Serco Probably Own You and Your Little Dog, Too

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You may have heard of the security company called Serco before, if you have not, however, then you might be interested to learn that they run the security for Villawood Detention Centre. You may also be interested to learn that what they also own is most of the world’s ‘public’ assets.

The multinational company (and that’s about 17 different countries worth of multinational). They are run out of the UK where they have the most influence and in the UK they own (yes all of these services are privatized) state security, transport, the National Physical Laboratory, most of the prisons and detention centres, most of the defence force including the countries ballistic missile defence system, most of the airports, five of the state’s hospitals, a highschool, some leisure centres, they run a number of publicly-funded (naturally putting the private in public) websites, and waste collection. They also create the software for monitoring web traffic across London and they’ve been contracted to set Greenwhich Mean Time. 

In the United States, they have contracts with the US Army, US Federal Aviation Administration, The Ministry of Ontario, the US Navy, the US airforce, US Department of Homeland Security, US Marine Corps, Federal Retirement and Thrift Investment Board, US Patent and Trademark Office, and the US Department of State Intelligence Community.

In case you thought the list was done, I’m sorry but it doesn’t end here. The company owns the Province of Ontario’s DriveTest driver examination centres, they have 55 of their own contractors working for the US Department of Health and Public Services, and they manage the implementation of the US’ Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act. They also have a contract to enforce parking meter regulations in Chicago and they run prisons in Germany and Mount Eden Prison in New Zealand. They operate the Dubai Metro and the Copenhagen Metro.

To add further to the list, the company operates air traffic control in Iraq and the United Emirates.

In Australia, the company run Acacia Prison, Borallon Correction Facility, Christmas Island and of course Villawood Detention Centre. Outside, of our detention centres, they also operate the Transport Infoline.

To put it simply, Serco as a conglomerate has managed to privatize more ‘public assets’ than any conglomeration in history.

The companies revenue officially stacks out at UK3, 955 million and is ever-growing and, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn, ever acquiring more ‘public’ assets.

So, how much power do they actually have over individual states?

Well, as is boringly predictable, they have a dodgy track record which has gone largely unchecked.

In the UK, a report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate, a regulator body in the country, found that under prison regulation from Serco, 60% of its inmates were locked up all day. Another report found that under the same regulation from Serco in the UK’s public hospitals, the company had falsified its numbers on its performance 252 times. In fact, within weeks of becoming a large stakeholder over the National Health Service in the UK as it is now, the company immediately cut one in seven jobs under the title of “wastage.” The report also found that the company were underemploying staff and two managers had been gagged by confidentiality clauses, which was only revealed after several whistleblowing incidents.

The company also contracts for the Ministry of Justice in the UK here it was revealed that two Serco contractors had overcharged the government for its services by up to $50 million. Not only does a figure like this prompt the question, what’s in it for the public, but what’s in it for the people in government?

In Australia, the record of the company’s finances are fairly similar. In 2012, Serco was meant to be reporting its financial assets using the auditor Deloitte. However, the University of New South Wales Proffessor Jeff Knapp said in the Sydney Morning Herald “Serco now claims the company is not a reporting entity and it prepares a special financial report that does not include business segments, financial instruments , directors remuneration and related party transactions and balances.”

Almost like clockwork, story after story of misconduct by Serco Security guards keeps finding its way into the public news rounds such as security guards failing to pay respond properly to protests and allegations that the security guards are not trained properly. Allegations of this nature do not just come from Villawood staff themselves but from the NSW police force who have said that they weren’t not properly trained for emergency incidents such as fire emergencies. 

Serco staff also threatened industrial action last year claiming that Western Australia’s prisoner transport system is understaffed. United Voices Carolyn Smith said to the ABC. "They are running incredibly important public services and they do not have the guts to come out and answer the very real questions that people have about the way they're running those services."

To criticize the government’s relentlessly racist asylum seeker policy on both the federal and opposition side is one thing, but what does it mean it is in a company’s vested economic interest for their to be a continued influx of asylum seekers in a given country? The same vested economic interested the company also has in continued national defence spending in numerous countries and the same vested economic interest in continued government surveillance? In fact, the same vested economic interest in continued conflict between many of the countries it runs security for?

Well, the multinational conglomerate Serco does and will only continue to as long it keeps buying up public assets.

Why I was pushed out of the Socialist Alliance

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TW: mentions and details of sexual harassment, assault, rape and discrimination.

(I have deliberately not included names or details of people involved in this who have not given me express consent and I would like it to remain that way).

There are many aspects of the Alliance that I will always be grateful for having experienced: their tendency to create long-lasting support networks to the point where its hard not to feel like you have developed an entirely new family, their ability to introduce you to other political networks that a political outsider would simply struggle to do (which in and of itself is probably an issue for the left generally) and their ability instantly throw you into positions of authority particularly for impoverished people or oppressed minorities who aren’t used to having their opinions taken seriously. However, when I witness behavior that I believe to be strongly against my own morals, I will not fail to address that. My morals are always how I identify myself and I think that’s why I’m the kind of person who’s never really been able to put a political party before them: my identity is my principles and political leanings – not a political party. If that party happens to fall in line with the majority of those principles, that’s mainly just a bonus for me.

