demodernise

DAY TEN: Gender-based violence in the archives: Curating the past without perpetuating harm

Kirsty Stewart writes about the role of the archivist and the problems of taking a neutral voice in curation when many stories are underpinned by gendered violence and silencing womens’ voices.

Kirsty M Stewart

Featured image: “The old style archives” by ʎɔ. is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

It has long been a part of archival training that archivists bear a neutral voice in describing records in catalogues for their users. Recently, that notion has been actively dispelled as the predominantly white, middle-class profession realises that it brings to bear a white, middle-class perspective on describing, arranging and even collecting archives.

Two examples of this are the following accounts relating to the Gaelic community in the Outer Hebrides in the 1800s in which gender-based violence has been perpetuated or altered, perhaps even sanitised, as they make their way through history. Women have had their names erased (sometimes thankfully) but also their voices – their dissent or distress ignored in favour of a good story or song.

The accounts come from the notebooks of the nineteenth-century Scottish folklorist and antiquarian Dr Alexander Archibald Carmichael (1832 – 1912), which are inscribed in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. Held at the University of Edinburgh, this archive contains priceless pieces of Scottish folklore and oral tradition. Perhaps even more precious are the accompanying notes detailing the individuals who recounted or were recounted in charms, songs and stories.

“Màiri Bhòidheach” [Beautiful Mary]: ‘…she could never bear to hear the song’ One jarring example concerns the song “Màiri Bhoidheach”, a highly regarded example of a Gaelic song about unrequited love between a man and a woman. In a notebook from 1877, Carmichael reveals the real story behind the song, which heard in North Uist in the Outer Hebrides. It was written by the local schoolmaster, Alexander Stewart (1764-1821), in the 1890s about Mary MacQueen (1783-1860), the minister’s daughter.

(Archives reference GB 237 Coll-97/CW108/47)

*“Mairi Bhoidheach”*
*was the daught[er] of Rev. Alan MacCuinn*
*son of Rev. Donul MacCuinn, Taigh*
*earry. Song composed by Alexander*
*Stewart a schoolmaster. Kept the*
*school at Baileanloch – the only one*
*in N. Uist at the time. Stewart was*
*alleged to have used some familiarity*
*with some of his female pupils which*
*whether founded or unfounded caused*
*a feeling against him & he left. The*
*children of the best people in N. Uist at-*
*tended his school Miss Mary MacCuinn*
*(Nic Cuinn) was one in his school, and she*
*took sl such a dislike to the man that*
*she could never bear to hear the song. She*
*died some some [sic] 15 years ago or so – aged*
*She was a very tall handsome portly*
*woman of mild benevolent disposition.*
*Stewart left Uist about the year 1800.*

Stewart had a reputation for ‘familiarity with some of his female pupils’. He had moved on because of ill-feeling against him, ‘whether founded or unfounded’, Carmichael’s informant had added. Mary’s physical appearance and character are noted as if to validate the song. It had entered local lore that Mary ‘took such a dislike to the man that she could never bear to hear the song’. Yet this did not stop the performance of Màiri Bhòidheach in her own community and many others for decades to come. How many other pupils might have squirmed or felt relieved that the song was not about them?

This example raises uncomfortable questions for those of us who curate records. Songs and stories about the abuse of vulnerable girls can be preserved as entertainment but to erase them might falsify history.

Alexander Stewart has been remembered as the composer of a beautiful love-song. Mary MacQueen’s story, her hatred of the song and what it truly meant, is little more than a quiet note in the archives.[1]

“…with much quiet humour”

In another entry ‘Eòlas na Budha’ (charm for jaundice), this time from 1883, another young woman’s distress became the object of derision.

