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[labellementeuse]

I was thinking a few days ago, it's been awhile since there's been any really impassioned ranting hereabouts. I was wondering how to fix this; happily, although not really, today's Sunday Star Times front page gave me not one but TWO apoplexies this morning! I have been working up rants on them all day at work.


A two-part rant: one for the article and one for the attitude. Firstly, the "illegal immigrant" in question has been granted permanent NZ residency (so I'm really confused as to how calling her an illegal immigrant is at all enlightening; she was an overstayer from Kiribati, but as an overstayer would have been expected to pay for her own health treatment. It's only since she was granted residency that the fee has been waived). The headline, obviously, is very fucking misleading; but hey, that's the SST for you.

Secondly, the article (I believe deliberately, but hey, I'm suspicious like that) confuses two different problems; a, foreign citizens who don't pay their health bills, and b, immigrants granted residency despite the immigration office being advised that they're, you know, sick, and gonna cost all those taxpayers lots of money, curse them! With regards to a - I'm not really sure what the article's suggesting should be done, but it seems clear to me that the only thing that can be done about this is to refuse to treat people who aren't citizens. Um. Raise your hand if you see a problem with this? Oh, good. (And let's remember, there are probably a lot more citizens who are guilty of this as well, or would be if their treatment wasn't gvt-provided in those cases where it is.) B leaves a sour taste in my mouth because of, well, my attitude problem; but I will mention that once people have been granted residency, they're probably paying taxes. (In fact, they were probably already paying taxes, especially if they're working.) I hope no-one would seriously suggest that we should treat taxpayers differently as a function of where they were born? Also, as the minister quoted said, health waivers are only given rarely, and presumably the immigration office has good reasons for them. Certainly the SST didn't bother to try to find out why this woman was given residency despite her condition; probably because that would have been an interesting article but not sensationalist, and it probably wouldn't have fueled the fires of hate, which the SST apparently set out to do today.

WRT attitude. Okay, people, call me naive, but I don't like to think that our health system should let people die because they can't afford treatment, or because they aren't paying taxes. I don't know if they have facilities for liver transplants on Kiribati or not, but the drift of the article quite clearly suggests to me an attitude that those pesky immigrants should all go back to their own damn countries to die in peace where we can't see them and DEFINITELY don't have to pay to support them. I don't believe that and I'm glad I don't. I'm aware that we simply can't pay to suppor/treat everyone but, on the other hand, neither are we being asked to: the health requirement is waived only for good reason, according to the minister quoted.

The other thing I would like people to be aware of is that probably a lot of people in this position are people who a) couldn't pay for the treatment no matter where they are b) come from the Pacific Isles or Polynesia. This is important because there simply may not be the facilities where they come from. I am intensely proud of NZ's role in the Pacific, especially with regards to aid. There aren't many countries we're bigger than but we're a lot bigger than Kiribati and some of those islands need us, and I believe we are responsible towards them.




column here. Okay, now I can barely see straight (little joke there) having read this article but I do want to say, for people who don't read Rosemary McLeod's writing, that she's a good columnist who sometimes writes things that I very much enjoy... but she is obsessed with homosexuality, particularly preoccupied with "dykes", as in "the dykes taking over Parliament". This article is pervaded by that but I've read articles by her that were a lot more subtle about it. This is just her most flagrant example yet.

I also want to mention, before I start, that I think the Labour party's roots in the working class is crucial and critical and if I had to pick social or economic reform under a Labour government I'd pick economic, purely because I know that, eventually, even National is going to adjust to homosexuality and women's equality. And I was saying to amarynth just the other day that I am sometimes concerned that that emphasis on welfare and benefits and, basically, socialist unionism is being lost - partly because, actually, it's unhip. Unionism is no longer a good look, sadly. BUT I think it's important to remember that it is possible to have both. an emphasis on civil liberties does not mean that the emphasis on socialist economic policies is lost.

Okay. Now. This column is a TOTAL CROCK OF EXCREMENT and I frankly feel sick having read it. Firstly, her argument is shit- or, actually, it's not there. What she purports to do is demonstrate how an emphasis on economic policy in the Labour party has been replaced by an emphasis on gay rights in the Labour party. What she actually does is spend a few paragraphes propagating stereotypic and oldfashioned commentary on the homosexual lifestyle, then spends some time saying that the working-class hates gays and the lifestyle (No, Rosemary: you hate and fear gays and the gay lifestyle. Bad reporter, no projecting!) without bothering to prove this. Then she gives examples of Member's Bills tabled or supported by gay MPS. Okay, one, members' bills are not required to be representative of the feelings of the entire party. Two, what, gay MPs aren't allowed to want civil rights? Of course gay adoption is important for Chris Carter; he has fathered children for a lesbian couple. As for saying that Tim Barnett seems to be focused primarily on "gay issues"... despite being openly gay in the most conservative city in the country, Tim Barnett has been the ELECTORATE MP for Christchurch Central since he first ran in 1995. If he was not a good electorate MP, he wouldn't keep getting elected by, I repeat, a very conservative city.