So, this is where what I believe to be a contradiction of my own political beliefs or a strong sense of cognitive dissonance if you will began to impact on my (what was at this point) very active involvement with the Socialist Alliance. I was working on Green Left Weekly (being paid a nominal, although not large, amount) and on the Resistance: Young Socialist executive.

The issue first arose when I was at a Women’s Collective banner paint with another Resistance: Young Socialist Alliance member who drew my attention to a meme on Shit Salties Say (which for those you who haven’t seen it is basically just a page to write shit about Socialist Alternative). So, it was surprising for a member of the Socialist Alliance to see a meme on there directly targeting the Socialist Alliance).

This was the meme.

 

My first instinct was thinking about how I had seen people on Facebook complaining about Socialist Alliances ‘broshevik’ problems, but considering I had just had a huge argument on Facebook with someone in the party who had very misguided ideas about feminism (although, I grant, I overreacted a bit, too), I didn’t instantly dismiss it as sectarianism.

Frankly, I considered it to be partially true already. Any member would find it hard to deny (although I’m sure some publicly would) that we do have some sexist men in the Socialist Alliance. We, in fact, have sexists from all genders and very little/ almost nothing is done about it.

Most people in the party did however instantly pass it off as sectarianism, but that simply didn't feel right to me.

After angrily demanding questions about this on the Resistance: Young Socialist Alliance Facebook page (which admittedly was brash but I was angry), I was contacted by two members of the Resistance: Young Socialist Executive and later two members of the Socialist Alliance (who were members at the time anyway) who all confirmed for me that there were, what I perceived to be, far more serious issues within the party when it comes to dealing with grievance complaints particularly around sexual harrassment. Since, it also seemed to me in Sydney that sexual harrassment wasn't dealt with expediency, I didn't find that hard to believe.

However, I have elected not to go into greater details of other people's stories for obvious reasons. Here, I am simply telling my own.

So, my next step at this point was to speak to a member of the National Executive who firstly told me that they were unaware of the situation so I made an appointment to have a face-to-face meeting.

During this meeting with the National Executive member I had two goals in mind: force the National Executive to deal with this in a meaningful way and see if there was anything that could be done to improve the feminist culture in our own branch including making a formal complaint against a member who had been harassing me. I understand it may have looked odd to choose this time to do it but I was scared of a culture like the one I had heard of repeating in Sydney and I had been advised by one Brisbane branch member that they simply purged people who make comrades feel uncomfortable/ commit harassment/ assault. So, I thought, if you can there, surely what I was arguing for wouldn't be that controversial.

Now, to explain my own harassing scenario I have to take a few steps back. When I first joined the Alliance, there was a member who had made me feel incredibly uncomfortable: often herding me away from the group to talk to me alone and away from everyone else, telling me things that where wildly anti-feminist and then asking me “not to repeat them or he would get into trouble,” asking my phone number saying that it was a “comrade thing” but then calling me every third day to talk about everything but activism, and constantly violating my bodily autonomy without any indication from me that I would be OK (even when I sometimes expressed I was annoyed). He would particularly do it if I tried walking away and talking to other people, and more particularly if I attempted to talk to someone in another political faction. In a simple sense, it would have easily passed for harassment, and in a more complex sense it felt like he was trying to assert ownership over me – for both himself and the party.

Now, to the branch’s credit a few other members cottoned on to this and asked me if he was annoying me and said they would back me if I wanted to put in a formal complaint. However, they also said that he already had numerous complaints against him and that he regularly uses settings like O-week to try and pick up women under the guise of recruiting them.

So, I experienced pretty strong cognitive dissonance again. As a feminist, I wanted to show the bastard I wouldn’t stand for it and in a pragmatic sense I assumed that my complaint wouldn’t do anything (since apparently seven or so others hadn’t) and therefore I would still have to see him after having gone through, what I assumed, would be a humiliating formal complaint explaining my situation (potentially with him in the room) or be forced into mediation with him. Either way, I felt I would end up being humiliated with no formal power.

I didn’t express this at the time but I was a new member and simply didn’t feel comfortable.

Now, back to the meeting, I sat down with a member of the National Executive who told me that they were aware of the situation and didn’t need my help with it because they where having a meeting about it that.

So, I tried to tell them what I had been hearing anyway. Because I was unwilling to name people (they had asked for their names to be kept out of it at the time because they were scared), I was instantly dismissed.

I was also told that the incident I was referring to hadn’t been the one that they were currently dealing with (a whirlwind of confusion).

I tried to explain one of the specific stories I had been told about and was dismissed again for not naming the person who had told me about it.

So, instead I expressed the need for us to look at things like this internally: “is there anything we can change? Would consent culture classes for the branch executives help in anyway?”

