Columns

The week before last was OU SA Women’s Week, and by most accounts it went pretty
darn well. So well done to Women’s Rep Sam Allen and Welfare Officer Ruby Sycamore-Smith. As reported in Critic last week, Ruby is now talking about holding a Men’s Week – cos, you know, it would be sexist if she didn’t. Um, what?

OUSA has a Men’s Rep. I’m not entirely sure what he does; I’m a man and I don’t feel particularly repped by my Men’s Rep. This is probably because OUSA has no idea what a Men’s Rep is actually supposed to do, and never has. As a result, the Men’s Rep has traditionally done very little.

The case for the Men’s Rep position recalls that most illustrious of political bodies, the Pakeha Party. “If the Maori get it, we want it to [sic]! No matter what it is!” read their first, wonderfully illiterate cover photo. Replace “Maori” with “women” and you basically capture OUSA’s attitude toward the matter. There is no deeper appreciation of men’s issues, and little understanding of context; the Men’s Rep and Men’s Week are just a method of placation in the face of a knee-jerk toys-out.

This is not to say that men’s issues do not exist, or that there is no place for a Men’s Rep and Men’s Week. Alcohol abuse, depression, suicide, sexual ethics, violence, lower academic performance – these are all genuine issues facing men, and many are the a result of increasingly obsolete norms of masculinity that we desperately need to challenge.

Instead, though, the Men’s Rep has been more interested in wallowing in these norms than confronting them. The last time we had something like Men’s Week was in 2010: the utterly cringeworthy “Man Day” featured the Football World Cup and a barbeque. As enjoyable as those two things were, “Man Day” completely missed the point.

Sure, a seminar on depression won’t exactly be a crowd-puller, but if the idea behind Women’s Week was to pull crowds then there would have been free RTDs and daily screenings of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Instead there were self-defence classes, debates on sexism, and daily screenings of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is the kind of model OUSA should be looking at for Men’s Week, not the tired clichés of meat and sports.

Hopefully OUSA is a little more self-aware than it was in 2010 – otherwise, “Men’s Week” could be an embarrassment.

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On a completely different note, welcome to our 1984 issue. Hopefully you weren’t put off by the hideous monster glaring at you from the cover.

Surveillance is kind of a big deal right now, from the NSA leaks to New Zealand’s own GCSB legislation. We give you a breakdown of the contentious GCSB Bill (page 16), an analysis of the role of surveillance in policing our behaviour (page 28), and the lowdown on the growing political movement of hacktivism (page 24).

Meanwhile, Jack Montgomerie seeks out some of New Zealand’s more neglected political figures, and asks them the hard questions on the pressing issues of the day (page 32).