Challenging Patriarchal Amnesia
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THE LANDFALL REVIEW reckless was also unleashed in me, and I Challenging Patriarchal would use that energy for the issues ahead’ (p. 67). Amnesia Use that energy she certainly did. In the by Jocelyn Harris belief that feminism was broader and more encompassing than party politics, Waring The Political Years by Marilyn Waring (Bridget crossed the floor and discussed matters of Williams Books, 2019), 376pp, $39.99 conscience with Opposition politicians. In her usual prophetic way she urged long- In the interests of full disclosure, I declare term planning to protect the environment that I like and admire Marilyn Waring. from natural climatic changes and Now, after reading The Political Years at one industry, to look at our whole internal gulp, I’m quite simply awestruck by her transport system, and to recognise that the principles, courage, intelligence, stamina, Pacific would become ‘the crux of our and saving sense of the ridiculous. foreign policy’ (p. 69). And she spoke up How on earth did she cope with Robert passionately for women, arguing in 1976, Muldoon? One day, wanting to show my for instance, that ‘when a person is children democracy in action, I took them murdered, the murderer is put on trial but to Parliament, where the prime minister when a woman is raped, it is the woman was jeering and sneering away like a who is put on trial’ (p. 61). teenager just asking to be sent to his room. Waring always did her homework, I happened to have a large drumhead recording events and conversations in cabbage in my bag, and my fingers itched clippings, letters, notes and diaries that to pot him with it. A single, brief exposure she wasn’t supposed to keep. That way she and I was ready to snap, but Waring could compare ‘what was said and agreed endured him year after wearisome year. in caucus, and what Muldoon told the On the black and white cover of The media and the public’ (p. 78). She also Political Years a young woman stands spoke knowledgeably on a dizzying array solitary in a phalanx of men, many of them of topics including 245T, Agent Orange, old. A thin red line points to the anomaly. alternative energy, Bastion Point, divorce, Waring’s friends, constituents, domestic violence, education, correspondents and some of her employment, homosexuality and the Colin parliamentary colleagues would be Moyle affair, housing, human rights, land generous in support, but relentless and rights, nuclear power, overstayers, parental often vicious pressure came from other leave, parliamentary boundaries, MPs, anonymous trolls and the media. The parliamentary reform, privatisation, rural loathsome New Zealand Truth even outed her depopulation, sales tax, shop trading as a lesbian at a time when New Zealand hours, urban planning, unionism, water, was deeply homophobic. ‘Part of me was and youth rates. But she was largely broken,’ she writes, but ‘something ignored. ‘Bigoted and anachronistic laws’ 185 LANDFALL 238 were upheld and ‘difficult decisions meeting as the ‘wonderful candidate postponed for another day’, leaving her Marilyn Monroe’ (p. 30), she won the seat ‘cynically resigned to hopelessness’ (p. 70). handsomely. The New Zealand Woman’s On women’s health, for instance, the Weekly, unable to abandon its stereotypical distance between MPs’ understanding and thinking, described her as a ‘girl, brown- women’s evidence-based research was eyed, honey-blonde’, with ‘a mischievous ‘galactic’, writes Waring (p. 82), especially giggle’. Even when talking ‘earnestly on a about abortion. The government was subject close to her heart, Marilyn’s voice is plotting to limit access even further, but she scarcely raised. She is a lot gentler, prettier argued that since justice was ‘considerably than newspaper articles and photographs slower than procreation’, women would have indicated’ (p. 54). Waring was both find it faster and cheaper to seek out illegal Muldoon’s youth card and his token abortionists. Parliament voted late at night, woman. ‘I wanted a woman,’ said he, ‘and Muldoon could not remember what he had I will help all I can’ (p. 19). It didn’t last. voted for or when, and all of George Gair’s Photographs illustrate some of compromise amendments were lost. Waring’s most urgent concerns—carrying Looking back, though no longer in a box of petitions asking for reform of the anger, Waring writes that her political abortion laws up the steps of Parliament; autobiography challenges ‘the dominant moving a plaque commemorating 75 years “history” of the period; it breaks the silence of women’s suffrage from a back