I then tried to put my complaint forward about the member I believed to be harassing me. I was harangued for not making the complaint sooner. I was also told that I should simply have felt comfortable telling him to go away or telling him that I wasn’t interested.

I countered with: “surely that’s irrelevant as to whether or not its actually harassment, though? I mean women are hurt violently all the time for rejecting men.”

The response was along the lines of: “well, I can’t do anything for your own personal concerns but these are your comrades, you should be able to feel comfortable around them.”

I strongly disagreed with that line of thought. I didn’t know these people that well comparatively to other friends and I don’t simply just trust anyone. I think it would be foolish to believe that no matter how feminist an organization claims to be or even requires you to be (which the Socialist Alliance simply doesn’t anyway) that you are instantly to assume you are in a space free of sexual violence or violence just generally. That simply seemed…unrealistic to me.

Nonetheless, my personal request to put in a sexual harassment complaint was not taken on board because the harasser “had already been given a talking to.”

I later followed this up with a branch organizer requesting for the harasser to be taken off Oweek organizing as he was still being invited to Oweeks and was told that it was at too busy of a time to talk to me about it because movement work was taking priority.. To my knowledge, he’s still a member.

In fact at a rally only a week or so later after I attempted to put in the harassment complaint, I saw him at a refugee rally and an organizer indicated to me “he’s talking to that woman we are trying to recruit, and I don’t feel comfortable with him talking to her, can you please keep an eye on him?”

I was fuming. It seemed to me that I was being asked to babysit a 30-year-old man in order to make sure he wasn’t sexually harassing anyone.

I later found out that I would be able to write policy around this to push for strong policy change around grievance complaints. I decided to go ahead with it.

I asked for that same member of the National Executive, since I personally assumed if I could make the policy seem logical to someone in a leadership position, I could make it seem logical to everyone else in the party.

Firstly, the member of the National Executive expressed to me that “consent culture was a radical feminist position that was separatist” (although I was later accused of liberalism for arguing for consent culture classes so the politics on this just seemed confused to me).

The policy I wrote can be read on Alliance Voices.

The TLDR version is that I argued for the abolishment of the show cause measure, which is maybe an extreme measure, but I wanted serious change. Past events in and my own experiences in the branch instilled in me a lack of trust of any executive to deal with sexual harassment and assault with expediency or gravity. So, I assumed we would need policy that essentially forces them to do just that.

Since then, I’ve been given some great alternative ideas which is more of a happy-middle policy line on this that I also agree with.

Cut to a few weeks later and Jaz Priddey called me about concerns in the Adelaide branch. They were more broadly about political disagreements in the branch. She said that people there were being discouraged from going to the Canberra Tent Embassy, that they where being discouraged from doing things within anti-poverty networks which she strongly disagreed with and that an older member was being told they where too old to participate and newer members where being told that they where too inexperienced to participate.

Despite being on the branch executive, Jaz told me that none of her ideas where getting through and she was being consistently voted down, because there was far too much political and ideological hegemony within the branch occurring. She told me that about half the Adelaide branch where ready to leave as a result and that if serious change didn’t occur she would simply leave herself.

I agreed that we had often been discouraged from going the Redfern Tent Embassy in Sydney which I didn’t like and that there was little autonomy for Resistance: Young Socialist Alliance members in their organizing in that Socialist Alliance members mostly controlled how Resistance: Young Socialist Alliance members organize at a branch level. I also found it unfair that the paid full time organizers seemed to have the most say in the Sydney branch because they were simply the ones who were able to put the most work in – often because there were closed meetings (outside of Branch Coordinating Committee meetings) that no one outside of the full-time organizers where invited to. In fact, to my knowledge, general members who asked to sit in on them where even told to leave the room.

I had been told by a comrade who had less to do with the branch that other parties simply don’t allow for paid members to be on any decision making committees and even though I was a paid member I would have happily have taken that hit if it meant more democracy for the branch more generally.

I saw this as a pretty reasonable disagreement so I suggested forming a political tendency because I remembered reading that the constitution gave us the scope to do just that.

I had no idea at the time that it would end as badly as it did though.

I was invited to discuss this online with four other Adelaide branch members and I invited in a few Sydney members who agreed with my line of thinking. We decided we would write a manifesto (which I think has since been taken down from Alliance Voices) and maybe some Pre Conference Discussion (which is the presupposition to policy being voted on at the national conference).

I was conscious that not a lot would actually occur though unless we acted as a collective and we were clear on our political message since tendencies had been formed in the past and didn’t get anywhere, so we decided to add people into the tendency on a broad political pitch.

We decided that everyone should get a say in the manifesto so we can behave as democratically as possible. However, some people we spoke to about the tendency contacted several branch organizers confused as to what was going on as they still didn’t understand what a tendency was (our bad explaining I guess).

The branch organizers responded by asking for a meeting with me after work one day. I also recently found out that that a member of the tendency in Sydney had singled me out to a branch organizer as one of the people in the tendency and implied I was the main organizer of the tendency. That’s incorrect; we were trying to act as a collective. I was putting in a lot of work but I only saw that as fair because I was the only one actually being paid to do things for the Alliance.

