The first time I purchased my own makeup was in 1994 at a pharmacy in Chartwell Square, a sprawling shopping mall in suburban Hamilton. I’d been pilfering my mother’s for years, but in my ill-fated first year of university I had drawn down the “materials costs” component of my student loan and I was heading in for some concealer.
The power of Lorde’s voice online managed to project from the netherworld of cyberspace and tear into the real life last night as she sent out a treasure hunt that saw Aucklanders ripped from their lounge rooms and rushing around town in a confused and curious friction.
Twenty years later and I still get a little sense of unease when I wander into the women’s wear section of Farmers Lambton Quay, or spend fruitless hours looks for a non chintz print edition of a t-shirt dress in the Lyall Bay Warehouse. I still notice the glances I get when I’m going around with makeup on my face, that are absent when I’m being read as male.
Kina Sai is an artist, musician, photographer and human rights activist. She went to the Auckland Pride Festival this weekend and took a snapshot of our largest Gay Pride celebration
Look, I’m all for putting the boot into the cops about their incredible expansion of surveillance, bugger all oversight to their powers and don’t start me on the poorly resourced Independent Police Conduct Authority, but shanking Mike Bush in the media as a hypocrite for leading an organisation that would now stop someone becoming a Police Officer for drink driving is the most petty of examinations.
PLEASE NOTE: I realise that transgender issues are a minefield which a stupid cis-male like me can blunder into and cause harm. That’s not my intention and please accept my apologies if I do.
Around the world, but very prominently in New Zealand, the turn away from class politics to identity politics as the principal organisational form of the Left occurred just as the social democratic compromise was undone and inequality began to rise again. Unlike class politics, which unites workers of all colours, genders, and sexualities to oppose capitalism, identity politics was not able to deal with this reconsolidation of power by the capitalist and new financial elite.
Well there goes another February 14th. Evenings of whimsical sighs, chinking champagne glasses, and adoring compliments across the Pacific as indigenous folks send their thanks out to the Hawaiian cousins that took care of business, and finally put an end to the diseased, kidnapping, murderous, thieving invader called Captain James Cook.
When confronted by such a self interested industry, stealing from them seems like a sensible response.
Entitlement. It’s a work that I’m reading more and more often of late. Used to describe an attitude born of various privileges. Take New Zealand’s former Prime Minister tugging on a waitresses ponytail. I’d class that as entitled behavior. Clearly John Key felt that he had tacit permission to lay his hands on this young lady.