Biphobia and Radio New Zealand

Dear Radio New Zealand,

Thank you for investigating the impact of marriage equality on sexuality and gender diverse communities (which I’m going to call “queer”) in your recent news article.  It’s most welcome to have ongoing attention to the ways in which discrimination and oppression are experienced by queer people in Aotearoa.

Many of the speakers were interesting, thoughtful and eloquent.  I particularly enjoyed hearing from Ngahuia Te Awekotuku and Elizabeth Kerekere as centring takatāpui experience should be part of any conversation of queer rights in Aotearoa.  And I loved the use of “queer” as an umbrella term by Radio NZ, though I know it's a contested term.

I missed any acknowledgment of issues for intersex people, particularly when Aotearoa is the home of one of the most internationally respect intersex human rights advocates in Mani Mitchell. Intersex people face unwanted and intrusive health practices throughout their lives as a result of binary understandings of sex. These things have been completely unaddressed by marriage equality.

I also missed any investigation of changes for queer Asian and Pacifica peoples, since in all those communities, queer activists raised issues and pushed MPs to vote in support of queer rights, with varying degrees of success. I wondered what, if anything, those conversations have opened up for queer people in those communities.

The concern I'm best placed to speak to though, as a Pākehā cis bisexual woman, relates to the biphobia and bi-erasure in the article. From the very first sentence in both the news story and the podcast, we were told queer rights were about “gay, lesbian and transgender individuals.” But bisexual people were not just absent, like intersex people and queer Asian and Pacifica peoples, we were completely erased. The “B” in LGBTIQ is too often silent, but this article took it to new levels.

You said:

"A study published by University of Auckland researchers last year found one in five same-sex attracted youth had attempted suicide in the past year - a rate five times higher than their straight counterparts.  Nearly half had thought about killing themselves, and just short of 60% had self harmed."

FALSE: That study is about same and both-sex attracted young people.  Bisexual people are explicitly included.

You mentioned in the podcast that international research shows homophobia is experienced by “gay and lesbian” sportspeople in Aotearoa.

FALSE: That study is about bisexual, lesbian and gay sportspeople.  Bisexual people are explicitly included.

The article referred to marriage equality repeatedly as same-sex marriage. This invisibilises both bisexual and trans people. There were gains for some trans people from this legislation, because for some it meant marriages that had been legal before transitioning but not after can now be legally recognized. And for bisexual people who have been able to marry different gender partners but not similar gender partners, this was a significant gain, and one which our submissions often explicitly discussed. "Marriage Equality" as a phrase in Aotearoa was about making sure this issue did not hide queer community people who do not identify as lesbian or gay. 

The word bisexual was not mentioned once. The word biphobia was not mentioned once. I understand both were used by at least one of the people you interviewed, but this was edited out.  Just like bisexual people.

You might not be sure why this matters, I guess.  So let me tell you.

Biphobia and bi-erasure mean bisexual people have the poorest mental health outcomes of all sexualities, and we hold onto those poor mental health outcomes for longer, because when lesbians and gay men get older and find community, that can be protective for mental health. That’s not always true for bisexual people.

Biphobia and bi-erasure also mean bisexual people have the highest rates of substance misuse of all sexualities. We use alcohol and drugs differently, and in more problematic ways.

Biphobia and bi-erasure mean bisexual people have the highest rates of sexual and partner violence of all sexualities.  This is true for bisexual women and bisexual men. We are targeted for violence because of our gender and sexuality identity, and biphobic attitudes often form part of partner violence for us.

Biphobia and bi-erasure often make queer spaces very uncomfortable for bisexual people, and this impacts on our health and wellbeing.

None of these vulnerabilities – unlikely to be impacted much if at all by marriage equality – have anything to do with what it means to acknowledge attractions and loves for more than one gender. They are to do with the ways bisexual lives are invisibilised and stereotyped in mainstream culture.

Please do this better next time. Bisexual people have been active in campaigning for and writing rights based legislation for queer people in Aotearoa for decades. We deserve to be included and have our distinct issues treated with respect.

