Happy Queens Birthday weekend, everyone.  What a busy and productive month May was. We raised enough money to buy one of the refuge staff members a car! (Roll on Women On Wheels, so that bit is taken care of).

If you want to help us help the women at the refuge this month, you can do that in this one very important way. I need your money. I always need your money but this month, we have to make what’s in the bank account last until July. Because we got our May payout early – so that R could buy her car – it means that we won’t get a pay out this month. All money raised through givealittle each month is paid out the following month. So our next lot doesn’t come, now, until July. A bit of a long wait when you have ongoing supermarket cards to buy, and car repairs to pay for, and all the other random expenses that pop their heads up in this completely unpredictable business we call Auntying. We operate on a very limited amount of money, all provided by YOU and you know what? That’s okay! But it’s a big ask for everyone, me included. We do it, though, don’t we?

So this month, what do we have to pay for?

1. Car repairs. The same woman whose car windows we paid to fix needs her lamp on her jeep fixed too. I wasn’t aware that her ex had damaged that as well when she left. The quote for that is $586. Another woman has let me know that her car needs a bit of panel beating – thanks to her ex. We don’t have a quote for that but she’ll let me know.
2. Supermarket gift cards and KMart gift cards. When the women arrive at the refuge, along with everything else they’re given, they get $100 supermarket gift cards to tide them over. And when they leave they get $150 KMart gift cards so that they can bits and pieces for their new homes.
3. Mileage. A couple of months ago, the Board decided that the thing to do would be to pay me mileage. I don’t currently get paid for full time Auntying, and it is a fulltime job, and so this is the one way I get recompensed. I drive around 800-900 kilometres a month, which works out at about $500-$600 a month. When there’s only ever around $2000 in the bank account at the beginning of each month – sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less – some months I just have to wait to get it paid. The women come first. Always. This is an ongoing expense.
4. Ongoing refuge expenses.  Every month, there’s stuff the refuge pays for – ID cards, licences etc. Instead of using their MSD funding on these, Kris asks for the amount needed and I just put it in the refuge account. This amounts to about $600 a month.

So those are the things your money is needed for this month. You can put that on the givealittle but I would prefer you use the bank account.

MRS V L EDWARDS AND MRS J GOODISON AND OTHERS

12-3077-0008717-00

Thank you all so much. You keep this ship afloat in more ways than one.

Love, me x

Yesterday I was 53. And birthdays, at this age, for me, aren’t a big deal. Every year, since Carol died, I’ve had a party to celebrate life, and so I focus on that instead. How to celebrate life, and getting one year older when Carol doesn’t get to do that.

This year, I wasn’t having a big party. I’m going to spend time in Dunedin, instead, with people I have loved for a long time, and some I’ve loved for a short time. And to be loved, I think, is enough of a celebration isn’t it? But no, I had to up the ante……

Let’s go back a few days. I was contacted by a woman whose car had broken down. She’s a woman who’s integral to the running of the refuge, and she’s also a single mum, and let’s face it, social workers aren’t paid what they’re worth. Working in a refuge with women who’ve lived in violence means you save lives, metaphorically and literally, on a daily basis – but you’re doing it for love, not the money. Let’s be honest.

Part of her being able to do her job is having a car. Carting women and kids to and fro, whipping women away from volatile situations, picking up women from the police, or hospitals….you get my drift. She was enormously reluctant to ask, I could tell. And I could also tell that she was asking but she didn’t think we could help her in a huge way. But she was also asking because she knows that The Aunties can make miracles happen.

So she asked. And I thought, quickly, as I’ve learned to do when processing a request: is it doable? How? And how much help can we provide realistically? So I gave her a figure, and said that’s about as much as we can do. And that was ok with her.

On further discussion, it transpired that actually, the car wasn’t worth fixing. And so, maybe, we could help get her a decent deposit on a car. I knew just the person who would sell her one. A woman of worth and integrity, who knows cars very well, who’s  lived in violence herself,  been a single mum, and she knows the score. I hooked them up, and I hatched a plan. If we could get $800, then that was going to be a really good start. I wasn’t terribly sure that that would happen, but I thought I’d give it a good go.

A couple of days before my birthday, I just thought it was worth using the fact that it was my birthday to give this fundraising a really good bloody go. I passed it by some besties, who told me to go for it. I thought it was cheeky, and perhaps may look a bit disingenous, but you don’t get anything unless you try. So I did.

