Part One - hearing
Living with PTSD
© Melina Magdalena (24/3/06)
The amazing thing about people who live with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is how well we appear to function in everyday society. Notwithstanding those of us who are so unfortunate as to have been misdiagnosed and so merely exist, drugged to the eyeballs to keep us quiet, most of us remain anonymous, faceless members of the community . We have learned that it’s safer to remain silent about those aspects of our lives that no one seems to be able to do anything about. The traumas that induced our conditions have already happened, after all, and that damage cannot be undone, only lived with. Living with PTSD is a continuous journey towards health.
Having studied Beverley Searle’s analysis of the kind of people upon whom Freud based his theories and diagnoses, I wonder whether a similar analysis could be made of the supposedly wide range of ‘normality’ in terms of the kinds of physical symptoms that survivors of sexual trauma are told are nothing out of the ordinary .
As Searle describes, a large proportion of Freud’s sample of young neurotic women had been sexually abused and traumatized by their fathers, uncles, brothers or family friends. The effect of this on Freud’s scientific output was not to spark outrage and put an end to the damage wreaked by these men on the girls and women they assaulted and violated, rather it was twisted upon the survivors themselves, who were labeled and diagnosed by Freud as being sick, deviant and deficient. These survivors struggled with the selfsame mental, spiritual, emotional and physical symptoms of having been abused, that survivors struggle with today. Today, the scale of normality in terms of mental and physical health which has been imposed upon us through the work of Freud and others, who failed to address the cause of the damage, and only assessed the results, means that we do not really know what normal is or could be, for us.
We have no idea what normal is, for a person who has not suffered trauma. In a way, this is a perfect reflection of the way in which conventional Western medicine functions. It is largely reactive, addressing symptoms as they arise, rather than seeking to prevent their occurrence or heal their underlying cause. The ability of human beings to survive despite all kinds of diseases and disabilities is amazing. It is not just survivors of trauma who exhibit this capacity. In itself, the ability to live and function, to produce, contribute and create within one’s circumstances is proof of the strength and determination of survivors to rise above conditions of ill-health, disability or chronic illness.
Some people might argue that it is precisely the fact that human beings survive and thrive within such a diverse range of possibilities that makes us truly human.
I don’t believe that surviving trauma makes me a better person than someone who has led a charmed and peaceful existence. I do believe it is incumbent upon me to put my life to good use, no matter what has happened to me in my past. That is what makes me truly human.
At the same time as writing this, I am conscious of the empowering belief that I am the expert on my own situation. I know myself better than anyone else possibly could. This is an attitude which I have been encouraged to develop, in order to give me some semblance of control over my life. It is a useful paradigm to work from, but today I choose to focus my attention elsewhere.
This week I went to an audiologist for a hearing assessment. My reasons for having the assessment include a strong family history of hearing loss, the government subsidy that enabled me to have the assessment without incurring a cost, and my auditory experiences which range from the bizarre to the annoying.
Like many people who live with PTSD, my extreme sensitivity to noises is trigger-happy and exhausting. This is something I live with every day and every night, for which I have developed a range of coping strategies which render it almost invisible to anyone else.
Gone are the days when I literally threw myself to the ground and rolled out of danger when a fighter jet roared over the skies of Adelaide as part of a thrilling entertainment spectacle. The spectacle of me having left my body so that I could watch myself shaking with terror on the ground below was enough to convince me that I had to do something to disguise my reactions in future.
I have trained my body not to physically jump in instinctive response to loud and startling noises. Whilst driving, I am able now, to remain outwardly calm, and hold my hands steady on the steering wheel, even when my heart is pounding and my legs have turned to jelly in response to the gunning and screeching of motorcycle engines and tyres behind, in front or beside me.
I work in the city, which means that I am exposed to a great deal of industrial and traffic noise. Walking along streets and waiting for public transport can induce harrowing auditory experiences. So I have learned to attend to a different range of sounds, and to block out those that most distress me.
Of course, this has meant I have to maintain other aspects of hypervigilance, in order to keep myself out of danger. Interestingly, I have developed an exaggerated startle reflex to visual stimuli. When I am dealing with emotional stress, or at times when I am concentrating intently on a single task, I frequently jump and scream when someone comes into my line of vision and startles me. These people are usually around six feet tall, and when their presence registers unexpectedly on my consciousness, I panic.
Unfortunately, along with several of my work colleagues, my sixteen year old son falls in this category. Last weekend I was extremely stressed and preoccupied. Over the course of one day, I jumped and screamed in fright about fifteen times at his sudden appearance, though I knew all along he was with us in the house. His feelings were understandably hurt and he was rightly offended that I was so afraid. My distress had nothing to do with him. This reminds me of the experiences of Shosha and her children, as described in “Soft of Hearing”, broadcast on Radio National in 2002.
There are some noises that I just cannot bear to be around. If I hear loud noises and fighting in our street, I run around the house and turn off every noisy appliance, just so I can hear exactly what might be going on out there. I cannot do anything else until it goes away.
The sounds of sibling rivalry used to be constant triggers, until my children began to explore the world of hip hop. How I hated that music when they first began to listen to it! I had to scream at them to turn it off, or I had to leave the room and leave the house. It was not just the level of profanity and discord, nor just the obscene and degrading lyrics, especially where they pertain to male attitudes to women. It was the various layers of noise that were woven together and somehow came to represent many of the kinds of sounds I find it hard to live with. I still object to the sexism, hatred and violence expressed by much of the hip hop that I have heard over the years, but I have trained myself to be able to listen to the sounds and separate the strands into their layers, thus confining them to limits that are tolerable for me. My children get along better than they used to, but I am now able to tune out their senseless bickering.
I live in an area of a housing boom. When I try to work at home amidst the cacophony of trucks, jackhammers and other building equipment, I know it is going to be more useful to stop what I am trying to write or paint and turn my attention instead, to something repetitive or mundane. The wear and tear on my emotions, from having to keep my reactions at bay whilst attempting to sustain my creative output is deleterious to my energy levels. Amidst such ongoing cacophony, forcing myself to relax and take a nap to recover my strength is also an impossibility.
It is in terms of quality of life, that such sensitivity to noise impacts on how well I am able to function as part of ‘normal’ society. Everyone who has learned to adapt to debilitating or limiting physical conditions, whether short-term, recurring, permanent or chronic, knows the cost of such adaptation can be measured by how much energy one has at one’s disposal, for other things.
Mental and emotional fatigue shows up in my life as a chronic physical symptom of PTSD. It is not my imagination or habit that causes my eyelids to droop around eight-thirty at night, and makes me yawn incessantly from then on. I am simply at the end of my tether. The level of auditory distress with which I have had to cope during the day directly determines my level of exhaustion when it comes to dealing with the noises of the night. Sleep is another matter altogether.
My hearing assessment showed that my hearing in both ears lies comfortably within the normal range. No surprises there. When my home is quiet, I can turn my television down to ‘3’ and still understand every word of dialogue. When I lie awake at night, I can hear the pulse in my wrists. The sound of the sheets as they rustle, when I turn over, trying to get comfortable and cosy enough to fall asleep, overwhelms every other sound around me.
Several years ago, I used to wake at night, believing I had heard gun shots next door. The second time I rang the police about this, the kind woman on the other end of the phone reminded me of the road works that were happening at night as tunnels were being blasted through the foothills of Adelaide, twenty kilometers away. I began to pay attention to the gunshots that I heard. Sure enough, they always occurred on the nights when there was blasting going on up there. I stopped bothering the police with my calls of auditory distress.
It’s funny how well I’ve taught myself to tune out false alarms. The trouble is, that in doing so, I also tend to fade out the noises of social discourse that do not represent potential danger or distress. In order to function socially, I have to consciously switch on my hearing and attend to the sounds that people are making around me. Overstimulation is the most frequent result. In attending to conversation, my hearing goes hyperactive. I overhear so many fascinating and intriguing tidbits, that it’s not easy to tune into the one particular strand of conversation in which I have been invited to be involved. This can be quite fun for a while, but it too, leads to exhaustion.
When I need to concentrate, I’ve learned that multitasking is sometimes the only way to do it. I often have two or three things going on in my head at once. If I am anxious while driving, I will sing a song, as well as counting, or reciting a different set of lyrics in my head. This drives my children up the wall. I’ll also add up the numbers on the numberplates of the cars around me, and make up silly acronyms with the letters.
I can carry on conversation fairly well at the same time as counting and singing in my head, though my retention levels are not high. This is probably what leads me to worry about my memory. It has meant that there are gaps in my sense of time. During the conversations, I appear to be attending and even to be a good listener. It’s later that I obsess about what I did or didn’t hear, and whether I was really there at all.
Creating noise is one of the most effective coping strategies I have developed. When the babble of my extravagant emotion becomes too hard for me to bear, I will take to hammering, throwing things around, and rummaging fruitlessly in my pots and pans cupboard just to drown out my own destructive thoughts. These are the times when I tend to break crockery by mistake, because I bang the plates down on the counter with gleeful rage, and throw them into the sink to be washed. It doesn’t make me crazy. It relieves the pressure without hurting anyone else. I also enjoy slamming doors.
But the best thing of all, I have found, is to put on the kind of music that I like to listen to, and to turn it up loud loud loud!. I love to sing my heart out when I’m feeling bad, because it makes me feel so much better. I don’t care about whether the neighbours can hear me through our paper thin walls. I couldn’t care less about the lameness of the lyrics. All that matters when I’m singing is the glory of the sound itself, and the fact that I am choosing to make it, to the exclusion of all other sound around me.
Living with PTSD is challenging. It’s good to reflect on aspects of what this actually entails. I quite like to admit that I have an extravagant emotional life. I can laugh about my exaggerated startle reflex. These are largely private matters, invisible to the naked eye, so to speak. When asked about my levels of health, I am happy to report that I am relentlessly well. I rarely mention the fatigue that now feels normal to me. This doesn’t mean I am not challenged by living with PTSD, but it reflects my strength and pride in the fact that I step up to that challenge and function very well in spite of it.
REFERENCES:
1. Bambridge, K (2005), “Reclaiming a Life”, pp. 128-131 and Searle, B (2005) “My Experiences of having Dissociative Identity Disorder in South Australia “ pp.178-182, The Reclaiming Anthology: healing our wounds M. Magdalena (Ed.) Seaview Press: Adelaide.
2. Searle, B (2005) ), “The Legacy of Freud“ pp.21-28 , ibid.
3. Aviva Sheb’a (2002) “Soft of Hearing”, adapted for radio by Mike Ladd, broadcast in two parts on Radio National 729 FM, (2002).
Saturday, July 08, 2006
notoriety
Is it notoriety, when I check google for 'Mersigns' and the entry comes up reading: Mersigns Notify Blogger about objectionable content. What does ... ?
Has someone looked at my blog? I wouldn't know - I have received no comments! And that's OK, because it gives me a certain amount of satisfaction to be able to publish online, whoever looks at the thing.
It teases me though - "objectionable content'? What is objectionable on my blog and what kind of person would have called it objectionable?
In looking through what has so far been published, I notice my earliest posts have disappeared. They were the ones that graphically detailed my experience of PTSD. These were the entries I trembled to write, let alone publish. They are possibly too long and in need of editing, but still, I've never read anything like them by anyone else.
Maybe one is not supposed to speak of such things?
Maybe that is what makes them objectionable?
Well, having worked on four different computers during the past six months, I shall go back in my files, find these writings and republish them.
If there are readers out there, please do feel free to comment.
m.m.m.
Has someone looked at my blog? I wouldn't know - I have received no comments! And that's OK, because it gives me a certain amount of satisfaction to be able to publish online, whoever looks at the thing.
It teases me though - "objectionable content'? What is objectionable on my blog and what kind of person would have called it objectionable?
In looking through what has so far been published, I notice my earliest posts have disappeared. They were the ones that graphically detailed my experience of PTSD. These were the entries I trembled to write, let alone publish. They are possibly too long and in need of editing, but still, I've never read anything like them by anyone else.
Maybe one is not supposed to speak of such things?
Maybe that is what makes them objectionable?
Well, having worked on four different computers during the past six months, I shall go back in my files, find these writings and republish them.
If there are readers out there, please do feel free to comment.
m.m.m.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
A Radical Notion
A Radical Notion
© Melina Magdalena (2006)
Sex in the Brave New World
Remember Aldous Huxley’s "Brave New World" (originally published in 1932), where the State controlled and managed human fertility and human sexuality? With the implementation of a strict routine of medication, people were encouraged and incited to have casual sex regularly, albeit in a sterile, factory-like manner without the accompanying neuroses of human relationship. Children were created in bottles and raised by the State, a system which is echoed today in the drive to have babies and toddlers cared for in institutions while their mothers go out to work.
As reviewer James Schellenberg writes in ‘Challenging Destiny: Science Fiction and Fantasy Reviews http://www.challengingdestiny.com/reviews/bravenew.htm (viewed on-line, 1/7/2006) “Huxley is worried about a state of mind … that puts happiness into a materialistic paradigm and then uses it as a method of control, justified as what the people want.”
In his review, Schellenberg reflects on the character of Lenina, who befriends the Savage, a man who was brought up outside of the System, and how “… Lenina and her sexuality often stand for everything that is wrong and corrupt and vacuous about this system …” Could it be that Lenina appears so grotesque in contrast with real live human women, for many of whom the relational aspects of sex are just as, if not more important than the physical?
As far as female sexuality is concerned, it’s important to realize that Huxley wrote the book before The Pill technology emerged and western climates changed from one of sexual restraint and limitation, to promiscuity and permissiveness. After The Pill came on the scene, males were to rejoice that there was now nothing to hold back the tide of female sexual energy. Females were to fully embrace their new freedoms and give their bodies over to sex wherever, whenever and with whomever.
It’s this technology that mirrors Huxley’s vision of fulfilling people’s materialistic desires and calling this happiness. By eliminating the fear that sexual activity will lead to the making of babies, marriages and families; by buying and ingesting The Pill, women can avoid the need to bind their male sexual partners into long-term financial contracts which are designed to ensure that their offspring are adequately provided for.
I first read the book as a sixteen year old, and recall sensing how isolating and lonely an existence would be, in those individual cells, each inhabited by a single person, where one’s interactions with others were segregated, measured and regulated so that no two people could ever know each other. I thought it was cruel.
What’s the point in living at all?
Something that Huxley managed to express very well in his book was the development of a societal aversion towards children, which has also become a strong element in contemporary western society. Just as the relationships between castes and sexes were managed and regulated, in Brave New World, so were the relationships between generations. So much so, that old people delivered themselves to be killed, because nothing but their physical remains were of any further use to society.
The question of ‘what’s the point in living at all?’ is central to Huxley’s vision. It’s a common question, first encountered by most disenchanted adolescents, and revisited from time to time as we are pummelled against life’s challenges. Why do humans continue to reproduce so mindlessly? Who says that the proper way to live is to go to school, get a job, marry and raise a family, play with your grannies and die? Why bother? Where does it get you? What does it get you? You can’t take it with you when you die.
Is it just a matter of grabbing at pleasures where they arise, and damn the consequences? Should we all just make a pact to look after ourselves and let future generations do the same? Should we humans commit mass suicide, and leave the planet to the innocent and more deserving?
Bestowing of Meaning
John Wyndham’s "Consider her Ways" (1959) is another book of speculative fiction in which society is sharply divided into castes, and the role of women is explored. In his vision, children are borne only by particular women, whose elevated role as Mother begins with conception and ends with birth (a vision recently echoed in the cloning film ‘the Island’, although for Wyndham, the cycle repeats and doesn’t end with the killing of the woman immediately after she gives birth).
I find the preoccupation of these two male writers with the role of women and childbirth quite fascinating. Wyndham’s book goes so far as to posit a manless society. Heinlein is another whose writing to me displays a great deal of misogyny, in which women are generally relegated to the undignified role of the sexually objectified.
The feminist speculative utopias I have read, including "Herland" (originally published in 1915), "The Demeter Flower" (Rochelle Singer, 1980), "Woman on the Edge of Time" (1976) and "Door into Ocean" (Joan Slonczewski, 1986) posit societies in which the begetting and raising of children are natural, conscious, valued and central aspects of the communities they describe.
In these feminist novels, the problem of men and the nature of man is a central theme. Is this simply a foil for the preoccupation of male novelists, for the nature and role of women? Why is motherhood so central to the women novelists and for the men, a medical problem at best, and a neurosis at worst?
Is it significant, that in researching this article, I came across a web-page by the fundamentalist Christian Right, which denounced all feminist speculative fiction? (Clear Goal for Utopia, by John and Clara Godwin, see ‘Feminist Utopias’ http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Publications/Utopia/utopia1wa1.htm viewed on-line, 2/7/2006).
Funnily enough, it is the spiritual haves who tend to reproduce with far more fervour than the spiritual have-nots. Leaving aside the obvious religious reasons for this (the meek shall inherit the earth; raise up your armies to conquer the infidel; bear sons so that you shall be rewarded in heaven) I wonder whether the confidence to reproduce also stems from a conviction that it is in relating, that human endeavour acquires a significance that elevates it from the mundane, physical and mechanical, to something more magical and sacred? Humans who relate to something bigger than themselves – whether that be Gaia, God, a Higher Self, Christ, Wilderness or a set of Deities – are automatically in a relationship with the rest of the world that non-believers lack.
It is true that we ourselves are the bestowers of meaning on every aspect of our lives, and that without bestowing such meaning, there is little point in anything, except to do our little but in maintaining the status quo and holding up the power structure.
The Baby Bonus
Indeed in Howard’s Australia, the cost of children is high on the government’s agenda. Women are now being paid thousands of dollars to bear children. Only future generations can justify the actions of past generations. Unless we have children to be born in hospitals and then go to child care and then school and then university and eat and play and consume and do their bit to maintain the economic cycle of production and consumption, we might as well all lie down and die. There’s no point at all.
