You can read it here.

Dear Catherine,

I have been and remain horrified at Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers, and so I write to you as a constituent to ask that you press your Government for humane treatment of these desperate people.

What if it was your mother, father, children or friends who had no other option than to flee their country, leaving behind a lifetime of memories and in many cases the opportunity to earn a living for some time. Would you want them denied succour in a new land? Imprisoned for indefinite periods? I am ashamed to be a citizen of a country that locks people up under these conditions.

Not only do we know onshore processing works, it’s the only humane option. Leaving asylum seekers in limbo in places more palatable to our politicians is a national disgrace, and poorly represents a country I know to be full of kind and generous people. The Government is not reflecting community sentiment, even if it claims to be.

The puerile ‘debates’ over so-called ‘boat people’ are even further evidence of how impoverished political discourse is in Australia. It is clear that people fleeing war, famine or persecution will leave by whatever means they can, including the life-threatening voyages some take by boat. You can help re-focus the debate on what’s important – how can Australia help people who seek asylum on our shores to enjoy the same freedoms and privileges we take for granted?

We need leadership, not pandering to the most base sentiments of our society.

It’s time Australia stops destroying people’s lives (and in the worst cases, committing murder when people take their own lives rather than suffer in detention centres any longer) by locking them up with no hope for months and years on end.

Distrust and incarceration are not the answers, compassion and hospitality are.

Sincerely,

Tammi Jonas

Two nights ago on Twitter, Mike Brull (@mikeb476) challenged Justin Shaw (@juzzytribune) for referring to academic and anti-porn activist Gail Dines’ ‘hysterical screeching’ in an article Shaw wrote for the Kings Tribune. As I watched, the two squared off into what appeared to be pretty aggressive corners. I agreed with Brull’s critique, but admittedly, not with his debating technique, which I thought was a bit inflammatory, and so potentially unproductive.

This is not the beginning, but it’s a good place to start this very long post. These are between Brull and Shaw, with a very helpful interjection from @theriverfed:

@mikeb476: @juzzytribune Calling a woman “hysterical” b/c she’s too angry for you is like calling a woman “slut” b/c you think she’s too promiscuous

@juzzytribune: @mikeb476 Are you saying the word should be banned from use now?

@theriverfed: @juzzytribune Butting in, I would say ‘Choose more precise, less loaded words.” Feminism aside, hyperbole is bad writing. @mikeb476

@juzzytribune: @theriverfed yeah I’ll wear that. It’s my style tho. I usually yell about sport, where hyperbole don’t matter so much..

Then @cosmicjester made a contribution:

@cosmicjester: @juzzytribune haha @mikeb476 taking issue with a single word. Guess you didn’t get it approved by the PC thought police juzzy.

@mikeb476: @cosmicjester Oh life must be tough under the weight of oppression, someone not liking a few words b/c of their history and connotations.

This is when I joined the debate. What follows are the tweets between me (@tammois), @juzzytribune, @benpobjie and some from @mikestuchbery.

There were many many more contributions from a lot of people, and many were not just uncharitable, they were rude and insulting, while plenty attempted to engage in a civil discussion as well. There are far too many for me to collate here, so I have elected to share those between the primary debaters, and have included some from @mikestuchbery although he never engaged with me or directly in the debate, merely made snarky, ‘gaslighting‘ comments from the sideline.

(NB I think it would be great if someone wrote about what happens when a number of people jump in, especially when the numbers are imbalanced on one side – some call it a ‘mob’ or ‘pile-on’, but I think it’s worth further analysis. And if anyone has tweets they think are essential to this discussion that I’ve missed, please insert them in the comments to round out the picture.)

@tammois: @cosmicjester oh, CJ, it’s times like this I lose faith. Seems @mikeb476 is defending women from a sloppy sexist attack by @juzzytribune ½

@tammois: @cosmicjester @mikeb476 then @juzzytribune conceded ‘wrong word’ but defended his right to use it. Sure, has right, as M does to say ‘wrong’

@juzzytribune: @tammois @cosmicjester I use “hysterical” in the generic non-gender sense. Could as easily used “over the top” or “feverish”.

@tammois: @cosmicjester @mikeb476 @juzzytribune I must be careful as haven’t read the article, but ‘hysterical’, ‘shrill’, ‘slut’ all not okay with me

@juzzytribune: @tammois BTW, my attack was not sexist in any way, other than an extrapolation of my use of the word “hysterical”.

@tammois: @juzzytribune I believe you when you say you believe your ‘attack wasn’t sexist’, but that doesn’t make it true… @mikeb476 @cosmicjester

@tammois: @juzzytribunebut I guess my response to calling women you disagree with hysterical has so much historical baggage, I think it’s not okay.

At this stage, @juzzytribune involves @benpobjie:

@juzzytribune: @benpobjie you ready for the hate, big guy? It’s started…

@juzzytribune: @benpobjie our p0rn pieces. I’m a sexist pig, you’re (as usual) making rape jokes..

Then returns to the debate:

@juzzytribune: @mikeb476 @cosmicjester @tammois don’t fucking misquote me. I said “stingy jew bastard” would be wrong, but “stingy bastard” no problem.

@tammois: @juzzytribune ’hysterical’, like ‘shrill’, has been used as a way to be reductive of women’s contributions to debate, so I wouldn’t use it.

@juzzytribune: @tammois conceded. As I said, I used it in a generic sense. could’ve/should’ve used “fevered” or similar instead…

@tammois: @juzzytribune yes, I think it’s just that these words have way too much baggage & *appear* to be a perpetuation of misogyny, hence concerns.

@tammois: @juzzytribune so perhaps the easiest thing to respond to @mikeb476 is just what you did – could have used other word – bc that word was bad?

@tammois: @juzzytribune it’s a trigger for social justice folk, when someone calls you out, reckon is best to admit to error of judgment & not repeat

@juzzytribune: @tammois done and done.

@tammois: @juzzytribune apols if I sound a bit schoolmarmish. Not trying to be patronising, just to help.

@tammois: @juzzytribune :-)

And that should have been it, right? @juzzytribune had accepted the feminist critique as valid and it was really not a big stoush. On the sidelines, @mikestuchbery gets involved:

@mikestuchbery: @cosmicjester @juzzytribune Really a waste of time arguing with those two. Unpleasant, arrogant jerks.

