Lots of connecting threads in this bumper edition!

In our features section, University of Melbourne academic Violeta Politoff shares some of her fascinating research into print media’s coverage of men’s violence against women, while author Anna Krien provides us with an extract of her highly anticipated (and just launched) book ‘Night Games’, looking at ‘Sex, Power and Sport’.

The extract begins with a great footy anecdote from Victorian Women’s Trust Executive Director Mary Crooks.  Mary’s yarn refers to a past Herald Sun article reporting on how former Blues Coach Denis Pagan berated the team for ‘playing like girls’ … Which leads me to this month’s Keeping it Reel submission, from Lesley Turnbull’s exhibition ‘Throw Like A Girl: The Tomboy Project‘.

Mary is an ardent Blues supporter, and our ‘First Person’ column this month has Janny Ryan taking us to the streets of Carlton, and recollecting a quaint conversation with a stranger.  Geographically, sitting behind the suburb of Carlton, is Brunswick, where I interviewed the fabulous Kavisha Mazzella for this month’s Bonza Sheila (I still have her beautifully moving song ‘All God’s Beggars‘ that she wrote with Arnold Zable for the asylum seeker play ‘Kan Yama Kan’ playing in my head – thank you Kavisha!). Also this month, Elisabeth Morgan from the Trust links us to a ’round-up’ of critiques on the very popular HBO series ‘Girls’, in Culture Club.

To go full circle, ‘Polly Ticks‘ also has a look at the prevention of men’s violence against women, this time with a focus on the ‘politics’ of addressing the issue.

And just to bring some of these threads together and more, next month we have Carlton great Ted Hopkins writing for us on the AFL and women.

Stay tuned!

Sarah Capper, Editor, Sheilas.

sarah@vwt.org.au

Sheilas resident cartoonist Judy Horacek has blown us all away with this month’s ripper cartoon! We absolutely love it.

More of Judy’s work (including merchandise) can be found via her website.

You can also follow Judy on twitter, or like her on facebook.

A Slutwalk protest in Edmonton, Canada

It’s often suggested (particularly in ‘developed’ countries like Australia) that violence against women is not as serious as it once was, that it’s more of an issue in ‘other’ countries/cultures, and that victim blaming is no longer considered a valid mainstream point of view. For example, in 2011 the Age published an article criticising the SlutWalk protests (a global protest movement which began as a reaction to a Toronto policeman who said “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized”). The article says that:

“… SlutWalk, like its pretext, is a one-liner. The organisers insist the Canadian cop’s dodgy remark is indicative of a deeper problem and cry ”enough is enough!” I don’t entirely buy their exasperation; it seems a little forced. They’ve had enough of … what, precisely? Yes, too many people still have a blame-the-rape-victim mentality, but the tide is clearly against them.”

The article goes on to argue that law reform in Australia has mostly solved institutionalised victim blaming, and that mainstream opinion has turned against victim blaming because “the ‘no means no’ concept has been thoroughly explored in pop culture, from Jodie Foster in The Accused to countless TV cop shows.” Unfortunately, after extensively researching media coverage of violence against women, I can say with confidence that victim blaming continues to be a problem – and not just for a small minority who are going ‘against the tide’.

Professor Jenny Morgan and I, in collaboration with VicHealth, have been researching this issue. Our 2012 report shows that, while explicit victim blaming is rare, 17 per cent of 2007-2008 articles from The Age and the Herald Sun covering violence against women include details which could imply that the victim is (at least partially) responsible for enabling the violence (e.g. taking a ride from a stranger, drinking heavily, etc.). Similarly, our research on coverage of sexual assault shows that 16 per cent of articles in our sample include commonly held misconceptions about rape, or ‘rape myths’. Among these are problematic ways of understanding consent, and suggestions that women often lie about sexual assault.

After establishing this baseline data, we wanted to see how sexual assault was represented in high profile cases – stories which receive high levels of coverage and commentary. We decided to consider the representation of sexual assault allegations against well-known sportsmen. Not only do these allegations receive large amounts of coverage, they are also cases where the accused is known to the public, and the (unknown) complainant is often young, and may have been willingly partying or drinking with the accused. Therefore, these cases tend to include elements which are often seen to suggest the complainant enabled the violence.

We found ‘Hard’ news stories are far less likely to include victim blaming elements than features, letters to the editor, or opinion pieces. When discussing complainants, often the stereotype of the footy ‘groupie’ is invoked – a stereotype which serves to undermine the veracity of the allegation. Statements like “The reality is there are women out there who do hunt footballers down, are prepared to have sex with them in nightclub toilets” (Herald Sun, 19/5/2009), and “I hate to let you know but there are some girls out there who are not that prim and proper (Daily Telegraph, 15/5/2009)” were common in discussions of allegations of sexual misconduct by celebrity sportsmen. Among the responses to ‘Spida’ Everitt’s shocking victim blaming tweet in 2010 was an op-ed piece in the Herald Sun which argues that “a post-grand final party after a bender is probably not the smartest place to find oneself in the early hours of the morning… women could also smarten up a bit about where they do and don’t find themselves… Save yourself the heartache, stay safe and know that you will never end up in a mess that could haunt yourself forever”. Although this author says at one point that sexual assault is never the woman’s fault, the story nevertheless suggests that if women were smarter about their behaviour they would “never end up in a mess”. We found these types of (often contradictory) sentiments to be depressingly common.

In spite of this there is something of a silver lining. While it’s disappointing to see victim blaming continue to hold any relevance in public debates, we did find articles which challenge these views to be relatively frequent. So it appears that while women’s behaviour continues to be scrutinised in relation to sexual assault (and these views don’t appear to be living outside the ‘mainstream’), at least these ideas aren’t going unchallenged. Thankfully there is SlutWalk, and a multitude of other outspoken organisations and individuals working hard to make sure victim blaming and rape myths don’t go uncontested. Finding that resistance to victim blaming also participates in mainstream discussions is motivating – and reminds us of the need to keep resisting.

‘I suggested that Denis might like to drop around to our home after a Sunday morning training session, have a coffee with us and tell our girls to their face how pathetic their gender was,’ said Mary Crooks, cackling. It was 2005 and Carlton were down by seventy-seven points at half-time when their coach, Denis Pagan, lashed out at his players, calling them a bunch of ‘schoolgirls and sheilas.’

A few days later, the back page of the Herald Sun carried the story. ‘Pagan was alleged to have hurled all the abuse he could at his players for being in this terrible predicament at half-time,’ recalled Crooks, ‘and it seems the worst barb was to suggest they were playing like sheilas and schoolgirls. I had a flash of anger!’

Crooks took to her computer and wrote Pagan a letter. She told him about her work at the Victorian Women’s Trust, in particular overseeing an exhibition to mark 100 years of federation called Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Lives.

‘Hundreds of women,’ said Crooks, ‘from all walks of life, doing the most amazing things – usually unheralded, unremunerated and most certainly not in football’s Halls of Fame.’ She wrote about how women’s unpaid work was devalued and about her and her husband’s two daughters. ‘I wrote that we were intent on bringing them up to feel confident about themselves, filled with positive qualities and, importantly, wanting to be positive contributors to their society.’

