I have tried to listen carefully to what she has had to say, and consider it honestly. Sometimes I have maintained my disagreements with her. Other times, I have been persuaded. I have tried to educate myself further at times, and have read an assortment of feminist writings (Greer, de Beauvoir, Ehrenreich etc).

There is much that I don’t know, and much that I still have to learn. But there are some things that I would not understand without my friend explaining them to me with her passion. Her passion is part of what is worth considering. When one considers racism, it is not enough to look at statistics. Perhaps a white person can never understand racism as experienced by a black person. But in seeking to understand that experience, one must not just look to statistics. One must try to understand how it feels to them. It is not enough to seek to understand how racism is applied to others – we must seek to understand how it looks to those who experience it.

In the same way, what are important feminist issues may be conceived by men in one way. Women may think of entirely different issues. In seeking to understand, one must understand how women are affected by their experiences.

And my friend is angry. She hates seeing the types of images of women that she sees everywhere. She is angry at how many men physically assault and sexually harass women. My friend has had appalling experiences: but so have many of her friends. It is perhaps easier for women – and certainly men – to respond without anger. By refusing to be angry, and accommodating such things. Saying “it’s not such a big deal” is the first step to accepting how things are. And it’s easy for men to do so. After all, we are generally not affected by violence against women. If society bombards women with pressure to look and act in a certain way, we can get by without objecting to such pressures. Indeed, it’s often easier not to rock the boat, and certainly for a man there’s no shortage of women who will defend such values. So why get involved?

It is people like my friend – who some might call an “angry extremist” – who provide an answer. They do not beg, and they do not pretend to be dispassionate. They demand that more people care. And I think that that is right

My relationship to feminism is a little more complex. However, if we describe feminism as devoted to redressing the substantial socio-economic disadvantages faced by women, and by trying to create a more equal society, it seems to me unimaginable that one could reasonably oppose such a movement. Indeed, it seems to me the only question should then become: what kind of work does feminism have to do?

In Australia, it is not hard to think of major issues. Something like one in three women experiences domestic violence. When I looked at the statistics last year, the government so grossly underfunded women’s shelters, that about one in two women were turned away from them every day. In NSW, when a woman is raped, there’s a one percent chance her rapist will be convicted. Women are paid on average 18% less than men, and this gap is growing. They are significantly underrepresented in many occupations, and in the highest positions.

There is, of course, much more. Emily Maguire – the most intelligent and thoughtful feminist commentator I know of in Australia – gave a lecture describing the obstacles women face through life.

This is not all. For feminism alone cannot address the issues of race and class, and any feminism that fails to do so is not feminist in the sense I described above. Aboriginal women in the Northern Territory like Barb Shaw have urged an end to compulsory income management and the racist measures of the Intervention. Aboriginal women also suffer in particular from rapes and domestic violence. Chris Cunneen’s book, Conflict, Politics and Crime surveyed the literature when he wrote 10 years ago, and noted that 88 percent of Aboriginal women didn’t report rape and assault cases. He quotes Judy Atkinson – an Aboriginal activist – explaining why: “If a white women gets bashed or raped here, the police do something. When it’s us they laugh.” The National Inquiry into Racist Violence describes a police officer describing the dismissal of a rape allegation by a senior police officer, on the grounds that “You can’t rape a coon”. The rape, incidentally, had independent witnesses. One can see the continued failure of the criminal justice system to protect Indigenous women from violence in the sentence former Chief Justice Martin of the Northern Territory Supreme Court gave to a man who raped an Indigenous 14 year old girl: one month. Plainly, it wasn’t a big deal to him, just like when five white men beat an Aboriginal man to death. The “justice” in the criminal justice system should also be considered in the particularly high incarceration rates of Indigenous women, or of Aboriginal people in general, which is significantly higher than blacks in Apartheid South Africa.

A white feminism that fails to redress the particular issues confronting Aboriginal women would fail, just as surely as an anti-racism that failed to address gender issues. And the issues of the privileged white woman are also surely different from the poor and working classes. A privileged woman may be distressed by her inability to live up to impossible demands of appearance peddled in popular culture. There are other issues faced by less fortunate women, without wishing in way to diminish the significance of either. It is to suggest that creating a more just society should be the goal, and this goal should not face narrowly circumscribed limits.

I think these issues can only be understood by more of us listening to angry feminists. We must be willing to learn from those who say things that confront us. I understand the view that feminism should not seek to dismiss or alienate men. In my view, feminism, in my understanding, does not, and the very best of it seeks to understand what gender roles and patriarchy mean for men. Simone de Beauvoir was a brilliant feminist intellectual. In her enormous tome, The Second Sex, she wrote about women being forced to be housewives – and then conceptualised what this mean to men.

If he seems to be the victim, it is because his burdens are most evident: woman is supported by him like a parasite; but a parasite is not a conquering master.

…

If it is asserted that men oppress women, the husband is indignant; he feels that he is the one who is oppressed – and he is; but the fact is that it is the masculine code, it is the society developed by the males and in their interest, that has established woman’s situation in a form that is at present a source of torment for both sexes.

It is for their common welfare that the situation must be altered by prohibiting marriage as a ‘career’ for woman. Men who declare themselves antifeminists, on the ground that ‘women are already bad enough as it is,’ are not too logical; it is precisely because marriage makes women into ‘praying mantises’, ‘leeches,’ ‘poisonous’ creatures, and so on, that it is necessary to transform marriage, and, in consequence, the condition of women in general. Woman leans heavily upon man because she is not allowed to rely on herself; he will free himself in freeing her – that is to say, in giving her something to do in the world.

