The greatest fear of our activist movement is that we’ll lose steam, and people won’t fight anymore unless the government really fucks us over. I can’t see that happening, and from experience we know that queer activism of all kinds pretty much died silently after the federal override of 2006. We are seeing now, that currently we still have movement as we gear up to fight for amendments to a much less than satisfactory bill.

As for the trans stuff… I dunno, what they were thinking. I just kinda said I thought they were wrong, and moved on to the HREOC report.

I definitely agree though, that our current foundation is too shaky for a utopia. I also agree that a revolution isn’t likely to happen. However, I find the idea of spending the rest of my life fighting for these things a little depressing.

From your descriptions, I’m kind of o.O about the examples you’ve given, particularly the second, because I find it strange that change in one jurisdiction isn’t seen as a stepping stone to change in others (though from my own pragmatic point of view, one can see that making changes in a state that isn’t subject to federal pooh-pooh-ing may perhaps carry more weight), but again, that’s a face-value understanding.

As I mentioned in the post, whilst I think a lot of the change that would bring about a utopian-esque vision would need to be revolutionary (and that comes from my feeling that the foundations are too shaky for utopia to be possibly built on them), I’m not that optimistic about revolution and the likelihood of it happening, so whilst we keep trying to evolve out of the shaky foundations, feminism, anti-imperialism, anti-racism, and so on and so forth, will always be required.

I find the idea of a utopia can sometimes inhibit change. Particularly if those who have ascribed to the idea of the utopia believe that a full scale revolution is required to achieve their ends. I have noticed that many of my friends are so caught up in the idea of what the post-revolution utopia will look like, that they poo-poo any minor changes in the right direction.

Recent examples from my own experiences in local activism:
– Civil Partnerships Bill described as a ’skull fucked corpse’ and rejected, even though its a step towards relationship equality.
– Fighting to make gender an optional item on ACT birth certificates, with a third option ‘undisclosed’, in addition to M and F, was declared ‘pointless’ because it wasn’t across the board federally.

It can be intensely draining to have to justify the changes not only to the current powers-that-be, but to your fellow activists.

thanks for the link. We’ve gotten some awesome submissions, hopefully more will trickle before the deadline

(And yeah, I hear you on the wwsww thing. I mean, my queerness is about who I love as well as who I fuck, but I guess that’s sort of the distinction between wwsww as a descriptive of behaviour and lesbian as an identity that encompasses the former.)

Oh lordy yes. Whilst my mother came out to Australia in the 60s, I have distant relatives who have been here for generations. Historian John Fitzgerald has a great book called ‘Big White Lie’ which talks about the White Australia Policy and includes how it impacted on the Chinese Australians that were already here. He has some interesting discussions about how the White Australia Policy was formed and the rhetoric around it, and whilst he never mentions it, some of the contemporary comparisons one can make are quite obvious despite being only implicit.

i think the fact of the white australia policy makes people assume we have been white, which is part of why they assume racism has been an american problem. they had exclusionary immigration policies too, though.

i’ve never quite known what to do with this thought, but i remember when i was a youngun and there was all the pauline hanson madness. our old neighbours had been living in the US and they came back to visit us. anyway one of them said that because of the uproar that pauline had caused, americans were getting the impression that australians were very racist; this ex-neighbour thought that in fact we were just talking about it very openly.

hmm. do we talk about racism openly?? i doubt it, but maybe “we” did at that time? or some of us did?

i have to admit i haven’t come across the ‘racism is a US thing’ really, although thinking about that, probably i have, just said a bit more obliquely.

anyway, yes. i’m sure you’re right about both differences and intersections. good point about indigenous people here being inspired by and having links with black people and movements in the US. and interesting what you say about “CALD”. how much have you had the experience of being labeled “cald”? in what kind of places?

(i’m not sure how i feel about being labeled ‘wwsww’ actually, since unlike many young queers these days [hehe] i think of my self as a lesbian and who i sleep with is a part of that, not the defining thing about me – although i understand it would be a useful distinction for some people like doctors. i guess it would be weird though if they were running a community centre or something for ‘wwsww’ rather than ‘lesbians, bi and queer womyn’)

daiskmeliadorn:

I think there are some interesting differences, but also some interesting intersections between the way different racial groups are perceived between here and the US. Part of that’s to do with geography – forex, in some ways, the attitudes to Asian immigrants in Australia can be somewhat more similar in certain ways to attitudes to Latino/as in the US, because we perceive Asia as having that closeness, though Australia does have some differences, being an Island Continent. But there’s some non-geographical interesting intersections too; like the fact that Australian Indigenous folk have ways of identifying with black folk in the US, as well as with the indigenous peoples of the US. And well, I’m far from an expert on race relations in the US (or here, for that matter), so I’m just kinda thinking out loud, here.

I’m not sure why PoC tends to get less play here; afaik the colourism (stuff about ‘how black/etc’ someone is) stuff happens a lot in the US also, so I’m not sure that explains it. I have tended to find that Australian willingness to really engage on race issues is somewhat disappointing, and there’s far too much “racism is a US thing” which makes my blood boil. I’ve found it to be improving somewhat, but that’s mostly on the internets.

As far as CALD/PoC being analogous to lesbian/wwsww, my own experience with CALD is that it feels like the government is naming me, rather than having the descriptive power that wwsww does, so I dunno. Though it’s certainly a better term than NESB – it’s funny, I spoke Cantonese before I spoke English, but I started speaking English about a week later, and spoke both languages in about equal parts at home. So technically, I was NESB, but I never really fit in that box, either.

this is really interesting. before i comment i feel i should add that i’m whitey-white-white so only understand these things from that position…

anyhoo my housemate & i were talking once about why people in australia don’t use the term “women of colour” as much as they do in the US. what you’re saying here adds an interesting dimension to that with the fact that discrimination and prejudice aren’t just about skin colour.

i wonder if the absence of “woc” is partly because of the history of indigenous australians being divided according to how black they are? making “woc” or “poc” a tricky one for some who are seen as “white”.

actually it’s also complicated by the different context of “race” here vs in the US, really. indigenous issues seem to be much bigger here than there where the issues of black/latino/a people are so much more prominent. and while indigenous issues are obviously part of the whole racism thing, there are really important differences between racism for indigenous people and racism for other non-anglo people…

and i guess i’m wondering if some of that complexity meant there has been a different focus in anti-racist activism here, and whether that’s related to less talk about “people of colour”.

on the other hand the phrase seems to be taking off a bit lately – maybe cos of the whole blogosphere/internet thing?

what started the discussion with my housemate was that in social work etc they tend to talk about “CALD” people etc rather than “people of colour” as they might in the US.

now that is a complex question in itself really.

(sorry i’m ranting a little maybe. almost finished!)

the only thing i have to add about the CALD vs POC question is that maybe there’s something similar to the distinction between “lesbian” and “woman who sleeps with women”. “lesbian” is good for politics, in my view; “wwsws [hehe]” can be good for stuff like medical records when the important thing isn’t what the person identifies as but their behaviours? although sometimes you would want your identity to be part of how your doctor understands you. but not always, e.g. if they couldn’t understand your identity maybe?

*phew* well that’s a mess of thoughts for you