Howard’s disdain for cultural and artistic expression as a basis for meaningful human endeavour is easy to explain away because in these domains, the causal relationships between production, consumption and profit are not so easily characterized. Contrast this with his so-called passion for sport, where sport is not just a game of winning and losing, but entails much value-adding in terms of media interests, advertising, and a myriad of sport-related product-lines and it is obvious that his enthusiasm is purely capitalist. I’ve seen no evidence of any vision beyond the level of spiritual manager and bureaucrat. Howard’s policies inspire nothing, but the oft-thwarted pursuit of material happiness.
Would Australian women keep having babies if they weren’t being paid to do so? It’s clear to me that Huxley’s ‘soma’ is money. Money is where the power lies; not in human relationship, not in cultural expression, not in community and certainly not in family. Apparently, people will do anything they are told to do, as long as they are paid for it. Money is a scarce commodity. More money is in the hands of a few powerful people, than the rest of the money that is sprinkled like poppy seeds amongst the general population.
How racist is Howard’s agenda? Is it just to balance the rampant reproduction of the newly arrived to our shores, that he wants the more well-established women of Australia to have babies? His welfare policies further enlighten those who look for the hidden agenda. Surely it’s not a general call to reproduce, (though the Baby Bonus beckons at the quick-fix needy poor).
Wouldn’t Howard prefer to populate the country just with the offspring of certain individuals – well-educated, heterosexual professionals with property? Wouldn’t this be fair enough? These are surely the parts of society most able to raise healthy, clever, contributing children for the next generation. But think a little deeper – what will these children do when they are grown up? Our society is not egalitarian, even though the Baby Bonus goes to all sectors of society. What about the children of the poor, the working-class, the refugees and migrants? The children of the middle class will grow up to be the managers and teachers of the milling millions whose parents were less able.
Ultimately, what is wrong with this? Isn’t this the way the world has always worked? It’s hardly radical; hardly a departure from the norm. We all know society is divided into the haves and the have-nots. We all know how desperate the have-nots become, how they struggle and strive to change their status. Perhaps they will be seduced into thinking the Baby Bonus will enable them to achieve that step up the ladder to financial security?
I see Howard’s vision as manipulative, grandiose, narrow and disappointingly shallow. It attracts the support of the many precisely because of its conservatism. How often do we stop to ask the question ‘what’s the point in living at all?’ In our secular world, we do everything we can to avoid such questions. It is when we are brought face to face with them, if we lose our partner, lose a child, lose our job, that we finally admit that these questions have been in hot pursuit like the Greek Harpies, and have hounded us for years to pay attention to them.
Motherhood minus the father
In my world, I have come to question the role of fathers as anything but sperm donors. That is an extreme and radical statement, and I don’t wish to detract from the families in which mothers and fathers both play important and contributing roles in the raising of children. However, I know of so many families with absent fathers.
In these families, The Pill has not saved anyone from reproduction. It has not liberated the women from their pre-ordained role as mother. It has not rescued the children from lives of unstinting poverty. And the people in these families are obliged to fulfil Howard’s expectations for how single mothers ought to live.
These women, these mothers have not borne their children in order to get the Baby Bonus or the Pension (a.k.a. Parenting Payment Single). In the majority of cases, their children were conceived within heterosexual relationships that went wrong. These mothers, girlfriends and wives never anticipated the depths to which their sexual relations with men would take them.
Their children have been deserted by the men who fathered them. The wrongdoings of these men have resulted in long-term disadvantage for their children, which could be redressed either by enforcing some kind of contractual arrangement between the parents which made the father liable to support the children until they were financially independent, or by the government recognizing the value of motherhood and supporting the mother to raise the children in dignity until they were financially independent.
Though it purports to, Australia does neither of these very well. Instead, mothers and children are left in the lurch, perched upon a fragile twig of welfare offerings, struggling to maintain work and family balance, fighting to fulfil their side of the mutual obligation equation, when single-parent families are never recognized within the government schemata of how Australians ought to live, and the Government makes them beg for every cent they get. The double standards are never acknowledged, which is why it is so frustrating to take these issues into a community which meets them with the blank face of hostility and misunderstanding.
So I say to those women who want to have children and do not have male partners who will support them in raising those children – you won’t gain anything by not having them, so you may as well find some sperm and inseminate yourselves without agonizing over the lack of a father in your future child’s life. Eliminate him from the equation. Do not expect anything from him, whether financial, emotional or sexual. Give him no claim on the child. He’ll only want that if he feels it is to his economic advantage to use his biological bond in order to evade fiscal responsibility.
That is my radical notion. In my feminist utopia, children are conceived and brought into a world of love. Their mothers are valued and the work they do in raising them is recognized and rewarded so that families live comfortably and productively.
Children are cherished and educated by the community. No man or woman abducts, rapes and murders an eight-year-old in a public toilet. No priest molests choirgirls and altar boys. No brothers, uncles, cousins, step- or grandfathers or foster parents abuse the children under their protection and care.
In my feminist utopia, women are not ‘just’ mothers. They are expected and encouraged to contribute to their community in every way they can. Everything they do demonstrates what important, valued contributors they are, to the society of which they are part.
© Melina Magdalena (2006)
Sex in the Brave New World
Remember Aldous Huxley’s "Brave New World" (originally published in 1932), where the State controlled and managed human fertility and human sexuality? With the implementation of a strict routine of medication, people were encouraged and incited to have casual sex regularly, albeit in a sterile, factory-like manner without the accompanying neuroses of human relationship. Children were created in bottles and raised by the State, a system which is echoed today in the drive to have babies and toddlers cared for in institutions while their mothers go out to work.
As reviewer James Schellenberg writes in ‘Challenging Destiny: Science Fiction and Fantasy Reviews http://www.challengingdestiny.com/reviews/bravenew.htm (viewed on-line, 1/7/2006) “Huxley is worried about a state of mind … that puts happiness into a materialistic paradigm and then uses it as a method of control, justified as what the people want.”
In his review, Schellenberg reflects on the character of Lenina, who befriends the Savage, a man who was brought up outside of the System, and how “… Lenina and her sexuality often stand for everything that is wrong and corrupt and vacuous about this system …” Could it be that Lenina appears so grotesque in contrast with real live human women, for many of whom the relational aspects of sex are just as, if not more important than the physical?
As far as female sexuality is concerned, it’s important to realize that Huxley wrote the book before The Pill technology emerged and western climates changed from one of sexual restraint and limitation, to promiscuity and permissiveness. After The Pill came on the scene, males were to rejoice that there was now nothing to hold back the tide of female sexual energy. Females were to fully embrace their new freedoms and give their bodies over to sex wherever, whenever and with whomever.
It’s this technology that mirrors Huxley’s vision of fulfilling people’s materialistic desires and calling this happiness. By eliminating the fear that sexual activity will lead to the making of babies, marriages and families; by buying and ingesting The Pill, women can avoid the need to bind their male sexual partners into long-term financial contracts which are designed to ensure that their offspring are adequately provided for.
I first read the book as a sixteen year old, and recall sensing how isolating and lonely an existence would be, in those individual cells, each inhabited by a single person, where one’s interactions with others were segregated, measured and regulated so that no two people could ever know each other. I thought it was cruel.
What’s the point in living at all?
Something that Huxley managed to express very well in his book was the development of a societal aversion towards children, which has also become a strong element in contemporary western society. Just as the relationships between castes and sexes were managed and regulated, in Brave New World, so were the relationships between generations. So much so, that old people delivered themselves to be killed, because nothing but their physical remains were of any further use to society.
The question of ‘what’s the point in living at all?’ is central to Huxley’s vision. It’s a common question, first encountered by most disenchanted adolescents, and revisited from time to time as we are pummelled against life’s challenges. Why do humans continue to reproduce so mindlessly? Who says that the proper way to live is to go to school, get a job, marry and raise a family, play with your grannies and die? Why bother? Where does it get you? What does it get you? You can’t take it with you when you die.
Is it just a matter of grabbing at pleasures where they arise, and damn the consequences? Should we all just make a pact to look after ourselves and let future generations do the same? Should we humans commit mass suicide, and leave the planet to the innocent and more deserving?
Bestowing of Meaning
John Wyndham’s "Consider her Ways" (1959) is another book of speculative fiction in which society is sharply divided into castes, and the role of women is explored. In his vision, children are borne only by particular women, whose elevated role as Mother begins with conception and ends with birth (a vision recently echoed in the cloning film ‘the Island’, although for Wyndham, the cycle repeats and doesn’t end with the killing of the woman immediately after she gives birth).
I find the preoccupation of these two male writers with the role of women and childbirth quite fascinating. Wyndham’s book goes so far as to posit a manless society. Heinlein is another whose writing to me displays a great deal of misogyny, in which women are generally relegated to the undignified role of the sexually objectified.
The feminist speculative utopias I have read, including "Herland" (originally published in 1915), "The Demeter Flower" (Rochelle Singer, 1980), "Woman on the Edge of Time" (1976) and "Door into Ocean" (Joan Slonczewski, 1986) posit societies in which the begetting and raising of children are natural, conscious, valued and central aspects of the communities they describe.
In these feminist novels, the problem of men and the nature of man is a central theme. Is this simply a foil for the preoccupation of male novelists, for the nature and role of women? Why is motherhood so central to the women novelists and for the men, a medical problem at best, and a neurosis at worst?
Is it significant, that in researching this article, I came across a web-page by the fundamentalist Christian Right, which denounced all feminist speculative fiction? (Clear Goal for Utopia, by John and Clara Godwin, see ‘Feminist Utopias’ http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Publications/Utopia/utopia1wa1.htm viewed on-line, 2/7/2006).
Funnily enough, it is the spiritual haves who tend to reproduce with far more fervour than the spiritual have-nots. Leaving aside the obvious religious reasons for this (the meek shall inherit the earth; raise up your armies to conquer the infidel; bear sons so that you shall be rewarded in heaven) I wonder whether the confidence to reproduce also stems from a conviction that it is in relating, that human endeavour acquires a significance that elevates it from the mundane, physical and mechanical, to something more magical and sacred? Humans who relate to something bigger than themselves – whether that be Gaia, God, a Higher Self, Christ, Wilderness or a set of Deities – are automatically in a relationship with the rest of the world that non-believers lack.
It is true that we ourselves are the bestowers of meaning on every aspect of our lives, and that without bestowing such meaning, there is little point in anything, except to do our little but in maintaining the status quo and holding up the power structure.
The Baby Bonus
Indeed in Howard’s Australia, the cost of children is high on the government’s agenda. Women are now being paid thousands of dollars to bear children. Only future generations can justify the actions of past generations. Unless we have children to be born in hospitals and then go to child care and then school and then university and eat and play and consume and do their bit to maintain the economic cycle of production and consumption, we might as well all lie down and die. There’s no point at all.
Howard’s disdain for cultural and artistic expression as a basis for meaningful human endeavour is easy to explain away because in these domains, the causal relationships between production, consumption and profit are not so easily characterized. Contrast this with his so-called passion for sport, where sport is not just a game of winning and losing, but entails much value-adding in terms of media interests, advertising, and a myriad of sport-related product-lines and it is obvious that his enthusiasm is purely capitalist. I’ve seen no evidence of any vision beyond the level of spiritual manager and bureaucrat. Howard’s policies inspire nothing, but the oft-thwarted pursuit of material happiness.
Would Australian women keep having babies if they weren’t being paid to do so? It’s clear to me that Huxley’s ‘soma’ is money. Money is where the power lies; not in human relationship, not in cultural expression, not in community and certainly not in family. Apparently, people will do anything they are told to do, as long as they are paid for it. Money is a scarce commodity. More money is in the hands of a few powerful people, than the rest of the money that is sprinkled like poppy seeds amongst the general population.
How racist is Howard’s agenda? Is it just to balance the rampant reproduction of the newly arrived to our shores, that he wants the more well-established women of Australia to have babies? His welfare policies further enlighten those who look for the hidden agenda. Surely it’s not a general call to reproduce, (though the Baby Bonus beckons at the quick-fix needy poor).
Wouldn’t Howard prefer to populate the country just with the offspring of certain individuals – well-educated, heterosexual professionals with property? Wouldn’t this be fair enough? These are surely the parts of society most able to raise healthy, clever, contributing children for the next generation. But think a little deeper – what will these children do when they are grown up? Our society is not egalitarian, even though the Baby Bonus goes to all sectors of society. What about the children of the poor, the working-class, the refugees and migrants? The children of the middle class will grow up to be the managers and teachers of the milling millions whose parents were less able.
Ultimately, what is wrong with this? Isn’t this the way the world has always worked? It’s hardly radical; hardly a departure from the norm. We all know society is divided into the haves and the have-nots. We all know how desperate the have-nots become, how they struggle and strive to change their status. Perhaps they will be seduced into thinking the Baby Bonus will enable them to achieve that step up the ladder to financial security?
I see Howard’s vision as manipulative, grandiose, narrow and disappointingly shallow. It attracts the support of the many precisely because of its conservatism. How often do we stop to ask the question ‘what’s the point in living at all?’ In our secular world, we do everything we can to avoid such questions. It is when we are brought face to face with them, if we lose our partner, lose a child, lose our job, that we finally admit that these questions have been in hot pursuit like the Greek Harpies, and have hounded us for years to pay attention to them.
Motherhood minus the father
In my world, I have come to question the role of fathers as anything but sperm donors. That is an extreme and radical statement, and I don’t wish to detract from the families in which mothers and fathers both play important and contributing roles in the raising of children. However, I know of so many families with absent fathers.
In these families, The Pill has not saved anyone from reproduction. It has not liberated the women from their pre-ordained role as mother. It has not rescued the children from lives of unstinting poverty. And the people in these families are obliged to fulfil Howard’s expectations for how single mothers ought to live.
These women, these mothers have not borne their children in order to get the Baby Bonus or the Pension (a.k.a. Parenting Payment Single). In the majority of cases, their children were conceived within heterosexual relationships that went wrong. These mothers, girlfriends and wives never anticipated the depths to which their sexual relations with men would take them.
Their children have been deserted by the men who fathered them. The wrongdoings of these men have resulted in long-term disadvantage for their children, which could be redressed either by enforcing some kind of contractual arrangement between the parents which made the father liable to support the children until they were financially independent, or by the government recognizing the value of motherhood and supporting the mother to raise the children in dignity until they were financially independent.
Though it purports to, Australia does neither of these very well. Instead, mothers and children are left in the lurch, perched upon a fragile twig of welfare offerings, struggling to maintain work and family balance, fighting to fulfil their side of the mutual obligation equation, when single-parent families are never recognized within the government schemata of how Australians ought to live, and the Government makes them beg for every cent they get. The double standards are never acknowledged, which is why it is so frustrating to take these issues into a community which meets them with the blank face of hostility and misunderstanding.
So I say to those women who want to have children and do not have male partners who will support them in raising those children – you won’t gain anything by not having them, so you may as well find some sperm and inseminate yourselves without agonizing over the lack of a father in your future child’s life. Eliminate him from the equation. Do not expect anything from him, whether financial, emotional or sexual. Give him no claim on the child. He’ll only want that if he feels it is to his economic advantage to use his biological bond in order to evade fiscal responsibility.
That is my radical notion. In my feminist utopia, children are conceived and brought into a world of love. Their mothers are valued and the work they do in raising them is recognized and rewarded so that families live comfortably and productively.
Children are cherished and educated by the community. No man or woman abducts, rapes and murders an eight-year-old in a public toilet. No priest molests choirgirls and altar boys. No brothers, uncles, cousins, step- or grandfathers or foster parents abuse the children under their protection and care.
In my feminist utopia, women are not ‘just’ mothers. They are expected and encouraged to contribute to their community in every way they can. Everything they do demonstrates what important, valued contributors they are, to the society of which they are part.
Friday, June 23, 2006
New Australian Fascism
© Melina Magdalena
(14/6/2006)
I’ve been listening to Minister Joe Hockey speaking on Radio National’s “Religion Report” (14/6/2006). To see the transcript of this program, go to this link: "Churches say no to federal plans for the unemployed" (and ignore the typos) http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2006/1665033.htm
Minister Hockey's words confirm my suspicion that the Federal Government is moving closer and closer to fascism. Prime Minister Howard's cosy mania for the wholesome christian nuclear family is the obvious driving force behind the many moves by the Federal Government to impose someone else's world view upon our reality. Sitting here, with the twentieth century behind me, this is scary stuff.
Minister Hockey says that now that the Federal Government’s Welfare to Work legislation is becoming a reality for all Australians, non-government organisations including church agencies are obliged to comply with government directives and cooperate in administering the breaching system. Minister Hockey refuses to acknowledge the distinction between government and non-government agencies. He resorts to petty emotional blackmail, when he asserts that church agencies and non-government organisations which do not take up the government’s offer to take on the work of administering the government’s system, are letting down the most vulnerable people in Australian society – those very people the Government is aiming to breach, punish and abuse through its Welfare to Work legislation.
The only people I know who refuse to work are those non-custodial fathers who do not want to pay child support. Welfare to Work is designed to make the custodial mothers forsake their parental responsibilities and try and find paid work in addition to their parenting responsibilities. This policy sets up their children to be neglected. It leaves the next generations vulnerable to higher levels of parental abuse, because those who do not receive the good parenting that is only possible by parents who are present and actively engaged in positive parenting, do not learn how to parent their own children well.
The people targeted by the Federal Government’s Welfare to Work legislation are not people who refuse to work. People who do not have a paid job are people who have other concerns in their lives. They are people with disabilities, mental heath issues and family-life circumstances that make it difficult for them to take on regular work. Economic rationalism makes it difficult for businesses to adjust their practices in a way that would enable such vulnerable people to be employed.
NGOs and church agencies will continue to assist the most vulnerable people in Australian society, without cooperating with the Federal Government’s fascist schemes. Those most vulnerable people will be obliged in ever greater numbers to seek the assistance of these groups, because the Federal Government’s fascist legislation, with its eight-week breaching system is designed to starve them into submission.