@juzzytribune: @mikestuchbery MB, yeah… t’other?

@mikestuchbery: @juzzytribune Humourless Marxist

Now @benpobjie enters the discussion which had just concluded.

@benpobjie: @mikeb476 @cosmicjester @tammois @juzzytribuneif a Jew is stingy why can’t you say they are stingy? And if a woman is hysterical…

@tammois: @benpobjie @mikeb476 @cosmicjester @juzzytribune surely it’s best to acknowledge why someone isn’t forthcoming w $$ re stingy 1/2

@tammois: @benpobjie @mikeb476 @cosmicjester @juzzytribune & actually engage w a woman (or man)’s argument rather than labelling it ‘hysterical’?

@tammois: @benpobjie @mikeb476 @cosmicjester @juzzytribune these sorts of adjectives are a refuge for unwillingness to debate issues, IMO.

@tammois: @benpobjie @mikeb476 @cosmicjester @juzzytribune and I say that having called ppl ‘crazy shouty ppl’ a few times. But happy to be called out

@juzzytribune: @tammois thx. so what word could/should I have used/use in follow-up piece to describe Dines’ screeching?

@tammois: @juzzytribune to be honest, ‘screeching’ is a bit of a cheap shot as well, given, you know, it’s used about women…

@juzzytribune: @tammois seriously? Check my Drum pieces, I use it about men as well, and screeching is what it was..

@tammois: @cosmicjester @benpobjie @mikeb476 @juzzytribuneI don’t know the Dines piece, but surely ‘inciting moral panic’ will do?

@benpobjie: @tammois @mikeb476 @cosmicjester @juzzytribune in that case we can’t use any insults at all. If “hysterical” is accurate I say use it.

@tammois: @benpobjie that’s a pretty boring answer to critique, I reckon. You know, humourless left, etc. @mikeb476 @cosmicjester @juzzytribune

@benpobjie: My next column will be the words “Lighten the fuck up” repeated 250 times.

@benpobjie: @tammois @mikeb476 @cosmicjester @juzzytribune ”use words to accurately describe things” is boring? Christ, sorry for the tedium.

@tammois: @benpobjie okay, Ben, do it. Tell me how ‘hysterical’ is accurate & productive. @mikeb476 @cosmicjester @juzzytribune

@benpobjie: @tammois m.dictionary.com/d/?q=Hysterica… if any of these definitions apply to a person, “hysterical” is an accurate description. Easy.

@tammois: @benpobjie oh, wow, and you can’t see how calling a woman ‘uncontrollably emotional’ and ‘irrational’ is not okay? really?!

@benpobjie: @tammois are you saying women are never uncontrollably emotional or irrational? They are super-beings immune to these things?

@tammois: @benpobjie I am saying that to discount a woman’s contribution to debate that way is pernicious & unacceptable.

@tammois: @benpobjie I would think such behaviour is more common in the home than in a published piece of work, whether you agree with it or not.

@benpobjie: @tammois it may be more common – but Gail Dines’s work is irretrievably hysterical. It’s a very accurate descriptor of what she does.

@benpobjie: @tammois but it’s not necessarily discounting anything – if anyone’s contribution IS hysterical, why not call them on it?

@tammois: @benpobjie by what judgement do you decree that someone who has a considered (though anathema) position is ‘hysterical’?

@benpobjie: @tammois @cosmicjester @mikeb476 @juzzytribune what use is “stupid” to civil debate? Yet if someone says something stupid I’ll say so

@tammois: @benpobjie not saying we don’t all use unhelpful adjectives sometimes. But gee we should do better @cosmicjester @mikeb476 @juzzytribune

@tammois: @benpobjie and you know, if you want to call people stupid and hysterical, I guess you can, but it’s damaging & unproductive.

@benpobjie: It’s a blocky kind of evening. Also an I-hate-you kind of evening.

@benpobjie: @tammois by what judgment do YOU decree that someone’s position is “considered”?

@tammois: @benpobjie no more so than anything I read on the interwebz, really. But like to give the benefit of the doubt. Which I’m doing here x 1000.

@tammois: @benpobjie you know, we have a lot of followers, Ben. We could ask the women how they feel about hysterical.

@benpobjie: @tammois why? Is your opinion dependent on what other people tell you?

@benpobjie: @tammois if you think hysterical is the wrong word, put your case. Don’t pull this “sexist” nonsense to avoid having to.

@tammois: @benpobjieare you kidding? That’s your new approach to say I’ve not built one against hysterical as critique?

@benpobjie: @tammois point is, you say something is considered, I say it’s hysterical. We disagree. But neither of us is being bigoted.

@benpobjie: @tammois no, that you haven’t built one against it being accurate in a particular case. So you just issue a blanket ban on it.

@tammois: @benpobjie okay, Ben, sorry. Here we go. Your long history of white male privilege is totally blinding you here.

@tammois: @benpobjie I read plenty of things I think are very wrong, but still ‘considered’ in their fashion, as in come from a person with thoughts

@tammois: @benpobjie I guess there is a pretty good reason for dropping certain words until power structures change, yes.

@benpobjie: #block #fuckyou “@tammois: @benpobjie okay, Ben, sorry. Here we go. Your long history of white male privilege is totally blinding you here.”

@tammois: .@benpobjie that is really sad, Ben. Really really disappointing. This was an opportunity. This is your technique, hey? ‘#block #fuckyou‘

@tammois: Wow. I’ve never been blocked before that I know of? And certainly not by someone I don’t even follow. Hope others gained something.

@benpobjie: Anyone else want to be a fucking moron to me tonight? Anyone? Feel free.

@benpobjie: .@tammois it was an opportunity until you posted a tweet so stupid it brought home the futility of engaging you.

@benpobjie: @tammois sadly my twitter won’t let me block you so your idiocy continues to clog my feed.

@tammois: @benpobjie it is really unfortunate that you don’t want to engage with people when they tell you how they exp words, given you have a voice.

@juzzytribune: @tammois is there a parallel between accusing a white man of inherent blindness and accusing a woman of hysteria?

@tammois: No. RT @juzzytribune: @tammoisis there a parallel between accusing a white man of inherent blindness and accusing a woman of hysteria?

@juzzytribune: @tammois ok then.