Crooks then suggested Pagan come over for morning tea and tell her daughters that this upbringing was all for nothing, given their gender. Within a week, Crooks received a phone call from Pagan. She smiled, recalling the coach trying to make amends. ‘He wriggled, squirmed and said that he sort of, had not really said what the Herald Sun had printed and that maybe he sort of, might have said that girls were not as physically strong as boys.’

‘Poor Denis,’ said Lauraine Diggins, who was at Carlton the same time as Pagan. ‘He was so surprised, he had in no way intended to demean women. Footy was just so separate from the rest of the world. He learnt something that day.’

A couple of days after Pagan’s call, Diggins phoned Crooks and told her that the Women of Carlton – the official female supporters group of the Blues – loved the letter. By the end of the month, Carlton’s club president sent a formal invitation to Crooks asking if she would be interested in becoming one of the female ambassadors for the club. Crooks happily accepted.

*

In the finer zoos of the world, species of animals are

often added to the mix because they have a calming

effect on the group as a whole. It’s a strange idea but

it does work. You don’t fight the problem – you shift

it by changing the power dynamic of the group.

So wrote Damien Foster, a professional mentor, in the Age, in light of the spate of sexual assault allegations against footballers – and slowly but surely the leagues and their clubs have been doing exactly that. Women are taking up jobs once offered only to men, support roles as fitness advisers, podiatrists, dieticians, physiotherapists, trainers, counsellors, public relations managers, sports scientists, umpires and referees.

Many of these appointments come with teething problems. Elaine Canty was appointed to the AFL tribunal in 1996. The tribunal is a curious scene with foldaway chairs, where players turn up in often ill-fitting suits with top-notch QCs or footytragic lawyers working for free for their favourite club, and where the jury might find itself watching a seven-second television grab of a controversial tackle for hours. When her role was announced, Canty was inundated with hate mail. A central objection – most notably from the legendary coach Ron Barassi – was that a woman couldn’t do the job, having never played in the league. And it was true: the lawyer and broadcaster had never played professional football. But nor had the majority of the other members of the panel. This revelation produced an uncomfortable silence – no one had ever thought of asking the question of the tribunal’s male members.

Speaking to the AFL Record in 1999, Canty emphasised why women needed to be represented in the league: ‘It’s an industry, whether we like to think so or not, and it has to be a reflection of women’s place in the general community.’ She added that these changes were not simply about wanting to be virtuous: ‘I think they’ve [the AFL] made a cold-blooded commercial decision that it is in their interests to involve women in the administrative side of football.’

It certainly beats ragging out single mothers, as the league did in its 1994 report, blaming them for the decline in junior participation in the eighties: these over-anxious mothers were said to be steering their children away from footy and into sports they considered less dangerous, such as basketball and soccer.

And it certainly makes up for the 5.7 million hours of unpaid work that 48,000 female volunteers contribute to the game annually. That’s approximately $69 million in free labour, according to the AFL’s calculations in 2003.

‘The future of football is feminine,’ announced the FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) boss Joseph Blatter in 1995 – and Australia’s football codes caught on. The AFL is one of the few male-only sports codes in the world that can boast a large proportion of passionate female supporters. The columnist Chris Kenny did the maths in the Australian:

Men still dominate attendances, with Australian

Bureau of Statistics figures from 2010 showing

that 1.7 million males attended Aussie rules games

compared with 1.2 million women. So female

attendances are more than two-thirds the male

number.

Rugby league, by comparison, had a million men

Attending and 600,000 women – something less

than two-thirds. While the fractional differential

is not large, when combined with the overall higher

attendances it shows there are twice as many women

attending Aussie rules as league.

In England, less than 15 per cent of those attending Premier League football are women. So you can see why the ‘future is feminine’ – what successful business would alienate half of its clientele?

Cue the NRL’s ‘To the Women in the League. We Salute You’ campaign. Accompanied by the melodic tinkling of a piano, promotional footage shows selfless mothers painting white boundary lines on the oval, pumping up a football, stapling documents, hauling boxes of trophies from their cars, opening the cafeteria and attending to a player’s leg injury.

Over the images a deep gravelly male voice says:

This is dedicated to the unsung heroes

who ask for nothing and give everything.

You are the guardian angels, the gatekeepers,

and the champion’s champion, carrying the

weight of thankless tasks with selfless hearts,

you are the wind beneath our winners, the

goddesses of war and peace, the patron saints

of the sideline, the canteen queens who wear a

beanie like a crown, you are the dream makers

[camera flashes to little boy wearing footy jumper]

who understand that greatness is not born, it is

earned and easily squandered. You sculpt lives of

greatness out of grass and dirt and mud, you

don’t seek fame or glory, but know this – our

victories are your victories.

Excuse me while I vomit.

Are we changing stereotypes here or simply reinforcing them? With soppy advertisements like this one, it would be easy to keep seeing women as mere service providers. You have the mothers who cheer from the sidelines, drive to and from games and training, cook carbohydrates the night before, volunteer in the canteen and scrub the grass stains out of uniforms; women idolising their ‘boys’ who can do no wrong. Then there’s the female support staff tending to the players’ injuries, massaging their hamstrings, studying their eating habits and micro-managing their media image.

These are the ‘good’ women – or, as Kevin Sheedy and Carolyn Brown wrote in their book, the ‘forgotten heroes.’

Oh, and let’s not forget the WAGs, the tail of the dog. Otherwise known as ‘wives and girlfriends’ of footballers, they are expected not only to take over the reins from Mum, but to look hot too. They are service providers and trophies (and at the other end of the spectrum is the player who wins the wooden spoon for picking up the ‘ugliest chick’). In the Herald Sun: ‘Every sport has them, their stars wouldn’t perform as well without them … Take a look.’ On radio: ‘Triple M makes a calendar of Melbourne’s Hottest WAGs!’

When three Brisbane Broncos players found themselves under investigation for claims of sexual assault at a nightclub, where they said they’d engaged in consensual sexual acts with a woman in a toilet cubicle (one of the men had filmed it on his mobile phone and phoned another player, saying, ‘Guess what’s happening inside here?’), the Daily Telegraph thought it relevant not only to note that one rugby player had ‘lost his girlfriend Emma Harding’ as a result of the incident, but also to link to a photo gallery titled ‘Bronco Stunner Emma Harding.’

And amazingly, Wayne ‘the King’ Carey’s fall from grace in the AFL came not after he grabbed a woman’s breasts on a city street and told her, ‘Why don’t you get a bigger pair of tits?’ Nor was it when it came to light that his North Melbourne club had negotiated a $15,000 settlement with a woman who claimed to have been sexually harassed by Carey and another AFL player. Nor when he provided a character reference in court for the  drug dealer and gangster Jason Moran, who was later murdered in Melbourne’s gang war. No, Carey hit an all-time low in the popularity stakes in 2002 when he shagged teammate and vicecaptain Anthony Stevens’ wife in a bathroom at a party.

Touchingly, the Kangaroo players publicly linked arms around their vice-captain and Carey was shunned. But the issue wasn’t about morality – if it had been, Carey would have been shunned years earlier. It was about propriety and betraying a teammate.

While I understand that employing more female support staff helps chip away at an entrenched and blinkered male society, and that the presence of professional females can help to rehumanise women in the eyes of these young men, it’s the absence of females at the two most powerful ends of football that stands out: at the top and on the oval.

