If you’ve been reading the Fairfax press (or surfing social media) recently, you’re probably familiar with the debate about writer and activist Melinda Tankard Reist – and whether she has the right to call herself a feminist.
Tankard Reist is the author of two books by Melbourne feminist publisher Spinifex Press, Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls and Big Porn Inc. (edited with Abigail Bray). She runs an activist group, Collective Shout, that works against the objectification of women and sexualisation of girls for commercial profit.
She’s also a conservative Christian who is anti-abortion (or ‘pro-life’) and spent twelve years working for Tasmanian senator Brian Harradine. [missing asset]
Tankard Reist has long been a controversial figure – particularly in feminist circles – but the current furore began with a front-cover profile in Sunday Life magazine on 8 January, nearly two weeks ago. The profile writer, left-wing feminist Rachel Hills, says she interviewed Melinda because she ‘thought it would be interesting’. She wrote on her website, ‘Like many journalists, I spend too much time thinking about what goes on in other people’s heads, and Melinda was a public figure I found particularly perplexing … I still didn’t “get” her. And I wanted to.’
This weekend, iconic Australian feminist Anne Summers argued that you need to sign onto certain principles in order to be a feminist – and abortion rights is one of them. ‘As far as I am concerned, feminism boils down to one fundamental principle and that is women’s ability to be independent. There are two fundamental preconditions to such independence: ability to support oneself financially and the right to control one’s fertility … To guarantee the second, women need safe and effective contraception and the back-up of safe and affordable abortion.’
She concluded of Tankard Reist, ‘Just because she says she is a feminist does not mean she is.’
In a past Wheeler Centre debate, Summers' contemporary Wendy McCarthy recalled abortion in the 1960s – before social pressure from feminists and others made it legal – as potentially fatal. ‘In my own experience, to get an abortion required furtive phone calls, 63 guineas (a large amount of money), cops patrolling up and down the road, hoping someone would give you advice when you left…’
Yesterday, Kate Gleeson said the most significant argument against Tankard Reist’s identification as a feminist is her involvement – through her work as Harradine’s adviser – in restricting the approval of the abortion drug RU486 and ushering in Australia’s adoption of the ‘global gag rule’ that dictates AusAID’s overseas family planning guidelines.
Gleeson said this had ‘profound implications for women’s access to contraception in our donor destination countries’, contributing to ‘the two-tier system in which Western women have mostly unfettered control over their reproduction, while those in the developing world are at the mercy of dangerous abortions’.
Today, Cathy Sherry takes issue with all those who’ve questioned Tankard Reist’s right to call herself a feminist. She says ‘I have long considered myself a feminist and been disturbed by the parts of the sisterhood who operate like the nasty in-group in primary school … I do not know Melinda Tankard Reist and I am not pro-life, but I defend her right to express her opinions, call herself a feminist and prosecute her own beliefs … The real test of tolerance is tolerating those with whom we strongly disagree. We will never have a right to express our own contested ideas if we do not defend others' rights to do the same.’
A somewhat baffled Rachel Hills (who says that the huge response to her profile – including five separate opinion pieces last weekend – has been both ‘a bit of a dream’ and ‘challenging’) reflected this week on what she’s learned from the experience. She concluded, ‘if you want people to listen to what you’re saying – whether you have a big platform or small one – you also have an obligation to engage in good faith’.
Hills’ approach to the profile was to avoid a hatchet job, but ‘to write something critical (in the sense of making analytic judgments) but still human’.
While perhaps not all the arguments being traded are useful (or indeed respectful), the broad debate is teasing out some big questions.
While Palestinian attempts to secure full membership of the United Nations are still pending, signs have abounded that they will ultimately prove futile. Representatives of the Palestinian Territories are currently in confidential talks with the 16-member United Nations Security Council. The Palestinians needs to obtain a Security Council recommendation before the 193-member United Nations General Assembly can vote on granting them full membership. This means that not only do they require the votes of nine of the 16 Security Council members, they also require the votes of all five of the permanent members – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – any one of which can veto the proposal. The United States has already indicated it will exercise its veto on the grounds that Palestinian statehood can’t be unilaterally declared without Israeli support. This probably won’t be necessary: Bosnia, which hold a temporary seat on the Security Council, has indicated it will abstain from the vote, making a majority of nine unachievable.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) voted to admit Palestine as its 195th full member on Monday. Only fourteen member states voted against the move (including Australia and the US), while 52 abstained. The move comes at considerable cost to the organisation – some $70 million, or a quarter of the budget – as both US and Israeli will withhold their funding allocations to UNESCO as a result of the vote. By law, the US government cannot fund a UN agency that accepts Palestine as a member. Indeed, the US boycotted UNESCO from 1984 to 2003, alleging the organisation was corrupt, censorious and anti-Israel.
Palestine’s curious UN double status is the result of differing admission procedures between the two organisations. No UNESCO member nation holds veto power. The Palestinian foreign minister insisted this week the two admission applications were not linked. UNESCO is a global development agency which hosts the City of Literature program, of which Melbourne is a member city.
The video/podcast of the recent Wheeler Centre event, ‘The Arab Spring’, is now available. Click on the image below to watch, listen and download.
(Click to watch video.)
There are children’s books, and then there are children’s books that make a difference. The Boy and the Crocodile tells the story about East Timor’s national origins that doubles as a fable about the importance of human kindness. The book’s illustrations will be provided by children from the Familia Hope orphanage in East Timor, to which all proceeds will be directed. The orphanage is located an hour from the capital Dili in the village of Gleno, the centre of the Ermera district, one of the country’s least developed of its 13 districts. Many of its kids were orphaned during East Timor’s struggle for independence.
The book is being published by Melbourne independent publisher Affirm Press. Affirm Press publisher Martin Hughes, who recently visited East Timor, says the project isn’t charity so much as ‘profit for purpose’. “We don’t just want to raise funds for the orphanage,” says Hughes. “We want to create books in Tetum [East Timor’s de facto national language]. There’s a dearth of education materials for kids in East Timor. We want to give them their story back.” In addition, Hughes says, it’s hoped the book will have other, flow-on effects: “If we can give them these high quality, flexi-bound copies of this book of their own legend, it’ll not only give them a sense of appreciation for books, but hopefully it’ll also give them a sense of national identity that they need so much.”
It follows the success of the From Little Things, Big Things Grow project, also by Affirm Press, where remote-community Gurindji kids illustrated the lyrics to the song by Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody. The project raised $120,000 to build an art centre for Gurindji youth in the Northern Territory. The Boy and the Crocodile is due to be released in November, but can be pre-purchased from the website until July. It’s intended that everyone who pre-purchases the book will have their name printed in the book.
The Wheeler Centre is hosting an event on East Timor – Human Rights and East Timor: Remembering East Timor’s Political Prisoners – on June 23.
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