@tammois: RT @mikestuchbery: Lovely of @BenPobjie& @JuzzyTribunevia @KingsTribune to highlight the how intolerant & pigheaded some Lefties can be.

@tammois: Nice one by @mikestuchbery there – of course it’s ‘intolerant & pigheaded’ of the left to point out intolerance. Very clever, Mike.

@benpobjie: Protip: don’t bother arguing with someone who decided your gender makes you incapable of being right before you start.

@benpobjie: @tammois I don’t engage with those who predetermined that I have nothing worthwhile to say because I’m male. Because it’s pointless.

@tammois: @benpobjie that’s not very helpful. I engaged w you respectfully at all stages, & don’t remotely think men have nothing to offer.

@tammois: @benpobjie that’s a total cop out. but your total unwillingness to listen indicated that you have *no idea* of your own privilege.

@benpobjie: Don’t call hysterical people hysterical. Don’t call stupid people stupid. Don’t call arseholes arseholes. Fuck that for a laugh.

@tammois: @benpobjie do you realise you have choices her beyond ‘STOP IT I AM NOT SEXIST I SWEAR I AM NICE’? There is also, ‘wow, thx for the input’

@tammois: @benpobjie bc, you know, I didn’t really think you were a terrible sexist. But defending reductive abuse of women isn’t very helpful.

Then people commence with the dismissive jokes about feminism.

@benpobjie:@cyenne40 misogynist album

@benpobjie: @tammois you don’t know me. You don’t know what I do. You don’t know what I think. You don’t have a fucking clue about me. So fuck off.

@tammois: @benpobjie I am not judging you – I’m judging your current words & response to critique *of somebody else’s writing*, btw.

@tammois: @benpobjie I don’t want you to feel bad, or that I think things about you. I just want you to *hear us* when we say don’t call us hysterical

@benpobjie: Twitter has finally allowed me to block @tammois and free my feed of her patronising sexist gibberish, thank Christ

@tammois: For those who follow me, I hope this has been helpful to understand structures of privilege & why it’s not cool to call women hysterical.

@tammois: Nor ‘shrill’, nor ‘sluts’… give me more, everyone, & I’ll RT.

@benpobjie: @crazybrave @ellymc nobody explained privilege because it didn’t need explaining. I’m very familiar with it thank you, patronising tosser

@benpobjie: The world is filled with petty witless fools who’d rather masturbate over their own superiority complex than have an original thought.

As I collected these tweets, I saw a couple where people had asked @juzzytribune what was going on. I’d like to highlight that his responses appear respectful and civil, as they had earlier.

@juzzytribune: @TudorGrrrl I used the “H” word, which started all this…. and I’ve clarified and acknowledged I should have used a non-gender word..

Sadly, @mikestuchbery (and others) chose to continue with dismissive acerbity of the ‘feminism is stupid’ variety:

@mikestuchbery: @jeremysear @JaneTribune @benpobjie You are a male. It will take a whippersnipper to your goolies & send you to a site on male privilege.

@mikestuchbery: @Twinarp @benpobjie Your derp privilege is derping you both to the derp.

Though consistency seems not to have been his aim:

@mikestuchbery: @JackieK_ Her initial criticism was fine & cogent. It was the resulting pile on with Brull & others on Ben & Justin I found distasteful.

Finally, this:

@mikestuchbery: @benpobjie Some of us admire your persistence in not losing your cool at the bullies, chancers & zealots.

To wrap up:

This all relates to my post on dissent and intellectual honesty (which was cross-posted to the Drum), except that this is specifically around gendered language. The history of hysteria is basically that women’s uteruses make us irrational. There’s more, but brevity is called for here. But let me attempt to articulate concerns around usage in this case.

Dines (or Greer, or any female commentator) says a thing (or things) that someone doesn’t like, in this case, that porn culture is bad. Perhaps she is passionate on the topic, a bit like Tony Abbott wound up about the price on carbon, but these are women. So some people (not just men) say she is being ‘hysterical’, which means ‘uncontrollably emotional’ or ‘irrational’. It is a deeply gendered term – try to imagine it being applied to men, and in most cases you can’t, unless it’s to queer men. In Shaw’s case, he didn’t just say ‘hysterical’, he said ‘hysterical screechings’. So in the first paragraph of his article, he has given us a position on Dines where anything else we read about her, she is a banshee character, so out of control she’s a danger to not only herself, but probably others.

Let’s say Shaw had said, ‘Dines is trying to incite moral panic’. In this example, Dines is a rational actor with an aim, not an out of control woman not to be taken seriously. In the second example, we do take her seriously, but we may just as easily reach a conclusion that we disagree with her position on porn culture as if we thought she was actually hysterical. The key difference is that Shaw hasn’t robbed her of agency and put her back into that female box of irrationality, emotions, tears and hormones.

Calling a male writer hysterical is just as unproductive to civil debate as calling a woman hysterical. But to call a man hysterical doesn’t have the historical baggage that leads to this act of continuing to marginalise women from public debate.

I have been challenged for calling a man out for being ‘blinded by his (white) male privilege’, as I did Pobjie when he grew more and more belligerent and unwilling to enter into productive discourse. Pointing out privilege is not remotely the same thing as calling a woman hysterical. Privilege is about power, being labeled ‘hysterical’ is about usurping power.

It is far too common a position for people who don’t want their privilege contested or acknowledged to insist they are being oppressed. We’ve all heard the undergrads who, upon learning of the ‘women’s room’, start up a culture of ridicule and demand a parallel ‘men’s room’. Because they’re being marginalised by women seeking a place to retreat from masculine aggression.

I looked at the timelines of a number of people yesterday. There has been a long stream of ‘oh, no, we’re sexist’, ‘don’t say gender, bc then we’re acknowledging gender’, and other such witticisms. They’ve even started a #hysteriagate tag – another tactic to silence dissent.

It’s hard to believe that we still live in a world where people feel so comfortable to retreat to (a very public twitter timeline) space where they make a number of sexist jokes to make themselves feel better about dismissing critique.

Ridicule the women who told you we felt ridiculed. Yeah, that’s really grappling with your male privilege.