There is gender imbalance and there is power imbalance. And without fixing the latter, the former will continue to stink of servitude.

*This is an extract from Night Games: Sex, Power and Sport by Anna Krien, published by Black Inc. RRP $29.99. Also available as an ebook. www.blackincbooks.com

A couple of months ago, I took a cab ride into the city. The conversation moved to what job I had – and when I mentioned the Victorian Women’s Trust, the young male cab driver looked a bit perplexed. I explained that the Trust funds projects addressing discrimination and disadvantage faced by women and girls living in Victoria, only to be greeted by more confused looks.

When he asked specifically what I worked on, I said ‘Communications and Policy’, and the conversation drifted towards law reform and I mentioned working on addressing men’s violence against women.

He asked about laws relating to this. I mentioned family violence, sexual offences and how many laws over history were created by men and not necessarily ideal in terms of outcomes for women. I then made the quip that it was only in the early 1980s that rape in marriage became illegal. This caused the biggest eyebrow raise, which I could see through his rear vision mirror from the backseat.

“Rape in marriage?” he said, with a high inflection in his voice that indicated a question.

“Well, when a woman, in this case, a wife, is forced to have sex with her husband, without her consent, against her will – as in raped,” I tried.

“But what do you mean?” he genuinely asked, followed by an incredulous, “She’s my wife!”.

I could see we needed a much longer cab ride to address the ‘confusion’. I had one more attempt at explaining, paid the fare, and was again reminded of the world I inhabit, and the disconnect between the ‘ordinary person’ and the sector I work in, and how there is a daunting amount of work to continue.

***

Last week I was at the inaugural White Ribbon International conference, where participants were overloaded in hearing three days of talks centred on the prevention of men’s violence against women.

The official opening of the conference included a panel of pollies – welcoming guests to Sydney and all talking the talk on their commitment to violence prevention.

We had the Federal Minister for the Status of Women, Julie Collins, open the conference with a $1 million announcement to set up a new national organisation to engage with the community on preventing violence against women and children. Collins apologized for the Prime Minister being unable to attend, because she was attending to a little document known as the ‘Federal Budget’.

Collins was followed by the Shadow federal Minister, Senator Michaelia Cash, who told us the issue was “above politics” and talked about how committed Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is in addressing the issue. So committed, she mentioned ‘Tony’s Pollie Pedal’ and raising money for the Manly women’s refuge in his electorate.

Cash departed after giving her speech – noted at the start of the NSW Women’s Minister Pru Goward’s address, “and I thank Senator Cash who is leaving now”, and the others followed suit soon after their official duties and the session ended.

Inside the conference booklet, we had a message from the Prime Minister Julia Gillard, about how the “Australian Government stands with White Ribbon in its endeavour”.

This was followed by a message from Victoria’s Minister for Community Services Mary Wooldridge, who wrote of the State’s Action Plan to Address Violence against Women and Children as covering “prevention, early intervention, and response measures”.

And finally there was a message from federal Green leader Senator Christine Milne, who wrote about campaigning to make domestic and family violence as a separate form of discrimination in law. On the surface, it appears that politicians really care about this issue.

The conference itself included a mix of speakers from around the country, with some international ‘gurus’ in the prevention of men’s violence against women also attending – like White Ribbon founder Michael Kaufman and educator and author Jackson Katz.

Both gave arresting presentations, with Katz in particular honing in on some home truths. Katz joked about being applauded for stating the bleeding obvious on various issues that even still seem to be missed by mainstream media discussion – for instance he talked about the gun massacres in the United States and noted that of the last 60 odd gun massacres, all but one were perpetrated by men – and how that if this had been reversed in terms of gender, there would be widespread discussion about ‘what is wrong with our women?’ – yet instead, the debate focuses on gun control and mental health, and is devoid of gender analysis.

Kaufman talked about the history of White Ribbon, and its humble Canadian beginnings around kitchen tables, and talked about how societies which have bigger gaps in gender equality and reinforce traditional roles of men and women, also have higher rates of men’s violence against women.

This point was superbly articulated in the keynote address by Dr Michael Flood, one of Australia’s experts in men’s violence against women and in gender studies:

Men perpetrate violence against women because they believe in gender inequality.

Men assault and control their wives and partners because they believe that men should have status and authority over women, that they have a right to punish ‘their’ women; and that violence is a legitimate form of punishment (Adler, 1992: 269). Men pressure and coerce women into sex because they believe in gender inequality: that they are entitled to access to women’s bodies; that women are malicious and dishonest; that men should be strong and forceful and dominant.

Another way of putting this is that there is a crucial link between men’s violence against women and sexism. Men’s use of violence in intimate relationships “is particularly reinforced by sexism, the ideology of male supremacy and superiority” (Gamache, 1990: 71).

Taking a global view, rates of men’s violence against women are higher in societies in which manhood is culturally defined in terms of dominance, toughness, or male honour. Rates of violence against women are higher in societies with rigid gender roles.

The whole address is well worth the read. Flood’s emphasis on gender equality as being key to solving the problem (although as he notes later in his speech, there are other factors at play, but this is key to solving the issue), poses the follow-up question as to how Australia fairs in terms of gender equality.

Our rates of violence against women certainly echo other western countries. We know the issue of violence against women including sexual assault is underreported. But from some reputable organisations we do have some pretty stark facts:

From the ABS, we know that since the age of 15, almost 40 per cent of women have experienced violence. From Vichealth’s research, we know that violence against women is the leading contributor to death, disability and illness in Victorian women aged 15-44, being responsible for more of the disease burden than many well-known factors such as high blood pressure, smoking and obesity. From KPMG, we know that the the total cost of domestic violence on the Australian economy was $13.6 billion. And perhaps the starkest of facts come from homicide data – that a woman is more likely to be killed by her partner or her ex-partner, than by any other person, and that in terms of numbers, this translates to a woman being killed almost every week in Australia, at the hands of her male partner or ex-partner.

In terms of gender equality more broadly, in a 2011 International Women’s Day address, federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick nominated four areas in Australia where inequality still prevails – pay equity, women’s leadership, sexual harassment and yep, violence against women.

In terms of political representation, out of 189 countries, Australia ranks 46^th in terms of the proportion of female representatives (federally, if you average the numbers of women in the House of Representatives and the Senate, it’s around 30% (the Reps has a smaller percentage of around 25%)). The Gillard Government has seen record numbers of women in Cabinet and in decision making positions.

If violence against women is inextricably linked to gender inequality, what sort of impact does politics and policies have on addressing the issue? And indeed, in a political environment which is traditionally, and more often than not, male dominant? When we change governments, is it ‘much of the same’, or does a change of government impact efforts to reduce men’s violence against women?

Dr Michael Flood provided this analysis towards the end of his speech:

If gender equality is the solution, what do we do about governments which are not very supportive of gender equality? On Monday morning, Michael Kaufman said that the White Ribbon Campaign is “politically non-partisan”, that these issues “have to transcend our political differences”. He urged a ‘big tent approach’, saying that “We will speak with one voice.” Later on Monday, Coalition Senator Michaelia Cash echoed this, stating that addressing violence against women is “above politics”.