Carmichael noted down a long-standing story from South Uist. Angus MacEachen (c.1810-1890), a herd, was called to treat the daughter of Roderick MacMillan ([fl. c.1850]), a neighbouring farmer. Aged 18 or 19, the girl in this story was, Carmichael noted, ‘a stout portly good looking girl’. Angus made a great show of heating a red hot poker, asked her mother to bare the girl’s back and then had everyone leave the girl’s room. He led her to believe that he was going to put the hot poker on her bare back. But at the moment she expected it, he placed a cold piece of iron on her back instead, to her great distress. ‘She roared and roared and screamed causing her mother and all the people in the house to rush into the room’.[2] (Archives reference GB 237 Coll-97/CW87/11)

In the published version[3], Carmichael writes that the young woman’s “mother and sisters burst open the door, calling on Mary Mother to rescue the maltreated girl, and on Calumcille[4] to redress her wrongs”. Yet the last word belonged to Angus MacEachen himself, who “told of this and similar cases with much humour, but without a smile on his lips, though his eyes sparked, and his countenance glowed with evident appreciation of the scenes.”

Once again, this young woman is identifiable, if not by name in either the notebook or publication by her relatives. That this is how she was ‘cured’ would be known in the community and with Angus’s reputation for curing may have been used as a dramatic example of his abilities. It also has the air of a cautionary tale for other girls/women. This young woman’s lack of choice or control, the indignity and cruel humour embedded in the tale (‘the cure’) would probably have been felt by her for many years.

Curation

So, what can the archivist do about these stories and the ways they have been preserved?

We cannot shy away from the wrongs perpetrated on Mary MacQueen or on Nic Ille Mhaoil [MacMillan’s daughter] but we can bear witness to them and change how they are represented.

In addressing concerns regarding bias or material which could be upsetting to others, we are starting to develop trigger warnings for catalogued material. We are trying to identify the unnamed if it seems possible –in the case of the young woman from South Uist, through her relations. We are trying to use language which is less biased and more empowering, whether it is through using the language the people represented would use themselves or whether it is considering what, as in this instance, the young women involved would think. The perpetuation of acts of violence on women and girls through their re-telling can be de-sanitised by less ‘neutral’ catalogue descriptions giving these women and girls a voice their history should have had all along.

Author’s Bio

Kirsty M Stewart is the New College Collections Curator and School of Scottish Studies Archivist, Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh. Her undergraduate degrees is in Gaelic Studies from the University of Aberdeen and her postgraduate qualification is in Archival Studies from University College Dublin. She has been an archivist for nearly 25 years.

[1] Read the original notebook entry: https://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/fpxnm9 ; catalogue entry (ref. Coll-97/CW108/47, University of Edinburgh): https://archives.collections.ed.ac.uk/repositories/2/archival_objects/142484

[2]Read the original notebook entry: https://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/t65tfp https://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/1ose88 and https://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/yca30v ; Catalogue entry reference: https://archives.collections.ed.ac.uk/repositories/2/archival_objects/141706

[3] Carmichael, Alexander Archibald, Carmina Gadelica Ortha nan Gàidheal, volume II, Edinburgh (1900), pp 12-13.

[4] Calumcille is also known as Colm Cille or St Columba: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columba

DAY TEN: Storytelling for Social Justice: The Story of Antigua and the Masked Serial Rapist

Stories have power. Stories shape how we understand our realities. Janeille Matthews offers a critical perspective into the story of the ‘masked serial rapist’ in Antigua and how it frames gender-based violence.

Janeille Zorina Matthews

Featured image: “there is something about facing the sea” by chamko rani is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

If you spend enough time in Antigua, you are bound to encounter talk about crime. And, when you do, you will likely hear claims that crime has increased significantly over the past 20 years and continues to do so largely unabated. You may hear people lamenting the way in which criminals have become so bold – daring to commit armed robbery in ‘broad daylight’ or you may hear whose dogs are about to have pups and who may be interested in taking those pups because everyone knows that dogs are the best security system, ‘Black people tend to be afraid of dogs’ Antiguans say.

You may even hear people recounting the tale of the elusive ‘serial rapist’ who once wreaked havoc in the country disappearing just as mysteriously as he arrived and discussions about how much people have had to adjust their daily routine and behaviour because of crime. In all of this crime talk, you may hear people calling for stiffer penalties including castration, or you may hear people lament that as a result of increased crime, life in Antigua is not like it was generations ago, or as Antiguans simply say, not like ‘before time’.