(14/6/2006)
I’ve been listening to Minister Joe Hockey speaking on Radio National’s “Religion Report” (14/6/2006). To see the transcript of this program, go to this link: "Churches say no to federal plans for the unemployed" (and ignore the typos) http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2006/1665033.htm
Minister Hockey's words confirm my suspicion that the Federal Government is moving closer and closer to fascism. Prime Minister Howard's cosy mania for the wholesome christian nuclear family is the obvious driving force behind the many moves by the Federal Government to impose someone else's world view upon our reality. Sitting here, with the twentieth century behind me, this is scary stuff.
Minister Hockey says that now that the Federal Government’s Welfare to Work legislation is becoming a reality for all Australians, non-government organisations including church agencies are obliged to comply with government directives and cooperate in administering the breaching system. Minister Hockey refuses to acknowledge the distinction between government and non-government agencies. He resorts to petty emotional blackmail, when he asserts that church agencies and non-government organisations which do not take up the government’s offer to take on the work of administering the government’s system, are letting down the most vulnerable people in Australian society – those very people the Government is aiming to breach, punish and abuse through its Welfare to Work legislation.
The only people I know who refuse to work are those non-custodial fathers who do not want to pay child support. Welfare to Work is designed to make the custodial mothers forsake their parental responsibilities and try and find paid work in addition to their parenting responsibilities. This policy sets up their children to be neglected. It leaves the next generations vulnerable to higher levels of parental abuse, because those who do not receive the good parenting that is only possible by parents who are present and actively engaged in positive parenting, do not learn how to parent their own children well.
The people targeted by the Federal Government’s Welfare to Work legislation are not people who refuse to work. People who do not have a paid job are people who have other concerns in their lives. They are people with disabilities, mental heath issues and family-life circumstances that make it difficult for them to take on regular work. Economic rationalism makes it difficult for businesses to adjust their practices in a way that would enable such vulnerable people to be employed.
NGOs and church agencies will continue to assist the most vulnerable people in Australian society, without cooperating with the Federal Government’s fascist schemes. Those most vulnerable people will be obliged in ever greater numbers to seek the assistance of these groups, because the Federal Government’s fascist legislation, with its eight-week breaching system is designed to starve them into submission.
Monday, June 12, 2006
retrospective use of rapist's DNA
STATEMENT – retrospective use of rapist’s DNA
© Melina Magdalena (12/6/2006)
(written in preparation for tv interview with Channel 10 (Adelaide) news reporter Gerda Jezuchowski)
First of all, this person who was raped is not a victim of rape. She’s a survivor. Moreover, I would like to acknowledge her courage, in reporting the crime to the police. That is not an easy thing to do, and I wish her strength in the journey ahead.
Secondly, it’s bad enough to be raped by someone who is known to you. If it’s not someone you live with, you’re always going to be on tenterhooks, afraid to run into him somewhere unexpectedly, and you wonder who in your social circle knows about him and hasn’t said anything. That’s pretty creepy.
But when you’re raped by a stranger, one of the first questions you ask is – why me? To have such a personal violation, this atrocity committed against you, and then you say – it can’t have been a random attack. It’s so pointless. And after that, you realise that every man is suspect. It could have been the policeman who is interviewing you. It could be the man in front of you at the supermarket checkout. It could be your nephew, your uncle’s best friend, your neighbour, your grandson’s teacher, your mechanic.
So you walk around with this burden of knowing that you are a damaged, violated, broken person. And you know it can happen again, at any moment. Who was it? No one knows. But that rapist knows you now. And he might come back. You might encounter him anywhere and he’ll be laughing about it, because you’re so terrified. There’s no way to prevent it from happening again. There is no such thing as personal safety. You are vulnerable to attack at every minute of every day. You wind yourself up as tight as a spring and you’re ready to be raped again.
After a long time, you get used to being on edge all the time. You live with the fatigue of spending all your energy keeping guard and you modify the way you do things, to try and feel a little bit safer. You worry about the people you love, and hope they never go through what you’ve gone through and you live with the constant regret that those who are closest have seen you at your worst, and you wonder how it’s affected them. And you get on with your life, because what else can you do? It’s either that, or give up and die. But you never forget that you are under siege.
I was raped thirteen years ago when a stranger broke into my home while I was asleep. Even now, after all this time, I do not go to sleep ever, without running through scenarios in my mind. If it happens again tonight, what will I do? Is the phone beside my bed? Do I have a clear escape route? Is there anything nearby that he could hit me or cut me or strangle me with? Have I checked the doors and windows? What will happen to the children if I am murdered tonight? Have I done absolutely everything I can to make sure they will be all right even if I am not?
Thirdly, this business of DNA testing is being twisted to a criminal’s advantage, by conveniently forgetting the purpose for which his DNA was taken and tested in the first place. Police DNA records should be no more sacrosanct than fingerprints. The whole point of a DNA Bank is to assist police to solve crimes, prosecute offenders, and stop further offences from being committed.
If your fingerprints are on file, it is a good deterrent not to commit a crime that might be linked back to the reason your fingerprints were taken in the first place. The same follows for DNA testing. No one is advocating that every person in Australia have their DNA arbitrarily put into the DNA Bank just in case they commit a crime down the track.
If the police have this rapist’s DNA on file, we may presume they took it for some other offence-related purpose. When a person is not convicted for a crime because of lack of evidence, it doesn’t mean that person didn’t commit the crime. But saying that his DNA cannot subsequently be used to identify a crime that he did commit because he didn’t commit the other one, is a bit like saying “OK, you got off, that time so feel free to go out and re-offend.” Wouldn’t it be more sensible to say “You were lucky that time, you bastard, and we’ll be watching you, so keep your nose clean! If you hurt anyone else, we will be on to you in a flash, because that kind of behaviour is unacceptable and we will not tolerate it.”
© Melina Magdalena (12/6/2006)
(written in preparation for tv interview with Channel 10 (Adelaide) news reporter Gerda Jezuchowski)
First of all, this person who was raped is not a victim of rape. She’s a survivor. Moreover, I would like to acknowledge her courage, in reporting the crime to the police. That is not an easy thing to do, and I wish her strength in the journey ahead.
Secondly, it’s bad enough to be raped by someone who is known to you. If it’s not someone you live with, you’re always going to be on tenterhooks, afraid to run into him somewhere unexpectedly, and you wonder who in your social circle knows about him and hasn’t said anything. That’s pretty creepy.
But when you’re raped by a stranger, one of the first questions you ask is – why me? To have such a personal violation, this atrocity committed against you, and then you say – it can’t have been a random attack. It’s so pointless. And after that, you realise that every man is suspect. It could have been the policeman who is interviewing you. It could be the man in front of you at the supermarket checkout. It could be your nephew, your uncle’s best friend, your neighbour, your grandson’s teacher, your mechanic.
So you walk around with this burden of knowing that you are a damaged, violated, broken person. And you know it can happen again, at any moment. Who was it? No one knows. But that rapist knows you now. And he might come back. You might encounter him anywhere and he’ll be laughing about it, because you’re so terrified. There’s no way to prevent it from happening again. There is no such thing as personal safety. You are vulnerable to attack at every minute of every day. You wind yourself up as tight as a spring and you’re ready to be raped again.
After a long time, you get used to being on edge all the time. You live with the fatigue of spending all your energy keeping guard and you modify the way you do things, to try and feel a little bit safer. You worry about the people you love, and hope they never go through what you’ve gone through and you live with the constant regret that those who are closest have seen you at your worst, and you wonder how it’s affected them. And you get on with your life, because what else can you do? It’s either that, or give up and die. But you never forget that you are under siege.
I was raped thirteen years ago when a stranger broke into my home while I was asleep. Even now, after all this time, I do not go to sleep ever, without running through scenarios in my mind. If it happens again tonight, what will I do? Is the phone beside my bed? Do I have a clear escape route? Is there anything nearby that he could hit me or cut me or strangle me with? Have I checked the doors and windows? What will happen to the children if I am murdered tonight? Have I done absolutely everything I can to make sure they will be all right even if I am not?
Thirdly, this business of DNA testing is being twisted to a criminal’s advantage, by conveniently forgetting the purpose for which his DNA was taken and tested in the first place. Police DNA records should be no more sacrosanct than fingerprints. The whole point of a DNA Bank is to assist police to solve crimes, prosecute offenders, and stop further offences from being committed.
If your fingerprints are on file, it is a good deterrent not to commit a crime that might be linked back to the reason your fingerprints were taken in the first place. The same follows for DNA testing. No one is advocating that every person in Australia have their DNA arbitrarily put into the DNA Bank just in case they commit a crime down the track.
If the police have this rapist’s DNA on file, we may presume they took it for some other offence-related purpose. When a person is not convicted for a crime because of lack of evidence, it doesn’t mean that person didn’t commit the crime. But saying that his DNA cannot subsequently be used to identify a crime that he did commit because he didn’t commit the other one, is a bit like saying “OK, you got off, that time so feel free to go out and re-offend.” Wouldn’t it be more sensible to say “You were lucky that time, you bastard, and we’ll be watching you, so keep your nose clean! If you hurt anyone else, we will be on to you in a flash, because that kind of behaviour is unacceptable and we will not tolerate it.”
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Numbers Game
1 March, 2006
Dear Friends,
I need to explain this to someone. It seems as though no one really understands this number game. Everyone says it’s so good that I’m working, that I’m a good Mum, that I’m not just a welfare mother, how clever I am, what potential I have blah blah blah – bullshit.
If I’d stayed married, things might not be any better. X’s vision was for me to go and clean nursing homes while he stayed home and played his guitar while the babies screamed in the background. I can’t castigate myself now for leaving that marriage.
The second piece of irony – and this one stings – I’ve finally found a job I like and can do, with people I can respect, who respect me. I actually like my job and enjoy it.
What’s so soul-destroying is the numbers game which holds me hostage. And yes – I did blow my entire income tax return last year by going overseas. Again, I get all kinds of messages about how that was a great thing to have done: “It’s the first thing you’ve done for yourself in all these years, and it’s about time you had a holiday.” Bullshit. People like me don’t deserve to go on holidays. We should stay in our little holes and not bother anybody.
Am I profligate with my money? Could I – should I – manage it better? I honestly don’t see how. Food and bills are all I spend it on – the absolute bare minimum basics. I work 18.38 hours each week. If I didn’t go out to work, I might not have more money to spend, but I also would have fewer commitments that demand that I spend money on them. If I have to pay for all-day parking once each week, I earn almost nothing over and above what I’d be getting on welfare alone.
Here is how it works.
I go out to work in a 0.5 fractional position at HEO3 level rates. (It’s an entry-level position. What do I expect – I’m a single mother, unprofessional, at least it’s not a casual job!)
Each fortnight, my pay slip tells me I’ve earned around $600, for which I am taxed $200. About $400 is deposited into my bank account. However, I have to report my gross earnings to Centrelink, who reduce my welfare payment. For the $400 net I earn each fortnight after tax, Centrelink takes another third, leaving me with about $200 in net earnings.
Now, I am extraordinarily lucky to live in government housing. (Imagine if I had to pay private rent?) In addition, because I was clever enough to flee my marriage in 1993, even though it took 14 years to be housed, legislation states that I cannot now be kicked out of my home (which, I have to acknowledge, has got to be a good thing). And I thank my lucky stars each and every day that I live in meek old Adelaide, where “the cost of living” is so very low. Here’s the thing: because I am in government housing, I am not eligible for rent relief from Centrelink.
Rent relief may be a non-issue, but the scaled rental payment for which I am liable each week is significant. If I had nothing but Centrelink payments, I would pay about $80 each week to live in this house. However, because I earn the exorbitant amount of $600+ each fortnight (yes – Housing Trust works out my rental payment according to the gross amount, as does Centrelink), my rent has almost doubled. I pay $151.50 each week.
The difference (I’ll work that out for you) is $71.50 per week. That $71.50 is money that I have earned by going out to work. It is the money I owe the government for living in government housing and earning outside of the government welfare system. It is money over and above the (reduced) Centrelink payment I am handed each fortnight for being a single parent, and it is money over and above the money that is deducted in tax from my pay each fortnight.
Now actually, I receive two Centrelink payments. On the week in between, I receive about $400 for the parenting payment. So my total fortnightly income consists of:
Looks pretty good, doesn’t it. $1,400 per fortnight – that’s $700 per week, for goodness sake. If I can’t raise two teenagers on that amount, there must be something wrong with me. What do I expect – larger government handouts?
Remember, that’s not the real picture. It is, however, the picture that Centrelink, the Housing Trust, the Smith Family and the Salvation look at Army (believe me – I’ve been pushed to beg more than once before, for my groceries).
But I have to explain this to someone. So here’s the real picture:
So that is actually only $500 per week to raise two teenagers. From this amount comes rent, food, petrol, school fees and everything else.
If we take a look at the rental situation in a similar light, it only gets worse.
Here’s how it would be if I didn’t go out and earn.
OK, so I’m $60 in front! Whoopeedoo! What’s the story? Why am I complaining? Why am I depressed? Why am I feeling trapped and in despair? Why don’t I go out and spend that extra $30 each week – live it up, treat myself to something nice?
Let’s look at it another way. If, after all that, I am only $30 per week in front of my welfare entitlements, and I am working 18+ hours each week, that means I am working for the grand sum of $1.66 per hour.
And for that extra $30, I get to be productively occupied with something other than parenting!
So what would I be doing with my time if I didn’t go out to work? I might still be depressed and in despair. I might long to have my days filled with some kind of meaningful productivity other than keeping house. I might have written my novels by now. I might have time to op shopping for the essentials I am forced to buy new, because I don’t have time to op shop, and because my children and I live with the pretence that as a working single mother we can do better. Who knows? It might not be any better. But does that make what we have, all right?
The solution? It’s not my employers’ fault. I knew when I applied for the job, that it was only an HEO3 half-time position. And yes, I probably will get a chunk of this money back at the end of the financial year. (I can see by my payslip that I have already paid $3,238.00 in tax.) But that doesn’t help me pay the bills I have right now. My creditors are not going to be willing to wait for August or September on my promise that I will pay them if and when I get the money back from the government.
I’m bitter and I’m sad. I’m in despair. I see no way out. It’s not a pretty picture.
We aren’t starving. We never will. We have a roof over our heads. We have a car to drive around in. We have furniture to sit on, beds to sleep in. We have so much, yet we have so little.
The solution? Again, it’s a tough one. Obviously, I need to work longer hours, and/or I need a higher-paid position. I cannot begin to calculate what will happen when my son goes onto Youth Allowance in May. That just frightens me even more. I intend to finish my graduate diploma in Education, by taking leave without pay from my job for 5 weeks in May/June, after which I will be qualified to teach. When I did that last year, we managed quite well without any extra income (this should come as no surprise, if you’ve managed to follow what I’ve written here). In the meantime, it is unlikely I’d find a higher-paid job for the next three months that would let me go on leave for five weeks, so I guess I keep on treading water for that $30 per week and believing everything will be all right. Do I want to teach? Not really – I like my part-time office job – but I don’t think I can afford the luxury of choice.
Forgive me if my attitude at work seems deficient. I know it’s not your fault I’m working for $1.66 per hour, but somehow, that doesn’t make me feel any better. I promise to go on doing my best. This is the best I can do.
Yours truly,
Melina Magdalena
P.S. Please note that I have rounded figures both up and down in the above diatribe, which balances itself out, in the end. After all, numbers are just numbers. We’re just one small family trying to make ends meet. And we’re the enemy – the greedy, unscrupulous, welfare dependent ne’er do wells that Australia loves to vilify, and who do not deserve to be heard. However, I am audacious enough to expect, await, and look forward to your response.
© 2006
Dear Friends,
I need to explain this to someone. It seems as though no one really understands this number game. Everyone says it’s so good that I’m working, that I’m a good Mum, that I’m not just a welfare mother, how clever I am, what potential I have blah blah blah – bullshit.
If I’d stayed married, things might not be any better. X’s vision was for me to go and clean nursing homes while he stayed home and played his guitar while the babies screamed in the background. I can’t castigate myself now for leaving that marriage.
The second piece of irony – and this one stings – I’ve finally found a job I like and can do, with people I can respect, who respect me. I actually like my job and enjoy it.
What’s so soul-destroying is the numbers game which holds me hostage. And yes – I did blow my entire income tax return last year by going overseas. Again, I get all kinds of messages about how that was a great thing to have done: “It’s the first thing you’ve done for yourself in all these years, and it’s about time you had a holiday.” Bullshit. People like me don’t deserve to go on holidays. We should stay in our little holes and not bother anybody.
Am I profligate with my money? Could I – should I – manage it better? I honestly don’t see how. Food and bills are all I spend it on – the absolute bare minimum basics. I work 18.38 hours each week. If I didn’t go out to work, I might not have more money to spend, but I also would have fewer commitments that demand that I spend money on them. If I have to pay for all-day parking once each week, I earn almost nothing over and above what I’d be getting on welfare alone.
Here is how it works.
I go out to work in a 0.5 fractional position at HEO3 level rates. (It’s an entry-level position. What do I expect – I’m a single mother, unprofessional, at least it’s not a casual job!)
Each fortnight, my pay slip tells me I’ve earned around $600, for which I am taxed $200. About $400 is deposited into my bank account. However, I have to report my gross earnings to Centrelink, who reduce my welfare payment. For the $400 net I earn each fortnight after tax, Centrelink takes another third, leaving me with about $200 in net earnings.
Now, I am extraordinarily lucky to live in government housing. (Imagine if I had to pay private rent?) In addition, because I was clever enough to flee my marriage in 1993, even though it took 14 years to be housed, legislation states that I cannot now be kicked out of my home (which, I have to acknowledge, has got to be a good thing). And I thank my lucky stars each and every day that I live in meek old Adelaide, where “the cost of living” is so very low. Here’s the thing: because I am in government housing, I am not eligible for rent relief from Centrelink.