I disagree. A Coalition government may [be elected] in September, and I’m not sure if what I’m about to say will make it impossible for me ever to work for them. It will depend on whether they want what Australia’s public service used to call ‘frank and fearless advice’, or just advice which makes them ‘comfortable and happy’.

If saying that ending men’s violence against women is ‘above politics’ means that the two main political parties both will support efforts to reduce and prevent this violence, then all well and good. So perhaps saying that this issue is non-partisan, above politics, is strategically useful. But at a more substantive level, the issue is not at all above politics.

Conservative political parties and conservative political agendas do have an impact on gender, and thus on violence. In general, the political agendas of the Coalition are more likely than those of the Labor Party to maintain women’s economic dependence on men, to limit women’s access to political decision-making, to put children of divorced and separated parents in the hands of violent fathers, to limit women’s sexual autonomy, to support narrow constructions of gender and to refrain from educational and media efforts to change them, and to entrench various forms of social disadvantage. And these then feed into a greater likelihood of men’s violence against women.

Equally, it’s broadly true that there is greater support for gender equality among the parties to the left of the Labor Party, those more progressive political parties and groups which contest the margins of parliamentary politics. I’m not saying something stupid here, that a vote for Tony Abbott is a vote for violence against women. That’s too simple. But it is undeniable that a party which fails to address gender inequalities is a party which also risks failing to address violence against women.

Should Abbott form Government post September, the new federal government will no doubt continue to address the problem of men’s violence against women (although I doubt official government policy will preface the word ‘violence’ with the word ‘men’). Abbott will need to bridge a steep learning curve if his comments regarding White Ribbon earlier this year are anything to go by – when asked by a commercial radio what ‘White Ribbon’ addresses, the leader of the Opposition offered a hesitant “cruelty towards women” as a response. Sure, cruelty could be perceived to be part of ‘violence’ against women, but the comments were particularly naive in light of Abbott actually being a White Ribbon ambassador (according to White Ribbon, he is still listed (albeit with a spelling error) on their website as an ambassador).

For women and men who care about this issue – who want their daughters to grow up in a society free from violence – it’s worth considering what government you want to put in place that is best positioned to actually make a difference on this issue. And one that can preferably bridge the gap between cab drivers who don’t understand the concept of ‘rape in marriage’, and what workers in the family and sexual violence prevention sector have been solidly working towards for decades.

sarah@vwt.org.au

After greeting the dog Bella and having a quick tour of the Balinese styled backyard, Sarah and Kavisha sat down for a bowl of dal in a cosy backroom that smelt of incense and spices, and was adorned in colourful rugs and treasures from all corners of the globe, complete with a framed screen-print of Burmese activist Aung San Suu Kyi. Below is transcript of their chat about Kavisha’s life and achievements.

Kavisha leading the Women’s Anthem rehearsals, 2008

SC – I want to start off with you being the daughter of a Burmese mother and Italian father, who I understand met in England and moved to Perth when you were a little girl. I’m just wondering how this cross-cultural lived experience growing up led you to music?

KM – My mum was musical and I always wanted her guitar. It’s funny how kids think they’re entitled to their parents stuff, and I said, ‘Mum, give me your guitar!’ and she said ‘No!’ – and I thought she was being cruel. Then one day in Grade 7, I’d done really well. To my surprise, I topped the class – because I was one of those people who always came fourth, or third and my parents were so pleased, they bought me a guitar.

This was my first guitar and I was so excited. I just practised and practised and practised – such sore fingers, just burning through. I just wanted to play and I was obsessed. So my Mum taught me three chords, and the rest, they say, is ‘mystery’.

SC – Did your Mum sing?

KM – Yeah, she’s got a beautiful voice. She plays piano and has early onset alzheimer’s now, but she knows hundreds of songs and still plays piano every day, it’s brilliant.

SC – Because you play guitar, banjo, mandolin, piano accordion –

KM – And piano – I did piano studies up to Grade Six which is Year 12 level, and you know, you can’t take a piano around with you and so I instead got really into guitar. Cathie Travers was a year above me at school and is an amazing musician. She’d be in the playground, playing at lunch time, so we had a little lunch time band.

And we used to sing, ‘Ground Control to Major Tom’ –

SC – David Bowie.

KM – And Carly Simon, ‘You’re So Vain’, and all these sorts of songs. And I remember we had this nun at school and she used to say ‘Oh, I’d rather be hanging around you two than doing playground duties!’, and instead she’d be sitting with us, singing with us. It was fantastic. Cathie went on to become a really, quite famous, contemporary composer of piano, and is an amazing piano accordion player in Perth. It’s amazing she followed that musical path and that we formed a connection in the playground.

SC – Great environment.

KM – It was. And the nuns, I have to say, were very supportive of us. We were really lucky to have good supportive leaders in the arts and music and I’m pleased to say my school, Mercedes College in Perth, is now a performing arts school. After I left of course.

SC – Well I dare say you would be a heralded past student, as well as Cathie.

KM – Yeah, they’re proud of us. They did support the arts, even though it wasn’t an official performing arts college at the time. I’d like to think that we possibly may have had an effect on their thinking, because that nun I mentioned, she ended up as the school principal, and that’s when they changed the school to have a performing arts focus. She saw how happy we were playing music – she could see how much the kids loved it.

SC – Do you think that your work with different communities through your music and artistic pursuits was influenced by your parents different backgrounds and that migrant experience?

KM – My parents were living multiculturalism before it became a known word in the 1970s, when the Whitlam Government and [Immigration Minister] Al Grassby started talking about the concept. I think it’s really important that leaders name experiences for people and allow them to embrace it. People do look to leaders, that’s why it’s important what’s happening now, for example with refugees.

The way leaders behave effects everybody and their attitudes. The fear of refugees is coming directly from our leaders and if Prime Minister Julia Gillard turned around and said, ‘You know what, we got it wrong, we’ve been wasting all this money and let’s be a bigger country,’ people would follow that lead. If only leaders realised how much influence they really have.

When I was growing up, we lived multiculturalism. My Mother is Irish Scottish Burmese and my Dad’s Italian, so we had Asian food one night, and Italian another. And immigrants were all the friends of my family, because we had migrated. My parents friends were the families of immigrants and their house was an international household.

My parents really accepted one another. The Asian side really accepted the Italian side and they really loved the mix and the experiences they were introduced to – their world was opened up. The other day I asked my Dad, ‘What would you say is the best thing you’ve learnt from Mum?’ and he said, ‘I was so narrow-minded when I met your Mother, and she has opened me up to the world’. It was so touching to hear that.

My parents had a shop. When I say shop, we had a café and a ten pin bowling alley. We went to work there after school – every day we would be there for a couple of hours, helping Dad in the shop and we were next to the ABC in Perth.

So my Dad, being Italian, bought a coffee machine – one of the first in Perth – you know, we came to Australia “BC” – before coffee! So all the ABC presenters would come in to get the good coffee from my Dad. Consequently, when they were interviewing people, from the Harlem Globetrotters, to Jeannie Lewis, they’d come to our café.

We were exposed to all sorts of cultures and artists – and even though we were working class with a shop, we had all these artists, musicians, the symphony orchestra members, coming in to order coffee and hamburgers.

We had this weird world where everything met. My parents introduced a real social ability to us and I feel that’s helped me with my work – working side by side with any kind of member of society in community work.