You say a thing. I disagree with the thing you said and I tell you so. You say:

1. Everybody is entitled to their opinion.
2. Why are you so difficult?
3. nothing, and look surly or distraught.

The first example is a ‘non-answer’, designed to stifle discussion and debate. I may have information you don’t have about the topic. Telling me ‘it’s just my opinion’ rather than engaging with the opinion or assertion of ‘fact’ achieves nothing except to silence me. Your original statement remains unchallenged and unchallengeable, because anything anyone might say is ‘just opinion’. This isn’t true. Not everything is opinion.

Academics are trained to research a topic until they know it inside and out. That doesn’t mean there can’t be new data at any time, that may shift the scholar’s position once uncovered. It does, however, mean the scholar is considered ‘an expert’ who has authority to speak on the topic. This authority has come with years of work and constantly challenging assertions and so-called common sense beliefs. It has not come from reading an article in the newspaper and then citing that article for the next year as authoritative.

Newspapers are not authoritative. Research is, as carried out by academics and other knowledge workers across many sectors who read widely, ask questions, observe, and engage in constant discussion and debate on a topic.

What you read in The Australian about climate change is not authoritative. What you read from the Union of Concerned Scientists is.

The second response (that I am being difficult) is also a non-answer, but a more aggressive one in which I am positioned as an unreasonable person who won’t let a person speak freely. This answer, while serving the same purpose as the first (to silence me), is, I would argue, pernicious. It allows statements that commit symbolic violence to go forth and prosper.

You’re not racist/sexist/nationalist – I’m just difficult.

I’ll admit it. I’m contrarian when people unreflexively reproduce stereotypes and prejudice that keep us from progressing towards a more egalitarian/cosmopolitan/sustainable society.

I will tell you I disagree with you when you say things that maintain hegemonic structures such as white privilege. Calling me difficult when I tell you I disagree is tantamount to saying you don’t care that you are privileged, and in fact you bloody well like it this way, so bugger the global south/Indigenous Australians/asylum seekers/women… Why don’t you try an honest approach and just admit it – the status quo benefits you – rather than obfuscating the point by trying to dismiss me as difficult?

But wait, you meant no harm? That is why I will disagree with you respectfully. People often reproduce stereotypes while meaning no harm. Wouldn’t you like to know that’s what you did though, so you don’t do it again? And please tell me when I say something unintentionally offensive or inaccurate.

The third one, silence (often surly silence), is spectacularly disingenuous – you get to be a victim of this difficult contrarian. Make sure your eyes look pained in your silence so everyone around you can see that I’m picking on you. In fact, I’m the elitist one, sharing what I’ve learned as a researcher, ‘me and my fucking education’. Yes, it’s awful that I have learned many things that have made me want to do more so that more people in the world can feed themselves and have choices in their lives as to what and where they will eat, study, work, marry, vote, live.

Rather than being so wounded when I tell you I disagree with you and why, try something different. Try saying, ‘Really? Tell me more. I’m interested.’ There should be nothing threatening about learning something new, something that may even change your mind. It’s okay to change your mind. I’ll change mine if you provide compelling evidence for me to do so.

You say a thing. I disagree with the thing you said, but I say nothing.

• You believe I agree with you.
• I feel dishonest for not saying what I think/know.
• Your peace is kept, mine is disturbed.

If the world is to distribute resources and power more equally amongst all its people, then for me to imply with my silence that I agree with your statement that is promoting ignorance or prejudice is for me to support the very hegemony I am suggesting we should contest. I become complicit. My silence extends the symbolic violence of your words by giving the impression of consent.

I am then a lesser person for my intellectual dishonesty. I have remained silent and allowed you to believe that your comment about ‘those uncivil people of…’ was acceptable. I am unhappy with my silence, but I am so well versed in what happens (1, 2 or 3) that I have learned to pick my battles and ‘get along well enough’. In getting along well enough with you, I have failed to protect the voiceless. I have not used my own privilege to fight for the rights of others. I am wasting my privilege so that you may maintain yours.

You say a thing. I disagree with the thing you said, and I tell you so. You say:

1. Really? Tell me more. I’m interested.

My story is not unlike many who spent years as a vegetarian only to resume eating meat – I chose a vegetarian diet for ethical and environmental reasons, and returned to meat for health reasons. I had two very healthy pregnancies while vegetarian and breastfed my first two children with no issues, only to become severely anaemic early in the third pregnancy. I tried Floradix Herbal Iron Supplement, which had seen me through the final trimesters before without dropping into the anaemic range, to no avail.

As I sat in wan exhaustion at work one day in the third month, it came to me: a burger will fix this. Considering I hadn’t eaten nor craved meat for over six years (and no pork or poultry for even longer because of my particular concerns about the horrific conditions these animals face in intensive systems), this was a pretty weird thought. But moments later, I walked into a little burger joint in Smith Street, Fitzroy and ordered a burger and asked them to slather it with hot English mustard. I’ll be honest, I felt absolutely nothing except exhilaration and a sense of well being. No guilt – I think my body was thanking me, again, weird, I know, ‘cos it was a burger after all, not a scotch filet, but, hey, that iron slid into my blood cells and brought colour to my cheeks for the first time in months.

For the rest of the pregnancy, I ate red meat two or three times a week, as well as my usual high intake of leafy greens and vitamin C-rich foods, and my iron levels returned to normal – I didn’t even have to take any supplements in the final trimester. And I felt fabulous. I slowly took up sustainable fish and lamb, but it took another couple years before I could eat poultry or pork, and only when I could find free range. I really never even considered returning to a vegetarian diet – I had started to better understand the role that livestock plays in sustainable farming, and I became increasingly aware of where to source meat that had been sustainably and ethically raised. Of course, these days in Australia the options are improving all the time, especially for those with ready access to farmers’ markets and armed with the knowledge to frequent them and seek out ethical producers.

On the sustainability question I can cite a lot of research that supports systems that integrate livestock into holistic agricultural systems. My post on agroecology and food security has links to some of that research, as do my notes from the 2011 Sustainable Food Summit, and I’d strongly recommend reading ‘Meat: a Benign Extravagance‘ by Simon Fairlie, which even converted the previously staunch vegan George Monbiot to advocating for sustainable agricultural systems that include livestock. Monbiot’s post is an excellent overview of Fairlie’s book, and captures the key messages about inaccurate reporting of feed conversion ratios, livestock water consumption, and other fallacies that lead to the conclusion that one shouldn’t eat meat.