If you read the local newspaper, headlines like ‘2007 Crime Stats Confirm Public Opinion’ and ‘One Raped, Another Attacked,’ would confirm that all you have heard is accurate. But, when you look at official police records from 1970 to 2020, you will realise that much of what you’ve heard is not borne out by the data. For example, the rate of violent crime has remained relatively stable since 1970 and the rate of property crime is continuing to decline from its peak in 1995.

More pointedly, while it is true that the rate of rape and indecent assault nearly doubled between 2007 and 2009 when it was alleged that the serial rapist was at large, a longer view of the data shows persistently high incidence of these sexual offences with rates nearly tripling in 2000 and at times accounting for as much as 20 per cent of the country’s violent crime. Despite newspaper reports describing the serial rapist as a masked man who would break into the homes of young women living either with small children or alone to rape them at gun point, over time, professional profilers hired by the government would find that the rapes were likely committed by more than one person and not a single ‘serial rapist’. Yet, like most other inaccurate stories about crime in Antigua, the narrative of the serial rapist persists.

In a country born of state violence and structural oppression—in which high levels of sexual violence characterised the eras of slavery, colonialism and independence—it is the narrative of the serial rapist that heightened awareness and anxieties leading to a flurry of grassroots activism like “Take Back the Night” community events, more formal measures like the creation of a sexual offences unit in the police force and the creation of a high-level governmental taskforce, and promises of duty concessions and tax abatement on home security alarms.

It is this narrative that recharacterised sexual violence in Antigua as a relatively recent phenomenon spiralling out of control and perpetrated by men with individual pathologies. By framing sexual violence in this way, the normalised everyday violence against women has gone unscrutinised.

The masked stranger wielding a gun, invading homes and raping women in front of their children, became the quintessential enemy while innocent unsuspecting women, who could be anyone’s daughter, sister, aunt, wife or friend, became the quintessential victim. This narrative is an important example of how stories permeate our lived realities and why we need to be hyper vigilant about the stories that we tell ourselves and each other.

Stories have power. They engage us, they persuade us, they change us, and they move us to action. Stories affect what people are able to see as real and as possible. In more structural ways, stories help to shape how we understand and respond to problems, including matters of law and policy. As Jack Zipes explains, stories enable listeners and readers to envision possible solutions to their own problems so that they can survive and adapt to their own environments.

The alleged rapist—this bogeyman—for me, then, is a spectral figure. He is the ghost, or the jumbie as Antiguans call it, of a post-emancipation past that Natasha Lightfoot and Diana Paton describe in painstaking detail. He is the embodiment of a range of anxieties around the perceived influx of Guyanese and Jamaican nationals, a threat to middle class respectability, the fear of sex, sexuality and Black masculinity, and the justification for increased government expenditure and promises to increase the penalty for rape. He is the personification of a trend that was slowly creeping into Antiguan society long before his official arrival.

The story of Antigua’s masked serial rapist led to positive changes, but these efforts were necessarily limited because if you misdiagnose the problem, you cannot effectively solve it.

Antiguans need to hear a different story about crime and sexual violence, one that includes a historical understanding of the intra-racial sexual violence that existed during slavery and its post-emancipation aftermath and is grounded in 50 years of police data.

Shifting the narrative to emphasise both historical understanding and current significance can facilitate more effective interventions. If the story we told sounded more like the stories we tell of Sir Vivian Richards and the West Indies cricket team—comprehensive and contextual focused on individual events yet with statistics, trend analysis, forecasts, commentary and discussion— Antiguan criminal justice policy might be more comprehensive and less reactionary than it is currently.

Author’s Bio:

Dr. Janeille Zorina Matthews is a multi-disciplinary criminal justice scholar who teaches courses in criminal law and criminology at The University of the West Indies Cave Hill campus in Barbados. Dr. Matthews most recently authored an article entitled ‘Two Different Stories: A Mixed Methods Investigation of Crime in Antigua and Barbuda’ and a book chapter entitled ‘The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Reframing the Discourse of Sexual Violence in the Anglophone Caribbean. She is currently engaged in work around decriminalizing minor offences and tracing colonial legacies in contemporary penal practices. Dr. Matthews is the Research Coordinator of The UWI Rights Advocacy Project, a collective of UWI public law scholars committed to human rights and social justice in the Caribbean.