Anyway, she rounds off with an admittedly sad story about a friend of hers who raised six kids and is sick. How exactly this is related to teh ev0l gheys in Parliament is not clear.

What she doesn't do, at any point in the column, is show that a)there is a lost emphasis on economic policies b) there is increased interest in gay policies of the party as a whole, out of proportion to what is urged by Labour's normal civil liberties stances and the views of their constituents. Yes, Chris Carter and Tim Barnett occasionally table bills suggesting increased rights for gays. They're gay men; this is not surprising, and perhaps voters knew that when they elected them, especially Mr Barnett. This also does not mean that Labour is throwing over its working class supporters for gays.

I could do a line-by-line criticism of the article, but instead I'm going to pick out some true gems.

Are we supposed to pretend now, that there is not a dangerous culture of cruising for sex in the homosexual community, and that some gay men don't knowingly seek sex with men who have an air of danger about them?

This is a bare inch from saying "Are we supposed to pretend that homosexuality is perfectly permissable". But, Rosemary, if you can use rhetorical questions (a hideous device IMO, used only to play on ingrained cultural prejudice and instinct in lieu of providing a solic argument), well, so can I: Are we supposed to pretend that there is not a dangerous culture of crusing for sex in the heterosexual community? Are we supposed to pretend that the only people affected by gay civil rights are wealthy young gay men? Are we supposed to forget the lesbian community, the transexual community? Are we supposed to pretend it's okay to bash other people to death as long as you can convincingly show that you were experiencing homophobia when you did it?

I can't help wondering if the proposed law change [eliminating the "homosexual panic defense"] is another way of bowdlerising gay culture, like the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy TV series which presents them as lovable little munchkins, about as threatening as the contents of your handbag.

I don't know what you keep in your handbag, Rosemary, but in mine I have several items that I consider far more threatening than homosexuality. Like lipstick. Homosexuality is no more intrinsicallt threatening than heterosexuality; and I consider heterosexual culture particularly its indoctrination of young women, to be *way* more dangerous than a small numbver of gay men who like to have a lot of sex in a promiscuous way. Be aware, guys: the subtext of this passage is gays threaten new zealand, gays threaten straights, gays are dangerous. *shudder*

That homosexual sex is nothing to fear, just because it's legal? That men who fear being sodomised should be nicer to menacing male homosexuals?

Um. I'm sorry, Rosemary, it's wrong to suggest that homophobes should be nicer to gay men? Homosexual sex is nothing to fear; lesbianism, for example, features extensively in pornography. Many heterosexual men have a knee-jerk fear of sodomy which should be discouraged because it leads to homophobia. I really don't understand why she has a problem with this.

[Jim Sutton's] replacement on the Labour list will be a gay lawyer who lives in Wellington's pricey Oriental Bay. Although he's lived with his gay partner for 11 years, he has a child who lives with its mother and her partner.

This sounds like an unusual arrangement, but Clark lives in a world in which such arrangements, odd in the eyes of straight New Zealanders, are everyday. Maybe Labour has lost sight of just how unusual these arrangements are.

Or maybe you're out of touch with... everything. For one thing, men who father children who then live with their mother are, um, *fairly* common. You're heterosexual, Rosemary, and so is your former partner - but your children live with you and your new partner, don't they? Unless you can show me that this so-called "unusual" arrangement is actually *bad*, I'm afraid you really fail to make a point. After all, in some parts of the world the number of children in NZ raised by grandparents, particularly in Maori or Polynesian families, would be considered very unusual. NZ recognises this as a perfectly appropriate and normal way to raise children. The same is true of other types of non-nuclear family arrangements, and, Rosemary, if you want to complain about those, well, before you complain about the mote in someone else's eye, check out the beam in your own, right?



And now, feeling much better, I'm going to do my reading for English tomorrow. Mmm, Wordsworth.

ETA: ALSO. So, all this year I've been telling people that I'm doing a BA/BSc, BA in phil, BSC in maths. However, I'm in the middle of confirming some of my course changes and I checked my majors and apparently my BA major is... English. Phil and maths are my joint BSc majors.

This means two things.
1) At the beginning of the year, in some major spaz fit that I have since totally and completely and utterly forgotten, I changed my majors.
2)Um, I should probably be taking those two English papers, since apparently I don't need the science credits any more. Predictably, as soon as I realise this, I instantly decide Semantics looked much more interesting in the Wednesday lecture. *sigh*

Comments

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Me, too (and apparently lots of other people, which is encouraging.) *smacks her* The worst thing is the way that there is a problem with Labour's economic policies -= but that shouldn't be connected to their civil liberties policies and it DEFINITELY is not a consequence of gay rights movements, ferchrissakes.