Prior to the meeting a branch organizer consistently harassed me for names and I said that we were formalizing soon and they’d be able to see all the names once they have published work for the manifesto which would be in a few days. She harassed me again for the names and then accused me of being ‘hostile’ when I didn’t comply.

I didn’t want to give her the names because we simply weren’t organized. We didn’t know who was ‘for sure’ in the tendency and everyone hadn’t finished writing their part of the manifesto, which I attempted to express at the time.

They called for a meeting with me and I asked Jaz if she wanted to sit in too. They asked us to stop contacting people in Resistance: Young Socialist Alliance as it was “getting in the way of recruiting.” I countered that there where no clear directions for forming a tendency in the constitution so I wasn’t behaving unconstitutionally. However, they implied that I was violating another part of the constitution which states that members can have their membership revoked for “bringing the party into disrepute.”

That night at a rally, one person in the tendency spoke to another branch organizer who said to them that they wanted to have me kicked out for “bringing the party into disrepute.”

So, since that night, I was waiting for someone to bring this up with me and have me kicked out with a claim about ‘undemocratic’ behavior.

A week later, a branch organizer told me that I would be presenting the tendency at a branch meeting. I was confused but since I was only given a day’s notice I still didn’t have the time to cohere with the tendency and expressed that I didn’t want to be undemocratic within the tendency and present something that wasn’t representative of everyone.

Nonetheless, the branch meeting that night opened with: “Jemma will be presenting the tendency she has formed since she has been making serious allegations about our dealings with sexual harassment and sexual assault.”

I tried to defend the tendency and explained clearly that it was, not only just one aspect of the tendency, but also that we simply wanted to change party policy. They then asked me to present my PCD (policy) around sexual harassment and assault (a discussion which had also been moved forward three weeks without much notice). I presented the policy as best I could, but what followed was a long round of what I perceived to be posturing, bringing my character into question and even demotivating me to discuss policy at the conference “because I don’t have opinions that are representative of the party.”

I left that night in tears with no sympathy – except from one comrade who has now been told not to have anything to do with the party by a branch organizer for simply wanting to associate with me.

Cut back to two days after I presented the tendency at a branch meeting when I went into return to the National Office a branch organizer took me aside and asked me to explain my actions. They said that they had “sufficient evidence that I was pushing for a split within the party, that I was planning on publishing information about them, and that I was conspiring to destroy property and goods.”

They said that if I didn’t resign they would be forced to “undergo a criminal investigation into this” and likely have me “pressed me with criminal charges.”

I was shocked and my instant response was to resign.

Looking back I do regret it a bit. They had no reason to press me with criminal charges, they never once told me what the “sufficient evidence” was despite me prompting them for it several times and only one of the things they listed was even a potential criminal matter – which they have no evidence to prove and I definitely wasn’t planning on doing that. I have offhandedly said before “oh, I’m so angry I just want to burn the place down” but I thought it would have been obvious that, that was just my brand of humour which was said emotionally with no plans for follow through. Despite having expressed my anger at the Alliance, the thought of literally destroying their property just seems silly.

I had considered publishing things, but I would only have done it if I left the Alliance and was satisfied I was unable to change things (which is quite clear now) and nonetheless that’s a civil matter – if any matter at all.

I wasn’t pushing for a split – however, I did often express with other members of the tendency that I just wanted to leave and they expressed the same thing.

But at the time, I was scared because I am an active activist and I was conscious that the police already addressed me by name at every rally I turn up to. I don’t know what they’d do if the Socialist Alliance asked for them to initiate a criminal investigation.

I’m telling this story not because I think anyone would be even remotely interested in the bureaucratic inner workings of a relatively small political party, not to defend my character (only people in the Alliance know about this so far and I don’t think it would have been in their interest to talk about it publicly – although they will now undoubtedly respond to this blog with an open letter doing just that) but because stories like these have floated around the Socialist Alliance for at least a decade.

There are entire organized groups of people in certain states made up of ex Socialist Alliance members who all have extremely similar stories about the organization and left for exactly the same reasons (well, not quite on the threat of criminal charges but you get the drift of what I am saying). What scares me most about this situation, though, is that none of these ex members were believed and its very possible that I won’t be believed telling this story, either.

Yet, I am not angry, I am not bitter, I simply believe that it’s in the public interest for any potential joiner of the Alliance to understand what they may face when considering joining. To not hold an organization to account, whether they are on the far left, centre left, right or even on Mars for that matter, for not putting otherwise good ideological theory into practice, would be against every cell of what I believe in.

So, that’s what I’m trying to do right now.

Liberal Feminism™

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Lowenstein’s article in the Guardian about western developed feminism received a lot of attention and criticism or applause. However, what a lot of people have failed to do (aside from Karen Fletcher’s great response) is recognize that some of the points he made had merit and other points he made would make even the most diplomatic feminist do a massive head desk.

