Just a reminder to Sydney Hoydenizens that we will be meeting this Sunday June 21, 12noon, to celebrate the solstice, Hoyden style. The venue is:
The Rose of Australia
1 Swanson St
Erskineville
All feminists and feminist-allies welcome!
When I called they said that they didn’t do bookings, so just turn up and look for the sign (same as the graphic in this post). The pub has disability access and is near Erskineville train station.
It’s also come to my attention this week that there is a marriage equality rally on at Town Hall in Sydney on Saturday August 1st — I thought perhaps it’d be nice to have a Hoyden contingent turn up there. If anyone’s interested please let me know in comments.
(Also, on a somewhat unrelated note: Aussies, don’t forget, Torchwood S1 begins to air on ABC2 tonight at 8:30pm — and if you don’t have digital TV, you can watch it on iView.)
Categories: arts & entertainment, Culture, fun & hobbies, Life, Politics
Hoyden About Town 
I’m so looking forward to this. I’ve had a quiet week feeling crook as a chook and coping with dead computers, so some cheerful hoydening is exactly what’s required.
Hooray! I too am looking forward to it, after a very stressful week of thesis-writing (but I handed two chapters in to my supervisor, yay!) — and I’m also looking forward to a nice warming drink after all this cold rainy weather.
I hate to not support a local rally, but I’m really ideologically opposed to the marriage equality movement as I think it’s counter productive for radical feminism. Just sayin’. Have fun at The Rose, people.
We did have fun at The Rose, thanks. As I said over at the Solstice photo post, the roster was me plus Beppie, Rayedish, Mimbles, Hellonhairylegs, Jo Tamar and a lurker all noshing and imbibing. A rant or three may have been had. Excellent fun.
Hope you all had a lovely time. The kids went well at swimming, so a pretty good day for us.
@Linda Radfem – have you posted your thoughts on this? I’m interested to hear why, from your perspective, it’s counter productive.
Crossed comments with you Tigtog. Glad to hear you had a lovely time.
’twas very good. Lashings of tuck and plenty of fizz to wash it down – it could almost have been a boarding school midnight feast.
Although stuck down here in Melbourne, I raise a glass of ginger beer to you all.
I was sorry to have missed it – I’ve enjoyed my Hoydenizen ketchups, and it feels odd twittering with folks who live nearby and never actually seeing any of them! Unfortunately, this time around I was in Canberra helping my parents unpack. Luckily their place is gorgeousness, and even though I had a mass of marking to do, there was a gorgeous fire for me to snuggle down in front of, and good company… but no drinkies! So I’m raising my hand and gazing pleadingly around to say, I’d be up for having another one, soon! (Ariane, I’m going for subtle first ;-))
Well, WP, that marriage equality thing isn’t too far off, and I imagine that afterwards we’d probably end up in a pub somewhere. 🙂
(And, Linda Radfem, while I appreciate and respect that some people would rather do away with the institution of marriage altogether, I personally don’t feel that that’s a reason not to fight for marriage equality — for one thing, the reason conservatives fight so hard against marriage equality is because, if same-sex marriage is legally recognised, it really does mean that the dominant paradigm for marriage has become “two consenting adults who love each other” rather than “ownership of women”, and for another, it’s still a civil rights issue — a whole group of people being excluded from an insitution that confers social, cultural, and legal benefits on the basis of their sexual orientation. One can dislike an institution while still arguing that said insititution should not exclude people on the basis of sexual orientaiton.)
The privileges that go with the institution of marriage, economic, legal, social etc. exclude a lot of people. Anyone who has that kind of living arrangement is privileged above ALL others, not just LGBTQ people.
In the interests of social equality I prefer to do away with the privilege club rather than just admit a few more people into it. I have a female partner btw; we don’t live together.
This is from the Beyond Marriage website:
“Marriage is not the only worthy form of family or relationship, and it should not be legally and economically privileged above all others. A majority of people – whatever their sexual and gender identities – do not live in traditional nuclear families. They stand to gain from alternative forms of household recognition beyond one-size-fits-all marriage. For example:
· Single parent households
· Senior citizens living together and serving as each other’s caregivers (think Golden Girls)
· Blended and extended families
· Children being raised in multiple households or by unmarried parents
· Adult children living with and caring for their parents
· Senior citizens who are the primary caregivers to their grandchildren or other relatives
· Close friends or siblings living in non-conjugal relationships and serving as each other’s primary support and caregivers
· Households in which there is more than one conjugal partner
· Care-giving relationships that provide support to those living with extended illness such as HIV/AIDS.”
http://www.beyondmarriage.org/
Linda, I do see what you’re saying about the need to move beyond the model of nuclear families as the “ideal” family, but I still feel that defining marriage as “between one man and one woman” (as Australian law currently does) reinforces the idea that people who want to pair up with a member of the same sex are second-class citizens (regardless of whether or not those couple actually choose marriage), that same-sex relationships don’t need to be taken as seriously as heterosexual relationships. Of course, we should also be fighting for recognition of alternative family models as well — but I think that marriage equality will only help with that (after all, there are plenty of same-sex couples who want marriage who do not and will not have a traditional nuclear family). And aside from all of that — it’s clearly deeply important to many people in same sex relationships that their relationship is recognised culturally and legally. If you don’t feel that way, that’s fine, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that these peope shouldn’t have that recognition simply because the concept of family needs to be expanded further, while straight couples continue to enjoy that privilege if they so choose.