Rent relief may be a non-issue, but the scaled rental payment for which I am liable each week is significant. If I had nothing but Centrelink payments, I would pay about $80 each week to live in this house. However, because I earn the exorbitant amount of $600+ each fortnight (yes – Housing Trust works out my rental payment according to the gross amount, as does Centrelink), my rent has almost doubled. I pay $151.50 each week.
The difference (I’ll work that out for you) is $71.50 per week. That $71.50 is money that I have earned by going out to work. It is the money I owe the government for living in government housing and earning outside of the government welfare system. It is money over and above the (reduced) Centrelink payment I am handed each fortnight for being a single parent, and it is money over and above the money that is deducted in tax from my pay each fortnight.
Now actually, I receive two Centrelink payments. On the week in between, I receive about $400 for the parenting payment. So my total fortnightly income consists of:
Looks pretty good, doesn’t it. $1,400 per fortnight – that’s $700 per week, for goodness sake. If I can’t raise two teenagers on that amount, there must be something wrong with me. What do I expect – larger government handouts?
Remember, that’s not the real picture. It is, however, the picture that Centrelink, the Housing Trust, the Smith Family and the Salvation look at Army (believe me – I’ve been pushed to beg more than once before, for my groceries).
But I have to explain this to someone. So here’s the real picture:
So that is actually only $500 per week to raise two teenagers. From this amount comes rent, food, petrol, school fees and everything else.
If we take a look at the rental situation in a similar light, it only gets worse.
Here’s how it would be if I didn’t go out and earn.
OK, so I’m $60 in front! Whoopeedoo! What’s the story? Why am I complaining? Why am I depressed? Why am I feeling trapped and in despair? Why don’t I go out and spend that extra $30 each week – live it up, treat myself to something nice?
Let’s look at it another way. If, after all that, I am only $30 per week in front of my welfare entitlements, and I am working 18+ hours each week, that means I am working for the grand sum of $1.66 per hour.
And for that extra $30, I get to be productively occupied with something other than parenting!
So what would I be doing with my time if I didn’t go out to work? I might still be depressed and in despair. I might long to have my days filled with some kind of meaningful productivity other than keeping house. I might have written my novels by now. I might have time to op shopping for the essentials I am forced to buy new, because I don’t have time to op shop, and because my children and I live with the pretence that as a working single mother we can do better. Who knows? It might not be any better. But does that make what we have, all right?
The solution? It’s not my employers’ fault. I knew when I applied for the job, that it was only an HEO3 half-time position. And yes, I probably will get a chunk of this money back at the end of the financial year. (I can see by my payslip that I have already paid $3,238.00 in tax.) But that doesn’t help me pay the bills I have right now. My creditors are not going to be willing to wait for August or September on my promise that I will pay them if and when I get the money back from the government.
I’m bitter and I’m sad. I’m in despair. I see no way out. It’s not a pretty picture.
We aren’t starving. We never will. We have a roof over our heads. We have a car to drive around in. We have furniture to sit on, beds to sleep in. We have so much, yet we have so little.
The solution? Again, it’s a tough one. Obviously, I need to work longer hours, and/or I need a higher-paid position. I cannot begin to calculate what will happen when my son goes onto Youth Allowance in May. That just frightens me even more. I intend to finish my graduate diploma in Education, by taking leave without pay from my job for 5 weeks in May/June, after which I will be qualified to teach. When I did that last year, we managed quite well without any extra income (this should come as no surprise, if you’ve managed to follow what I’ve written here). In the meantime, it is unlikely I’d find a higher-paid job for the next three months that would let me go on leave for five weeks, so I guess I keep on treading water for that $30 per week and believing everything will be all right. Do I want to teach? Not really – I like my part-time office job – but I don’t think I can afford the luxury of choice.
Forgive me if my attitude at work seems deficient. I know it’s not your fault I’m working for $1.66 per hour, but somehow, that doesn’t make me feel any better. I promise to go on doing my best. This is the best I can do.
Yours truly,
Melina Magdalena
P.S. Please note that I have rounded figures both up and down in the above diatribe, which balances itself out, in the end. After all, numbers are just numbers. We’re just one small family trying to make ends meet. And we’re the enemy – the greedy, unscrupulous, welfare dependent ne’er do wells that Australia loves to vilify, and who do not deserve to be heard. However, I am audacious enough to expect, await, and look forward to your response.
© 2006
Report: Meeting with my local MP
Report: Meeting with my local Member of Parliament (MP)
Issue: Workforce Participation for Sole Parents
Attached Below: Original letter sent to politicians and agencies
PLEASE FORWARD THIS IMPORTANT INFORMATION TO ALL THE SOLE PARENTS YOU KNOW
18 March, 2006
Dear Friends,
Yesterday I had an appointment with my local Federal Member of Parliament, Christopher Pyne (Torrens, South Australia). The meeting had not been easy to set up. First I sent a letter (via email), to which I received no reply. A week later, I rang his office, and his diary secretary said she would speak with Christopher and get back to me. A week after that, I rang his office again. This time, his diary secretary told me that the materials I had sent were on his desk, and she hoped he would have a chance to look at them that afternoon. She promised to get back to me after speaking with him to set up an appointment. A week later, I went to his office and told the young man at the front desk that I had been trying for three weeks to get an appointment to speak with Christopher Pyne. He disappeared for several long minutes, and then reappeared, with the diary secretary, who told me “Christopher is happy to meet with you, and he is available next Friday. What time would suit you?”
Advice: It is your right to speak with your MP. Perseverance pays off. Fronting up to the office elicits the most rapid response.
Christopher met me in the meeting room, of his office, a lovely old bungalow on Magill Road in Adelaide. He has the whole building set up as working space. There is no backyard left, it having been converted to a car park, but his indulgence, an old gold bomb-like car, sits in the driveway. The meeting room has two doors, and a window that looks out onto the street. It contains a large, wooden table, with many chairs. I made sure I took a chair that didn’t leave my back to either of the doors.
He asked me why I was there. I said “Did you read my letter?” He said “Well, it would be somewhere out there,” and gestured vaguely toward the other part of his building.
Advice: Bring a copy of your letter and/or documentation with you, when you meet your local politician.
Disappointed that my letter clearly had remained unread, or had made no impact on him, I took him through the ludicrous situation in which I find myself. Briefly, that as a sole parent, I work 18 hours a week on top of parenting, for about $1.66/hour, due to the combination of being taxed, plus having my welfare payment deducted. I explained to him that I had made an error in my letter, believing that Centrelink deducted my pension at the rate of 30¢ in the dollar, when in fact it deducts my pension at 40¢ in the dollar.
I explained to Christopher the impact that this has on me and my children, that I find it and demoralizing and struggle with depression. That it interferes with my creative life. That I prefer to work as well as parent, but this regime interferes with my well-being and ability to create, let alone function. That as a sole parent, I have been unusual in prioritizing my children’s extra-curricular activities, and ensuring they live a life as close to ‘normal’ as possible, but that as they have gotten older, this has become untenable. I empty my bank account each week just with paying out for the basic things of life: food, rent, car and school expenses.
I told Christopher that since sending my letter, I had received a response from Centrelink, who had been contacted by Joe Hockey (NSW), one of the politicians to whom I had sent the letter. Centrelink investigated my file and discovered an anomaly which meant I was owed arrears in the order of $565. I told Christopher that receiving this money had been a wonderful surprise, but it didn’t solve my problem.
I told him that the $565 enabled me to pay off my outstanding debt to my mechanic, to pay a chunk off the school fees I owe for my children (both at a state high school), and that I would now be able to buy some new underwear for myself, and my daughter. He laughed at this, but I was serious. I hadn’t been able to afford to replace my underwear, which has been getting progressively shabbier by the week.
Christopher wanted to know the age of my children, and what school they go to. He said that his children go to Burnside Primary School, and agreed with me that yes, even state schools charge fees. He asked me how long I had been a sole parent. I said I had left my marriage in 1993. He said “Thirteen years? Your daughter must have been very small then.” I said “Yes, she was still breastfeeding at the time.”
He agreed with me that the situation is ludicrous, and went to pains to let me know I was not telling him anything he didn’t already know. He said I am obviously a good mum, to which I responded “Well there’s no doubt that I’m a good mother, but that’s not really the point.”
Christopher Pyne then went into politician-mode and confided to me that conditions for sole parents and the Welfare to Work platform of his Liberal Party, is a political issue, with which Labor disagrees. He said it’s something the Liberal Party wants to deal with, in order to take away any ammunition from the Labor Party. I said to Christopher Pyne that as far as I am concerned, it’s more about the people whose lives are being affected by these punitive regimes.
Christopher Pyne said to me that the issue of Welfare to Work is very important to Peter Costello, and that it is being looked at right now. He said that there may be something good for me coming out in this year’s budget, and that Peter Costello would prefer to make tax cuts for those people on the low end of the tax bracket, than for those who earn over $100,000 per annum.
He mentioned the idea of increasing the Tax Free Threshold to $20,000. I said that I have heard welfare groups talk about this as a possible solution to the problem. I said however, that I am happy to pay tax. I am tired of sole parents being referred to as a drain on the tax payer, because we pay a lot of tax. What I don’t think is fair, is the way the government dips into my income twice and deducts 70% of my earnings every fortnight, leaving me barely able to maintain my household at a decent living standard.
Christopher changed the subject. He wanted to know whether I had any connection with the Women’s Centre at St Peters, which he used to “help”, after it had had its budget slashed by the State Government. He told me that everyone there voted Labor, but that didn’t stop him from helping them. Now that he has children of his own, however, Christopher has no loose money, and so he no longer helps out the women’s centre.
When Christopher so callously complained of having “no loose money” due to the fact that he now has three children and a wife to maintain, I realised he had not heard me at all when I spoke of my life, in which I am unable to afford to buy new underwear, or my fear of having two bright teenagers for whose higher education I have been unable to save a single cent. Though a quick browse on the internet does not bring the exact figures to light, I am certain that Christopher Pyne earns at least six times what I do each week.
I feel ashamed that I did not manage to come out with the words that I had rehearsed, in preparation for my meeting with Christopher Pyne. I had planned to ask him how he thought his lovely wife would cope, raising their lovely children on the kind of income on which my children and I subsist. Alas, he was already out of his chair, ushering me toward the second door in his meeting room which turned out to lead directly to the street. “You’ve done what you could,” he said to me, “in coming to see your local politician.”
If the Tax Free Threshold is raised to $20,000 per annum, I think life for me may become a little easier. However, I still fear for my future, and the future of my children, who are about to be faced with becoming numbers themselves, in the system, as they go from being my children to being Youth Allowance recipients and themselves having to report their every move to Centrelink. This will determine many aspects of their future, such as what kind of job they choose, whether they are able to go to university and where, as well as what kind of housing they can afford when they eventually leave home.
As for me, with my meager superannuation savings, despite voluntary contributions, I can really only hope to die young, and be grateful that my HECS debt will not be taken out of whatever estate I have to leave my children, because it would surely bankrupt them before they have even begun. As it is, I cannot even afford my own funeral yet, so I’d better not begin to plan it just yet.
Yours truly,
Melina Magdalena
© 2006
Issue: Workforce Participation for Sole Parents
Attached Below: Original letter sent to politicians and agencies
PLEASE FORWARD THIS IMPORTANT INFORMATION TO ALL THE SOLE PARENTS YOU KNOW
18 March, 2006
Dear Friends,
Yesterday I had an appointment with my local Federal Member of Parliament, Christopher Pyne (Torrens, South Australia). The meeting had not been easy to set up. First I sent a letter (via email), to which I received no reply. A week later, I rang his office, and his diary secretary said she would speak with Christopher and get back to me. A week after that, I rang his office again. This time, his diary secretary told me that the materials I had sent were on his desk, and she hoped he would have a chance to look at them that afternoon. She promised to get back to me after speaking with him to set up an appointment. A week later, I went to his office and told the young man at the front desk that I had been trying for three weeks to get an appointment to speak with Christopher Pyne. He disappeared for several long minutes, and then reappeared, with the diary secretary, who told me “Christopher is happy to meet with you, and he is available next Friday. What time would suit you?”
Advice: It is your right to speak with your MP. Perseverance pays off. Fronting up to the office elicits the most rapid response.
Christopher met me in the meeting room, of his office, a lovely old bungalow on Magill Road in Adelaide. He has the whole building set up as working space. There is no backyard left, it having been converted to a car park, but his indulgence, an old gold bomb-like car, sits in the driveway. The meeting room has two doors, and a window that looks out onto the street. It contains a large, wooden table, with many chairs. I made sure I took a chair that didn’t leave my back to either of the doors.
He asked me why I was there. I said “Did you read my letter?” He said “Well, it would be somewhere out there,” and gestured vaguely toward the other part of his building.
Advice: Bring a copy of your letter and/or documentation with you, when you meet your local politician.
Disappointed that my letter clearly had remained unread, or had made no impact on him, I took him through the ludicrous situation in which I find myself. Briefly, that as a sole parent, I work 18 hours a week on top of parenting, for about $1.66/hour, due to the combination of being taxed, plus having my welfare payment deducted. I explained to him that I had made an error in my letter, believing that Centrelink deducted my pension at the rate of 30¢ in the dollar, when in fact it deducts my pension at 40¢ in the dollar.
I explained to Christopher the impact that this has on me and my children, that I find it and demoralizing and struggle with depression. That it interferes with my creative life. That I prefer to work as well as parent, but this regime interferes with my well-being and ability to create, let alone function. That as a sole parent, I have been unusual in prioritizing my children’s extra-curricular activities, and ensuring they live a life as close to ‘normal’ as possible, but that as they have gotten older, this has become untenable. I empty my bank account each week just with paying out for the basic things of life: food, rent, car and school expenses.
I told Christopher that since sending my letter, I had received a response from Centrelink, who had been contacted by Joe Hockey (NSW), one of the politicians to whom I had sent the letter. Centrelink investigated my file and discovered an anomaly which meant I was owed arrears in the order of $565. I told Christopher that receiving this money had been a wonderful surprise, but it didn’t solve my problem.
I told him that the $565 enabled me to pay off my outstanding debt to my mechanic, to pay a chunk off the school fees I owe for my children (both at a state high school), and that I would now be able to buy some new underwear for myself, and my daughter. He laughed at this, but I was serious. I hadn’t been able to afford to replace my underwear, which has been getting progressively shabbier by the week.
Christopher wanted to know the age of my children, and what school they go to. He said that his children go to Burnside Primary School, and agreed with me that yes, even state schools charge fees. He asked me how long I had been a sole parent. I said I had left my marriage in 1993. He said “Thirteen years? Your daughter must have been very small then.” I said “Yes, she was still breastfeeding at the time.”
He agreed with me that the situation is ludicrous, and went to pains to let me know I was not telling him anything he didn’t already know. He said I am obviously a good mum, to which I responded “Well there’s no doubt that I’m a good mother, but that’s not really the point.”
Christopher Pyne then went into politician-mode and confided to me that conditions for sole parents and the Welfare to Work platform of his Liberal Party, is a political issue, with which Labor disagrees. He said it’s something the Liberal Party wants to deal with, in order to take away any ammunition from the Labor Party. I said to Christopher Pyne that as far as I am concerned, it’s more about the people whose lives are being affected by these punitive regimes.
Christopher Pyne said to me that the issue of Welfare to Work is very important to Peter Costello, and that it is being looked at right now. He said that there may be something good for me coming out in this year’s budget, and that Peter Costello would prefer to make tax cuts for those people on the low end of the tax bracket, than for those who earn over $100,000 per annum.
He mentioned the idea of increasing the Tax Free Threshold to $20,000. I said that I have heard welfare groups talk about this as a possible solution to the problem. I said however, that I am happy to pay tax. I am tired of sole parents being referred to as a drain on the tax payer, because we pay a lot of tax. What I don’t think is fair, is the way the government dips into my income twice and deducts 70% of my earnings every fortnight, leaving me barely able to maintain my household at a decent living standard.
Christopher changed the subject. He wanted to know whether I had any connection with the Women’s Centre at St Peters, which he used to “help”, after it had had its budget slashed by the State Government. He told me that everyone there voted Labor, but that didn’t stop him from helping them. Now that he has children of his own, however, Christopher has no loose money, and so he no longer helps out the women’s centre.
When Christopher so callously complained of having “no loose money” due to the fact that he now has three children and a wife to maintain, I realised he had not heard me at all when I spoke of my life, in which I am unable to afford to buy new underwear, or my fear of having two bright teenagers for whose higher education I have been unable to save a single cent. Though a quick browse on the internet does not bring the exact figures to light, I am certain that Christopher Pyne earns at least six times what I do each week.
I feel ashamed that I did not manage to come out with the words that I had rehearsed, in preparation for my meeting with Christopher Pyne. I had planned to ask him how he thought his lovely wife would cope, raising their lovely children on the kind of income on which my children and I subsist. Alas, he was already out of his chair, ushering me toward the second door in his meeting room which turned out to lead directly to the street. “You’ve done what you could,” he said to me, “in coming to see your local politician.”
If the Tax Free Threshold is raised to $20,000 per annum, I think life for me may become a little easier. However, I still fear for my future, and the future of my children, who are about to be faced with becoming numbers themselves, in the system, as they go from being my children to being Youth Allowance recipients and themselves having to report their every move to Centrelink. This will determine many aspects of their future, such as what kind of job they choose, whether they are able to go to university and where, as well as what kind of housing they can afford when they eventually leave home.
As for me, with my meager superannuation savings, despite voluntary contributions, I can really only hope to die young, and be grateful that my HECS debt will not be taken out of whatever estate I have to leave my children, because it would surely bankrupt them before they have even begun. As it is, I cannot even afford my own funeral yet, so I’d better not begin to plan it just yet.
