses me when I find myself on the “wrong” side.

For example, here I thought Pru Goward had for the first time in a couple of years said something reasonable (and feminist) only to find all these female commentators abusing her.

In case you missed it, she said:

“I have to admit that the burqa is very confronting — its blackness, the net over the eyes. It’s hard to know how much of it is religious and how much of it is tribal or … cultural.
“(But) we wear high heels. We torture our feet. Women all over the world have dress codes that, either willingly or unwillingly, they impose upon themselves that are ugly and distorting and unhealthy and it’s part of the oppression of women all over the world … People are entitled to wear the clothes that they want to wear.”

Commentators were appalled at her comment, thought it was inappopriate of her to compare burqas to high heels, that she was trivialising the plight of Muslim women. But I think she’s absolutely right. Burqas, niqabs, whatever, are the far end of a continuum of oppression of women in all societies that women to some degree participate in. And ultimately, you have the “right” to participate in your own oppression. Or to not see it as oppression at all. (I for one am an opponent of high heels.)

And then there was the outcry on the part of disability advocates after Minister Cobb said that he would institutionalise a severely disabled child if he had one. The advocates thought he should be sacked for insensitivity and discrimination against the disabled. But I can’t figure out what is so terrible about allowing professional carers to take care of a severely disabled child. Especially if that disabled child is a member of a family with siblings and two parents who have to work. Not to mention that “institutionalised” is a very vague term. Does it mean putting a child away in a full-time hospital for the rest of their lives or a day centre program with schoooling and social activities?

Andrew Bolt was one columinst who willfully misread Goward’s comments so he could bag her out and he included this quote from Germaine Greer:

“Told that Saudi Arabian women were banned for religious reasons from driving, she said she understood: ‘I get a bit worried about certain heavily veiled ladies driving because they have no peripheral vision at all.’

I love Germaine. Leave it to her to inject some humour into tense and polarised debate.

Rachel F

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If anyone was considering taking their cousins/friend’s kiddies/children to see Monster House, I’d like to suggest that you don’t.

This movie upset me so much that it made me cry and I had to lecture the two lovely little girls that I took to the movie with when it was over, trying to hammer it in that violence is not a way to deal with angry, hurt and psychopathic people. They need love and understanding, not to be blown up by dynamite.

The movie was going along just fine until it started explaining itself: the monstrous house, which is an enormous mouth that wants to devour children and eats their toys, is actually the soul of dead obese woman who used to be in a freak show. People threw things at her and when she was rescued by a man who fell in love with her, local children still threw stuff at her while he was building her a house. She rages at the children and falls off the house and dies - then haunts the house. The husband that falls in love with her, instead of being a hero for loving a fat woman, is a pathetic enabler who has to “let go” and destroy his wife/house in order to free the neighbourhood children from the tyranny of the house. In the end the three kids whose quest it is to kill the house end up dynamiting the house to oblivion.

Apalling!!! The tiny time devoted to showing the fat woman abused was enough to make me start crying for the house. The movie portrays fat women as evil (the other women are stylised skinny), does not demonstrate in a way that small kids would understand the link between the woman being abused and the anger and hurt that fuels her devouring hunger for kiddies and doesn’t show any useful, healthy or sympathetic way that the kids could have helped her to heal.

Obviously the movie was written and produced by men.

Please don’t let the kids in your life absorb these lessons.

Rachel F

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Hey all,

Well, back from TINA and Newcastle. Being back at work is sooo depressing.

TINA was great as usual. My panel for the Student and Emerging Media Festival went well, though was more a heated discussion on feminism than on grrl media. I think that was alright, though, as there were several different perspectives being bandied around and we all need to understand how varied feminism is and clarify our own attitudes. Thanks to Rachel Hills, Anna Greer and Wendy Bacon for offering their views.

Aside from panels put on by NSEMF and the Young Writers Festival, I also partook in some Electrofringe exhibitions, house shared with the lovely Vibewire crew had a swim at the beach and sold a bunch of mags at the zine fair. A highlight was the new!shop. Rather than try to describe the awesomeness that is this particular installation/performance exhibition, I’d urge you to go have a browse if it comes to a town near you.

All in all an excellent weekend!

You should go…

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