Posts by Hilary Cameron
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Speaker: Not even a statistic, in reply to Jackie Clark,
Yes, this. So much this.
I've always had this thing where I just love night-time. I especially love running alone at night in the dark. I've never felt scared, maybe because I grew up on a farm where the same perceived dangers just are not there. Or whatever. I actually had a friend at uni once who asked me "So, do you have some thing where you want to be raped?" because I didn't see an issue with cutting through the same gardens in the dark as we did in the day. It's moments like this that have made me so aware of the societal expectation that we should be afraid, like it is a duty to ourselves to be, and that pisses me off.
The thing is even though the realisation hasn't lead to me being more cautious or fearful, it has made me so much more aware that this thing I do that I love I do at my own "peril". I'm forced to accept that the price I pay is that if something were to happen to me, there'd be far, far more blame apportioned to me for not "being responsible" than the offender. That makes me really fucking angry.
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Up Front: Lighting the Dark, in reply to Tess Rooney,
Amongst women? Yes. As a society as a whole? I think it's largely no, not to this extent. I'm a young 'un, but I don't ever recall men being as engaged as we are seeing here. Even if it's just "Ok, I'm going to sit down and shut up and listen to you."
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After reading writehanded girl's recent post on Yes All Women ( TW, if you venture to those posts) I really wanted to find some NZ stats and I was bloody shocked, but maybe I shouldn't have been surprised.
According to Rape Prevention Education:
In Aotearoa New Zealand, up to one in three girls will be subject to an unwanted sexual experience by the age of 16 years. The majority of those incidences would be considered serious.
Up to one in five women will experience sexual assault as an adult
For Maori girls and women the likelihood of sexual violence is nearly twice as high as the general population
Reporting of sexual violence in New Zealand is very low, with an estimated 9% of incidents ever reported to police.
Sexual violence has a very low conviction rate in Aotearoa New Zealand, with only 13% of cases recorded by the Police resulting in conviction.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
There is a damn big problem here. What kind of society do you have when only an estimated 9% of women feel safe enough to be able to report offending against them? And a 13% conviction rate? What is WRONG here?!
Shame it's taken such a horrific act to bring this conversation to the surface, but it's clearly so, so important. I think I need a cup of tea and a lie down...
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I was quietly quite stoked to see "Royals" win, I thought it was really deserved on its own merit.
The thing that really strikes me more than anything is how incredibly broad Lorde's appeal is. You only have to whack "Lorde" into search on twitter to see tweets from 13 year old girls along the lines of (to generalise): "omg my dad like totally loves lorde too like wtf idk" .
This struck me today when I visited my 72 year old nana, who out of the blue proclaimed how much she likes Lorde's songs. My Nana for gods sake, who sticks primarily to Neil Diamond, Abba and The Carpenters. Not many songs or artists have that kind of power, at least that I'm aware.
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Very, very sorry to hear that. One of the few shows this member of the youth demographic made time for.
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Hard News: Event Season, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Completely true, I agree there is so much talent and so much of it goes unrecognised.
Part of my point is that the Americas Cup is a fantastic platform to showcase some of those under-recognised talents. Don't be too harsh on the yoof, remember at that age if you're a non-occurrence in pop culture you may as well not exist. That's just part of their world. For them to see kiwis being talked about overseas in the context of achievement is invaluable.
I really do think Kiwis have truly been upping our game over the last few years across the board, it's awesome. Events like the Americas Cup, the Olympics...hell, even the likes of 'The Hobbit' is a great example to the kids growing up now.
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I know it's sorta trendy to shit on it a bit ("That money could go into healthcare or eradicating child poverty!"), But I'm glad we are in it.
And this is from someone with minimal sailing experience (I got concussed by the boom, gave the boat a dirty look and didn't go back). But the thing is, I'm of that generation where growing up as a teenager EVERYTHING from NZ was a bit shit.
All we heard about was the 'brain drain', how crap our new NCEA system was, and that music was "Oh, they're pretty good...for a NZ band." It's that mentality that if you want to be something, you'd better get out of NZ quick smart.So it is really awesome to see our kiwi boat doing well against the big boys. It's inspiring. It's like that argument about the effect of the moon landing , and the economic benefits it created in the US ( one calculation was that the spinoffs were $14 back on every $1 spent on the original mission). I get that might be a stretch, but it irritates me to no end how safe we are with investment sometimes in this country. If you play it safe, what do the young-uns have to aspire to?
Just read interviews with Lorde (another example of awesomeness, good on her) and how she talks about NZ. She's gotten some flak for "culturally barren" "noone cares about NZ" etc, but thats how kids here feel. They need things to aspire to, more than just the All Blacks.
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Pretty sure she did see it. Right around that time she tweeted "Let 'em talk. " That's class.
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Ugh, Thankyou! I get it: don't feed the troll, but this one wound me up too. That awful comment about her being 'sexualised' had me confused, then outraged. If you call that sexualised, then what on earth should she look like?! It just reeks of misogyny. Like you say, if he sees that as wank material, he really has issues.
To be honest, if I look at the pop charts and have to choose who I want my little sister to emulate and idolise, Lorde is my top pick. She's lyrically an unabashed teenager, minus the boy needy-ness. How can we not be a bit stoked that of all the teen girls we could have representing us on the world stage, it's one that does it so well?
If nothing else, the twat is a sorry demonstration that tall poppy syndrome is alive and well.
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Hard News: Jonesing, in reply to Russell Brown,
I feel like part of the critism remains unaddressed, mainly that the irritation at the other two candidates not playing the media game spilled over into the story (hence the focus on Cunliffes call). For me, it really came across as quite unabashed bias.
It surprises me that the fact that repeatedly it has been mentioned that Clarke, Key etc have allowed media into their homes, and yet that was when they were running for PM. I'm not convinced they should be under the same "obligation" in a primary.