POLS2603 Week 6

Behrendt - Main Argument

1 Indigenous women perpetually and unquestionably consenting, writing out violence, coercion and duress and denying agency by assuming consent can never be withhoeld or its absence didn’t matter

2 persists in contemporary courtrooms as judges historically discounted seriousness of rape against Aboriginal women

Unequal Sisterhood (Moreton-Robinson)

“What sort of sisterhood can be constructed when we begin from such unequal positions within a politics that defines our racial difference yet marks its own?”

Whiteness as Invisible Norm (Moreton-Robinson)

“Whiteness is felt to be the human condition… it alone both defines normality and fully inhabits it”

Fiction Retelling of History (Behrendt)

a cave for men

Black women as spoils of colonial conquest (Behrendt)

“the bodies of black women are contested terrain, the spoils of colonial conquest”

Judges Discounting of Rape (Behrendt)

1 R v Burt Lane

“I accept, that rape is not considered as seriously in Aboriginal communities as it is in the white community… the chasisty of women is not as importantly regarded”

2 R v Mingkilli

“not regarded with the seriousness that it is by the white people”

Huggins rebuttal to Bell (Moreton-Robinson)

“our fight is with the state, the system, social injustice, and primarily racism, far in excess of patriarchy”

Bell’s argument (Moreton-Robinson)

1 intra-racial rape in Indigenous communities is a universal feminist concern that everyone has the right and responsibility to address

2 emphasising the universal female experience (radical feminism)

3 infantilises and exemplifies white privilege with the control and ownership of knowledge