Telling other people's stories

I mentioned last week that I had managed to slip my hatred of racism into a lunchroom conversation about The Help. This is a battle I didn't pick wisely, as I've now discovered that everybody loves The Help. 'How couldn't you love it?', they asked, 'It's about racism, and racism is bad!' The worst part was the awkward looks that followed, and I felt they now imagined me riding around on horses, cutting holes out of pillowcases and calling myself the Grand Wizard.

I haven't read the Help or seen the movie, so perhaps am unqualified to comment here, but I understand the story is based in 1960s Mississippi, where a young white writer decides to reveal the truth about black domestic workers by writing a book exposing this. It includes such gems as the following, where our heroine describes her childhood friends:

Sometimes two girls from next door would come over to play with me, named Mary Nell and Mary Roan. They were so black I couldn't tell them apart and called them both Mary.

What a woman!

The Help has bafflingly won rave reviews from critics and fans alike, with one critic writing that the Help has its cake and eats it "and makes short work of the fried chicken, grits and sweet potato pie too" - charming! People I meet almost uniformly love it and gushingly recommend it to me, and my colleagues sometimes quote it in the way my friends and I used to say 'Orange Mocha Frappuccino!' when Zoolander first came out.

I don't get it. Before I could speak in the language of appropriation, I knew something was off about these movies and books. I knew there was something I didn't like about Crash, and something that rubbed me the wrong way about Dangerous Minds (more than the Nice White Lady trope - seriously, watch that video, it's gold). And now that I'm more well-read on the topic, I can generally enunciate my views on these kinds of Oscar-baiting movies (the Academy loves a good tale of white rescue) a little more clearly.

The problem with these books and movies is while claiming to be inspiring tales of fights against racism, they really achieve nothing more than replace one form of oppression with another, the oppression of silence. The oppressed - the help, the poor minority students, the homeless talented black footballer - are the vehicles for the tales of the white rescuers. We're not interested in hearing these people tell us their own stories, and we're not interested in stories where they rescue themselves from oppression, as is the case in basically all history. We want more stories of the bravery and kindness of wealthy privileged people who look like us.

It's something that's also been playing on my mind a lot recently. I've just finished reading Nickel and Dimed, journalist Barbara Ehreinreich's account of a few months she spent undercover trying to survive on the minimum wage. I was intrigued by the concept, but I couldn't quite place why I disliked the book so intensely. And then it clicked, yet again we are being fed the stories of the oppressed (the overworked and underpaid) by somebody who was doing this as an experiment. Ehrenreich constantly mentioned trying to educate her fellow workers, she drew on her own funds once or twice when things got tough and generally portrayed a sense of being above it all. And I lapped it up. I was desperate to read this book and even put my name down on the library waiting list, hoping to gain new insights. But why can't we hear this from the people who actually live this life? Why do we need a buffer, a guide, a translator for oppression and suffering? 

It's a hard one to grasp, because it seems so contrary. I know I felt like a card-carrying leftie as I proudly carried my expose on poverty home on the tram. These works do such a good job of pretending to be against the very thing they perpetrate. But isms today are a lot more subtle than the isms of days now past. There are no more laws and little segregation. Instead, the most insidious racism is the kind that is done under the guise of integration, or of anti-racism. The term 'One New Zealand' springs to mind. 

So I won't be reading the Help, or watching the Blind Side, or reading any more stories of weekend flings with poverty. I don't think I have many other options though, as there aren't too many people out there willing to fund stories where the oppressed speak for themselves. And Oprah can't keep carrying the baton alone forever...

Being a crafty feminist

Starting a new job is always tricky. There is a whole lot of figuring people out and of people figuring you out. It's doubly difficult when you're also new to the country, so you're trying to work out if these new colleagues are roughly representative of their country, and they are trying to do the same for you. There are always a few things I like to lay on the table early to avoid awkward conversations later on - my feminism (discussions helpfully triggered by sexy Julia Gillard newspaper cartoons), my hatred of racism (discussions helpfully triggered by someone gushing about the Help) and my love of crafting (discussions triggered by bringing in gluten free banana loaf for morning tea).