SC – I read that you began singing in church choirs and then transitioned into the folk scene – and there’s a natural marriage if you like, between folk music and community. I’m wondering if this was a natural progression for you?

KM – Sure. Well folk actually means any song that tells of the condition of society. My first teacher was my Mother. And then I joined the church choir which became a folk choir. My friend Alicia, she was my guitar teacher and she was interested in all these poet songwriters – like Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Buffy Saint Marie, Joni Mitchell – and any song that could cross into a church context. We’d end up singing Simon and Garfunkel in the communion! It was pretty wild, when you think about it.

But it was also the 1970s and a really interesting time, even in the spaces you would think as being conservative, ie the church, and the nuns – they were really open to new things because it was such an open time.

SC – You’re not just a musician. Your music is steeped in working with different communities from a cross-section of cultural backgrounds (like your work with the Italian Women’s Choir, with asylum seekers, with women). Activism seems very much embedded into your artistic inclinations. How do you view this relationship with social activism and your artistic output?

KM – I feel that if art can promote dignity and compassion in society, then that’s what I want to be part of, and doing. My art is like a tool – I feel it’s a way I can contribute. I know that art heals, and art brings people together, and we can have a lot of fun doing it. And if people are connected, it just makes society better, full stop.

There was a time when I wanted to be the singer, and for want of a better word, the pop star, which is really all about ‘me’. But after awhile, it’s not meaningful, if you’re not opening it up to a broader canvas. It’s not really about ‘me’, it’s about ‘us’. I get a lot of pleasure onstage singing and people applauding, but it’s really not enough. I feel at peace doing stuff in the community.

It’s like two wings of a bird – one is the solo musician, the singer / songwriter, and the other is the community – and music brings it all together for me.

SC – I want to talk to you about the theme of story-telling that is woven through your work, and in putting pieces of history back on the public record. I’ve got three different examples from your work that I want you to consider in light of the thread of story-telling – and what the projects have meant to you.
The first example is your asylum seeker involvement. I know you’ve done a lot of work with refugees, but one piece that stuck out was the Trades Hall plays where you collaborated with Kurdish musician Dursan Acar on the play ‘Kan Yama Kan’ (Arabic for ‘Once Upon a Time’), working with refugees who’d been in the Woomera Detention Centre.

KM – We did an earlier play called ‘I came without my Mother’s hand’. I was sharing a house with Carmel Davies, who’s an English as a second language teacher, and she was teaching when all these refugees started to come. She had written a five minute role-play play. I suggested we make a bigger play and include all these issues that people come across when they move to Australia. And that became ‘I came without my Mother’s Hand’.

We got a $1000 grant from the City of Yarra. We got people to bring in photos of home and projected them onto the background and people came on stage carrying an object, and one of the first lines was, ‘We used to sit on the balcony in Sarejevo, drinking wine and listening to music,’ highlighting just normal things people did back home, and ‘I come from Kurdistan where the mountain flowers smell so sweet’. They would make a sentence about something they lived. And then everyone came out and said, ‘And then war came’. So the idea was to teach them English through simple language in telling their stories, and it was so successful.

We got a bigger grant, over $50,000 –

SC – From the Australia Council.

KM – Yes, and we got Arnold Zable on board, as well as Robin Laurie, Carmel of course, Trish Parker, a set-designer who has now sadly passed away, she created a beautiful set, and Alice Garner who went on to start Actors for Refugees. I was there for the music with Dursan. It really was a remarkable performance. I’ve got a slide show of it.

It was a group of friends with similar concerns and we put our creative talents together, and that’s where I wrote, ‘All God’s Beggars’, with Arnold. And that was sold out for ten days at Trades Hall and it was just incredible!

People who came through the journey of the play healed. One woman, Ohan, who’s a primary school teacher, wore the traditional hijab and couldn’t be seen in public talking, so we had to put her behind a screen, as a shadow, talking.

After this play she decided she couldn’t stand the repression anymore, and the next time I saw her she was without a scarf. I didn’t recognise her, she looked ten years younger. Just doing that play, the fact she couldn’t be seen with an audience every night – it made her really question everything. It was really powerful for her to go through that. She’s come out and she’s doing great work now.

It was phenomenal. It was life changing for everyone. It was very well supported by the Melbourne public; people like [Lawyer and Refugee advocate] Julian Burnside came along.

SC – I read that Julian Burnside described you as “one of our country’s best songwriters”.

KM – I got a lot of support from Julian. I made a CD, Silver Hook Tango, and he was one of the major patrons.

SC – The second example of that story-telling tradition at play in your work that I want to ask about, is Tunc Justice, which the Victorian Government commissioned you and other musicians to contribute to in 2004.

KM – They commissioned me to write a piece for the Italian Women’s Choir to sing at the Eureka 150^th celebrations at Ballarat. So I decided to write from the point of view of the women, exhorting the men to go out and fight. The thing that is often overlooked with the Goldfields is the international scene – they spoke many languages, and if you could speak many languages, it was like gold.

And Raffaello Carboni was a linguist and he was Peter Lalor’s left, err, right hand man. Although we’re talking left here, left hand man! He was his translator talking to the miners.

SC – And you used his poem?

KM – Yes. It is the poem that opens his eye witness account of the Eureka Stockade, which I initially found hard to read because of the 19^th century, formal style language. We’re much more casual and conversational in our language today. But after awhile I got used to the music of that language. So I wrote a piece based on his writing – I wanted his voice to live again.

And the Italian Women’s Choir, bless their hearts, they went down to Ballarat and took the place by storm! In the last scene, they’re banging pots and pans with wooden spoons and the crowd went nuts! It was so great they could participate – that there were people of all cultures who should be sharing in the Eureka experience.

Kavisha and husband Andy on their honeymoon

SC – And the 3^rd story telling example that I have to bring up with you is ‘Love and Justice’, a women’s anthem commissioned by the Victorian Women’s Trust, publisher of Sheilas, to commemorate the Centenary of women’s suffrage in Victoria in 2008, performed at Federation Square with a 400 plus women’s choir.

I’m particularly interested in the process in trying to capture the voices of those feminist pioneers who campaigned for the vote, in what is such an important, often untold history.

KM – Well it was hard!!!

After I said yes, I then thought, ‘How am I going to do that!’. And then I went to India on a honeymoon with my husband. I was watching television in India and an ad came on for microfinance – an extraordinary ad where women were walking over this hill with their children, and they looked into the camera and said, ‘Women have the power!’. I was thinking how I would never see this in the West. And the ad talked about all the world’s resources running out, and then said, ‘There is one resource that remains untapped,’ and then the word comes on the screen, ‘WOMEN!’.

I got such a shock! And then the line came to me: Gold. Untapped treasure. Women’. Yeah! Which became the line in the anthem, ‘Women are the real gold, for all of us to treasure,’ and that was my line in.

I was thinking about Vida Goldstein. There’s that word ‘Gold’ again! But when you write anthems, you’ve got to tap into historic memory.

SC – And [Trust Executive Director] Mary Crooks took you up to see the ‘Monster Petition’?

KM – Yes. Mary took me to see the petition and it was amazing! Just to see the signatures on this massive role of calico. It was very moving to hear the story. And I heard all these amazing stories, of people travelling on horseback, of going door to door, to get all these signatures.

SC – 30,000 signatures.