I will say again, I do agree with you that more needs to be done, and I respect your choice to fight against heterosexual/nuclear family privilege in a different way. But for me, I will continue to support marriage equality (including trying to arrange a Hoyden presence in this upcoming rally), and I hope that we can both acknowledge that we are aiming for the same goal, though we are using different tactics.
Dammit, I thought Torchwood was on Sunday night, not Friday night. Silly me.
Ack, sorry Mindy — I realised yesterday that I should have specified “Friday” instead of saying “tonight”. It is still watchable on iView, however.
Not your fault Beppie, it was perfectly clear when I read it again this morning. I think I’ll have to download and watch it at home.
Political march/rally + coffee/drinks seems to me to be a peculiarly Sydney way to spend an afternoon. Gotta love this city. I can make 1Aug.
Linda, I think everything you say about marriage is right, but I think the marriage equality campaign only moves us closer towards according all kinds of relationships respect, not further away from it.
I’m not sure if our goals are the same, Beppie. Mine is to abolish patriarchy, not preserve it by preserving it’s primary unit which is marriage, but I realise this is a fairly radical viewpoint and this may not be the best space to advance it so I’ll say no more on the subject here.
I think it’s pretty problematic to suggest that another feminist is ‘preserving patriarchy’, Linda.
My own personal perspective is that the looser the definitions of what counts as a marriage get, the better, because it gets us further away from the problematic singular model of one dominant man and one submissive woman, and it makes it more likely that there will be the recognition of more and more relationships currently excluded (like your list above, Linda). In this sense, it’s not about preserving a club of privilege, but making the requirements for entry less exclusive: this is always likely to lead to more change, to greater inclusivity. At the same time, I’m not that invested in the equality of marriage movement, mostly because yes, marriage gets looser, but can also/still have a narrowing (a heteronormativising, if you like) effect on relationships (and let’s not forget that one of the more troubling things for the mainstream about gay male sex is that it can be so *promiscuous* [gasp] and so outside the bounds of how proper sex happens). It works both ways, and so I have a pretty profound ambivalence about the whole thing (which is not the same as confusion). But that doesn’t make me against the queering of marriage, although I do like Liss’s suggestion (which I now can’t find) over at Shakesville, which is that in order to make marriage less closed, people should get married more. People who aren’t sure about whether they want to be together. People who might well divorce. People who aren’t treating this ‘sacred institution’ with the seriousness it allegedly deserves. IMO, that’s a queering of marriage straight people can participate in, and that could be a good thing.
I’ll think about the rally, but I’d definitely be up for drinkies afterwards, even if I don’t wind up attending. 🙂
I’m not sure if our goals are the same, Beppie. Mine is to abolish patriarchy, not preserve it by preserving it’s primary unit which is marriage
You know, I can happily accept that you believe my methodology is flawed, insofar as I believe that marriage equality is one step away from patriarchal understandings of marriage and you do not, but it is incredibly unfair of you to cast aspersions on my intent in this endeavour, by suggesting that my actual goal is to preserve patriarchy.
I’m curious as to how Linda Radfem suggests we handle securing legally enforceable inheritance and next-of-kin decision-making rights for the other adult(s) in a pair-bond or group-bond situation without some reformed form of what has been traditionally called marriage? With the best intentions in the world, wills/testaments get lost/destroyed and without some legal entitlements for registered partnerships, many people will be ousted from property that should have been theirs after their partner dies (plus of course all the nonsense about families keeping same-sex partners away from deathbeds etc etc).
I’d be very happy for the word “marriage” to be retired from the State recognition of adult partnerships entirely and left just to the churches, so that nobody gets a govt certificate of marriage anymore, and it’s open to couples/groups who do not have a sexual/romantic relationship but who do have a mutual emotional/physical dependency. (Next of Kin Declaration Registration Certificates for everyone who wants one!) But in the meantime I believe WP’s idea of extending and queering marriage so that it is less of a sacred cow is a necessary step to retiring the word from the State legal system entirely.
I’d be very happy for the word “marriage” to be retired from the State recognition of adult partnerships entirely and left just to the churches, so that nobody gets a govt certificate of marriage anymore, and it’s open to couples/groups who do not have a sexual/romantic relationship but who do have a mutual emotional/physical dependency. (Next of Kin Declaration Registration Certificates for everyone who wants one!) But in the meantime I believe WP’s idea of extending and queering marriage so that it is less of a sacred cow is a necessary step to retiring the word from the State legal system entirely.
Yes. This.
Beppie, sorry for making it sound like I think you personally are preserving patriarchy, that really wasn’t what I meant to say at all, but rather that the movement to preserve marriage must ultimately also preserve patriarchy.
I have a post up now outlining my position more clearly. I’m not interested in being the centre of a pile- on here just for expressing a minority view.
Linda, sorry if it seemed like a pile-on. I really am curious as to your proposals, and will read your post later with interest.
Linda– thanks for the clarification, and I extend my own apologies to you if I contributed to the sense of a “pile-on” — I do respect your views, and, I will read your post and consider your viewpoint.