What he managed to capture was the fact western feminists do, in fact, focus on relative trivialities within the western world whilst their fellow women in the Middle East are being sold to men in markets. Yet he didn’t seem to acknowledge that perhaps one aspect of western feminists obsession with writing about shoes instead of Pakistan is a part of an endemic broader issue within society. He ignores the point that perhaps this is something the entire west is guilty of. The desensitization of the west to bigger issues isn’t the fault of feminism; it’s the fault of the system we live under.

 

Furthermore, the way in which Lowenstein attempts capture how women are ignoring bigger issues is simply flawed. Firstly, he writes that the reason men don’t write about feminism much is because they’re afraid of being attacked. Yet, he ignores the fact that most feminists aren’t, if you would believe it, men. Within mainstream society, the majority of men don’t even know it’s possible for them to be feminists thus why would they care? Even within public life or the scepter of journalistic life, the majority of men are still unlikely to identify as feminists and therefore probably wouldn’t see it as the most pressing issue to talk about. The most important part of this however is just how infantilized such a comment is. When was the last time you saw a man who wrote about feminism being threatened with rape? Yet female feminists don’t seem to have a problem speaking out despite constant barrages of rape or death threats. So, what’s the worst that could happen if a man writes about feminism? Someone might disagree with him. In other words, to Lowenstein and any man scared of writing about feminism because their views might be challenged – just start writing more - we don’t actually bite.

He then makes the point that mainstream western feminists supported Gillard whilst ignoring some of her more horrible policies. Once again, such an issue is not just one for western feminism. Gillard’s entire reign was covered in a thick layer of the mainstream media focusing on her tripping over in heels rather than her asylum seeker policies. In essence, the mainstream feminist response to Gillard’s time in power was a hyperbolic reaction to the constant and continual barrage of sexism that Gillard received. If the feminists weren’t responding to the trivialities of her reign, then all we probably would have seen was the sexists focusing on the trivialities of her reign. Furthermore, let’s not forget that it’s not the job of prominent feminists to focus on governmental policy unless it address’ women’s subordination – the mainstream political media are the ones that were supposed to be doing that. Even so, most prominent feminists did call Gillard out on certain policy that was inherently sexist. You might recall most mainstream western feminists attacking Gillard over the fact that she allowed for a continued tax on tampons and many mainstream feminists, in fact, attacking her cutting of single parent benefits constantly and consistently over their large Twitter channels. Of course, that’s not really the same has having it published in the Daily Life or similar and we all have to permit that, that is reprehensible.

Although, it’s now deleted he also blamed feminists for anti-feminists. However, to disagree with a feminist over how to address women’s subordination and then become an anti-feminist is a bit like disagreeing with someone over how to address racism and then joining the KKK. A part of what has been lost during this whole conversation is that feminism isn’t a homogenous theory and no single person who identifies as a feminist thinks that all feminists are right or that all streams of feminisms are correct. That’s right there are several streams of feminisms – although a lot of the responses to Lowenstein seem to inaccurately imply otherwise. So, can we all, for the love of Sheezus, please stop tarring all feminists with the same brush just because of one feminist’s views on women’s subordination – doing that is just stupid.

Finally, Lowenstein points to click-baiting and the general commercialization of feminism as a guise for selling middle-class aspiration and capitalist ideals. There is truth to this point in that the now mainstream concept of ‘breaking the glass ceiling’ in some way perpetuates the myth that all women can be equal under a capitalist system if they fight hard enough for it, which is, of course, false. Such an ideology is consistently backed up by pop culture icons like Beyonce or Lily Allen. However, are the mainstream liberal feminists at fault here or are the people cutting their paychecks at fault? Generic Feminist So and So™ writes five articles a week about shoes because, in all likelihood, someone tells Generic Feminist ™ to do that or at the very least is constricted by writing something that will get at least 50, 000 hits per article. So, is that a reflection on Generic Feminist So and So™ or the system we live in? For some reason Lowenstein insists that it’s fault of Generic Feminist ™ and not the restrictions of writing about feminism in a capitalist system.

In my opinion, the fact that ‘feminism lite’ exists is not a reflection on feminism but a reflection on capitalism and it’s important to keep that in perspective when approaching this issue. ‘Feminism heavy’ exists, though, and we all need to do what we can to throw more weight behind it. So, cheers, Lowenstein for starting this debate.

Now let’s start talking about things that matter:

http://noshelter.com.au/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Support-Kobane-Donate-to-show-practical-solidarity-with-Kobane/606733109436719?ref=ts&fref=ts

Let's Talk About Schizophrenia

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#MentalAs kicked off this week and I think everyone does and should feel proud of what they achieved. Although, all the Twitter handles involved seemed to make the point that #MentalAs finished on Friday night, this does not mean that the conversations around mental illness should ever finish. We need more of the ABC’s style of awareness raising but we also need so many more things put into action around these conversations. As was mentioned on #qanda, as they kicked things off, the national and federal government’s have increasingly gutted this countries mental health services. That HAS to change.