KM – Yeah, in six weeks.

SC – At a time with virtually no communications.

KM – To get 30,000 signatures now would be amazing. And the fact that it took 19 private members bills in parliament. It has such a long history. The first attempt was in 1889.

SC – And it was passed in 1908. Almost 20 years.

KM – Yeah, unbelievable. People just persisted, which is a great example for us now where we want immediacy, things done, now, now, now [clicks fingers]. So we shouldn’t get discouraged about refugees and issues like that because things take time. We have to just keep persisting.

Mary was my sub-editor if you like. The song was about healing as well, there was a link to violence and healing that violence against women. I didn’t realise one of the big issues of the day was alcohol fuelled violence – and how women with no social supports protested about the violence through the temperance movement.

I’m so used to being independent. But what was great was Mary challenging the words, asking why I’d put stuff where I had. At first it was difficult, but after I got over my artistic ego I began to question  things as well. And then I got excited about it because she was my devil’s advocate. We were playing this game with the words and she was just nudging me in the right direction. I realised I wished I had someone who was such a tough sounding board on all my projects!

What I love about the anthem is that every International Women’s Day, I’m still getting feedback from women all over the country. Someone will write and say my choir is singing this song and everytime I sing it, it just brings shivers to me. Great feedback.

SC – And the whole idea with the anthem, was gifting it to women everywhere to sing.

KM – Yes, and that’s been a great thing.

SC – Another question I need to ask you, I know you founded the Joy of Women (also the name of your first album) Italian women’s choir in Fremantle in 1989, and then founded La Dolce Della Luna, the Italian Women’s choir in Melbourne in 1996.

KM – and I’m about to leave them. I’m leaving them in the next month.

SC – Setting them free?

KM – Yeah, I’ve got another wonderful woman, Vera, who is passionate about Italian folk music, and to do this job you have to be passionate about people, and passionate about the form – and then you can learn to be a choir director. She’s crazy about the music and crazy about the people, so I thought, ‘She’ll work!’.

SC – I’m sure you’ve got a lot of inspiration and hope through your work with the Italian women’s choir, I’m just wondering if you can share a highlight from the long association you’ve had?

KM – If I could start briefly with the first way I met them. I had done a play in Fremantle called ‘Emma Celebrazione’, by Graham Pitts, about the life of Italian woman Emma Ciccatosto migrating to Australia. That was a great success in Fremantle.

I left Perth in 1993, came here. And the Playbox called me up in 1995 and said they wanted me to do the play again and form another choir. So we put an ad in Il Globo, and fifty women turned up and I was thinking ‘Oh my God, I have to audition them,’ and I said, ‘You know what? You’re all in!’.

They became two choirs that we alternated on different nights to do the show. It was so successful we got a return season, and it was like the project that kept giving. So we started meeting every Monday night.

I’d say the last big performance I was involved in was a big highlight. We got invited to Womadelaide. Womad said to us, ‘We want a choir of 22’, and with a choir of 47, I said ‘Are you joking? Are you trying to split up my choir?’. They said they only had money for 22, so I said we’d fundraise for the rest. Which was just fabulous. Forty-seven of us got on the train – forty seven women and forty seven picnics! And they were sharing food with the people on the train –

SC – And Womad is such a spectacular experience too – for an audience member, let alone a performer, I imagine –

KM – It was really good, and the choir just blew people away because they are just so warm hearted. If you’ve never seen it before you can possibly compare it to last year’s Russian entrants in Eurovision with the six grandmas! That really reminded me of the way the women sing – that really heartfelt open way, full of joy. They don’t really have an ‘off’ button, it’s just on! And it just seduces people. People can’t help but smile and sway. We had a sea of people dancing waltzes at Womad – we got them all dancing – it was so brilliant.

And also because of their age. They defy the stereotype of the Italian woman at home, basically being the servant of her husband and children. So these women have defied that – they’ve done that, but they’ve also had this other life on stage, and it’s been so exciting to them.

They’ve also played at Woodford Folk Festival, for the Folk Festival Fire Event, for 2000, for the Millennium, where they just blew everyone away. In fact, Neil Cameron, who directed that, said that’s one of his favourite moments – when the Italian women, sang at the Fireworks event – and that ancient quality of voice rang out over the valley, and it was just wild.

SC – So lots of highlights –

KM – Too many to mention!

SC – You got an Order of Australia in 2011 for services to singing and songwriting and reflecting the experiences of women, refugee, multicultural and indigenous communities. What did this mean to you?

KM – It’s funny. When you’re a migrant, and you get something like that, you think, ‘Oh, I’m finally accepted!’ [laughs]. It was very moving, and I was really pleased – more for my parents. Of course I felt pleased for myself, especially when sitting in a room with all these people who’ve done amazing, inspirational things – it’s very exciting. I still sort of felt overwhelmed, but it was really beautiful and humbling and great – in particular from the view from my parents who’d been through so much, they sacrificed a lot for us. My Dad and Mum were always working. We had holidays, but not like our Aussie mates. So it was just a great honour and I felt really pleased for them, like it was something I could give back to them.

SC – One silly question. If you could have a dinner party with any women over history, who would they be?

KM – Mmmm! I thought Mary the Mother of Jesus, would be a really good one. ‘What really happened, Mary?!’. I figure that anyone who is the mother of Jesus must be some heavy duty chick!

SC – Yeah, immaculate conception..

KM – Yeah. Having said that, I’d really like to meet Mary Magdelene and have a good chat. ‘So, what was he like?’. [Laughs]

SC – Two Marys.

KM – Oh and Frida Kahlo, Edith Piaf, and I dunno, Joni Mitchell.

Tracy Bartram! [who we had mentioned in conversation prior to our interview, who sang on Love and Justice]. There’s so many great women!

Oh. Garibaldi’s wife – Anita. She sounds bloody amazing!

Wow, can you imagine what sort of food we’d have! Bit of Middle Eastern, bit of South American, bit of French. Very multi-cultural meal there.

SC – Basically traditional Australian cuisine, really ….

KM – Yeah, absolutely! And very Melbourne!

SC – Final question, what’s next for you – I know you’re working on an album.

KM – I’m doing on album of traditional Italian folk, a solo album, with just me on a nylon string guitar. I want it to sound like a 60s folk album. I’ve recorded 13 songs, and I now need to go into fundraising mode to print and produce the album. I’ve got to raise about $7000 to finish it off.

SC – So any generous Sheilas readers could help contribute to that?

KM – You can go to my website and pre-order a copy. That’s my main project I’m working on, and I’m about to go to China to study Tai Chi. I’ve been doing Tai Chi for seven years – it just mentally balances all my creative stuff, to have a more meditative side of life. Especially with the body, you know we’re not getting any younger!

SC – Well on that note, thank you, and your musically-gifted body, very, very much, and for being our Bonza Sheila.

KM – Thank you very much.

To pre-order a copy of Kavisha’s new album, click onto her website www.kavisha.com.

**NB: there has currently been an issue loading Kavisha’s website. This should be rectified soon – if you are still having trouble, please contact us at sheilas@vwt.org.au.

