Today is Suffrage day. So needless to say that some parties are trying to leverage this to help get out the vote. In fact I am surprised the media haven’t made more of it. All I have seen is one story about who a large number of Kates who all cast advance votes at once. One party that is pushing this connection is the Internet Party. Laila has issued a press release:
They have also created a Facebook event:
There are some strong feminist elements in the Internet Party. The Herald earlier this year reported:
Dr Pani Farvid, an Iranian-born psychologist at AUT, proudly told a women’s election forum in Auckland last night that the Internet Party was “a feminist party”.
I would also include Laila and Miriam as feminists. The Herald went on to quote Dr Pani:
“He is not perfect. He is not the party, he’s the founder, but we are a feminist party. He has apologised himself, I’m not excusing him, that sort of thing is not OK, absolutely. He just doesn’t know any better and he should.”
But as Carrie over at Ellipsister observes:
I have no doubt in my mind that Dr Farvid and many of her peers absolutely support the feminist movement. I do however, consider it a bold claim to promote the Internet Party as a feminist party in light of its founder, Kim Dotcom’s repulsive sexist record.
So there are those within the party who see it as a feminist party. But if they are, how do they explain the following reaction to their email about the above suffragette voting event:
The responses are pretty telling as well:
Here is the email that was sent out:
Did no one in the Internet Party see the issues that this might bring up? Assange is a rather divisive figure. Not just because of his role in wikileaks, but also for the fact that he is using diplomatic facilities to avoid facing questioning around allegations of sexual assault/rape in Sweden. Mentioning him in the same email as something like Suffrage day was always going to raise reactions and is just another example of where the party appears not to have thought threw how things are going to appear or be taken by those they are trying to appeal to.