I've always been, much to my own chagrin, more interested in stereotypically feminine pursuits than sterotypically masculine ones. As a kid I was much more likely to be found indoors in a pink tulle dress playing princesses than outdoors playing cricket. And now as an adult, not much has changed. My interests are certainly more balanced but by and large I'd rather be knitting a cushion than kicking a ball. And I'm not alone in this. Crafting has become a worldwide craze, with various commentators citing the recession, third wave feminism and hipsterism as causes for the trend. Crafter-driven websites like Etsy are massively popular, craft fairs are the new malls, and the crafting trend has been featured in publications like the New York Times. But I've never been clear as to how this passion for crafting fits with my feminist beliefs.

And I'm certainly not the first feminist to grapple with this craze. Many before me have felt discomfort in the wholehearted embrace of something our second wave sisters so flatly rejected.  Pro-crafting feminists have defended craft by talking about choice and claiming feminism has moved beyond agitating to be able to vote and go to work. But I've found little discussion on the inherent problems that exist in the craft trend even though we're no longer forced to remain barefoot and pregnant.

The language of choice and reclamation is well known, and well understood. A third wave feminist might argue that we're reclaiming craft, we're choosing these pasttimes without pressure and we're recognising the inherent value in craft that for so long has been minimised as 'woman's work'. We're making these choices freely and consciously. But I'm not so sure. I think this (and much of third wave feminism in general) mischaracterises our environment as one of free choice and almost seems to declare the battle won. It's premised on a false assumption of equality that sometimes dismisses the history of struggle, and the rampant inequalities that still exist between men and women, especially those of lower socioeconomic status.

I also feel uncomfortable talking about craft to other women who may not share my interests. I find bringing baking to work and friends one of those things - I love baking,  I can't eat a whole cake myself and I love bringing baking to people especially when I've noticed them looking stressed or overwhelmed.  But I can't help but feel show-offy, especially if I make something a little complicated or if the target of my baking-love-bomb is somebody who doesn't enjoy baking, or who may not have the time, or may not be that good at it. Sometimes I think the implication is almost 'I'm a better woman than you'. I feel like this with a lot of crafting, the better you are at it and the more you embrace it, the more feminine and successful at being a woman you appear. And I think the same is true for men and DIY - I've observed many a 'so what did you do this weekend?' conversation between men becoming a competition as to who did the most complicated and physically demanding home renovation themselves. There also seems to be a special kind of disdain reserved for men who hire tradesmen. This gender essentialisation of our hobbies shows exactly how far we've not come.

But my biggest discomfort with the craft craze is also my biggest discomfort with much of the mainstream feminist movement, and that is its blindness to economic inequalities. For me and other crafty Western feminists, crafting is indeed a choice. It's a choice because I have time, money and ability - I have the time to knit as a hobby, I have the money to spend on bespoke mini quiche pans and I have the ability to give things up if they get too hard. But for most non-Western women around the world who craft, its anything but a choice. Disadvantage, prejudice and social structures mean that women who craft in the developing world craft to survive. And this phenomenon allows crafting to survive as a hobby. I can turn my hand to sewing as a pasttime because most of my clothes are bought on the cheap from China and the developing world. Things aren't more equal, we simply have poorer women doing it for us. And is it really feminist if it isn't a choice for all women? It just isn't as easy as reclamation, as nice and clean an explanation as that is.

But I'm not going to stop crafting because I love it. I love the sense of achievement when I bake or sew something a little complicated. I love baking people their favourite cupcakes because it shows extra thought and care. But I'm certainly not going to celebrate it as a triumph of feminism, or have my ironic cross-stitches displayed as a hipster badge next to my Wayfarers and Navajo panties. I knowingly enjoy so many other things that are problematic, and I guess crafting is small fries compared to my obsessive love of Mariah Carey.