This month, Melbourne sheila Janny Ryan had a brief encounter with an interesting stranger while waiting for the bus in Carlton…

On a recent Monday, late afternoon, two of us sit and wait in Lygon Street for the bus into town. I’m pleased when she comments that the bus service is pretty good, not because I’m desperate to get into town but because she’s someone I think I’d enjoy talking to.I enquire if she’s a regular user of the service.

“Just on Mondays”, she tells me.

“Ah, the Nova”

“Yes, that and just being in Carlton. I love it. I love the whole European feel, that fabulous cake and coffee place…”

“Brunetti’s?”

“Yes.”

“So you approve of the new one?”

“Of course, it’s wonderful. So European.”

I tell her I overheard a young man in there describe it as a cross between the Starship Enterprise, the QE2 and the Vatican.

“Well, did he like it?” she wants to know.

“I think so, he seemed happy enough.”

“Good, because if he didn’t he could always wander up the road and buy a coffee at one of those 7-eleven places.”

She mentions that she’d grown up in Carlton, in Nicholson Street ­­ – “the Fitzroy side” – but it’s Carlton Gardens and Lygon Street where she fondly recalls spending a lot of time. She adds that she’d later lived for fifty years in Europe. I’m seriously curious about those Europe years but our discussion is still Carlton-centric.

“I grew up here and I’ll be buried here,” she says, dipping her head northwards to the Melbourne General Cemetery.

I’m used to people saying they love Carlton when I’m asked where, in Melbourne, I live. Country friends and relatives dine in Lygon Street when they’re down for the football, I know of people from Melbourne’s fringes who visit every weekend. Carlton belongs to everyone. And there’s always the cohort who reminisce and regret that their families sold up and moved out, but it’s rarer to meet someone who’s paid to be interred in Carlton. I learn that she now lives in Brighton and, despite two excellent cinemas in Brighton, prefers to travel to the Nova on Mondays and enjoy her old suburb. She often sees two movies on the one day: this day it’s Song for Marion (“not bad”) and Cloud Atlas (“I walked out”). I’d seen the latter film some weeks earlier and told her I’m not sure if I liked it or not but hadn’t walked out. She preferred English actors to American ones.

We see the bus coming and ready ourselves. My walking stick brings a note of recognition. She’s used one herself in the past recovering from hip replacement surgery.

“I’ve had TWO”, she tells me conspiratorially.

I tell her I’m now going into brag mode and indicate my tally with my fingers, adding that I didn’t think I could go through it again. As we get onto the bus she’s effusive in her sympathy – “you poor darling, oh dear” – but I’m over discussions about hip replacements. It’s those fifty years in Europe I want to get back to as we settle in beside each other. We talk surgeons for a bit. Hers is a well known guru in orthopod circles. Mine is less flamboyant, has no bedside manner to speak of, but has served me well. She agrees that skill precedes charm and backs it up with personal experience. When she moved back to Australia she had to find a new GP. She wandered into a local medical practice and whispered to the receptionist, “who’s the best“?

The receptionist quietly recommended so-and-so, adding, “very dour but knows his stuff.”

“He’ll do,” she told the receptionist.

To me she adds, “I managed to get a smile out of him.”

Nearing Melbourne Central I ask where she lived in Europe.

“Oh, all over. I was an opera singer. I’ve still got my voice, I’m 79 but I could sing Aida tomorrow.”

As we get off the bus she tells me to be careful. And I say the same back. We exchange first names. She hopes, as I do, that we run into each other sometime at the Nova.

She heads south along Swanston Street and I note her near perfect gait and imagine her holding audiences captive in Covent Garden, La Scala… I also vow to go and see Aida the next time it comes to town.

These two images of ‘Fitzy’ and ‘Bam-Bam’ come from Lesley Turnbull’s Throw Like A Girl: The Tomboy Project

Lesley writes: The archetypal tomboy as portrayed in children’s fiction and adult literature is commonly posited on the brink of adolescence. The tomboy (revered in childhood for her ‘tomboyness’ – qualities pertaining to independence and adventure), is now cast either as rebel, seen to repeatedly wrestle against a performance of femininity; or as queer, shamed by her seeming inability to be feminised and thus becoming outcast.

Throw Like A Girl: The Tomboy Project is the result of a practice led research project 2011-2013, investigating the concept of ‘the tomboy’ beyond the childhood stage. This body of work – twelve large-scale photographs with text-based images– responds to both the actual experience of the tomboy during adolescence and through differing stages of adulthood, whilst mapping the landscape of the metaphorical and poetic associations of this aspect of the female experience.

To make the work, I enlisted willing participants who identified themselves as tomboys, either currently or in the past. It was paramount that all participants self-identify. The project includes audio tape recordings with those who proffered stories about themselves in relation to their ‘tomboynesss’.

To read more – and see more of Lesley Turnbull’s work, check out her blog here, and website here.

Show Us Your Pics!

Photographers of all persuasions please note – if you have an image you would like to share with us and our readers, send it to us for publication consideration (sheilas@vwt.org.au).

Send us the photo, subject (if they wish to be named), where it was taken, and a sentence or two about it.

Please note: main photo subjects need to give their permission for their photograph to be published on Sheilas. If you have any queries, email us at sheilas@vwt.org.au.

HBO’s Girls - the mind-child of young and enviable talent Lena Dunham, now two seasons in – has become one of the most hype-fuelled television series around; dividing, confusing, shocking, impressing and insulting critics in its wake.

Girls is based on the misadventures of four twenty-something inner-city New York women trying to muddle through the awkward and gruesome world of newfound adulthood. Hannah Horvath, the show’s protagonist played by Dunham, is a would-be writer dealing with a confusing semi-relationship, recent parental financial cut-off and her own unhinged narcissism.

The Guardian’s Lucy Mangan describes the show as…

“…astonishing in about a million different ways: for being the product of someone so young and inexperienced; for being stuffed with dislikeable, dishonourable characters who move in an almost entirely affectless universe without alienating every viewer within the first 40 seconds; for being honest to the point of brutality (especially in the now-legendary sex scenes, which take every screen and social convention about what can and should be shown and reduce them to rubble); for its sheer audacity in dramatising a ceaselessly self-dramatising generation and never letting sentimentality or partisanship blunt its edge; and for still being funny as hell.”

With the generally overwhelming amount of criticism towards the show in mind, The New Yorker’s Emily Musbaum writes…

“ The show isn’t perfect – it’s got cartoonish bits – but then most interesting art isn’t … It lingers and rankles and upsets. Like any groundbreaking TV, it shows the audience something new, then dares it to look away. Small wonder some viewers itch to give the show a sound spanking”

And a sound spanking it has been, on everything from the unapologetic sex scenes to the privileged whiteness of its characters.

DIVERSITY

A lack of racial diversity has been one of the most popular criticisms of Girls, raging in season one and marginally dying down in season two after Dunham cast Community’s Donald Glover as Hannah’s sweet, questionably republican boyfriend.

During season one, a Jezebel article by Dodai Stewart claimed the show has a “serious problem when it comes to race” and the lack of diversity in Girls is “exclusionary, disappointing, unrealistic, and upsetting”, adding:

 “we, the public, have the right to critique the insular, homogenous world a young woman with the good fortune to have her own TV show has chosen to present.”