Yours truly,
Melina Magdalena
© 2006
Saturday, June 03, 2006
Free Lunches
It worries me, how in this first decade of the twenty-first century we have all become wheeler dealers. Everything we do must be paid for. Schemes for obtaining customer loyalty through customer rewards have skyrocketed in availability and popularity. I am not immune. And while I enjoy getting $5 off my sixth purchase of chicken products after spending $12 or more during the previous five purchases, AND modify my spending habits to enable this ‘reward’, I sense a frenetic quality, an almost desperation in myself for taking advantage in this way. It’s a symptom of a deeper societal malaise. We’ve all been tainted.
Last week, I was treated to a scrumptious lunch of rice, chickpeas and vegetables, made to a modified recipe by the class I’ve been teaching for the last five weeks. They served it to me lovingly, on an oval plate, with a large spoonful of each version of the dish as prepared by each of the three groups who were working together in the Home Economics kitchen. On one side of the plate was a generous serving of yoghurt.
When my mentor teacher and I were invited to eat lunch with our students in the Home Economics room, teachers of other classes joked with us that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”. This reminded me of my favourite Heinlein book, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966).
I like the radical quality of some of Heinlein’s works despite the sexual decadence of some of them, which sits uncomfortably and feels so dated in this post-70s era. Heinlein never managed to circumvent his exploitation of women within his writing, despite his exploration of various scientific, social and political ideas. In The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Heinlein posits radical new family structures, a sentient computer and a revolutionary politics which I find refreshing and inspiring. A recurring theme in this book is ‘There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch’ (Chapter 11, p. 122 in my 1979 New English library edition). I wonder ...
This has been a week in which social and political activism has been uppermost in my mind. I’ve been working with a group of teenage refugees to Australia from Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Kurdistan, Liberia, Sudan and Somalia. They have been studying Australian Government, and haven’t enjoyed this much at all. I challenged myself to find a way to engage them in this topic.
Along with Aboriginal people, refugees are some of the most disenfranchised residents of Australia. These young people all have aspirations towards the citizenship that will grant them a permanent and safe place to live out their lives. Like most teenagers, they are also bursting with energy, ideas, experiences and opinions. They want to do their own thing, without bending to the arbitrary demands of adults. During their short time in Australia, (less than two years) they have all, without exception, experienced the sting of racism. This has disillusioned them and distanced them from the joyful hopes and dreams they brought with them to this country. 
Having come from places where government actively seeks to make life chaotic, cruel and dangerous for its people, abstract classroom discussions of democracy and the history of Australia’s political system were hardly likely to engage them. Yet in a short time, having attained both adult status and the prize of Australian citizenship, they will all be expected to vote. I thought about my political activism over the years, and wondered about this idea of democracy. Certainly, I have not taken for granted, my right to protest and to lobby government for what I believe in. Since AIDEX 1991*, I don’t attend any protests without the fear of police brutality and media misrepresentation. My Jewish heritage lingers in the worry I feel at large public gatherings, that our united presence offers ideal opportunities to eliminate voices of dissent. As a novice teacher I know that my police record, if not my ASIO file, will be open to scrutiny.
A few things reminded me of AIDEX this week. It chills me, the way South Australia’s Labor government has been crowing about our position as Australia’s “defence state”. Since the Federal Government decided to move AIDEX offshore, after the protests in 1991, I have not kept in touch with its activities and aspirations to gain more and more contracts to produce weapons and all the other paraphernalia to do with the machinery of war. Contracts to build military equipment are said to be flowing hard and fast. Secondly, the so-called debate about nuclear energy has gripped Australia’s media this week. To say that nuclear power is environmentally-friendly is an oxymoron that stunned me almost speechless. Yet the Federal Government has such tight control over Australia’s media, that the other side of the debate has remained almost silenced in the mainstream media. This is terrifying, particularly given the headline on yesterday’s newspaper in Adelaide, where Alexander Downer claims a strong case for the first nuclear reactor to be built in Adelaide (front page, The Advertiser, 2 June 2006).
Thirdly, the recurrent rise of violent unrest in East Timor and the sending of Australian peacekeepers reminded me of the paradox of maintaining and promoting a defence force for our nation that spends most of its energy in assisting other countries to attain peace. Sad as it may seem, Matt Groening and The Simpsons have done a brilliant job of desensitising Australia’s young people to the issue of nuclear energy. If the Simpsons can dwell in tranquil unconcern about the nuclear reactor in their back yard, and even laugh about their father’s ineptitude in his job to maintain the safety of the reactor, then what are all these old fogey hippies yelling about, when they say that nuclear energy is dangerous and unnecessary? There’s no issue, is there?
Sadly, the twists and cynicism of the Simpsons go straight over the heads of Australia’s apolitical youth. They may be taught in school to critically analyse texts until they are blue in the face, but the fact of the matter is that applying this critical analysis to situations in their own lives is never encouraged. For teacher in schools, just like workers in women’s health centres and those behind the desks of the public service, the exploration of issues is tightly controlled. We impose silence over our opinions to protect ourselves. No one wants to risk losing their job or jeopardising the existence of public services by saying things that the government doesn’t want us to say. (Doesn’t sound much like democracy to me, but there you go!)
Homer and Bart, like Howard and Costello, Rann and Foley, are still our larrikin heroes. Lisa and Marge, like Bob, Sandra and Natasha, are everybody’s mothers who exist only to spoil the boys’ fun. Needless to say, we all want to be one of the boys! For my class, I wrote a short description of the arrestable protest action I undertook, with six other young people, at AIDEX 1989. We read this as a class, and began to discuss whether our action had achieved anything. The point of the exercise was to instil in these young people, the idea that dissent is a natural and inevitable part of every democracy.
Complacency is the result of disenfranchisement.
The second step was to analyse authentic letters to the editor. I put them in groups of three, each with a different letter. The topics ranged from nuclear energy, Sydney’s riots last year, working women to Australia’s anti-terrorism legislation. These were tough issues for the refugee students to comprehend, let alone work with. By the end of the week, students wrote ‘letters to the editor’ about issues they feel strongly about. To set the scene, I had first of all to explain the role of an editor in newspapers, and the right of residents to write letters to media and politicians on the assumption that these letters receive attention and even be published. My aim was to given the students the idea that as new Australians, they can and should contribute to our society.
Not surprisingly, a couple of them chose to write about the racist attacks they have experienced on Adelaide’s public transport. Others wrote about issues to do with driving – petrol prices, drink driving, and using a mobile phone whilst driving. These are all issues with which these young people are engaged. I felt encouraged by their willingness to accept the idea that they have a voice in determining aspects of the society in which they live. As far as the free lunch goes, I could be cynical and say it was offered to me in thanks for caring enough about them to give them access to voicing their concerns and their ideas in this world. I’ll leave it to my readers to determine my motivation – was it altruism, or purely self-interest?
*AIDEX (Australian International Defence Equipment Exhibition) was first held in Canberra in 1989. Planned to occur every two years, protest action against the arms exhibition grew exponentially between 1989 and 1991 to such an extent that the exhibition was subsequently moved offshore. Protests which had aimed to be peaceful and creative, were marked by police brutality towards protesters who were mostly white and middle class, and had never been exposed to the reality of such violence. For more archived information about AIDEX and its legal aftermath, see: http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/1992/42/42p2b.htm “Aidex aftermath”, published in Green Left Weekly, http://www.cat.org.au/catv/catv95/Aidex.html “AIDEX ’91 Inside the Arms Trade”, http://www.jcs.act.gov.au/eLibrary/lrc/r15/r15a.html Attachment A, Attorney General’s Office, http://www.jcs.act.gov.au/eLibrary/lrc/r12/r12_fn.html , http://nla.gov.au/nla.cs-pa-http%253A%252F%252Fbuffy.lib.unimelb.edu.au%252Fcgi-bin%252Fmua-search%253Ftdetails%253D936%253Bimgdetails%253D936 “Picture Australia – Police and protestors clash at the Australian International Defence Equipment Exhibition (AIDEX) protest, Canberra, 26 November 1991”, http://users.senet.com.au/~gregogle/Free%20Speech%20Speech.htm “Protest and the Law. An Anarchist Speech at South Australia’s Law Week Speaker’s Corner”, (16 May 2002), http://www.spunk.org/texts/tech/sp001035.txt “Surveillance”, (Dimity)
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Being Present
Being Present
© Melina Magdalena (2006)
“I wanted you to be present”
(Majid, just before his death; Caché (Hidden) Michael Haneke, 2005)
To be present at any given time is to give the gift of human connection to the world. Moment by moment, we make choices about what we attend to. At the moment, I am typing on my computer ... listening to music ... singing along ... knowing the washing machine cycle will finish soon and wondering how cold it will be when I go outside to hang it out ... savouring my fried rice breakfast, still warm in my stomach ... thinking about my sister and her newborn baby girl ... conscious that I have planning to do for my teaching this week ... and the need to get out my paints to make thank you cards for the students in my class, who have taught me such a lot over the last four weeks ...
But all of this is now also in the past. And some of it is in the future. The flow of time is a matter of ever-present perplexity for me. How often am I really present? How can I be present and still maintain links to the past and the future? What is present?
Caché (Hidden) Michael Haneke, (2005)
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387898/)
I went to watch “Hidden” last weekend. At the films’ conclusion, like several other members of the audience, I sat in stunned and horrified numbness, wondering what the film was all about, and what it said about me, in my life.
I was horrified and stunned by Majid’s act of defiance, but something else disturbed me more. While Majid’s end is swift and startling (albeit not without ongoing ramifications), the behaviour and attitude of George, his erstwhile peer and brother, is what leaves me sleepless. Majid’s act of self-destruction contributes nothing, because George refuses to engage with it on any level at all.
It reminded me of Marilyn French’s “The Women’s Room”, (1977) where Val self-destructs in what seems to be a pointless act of aggression against patriarchy. Not only does her participation in the robbery fail to solve any problems, but it does not even attract the attention of the world to what those problems are.
I am also reminded of the sorry tale of Sorry Day in Australia, (http://home.alphalink.com.au/~rez/Journey/) and John Howard’s refusal to say ‘sorry’. His refusal leaves me almost speechless, because it is such an inhuman response, revealing him as cold, passionless, manipulative and cruel. The ability to show empathy and compassion for what others have experienced is not a weakness, but a gift and a strength that connects one person to another. When our nation’s leader claims that showing empathy will make him liable and accountable for the past, he is missing the point.
What we have and what we are is connected to what we did in the past. Australians ride high on what was stolen from the Aboriginal peoples of this land. However, Australia’s Indigenous peoples are not holding the rest of us to ransom. No one is demanding that we relinquish everything we have and give it back. It is not possible to turn back the clock and restore things as they used to be.
Like disenfrachised people everywhere, whether they were colonised or hounded from their homelands, Aboriginal people simply want to be recognised as human beings, and be given what every Australian has – equal opportunities to live, work, play, create and thrive as valued and contributing members of the Australian community.
George’s rejection of Majid and what he represents goes deeper than any personal guilt he may be covering up, for the fact that Majid, an Algerian Frenchman, grw up penniless and orphaned, in contrast to George’s well-padded, connected and affluent lifestyle. In the whole film, Majid is represented as hospitable and welcoming. He is not accusatory of George, but opens his home, offers George a drink, somewhere to sit and asks him about his life. But George rejects any level of connection with Majid. This is an absolute image of racism. George refuses to recognise that Majid is a human being. At the end of the film, we see George sleeping off the events of the previous weeks. Sleep is his solution to encountering the trauma in which he was complicit. It’s an easy metaphor to interpret – equivalent to hiding one’s head in the sand. (At the end of the day, we’re all too busy to do anything anyway. But is inaction equivalent to passive non-violent resistance?)
In the closing scene, we watch tensely, as George’s son Pierrot, leaves his school at the end of the day. From our viewpoint, we might be watching from behind a video camera, or looking down the barrel of a gun. While watching the film, I was convinced that we were about to witness a bloodbath; especially given the situation could be constructed as a war between two religious groups, the Christian-haves and the Muslim-have-nots. Instead, we are treated to an alternative that challenges the prejudices uncovered by my initial thoughts as to what will happen next. Majid’s son is indeed at the school, where he meets George’s soon. They walk off together in conversation, as their fathers never did, and never will.
© Melina Magdalena (2006)
“I wanted you to be present”
(Majid, just before his death; Caché (Hidden) Michael Haneke, 2005)
To be present at any given time is to give the gift of human connection to the world. Moment by moment, we make choices about what we attend to. At the moment, I am typing on my computer ... listening to music ... singing along ... knowing the washing machine cycle will finish soon and wondering how cold it will be when I go outside to hang it out ... savouring my fried rice breakfast, still warm in my stomach ... thinking about my sister and her newborn baby girl ... conscious that I have planning to do for my teaching this week ... and the need to get out my paints to make thank you cards for the students in my class, who have taught me such a lot over the last four weeks ...
But all of this is now also in the past. And some of it is in the future. The flow of time is a matter of ever-present perplexity for me. How often am I really present? How can I be present and still maintain links to the past and the future? What is present?
Caché (Hidden) Michael Haneke, (2005)
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387898/)
I went to watch “Hidden” last weekend. At the films’ conclusion, like several other members of the audience, I sat in stunned and horrified numbness, wondering what the film was all about, and what it said about me, in my life.
I was horrified and stunned by Majid’s act of defiance, but something else disturbed me more. While Majid’s end is swift and startling (albeit not without ongoing ramifications), the behaviour and attitude of George, his erstwhile peer and brother, is what leaves me sleepless. Majid’s act of self-destruction contributes nothing, because George refuses to engage with it on any level at all.
It reminded me of Marilyn French’s “The Women’s Room”, (1977) where Val self-destructs in what seems to be a pointless act of aggression against patriarchy. Not only does her participation in the robbery fail to solve any problems, but it does not even attract the attention of the world to what those problems are.
I am also reminded of the sorry tale of Sorry Day in Australia, (http://home.alphalink.com.au/~rez/Journey/) and John Howard’s refusal to say ‘sorry’. His refusal leaves me almost speechless, because it is such an inhuman response, revealing him as cold, passionless, manipulative and cruel. The ability to show empathy and compassion for what others have experienced is not a weakness, but a gift and a strength that connects one person to another. When our nation’s leader claims that showing empathy will make him liable and accountable for the past, he is missing the point.
What we have and what we are is connected to what we did in the past. Australians ride high on what was stolen from the Aboriginal peoples of this land. However, Australia’s Indigenous peoples are not holding the rest of us to ransom. No one is demanding that we relinquish everything we have and give it back. It is not possible to turn back the clock and restore things as they used to be.
Like disenfrachised people everywhere, whether they were colonised or hounded from their homelands, Aboriginal people simply want to be recognised as human beings, and be given what every Australian has – equal opportunities to live, work, play, create and thrive as valued and contributing members of the Australian community.
George’s rejection of Majid and what he represents goes deeper than any personal guilt he may be covering up, for the fact that Majid, an Algerian Frenchman, grw up penniless and orphaned, in contrast to George’s well-padded, connected and affluent lifestyle. In the whole film, Majid is represented as hospitable and welcoming. He is not accusatory of George, but opens his home, offers George a drink, somewhere to sit and asks him about his life. But George rejects any level of connection with Majid. This is an absolute image of racism. George refuses to recognise that Majid is a human being. At the end of the film, we see George sleeping off the events of the previous weeks. Sleep is his solution to encountering the trauma in which he was complicit. It’s an easy metaphor to interpret – equivalent to hiding one’s head in the sand. (At the end of the day, we’re all too busy to do anything anyway. But is inaction equivalent to passive non-violent resistance?)
In the closing scene, we watch tensely, as George’s son Pierrot, leaves his school at the end of the day. From our viewpoint, we might be watching from behind a video camera, or looking down the barrel of a gun. While watching the film, I was convinced that we were about to witness a bloodbath; especially given the situation could be constructed as a war between two religious groups, the Christian-haves and the Muslim-have-nots. Instead, we are treated to an alternative that challenges the prejudices uncovered by my initial thoughts as to what will happen next. Majid’s son is indeed at the school, where he meets George’s soon. They walk off together in conversation, as their fathers never did, and never will.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Not our culture
Not our culture
©Melina Magdalena (2006)
a plea for compassion, empathy, understanding, hope and action
In the mid-1990s I began to study linguistics at university. The format of the course involved one lecture and one tutorial each week. One of the things our tutor worked hard to impress upon us was the concept that language reflects the world which created it, in which that language continues to evolve. The tutor chose to instruct us in this concept by using “rape” as an idea that only exists in a certain cultural framework.
His thesis was that we who look at what happens to the women and children in other cultures get outraged by “rape” because we mistakenly attribute the same connotations and understandings and attitudes to what we observe taking place there, when in fact for the people in those cultures, there is no wrongdoing and no need for outrage, because there is no such thing as “rape”.
I was reminded this week of the deep rage and sadness this triggered in me, with the media frenzy over child sexual abuse and domestic violence in Aboriginal communities of the Northern Territory. The woman who impressed me most was Betty Pearce, who is quoted saying “Anger is so great because this is not an Aboriginal culture. Even 20 years ago, 22 years ago, had an Aboriginal person done that he’d have been killed, had he raped a child.”
Child sexual abuse and domestic violence are present in all sectors of Australian society, and it is significant that media excitement about these issues on Aboriginal communities is hyped to such an extent, when the people involved say that action is needed now (and twenty years ago), not just more talking. Otherwise, domestic violence and child sexual abuse hardly rate a mention in Australian media except when they involve gruesome murder suicides.
We know that rape is not about claiming one’s traditional rights to a child bride. Nor is rape about sex. Rape is about power.
We know that domestic violence, which is when one’s spouse, child, or lover enforces a reign of terror in one’s daily life, is about control. We know that the perpetrator of domestic violence does everything he can to maintain control over those under his power. When verbal abuse is not sufficient, he resorts to physical, sexual, social, financial and spiritual abuse.