corridor and challenges patriarchal amnesia’ (p. 9). to a more prominent location; joining In short, it bears witness. She makes of her protesters at the Hamilton game of the ‘visceral memories’ (p. 8) a page-turning 1981 Springbok tour; and leaving her office and sometimes hilarious narrative, even on 13 June 1984 for the debating chamber, though her lists of activities would make where she would cross the floor on most people clutch their heads and scream. Richard Prebble’s Nuclear Free New A list chosen at random reads: ‘visiting Zealand Bill. pine-forest nurseries, plastics factories, Waring tells a riveting inside story about electric-fence manufacturers, retirement the Bill. Although it had already gained a villages, rest homes, and the Church of the majority, Muldoon stopped it from going Latter Day Saints school and village in to Executive Council to be signed by the Tuhikaramea. I went to Geoff Chitty’s bull governor-general. For Waring, as for sale in the Waikaretu Valley’ (p. 29). She Opposition MPs Helen Clark, Wallace kept on top of it all, primed and ready to Rowling and Jonathan Hunt, that was an contribute. appalling threat to democracy, but the In 1974 Waring had joined National on Speaker shut her out of the debate. With impulse after Norman Kirk refused to the National Party holding a majority of support any legislation that treated one, resignation was not an option. homosexuality as ‘normal behaviour’. Instead, she withdrew from caucus and all Though introduced at the Raglan selection her committees. 186 THE LANDFALL REVIEW ‘Just what do you think you are up to raising goats on a paradisal farm became now, you perverted little liar?’ demanded more and more vivid, and she handed in Muldoon, swilling down glass after glass her resignation. of brandy and ginger. ‘If you say that again Outside New Zealand Waring’s outside the room I will sue the shit out of reputation grew exponentially, and in 1980 you,’ returned Waring, munching on an she received a standing ovation in apple. Muldoon accused her of lying, of Copenhagen for speaking feminism in being ‘just after headlines to please her New Zealand’s name at a UN Conference lefty feminist friends’ (pp. 341–42), then on Women. Long before the word announced a snap election in his infamous ‘intersectionality’ was invented, she drunken press conference. Waring refused explained how women were oppressed in to accept the blame, thinking to herself, multiple, overlapping ways. On a ‘You will have to fight on your lousy fellowship to Harvard in 1981 she relished leadership, poor economic management, conversations with like-minded people, and abusive personality’ (p. 343). Labour and in 1984 she published her hugely won, and the Nuclear Free New Zealand influential economic treatise Counting for Bill passed into law. Nothing. Here she explained that to The grind eventually drove Waring to measure success by the Gross National the limit. Being part of the party under Product is to overlook the trillion-dollar Muldoon was ‘extremely dark’ (p. 233), contribution of unpaid workers such as she writes, especially in the ‘very crazy mothers, rural women, caregivers and period’ of the 1981 rugby tour when volunteers. More than three decades later ‘hypocrisies, lies and double standards our current government is busily replacing were all in evidence as we engaged the the GDP with more inclusive indicators. nightmare’ (p. 245). She swam and she ran As Waring once said, ‘It was and she knitted furiously, but the stress unfortunate that I was elected to brought on weeping and vomiting. Parliament with a mind, and I’m going to Ashamed and despairing about her use it, but it doesn’t make people happy’ enforced complicity with the government’s (p. 325). Muldoon tried to break her spirit abuse of foreign leaders, its public release and wear her down, but as a constitutional of SIS information about protesters and its commentator explained, the role of caucus ‘breathtaking lack of integrity and is ‘to challenge Prime Ministers to think principle in the name of holding a few again. There is no other body to provide rural seats’ (p. 251), she held her public such a check on the political executive.’ and private lives together until the day the Marilyn Waring, the ‘conscientious and vacuum cleaner broke down, then she competent’ back-bencher, ‘understood this slumped to the floor, back to the wall, and acted on it’, he said (p. 323). That was unable to move. Luckily, her GP happened the job she was elected to do, and she did to come by and sent her to a private it. Some youth card, some token woman. hospital for a rest. Waring’s dreams of 187.