DAY NINE: Statues and status: Mexican women change the face of history to combat gender-based violence today

Sarah Easy discusses how Mexican women are changing the face of history to combat gender-based violence today.

Sarah Easy

Image above: The Benito Juárez Hemicycle monument, Mexico City, defaced by anti-gender-based violence protesters in 2019. Credit: Santiago

Until recently, statues of Christopher Columbus quietly watched over major cities of the world amongst other bronzed men and marble slave traders, including in Mexico City. Public monuments are now flashpoints for activist movements worldwide, including the anti-gender-based violence (anti-GBV) movement. In October of this year, the governor of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, announced that a statue of the indigenous ‘Young Lady of Amajac’ would replace the statue of Christopher Columbus toppled 2 years ago by the anti-GBV movement, renewing debate surrounding the historical representation of women.

Protest and public monuments in Mexico

The anti-GBV movement in Mexico provides fertile ground for discussion; deemed ‘the most successful women’s and feminist movement in the history of Latin America’ by Associate Professor Edmé Domínguez, yet birthed from a patriarchal society with one of the highest rates of gender-based violence worldwide.

Originating in the #MeToo phenomenon, the movement reached boiling point during the student occupation of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in October of 2019 (ongoing to this day). Mass protests of hetero, trans and non-binary women subsequently erupted under the Ni Una Menos and Aequus collectives. Judith Butler describes the movement as “a realisation of a common social good and social bond, one that recognises that what is happening to one life…is also happening for others.” This collective approach provides an alternative to more individualistic modes of western feminism.

The most visible expression of the anti-GBV movement in Mexico is the defacing and dismantling of public monuments.

“the movement is anti-patriarchal and, in one aspect anti-capitalist, that’s why one of its forms of resistance is to intervene in these representations of historical figures and facts as forms of protest”.
Prominent feminist collective Aequus

During the anti-rape glitter protests of 2019, slogans such as ‘the State doesn’t take care of me, my friends do’ were painted across Mexico City’s iconic Angel of Independence. This lasting imagery situates women in the public sphere, giving new meaning to spaces that previously celebrated masculine ideals of war and colonial rule.

*Image above: The Angel of Independence statue, Mexico City, defaced by anti-gender-based violence protesters in 2019. Credit: Santiago Arau*

In September of 2020, anti-GBV collectives Aequus, Okupa and Ni Una Menos took further radical action by occupying the National Human Rights Commission and converting the building into a shelter where over 100 women sought refuge. Activists painted over portraits of the all-male historical figures that adorned the Commission, highlighting the female human rights defenders who have been erased from history.

This form of radical visual activism has become so infamous that president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador erected a 3 metre metallic barrier, or “macho wall of shame”, around the presidential palace in nervous anticipation of the International Women’s day March this year. Aequus Collective contends “if the State does not guarantee the security, integrity and the life of women, we should not respect figures symbolic of the State”.

*Image above: Anti-gender-based violence protesters camp outside the National Palace, Mexico City, on International Women’s Day 2021. Credit: Santiago Arau*

The most recent visual demonstration of the anti-GBV movement is the installation of a cardboard cut-out of a woman with a raised fist where a statue of Christopher Columbus was toppled two years ago. Activists renamed the site the ‘Glorieta de las Mujeres que Luchan’ (Women Who Fight Roundabout), painting the names of murdered women across its base. Aequus explains that “the demand not to commemorate anyone in particular is a way of expressing pain and rage in the face of violence, as well as a will to fight for the dead and disappeared.”

This example of an ‘anti-monument’ rejects the official discourse of the Mexican state which denies the corruption of the justice system, propagates the impunity of rapists and silences survivors of gender-based violence.