I tweeted that instead of birthday wishes, or maybe alongside, people pop $5 in the givealittle. I also put a post on my personal FB page, and The Aunties one.  I think a few people caught onto it, and I RTed myself a couple of times. As you do.

And off it went. By 10am there was $2000. By 2pm, there was over $4000, and by this morning, there was $5000.

Yesterday, I did alot of crying, and gasping and saying to myself: YOU ARE KIDDING ME. I said thank you one thousand times over.

And today? Today I am 53 years and one day old, and my heart is like a 21 year olds.

I’ve been pretty lucky in this job. I’ve had a bit of recognition, I’ve got a lot of support, and there’s a really rock solid group of core Aunties who hold me up. But I’ve never seen anything like what happened yesterday.

So: I say this, and mean it.

The Aunties core values are about sustained support, and bringing joy and dignity to all people, but particularly those who have lived in violence. We meet need, with love, where it arises. There are many and varied ways this happens. But none of it happens without the use of social media, and none of it happens without you – the people who heed the requests I make on behalf of other people. and you give. You give. With love. That’s the bottom line. If you give anything in this world, for it to be meaningful, and purposeful, it has to be given with love.

And I am enormously grateful for all the love you gave yesterday.

Once again, I thank you. On behalf of a woman who needed a bit of help with a car, and now she’s getting a new one. On behalf of the women who staff the refuge, and all need to be mobile so they can do their job. On behalf of the women who live in the refuge, and need the staff to be mobile so that they can be safe.

Meeting needs with aroha. Getting it done.

Thank you.

 

#whaeapower

 

 

I’m 53 this year. I’ve been a feminist for a long, long time.
I used to believe that there were many types of feminism, and that we all enact our feminism in our own ways.
I used to believe that feminism was about women.

But I don’t believe any of those things anymore.

If you look at the traditional definition of feminism it’s about the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes. Except. The construct that is gender, and essentialist or binary – ie you’re either a man or a woman – is a false construct. There is much research to suggest, and indeed prove, that. Google it.

Gender queer people were never considered in the feminism that I was raised in. Now, however, I believe that feminism is a movement that should encompass all PEOPLE who do NOT have equal rights. That we should be advocating for those people on the grounds of the equality of the genders, all genders.

That’s it. That’s my hard line.

We’ve won many rights, and we have a long way to go. I would argue that that distance is only covered effectively if we take gender queer people with us, if we deconstruct gender and what that means, if we destroy that toxic masculinity that’s so harmful to us all. That won’t happen if you exclude gender queer people. Feminism isn’t just for white, middle class cis women. It’s for all people that don’t hold the power of the patriarchy.  If feminism is the opposite of the patriarchy, then what does it need to look like?

It’s not men we’re fighting anymore, you see. It’s the patriarchy. Designed by white, cis, wealthy men to keep everyone else out of any power structure they have created. These structures are often aeons old, and designed for nobody else but themselves. And if there’s one thing we know about white cis men, in general, it’s that they don’t like to share power.

So how do we go about denting that power? Taking it for ourselves? Busting the patriarchy that keeps us shackled, those of us who don’t control it, or benefit from it?  In my opinion, we need to stop the bollocks of defining everyone as man or woman. The patriarchy doesn’t hate women, it simply resents and seeks to erase all those who are not they. It searches for disunity, seizes upon it, and 7/10, it wins whatever war it thinks it’s fighting.

This is crucial. If we continue to buy into transphobic rhetoric and fears, if we continue to deny that trans and genderqueer people have a place in feminism, then we are lost. It’s as simple as that.

I used to believe that feminism only advanced if we spoke with one voice. That voice is female and white, I have discovered. This single minded stupidity is costing us dearly. There are many voices in this movement, and white cis women’s voices are no longer as vital to the cause. We aren’t the bosses anymore. We are part of the movement. But we aren’t the impetus that is required. We must keep raising our voices, but we must also seek to boost the voices of others. To listen more. To be aware of how internalised misogyny works. And understand how harmful we are being if we deny trans people their place in the movement.

This shit needs shaking up. Gender needs to be destroyed. We are humans. If, and only if, we can accept that, that it’s about working together, and sharing power, we might get somewhere. Otherwise, we are as bad as the patriarchy we purport to be fighting.

I’m a woman.

But I’m a human first and foremost.