Yours truly,
LJ


UPDATE: 11 August 2015.  The response received from Radio NZ said:

Thanks for your feedback.  I absolutely take your point and will pass on your message to my editor - as a broadcaster you'll understand we're constantly trying to get our scripts as tight as possible but I see the issue of erasure apparent here. I've taken it on board, and will ensure to be more inclusive and clearer in the future. Again, I do appreciate the feedback, as it really makes a huge difference in how I tell stories and explore issues going forward.

I asked if they could edit the online print story to include the word bisexual where it's appropriate (which they have done) and note the erasure and omission at the end as a problem (which they have not done).  The journalist concerned was gracious and has reiterated that they intend to approach queer stories differently in the future.  I hope that's what ends up happening. 

Stick and stones may break my bones, but verbal banter haunts me

It's fair to say Andy Haden and I have different views on the world, sharing only an enjoyment of the athletic.  But when he described high levels of fear of homophobia from lesbian, gay and bisexual sportspeople in New Zealand as a problem that "doesn't really exist" because it's just about "verbal banter" I found myself unable to respond until now.

Out in the Fields talked to 9,500 sportspeople in New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, Canada and Australia.  The headline results - that queer people play sport, but find it unwelcoming - is not major news.  The fact that 78% of New Zealand athletes had witnessed or experienced homophobia in sport is also unsurprising.  More gay men in New Zealand (not sure about bisexual men) don't play sports because of early negative experiences than queer men in other places.  And while our homophobic assaults of queer athletes are lower than other places, one in six gay men (again, bi men have disappeared) have been physically assaulted here.

It's taken me a while to write about this, because it's my story too.  Women's sport is easily the site of the most queer-hating set of experiences I've had, and perversely, at times the most queer affirming.

 _______________

When I was 16, I made the Wellington Women's Under 20 Cricket Team.  I chased the ball hard and I was thrilled to make the team since I wasn't very good.  When I came back with my new Wellington jumper on, I was full of pride.

"Did she try and touch you?"  my teammates asked.  I didn't know what they meant.  Gradually it dawned on me, after other questions, that the woman doling out the jumpers was in a relationship with a woman, and the other girls in my team thought she might be trying to grope us.  It didn't make much sense to me; I was tiny, very pre-pubescent, and far more interested in playing the perfect cover drive than being sexual with anyone.  The key protagonists in this questioning have all been in relationships with women as adults.
________________

When I was 17, I made my first full Wellington team and went away to tournament.  Our coach held a competition every night - we had to vote on the ugliest player in the other team.  He also warned us, repeatedly, about the lezzies who might try and "turn us".  The two things became combined, and most of the team participated.  No one in our team was out, though several players later had relationships with women.  I didn't take part, but nor did I challenge it.
________________

When I was 18, I came out as bisexual, everywhere.  I'd also by this time, grown a bit, gone through puberty, and was quite a lot better at cricket.  I was in the New Zealand Under 20 team and captained the Wellington Under 20 team to our second year as national champs.

Then I was dropped as captain.  The woman replacing me led us to placing eighth of eight teams.  The gossip on the field was my shaved head was the problem, and not the image Wellington wanted. 
_________________

Aged 19, I'm asked to coach the Wellington Secondary Schoolgirls team.  They play wonderful cricket, beating every team they play.  Their team is full of homophobic abuse, and before the first game I ask the whole team if they want to play for New Zealand.  They all do.  I tell them that if that's the case, they need to change the way they talk about lesbians and bisexual women, since they will have queer teammates and captains.  The (straight) captain and (straight) vice captain take this on, stop the homophobic bullying, and three of the team come out.  One goes on to set up the first queer support group in a secondary school, and many play top representative cricket - including two for New Zealand - for years.
__________________

On tour with the New Zealand Under 23 team.  Our coach is a woman in a relationship with another woman, so there is no homophobic bullying, but I am the only out woman in the team.  In one game, a group of queer fans cheer us on enthusiastically, and when we walk off the field one runs up and kisses me and says "thank you."  Everyone, including our coach, pretends it hasn't happened.  Years later, another four women in that team have come out.
__________________

I'm away with my first-class team, and I'm sharing a room with another player I know is the captain's partner, despite the fact they are not out.  The first night she tells me she might hang out in the captain's room for a bit.  I tell her I don't mind if she wants to stay there, and that I won't tell anyone.  She spends the tournament with her partner at night.  A year later, they tell me they have hidden their relationship for 15 years because they believed it would stop them playing international cricket.  They come out to everyone else in the team that year.
__________________

I'm bowling, in the nets.  The coach of the Wellington team tells me as I run in: "the problem with women's cricket is, too many hairy-legged dykes play it."