Whether the replacement of the cut-out with a replica of ‘the Young Lady of Amajac’ is genuinely progressive or purely performative remains heatedly debated in Mexico.

*Image above: Glorieta de las Mujeres que Luchan installation, Mexico City. Credit: Sarah Easy*

*Image above: Anti-gender-based violence protesters paint the names of murdered and disappeared women in Mexico City on International Women’s Day 2020. Credit: Santiago Arau*

Statue toppling as a global phenomenon

Dating back to ancient Rome, the practice of ‘statue toppling’ forms part of ‘damnatio memoriae’ (the condemnation of memory) in which public figures were erased from official accounts. We are currently experiencing a global wave of statue toppling that intersects gender, class and race campaigns, such as the mass removal of confederate statues during the Black Lives Matter Movement. Modern activism distinguishes itself through this fixation on history, re-examining and rectifying what is remembered, by whom and for what purpose.

In October 2020 in La Paz, Bolivia, activists from the group Mujeres Creando clothed a statue of the Queen of Castile, financier of Christopher Columbus’ expedition to the Americas in 1492, in a traditional hat, aguayo and pollera (the traditional dress worn by Andean indigenous women, or ‘cholas’).

Indigenous women in Bolivia experience compounded discrimination on grounds of gender, ethnicity and class, with gender-based violence most pronounced in rural areas. Perpetrators of gender-based violence justify their crime by debasing indigenous women. Consequently, the transformation of the statue of the Queen of Castile into a chola serves to elevate the position of indigenous women in society, reflecting their active participation in business, education and politics.

Significance: statues as symbols or vehicles for change?

The question remains: is the dismantling of the old and rebuilding of new public monuments merely symbolic or can it engender genuine change? Professor Verity Platt defines statues as ‘ideological powerhouses: physical objects that compress whole systems of authority into bodies of bronze or marble’. Similarly, Perhamus and Joldersma (2020) argue that the toppling of statues is ‘more than symbolic destruction of representations, these ‘acts of takedown’ are concrete, physically manifested interruptions’ of the established order.

From this, we can understand the recent substitution of the statue of Christopher Columbus with the indigenous Young Lady of Armajac in Mexico as more than a passive reflection of feminist ideology, but rather, an active tool for countering machismo.

Gender-based violence knows no bounds of race or class. Judith Butler stresses that ‘violence seeks to secure the class of women as killable, dispensable; it is an attempt to define the very existence of women’s lives as something decided by men, as a masculine prerogative.’

Put simply, a man who respects women doesn’t kill them; what we need is a cultural revolution. Aequus explains that the violent and patriarchal culture in Mexico is “linked to the official version of Mexico’s history in which male historical figures and facts are elevated…due to the broad influence of the armed forces in different aspects of public life”. The anti-GBV movement in Mexico is changing its violent culture against women by tearing down the patriarchal ideology preserved in statues, monuments, portraits and public spaces, and we should be doing the same.

*Image above: Anti-gender-based violence protesters gather on International Women’s Day 2020 in Mexico City. Credit: Santiago Arau*

Author’s Bio:

Sarah Easy is a human rights lawyer based in Mexico City and research assistant for the Australian Human Rights Institute. She has previously worked in the Human Rights Specialist Law Service and the Mental Health Advocacy Service at Legal Aid NSW. She has also worked in several NGOs across Mexico, Spain and Australia. She undertook her practical legal training at the Refugee Advice & Casework Service (RACS). Her work focuses on women’s rights and refugee and asylum seekers’ rights.

DAY EIGHT: Death in Geraldton: how Joyce Clarke became another Indigenous statistic

Aboriginal women continue to voiceconcern about state indifference and violence that contributes directly and indirectly to the violence against women and children.

Hannah McGlade

Featured image: Death by police in the NT: murder trial is only the second in 41 years. Source: https://www.crikey.com.au/2021/07/21/death-by-police-in-nt-second-cops-murder-trial-after-41-years/

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following article contains reference to community members who have died.

On 7 September 2019, Joyce Clarke was shot by police as she walked down a suburban street in Geraldton, Western Australia (WA). She was carrying a large bread knife in one hand and small pink scissors in the other. Hours earlier, she told her family she was going to die.