As a mother, the impulse to appeal to a child’s father’s better judgment can lead to the child getting in the way of its father’s rage, and bearing its brunt. (I know I’m not the only woman who put my child between myself and the one who wanted to strangle me, in the vain hope that he would cease his tyranny, for the love of his child.) And my hopes were dashed in the instant it took for me to recognise my mistake. A child will be used to fuel the rage, in an attempt to control its mother.
We know that people who have no power and no control over their lives, people who have been deprived of choice, opportunity, self expression, growth, education, purpose and health will enact and act out their life situations anyway they can. This is not an excuse, but it is a matter of survival.
Those who have suffered react to that suffering in a range of ways, depending on the avenues of expression that are open to them. To move out of the status quo and into an unknown way of being requires luck, perseverance, assistance and courage. It doesn’t work to say that women should take their children, leave, and set up homes elsewhere. In any case, they have tried that, and the men simply follow. Where else are they supposed to go? Will it heal communities to further fragment families?
I wrote two poems to express my fury at what I thought my tutor was suggesting, in claiming that it is only our world view and the culture we grew up in, that determines whether “rape” is an act of evil.
I’d also like to point out the prevalence of rape and child abuse as it appears in the western Bible, often with no commentary or condemnation. I question my tutor’s stand even more, in light of these examples. Who decided that “rape” for those who live in the western world, is a reprehensible act? And when did this occur? Is it only to do with dowries, transactions and ownership of the female by the male? Why do we continue to victimise the victims, as though they are to blame for their own victimisation? That was the message I took away from these linguistics tutorials.
To my Tutor #1
©Melina Magdalena (1996)
I’m studying linguistics, you see.
Here’s a demonstration of the power of language.
Two men sitting, one a tutor, one a student
feebly batting back and forth
words like rape and good and bad and evil and loaded
ideas about language taboos and cultural realities
I heard the tutor ask him
“so is rape always evil; what about rape in war?”
“I don’t believe in evil” says the student
“yes, but surely you accept that one’s society puts
constraints on what is construed
as all right and what is unacceptable?”
(Ah, I say to myself,
the despair is descending upon me.)
So rape is sometimes good?
So rape in war is justified?
And the perpetual war against women is all that makes
this discussion acceptable.
(And when was either of you two raped?)
(Melodrama. Trigger back into the nightmare.)
“I have overcome great obstacles to be here today.”
(Loopy tragic thoughts frantic spiral doodles)
resolutely break those chains that train of thought ...
NOW!
“I don’t want to waste this hour on remembering.
I am not here to indulge in self pity.
I came here today to further my learning.
It took me years to accept the existence of evil.
To my Tutor #2
©Melina Magdalena (1997)
The fact that you revealed
your prejudice to all assembled
the fact that you revealed
your stupidity and lack of compassion
the fact that you revealed
without discretion or reflection
Is proof unto itself of where you-man speak from
The fact that you spoke
of the rape of woman
the fact that you spoke
where all of us could hear
the fact that you spoke
as though we did not exist
Is proof unto itself that you-man think you rule
The fact that you made claims
with complete disregard
The fact you made claims
on your own beliefs only
The fact you made claims
as though only your claims counted
Is proof unto itself that you think rape is man’s right
The fact that you did not
inquire as to woman’s view
The fact that you did not
invite us into discussion
The fact that you did not
view our experience as relevant
Is proof until itself that you think women deserve to be raped
Now I could go further and claim
that you are a rapist in thought
Now I could go further and claim
that thought is incriminating enough
Now I could go further and claim
that you hate and fear women like me
Your dry intellectualism gave you permission
To state your beliefs far beyond the boundaries
of what is acceptable, tolerable and professional
The fact that I said nothing at the time speaks clearly for itself.
“Indigenous groups warn violence worsening”, (ABC ONLINE) URL: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200605/s1640083.htm (viewed online, 18/5/2006)
©Melina Magdalena (2006)
a plea for compassion, empathy, understanding, hope and action
In the mid-1990s I began to study linguistics at university. The format of the course involved one lecture and one tutorial each week. One of the things our tutor worked hard to impress upon us was the concept that language reflects the world which created it, in which that language continues to evolve. The tutor chose to instruct us in this concept by using “rape” as an idea that only exists in a certain cultural framework.
His thesis was that we who look at what happens to the women and children in other cultures get outraged by “rape” because we mistakenly attribute the same connotations and understandings and attitudes to what we observe taking place there, when in fact for the people in those cultures, there is no wrongdoing and no need for outrage, because there is no such thing as “rape”.
I was reminded this week of the deep rage and sadness this triggered in me, with the media frenzy over child sexual abuse and domestic violence in Aboriginal communities of the Northern Territory. The woman who impressed me most was Betty Pearce, who is quoted saying “Anger is so great because this is not an Aboriginal culture. Even 20 years ago, 22 years ago, had an Aboriginal person done that he’d have been killed, had he raped a child.”
Child sexual abuse and domestic violence are present in all sectors of Australian society, and it is significant that media excitement about these issues on Aboriginal communities is hyped to such an extent, when the people involved say that action is needed now (and twenty years ago), not just more talking. Otherwise, domestic violence and child sexual abuse hardly rate a mention in Australian media except when they involve gruesome murder suicides.
We know that rape is not about claiming one’s traditional rights to a child bride. Nor is rape about sex. Rape is about power.
We know that domestic violence, which is when one’s spouse, child, or lover enforces a reign of terror in one’s daily life, is about control. We know that the perpetrator of domestic violence does everything he can to maintain control over those under his power. When verbal abuse is not sufficient, he resorts to physical, sexual, social, financial and spiritual abuse.
As a mother, the impulse to appeal to a child’s father’s better judgment can lead to the child getting in the way of its father’s rage, and bearing its brunt. (I know I’m not the only woman who put my child between myself and the one who wanted to strangle me, in the vain hope that he would cease his tyranny, for the love of his child.) And my hopes were dashed in the instant it took for me to recognise my mistake. A child will be used to fuel the rage, in an attempt to control its mother.
We know that people who have no power and no control over their lives, people who have been deprived of choice, opportunity, self expression, growth, education, purpose and health will enact and act out their life situations anyway they can. This is not an excuse, but it is a matter of survival.
Those who have suffered react to that suffering in a range of ways, depending on the avenues of expression that are open to them. To move out of the status quo and into an unknown way of being requires luck, perseverance, assistance and courage. It doesn’t work to say that women should take their children, leave, and set up homes elsewhere. In any case, they have tried that, and the men simply follow. Where else are they supposed to go? Will it heal communities to further fragment families?
I wrote two poems to express my fury at what I thought my tutor was suggesting, in claiming that it is only our world view and the culture we grew up in, that determines whether “rape” is an act of evil.
I’d also like to point out the prevalence of rape and child abuse as it appears in the western Bible, often with no commentary or condemnation. I question my tutor’s stand even more, in light of these examples. Who decided that “rape” for those who live in the western world, is a reprehensible act? And when did this occur? Is it only to do with dowries, transactions and ownership of the female by the male? Why do we continue to victimise the victims, as though they are to blame for their own victimisation? That was the message I took away from these linguistics tutorials.
To my Tutor #1
©Melina Magdalena (1996)
I’m studying linguistics, you see.
Here’s a demonstration of the power of language.
Two men sitting, one a tutor, one a student
feebly batting back and forth
words like rape and good and bad and evil and loaded
ideas about language taboos and cultural realities
I heard the tutor ask him
“so is rape always evil; what about rape in war?”
“I don’t believe in evil” says the student
“yes, but surely you accept that one’s society puts
constraints on what is construed
as all right and what is unacceptable?”
(Ah, I say to myself,
the despair is descending upon me.)
So rape is sometimes good?
So rape in war is justified?
And the perpetual war against women is all that makes
this discussion acceptable.
(And when was either of you two raped?)
(Melodrama. Trigger back into the nightmare.)
“I have overcome great obstacles to be here today.”
(Loopy tragic thoughts frantic spiral doodles)
resolutely break those chains that train of thought ...
NOW!
“I don’t want to waste this hour on remembering.
I am not here to indulge in self pity.
I came here today to further my learning.
It took me years to accept the existence of evil.
To my Tutor #2
©Melina Magdalena (1997)
The fact that you revealed
your prejudice to all assembled
the fact that you revealed
your stupidity and lack of compassion
the fact that you revealed
without discretion or reflection
Is proof unto itself of where you-man speak from
The fact that you spoke
of the rape of woman
the fact that you spoke
where all of us could hear
the fact that you spoke
as though we did not exist
Is proof unto itself that you-man think you rule
The fact that you made claims
with complete disregard
The fact you made claims
on your own beliefs only
The fact you made claims
as though only your claims counted
Is proof unto itself that you think rape is man’s right
The fact that you did not
inquire as to woman’s view
The fact that you did not
invite us into discussion
The fact that you did not
view our experience as relevant
Is proof until itself that you think women deserve to be raped
Now I could go further and claim
that you are a rapist in thought
Now I could go further and claim
that thought is incriminating enough
Now I could go further and claim
that you hate and fear women like me
Your dry intellectualism gave you permission
To state your beliefs far beyond the boundaries
of what is acceptable, tolerable and professional
The fact that I said nothing at the time speaks clearly for itself.
“Indigenous groups warn violence worsening”, (ABC ONLINE) URL: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200605/s1640083.htm (viewed online, 18/5/2006)
Saturday, May 13, 2006
The Anthropologist
The Anthropologist
©Melina Magdalena 2006
REPORT: Meeting with Hon. Sharman Stone, Federal Minister for Workforce Participation, Adelaide, April 2006
WAITING TO ARRIVE
I saw the Anthropologist arrive, as I waited outside the building on Grenfell Street. She was keyed up, excited, and looking forward to this meeting. Her two young male minions trotted beside her. It was obvious she enjoyed having them at her beck and call. What woman wouldn’t?
I stood and watched, as Adelaide’s morning traffic trundled past, all eyes to the front, a parade of respectable propriety. She was dressed in a classy frock; hair, makeup, shoes, handbag, a middle-aged woman like many others I’ve never met.
I followed them up in another lift, sure now, that those I was supposed to have met outside must be waiting for me inside. Sure enough, they were. I joined them. We sat around for another ten or fifteen minutes, waiting for the Anthropologist and her assistants to make their brief, public appearance.
ANTHROPOLOGIST OR ECONOMIC RATIONALIST?
Was it she who introduced herself as an anthropologist? I can’t remember. Though her identity as anthropologist has been captured in my mind, a brief search on the web reveals a very different person. Maybe she was an anthropologist as an undergraduate, but her PhD is in Economics and Business.
From what I can discern, no anthropological studies are being conducted of her own community in Canberra, either. She has a husband and several children. Perhaps she has divested her professional training for the Party line? To some degree, most of do this, in one way or another. The sense I got of her was ordinary – a middle-aged white Australian rural woman, with a narrow range of experience and worldly concerns.
Her electorate is in rural Victoria. To its shame, it has the second highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the nation, with a large proportion of these pregnancies amongst the Aboriginal girls in the community. The Anthropologist’s platform became obvious during the course of our meeting: only certain kinds of women should be having children.
Someone told me later that the Anthropologist was the instigating force behind the push by women politicians for RU486 to be made available and accessible in Australia. While I support this move and see the merit behind it, I question some of her motives. The scenario could also read like a recipe for disempowerment. Handing out a ready-made solution to bandage symptoms doesn’t fit with an objective ideal of self-determination; of the right for a particular community to go on evolving, transforming, growing and existing for its very own sake and not only by the beneficence of some higher power that be. Does she think it would solve everyone’s problems to be able to shove the drug into the mouths of girls every time they have sex? Ought they to have better things to do with their time than raise children?
HOSPITALITY
No participant-observer phenomenon was in evidence on this occasion. The anthropologist had erased herself entirely from the picture. We, and not she, were the objects under scrutiny.
Her attitude reminded me of all the nasty stories I have heard about anthropologists and linguists, and their removal of cultural intellectual and spiritual property. Such appropriation may be done in the name of science and academia for the betterment of humankind (better to have the knowledge conserved preserved distilled for the future when nothing is certain to last beyond tomorrow and the people whose culture is thus recorded are not doing anything with it anyway; change and growth are not natural processes, but taints which stain and obscure the otherwise naked truth). The perversion of intellectual study comes when observations are transformed into information and labelled knowledge. Whose knowledge? What meanings are imposed upon it by the eyes of its beholders? Whose name is given as the owner of this knowledge? Who has permission to study it and use it?
I was invited to attend as an unsanctioned representative of my kind. I had a specific role to play, but no authorised voice and no legitimised position to take. As soon as the Anthropologist entered the board room and directed her minions to pour the morning coffee, I perceived the need to hold fast to my power, lest it be drained just like the coffee, in several thirsty gulps. I felt under subtle scrutiny, but she seemed way beyond above board and way beyond question.
That the Anthropologist had agreed to be there was a victory for those who invited me to the meeting – her predecessor dodged every opportunity to make himself available to consult with the stakeholders at the grassroots of this community.
None of us wished to partake of morning coffee or tea. This might have been a mistake. We’d all been up and about for hours, it’s true, but it’s hardly polite to refuse hospitality.
Perhaps we were a little carried away by the moment? The life and death urgency with which we conduct our daily lives could not, after all, be temporarily excised from our beings. A portion of our apprehensions necessarily leaked out, like milk from an overfull, compassionate breast – is this cause for apology? How could we be certain of any future opportunities to make known the issues that fuel our concerns and our actions?
STUDENTS OF CULTURE
We feel most personally injured and aggrieved by those who approach with open hands and then steal what we give them. At least through this trauma of loss we learn to see ourselves from without as well as within. This tool of self-evaluation enables us to articulate our pain and rage for what has been taken from us.
The worst students of culture, whether they call themselves missionaries, linguists or anthropologists, are those who arrive with their minds already closed, opinions already formed. Those who offer us their poison in the form of sugar-coated set solutions and beliefs that are designed to solve all our problems in this world and the next, worm their thinking into our minds like a virus that corrupts whatever it encounters, at those times when we are most desperate to help ourselves. They present a delicate and seductive peril which is calculated to destroy, dismantle and reconstruct bit by bit, our self-belief and most fundamental understandings of our places in the world.
The Anthropologist was not interested in what any of us had to say about ourselves. Like my local MP before her, she met my story as though she were insulated in a cocoon of several insulating layers of spider silk, protected from those shards of verbal insult, the continual ache of stigma which lingers in my underbelly, the stabbing throb of my chronically empty bank account, the flickering shiny migraines of stress that threaten to overwhelm me almost daily if I pay too much attention to what I need to provide and the disparity between this need and my ability to fulfil.
As far as she is concerned, none of this is significant. None of this is even real. It’s some primitive superstition which I and all of those like me could choose to give away, if we would only listen to her and do as she says. She would gladly replace our superstitions with a more suitable set of beliefs and practices and then reward us with right and proper places in society.
WIFE OR WHORE?
No wonder I felt my power being tugged by her magnetic pull. No wonder I felt my self-belief slip into oblivion. No wonder I felt myself being dragged under, under, under. I was fixated by her fundamentalism to the extent that I had to firmly instruct myself to remember why I was there, and what I needed to tell her. And then it all came out wrong. Of course it did. What choice was left to me, but to play the part of the shrew, the nag, the complainer, the victim?
Given the Anthropologist’s dichotomy of choice, between wife and whore, I could only choose the latter.
In the Anthropologist’s world, the whore is every woman without a husband. Whether she has a career, studies, sells, creates, struggles to survive, volunteers, is an addict, is unwell, is childless or a mother, she has no entitlement and no right to claim that she is a productive member of society. A wife, on the other hand, is entitled to see herself as a productive and economic unit of society because no matter what else she does in her life, she has a husband who confers his legitimacy upon her.
The Anthropologist no more looks at the reality of my world than at the world of my children. Under her gaze, I feel like an ant or a bug being viewed by some enormous creature whose vision is blurred and distorted. The lack of recognition on her part feels all the more offensive because of the points of commonality that I can see from where I stand and look at her. It’s bewildering to speak to this woman and feel no connection with her. She is armoured, invincible, fortified and smug.
I did not expect this to be the outcome of our meeting. I had hoped to meet her on common ground, to exchange experiences, share ideas, and open avenues for further discussion and action. I did not expect to agree with her about everything, but to find no connection at all has numbed me for the last few weeks. I haven’t known quite how to respond. In analysing the situation, and acknowledging that for the Anthropologist each of the women who sat at that table with her, is a whore, I can begin to react.
It’s not about the label or the connotations of the word, but about how much its designation omits. The narrow definition allows no room for the parts of me that are most important to how I interact with the wider world community. The designation ‘whore’ admits my sexuality only so far as the intercourse I might or might not have with men. How then, can it so blatantly omit the products of this intercourse – my children?
My identity as mother is what led me to sit around the table with the Anthropologist. As a mother with no husband, she relegates me to a specific role within my community. Not quite the third wheel, but most definitely the odd one out.
Rather than the busy, productive, creative, inventive, contributing, nurturing human being that those close to me perceive me to be, I am a whore – a grasping, whinging, draining, undeserving, unmotivated burden on the so-called taxpayer and the Australian Government, which she represents.
WORKFORCE PARTICIPATION
The beliefs and values that guide me in my life are more than the strings of a marionette that manipulate my movements according to the whims and desires of someone else. They are formed from teaching and experience, and they bear intrinsic meaning. At times, they are fragile, impacted by the cruelty and ignorance of others, whose values, beliefs and experiences are different from my own.
The Anthropologist has an excuse for neither apathy nor ignorance. As my outrage stems from my core belief that what I do in my life counts for something, her apathy reflects her beliefs and values that a woman without a husband should get one, or get a job.
As representative of my kind, I do in fact, have a paid job. In the mind of the Anthropologist, I can only be anomalous, a round peg in that square square hole, though evidence clearly shows I am one of the majority of single mothers. Most of us work very hard to juggle multiple commitments. We work to maintain our households, our extended families and our neighbours. We do everything that is necessary to nurture ourselves and our children. We enter the workforce and we volunteer widely in various capacities to better the lives of our children and their extracurricular activities, as well as to help society as a whole.