I say, "actually, I wish there were more hairy-legged queer women playing."  I bowl another off-spinner. This is the same man, in his late twenties, that I carry a very drunk schoolgirl away from a year later, after he's pulled her into his bedroom at a party.  His teammate who helps agrees with me that we've stopped a rape.
__________________

My first-class team is batting, and we're talking about a high-profile television announcer who has just come out as bisexual.  "She looks bisexual," says our coach.  "What does looking bisexual mean?" I scoff at him.  "Do I look bisexual?"  I'm still shaving my head.

"Yes", he says aggressively.  "Do I look bisexual?" says another teammate, a Māori woman with long hair, who's been bringing her girlfriend to every game.

"Yes", he says, a bit more quietly.  "Do I look bisexual?" says another teammate (the Secondary Schools vice-captain from incident above).  She's blonde, petite, very conventionally femininely attractive.

"No", he says, horrified.  "Are you......?"  She refuses to answer.  He puts away his homophobia and biphobia.  It's after this incident that the couple above come out to the whole team.
___________________

These are some of the highlights, off the top of my head.  The coaches I'm mentioning are different men.  I love sport, and I played serious representative cricket for more than 15 years, both here and in England.  The teams that were safe from homophobia and biphobia were only that way when women in positions of power made them so, by coming out, and by challenging homophobic and biphobic bullying and abuse.  It's not linear progress either - in my last season of senior cricket in Wellington, not that long ago, homophobic abuse from men in the club was ever-present.  At the prizegiving that year, a drunk player grabbed his bits and told many of my teammates they just needed a good fuck.  They were intimidated enough to leave the public event.

So, dear Andy, you can dismiss homophobia and biphobia stopping queer athletes playing sport, or making us feel scared when we do as "verbal banter" if you like.  But you're wrong.  Sport is almost like the final frontier - it's ok to be racist, sexist and homophobic there in ways that are legally challengeable if they happen in other places.  It's about time New Zealand sports codes made it clear how much they care about their queer athletes.  We deserve to feel safe while we play.

My whole life I've been dressing up

I'm going to try something a little different, and review a TV series. 
Disclaimer: Transparent is about a white upper-class Jewish trans woman, Maura, coming out when her children are adults.  Since I'm atheist and cis, I'm sure my understanding of some things will miss the mark so please jump in for discussion/correction in comments.  Second disclaimer:  I don't watch a whole heap of tv or movies. Sometimes when my very clever friends talk about tv I don't understand them.  So this will be unsophisticated.

Transparent came out last year, winning awards and critical admiration, including from trans activists.  Early on in the show Maura comes out to her eldest daughter Sarah, who asks "Does this mean you're going to be dressing up like a woman?"

There's some reaching out to other trans* folks from Maura that speaks clearly to why we need support groups and retreats and safe places for all trans and gender diverse people.  One of the scenes I found most painful was a summer camp Maura attended years earlier for transfeminine people.  Camp members are describing someone being kicked out of the camp for using hormones.  "This is a camp for men," they heartily agree, "men who like to dress as women!"  Maura is visibly uncomfortable, and it feels like she's finding out that even that space - which she has been experiencing, until then, as joyful and full of wonder - may not be safe.

There are other painful slices of transphobia. Maura enters a women's bathroom with her daughters, who assure her it will be fine, despite her obvious discomfort.  They call her "Dad", which leads to other women in the toilet misgendering Maura and telling her she must leave.  Sarah's rage - which no doubt you'd feel - explodes and worsens the situation and Maura slinks away, finding an empty construction site portaloo she can safely use.  A good reminder to cis allies that the most important way to support someone is to make sure you respect what they want whether you understand why or not, because getting it wrong might well be dangerous.