I don’t want to focus on health care services in this particular post, however. Instead, I would like to focus on a mental illness that, for me, seemed a bit like the weird kid in the corner at the party during all this conversation (believe me I would know a thing or two being the weird kid in the corner). The mental illness I am referring to is schizophrenia. I am fortunate enough to have someone close to me in my life who has schizophrenia. To clarify, when I say fortunate, I mean simply that I am able to look at the mental illness from a slightly more informed lens than, probably, most. I feel the need to clarify this because I don’t want to insinuate that is in anyway easy to have someone close to you who has schizophrenia or that schizophrenia is some superpower for those affected – it’s not. Schizophrenia does severely impact on every part of a person’s life and those who love them (I’m just dropping the realness, guys). 

For the purposes of this blog, I am going to talk about this person’s experiences using a false name as both of us would like to protect this person’s identity. So, the person I am going to be writing about will be called Jessica. Please feel safe in the knowledge though that she is a real person and I have not changed anything else about her experiences with schizophrenia. I first learned that Jessica had schizophrenia when I was in my first year at uni. A friend called me up and exclaimed over the phone ‘Jessica’s in hospital.’ Looking back at this, the most disturbing part was my reaction, because the first thing I thought was ‘OMG she probably went in trying to convince them she was physically sick and they thought she was crazy and stuck her in the mental ward.’ I really wasn’t far off the mark. Jessica had a tendency to be a hypochondriac on a very extreme level and they had put her in the mental ward. I later found out though that Jessica had collapsed after what seemed like an anxiety attack at her church  (she’s a fundamentalist Christian) and her pastor had called an ambulance. At the hospital, they decided she wasn’t talking sense and boom! Mental ward – population overmedication and shock therapy (that’s right, kids, this tired and fucked up practice still exists. Jessica told me it was one of the worst things she’s ever experienced in her life).

Jessica had always been a bit odd in her behaviour to an outside observer. She is smart, well-spoken, well-read and can converse with almost anyone about almost anything, which I personally see as a innate skill she’s always possessed. However, once you get to know her better, it becomes slightly more evident that she had somewhat unhealthy behaviour patterns. She wasn’t a very stable person – she changed her job at least once a year and moved house A LOT. She was also emotionally unstable, although, being emotionally unstable and generally unstable usually go hand-in-hand. She would become profusely angry over very little things and she would become desperately sad often crying for hours on end for, seemingly, no reason.

I still remember vividly a time when she yelled at me for 20 minutes for leaning against a counter bench because she thought I was being lazy. Most of us just assumed she was PMS’ing (I now realize how sexist that line of thinking is).

She first began to shows signs of psychosis several weeks before she was admitted to the mental ward. For those of you who don’t know what psychosis is lemme break it down: psychosis is a period of time for people with mental illness used to describe “a loss of contact with reality.” For most schizophrenics, psychosis usually involves hearing voices, hallucinating or severe personality changes. A friend living with her told me that she had not been sleeping and we later found out she was suffering from long-term insomnia. She had been spending most nights pacing up and down her hallway muttering to herself.

Another friend living with her told me that she had told him that she thought he was an angel “sent from heaven to rid the world of evil.” I would later learn that a lot of her mental illness made itself known through her Christianity and that, in fact, religious fundamentalism is a very common symptom in schizophrenics. She told me that her mental ward was filled with schizophrenics that thought God was talking to them. There are honestly so many important points to be made on that topic alone but I’ll try to stay on schizophrenia itself for this one. After being released from the mental ward, she began a very rocky road to recovery.

The first step on her road to recovery was her friends, family and counsellors trying to ensure that she took her antipsychotics regularly. The thing about schizophrenia is that when you don’t always have a great grip on reality, taking antipsychotics doesn’t always seem like a rational decision to the sufferer. She is taking them regularly now. The second step was learning to realize and accept as reality that the voices she heard in her heard were disconnected from everyone’s else’s reality except her own. Jessica told me that her voice was the voice of a man. She told me that the man had a scary, but authoritative voice. She now accepts that, that voice is a creation of her own mind.

I asked Jessica a few days ago what schizophrenia was like to live with. Her response: “You know that movie A Beautiful Mind? Yeah it’s exactly like that. Except the voice in my head still isn’t as bad as Russell Crowe.” She’s very to the point these days, which, I believe, is a side effect of her antipsychotics. Just by talking to her, I can tell that her speech and thoughts have become, somehow, elucidated.  There were so many factors in her recovery though including more struggles with insomnia.

When Jessica had just been diagnosed, I remember waiting to go into one of my journalism classes at uni and talking to some of my fellow students as we stood outside. One of the students was telling a story about how she visited a mental ward for a story and all of the students gasped with responses like ‘you’re so brave!’ She quipped ‘Don’t worry. They didn’t put me in with the real crazies like the schizophrenics or something.’ Bile rised in my throat and I just felt so deflated. That anecdote brings me to the first lot of stigma I have noticed though:

Schizophrenics are dangerous:

In responding to this, I don’t want underplay that schizophrenia IS a dangerous mental illness. Jessica told me that one of the voices in her head was telling her to kill her flatmate and if she had, had less of a grip on reality at the time, she may have actually killed him. I also have an acquaintance with schizophrenia who’s voice told him to jump off a bridge. I want to make the point, though, that you aren’t necessarily inclined to kill people at every point in your life just because you suffer from schizophrenia.