So while it’s easy these days to counter the ‘animal farming is unsustainable’ furphy with an increasing body of evidence that show how we can feed the world with small-scale, integrated, ethical agricultural systems (because of course the vegans and ethical omnivores already agree that intensively farming animals is both unsustainable and unethical), the ethical disagreement seems harder.

My recent twitter debate with vegan activist @MSizer reminded me what an impasse we come to when his position is ‘it’s immoral to eat animals’ and mine is ‘no it’s not’. Although I have some background in philosophy, it’s not my discipline, but there was an excellent article in the Conversation that went through the very difficult and complex philosophical arguments around eating animals that I recommend you read.

The fundamental question is whether one believes it is okay to take an animal’s life for our nutrition and pleasure. @MSizer does not believe it is morally defensible to do so, but like many other omnivores, I believe it is, so long as the animal has lived a pain and stress-free life on the paddock in an environment that allowed it to engage in its instinctive behaviours, and that its slaughter is quick and painless, and preferably done without the animal knowing it was about to happen. I am comfortable with humans eating non-human animals in the same way that I am comfortable with birds eating worms or lions eating antelope.

I have a pang of sadness for the life lost, especially at such times as we face that death in person, such as when we slaughter our own chickens, just as I have a pang when I see footage of a predator taking its prey in the wild. That doesn’t mean I don’t think it should happen. The more deeply engaged I have become with these ethical concerns, the more mindful my meat eating is – I am horrified these days if I overcook a piece of meat, and have recently caught myself saying, ‘this animal gave us its life, we should cook it with the respect it is due’. I am also a strong advocate for and practitioner of a reduction of meat and dairy consumption in the average Australian’s diet (and other members of high-meat-eating societies, of course). If we all simply ate less then the demand pressures that got us into this unsustainable, unethical industrial food mess would diminish, and our global food security issues would with them.

But that is my position, and I should address the position put forward by the likes of Animals Australia, PETA and @MSizer, that is, that it is immoral to kill and eat animals. I don’t really think I could convince vegans with this ethical code that it’s not immoral, and frankly, I’m not really interested in trying. I have great respect for people who have chosen a vegan diet out of compassion, and I’m definitely not interested in trying to get this very small minority to take up meat eating again. But I would like to put two important questions to them.

First, if you believe it is immoral to eat animals, does that mean that people in the global south on subsistent diets who are able to access some meat in a very nutritionally limited diet are immoral for doing so? Would you begrudge the one in six people in the world who are food insecure or starving the right to eat meat if they can? And if not, is your ethical position perhaps not so absolute as you suggest it to be?

Second, I think it’s wonderful that groups such as Animals Australia fight for animal rights, but to draw attention to the worst abuses of industrial farming and then draw the conclusion that therefore we shouldn’t eat meat is totally unproductive in the campaign to improve animal welfare in agriculture. I know their premise remains ‘but you shouldn’t eat meat’, but the very simple reality is that the majority of those who can eat meat in the world will continue to for a very long time to come, perhaps forever, and no amount of activism will stop that. There are deeply rooted cultural, social and economic reasons why it is so, as well as the environmental ones whereby livestock are healthy contributors in agroecological systems such as these examples in China.

The most positive impact any of us can have on the majority omnivorous culture is to fight for stronger animal welfare measures in agriculture right now. A personal decision not to eat animal products is a powerful statement in itself, and will cause a level of reflection amongst those with whom you engage, but if you don’t join the vocal fight for ethical animal agriculture, in my opinion, you’re wasting a valuable opportunity to work with ethical omnivores to change policy, regulation and awareness of improved production models amongst producers. By starting the conversation with, ‘I think you’re immoral’, you alienate most omnivores immediately, and are then far less likely to actually influence their decisions.

I’m a free-range pig farmer. I despise intensive farms with pigs in huge sheds on concrete, the use of sow stalls, routine castration, docking and the entirety of how those poor animals are treated over the course of their short lives. The ‘outdoor bred’ farms are an improvement, and one that I am happy to acknowledge and indeed even promote as a better option than the former. I still want pigs raised outside on pasture their whole lives, but I’m glad the outdoor bred growers have sprung up to provide more humane treatment for the millions of pork eaters out there. I’d like eventually for all pigs to be free range, just as I want all animals to be. We may not get there, but I’ll keep fighting.

Vegans such as @MSizer want no animals grown for our consumption and I don’t begrudge you that position, but in the meanwhile, you could still acknowledge the vastly better conditions under true free-range production models and push for all animal agriculture to be to those standards. So long as animals are raised for food, I reckon its unconscionable not to.

The field of agroecology offers a rich body of work that makes the argument for moving to more sustainable, small-scale agriculture, whether organic or with reduced external inputs such as commercial fertilisers and pesticides. In a few recent discussions I’ve had with supporters of GM, I’ve sent them links to reports to back up the clear and demonstrable evidence that we must move to a very different way of producing food that works to preserve natural resources and regenerate landscape while supporting local communities, but I don’t believe any of them ever read the research.

So today I decided to tweet quotes and paraphrases from one piece of work, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food report: ‘Agroecology and the Right to Food‘, released on the 3^rd of August 2011. I hoped that by reading the 21-page report myself and offering just the highlights, those who speak loudly on a topic they appear to know little about might be better informed. Of course I also knew it would offer plenty of good evidence for those already advocating for sustainable ag. I offer you the list of the quotes and paraphrases I tweeted here in one place for easy reference. Note that most of these are direct quotes from the report, and a couple of them are paraphrased – I have not added any of my own comments.

Another excellent resource of the latest research in agroecology is The Laboratory of Agroecology and Urban Ecosystems at Washington State University Vancouver – and you might like to follow Assistant Professor Jahi Chappell on twitter – he’s @mjahi – as he often tweets links to relevant research.

