SNAP!#23 out NOW!

- Gender Identity Bill - US Plans for Iran - Reply to media hysteria on breats

You can downoad a copy here:

http://www.snap.enzyme.org.nz

ROSEMARY WANTS HER BARBIE BACK – HANA PLANT AND HOLLY EMMA-GOLDMAN WE, the infamous bare-breasted women would like to respond to Rosemary McLeod's column in the Sunday Star-Times concerning our action or, more accurately, the questionable aesthetic value of our breasts. Women, apparently, must conform to media generated ideas about beauty before they bare themselves in political statement.

"There is also the delicate question of the boob sag… at their age many women would despair of such sorry mammary outline," worries McLeod. What young women is she comparing us to? Barbie? Our breasts are sexual, functional and healthy i.e. perfect. Is it better, at our age, that we should have plastic surgery?

What message is Rosemary giving to the thousands of women who suffer from body image illness, anxiety and starvation? If ever we are to take seriously the liberation of women, actions ought not be judged on a culturally biased beauty standard, yet of course this is too much to ask of malestream journalism.

When it came to the weather, she was more concerned with our presentation then how cold we were… "one's mammaries (!?) could resemble windsocks in strong wind." Heaven forbid! In actual fact, it was a lovely day to have your tits out, and if there weren't such 'disorderly' consequences for the baring of breasts, we could have spent the whole day with the sun caressing us.

It seems, in fact, that people's fear of bare boobs comes from an association with, need I say it, the sexual. This is unfair! Prince Charles' (large) ears were out for all to see. Ears are as functional, and as sexual, as breasts, comprising an important part of foreplay. If he has the freedom to display his controversial ears, then what exactly is the problem with breasts? Let us never allow such irrational social mores to dictate our actions!

McLeod concludes that we were, in fact "in need of male attention." Did she consider that we might not be of heterosexual orientation?! Our statement was about many issues. As anarcha-feminists, these always include resisting the repressive assumption that the purpose of the bare female body is to attain, and gratify, the male gaze.

REGIONAL PARK FOR SALE HOW MUCH more land will be lost to private developers in Aotearoa?

All over the country you can see the same thing – a block of land, often in one of the most beautiful parts of the country, bought up by developers and turned into hideous sub-divisions.

Is this what will become of Waitangirua Farm, a large chunk of Belmont Regional Park? Located between Lower Hutt and Porirua this 1250 hectare block of land would make any developer see dollar signs, now it looks as though it may be on the chopping block. Currently owned by Landcorp there are plans to sell it on the open market. When the Regional Council was approached last year to see if they would buy the land they said the price was too high and asked for sale to be held off as they looked into their options.

Regional Council Landcare Committee Chair Chris Laidlaw said, "We will be working with Landcorp and the government in order to put together a package which preserves and enhances the essence of Belmont Regional Park. I'm confident we can reach an agreement."

Currently "Friends of Belmont Regional Park" are trying to lobby the council to ensure that the land remains open to public use. "We want to ensure that this beautiful area is available for future generations to use," said one member. Every attempt by SNAP! to get information on the current status of the deal was meet with a complete lack of assistance by the Council and Landcorp so it is left to the imagination as to what will become of this land.

SUPPORT THE GENDER IDENTITY BILL

NEW ZEALANDERS are protected by the Human Rights Act against discrimination on the grounds of sex, sexual orientation, race, colour, ethnic or national origin, religious or ethical belief, disability, age, political opinion, employment, family and marital status. However, those who identify as transgendered, transsexual, fa'afafine, takataapui, intersex or anything other than 'gender-normative' do not enjoy such clear legal protection against discrimination.

This means it could be construed as legal for a boss or a landlord to fire or evict someone simply on the grounds of their gender identity. Transgender people are routinely abused for looking different to their birth biology - in the street, the home, the workplace, and in prisons and schools. At the extreme end, there have been four documented cases of murder in this country where someone was killed for no other reason than being transgendered and were picked out as 'different.'