This is of course the case for most women in the world today, whether we be wives or whores. Unless we are seriously damaged, addicted or disillusioned, most women engage with the world and participate in life and work. Our level of participation in the paid workforce ebbs and flows, determined by far more than our individual motivation and circumstances. Job availability, conditions, provision of childcare, training, and transport are all determining factors, as well as overall stress levels, our individual circumstances, wider social and environmental issues, the lingering effects of relationship breakdown, the health and needs of our children, convictions and beliefs about how best to parent.
The Anthropologist is Sharman Stone, Federal Minister for Workforce Participation. She came to Adelaide in April to meet the former and current directors of the NCSMC (National Council for the Single Mother and Her Child), Director of SPARK (Single Parent Resource Centre) and me, single mother of two. The meeting was a preliminary meet and greet, at which we were to explore where we could go from here, to improve conditions for single parents in Australia.
I was briefed before the meeting to present my case of government-enforced and sponsored poverty as a personal experience with which I have struggled over many years, and which impacts daily on my ability not only to parent my children well, but on my ability and willingness to maintain my participation in the paid workforce.
The central issue for me, as it is for most sole parents, is the combination of taxation and taper rates which affect our income, meaning that unless we work full-time and thereby disqualify ourselves for the government assistance in terms of welfare and concessions, 70% of what we earn is retained by the Government, thereby trapping us into an endless cycle of poverty. It’s a straightforward calculation, callously and strenuously maintained by the Australian Government. No one can seriously deny its detrimental impact upon sole parents and our children.
The situation could be easily fixed, if the Government cared. If the Government cared to take a longer term view, it would see that mothers generally live longer than the seven years now allotted us to parent. Single mothers need time and assistance to achieve some level of financial independence from welfare not only as our children grow up, but as we ourselves grow older.
Personally, I don’t mind being poor. The reality for me though, is that I empty my bank account each week in order to pay for the things that keep my children and me alive. This makes me destitute.
The Government has no excuse for keeping me in this position. The Anthropologist’s stated position is that the Government cannot afford to keep such a large proportion of the population on welfare payments. This is a lie.
The Anthropologist’s claim that “A job is more than just about financial rewards and economic independence”* is apologist rhetoric. I wonder just what she means by ‘a job’? It doesn’t sound like she wants us to make serious career choices that will assist us to grow as engaged, contributing and valued Australians who participate in the workforce because this enhances our well being and self-image, but rather to be the slag who takes any old work that’s going, because no one else wants to do it.
And let’s face it – with the breaching regimes that are being set up right now, surely we would rather take whatever work is offered to us, than see our children starve? That’s certainly the message I got, when the Anthropologist told us that getting that a job must come before training or education. Sole parents who wish to study are welcome to make that choice, so long as they also fulfil their obligations to the Government to maintain their jobs.
At the moment, working sole parents pay for our own pensions, as well as paying all the taxes paid by every other Australian consumer, and all other workers. Working sole parents and working people on Disability Support Pensions are the most highly taxed and marginalised Australians.
To live in this absurd situation is like being imprisoned in a labour camp where we are to free ourselves by digging a tunnel that each night is refilled with the excreta of every prisoner and every guard. It feels like being in a trap, where our choice is to continue to struggle in excruciating pain, or to chew off our own leg to obtain some degree of freedom.
This protectionist style of government claims to know best what I need, and refuses to listen to me despite the fact that I am a member of the voting community. I feel it edging ever closer to fascism. It’s frightening to reflect upon the RU468 debate and what the drug represents as far as regulating the fertility of Australia’s unmarried women. It’s beyond me how public opinion now sees the raising of children as a luxury and not a normal part of the lifecycle. Aren’t human beings supposed to live in families? The Government’s attitude renders the work of a mother meaningless and valueless, unless she is also nurturing an adult male – her husband.
The choice of the Anthropologist and her Government to continue to punish single mothers with this taxation regime is the choice to bind me and my children to poverty, and deny us the opportunity to normalise our lives and struggle to better our future position and standing within our communities.
I cannot deny the products of my own fertility, whether my children came out of a legally-sanctioned heterosexual relationship or whether I chose some other means of reproduction. I cannot unmake the bed I lie in. I am a mother and I am not a wife. If that makes me a whore, than I ought at least to be able to make a living.
*Media Release, Dr. Sharman Stone (11/4/2006) “What July 1 really means for welfare recipients”, URL http://www.sharmanstone.com/media06/06-04-11a.htm viewed on-line, 13/5/2006.
©Melina Magdalena 2006
REPORT: Meeting with Hon. Sharman Stone, Federal Minister for Workforce Participation, Adelaide, April 2006
WAITING TO ARRIVE
I saw the Anthropologist arrive, as I waited outside the building on Grenfell Street. She was keyed up, excited, and looking forward to this meeting. Her two young male minions trotted beside her. It was obvious she enjoyed having them at her beck and call. What woman wouldn’t?
I stood and watched, as Adelaide’s morning traffic trundled past, all eyes to the front, a parade of respectable propriety. She was dressed in a classy frock; hair, makeup, shoes, handbag, a middle-aged woman like many others I’ve never met.
I followed them up in another lift, sure now, that those I was supposed to have met outside must be waiting for me inside. Sure enough, they were. I joined them. We sat around for another ten or fifteen minutes, waiting for the Anthropologist and her assistants to make their brief, public appearance.
ANTHROPOLOGIST OR ECONOMIC RATIONALIST?
Was it she who introduced herself as an anthropologist? I can’t remember. Though her identity as anthropologist has been captured in my mind, a brief search on the web reveals a very different person. Maybe she was an anthropologist as an undergraduate, but her PhD is in Economics and Business.
From what I can discern, no anthropological studies are being conducted of her own community in Canberra, either. She has a husband and several children. Perhaps she has divested her professional training for the Party line? To some degree, most of do this, in one way or another. The sense I got of her was ordinary – a middle-aged white Australian rural woman, with a narrow range of experience and worldly concerns.
Her electorate is in rural Victoria. To its shame, it has the second highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the nation, with a large proportion of these pregnancies amongst the Aboriginal girls in the community. The Anthropologist’s platform became obvious during the course of our meeting: only certain kinds of women should be having children.
Someone told me later that the Anthropologist was the instigating force behind the push by women politicians for RU486 to be made available and accessible in Australia. While I support this move and see the merit behind it, I question some of her motives. The scenario could also read like a recipe for disempowerment. Handing out a ready-made solution to bandage symptoms doesn’t fit with an objective ideal of self-determination; of the right for a particular community to go on evolving, transforming, growing and existing for its very own sake and not only by the beneficence of some higher power that be. Does she think it would solve everyone’s problems to be able to shove the drug into the mouths of girls every time they have sex? Ought they to have better things to do with their time than raise children?
HOSPITALITY
No participant-observer phenomenon was in evidence on this occasion. The anthropologist had erased herself entirely from the picture. We, and not she, were the objects under scrutiny.
Her attitude reminded me of all the nasty stories I have heard about anthropologists and linguists, and their removal of cultural intellectual and spiritual property. Such appropriation may be done in the name of science and academia for the betterment of humankind (better to have the knowledge conserved preserved distilled for the future when nothing is certain to last beyond tomorrow and the people whose culture is thus recorded are not doing anything with it anyway; change and growth are not natural processes, but taints which stain and obscure the otherwise naked truth). The perversion of intellectual study comes when observations are transformed into information and labelled knowledge. Whose knowledge? What meanings are imposed upon it by the eyes of its beholders? Whose name is given as the owner of this knowledge? Who has permission to study it and use it?
I was invited to attend as an unsanctioned representative of my kind. I had a specific role to play, but no authorised voice and no legitimised position to take. As soon as the Anthropologist entered the board room and directed her minions to pour the morning coffee, I perceived the need to hold fast to my power, lest it be drained just like the coffee, in several thirsty gulps. I felt under subtle scrutiny, but she seemed way beyond above board and way beyond question.
That the Anthropologist had agreed to be there was a victory for those who invited me to the meeting – her predecessor dodged every opportunity to make himself available to consult with the stakeholders at the grassroots of this community.
None of us wished to partake of morning coffee or tea. This might have been a mistake. We’d all been up and about for hours, it’s true, but it’s hardly polite to refuse hospitality.
Perhaps we were a little carried away by the moment? The life and death urgency with which we conduct our daily lives could not, after all, be temporarily excised from our beings. A portion of our apprehensions necessarily leaked out, like milk from an overfull, compassionate breast – is this cause for apology? How could we be certain of any future opportunities to make known the issues that fuel our concerns and our actions?
STUDENTS OF CULTURE
We feel most personally injured and aggrieved by those who approach with open hands and then steal what we give them. At least through this trauma of loss we learn to see ourselves from without as well as within. This tool of self-evaluation enables us to articulate our pain and rage for what has been taken from us.
The worst students of culture, whether they call themselves missionaries, linguists or anthropologists, are those who arrive with their minds already closed, opinions already formed. Those who offer us their poison in the form of sugar-coated set solutions and beliefs that are designed to solve all our problems in this world and the next, worm their thinking into our minds like a virus that corrupts whatever it encounters, at those times when we are most desperate to help ourselves. They present a delicate and seductive peril which is calculated to destroy, dismantle and reconstruct bit by bit, our self-belief and most fundamental understandings of our places in the world.
The Anthropologist was not interested in what any of us had to say about ourselves. Like my local MP before her, she met my story as though she were insulated in a cocoon of several insulating layers of spider silk, protected from those shards of verbal insult, the continual ache of stigma which lingers in my underbelly, the stabbing throb of my chronically empty bank account, the flickering shiny migraines of stress that threaten to overwhelm me almost daily if I pay too much attention to what I need to provide and the disparity between this need and my ability to fulfil.
As far as she is concerned, none of this is significant. None of this is even real. It’s some primitive superstition which I and all of those like me could choose to give away, if we would only listen to her and do as she says. She would gladly replace our superstitions with a more suitable set of beliefs and practices and then reward us with right and proper places in society.
WIFE OR WHORE?
No wonder I felt my power being tugged by her magnetic pull. No wonder I felt my self-belief slip into oblivion. No wonder I felt myself being dragged under, under, under. I was fixated by her fundamentalism to the extent that I had to firmly instruct myself to remember why I was there, and what I needed to tell her. And then it all came out wrong. Of course it did. What choice was left to me, but to play the part of the shrew, the nag, the complainer, the victim?
Given the Anthropologist’s dichotomy of choice, between wife and whore, I could only choose the latter.
In the Anthropologist’s world, the whore is every woman without a husband. Whether she has a career, studies, sells, creates, struggles to survive, volunteers, is an addict, is unwell, is childless or a mother, she has no entitlement and no right to claim that she is a productive member of society. A wife, on the other hand, is entitled to see herself as a productive and economic unit of society because no matter what else she does in her life, she has a husband who confers his legitimacy upon her.
The Anthropologist no more looks at the reality of my world than at the world of my children. Under her gaze, I feel like an ant or a bug being viewed by some enormous creature whose vision is blurred and distorted. The lack of recognition on her part feels all the more offensive because of the points of commonality that I can see from where I stand and look at her. It’s bewildering to speak to this woman and feel no connection with her. She is armoured, invincible, fortified and smug.
I did not expect this to be the outcome of our meeting. I had hoped to meet her on common ground, to exchange experiences, share ideas, and open avenues for further discussion and action. I did not expect to agree with her about everything, but to find no connection at all has numbed me for the last few weeks. I haven’t known quite how to respond. In analysing the situation, and acknowledging that for the Anthropologist each of the women who sat at that table with her, is a whore, I can begin to react.
It’s not about the label or the connotations of the word, but about how much its designation omits. The narrow definition allows no room for the parts of me that are most important to how I interact with the wider world community. The designation ‘whore’ admits my sexuality only so far as the intercourse I might or might not have with men. How then, can it so blatantly omit the products of this intercourse – my children?
My identity as mother is what led me to sit around the table with the Anthropologist. As a mother with no husband, she relegates me to a specific role within my community. Not quite the third wheel, but most definitely the odd one out.
Rather than the busy, productive, creative, inventive, contributing, nurturing human being that those close to me perceive me to be, I am a whore – a grasping, whinging, draining, undeserving, unmotivated burden on the so-called taxpayer and the Australian Government, which she represents.
WORKFORCE PARTICIPATION
The beliefs and values that guide me in my life are more than the strings of a marionette that manipulate my movements according to the whims and desires of someone else. They are formed from teaching and experience, and they bear intrinsic meaning. At times, they are fragile, impacted by the cruelty and ignorance of others, whose values, beliefs and experiences are different from my own.
The Anthropologist has an excuse for neither apathy nor ignorance. As my outrage stems from my core belief that what I do in my life counts for something, her apathy reflects her beliefs and values that a woman without a husband should get one, or get a job.
As representative of my kind, I do in fact, have a paid job. In the mind of the Anthropologist, I can only be anomalous, a round peg in that square square hole, though evidence clearly shows I am one of the majority of single mothers. Most of us work very hard to juggle multiple commitments. We work to maintain our households, our extended families and our neighbours. We do everything that is necessary to nurture ourselves and our children. We enter the workforce and we volunteer widely in various capacities to better the lives of our children and their extracurricular activities, as well as to help society as a whole.
This is of course the case for most women in the world today, whether we be wives or whores. Unless we are seriously damaged, addicted or disillusioned, most women engage with the world and participate in life and work. Our level of participation in the paid workforce ebbs and flows, determined by far more than our individual motivation and circumstances. Job availability, conditions, provision of childcare, training, and transport are all determining factors, as well as overall stress levels, our individual circumstances, wider social and environmental issues, the lingering effects of relationship breakdown, the health and needs of our children, convictions and beliefs about how best to parent.
The Anthropologist is Sharman Stone, Federal Minister for Workforce Participation. She came to Adelaide in April to meet the former and current directors of the NCSMC (National Council for the Single Mother and Her Child), Director of SPARK (Single Parent Resource Centre) and me, single mother of two. The meeting was a preliminary meet and greet, at which we were to explore where we could go from here, to improve conditions for single parents in Australia.
I was briefed before the meeting to present my case of government-enforced and sponsored poverty as a personal experience with which I have struggled over many years, and which impacts daily on my ability not only to parent my children well, but on my ability and willingness to maintain my participation in the paid workforce.
The central issue for me, as it is for most sole parents, is the combination of taxation and taper rates which affect our income, meaning that unless we work full-time and thereby disqualify ourselves for the government assistance in terms of welfare and concessions, 70% of what we earn is retained by the Government, thereby trapping us into an endless cycle of poverty. It’s a straightforward calculation, callously and strenuously maintained by the Australian Government. No one can seriously deny its detrimental impact upon sole parents and our children.
The situation could be easily fixed, if the Government cared. If the Government cared to take a longer term view, it would see that mothers generally live longer than the seven years now allotted us to parent. Single mothers need time and assistance to achieve some level of financial independence from welfare not only as our children grow up, but as we ourselves grow older.
Personally, I don’t mind being poor. The reality for me though, is that I empty my bank account each week in order to pay for the things that keep my children and me alive. This makes me destitute.
The Government has no excuse for keeping me in this position. The Anthropologist’s stated position is that the Government cannot afford to keep such a large proportion of the population on welfare payments. This is a lie.
The Anthropologist’s claim that “A job is more than just about financial rewards and economic independence”* is apologist rhetoric. I wonder just what she means by ‘a job’? It doesn’t sound like she wants us to make serious career choices that will assist us to grow as engaged, contributing and valued Australians who participate in the workforce because this enhances our well being and self-image, but rather to be the slag who takes any old work that’s going, because no one else wants to do it.
And let’s face it – with the breaching regimes that are being set up right now, surely we would rather take whatever work is offered to us, than see our children starve? That’s certainly the message I got, when the Anthropologist told us that getting that a job must come before training or education. Sole parents who wish to study are welcome to make that choice, so long as they also fulfil their obligations to the Government to maintain their jobs.
At the moment, working sole parents pay for our own pensions, as well as paying all the taxes paid by every other Australian consumer, and all other workers. Working sole parents and working people on Disability Support Pensions are the most highly taxed and marginalised Australians.
To live in this absurd situation is like being imprisoned in a labour camp where we are to free ourselves by digging a tunnel that each night is refilled with the excreta of every prisoner and every guard. It feels like being in a trap, where our choice is to continue to struggle in excruciating pain, or to chew off our own leg to obtain some degree of freedom.
This protectionist style of government claims to know best what I need, and refuses to listen to me despite the fact that I am a member of the voting community. I feel it edging ever closer to fascism. It’s frightening to reflect upon the RU468 debate and what the drug represents as far as regulating the fertility of Australia’s unmarried women. It’s beyond me how public opinion now sees the raising of children as a luxury and not a normal part of the lifecycle. Aren’t human beings supposed to live in families? The Government’s attitude renders the work of a mother meaningless and valueless, unless she is also nurturing an adult male – her husband.
The choice of the Anthropologist and her Government to continue to punish single mothers with this taxation regime is the choice to bind me and my children to poverty, and deny us the opportunity to normalise our lives and struggle to better our future position and standing within our communities.
I cannot deny the products of my own fertility, whether my children came out of a legally-sanctioned heterosexual relationship or whether I chose some other means of reproduction. I cannot unmake the bed I lie in. I am a mother and I am not a wife. If that makes me a whore, than I ought at least to be able to make a living.
*Media Release, Dr. Sharman Stone (11/4/2006) “What July 1 really means for welfare recipients”, URL http://www.sharmanstone.com/media06/06-04-11a.htm viewed on-line, 13/5/2006.