Quotes & paraphrases from Agroecology and the Right to Food

• agriculture should be fundamentally redirected towards modes of production that are more environmentally sustainable and socially just
• Foreign direct investment in agriculture went from an average US$ 600 million annually in the 1990s to an average US$ 3 billion in 2005-2007.
• …increasing food production to meet future needs, while necessary, is not sufficient. It will not allow significant progress in combating hunger and malnutrition if it is not combined with higher incomes and improved livelihoods for the poorest – particularly small-scale farmers in developing countries.
• pouring money into agriculture is not sufficient – must take steps towards ‘low-carbon, resource-preserving agriculture that benefits poorest farmers’
• It can only happen by design, through strategies and programmes backed by strong political will, and informed by a right-to-food approach.
• Participation of food-insecure groups in the design and implementation of the policies that most affect them is also a key dimension of the right to food.
• food systems must ensure the availability of food for everyone, that is, supply must match world needs.
• At present, nearly half the world’s cereal production is used to produce animal feed, & meat consumption is increasing.
• Problem w most widely cited need to increase ag production by 70% by 2050 is it takes demand curve as a given.
• UNEP estimates loss of calories from feeding cereals to animals rather than humans represents the annual calorie need of 3.5 billion people
• Planting, harvest & post-harvest waste, combined w increased production of grains for agrofuel tightens pressure on agriculture supplies
• agriculture must develop in ways that increase the incomes of smallholders
• hunger today is mostly attributable not to stocks that are too low or to global supplies unable to meet demand, but to poverty
• GDP growth originating in agriculture is at least twice as effective in reducing poverty as GDP growth originating outside agriculture
• When large estates increase their revenue, most of it is spent on imported inputs and machinery, and much less trickles down to local traders
• Only by supporting small producers can we help break the vicious cycle that leads from rural poverty to the expansion of urban slums
• loss of biodiversity, unsustainable use of water, and pollution of soils and water are issues which compromise the continuing ability for natural resources to support agriculture.
• Climate change, which translates in more frequent and extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods and less predictable rainfall, is already having a severe impact on the ability of certain regions and communities to feed themselves. It is also destabilizing markets.
• Most efforts in the past mimicked industrial processes where external inputs serve to produce outputs in linear model of production
• agroecology seeks to improve the sustainability of agroecosystems by mimicking nature instead of industry
• This report suggests that scaling up agroecological practices can simultaneously increase farm productivity and food security, improve incomes and rural livelihoods, and reverse the trend towards species loss and genetic erosion.
• The core principles of agroecology include recycling nutrients and energy on the farm, rather than introducing external inputs integrating crops and livestock; diversifying species and genetic resources in agroecosystems over time and space; and focusing on interactions and productivity across the agricultural system, rather than focusing on individual species. Agroecology is highly knowledge-intensive, based on techniques that are not delivered top-down but developed on the basis of farmers’ knowledge and experimentation.
• agroecology is more overarching as it supports building drought resistant agricultural systems (including soils, plants, agrobiodiversity, etc.), not just drought-resistant plants.
• Integration of livestock into farming systems, such as dairy cattle, pigs and poultry, provides a source of protein to the family, as well as a means of fertilizing soils
• it was found that the average crop yield increase was even higher for agroecology projects than the global average of 79 per cent at 116 per cent increase for all African projects and 128 per cent increase for projects in East Africa
• Kenya: ‘push pull’ strategy – plant insect-repellent, stock fodder crops amongst corn & Napier grass at edge to attract & trap pests. The push-pull strategy doubles maize yields and milk production while, at the same time, improves the soil.
• In Japan, farmers found that ducks and fish were as effective as pesticide for controlling insects in rice paddies, while providing additional protein for their families.
• An optimal solution that could be an exit strategy from fertilizer subsidy schemes would be to link fertilizer subsidies directly to agroforestry investments on the farm in order to provide for long-term sustainability in nutrient supply, and to build up soil health as the basis for sustained yields and improved efficiency of fertilizer response.35 Malawi is reportedly exploring this “subsidy to sustainability” approach.36
• By enhancing on-farm fertility production, agroecology reduces farmers’ reliance on external inputs and state subsidies
• Agroecological approaches can be labour-intensive during their launching period, due to the complexity of the tasks of managing different plants and animals on the farm, and recycling the waste produced. However, research shows that the higher labour-intensity of agroecology is a reality particularly in the short term. In addition, while labour-saving policies have generally been prioritized by governments, creation of employment in rural areas in developing countries, where underemployment is currently massive, and demographic growth remains high, may constitute an advantage rather than a liability and may slow down rural-urban migration.
• According to peasant organizations, agroecology is also more attractive to farmers, because it procures pleasant features for those working the land for long hours, such as shade from trees or the absence of smell and toxicity from chemicals.
• need to produce equipment for conservation agricultural techniques such as no-till and direct seeding actually results in more jobs being created in the manufacturing sector
• The shift from diversified cropping systems to simplified cereal-based systems thus contributed to micronutrient malnutrition in many developing countries
• The use of agroecological techniques can significantly cushion the negative impacts of extreme weather events, for resilience is strengthened by the use and promotion of agricultural biodiversity at ecosystem, farm system and farmer field levels, which is materialized by many agroecological approaches.
• Nicaragua after Hurricane Mitch: On average, agroecological plots lost 18 per cent less arable land to landslides than conventional plots and had 69 per cent less gully erosion compared to conventional farms
• on-farm experiments in Ethiopia, India, and the Netherlands have demonstrated that the physical properties of soils on organic farms improved the drought resistance of crops
• agroecological practice of cultivar mixtures bets on genetic diversity in the fields in order to improve crop resistance to diseases
• In the Yunnan Province in China, after disease susceptible rice varieties were planted in mixtures with resistant varieties, yields improved by 89 per cent and rice blast disease was 94 per cent less severe than when the varieties were grown in monoculture, leading farmers to abandon the use of fungicidal sprays.
• Agroecology also puts agriculture on the path of sustainability by delinking food production from the reliance on fossil energy
• It contributes to mitigating climate change, both by increasing carbon sinks in soil organic matter and above-ground biomass, and by avoiding carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions from farms by reducing direct and indirect energy use
• Farmer field schools have been shown to significantly reduce the amounts of pesticide use, as inputs are being replaced by knowledge
• Large-scale studies from Indonesia, Vietnam and Bangladesh recorded 35 to 92 per cent reduction in insecticide use in rice, and 34 to 66 per cent reduction in pesticide use, combined with 4 to 14 per cent better yields recorded in cotton production in China, India and Pakistan
• The incentive structures which such policies create to encourage the shift towards sustainable farming should be regularly tested and re-evaluated with the participation of the beneficiaries, transforming policy into a mode of “social learning rather than an exercise of political authority.”
• Agroecological techniques are best spread from farmer to farmer, since they are often specific to an agroecological zone.
• Agroecological practices require supply of public goods, but investment is significantly more sustainable than provision of private goods….such as fertilisers or pesticides that farmers can only afford so long as they’re subsidised
• agricultural research has the greatest overall impact on poverty and agricultural productivity in developing countries
• perhaps bc this sort of research cannot be rewarded by patents, private sector has been largely absent from it’
• Rather than treating smallholder farmers as beneficiaries of aid, they should be seen as experts with knowledge that is complementary to formalized expertise
• participation can ensure that policies and programmes are truly responsive to the needs of vulnerable groups, who will question projects that fail to improve their situation
• participation empowers the poor – a vital step towards poverty alleviation
• Participation of food insecure groups in the policies that affect them should become a crucial element of all food security policies
• Specific, targeted schemes should ensure that women are empowered and encouraged to participate in this construction of knowledge.
• gender issues are incorporated into less than 10 per cent of development assistance in agriculture, and women farmers receive only 5 per cent of agricultural extension services worldwide
• Farmers should also be encouraged to move up the value chain by adding value to raw products through assuming increased roles in packaging, processing, and marketing their produce
• support for agroecological practices will fail to achieve the desired results if markets are not organized to protect farmers from volatile prices and the dumping of subsidized products on their local markets, which can seriously disrupt local production