On being brown in the Antipodes

I've recently become even more of a cliche - a late 20-something educated Kiwi woman who has moved to Australia in search of greener (browner? redder?) pastures. I am living the brain drain. As such, I'm also living a life where everything is new to me. Not that I was ever a 'finger on the pulse' kind of person, but I'd like to think I had a general understanding of the feeling of my fellow New Zealanders on certain issues. But now, finding out what Australians think about things is tiring. Some things, like opinions on the carbon tax, whack you over the head with long emotive TV advertisements. Other things, like racism, are a bit trickier to get to the nub of.

One of Bolt's opinion pieces on 'White Aborigines'

Take, for example, the recent case of Eatock v Bolt where shock jock Andrew Bolt was found to have contravened key sections of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 with his combative articles undermining the right of fair skinned Aboriginal people to identify as such. If you feel like being sick, read the case as it cites numerous sickening quotes from Bolt. Other than that, its a progressive, fascinating and accessible read, even for this rusty law grad. It has a beautiful section on self-identification of mixed race people, but that's a blog for another day...

This case was a big deal. A "journalist" faced judicial censure for expressing his (frankly disgusting) opinions. After Paul-Henry-Gate in New Zealand, I braced myself for a flurry of pro-Bolt commentary along the lines of 'he's just saying what we're all thinking' or 'but it's the truth isn't it?' and my personal favourite (always exclaimed without any explanation) 'FREEDOM OF SPEECH!' I thought it would be worse than New Zealand as a) This is Australia - everyone knows Australians are racist! and b) this is an actual court case, with actual court-ordered punitive measures (well kind of). By comparison, Paul Henry only lost his job, and technically resigned (and thanks guys now we're stuck with him). 

But I was pleasantly surprised. Either my work was ordering some progressive newspapers for our lunch room reading, or Bolt was already a hated man in Australia, or the Australian commentariat's concept of freedom of speech is more advanced than that of their New Zealand equivalents. I suspected it was a little from columns a, b and c. I got the sense that Bolt was far from universally loved, but also that Australians have had a lot longer to get used to and digest the provisions of their race discrimination legislation. While this judgment pushed the boundaries of this legislation, most Australians seemed OK with that. 

But then the response to Steve William's delightful comments on Tiger Woods made me rethink that... The commentariat on both sides of the ditch universally dismissed his claims as not being racist, as simply pointing out the dark colour of Tiger Wood's skin, well something other than his skin... Golfers even came to his defence by hauling out the old 'but he has black friends' routine. Online polls here and in New Zealand overwhelming supported Steve William's othering of his ex-boss, and defended his right to continue stating the 'facts'.

And then I started attending events. No matter what the occasion, from a talk on dental health in Iraqi children, to a forum on the rights of older people, every occasion thus far has been opened by an acknowledgement of the traditional owners of the land, and a thanks to their elders past and present. Sure this is ceremonial and might not mean anything further than a tick-box exercise, but it's been much more consistent than I ever witnessed in New Zealand. 

And then I did further research. Race really is a big deal in Australia. 44% of the population was born overseas or to an overseas born parent. Indigenous Australians have been here for 75,000 years, yet they face some of the worst outcomes in Australia. Boat people present an ongoing challenge for every Australian government. This is a country of very recent migrants, struggling with a legacy of horrific discrimination against the lawful owners of the land, the people who weren't counted as people until recently. Their issues are certainly more complex than those of New Zealand, but what does that mean? Shall we give them more lenience as they struggle with bigger and wider reaching issues? Or do we expect greater sophistication in their dialogue, more progressive policies and greater societal acceptance of diversity? I don't yet know the answer to that, but I'm leaning towards the latter.

So what did I learn from all this, other than getting myself thoroughly confused? First, which newspapers to avoid (I'm looking at you Herald Sun!). But secondly, that judging the racial temperature of a country takes a lot more than reading some papers and blogs. It's going to be a long time before I get a sense of how I, as a visible immigrant, fit into this country. All I know so far, is that I never got called a wog in 14 years of life in New Zealand. It took me two weeks in Australia.