As I have already said, there is still so much that psychologists don’t know about mental illness and, in fact, the people who diagnosed Jessica still aren’t sure if it’s not bipolar disorder or schizophrenia although she’s been treated for schizophrenia. Yet no mental illness is permanent (not even schizophrenia) and everyone who suffers from any mental illness will be at different stages of severity. Jessica has now stopped hearing voices for long periods of time and even when she did it, she managed to reach a place where she realized she didn’t have to do what the voice told her to. Furthermore, schizophrenics in mental wards are usually heavily medicated, often to the point of being barely conscious, and are likely at a period when they are going to be the least dangerous to anyone.

Schizophrenia is the same as sociopath or psychopath:

Seriously, just look up the definitions of each – it’s not that hard. Yet, this is still one of the most common misconceptions about schizophrenia. One of the biggest differences between schizophrenics, sociopaths and psychopaths is that the latter two are unable to feel empathy. Jessica is capable of empathy and is, in fact, one of the most empathetic and emotional people I know (which by the way I do not view as a bad thing. Emotionality is a sign of strength not weakness). One of the symptoms of her schizophrenia was that she became obsessed with charity work and helping people in need. A sociopath and psychopath’s behaviour is more likely to be self-interested due to the symptoms of their suffering, Of course, you might think a lot of people do charity work land it’s surely not a sign of mental illness, but it did prove to be a problem for Jessica as she was putting everyone else before her own needs or even survival.

I know from personal experience and the experience of Jessica, that the only way anyone with mental illness can look towards recovery is by accepting that what they have IS an illness. Knowing that Jessica had schizophrenia helped me learn how to treat her and simply be around her. I now understand that her behaviour is often defined by her mental illness and, as a result, I can be compassionate and understanding rather than harsh as I might have before she was diagnosed. In particular, I no longer become frustrated with her when something seems obvious to me and not to her just like I wouldn’t become frustrated with someone with depression for not being happy and JUST like I wouldn’t become frustrated with someone in a wheelchair for not being able to walk.

I want to end this blog on a happy note, so I’ll leave you with this thought. I once heard a comedian say: “I’m so sick of stigma around these old words. Why don’t we just call schizophrenics 'over imaginative?'”

20 Things That Only Women Will Understand (If You Hate Obvious Gender Stereotypes)

We all have those things that we do, don't we ladies? Because don't you ever forget that having a vagina comes packaged nicely with ridiculous gender stereotypes that not only make you feel like a lesser person if you don't conform to them but also usually encourage society to take women less seriously in the real world. WE SO DUMB! But don't you dare say that me if you're a boy cause I'm on my period, so I'll probably snap you ahahahahaha

Us all here at Team Jemma's obscure blog decided to come up with 20 things you'll only understand if you're a lady. BACK OFF BOYS! Oh heteronormativity, you're so good for easy hits.

-       What it’s like to have a vagina; amiright?

-       What it’s like bleed for 7 days and then feel ashamed of it because society.

-       What it feels like to push human life through your body

-       XX chromosones: waddup with that?

-       What it feels like to sexually frightened on a regular basis.

-       What it feels like to be terrified walking home by yourself at night

-       What it feels like to get paid less than a man for doing the same job.

-       What it feels like to be shamed for having feminine characteristics and then make the assumption that there must be something wrong with being a woman and consequently feel more ashamed for having a vagina

-       What it feels like to be shamed for having or wanting sex

-       What it feels like to be experience mild or severe sexual assault on a regular basis and then have people imply you wanted it because of how you were dressed or were behaving

-       What it feels like to genuinely hate yourself just because of your gender

-       What it feels like to have male politicians consistently tell you what to do with your body and life more generally

-       What it feels like to be labelled cranky, or boring just because you demand more for yourself than consistent oppression

-       What it feels like to have a one-night stand and not be sure whether or not you are going to be sexually shamed for it.

-       What it feels like to be raped as an instrument of war and general violent oppression

-       What it feels like to be shamed for not being girly enough or being 'too much like a boy.'

-       What it feels like to think that your looks are your only worth

-       What it feels like to grin and bear it when someone in your professional life says something sexist to you

-       What it feels like to be constantly sexually harassed in the workplace and for no one to really give a shit

-       What it feels like to have someone blame you for sexual attention you receive or blame yourself for sexual attention you receive

-       What it feels like to be a minority

Holler at me ladies! Boys, you just like totez won’t get this tehe. Next post I’ll do why Beyonce turns everybody gay…fuck it I’ll do any mundane shit as long you validate me ;)

5 awesome things to do this weekend!

(If you know that your degree is going to leave you financially crippled, you won't be able to afford to drive soon, and the government is making you apply for 40 non-existent jobs a month which you'll never get).