There are more retailers and promoters of ethical and local produce than I had space for in the article, so I thought I’d put a few more here. Not all produce listed by these sites will necessarily be free-range meats – I’ve included local directories here, and you’ll need to do your own local homework on the details!

I’d be very interested in feedback on more sites – I’ll pop them into the following list as I’m made aware of more.

Foodo

Australian Regional Food Guide

Pigeon House 150 (Wollongong, NSW)

Transition Mt Alexander Local Food Guide (VIC)

Daylesford Macedon Produce (VIC)

Local Harvest: The Sunshine Coast Regional Food Directory (Qld)

Feast Fine Foods (Adelaide, SA)

I’ve been making tacos and burritos at home for a very long time, and it was with great delight I went on a hunt for a tortilla press on our recent Road Trip USA (I came home with three – two for me and one for Zoe). Now that I have the presses, plus access to instant masa flour from Casa Iberica in Melbourne, corn tortilla making is very simple indeed.

So it was rather amusing that as I was making tacos de carne asada the other week food writer John Lethlean tweeted a request for a recipe for soft tacos. @FlavourCrusader put me forward, which motivated me to write out my recipe. With the current craze for all things Mexican in Melbourne, I hope this helps all the home cooks see what the fuss is about.

Tortillas:

Carne asada:

Pico de gallo:

Guacamole:

For the tortillas, mix masa & water and knead until a smooth dough – this doesn’t take long. If too dry, add a bit of water – should be slightly tacky but not sticky. Roll into 16 balls and cover with a damp cloth until ready to cook.

When ready, place baking paper on press, put ball in centre and press flat, then place tortilla on dry hot griddle and cook until brown spots appear on both sides. Keep warm in a tea towel until serving. If you don’t have a tortilla press, these are easy to roll out with a rolling pin.

For the carne asada, squeeze juice of limes (I typically use 2 for one steak) over steak, add pepper, cover and set aside for an hour while steak comes to room temp. Just before grilling, salt liberally, then grill to taste (we like it med rare). Rest for a couple minutes before slicing thinly.

For the pico de gallo, dice tomatoes, red onion and chilies and mix with coriander and lime juice. It’s best done at least half an hour before serving to develop the flavours through the tomato. We often leave the chilies out for the kids and just add Tabasco at the table.

We like the simplest guacamole: mash avocados with minced or bashed garlic (1-2 cloves to 2 avocados), add lemon juice, salt & pepper to taste.

You can either construct them in the kitchen and bring them out on plates served with frijoles or Mexican rice, or let people construct at the table. The order for us is usually: tortilla, carne asada, white onion, pico de gallo, guacamole, coriander. Sometimes we add a bit of homemade yoghurt (which we use instead of sour cream for pretty much everything), and we usually let everyone opt in or out of the coriander. Thinly sliced purple cabbage is also a delicious addition.

This entire meal, though it includes a number of separate processes, can take less than half an hour to prepare for a family of five! It’s a Jonai staple.

All of this happened while I was at the inaugural Australasian Regional Food Networks and Cultures Conference in Kingscliff, and then immediately afterwards at the Annual Council Meeting of the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA), for whom I am no longer an office bearer as of 1 January 2012. Hence you’ll see I haven’t responded to any of the comments on the posts on Marian and Wendy’s sites, which I aim to rectify soon.

Just to finish this little update, I’ve also just been appointed Company Secretary to the Rare Breeds Trust of Australia, where I look forward to using my years of higher ed advocacy and activism to step up my advocacy for sustainable and ethical farming and consumption practices.

Thank you, 2011, for the glorious life-changing opportunities, and here’s looking towards 2012 for even brighter (and bigger) horizons!

Authenticity measures the degree to which something is more or less what it ought to be. …is it an immanent norm, emerging somehow from the cuisine itself? Or is it an external norm, reflecting some imposed gastronomic standard? If is is an immanent norm, who is its authoritative voice: The professional cook? The average consumer? The gourmand? The housewife? If it is an imposed norm, who is its privileged voice: the connoisseur of exotic food? The tourist? The ordinary participants in a neighboring cuisine? The cultivated eater from a distant one? (Appadurai 1986, 25).

My first job as a recently-arrived Anglo-American migrant to Australia in 1992 was as a waitress in a bistro in Geelong, a provincial city an hour from Melbourne. On the menu, I was delighted to note, were burritos, a food Americans claim as our own. Whilst having my tour of the kitchen, I asked the chef how she made her burritos, to which she replied, “I use large roti bread, fill it with pieces of chicken I’ve fried with some onion, roll it up, and pour béarnaise sauce over the top. Then I serve it with salad on the side.” Aside from raised eyebrows, I withheld my feedback until I tasted said ‘burritos’ at the end of a long shift, “This tastes quite nice, but it’s definitely not a burrito.”

In a short piece On Culinary Authenticity, Arjun Appadurai suggests that “quality is typically the insider’s concern, authenticity that of the culinary tourist. We often admit that there is food that, though inauthentic, is good” (1986, 25). However Appadurai acknowledges that authenticity becomes the concern of insiders “when they (and the food) are far from home. […] The concern with authenticity indicates some sort of doubt, and this sort of doubt is rarely part of the discourse of an undisturbed culinary tradition.” (ibid).