One cannot expect another de Beauvoir. One can hope that more will try to conceptualise feminism in a way that is not just talking to women, about women, but that also talks about men, and also to men. In Anti-Semite and Jew, Sartre wrote

Richard Wright, the Negro writer, said recently: “There is no Negro problem in the United States, there is only a White problem.” In the same way, we must say that anti-Semitism is not a Jewish problem; it is our problem. … it is not up to the Jews first of all to form a militant league against anti-Semitism; it is up to us.

I would perhaps go a bit less far: feminism is not just an issue for women. It is our problem too. And perhaps if we got angrier about it a little more, fewer women would need to.

The world is a terrible and unfair place. Some of the events that I found most shocking received extremely limited public attention. Obviously, not everything can be as important and exciting as Tiger Woods cheating on his wife. Below, I’ve listed four things that I felt were of at least as much significance as Woods’ infidelity. Some of them received virtually no coverage, some of them were simply covered inadequately in the mainstream media (Copenhagen in particular).

1) The coup in Honduras.

President Manuel Zelaya – freely elected – was kidnapped at gunpoint by the military and flown out of the country. There were massive protests, every other country in the region denounced the coup. Yet the US quietly supported it, refused to cut off aid, and organised bilateral negotiations with Costa Rica between the illegitimate coup government and the elected government, because Costa Rica is a small country with no leverage over Honduras. After months of no progress, and months of harsh repression, a fraudulent election was held, with two candidates running who both supported the coup. The US recognises the new government, effectively legitimising the coup, which it supported diplomatically and financially.

It was never in doubt that the US, with tremendous leverage over Honduras, could have restored democracy in a day, simply by withdrawing support from the US trained military, and the tiny elite that owns most of the country’s wealth. The US decided against this. A spokesperson for the Obama administration said it would be a good message if people in the region learned not to follow the Chavez model. That’s exactly what this was about: yet it received virtually no coverage in the mainstream media

2) The Intervention of Aboriginal communities continues.

Compulsory income management will be expanded over the coming years. Jenny Macklin can declare an area disadvantaged, and then begin quarantining half Aboriginal welfare income.

What does this look like?

People get put onto a Basics Card, which they have to use to spend their income, and which they can only use at certain stores. Right now, only Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory are affected. So, when they go shopping, there are lines for blacks with their Basics Cards, and lines for everyone else, who presumably can be trusted with money. There’s a chance that future expansions won’t target Aboriginal areas, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Soon we may have more open segregation across Australia, like the Centrelink lines with blacks and whites. Stripped of their rights, some have said that this policy is a return to the ration days. And they’re right.

Macklin announced the cotinuation and expansion of these measures based on her “consultations”, despite the repeated urging of every UN observer, the review of the Intervention, and the authors of Little Children are Sacred to have genuine consultations with Indigenous communities so they could design and implement their own solutions. Instead, Macklin produced something like a vulgarly rigged public opinion survey. She has claimed these new measures are based on the evidence, and because people begged her to continue these lovely measures.

According to her own government report, the budget for the Intervention was increased a month before the consulations. Meanwhile, Aboriginal communities with their rights stripped away continue to live in abject poverty, with a complete lack of funding for basic services, schooling and so on.

And how is Macklin dealing with child sexual abuse, the rivers of grog and so on? Out of a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, she is spending $2.6 million on alcohol and drug treatment services. And she is funding 5 child protection workers across 73 communities. That’s how deeply she cares.

3) Copenhagen:

There’s not much to say. The rich countries said in advance they wouldn’t do enough, and now they’re acting to destroy the planet. They’re offering a pittance in aid, refusing reparations for destroying the planet in the first place, and commiting to reductions that will lead to disaster and catastrophe for much of the planet.

Mr Hope himself has offered 4% cuts from 1990 levels, Rudd is willing to insist on 5%, though there’s no evidence his CPRS scheme will actually reduce emissions at all. However, money will continue to be found to hand out to big business. We have billions for corporate welfare: nothing for renewable energy that we would rely on if we planned on reducing emissions. Unless popular movements take on real power, we are going to quietly watch time pass by: we have a few years for emissions to peak before it’s all out of our hands.

Too few of us can say we’ve done enough.

4) Gaza:

The water supply is on the verge of collapse. There isn’t clean drinking water, so babies are turning blue, and developing intestinal and respiratory diseases. The water could be repaired, but Israel’s blockade is too severe. Before the attack on Gaza, already 80% of the water was undrinkable. And that’s for those with access to water: we also shouldn’t forget Israel’s destruction of Gaza water wells.

Israel’s policies are making life unliveable for 1.5 million people. What should also be considered shocking is how unimportant this is considered. Apparently, the view that a government should not force babies to drink polluted water is controversial. Or that one country should not so sharply limit the food supplies of a people that their children’s growth is stunted.

2009 had much to make me bitter. But in every issue there were also the seeds of hope. There is still strong resistance in Honduras and across the hemisphere to the coup. Opposition to the Intervention is growing. International solidarity movements on climate change are developing. And the upcoming Gaza Freedom March is just one of many demonstrations showing a world whose conscience has been aroused to the crimes of the occupation and the suffering of the Palestinians.

I once spoke to a very passionate, brave woman from Gaza. She was a leftist, feminist atheist, who strongly opposed religion, Fatah and Hamas, the Israeli occupation and so on. When someone asked what people in the West could do, she said “we don’t want your money, we don’t want your charity.”

They want our political support.

2009 was not a good year. But 2010 has promise.

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