At 6.30pm that night, her prediction came true. It took the police officer charged with her murder 16 seconds to arrive at the scene and fire the shot that ended her 29-year life. Last Friday, the officer was found not guilty of murder.

Aboriginal women in Australia have been described as “the most incarcerated group of people in the world“.

Over 475 Aboriginal people have died in custody since the end of the 1991 royal commission. In New South Wales, the number of Aboriginal people charged by police increased by 67% between 2010 and 2020. Western Australia has the highest rates of incarceration and deaths in custody of Aboriginal people in the country.

Clarke’s trial was shrouded in secrecy. A suppression order was placed on the officer’s name due to safety concerns for his family. The media was allowed in, but the public was refused entry to the court.

This isn’t the first time the WA Supreme Court has suppressed information over those charged with murdering Aboriginal people. In 2016, the same court issued a suppression order over the name of the Kalgoorlie man who killed Elijah Doughty, a 14-year-old Indigenous boy. The man was eventually given a road traffic conviction.

There were no Aboriginal people on that jury and there were none in the murder trial for Clarke.

Clarke’s family, including her sister Bernie Clarke, maintained their steady presence through the trial, although it was hard for them to hear the final details of her life.

During a demonstration of how a taser works, defence barrister Linda Black began laughing loudly. She later told the jury that Clarke was a “walking time bomb” and a person who “needed to be taken down”. In her opening address, Black said the case had “nothing to do with race”.

Seven days before her death, Clarke had called 000 because she wanted to end her life. This was known by Senior Constable Barker on the day she died. He had approached her with his hand out, wanting to “communicate”, when the constable responsible for her death appeared and shot her.

Barker, who was only a few metres away from Clarke, was clear in his evidence that Clarke had not moved in a threatening way. Other officers gave similar evidence that she had not moved when shot — evidence that contrasted with that of a civilian witness who, at some distance, claimed Clarke, arms in the air, had lunged at the officers before being shot.

There’s no doubt Clarke was in a bad way. She had recently been released from the overcrowded Bandyup prison for stealing a mobile phone she believed was possessed by spirits. The prison is known for its appalling conditions, with reports of abuse of Aboriginal women.

Just two weeks after her release from Bandyup, Clarke was admitted to Geraldton hospital following a suicide attempt. She was discharged, and less than a week later was admitted to St John of God Hospital in Perth for mental health issues. Anne Jones, whom Clarke called mum, asked a nurse not to release her due to concerns she wasn’t well enough to leave. Clarke was discharged because there was no evidence she was still experiencing psychosis.

She left the hospital on Friday, September 13, taking a bus back to Geraldton to stay with relatives. The next Tuesday, in a state of distress, she went to the Wajarri Aboriginal community organisation. She called a relative, warning she was going to die.

A relative called the police to try to get her taken back into the hospital. That was when police arrived — a total of three police cars and eight officers.

The jury took just a few hours to hand down the not guilty verdict, accepting the defence argument that the officer had acted in self-defence. Aboriginal women have long been seen as angry, violent and unworthy of legal protection.

Clarke’s family were distraught. Aboriginal elders began crying outside the court in disbelief that so little had changed. Although police told the defence not to exit the court’s front door, defence lawyer Linda Black did so, telling the family — surrounded by a police barricade — that her client was “sorry” but did what had to be done.

In their case study on Indigenous femicide, that is, the systemic ways in which Indigenous women are subject to conditions that render them unsafe and exposed to violent deaths in settler states of Australia, Canada and the US, the authors write:

‘Indigenous women are targeted and criminalised from birth. In many cases, women who should have been afforded protection by authorities have instead been treated with extreme violence by them’.

We must learn from Joyce Clarke’s life and death. Aboriginal women have consistently voiced concern about state indifference and violence that contributes directly and indirectly to the violence that is blighting the lives of too many women and children. We have argued for a stand-alone National Action Plan to combat the systemic and structural discrimination that contributes to and underlines violence. And we demand recognition of our fundamental right to self-determination as critical to all dialogue and responses on addressing violence to Aboriginal women.