These people are not "sexual fetishists," "perverts" or any of the other terms recently tossed about by politicians and the religious right. Most people have a gender identification that matches their physical bodies, but for some the mental and physical are at odds. Georgina Beyer's Private Members Bill was recently drawn in Parliament. It proposes a simple amendment to the Human Rights Act making it clearly illegal to discriminate because of gender identity.

It is intended that differently gender-identified people could make a complaint to the Human Rights Commission when they are discriminated against – just like everyone else already can. More importantly, passing the Gender Identity Bill would send a clear message to New Zealanders that this sort of discrimination is not okay.

Today's news that the bill will be left until after the election was met with relief by some in the transgender community as there was not enough time to organise and elections tend to take the focus off inportant issues.

A rally will go ahead as planned next Wednesday 23 March, 12 noon in Parliament grounds. The rally aims to raise awareness in general of transgender issues, get vocal about the need for this Bill and to encourage people to write to MPs and sign a petition expressing support for the bill.

The trans-gendered community is small, so everyone who cares about human rights is being asked to support them. Everyone is welcome. Please bring friends, family, placards, banners, righteous indignation and the belief that we can make a difference.

V8 – MORE THAN JUST A HEALTH DRINK

1. Do you think ticket prices for the V8 race in Wellington should be subsidised from residential rates?

2. Would you attend the event or stay out of town when it was on?

3. Why are V8's called V8's?

4. Did you have a slot-car set when you were young? Michelle

1. No because I think a lot of people will come from outside of Wellington to come to the V8's specifically. I don't think Wellington residents should cop that.

2. I'll be here, I'll definitely be attending. Yeah, I'm taking clients actually.

3. Because its something to do with the engine. I used to have a V8, I dunno it had a nice rumble.

4. Er no, I'm a girl, I had dolls.

Paul 1. Absolutely not! I have no interest in car races so why should I pay for it? I have lots of hobbies but I don't expect everyone else to pay for them. I'm certainly not going to pay for some car junkies to have a good time. 2. I'll probably stay in town but if anyone gets in my way with any race nonsense I'll give them a piece of my mind, its just a glorification of car culture if you ask me.

3. Dunno' some enginey reason I suppose, if it has four wheels and an engine it pollutes the earth, that's all I know. 4. Yeah a scalectrix, it was cool, and it ran on electricity not petrol, we should all drive scalectrix, it's better for the environment.

Johnny 1. No because it's a niche event, it doesn't justify being subsidised by the ratepayer. 2. Neither. I'd stay in town but I wouldn't go. 3. Because they have 8 cylinders in the shape of a V. 4. I did indeed. I had two cars and I raced my brother in Taupo. It was a scalectrix.

US PLAN TO BOMB IRAN

SCOTT RITTER, a former UN Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq, said recently that US government sources told him that that the US plans to bomb Iran in June this year, and that the US manipulated the results of the recent Iraq elections in order to reduce the United Iraqi Alliance's percentage of the vote from 56% to 48%.

Mr Ritter has become a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq after his stint as weapons inspector, when he maintained (correctly as it turned out) that if Iraq ever had WMD capability it had been neutralized in the '90s. He has since been active in the anti-war movement mainly through his writing and investigations but he has also testified in court on behalf of direct action activists who disabled Iraq bound US warplanes at a refuelling base in Ireland.

Ritter said that Bush has signed off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005. Its purported goal is the destruction of Iran's alleged program to develop nuclear weapons, but Ritter said neoconservatives in the administration also expect that the attack would set in motion a chain of events leading to regime change in Iran, a possibility Ritter regards with scepticism.

Ritter says that although the peace movement failed to stop the war in Iraq, it has a chance to stop the expansion of the war to other nations like Iran and Syria. He held up the spectre of a day when the Iraq war might be remembered as a relatively minor event that preceded an even greater conflagration.

It is clear that Bush's rhetoric about democracy and his lies about WMD's are a mask for his plans for US hegemony over the major oil producing nations ahead of a predicted oil shortage – no matter what the cost in human lives.

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