Monday, May 08, 2006
These old doldrums
© Melina Magdalena (2001)
my eyes don’t want to open today
they hang half-lidded cloudy
it’s not like me to seek more sleep
indeed
my fish feet seek the floor
even as my leaden limbs
plunge horizontal
must be those old doldrums
catching up with me
milk slops over the edge of my mug
as I greedily suckle
thirst-quenching
not sweet
hot tea scalds me slightly
as I breathe deliciously
wanting to keep dreaming
seems there’s something
I won’t turn and look at
Lightning tongue nonetheless
bids the kids good morning
I stretch
to kiss each tousled head hello
my son and I stand eye to eye – I kiss his forehead
they bicker and fight, hoping to spark
some awakening awareness in me
enveloped in gloom I turn
tempted back to my warm, dark burrow
Even driving my eyes quest closed
in full knowledge of what lies behind them
struggling
for alertness my body
appears to know what it is doing
as it narrowly avoids colliding with
that car that swerved so suddenly in front of me
my earthen heart beats so slowly today
those doldrums caught me unawares
Lying well everything is normal at work
performing like a chimpanzee
silent
keeping up the mechanical banter
coping miraculously with every spanner
thrown my way taking orders
too preoccupied to take anything personally
tomorrow is another day
fingers drumming impatiently
I catch the warning glance as storm clouds gather
Horizontal home again curl up hug my pillow
snarl at the dog lash out even at the cat
it comes
overwhelmed sobs overtake me breaking
too safe to fall too calm to scream
why must this eternal grief
remain a central pillar of my wellness?
my eyes don’t want to open today
they hang half-lidded cloudy
it’s not like me to seek more sleep
indeed
my fish feet seek the floor
even as my leaden limbs
plunge horizontal
must be those old doldrums
catching up with me
milk slops over the edge of my mug
as I greedily suckle
thirst-quenching
not sweet
hot tea scalds me slightly
as I breathe deliciously
wanting to keep dreaming
seems there’s something
I won’t turn and look at
Lightning tongue nonetheless
bids the kids good morning
I stretch
to kiss each tousled head hello
my son and I stand eye to eye – I kiss his forehead
they bicker and fight, hoping to spark
some awakening awareness in me
enveloped in gloom I turn
tempted back to my warm, dark burrow
Even driving my eyes quest closed
in full knowledge of what lies behind them
struggling
for alertness my body
appears to know what it is doing
as it narrowly avoids colliding with
that car that swerved so suddenly in front of me
my earthen heart beats so slowly today
those doldrums caught me unawares
Lying well everything is normal at work
performing like a chimpanzee
silent
keeping up the mechanical banter
coping miraculously with every spanner
thrown my way taking orders
too preoccupied to take anything personally
tomorrow is another day
fingers drumming impatiently
I catch the warning glance as storm clouds gather
Horizontal home again curl up hug my pillow
snarl at the dog lash out even at the cat
it comes
overwhelmed sobs overtake me breaking
too safe to fall too calm to scream
why must this eternal grief
remain a central pillar of my wellness?
Friday, April 28, 2006
Happy Birthday, Kid
© Melina Magdalena 2006
My son and I spent three hours in Centrelink yesterday. He turns 16 next week.
Turns out we didn’t bring all the documentation that was required. We also need proof of his birth, my taxation statement for the last financial year, proof of his enrolment at school (his school ID card is not sufficient) and his payslips for the last 8 weeks. Even with all of this, his form will not be looked at before the day he turns 16, and will take a further 3 weeks to be processed. A person can starve, become homeless and drop out of school in three weeks with no income.
The Centrelink worker who eventually interviewed us said that most 16-year olds come in on their actual birthdays. Centrelink is busy from 3:30-5:00 every day when high school students come in to apply for Youth Allowance and Health Care Cards.
There was a section on the claim form that asked my son whether he had needed help, in filling out the form, and why. I think he knows now, why he got me to fill out the form for him.
You get the form in the mail, fill it out, and bring it, along with all the documents required, to the particular Centrelink office that is designated ‘yours’. You work out which queue to join. You wait in line while the workers at the counter process the enquiries. When it’s your turn, you go up and present your case. They type some details into the computer and ask you to sit down and wait your turn.
While we were there, one man left the queue and fetched a chair to sit on. He couldn’t stand up that long. The people behind him saved his place in the queue.
Although I’ve been a sole parent for 13 years, it has been some time since I’ve actually had to spend time in a Centrelink office. Most of our interactions these days are by telephone or the internet.
After we were placed in the queue, we waited for another hour to be interviewed. I spent that time analysing the place and the people. The walls were plastered with self-congratulations that Centrelink helps all kinds of people. I noticed straight away that single mothers are not represented in any of these images. Such blatant omission makes my hackles rise.
A nice cross-section of people entered the doors of Centrelink. I saw several leave in distress and disgruntlement.
There was the elderly woman who wanted to sort out what will happen with her pension when she goes to Europe to visit relatives for a few months. She was told she cannot arrange things with Centrelink ahead of time. Centrelink cannot tell her how her travel plans might affect her pension. She is obligated however, to report to Centrelink not more than a fortnight before she gets on the plane, and inform them of her plans. (Never mind that she cannot make those plans without knowing what funds she will have at her disposal.)
A Vietnamese couple of retirement age was told they have to come back with appropriate documentation. I’m not sure what their situation was. They provided documentation that Centrelink had accepted two years ago.
An Aboriginal woman carrying an infant was greeted by a Centrelink worker with the question “And who’s this little one?” Not particularly charmed by this question, she mumbled something inaudible. Perhaps she was tired of waiting.
My son simmered beside me as people were called in to be dealt with behind the counter. The order of service did not reflect the order in which we had presented ourselves in the queue.
We were the last people on the chairs when my son’s name was called out. Privately, I wondered whether we were being punished because I became hostile after the young woman who placed us in the queue had asked me whether I worked and whether I was partnered. I had taken a deep breath, and told her very quietly and very slowly that yes, I do work, I parent and I study. I am single. When I queried the need to present my son’s birth certificate, because he has been on my pension card for the last thirteen years, she exploded, and said “Yes, that is why we need his birth certificate!”
We followed the Centrelink worker into the Manager’s Office. He told us he doesn’t normally process claims for Youth Allowance, and asked us to please forgive him if he didn’t seem to know what he was doing.
We sat down.
He went through my son’s form, checking details and entering them into the computer. I explained that I hadn’t been able to find my taxation statement but that because my son had been proven eligible for school card this year, it was obvious that I wasn’t earning enough to make him ineligible for Youth Allowance. He said that Centrelink is not the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and therefore doesn’t really know what my income was. I didn’t bother reminding him that I have to report my income to Centrelink each and every fortnight so that after the ATO has done its dirty work and taxed me at 30%, Centrelink can then take another forty percent of my gross income away from me. It triggers instant rage in my son when I begin to tell the story again.
There is difficulty in getting payslips from my son’s employer. The man from Centrelink implied several times that my son’s employers are unscrupulous, lazy and not doing the right thing by him. My son was upset by his attitude towards people this man has never met. Eventually, the worker explained that my son is the one who will suffer, if he cannot prove by dint of a letter on his employer’s letterhead, how much he has been earning. My son is the one who won’t get a Health Care Card, and who will incur a debt to Centrelink and the ATO if his employers continue to refuse to provide him with payslips.
Is ‘Mum’ going to charge her son rent? I wasn’t planning to, but I haven’t been able to get a straight answer out of the Housing Trust as to whether they are going to charge my son rent, now that he is not my child anymore. I will need to fill out a form from the Housing Trust and send it back to them, awaiting a decision from my Housing Manager as to how my son’s new status will affect the amount of rent they charge us for continuing to live in our house.
If my son is charged rent, I will be his landlady. He will sub-let his bedroom from me. His income will be assessed as though he were independent. He will have to report all changes in his income to the Housing Trust. The amount of rent he is charged will go up and down accordingly, never rising above one-third of the amount he “earns” before tax.
I wonder whether I’ll be able to afford to keep him at home. I wonder where he will go, if I cannot afford to pay his rent, as well as mine.
Finally, we had to deal with the question of how much tax should be taken out of my son’s Youth Allowance to cover him at the end of the financial year. It was here that the seams of the fabric that hold our family together really began to unravel.
My son agreed that the Youth Allowance should be paid into my account, since he is my dependant, and since I pay for all his living expenses. The idea that he is liable to be taxed on this as though it were his income is something he finds difficult to swallow. Furthermore, Youth Allowance added to his earnings from work means he will now be “earning” above the tax free threshold.
At the end of the financial year, if he gets tax returned to him, it will be impossible to know which bits are from his Youth Allowance and which are from his job. If the ATO deems that he has not paid enough tax, he will be liable to pay this, whether the tax he owes is from his Youth Allowance, or whether it is from his job.
I tried to explain to my son that in this event, I will pay his tax bill. I tried to explain that all workers in Australia pay tax. I tried to point out that at least he is in a better position to earn money than I am. As a single parent, I am only allowed to earn $67 gross per week before Centrelink deducts 40% from my welfare payment. As a full-time student on Youth Allowance, my son is allowed to earn $118 per week before this starts happening to him.
None of this made him feel any better. I count my lucky stars that he and I still talk to one another. We have a fairly harmonious relationship. If we were already in conflict, this system could only exacerbate the issues.
Just what has changed in our family, for me as his mother, and for him as my son? He’s having a birthday. He is still my child, under my care. I still regard myself as responsible for sustaining him.
All of the money my son earns has been his. I do not charge him room and board. I do not count the number of telephone calls he makes each week. I buy him bus tickets, his school uniform, stationery and shoes. I pay his school fees and for his extracurricular activities. I drive him around. I still feed, clothe and nurture him. None of his circumstances have changed.
My 16 year old has been placed in the same basket as 16 year olds with very different life circumstances. There are 16 year olds who are independent, who have children, run away from home, leave school. My son has to be accountable to the taxation office and the welfare system because he happens to have been raised by a single mother.
Centrelink has designed this system not to cover all bases, but to enable 16 year olds to be penalised and taxed as adults.
Never mind the issues of how his new status is certain make life much more difficult for me. My heart aches, because of how my son is being affected. This system is cruel, discriminatory and unfair. It places unnecessary burdens on young people, and sets them up in opposition to their parents, their employers, the taxation regime and the welfare system. No wonder they feel the world is against them. No wonder they feel it would be easier to opt out altogether.
My son’s father yelled at me when I left him, that he would never pay me money to raise his child. I’ve done the very best I could, and I’ve had no choice, but to depend on Centrelink to help me. Now my son has no choice but to kowtow to Centrelink in his turn.
Happy birthday, kid.
My son and I spent three hours in Centrelink yesterday. He turns 16 next week.
Turns out we didn’t bring all the documentation that was required. We also need proof of his birth, my taxation statement for the last financial year, proof of his enrolment at school (his school ID card is not sufficient) and his payslips for the last 8 weeks. Even with all of this, his form will not be looked at before the day he turns 16, and will take a further 3 weeks to be processed. A person can starve, become homeless and drop out of school in three weeks with no income.
The Centrelink worker who eventually interviewed us said that most 16-year olds come in on their actual birthdays. Centrelink is busy from 3:30-5:00 every day when high school students come in to apply for Youth Allowance and Health Care Cards.
There was a section on the claim form that asked my son whether he had needed help, in filling out the form, and why. I think he knows now, why he got me to fill out the form for him.
You get the form in the mail, fill it out, and bring it, along with all the documents required, to the particular Centrelink office that is designated ‘yours’. You work out which queue to join. You wait in line while the workers at the counter process the enquiries. When it’s your turn, you go up and present your case. They type some details into the computer and ask you to sit down and wait your turn.
While we were there, one man left the queue and fetched a chair to sit on. He couldn’t stand up that long. The people behind him saved his place in the queue.
Although I’ve been a sole parent for 13 years, it has been some time since I’ve actually had to spend time in a Centrelink office. Most of our interactions these days are by telephone or the internet.
After we were placed in the queue, we waited for another hour to be interviewed. I spent that time analysing the place and the people. The walls were plastered with self-congratulations that Centrelink helps all kinds of people. I noticed straight away that single mothers are not represented in any of these images. Such blatant omission makes my hackles rise.
A nice cross-section of people entered the doors of Centrelink. I saw several leave in distress and disgruntlement.
There was the elderly woman who wanted to sort out what will happen with her pension when she goes to Europe to visit relatives for a few months. She was told she cannot arrange things with Centrelink ahead of time. Centrelink cannot tell her how her travel plans might affect her pension. She is obligated however, to report to Centrelink not more than a fortnight before she gets on the plane, and inform them of her plans. (Never mind that she cannot make those plans without knowing what funds she will have at her disposal.)
A Vietnamese couple of retirement age was told they have to come back with appropriate documentation. I’m not sure what their situation was. They provided documentation that Centrelink had accepted two years ago.
An Aboriginal woman carrying an infant was greeted by a Centrelink worker with the question “And who’s this little one?” Not particularly charmed by this question, she mumbled something inaudible. Perhaps she was tired of waiting.
My son simmered beside me as people were called in to be dealt with behind the counter. The order of service did not reflect the order in which we had presented ourselves in the queue.
We were the last people on the chairs when my son’s name was called out. Privately, I wondered whether we were being punished because I became hostile after the young woman who placed us in the queue had asked me whether I worked and whether I was partnered. I had taken a deep breath, and told her very quietly and very slowly that yes, I do work, I parent and I study. I am single. When I queried the need to present my son’s birth certificate, because he has been on my pension card for the last thirteen years, she exploded, and said “Yes, that is why we need his birth certificate!”
We followed the Centrelink worker into the Manager’s Office. He told us he doesn’t normally process claims for Youth Allowance, and asked us to please forgive him if he didn’t seem to know what he was doing.
We sat down.
He went through my son’s form, checking details and entering them into the computer. I explained that I hadn’t been able to find my taxation statement but that because my son had been proven eligible for school card this year, it was obvious that I wasn’t earning enough to make him ineligible for Youth Allowance. He said that Centrelink is not the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and therefore doesn’t really know what my income was. I didn’t bother reminding him that I have to report my income to Centrelink each and every fortnight so that after the ATO has done its dirty work and taxed me at 30%, Centrelink can then take another forty percent of my gross income away from me. It triggers instant rage in my son when I begin to tell the story again.
There is difficulty in getting payslips from my son’s employer. The man from Centrelink implied several times that my son’s employers are unscrupulous, lazy and not doing the right thing by him. My son was upset by his attitude towards people this man has never met. Eventually, the worker explained that my son is the one who will suffer, if he cannot prove by dint of a letter on his employer’s letterhead, how much he has been earning. My son is the one who won’t get a Health Care Card, and who will incur a debt to Centrelink and the ATO if his employers continue to refuse to provide him with payslips.
Is ‘Mum’ going to charge her son rent? I wasn’t planning to, but I haven’t been able to get a straight answer out of the Housing Trust as to whether they are going to charge my son rent, now that he is not my child anymore. I will need to fill out a form from the Housing Trust and send it back to them, awaiting a decision from my Housing Manager as to how my son’s new status will affect the amount of rent they charge us for continuing to live in our house.
If my son is charged rent, I will be his landlady. He will sub-let his bedroom from me. His income will be assessed as though he were independent. He will have to report all changes in his income to the Housing Trust. The amount of rent he is charged will go up and down accordingly, never rising above one-third of the amount he “earns” before tax.
I wonder whether I’ll be able to afford to keep him at home. I wonder where he will go, if I cannot afford to pay his rent, as well as mine.
Finally, we had to deal with the question of how much tax should be taken out of my son’s Youth Allowance to cover him at the end of the financial year. It was here that the seams of the fabric that hold our family together really began to unravel.
My son agreed that the Youth Allowance should be paid into my account, since he is my dependant, and since I pay for all his living expenses. The idea that he is liable to be taxed on this as though it were his income is something he finds difficult to swallow. Furthermore, Youth Allowance added to his earnings from work means he will now be “earning” above the tax free threshold.
At the end of the financial year, if he gets tax returned to him, it will be impossible to know which bits are from his Youth Allowance and which are from his job. If the ATO deems that he has not paid enough tax, he will be liable to pay this, whether the tax he owes is from his Youth Allowance, or whether it is from his job.
I tried to explain to my son that in this event, I will pay his tax bill. I tried to explain that all workers in Australia pay tax. I tried to point out that at least he is in a better position to earn money than I am. As a single parent, I am only allowed to earn $67 gross per week before Centrelink deducts 40% from my welfare payment. As a full-time student on Youth Allowance, my son is allowed to earn $118 per week before this starts happening to him.
None of this made him feel any better. I count my lucky stars that he and I still talk to one another. We have a fairly harmonious relationship. If we were already in conflict, this system could only exacerbate the issues.
Just what has changed in our family, for me as his mother, and for him as my son? He’s having a birthday. He is still my child, under my care. I still regard myself as responsible for sustaining him.
All of the money my son earns has been his. I do not charge him room and board. I do not count the number of telephone calls he makes each week. I buy him bus tickets, his school uniform, stationery and shoes. I pay his school fees and for his extracurricular activities. I drive him around. I still feed, clothe and nurture him. None of his circumstances have changed.
My 16 year old has been placed in the same basket as 16 year olds with very different life circumstances. There are 16 year olds who are independent, who have children, run away from home, leave school. My son has to be accountable to the taxation office and the welfare system because he happens to have been raised by a single mother.
Centrelink has designed this system not to cover all bases, but to enable 16 year olds to be penalised and taxed as adults.
Never mind the issues of how his new status is certain make life much more difficult for me. My heart aches, because of how my son is being affected. This system is cruel, discriminatory and unfair. It places unnecessary burdens on young people, and sets them up in opposition to their parents, their employers, the taxation regime and the welfare system. No wonder they feel the world is against them. No wonder they feel it would be easier to opt out altogether.
My son’s father yelled at me when I left him, that he would never pay me money to raise his child. I’ve done the very best I could, and I’ve had no choice, but to depend on Centrelink to help me. Now my son has no choice but to kowtow to Centrelink in his turn.
Happy birthday, kid.
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