Further reading:

https://www.deathscapes.org/case-studies/indigenous-femicide-and-the-killing-state-in-progress/

An open letter in response to the lack of public concern or response to the killings of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women

Author’s Bio:

Dr Hannah McGlade is a Noongar woman from Western Australia and her career has focused on justice for Aboriginal people, race discrimination law and practice, Aboriginal women and children, family violence and sexual assault.

Currently Dr McGlade is a Senior Indigenous Research Fellow at Curtin University and an Advisor to the Noongar Council for Family Safety and Wellbeing. Dr McGlade is also a member of the UN Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues, Western Australia Mental Health Tribunal and the Medical Board of Australia.

DAY SEVEN: When Bessie Guthrie met the Women’s Liberation Movement

Writer and Director Catherine Dwyer reflects on the Women’s Liberation Movement and the making of her film, Brazen Hussies.

Catherine Dwyer

Featured image: Bessie Guthrie: Fighter for Underprivileged Girls, Tribune 2 Oct 1973

I first came across the story of Bessie Guthrie and her campaigns for child welfare reforms in an essay by Suzanne Bellamy about MeJane, a Sydney Women’s Liberation Newspaper that ran from 1971-1974. I found it in a book called Things that Liberate An Australian Feminist Wunderkammer (2013) edited by Alison Bartlett and Margaret Henderson. The book is a collection of essays by various women centered around objects from the Women’s Liberation Movement. It became an object in my own ‘Wunderkammer’, acquired during the five years I spent researching and making the documentary film, Brazen Hussies.

*Image above: Things that Liberate An Australian Feminist Wunderkammer, edited by Alison Bartlett and Margaret Henderson (2013, Cambridge Scholars Publishing)*

In Suzanne’s essay I discovered the hilarious story of Vera Figner, a 19^th century Russian revolutionary, whose name was used as MeJane’s ‘Publisher’. As a result, Vera Figner was later found to be a “New South Wales Person of Interest” in ASIO’s surveillance on the Women’s Liberation Movement. This story made it into the film where we also combined ASIO surveillance footage with the pop song ‘Girl Watcher’ by the O’Kaysions – putting an ironic twist on the sexist pastime of ogling women.

*‘Girl Watcher’ ASIO Spy story featuring Vera Figner in Brazen Hussies (Film Camp, 2020)*

But it was difficult to capture all of the facets of the women’s movement in one 90 minute film, and one of my favourite stories ended up on the cutting room floor. It was the story of Bessie Guthrie’s arrival one day at the MeJane Headquarters. She was armed with folders of documents from her one-woman crusade for child welfare reform that she had amassed over 20 years. She announced to the MeJane collective of radical feminists “I’ve been waiting for you girls all my life.”

*Image Details: Bessie Guthrie at Sydney Women’s Liberation House, 1974. Photo by Anne Roberts courtesy of Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales and Tribune / SEARCH Foundation*

One of the most significant campaigns [from MeJane] in terms of its success and coverage came in the wake of the arrival of the grand dame Bessie Guthrie … She was in her 60s when she arrived, a tall, elegant woman who came with piles of folders about her campaigns for child welfare reform. It was an astonishing amount of work and took us time to really process.
Suzanne Bellamy, during her interview for Brazen Hussies

Bessie was a local Glebe woman, concerned about the plight of runaway teenage girls and their horrific treatment in state institutions. She would often take them in, her home becoming a makeshift halfway house for runaways.

She fashioned this campaign through MeJane and she gradually allowed us to explore her material and shape it, and then to access what we had, which was the power of numbers. And so we had really important demonstrations outside the Bidura children’s prison in Glebe in which women climbed up on the roof.
Suzanne Bellamy

Image details: Women’s liberationists storm the roof at the Bidura Shelter for Girls in Glebe on International Women’s Day 8 March 1974. Courtesy of Australian History Museum at Macquarie University [Image 42000127]

With the power of numbers, they were also able to attract the attention of ABC journalist Peter Manning, who reported an exposé on the abuse of girls in state care and the barbaric act of forced virginity testing. It was in watching this report that I was struck by how absolutely horrific the treatment of these girls was.

