Ah, Student Politics

Part of my Monday routine involves wasting the hours between arriving on campus and my Exotic Erotic Other class at 2pm. X usually drops me off at the station on his way to work which means I'm usually on campus by around 10am, depending on what time we're out the door. This means I generally have enough time to have a real sort of breakfast on campus - Monash's Clayton Campus is pretty awesome for food availability and variety - wander around the bookshop to see if there's anything I want to add to my collection - Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters, Gaiman's Anansi Boys - and run any other errands I can do on campus - any banking, doctor appointments, optometrists. Most of the time I end up sitting at a table with a fruit smoothie doing my readings or, ever since I got my hands on one of these little netbooks, typing things, doing research, etc etc etc. Lately of course, I've been looking at dress designs - but I'll discuss that more at a later date.

Today's time wasting took place primary in the English School Library, during which I was looking at pretty things before getting kicked out at 12:45pm by some of the members of the faculty who needed the room for a meeting, fair enough really. So I had some lunch and a ginger ale and then, out of sheer boredom and need to fill another hour with a useless activity that - preferably - didn't cost me any money, I wandered up to one of the several tables that were doing their student politic-y things. This one was trying to get as many signatures for a petition to the Australian Government to halt the 'Refugee Malaysia Solution' - for those of you not in the know, the Malaysia Solution, as it's being called apparently, involves, more or less, the government relieving the pressure of overpopulation in their refugee detention centres by sending refugees to a centre in Malaysia; the problem that has been raised with this is that Malaysia is not a signatory of the UNHCR Refugee Convention which deals with issues such as fair treatment and human rights. There's more to it of course, but that's it in a nutshell.

So anyways, I step up to said table, thinking 'eh, what the hell', and of course I ended up at the Socialist Alternative table...the group I'd spent so many years at the ANU avoiding....

Dredging up ever last thing I remembered about what not to say I ended up having a fairly basic conversation with the young woman, who in the process pawned off several bits and pieces of reading material off on me - I might even read some of them before I throw them out; can you tell I'm less than completely politically motivated? 

And so, I ended up back outside class, waiting for the meeting to end and class to start, and typing this up...because I can.

ClearSkies~V

Words, and what we do with them.

Apparently I'm currently residing in a lightheatedness-free zone. But it's 2am and I haven't been able to sleep, eat or think properly for days (long story), so let's just run with it and see where it goes.

For several months, I have been making an effort to eradicate the word 'retarded' from my vocabulary. To my shame, it's been there for a long time, a casually dismissive (offensive) marker of everything that's wrong with the subversion of meaning. I'm ashamed of myself for not having gotten rid of it sooner, not just because it's awful but for two other reasons; one of my family members has suffered throughout her life from the pernicious damage this language and attitude inflicts upon those we apply it to, and also because my younger sister would have been teaching me about the violence of language since we were kids, if I'd only had the wit to learn.

I'm not exactly a paragon of virtue when it comes to language. I swear. Lots, actually. I've never got the hang of being detached when arguing over something that means a lot to me; I rail and shout and rant. I'm not great at finding ways to produce emphasis without doing violence to, or through, the language I choose. At the core of much of this, I suppose, is a combination of passion and laziness. Passion for the things I believe in makes it difficult for me to divorce myself from the emotion of explaining, or arguing them; laziness has led to a failure to completely interrogate the language I use to describe the world and my relationship to it. In spite of my own failings on this point, I do believe in treating language with respect.

Because I'm bizarrely idealistic (strange attribute for a cynic, but what the hell...) I find the the manipulation of language for reasons of political expediency incredibly disturbing. I'm still flabbergasted by the 2001 Australian Federal election, when the Howard Government, desperate for an election victory, spent ten weeks engaged in a "pervasively mendacious" campaign of racial vilification. I found the language of the 'war on terror' similarly depressing, and so I shouldn't be surprised that, in the aftermath of yet another episode of violence, language is the first casualty of reporting.

When an individual chooses to commit an act of extraordinary violence as a means to protest the nature of government regulation, and clearly articulates that violence is the only way in which to make that stand, clearly in the hope that it will encourage others to 'wake up' and make that stand, that individual has committed an act of terrorism. Words have meaning for a reason. Official definitions of terrorism exist so that we are able to define those acts which, in endangering human life, aim to "intimidate or coerce the government, the civilian population... in furtherance of political or social objectives."

When a man flies a plane into a federal building and leaves behind documentation expressing his conviction that such acts are a necessary step, that man has engaged himself in a terrorist action. It is utterly indefensible to suggest that because that man happened to be an American citizen, acting without connection to international terrorist movements, he did not engage in a terrorist act.

Language is a powerful tool, and it is for that very reason that we have an obligation to use it well. Joseph Stack was a white, anglo, non-muslim American citizen. These facts in and of themselves are not enough to excuse him from being labelled a terrrorist in that 'capital T way'.

Get thee to the maternity ward.

So, it turns out my school-free Monday will be taken up with attending a rally at Parliament House.

I've been keeping half an eye on news related to the Medicare legislation which will be before Parliament when the new session begins on the 7th of September, and I'm partly amused (but mostly disgusted) that a two-year bandaid is the best solution the government could come up with to avoid effectively outlawing private home-birth. (I have to admit, I'm particularly dissappointed that a female Health Minister is apparently so incapable of understanding the issues here.)

According to the National Perinatal Statistics Unit, 4% of mothers in 2003 intended to give birth outside of a conventional labour ward, and 2.8% actually did. Denying midwives practising outside of a maternity ward indemnity insurance, refusing to cover their services under Medicare... apparently its ok to deny basic choice to women who prefer to give birth in a place not condoned and controlled by the edifice that is 'official' medicine. It's no secret that the rate of medical intervention in the birth process is rising, particularly the rate of elective caesarean sections, and particularly in private hospitals. I don't condemn anyone's choice to opt for an elective caesarean, but I think it's important that we don't over-intervene in the process, especially for low-risk pregnancies.

I'm not suggesting here that because childbirth is a natural process that there's no risk involved; modern medicine has improved mortality rates for mothers and children. But there is NO good reason to shunt women into a hospital, to cut off various avenues of choice in what should be an intensely personal process for her and her partner. What right does a democratically elected government have to deny a basic choice like this? Especially when data is available to back up the claim that, in a low-risk situation, women and babies are at no more risk during a home-birth than in hospital.

In still more news: once again, The Age has proven its journalistic worth with what is possibly the smarmiest article I've read in a long time. It's not new for the news media here to drift down the path of 'oooh, an academic!' to vent scorn at the Prime Minister, but this piece of reporting is the worst example of it I've seen in a while. I've no problem heaping scorn on politicians - let's face it, they often deserve it. But really - it says a lot about this country that it's perfectly acceptable to lambast someone for an academic endeavour.