The show is ostensibly about Maura, but actually we spend just as much time, if not more, watching her painfully self-involved children.  I'm assuming this is supposed to show the whole gamut of reactions to Maura transitioning, but it's hard to read her family's behaviour as having anything to do with her.  They are all complete train-wrecks, and while their indifference to Maura's feelings is horrific at times, it's how they treat everyone.  Sarah and Josh don't care when their mother's partner of many years, who seems to have dementia, disappears.  Josh scares his first girlfriend in the show so much she asks his boss to keep him away from her, though he thinks he's showing her love.  Ali's best friend tells her at one point that Ali's been making her feel awful for years.  I'm not sure the nuances of transphobia are well-served by this, though it's frequently good drama.

There's an argument over whether we should be interested or emotionally moved by what's going on in Maura's family anyway.  For many, shifting the focus from the person most vulnerable to structural oppression - Maura - might not be ok.  And it's a story we're more familiar with, right?  How cis people feel about trans* folks.

When I came out as bisexual I sent my mother books by and about queer women for every birthday and Christmas for a decade.  Good books, by Alice Walker and Lisa Alther and Jackie Kay and Sarah Schulman and Joan Barfoot and Marge Piercy....She read them, swapped them with friends.  I thought I was helping my mum see my life.  Years later, she thanked me for sending her books "about how other parents coped with having queer children."  I said I didn't think that's what they'd been about.  She was surprised.  I think, in a way, we were both right.

So while I'm much more interested in seeing Maura and her story being told than I am in another story about cis people, I feel disappointed that so far Transparent, in my opinion, has dodged telling the stories of her children's engagement with a transitioning parent with any depth, simply because they're all such self-involved jerks.

Maura's youngest daughter, Ali, changes her gender presentation quite dramatically during the show.  By the end, she's been wearing masculine clothes for a couple of episodes and has a much more androgenous haircut.  Some reviewers suggests this happens without commentary to juxtaposition how easy it is for women to play with presenting in a masculine way compared with the frequent and difficult reactions Maura gets to her transition.

I find this troubling.  While it's not helpful to play oppression olympics, the idea that there is no cost for women expressing masculinity is very different to my experience.  I've presented in a range of ways across my life, and spent lots of my early twenties looking pretty much like any stereotype of a sporty butch queer women you've ever seen.  During that period I was frequently asked to leave women's toilets, verbally and physically threatened by men, called "it" by men, asked if I was confused by men, told all I needed was a "good fuck" by men.  At one family gathering, the partner of one of my cousins drunkenly asked me "what are you?"  I think he was confused by my shaved head and breasts, they make bogans a little basic in Christchurch.  One of my friends, a beautiful butch, was recently so frightened about a road trip to the States and the violence she might experience there that we spent lots of time pre-planning safe stops, based on their LGBTIQ friendliness.

You get the point.  Maybe Ali's demographic cope much better with androgenous presentations.  But simply pretending there's no issue feels dishonest to me.
  
I'd be remiss, dear reader, if I didn't comment on The Biphobia.  Again.  Sarah's married life is turned upside down when she meets an ex-lover who's a woman.  So she does what every Bisexual should, and Cheats on her partner.  With the Other Gender.  Oh, and she tries to do it again later, after she's left her husband for the sexy ex, when she's hiding in the laundry with her husband.  Us Bisexuals, can't help with the Cheating.  We're just always wanting all of the genders, all of the time.  In case you're not sure this storyline is actually a thing, just cast your mind back to Orange is the New Black's central bi character, Piper, who um, does exactly the Same Cheating Bisexual Thing.

Actually maybe Sarah's not Bisexual.  It's not like that word is ever mentioned, for goodness sake. Towards Sarah or the other character who has relationships with more than one gender.  Because Biphobia.  Again.

There's been much commentary about the fact that a cis man, Jeffrey Tambor, is playing Maura.  He's wonderful in the role, and clearly an ally, plus I suspect an actor of his calibre may have significantly increased the chances of Transparent being made in the first place.  Some people have suggested it's marginally more acceptable to have a cis man playing a trans woman because Maura is beginning her transition.

This seems like slightly ridiculous transphobia to me.  Are we really saying a trans actress, assigned male at birth, wouldn't be able to pull off playing a trans woman pre-transition?  Whereas a cis man can pull off playing a woman?

