The Birth of Sexual Opression in Australia.

I got a tad distracted as I was revising for my HIStory exam, I would like to call it HERstory, but what we are taught in school is very much HIS-story!....

We generally like to believe throughout history that majority opinion goes from worse to at the very least, less worse. Sadly this isn’t always the case. Governments will use what ever oppression they deem necessary at any particular point in time to create their desired effect; Whether that be anti-Muslim racism and the fear of terrorism to support US imperialism or sexual oppression to ‘strengthen’ the population among other oppressions. Sexual Oppression is sharpest when governments most require the reproduction of the working class. Cipi Morgan points out in her article ‘Colonial invasion and homophobia in Australia’ “heads rolled across Europe like billiard balls as kings, queens and clergymen scrambled for complete control over the lives of ordinary people” We see this also during WWI in Australia, with a ban on the importation of contraceptives, and again in Nazzi Germany when women were recruited to reproduce with soldiers, and queers and feminist were thrown into concentration camps (along with Jews, socialists, gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses and the many other outspoken individuals and groups). There is minimal if any ‘progression’- rather there are peaks in different opinions based on political struggles and the government’s desperate protection of the economy in our ‘national interest.’ We see much time, but little progress between Hennry Parks’s statement in 1866, that in the business of colonisation, “there is only one way to do it-by spreading over it all the associations and connections of family life” and Howard 2000 assertion that children require one mother and one father-ruling out any aberration to the nuclear family.

"Freedoms Are Won not Given!!!"

As I have asserted again and again on this blog and in my life outside this blog (yes I do have one) we as women, queers and allies have been GIVEN NOTHING! All the rights we have were hard fought for and won. Including the right to vote, the right to use contraception, the right to abortion, the right to have relationships with members of the same sex (not marital yet, but we are working on it!) We find our selves constantly having to defend the rights we do have let alone the ones we continue to struggle for (pro choice rally this Saturday, starts at 12.00 at the state library.)

There can be no doubt of the significant damage done to Australia’s indigenous people and the environment following the British Invasion in 1788. The land was considered to be 'Terra Nullius'- a land which is not inhabited. Cook and the British law of the time had decided that the "Indians" he encountered had no right to the land as they were not 'improving the land'-because we all know how greatly European invasion 'improved' the land.

The extreme poverty of the under classes of Britain had been forced into crime. The numbers of this massive class were so large that they could not be contained within England and so deportation to the "new land" began.

There is no evidence to suggest that queerphobia existed prior to European invasion. In fact in many pre-colonial and pre-class societies there is evidence to suggest that both sexual and gender diversity was more acceptable though different terms were used. Sister-girls are an example of this in Indigenous Australian communities. (Sister-girl: The acceptance and visibility of sistergirls is often considered far greater than gay men or lesbians in aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Sistergirls are biological men who are effeminate or live their lives as women. Communities will often accept and recognise sister girls as women. Sistergirls undertake the roles and responsibilities of women having relationships with straight men. However sistergirls do not generally identify as transgender.) Societies in North America and Siberia are also said to have practised transexuality and homosexuality. In many ancient societies same sex relations were not only accepted but exalted. Examples include the Mycenaen society of around 12000BC and the Athenian and African societies of 400-300 BC.

Even with the rise of the church “homosexuality” as a separate sexual or identity category remained unknown. The term “homosexuality” was first coined by a German scientist;

Karl-Maria Kertbeny in 1869.

According to Australian historians R.W. Connell and T.H. Irving, the panic around sexuality flared up in the 1820’s. with Governor Arthur’s booting out of officials for offences such as “adultery” and general sexual immorality. They argue that “particular venom was directed against homosexual relationships formed by many convicts and pastoral workers” adding that “unmarried convict women got a fair pasting as sluts and whores” They also point out that although the “1812 parliamentary inquiry into transportation had hardly raised a question about sex, the 1837 inquiry…positively smouldered with innuendo, scandal and moralising.”

Morgan points out the sexism inherent in the over used metaphor in colonial studies which “depicts the agent of colonisation as man and the tragic subject as woman (some kind of irresistible “wilderness” for man’s exploration).

The new ruling class of settler Australians struggled to gain control of the largely prior-convict working class. Family units have long been understood as being an effective way of controlling workers. For the creation of families, wom*n were essential. There were offcourse few wom*n in settler Australia. The Port Philip District (now the state of Victoria) had 75 women to 2000 men in 1838.

The much celebrated Caroline Chisholm, a member of the British ruling class worked to domesticate the ‘frisky convict males’ She lobbied with missionary zeal for the importation of young wom*n. These young wom*n she argued, would galvanise the establishment of an Australian working class family- the platform of an obedient society

The wom*n and their children, Chisholm said in 1847, would act as “God’s police” taming unruly male workers.

This wave of women was intended for the sexual and domestic service of the state. Chisholm herself was involved in first the education of these women; teaching them the skills of cooking, cleaning and elocution, Chisholm then helped to ensure these young wom*n acquired jobs, as domestic labourers. Young wom*n were encouraged to travel to the “new worlds” of which Australia was one in order to find “respectablility” The colonies were advirtised as offering "respectable" work for a wom*n and eventually a greater prospect married-Marriage anf family life ofcourse being the ultimate goal for wom*n and the only way for a wom*n to acheive true respectability. Ruling class wom*n in Australia are reported to have complained about the difficulty in finding female domestic labour and that when found it was expensive and hard to keep. This shows us the vital role that wom*n play in sexism and the relation of sexism to class society as opposed to the gender of the perpetrator.

The use of “decent” working class families by the ruling class in Australia mirrored that of England; With the intensifying of gender stereotypes and the extraction of unpaid female labour in reproducing, feeding, clothing and caring for workers. At this same time the first of the trials of homosexuals were occurring, including that of Oscar Wilde in 1895.

Homosexuality was not invented in Colonial Australia however it certainly made it’s debut as public enemy number one in the eyes of the ruling class.

The old fashioned, conservative, bloodstained and oppressive values of the ruling class are no less prevalent in today’s society, though they tend to manifest themselves in different ways. Like all oppressions, sexual oppression is a tool used to keep the working class in it’s place.