Write on: Letters to the editor
Germaine Greer
I couldn't agree more with most of Mary Merkenich's article (GLW, July 12) on Germaine Greer's book The Female Eunuch.
When I read it years ago, I was a 47-year-old housewife and was learning what sisterhood really meant in the Adelaide women's liberation movement and my local suburban group. I still recall my shock and resentment at her attitude to other women and her quite slanderous statements on married women and mothers, as well as her dismissal of the reality of men becoming violent, which I was to learn later from bitter experience.
However, I do not entirely agree with all of Mary's conclusions. Some women certainly in the Adelaide movement went into alternative lifestyles but we did have many militant mass street demonstrations, quite a few on abortion and other campaigns.
Of course, Mary is right about the present, urgent need to revive the women's liberation movement, but women are not "once again" working double shifts. Most in married and unmarried partnerships have never stopped doing them, which is why I feel anger to read and hear the frequent thoughtlessly repeated phrase about "women being thrust back into the home". The truth is, they never left it!
We need a real, democratic socialist revolution and one of the first demands should be socialised housework and self-cleaning houses (one already exists invented by a woman and it's environmentally sound), the majority built without kitchens. Then and only then will houses become true homes for all, not unpaid workplaces, automatically eliminating "double shifts".
Findon SA
Excuses
The S11 Alliance in Perth has been going for a few months with support from various organisations and individuals, making it one of the broadest committees that Perth has seen for a while.
It has organised protests outside Nike and Citibank venues, and is planning a series of further actions outside multinational companies in the lead up to S11, when it will hold a major solidarity rally with the protests that will be happening outside Crown Casino in Melbourne.
In the lead up to a recent protest that S11 organised outside Rio Tinto, the Alliance tried to contact the construction union, the Maritime Union of Australia and Union WA to get their support and possibly a representative to speak at the action.
I was happy to see that two MUA executive members had arrived for the rally, together with a few other MUA members, so I approached them to see if they would like to speak. I was somewhat disappointed with their response.
Wally Pritchard from the MUA first questioned whether any of the other speakers were members of the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) and/or Resistance. They weren't, but then he made it clear that he would not participate in anything that was in any way connected to those organisations and refused to speak.
It seems that the mere presence of socialists is enough of an excuse for some officials not to participate in the movement against corporate tyranny.
Perth district secretary, DSP
Wembley WA
No to NMD
Australian Peace Committee members are outraged at the subservient stand taken by Foreign Minister Downer and the Australian government to the proposed co-operation with the United States in their National Missile Defence (NMD) scheme.
We are even more shocked by the government's complete disregard of the June 29 resolution of the Australian Senate, which called upon the United States not to deploy the NMD scheme, and the disregard they show to the 92% of Australians who (in a Roy Morgan public opinion poll) called for our government to take a leading role in the elimination of nuclear weapons.
The current NMD proposal and, indeed, any proposal for ballistic missile defence would be strategically destabilising, costly, and, judging by the two failed tests to date, would probably fail to deliver the security it promises to the American people, while putting the rest of the world, as well as the United States, at an increased risk of nuclear exchange.
The G8 foreign ministers meeting in Japan, the United Nations secretary-general, the European Union, Germany, France, Sweden, the New Agenda Coalition, the Non-Aligned Movement, and 50 US Nobel prize winners have all spoken out strongly against NMD.
The clear statement by US Defence Secretary Cohen that Pine Gap would be an integral part of the NMD system makes clear the danger in which Australia would be placed, no matter where in the world conflict might occur. Australia does not have the right to determine how the Pine Gap facilities are used.
We call upon the Australian government to listen to its own Senate, and to the 92% of the Australian population who look to them to help secure a safe and just world, by refusing to be involved in the NMD system and, further, that they call upon the United States to cease this incredibly wasteful and destabilising scheme.
There are far better ways in which the resources could be used, which would go much further to building a cooperative and peaceful world.
Secretary, Australian Peace Council (SA)
Adelaide
[Abridged.]
Genealogy
I have been following the infertility debate with Helen Riley with interest [see GLW #405, 408, 409]. Helen raises some very valid points for infertile parents to consider. However, Helen's obsession with the sanctity of "biological interconnectedness" and its "fundamentally dynamic role in identity construction and life meaning" is illogical, emotive, and ultimately repressive.
Helen insists on the "right" of the donor child to complete information about the biological parent who made the genetic donation. No mention is made of the right to privacy of either the biological donor, the infertile parent, or their fertile partner.
Helen forgets that most children created through IVF are genetically related to at least one of their parents and so remain connected to their "genetic" family. The analogy should be to step-families, not adoption.
For those few with no genetic link, the information already available to donor children is more than that available to many foster kids and orphans, or that offspring of single parents have on the biological parent that abandoned them.
Of course most infertile couples seek sperm/ova from family if possible. But it is not a simple black and white issue. By limiting the pool of potential genetic donors by denying them anonymity, Helen is making it harder for infertile couples to make their child feel as little "out of place" or "alien" as possible by matching race, physical similarities and culture.
Instead of minimising "genealogical bewilderment", the effect is to make it worse!
And with the dysfunctional family created by capitalism, Helen's glorified view of the purity of motive of a donation from a family member is illogical.
Self-esteem is not based on self-validation by intimate familiarity with family history, but on self-confidence built by being loved and raised in a caring environment by people who will always be there for you, whether genetically related or not.
Helen's insistence on the priority of her genealogical obsession is an insult to every successful foster parent in the world. The person who has made the commitment to be there for the child is the parent — not the one who wanked in a bottle and walked away.
Agnes Water Qld
[Abridged.]