We've seen similar arguments recently to justify non-disabled actors playing disabled characters.  As with white actors playing Black characters, all of these casting decisions reveal discrimination - an assumption that people (which people?) will identify more readily with able-bodied people, with white people, with cis people.

If cripping up and blacking up are unacceptable, so is transing up.  Cis people playing trans characters speaks to centring of cis experience even when a trans story is being told, and it needs to stop.  It's great to see a variety of other roles in Transparent are played by trans actors, and a trans woman is joining the writing staff for season two.  On the subject, it's no surprise to me that the central character here is white and middle-class.  I wonder if we'll see any intersectionality in season two, an exploration perhaps of the rates at which trans women, especially trans women of colour, are targetted for lethal violence?

These reservations aside, Transparent is a good watch.  The writing is tight, the acting superb.  Much as I might dislike Maura's children, watching them behave badly is a bit like watching an election result you're not happy about - it's hard to look away.  Gender and sexuality themes are everywhere.  Seeing a multiplicity of transfeminine and one transmasculine (to date) characters is a treat.  Maura may not be able to tell every transfeminine story - who could? - but she normalises a particular kind of trans experience for a mainstream audience.  We need more stories which do that, if we want to end transphobia.

Killing us softly, so softly

Suicide.  Frightening, complex, social phenomena which merits sound, evidence based, community responses.

So when this Government announces they have a new plan, it should be great news.  The Plan aims to:

• address the impact of suicide on families, whānau and communities by strengthening support for family, whānau and communities
• build the evidence base, specifically around what works for Māori and Pasifika
• extend existing services, specifically addressing geographical gaps in the coverage of services
• strengthen suicide prevention targeted to high risk populations who are in contact with agencies.

The problem is, every single one of those aims is applicable to the queer* community, and we are not mentioned once.

We are not mentioned once, even though just last year as part of the last suicide prevention plan, the Ministry of Health released a needs assessment of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex people, to provide the Ministry with "information to develop an appropriate policy and funding framework" for mental health promotion. 


Queer* people are much more prone to mental health struggles, much more likely to self-harm, and much more likely to try to or actually kill ourselves.  The reasons are simple - homophobia, biphobia and transphobia teach us to hate ourselves, and the world around us tells us how we live and love is not ok.  Or, as the policy wonks put it:

"It is readily acknowledged in the literature that the mental health of GLBT people is impacted by repeated exposure to a wide range of psychosocial stressors associated with anti-GLBT attitudes and behaviours, which include stigmatisation, discrimination and violence."

Yet we are not mentioned once in the brand spanking new Suicide Prevention Plan.

Young people are mentioned - but not same or both-sex attracted young people, half of whom self-harm, and a fifth of whom will try to kill themselves. 

Māori and Pasifika are mentioned - but not takataapui or fa'afafine.

Addressing gaps is mentioned - but not the lack of queer* support groups, queer* specific mental health services, or training for generic mental health services in the needs of queer* people.  Not the lack of research into the needs of trans* folk, even though international research points to terrifyingly high rates of suicidality which surely merit trans* specific responses.

This silencing, this invisibilisation will literally kill us.  This tangible example of heterosexism and cisgender normativity will literally kill us.  I'm not sure what more there is to say. 

Going to the chapel to educate the congregation

So now we’re beyond Marriage Equality, what next?  The indicators of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia are still all around us.  Who gets bullied at school?  Who disproportionately wrestles with mental health issues, depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide?  Who has hate graffiti on their walls?  Who is targeted for violence on the streets, in their workplaces, from their families?  Who is not able to look at any media, anytime, and see someone who looks a bit like them, wrestling with some of the things they think about?

One of the very difficult issues for queer and trans* people to navigate is connection with others.  What happens when you transition?  Can you keep relationships with people who have known you as one gender?  Will those people treat you with respect?  Will you be safe?  Or do you have to build a completely different social and support network from scratch?

For same and both-sex attracted people, the disconnect from our families can be just as severe.  I’ve supported young people whose families have kicked them out when they learned who their sons or daughters loved.  I’ve talked one parent down from trying to have their daughter institutionalized as mentally unwell – simply because she was lesbian.