Lucy Mangan is more sympathetic to Dunham:

“to my mind it is absurd to castigate Dunham for not managing to do everything in one bound, when she has succeeded in so much. Moreover, as feminist writer and activist Erin Watson once said of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique: ‘In my experience, people can speak profoundly well for themselves, and do both themselves and others a disservice when they try to speak for everyone else at the same time.’”

Dunham herself has discussed her reluctance to speak for everyone when responding to media org NPR about the criticism:

I am a half-Jew, half-WASP, and I wrote two Jews and two WASPs. Something I wanted to avoid was tokenism in casting … Not that the experience of an African-American girl and a white girl are drastically different, but there has to be specificity to that experience [that] I wasn’t able to speak to. I really wrote the show from a gut-level place, and each character was a piece of me or based on someone close to me. And only later did I realize that it was four white girls. As much as I can say it was an accident, it was only later as the criticism came out, I thought, “I hear this and I want to respond to it.” And this is a hard issue to speak to because all I want to do is sound sensitive and not say anything that will horrify anyone or make them feel more isolated, but I did write something that was super-specific to my experience, and I always want to avoid rendering an experience I can’t speak to accurately.

HBO Watch pointed to the fact that Girls has been singled out on the issue:

“these same criticisms could be applied to any number of programs across all networks.  Why pick on Girls specifically?  In it’s debut season no less.”

Others have argued that the same kind of criticism would not be levelled at a show written and directed by white males. A satirical blog post entitled ‘If People Talked About Seinfeld Like They Talked About Girls’ was published by Mike Trapp on College Humour:

“It’s just these privileged white people (and I mean, they’re ALL white) living their lives in New York. The only non-white characters are wacky immigrant cab drivers and soup vendors. Oh, hilarious: they can’t speak English well — what’s so groundbreaking about that?”

Another aspect of the post points to the way Dunham – not a conventional beauty – has been accused of deliberately pairing herself up with hot guys in the show; something that is rarely said about self-written male protagonists such as Jerry Seinfeld, Woody Allen and Larry David.

GUYS IN GIRLS

In a Huffington Post article, Hollywood actor James Franco looked at Girls from a male viewer’s perspective. He identified with the “struggling creative types” in the show, but had trouble relating to the male characters.

“The guys in the show are the biggest bunch of losers I’ve ever seen. There is a drip who gets dumped because he bores his girlfriend; a dad who hits on his babysitter; a bevy of wussy hipsters who are just grist for the insatiable lust of the too-cool girl with the British accent; and the king of them all, the shirtless dude who talks funny and hides his stomach all the time.”

Lena Dunham responded bitingly to Franco’s criticism with show-runner and friend Jenni Konner in an interview…

Konner: “I think it’s funny that he called them losers. It just made me laugh, because I was like, well, yeah, because you’re like a cool star who host[ed] the Oscars and you have all these amazing things.”

Dunham: “I’m sorry all our first girlfriends couldn’t be The Practice’s Marla Sokoloff.”

Dunham went on to question why Franco wrote a critical piece in the first place…

I really felt like whoever is his Svengali manager was like, “You have to host the Oscars, write a novel, also, it’s important to dabble in TV criticism this day and age,” like it’s how you stay relevant.

…SNAP!

SEX SCENES

The sex scenes in Girls have sparked discussion across the board. Most have taken the view that the sex depicted in the show is ‘bad sex’ – awkward, degrading and uncomfortable.

But Girls staff writer Leslie Arfin thinks we are missing the point…

“I don’t think ‘good vs. bad’ is what we should be asking. Sometimes good = bad and bad = good. Especially for our Girls girls. We make bad choices and learn good things as a result”

In an excellent analysis of Girls for the New York Review of Books, Elaine Blair similarly appreciates the sex scenes from a more nuanced perspective…

Girls never suggests that a smoothly pleasant sex life is something worthy of serious aspiration. The ultimate prize to be wrung from all of these baffling sexual predicaments is a deeper understanding of oneself.

To think of one’s romantic life as a game of numbers and animal pleasures, on the one hand, or as one long search for a spouse, on the other, is to miss the point. We can only justify our freedom by giving full attention to the human relationships formed by sex, even if those relationships are brief or strange.

Blair also sees the depictions of sexual relationships in the show as contributing to something exciting, subversive and revolutionary in film and television. She believes that Girls…

“ Reveal[s] the common facts of life that romantic comedy has never been able to show. For instance… that you can be wildly attracted to someone without having great sex. Or that you can have landed a handsome, funny, devoted boyfriend and then one day find him completely repellent… Sexual desire can also, in the crucial moment, fail to overwhelm us, and in our world this is really the more urgent, anxiety-provoking, and lonely situation. Dunham has intuited this fact and put it to use in all of her work.”

SEX AND THE CITY

Girls has also been comparatively pitted against Sex and the City – a show it is arguably indebted to, but transcends in terms of its realistic complexity. Clementine Ford, In her Daily Life article Why ugly sex is important, looks closely at the depictions of sexual experience in both shows.

“The sexual landscape of adulthood as presented in GIRLS boasts more subtle shading than the black and white mounted stencil seen in shows like SATC.”

“…while there’s no denying that SATC might have created a broader dialogue about sex among women, it also denied the complexities that exist in sexual relationships… My own experience suggests that sex, unlike the entirety of the SATC franchise, doesn’t come neatly wrapped up in a pretty box with an upbeat morality lesson attached. Unlike SATC, the sexual escapades of GIRLS are messy, often unattractive and occasionally primal. In short, they’re human.”

MAD MEN AND ENLIGHTENED

On the topic of female characters in television, we can’t go past the women of Mad Men in its new season. Amanda Marcotte has written a fascinating article in The Guardian profiling each of the female characters, where they fit within the tumultuous late ‘60s and how they adapt to shifting gender ideologies of the times.

The New Yorker’s Emily Nusbaum also urges us to check out the drastically underrated HBO series Enlightened, starring Laura Dern as Amy Jellicoe. The show was axed after its second season despite critical acclaim. Nusbaum draws comparisons between Girls protagonist Hannah Horvath and Enlightened’s Jellicoe:

“If Hannah mirrors Louis C.K., Jellicoe is a sister to Larry David. She wants to be peaceful, brave, and decent, but her needy personality makes everyone she meets want to claw off his or her face… Highly original and humane… it’s a satire of feminine New Age do-gooderism that shares the values of all it satirizes. Like Parks and Recreation, Enlightened bridges the comedy divide between warmth and smarts: it makes me cry more than any comedy I’ve ever seen”

*Image via hbo.com

**This article was written in the style of our Sheilas Monthly Mail, sent to the inboxes of our subscribers between monthly editions. If you haven’t yet subscribed, type your email address in the top right corner of the screen!

Also this month:

- Judy Horacek has a cheeky take on the successful attributes of public life,

- Bree Turner looks at the history of funny women in Culture Club

- Anoop Nair provides this month’s ‘First Person‘ column, on his experience migrating to Australia

- Hannah Gadsby is our ‘Bonza Sheila‘, just in time for the end of the comedy festival

- and yours truly looks at the eulogising of public figures, from the late Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin to Baroness Margaret Thatcher, in this month’s Polly Ticks

Also check out Keeping it Reel for a beautiful image from Pippa Dodds of dancer Anna Seymour.

Thanks for reading and contributing. For a Sneak Peak for the next edition, see here.

Sarah Capper, Sheilas Ed.