I find Americans in Melbourne often lament the lack of Mexican restaurants, or the perceived ‘inauthenticity’ of those we do have. I myself have indulged in precisely this lament, and in my early years as a new migrant went to some trouble to seek out Melbourne’s Mexican restaurants, which were unequivocally disappointing when the flavours failed to conjure up a taste of home. (The dilemmas of finding ‘my’ food also extended to: a lack of Ranch dressing; unwelcome slices of beetroot on burgers; large, overly pliant pieces of bacon; and milk that tasted ‘funny’, to name just a few.)

I eventually accepted the absence of what I understood to be Mexican food, and subsequently resorted to only eating it at home. Due to a lack of quality tortillas here in the early 1990s, I learned to make my own. Were the tortillas I made at home ‘authentic’? Surely not – I had to piece together recipes from a few whole-foods genre cookbooks, and I don’t own a tortilla press, so my tortillas were inevitably too thick and quite chewy. It is now possible to find edible commercial facsimiles of tortillas for sale even at Coles, though they don’t compare with homemade or California’s ubiquitous locally made versions. As well as tortillas, I make my own refried beans as the tinned version readily available here is, well, depressing.

And yet this story of a search for authenticity has a complicated genealogy. My earliest experiences of burritos were in fast food franchises in southern California, namely Del Taco and Taco Bell. Later, our Mexican housekeeper made us quesadillas almost daily, Mexican style, without vegetables. In my last years in America, I was a fan of the local taquería style burritos, which are typically giant and filled with refried beans, rice, cheese, lettuce, tomato, guacamole, sour cream and red or green salsa and wrapped in aluminium foil.

Thus is the varied landscape of my burrito memories. There were (and are) plenty of other versions of burritos in America, including the ‘wet’ burritos, which must be eaten with a knife and fork, but my core notions of authenticity (which, as per Appadurai’s point, only surfaced after migration) involved the basics of meat, beans, cheese, salads, guacamole and sour cream wrapped in flour tortillas and eaten with your hands. The American versions of ‘authentic’ burritos actually differ significantly from their Mexican counterparts.

In northern Mexico there are burritos, which are made from fillings (typically rice, beans and/or a meat) wrapped inside an unleavened flat bread that the Mexicans call a tortilla. The tortillas can be made from wheat or corn, and come in a variety of sizes. They tend to be smaller than burritos found in the US, where the burritos are filled with an astonishing number of ingredients, many of which are not easily found in their northern Mexican states of origin, Sonora and Chihuahua. With the ever increasing popularity of burritos in America, they have made their way onto menus throughout southern Mexico as well wherever ‘gringos’ congregate, and more closely resemble American versions than northern Mexican ones. I do not have the space here to do justice to a discussion of the process of migrant foods ‘returning’ in hybridised form to the ‘homeland’ as an aspect of the broader process of globalisation, but it is a topic worth exploration in its own right.

My personal hunt for an ‘authentic’ burrito is just one version of identity work played out repeatedly around the world. In my narrative, it is the story of the migrant who unreflexively believes there is an ‘authentic’ essence to a dish from one’s original culture (even if it’s a transplant in the first place). Writing about multiculturalism and migrant tendencies to self-essentialise, Tariq Modood observes that “…when non-Chinese speak of Chinese civilization, their starting point is often that it has coherence, sameness over centuries and a reified quality” (2007, 93) and subsequently argues that sometimes we all speak of our own cultures this way (as per my own migration trajectory).

In my initial searches for an ‘authentic’ burrito, I didn’t clearly articulate for myself or others what that item might really be like if I found it, but I knew that I would know it, by sight, smell, texture and taste, when I did. In 20 years here I have never found ‘it’, but still enjoy (nay, devour) ‘homely’ burritos on every return trip to the States. And in Australia, I no longer pine for Ranch dressing, or American-flavoured milk, and have accepted beetroot, prefer Australian-style bacon, and adore Vegemite and lamb in any form.

Migrants and those recently returned from overseas often experience unsatisfactory encounters with the dish (or dishes) of their memories, and will tend to seek out restaurants run by ‘real Mexicans/Vietnamese/Italians/[insert migrant group]’ in hopes that they have been ‘true’ to the cuisine and can offer one cultural succour and fulfilment of nostalgic desires by matching taste to memory. When this fails, if one is resourceful, one attempts to cook the foods at home, even if they were foods that one traditionally only ate ‘out’ back home, or for which key ingredients were always purchased ready made, such as tortillas in California.

But in my view, arguing about whether something is authentic isn’t very interesting. Rather, understanding what it means to those seeking or producing ‘it’ is my motivation for interrogating the concept. In my experience, it is common for Melburnians to express pride for their/our cosmopolitan city, a melding of cultures where people from all over the globe are living “togetherness-in-difference” (Ang 2001, 14), particularly in the food scene.

Yet there is an obvious tension between the (potential) symbolic violence of insisting on the performance of authentic identity and the associated very real desire to be challenged and stimulated with a multiplicity of ideas, flavours and ways that is at the heart of cosmopolitanism. As I have written elsewhere (Jonas 2008), at the heart of this is a desire for fluency in many vernaculars and to know the world’s many ways of being-in-the-world, which also has the consequence of distinguishing one as possessing a great deal of cultural capital within most fields, whether intentional or not.

So the important question is not whether it’s possible to determine whether something is authentic, but what does the search for it mean to different people, insiders, outsiders and those in-between? And what one finds upon probing is that it is a useful concept by which people assert and maintain ethnic and cosmopolitan identities that allow them to settle homely identities in new lands, or new identities in homely lands. It is a means to achieving social distinction and accruing cultural capital, and it is a way to engage with Otherness as a cosmopolitan principle. It is a way for migrants to strategically mobilise their own ethnic identities in order to accrue economic capital from the outsiders who seek it, and an essentialist assertion that can exclude those perceived to be ‘authentic’ from the project of modernity.

A final rhetorical flourish to highlight the instability of authenticity as a category then – some years ago I asked a focus group in Saigon, ‘what is the essential ingredient that makes phởauthentic?’. One woman responded, ‘MSG’.