But it’s not just young people.  I’ve been out for 24 years.  When I first came out, the homophobia and biphobia of my parents was so vicious I refused to see them for a year.  They told me they could never respect me again, that my sexuality was unnatural and a symptom of being parented poorly.  They tried, at length, to work out if it was my depressed mother’s lack of interest or my father’s fondness for playing cricket with me that was the problem.  They wanted me to be lesbian, because that would be easier for them.

No one in my family would even think of saying such things now.  Yet several years ago, when an aunt was visiting London, my sister could tell me not to make such a big deal about whether or not to come out to her.

“I’m not going to talk about my sexuality,” she said, straightly.  My sister was single.  I’d been with my lover for ten years.  We owned a house together, parented her children together.  To not come out meant not being able to talk about my life with any honesty.  To come out meant the risk of my aunt’s reaction framing the entire night.  We were faced with quite different dilemmas. 

 

Now, when I have a female partner there is no hostility, but no one in my family can bring themselves to ask me anything about her.  When a relationship ends, there is literally nothing to say, because my family have no idea how much she has meant to me, what we may have shared.  These things had shifted markedly with my mother before she died; in her absence, there is a gaping hole where some of the sustaining relationships in my life are ignored and minimised by my family.

I share stories of how my family treats me with other queer people.  Telling them in public, or to straight friends, feels shaming in a way it’s difficult to name.  I’m an out and proud bisexual woman.  How can there still be such bruising homophobia and biphobia in my life?  

That’s the beyond marriage equality I’m interested in talking about.  Moving now into educating our communities.  Gathering information – like say, by using the census – about the kinds of experiences queer and trans* people have based on our sexuality and gender identity.  Gathering information about victimisation – like say, by recording sexuality and gender diversity – in crime stats about street violence.  Expanding the Human Rights Act to protect trans* folk from cis-gender based discrimination.

A good starting point would be a national queer and trans* resource centre, funded to identify exactly what beyond marriage equality might mean.  Able to develop queer and trans* specific materials for schools and our national curriculum.  Able to work with the Human Rights Commission to ensure experiences of queer and trans* discrimination are named, understood, responded to appropriately.  Able to intervene in social institutions which are responding to queer and trans* people – New Zealand Police, mental health systems, healthcare more broadly – and ensure processes are transparent and well-equipped.  Able to develop completely new resources – emergency housing for young queer and trans* people who need somewhere safe to stay; social work and prevention resources around suicide and self-harm, intimate partner and sexual violence which are specific to the queer community.

The kinds of difference Marriage Equality will make to queer and trans* peoples lives are important.  This was a social change moment – and make no mistake, we won it.  The people arguing against equality looked like bigoted hate-mongers.  But we still had to listen to their vitriol, had to protect ourselves from its impact on our sense of self in a world where those things sadly do not just sound ridiculous - which is how they should sound.

It’s time to celebrate – and to work out what else we need to dismantle homophobia, biphobia and transphobia for good. 

Garth McVicar and heterosexual camouflage

Funny story.  I once camped on Garth McVicar's land after a friendly chat with him.

I'd just cycled through Te Urewera, in snow, and was feeling pretty damn intrepid.  I'd then cycled to Taupo via some beautiful backroads, and was making my way down to Napier to head home.  About two thirds of the way to Napier I was hunting for somewhere to sleep and biked down a gravel road which promised a campground at the end.  An hour later, no campsite, I was standing at the edge of the road, looking down at a beautiful river framed by stony ravine, eating handfuls of chocolate raisins.  A bloke on a tractor drove up.

Giddays exchanged, I asked him if it would be alright to just camp by the river.  Of course he said, and pointed me upriver a bit, to a better spot. 

A day later, I caught the bus back to Wellington, driven by the same man who I'd taken me up ten days earlier.  He had swapped his shift because he wanted to hear if I'd actually done the trip I'd planned, so we spent several hours talking about land and weather, places he'd fished and I'd cycled through.

I told him the story of the friendly tractor driver, and where it was. 

"Oh, that will have been Garth McVicar.  That's his land, down that road."