- Try to take your mind off the future, the past and the present by filling your head up with nonsense...by illegally downloading some reality TV (because God knows you can't afford to buy it).



- If you already have a degree, like me, and you know how much it's going to cost you - you could try setting it on fire, pretend it's an ancient manuscript and then sell it on the black market for extra cash. If this doesn't work, crying over your degree generally helps to relieve the tension.



- If by some accident your future does begin to creep into your head - don't forget that goon doesn't just work as pain relief - it also makes a great pillow. That shit's just ergonomic.



-  You could always just chill at home with a good book but try to stay away from anything that reminds you the country is headed towards 18th century class warfare - and yes I mean Dickens!



- If you can't afford to leave your shitty suburb because you can't afford to fucking drive anywhere, then you could always try hanging out on your corner with some mates throwing stones at your metaphysical lack of future. Don't stay there too long though unless you want Current Affair all up in your face telling you to get a job!



Well, that's it for me. I hope you found these useful!

The dirty, dirty F word.

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I watched this video and it inspired me to write about the ol’ ‘F’ word again. If you haven’t seen it yet lacigreen lists some beautiful and poignant reasons why she is a Feminist – both personally and more globally. I’ve already touched on this, but the vid inspired me to would explore some of my more personal reasons and somewhat similar reasons for being a Feminist. If anything, talking about this is therapeutic for me, but, if anyone out there can relate, then that’s a plus. So, considering I generally have a phobia of cameras – here we go.

My female friends warn me against telling people that I’m a Feminist.

I was recently at a pub having a few quiet drinks with some friends and a guy came up and started hitting on us. We got onto the topic of Feminism and one of my friends made a move to hush me (as though to say ‘don’t scare him off with the scary ‘F’ word!). Don’t get me wrong, I love my friend’s to bits, but I think this is an ideology that has been drummed into them whether through the media or family upbringings. Although, if I quizzed them, they would essentially agree with equality of the sexes in all aspects of society, some of them are still terrified of telling a guy that. Being a Feminist isn’t something that any woman should be afraid of expressing to anyone and the fact that a lot of women still feel this way just shows that, as a society, we aren’t done yet.

The sad part is that they aren’t wrong in the sense that telling a man that you’re a Feminist in a dating or romantic situation often does scare them off. The instant assumption seems to be that I’m going to follow the phrase ‘I’m a Feminist’ by ripping off their head for having the audacity to have a penis. Not the case.

I don’t hate men. I’m sick of people assuming that I do.

When rape cases are brought to court, I’m genuinely offended on behalf of men when it is assumed that the rapist couldn’t control himself because the woman was wearing a short skirt or because she was branded as a “slut” in some way.

The very fact that I sincerely love the men that I choose to keep in my life is one of the reasons that I AM a Feminist because it’s patriarchy that states men are animalistic creatures unable to be held accountable for their actions.

Feminism holds that men are better than that and that is the exact reason why they SHOULD be held accountable for their actions.

I know this point has already been made a lot in the Feminist-based media circles, but I think it needs to be continually made until I stop encountering people who think otherwise.

I respect decent men just as much as I respect decent women and the fact that I have to point that out on a regular basis pisses me off.

My male friends are victims of patriarchy just as much as my female friends

Have you ever been out clubbing and accidentally come across those guys?

By those guys, I mean the guys that go out looking for a fight…

They don’t care who they hurt or even what will provoke them, they just want to beat something up.

I went clubbing a lot in Townsville, and it was almost impossible not to encounter those guys at least once a night. One night, I was standing on a corner with a male friend who was going to give me and another female friend a lift home. We were waiting for one of his other friends to bring the car around when those guys came out of nowhere. WE WERE SO CLOSE TO AVOIDING THEM. DAMN!

They walked straight up to my male friend and insinuated that he was gay. They then proceeded to hit on us.

I know right…

I think the assumption was supposed to be that because he wasn’t hyper masculine and he was hanging out with chicks, he was of the homosexual persuasion. 

He politely responded that he wasn’t gay but it wouldn’t matter if he was.

They seemed to think that, that was a gay enough answer and proceeded to lay into him. There’s nothing worse than the feeling of helplessness you have, as a woman, when you see a male friend in a fight and you know you don’t have the physical capacity to weigh in on it. So, me and my female friend went into overdrive and tried to talk them out of it with a combination of faux-hitting on them and confusing them with hard questions (what’s 2+2?).

You’ll be pleased to learn that, that worked pretty quickly and they went on to bug someone else.

The point I’m trying to make though is that men are shamed on a regular basis for not conforming to patriarchal ideologies because patriarchy holds that there’s something wrong with having ‘female-like’ attributes.

I don’t know any guy who hasn’t been a victim of homophobia and thus inherently a victim of patriarchy at some point in his life. Whether, they actually are straight or gay is a complete irrelevancy.

If you think that your male friends or you, as a male, have never been a victim of patriarchy, you’re kidding yourself.