Video: Parramatta Girls Home and Hay Institute for Girls – This Day Tonight (1973)

In a report for the ABC on the Paramatta Girls Home in 1973, Peter Manning discussed the ‘exposure to moral danger’ laws which could be used against girls up until the age of 18:

Annual reports of the child welfare department state that no young men or boys are ever picked up on the charge of exposure to moral danger. It is the section of the Child Welfare Act used exclusively on girls … They are made to scrub the floors of the shelter on their knees every day, ordered to wear a uniform, and they are given a medical examination.

The medical exam included a pelvic examination to determine whether or not they were ‘virginal’. For this white, middleclass, Australian millennial -at least-the idea that the state could compel teenage girls to be physically violated to assess whether they were virgins or not, sounds like something from medieval times, rather than a common occurrence in 1970s Australia. A pelvic examination is not at all a scientifically sound means of testing ‘virginity’.

Image details: Protest at the Parramatta Girls Home, December 9th, 1974. Photo by Anne Roberts courtesy of Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales and Tribune / SEARCH Foundation

The exposure to moral danger law was designed to ‘protect’ teenage girls from having sex out of wedlock, but the punishment was far worse than the crime. Only recently the 2014 The Royal Commission into child sexual abuse in institutions revealed horrific stories of physical, sexual and mental abuse of the girls who were taken into state care and put into homes such as Parramatta Girls Home.

Just like the criminalization of abortion, the lack of financial support for single mothers and the pressure on them to give their babies up for adoption, the ‘exposure to moral danger’ law was all part of the gendered violence that controlled women’s bodies, and subjugated them under a patriarchal society. Exposure to moral danger was a crime only committed by poor, often Aboriginal, young women, for no other reason than being born female.

*Images Details: Bessie Guthrie (second from right) with members of Women’s Liberation, photo by Pat Fiske in Cauldron vol. 1, no.1, September 1974*

Because of Bessie Guthrie’s collaboration with the Women’s Liberation movement, a group of women also made a short film exposing the plight of girls charged with exposure to moral danger. Home, made by Leonie Crennan, Margot Knox, Barbara Levy, Robynne Murphy and Susan Varga features testimony by Toni Wilson, a young woman who spent much of her adolescence in girls homes. The film shows a reenactment of legs going into stirrups from the patient’s point of view. She recounted the following:

The doctor sticks his finger up you. So you can imagine the effect that would have on a thirteen year old child. And a virgin at that. And the doctor saying you know when I resisted purely out of embarrassment, ‘Oh if you don’t lie still we’ll take you to Parramatta and tie you down.’ Completely misinterpreting my attitude, that’s what shits me. An air of defence is just born of fear and bewilderment and you’re penalised for it.

After the episode of This Day Tonight aired compulsory virginity testing was stopped virtually overnight. Eventually the charge of ‘Exposure to moral danger’ was also dropped.

For more information about the “Exposure to Moral Danger” laws and the girls institutions listen to Ann Arnold’s award winning ABC radio documentary from 2009, Exposed to Moral Danger.

For more info on Brazen Hussies:

Web: brazenhussies.com.au
Facebook: brazenhussiesfilm
Twitter: Brazen_Hussies
Instagram: brazenhussiesfilm

Author bio:

Catherine Dwyer is the Writer and Director of Brazen Hussies– an historical dive into the Australian Women’s Liberation Movement 1965-1975. She was inspired to make the film during her time as an Associate Producer on Mary Dore’s She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry (2014) – about the Women’s Movement in the United States. During this experience she realized how little she knew of her own country’s feminist history and how easily it was being forgotten. Catherine was nominated for an Australian Director’s Guild Award for Brazen Hussies as well as an AACTA award for Best Direction. Brazen Hussies was nominated for the 2020 AIDC and AACTA Awards for “Best Feature Documentary” and is listed as one of The Guardian’s top 10 Australian films of 2020.