When I got home I did a google image search.  Turned out my friendly tractor driver was Mr Hang 'Em himself.  I felt like I'd got away with something, a radical bisexual lefty anti-racist feminist.  I was pretty sure I wasn't Mr McVicar's idea of a pleasant social companion.

And just today, turns out how right I was, because if I get married to a woman lover, Mr McVicar is worried it will lead to crime.

Garth, Garth, Garth.  Such a shame I didn't realise in time.  We could have had such a chat by my portable gas cooker about what really causes domestic violence and child abuse.  I am kinda surprised you didn't immediately recognise my crime-causing potential.  Maybe the dust and grime acted like heterosexual camouflage. 

Consent at the Ivy Bar

Rape culture is all around us, right?  Excuses for sexual behaviour in which one person's desires are constructed as all important and the point of view from which an encounter is judged, and the other person's ability to name what happened as unacceptable are undermined.

Setting rape up as something people "deserve" when they behave badly.  Blaming, women in particular, the person who is raped because they drank something/wore something/said something/did something that made it inevitable that someone else would choose to force them to do sexual things they didn't want.

Making fun of consent as something that is "for pussies".

The Facebook page of Wellington's under reconstruction "gay" venue, the Ivy Bar, offered up taking photos of "tradies" to their Facebook fans.  When one fan suggested that if they were going to take photos of "tradies" and put them online they needed to have said "tradies" consent, another made the comment above - not only unchallenged by Ivy as hosts, but liked by them.

Consent is certainly for women.  And for men.  And for transpeople.  And for intersex people.  And for those for whom those categories do not feel quite right.

Making fun of consent anywhere is concerning, and it happens far too often.  Making fun of consent in a venue seeking queer custom, part of the queer community, shows a devastating lack of attention to one of the saddest outcomes of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia - sexual violence.

Queer people experience sexual violence because we are queer, as hate crime.  And we experience sexual violence, just like straight people, within relationships and hook-ups, because some of us choose to over-ride consent.  The reasons for this are complex - to do with gender rules which say that men always want sex, so how can they say no?  Gender rules which tell women that asking for the sex we want makes us sluts.  Rigid gender policing which constructs some kinds of bodies as deviant and wrong, invoking shame and lack of entitlement around being treated with respect and care.  Homophobia, biphobia and transphobia teaching us that there is something wrong with how we desire.

Trans* people experience higher rates of sexual violence than anyone else, at 50%.  Indications are that other queer people also have high rates of unwanted, coerced and forced sex - sexual violence.  For non-heterosexual secondary school students in New Zealand, one in three have been touched in a sexual way, or made to do sexual things they do not want to do - again, higher than rates for heterosexual students.

So Ivy Bar - epic fail.  Treating consent as optional in a queer space dismisses many of your patrons' experiences.  Describing consent as "for pussies" has the delightful added bonus of denigrating women's bodies to support your very own brand of rape culture.

It's hard enough to name queer experiences of sexual violence, and that work, world-wide, is only just beginning.  We could do with insiders in the queer community not shutting it down.  I'll be avoiding Ivy, when they re-open, until they can do better.  Feel free to let them know what you think.

UPDATE (the next day):  Comment about consent being "for pussies" has been deleted and Ivy Bar have this to say on their Facebook page:

We have deleted ****s comment. *****s comment I believe was regarding consent for a photo to be taken. Regardless, I can see how his comment can be mis- interpreted the wrong way and we have removed his comment. We certainly do NOT endorse rape of violence against anyone. Thanks for your comments. We will certainly look closer at future comments from here. Regards Greig Wilson

Wellington's fair is queer, yeah

Well hats well and truly off to the Out in the Square organising committee who have changed the tagline of Wellington's annual fair for the queer community from the exclusionary "Wellington's Gay and Lesbian Fair" to the more open:

In their words, the reason they have chosen to do this after the old tagline was raised as a problem:

We've changed our tagline on the logo. It's more inclusive, the right thing to do and a reference to our proud history too.

I couldn't agree more - wonderful to see the queer community responding to issues to do with power, language and naming with such integrity.  Now if only we can get that John Key to listen about the ways he uses words that refer to queer people.....