Feminazery

Marriage, expectation and Pippa Middleton's bum

2011-05-08T17:53:00.002+01:00

Okay, so this blog post isn't actually about Pippa Middleton's bum but good cod, you'd think it was made of solid gold the way people have been harping on about it. Not bad for a 'passably attractive arts graduate' (thank you, Daily Mail, for that most backhanded of compliments)

No, this is about marriage. You see, the recent royal nuptials got me to thinking. No sooner had they tied the knot than tongues started wagging about when their first child would be born. Now, either there's some seriously dodgy sex education floating about, or there's a very real expectation that a young couple getting married must be planning kids, and sharpish.

I've experienced this. I married at 21 (yes, it's young, no, I don't regret it, and no, I don't have to justify my reasons - just take it from me, I'm a married feminist) and the number of people who admitted, on seeing how utterly un-pregnant I looked on my wedding day, that they thought it was a shotgun deal was kind of astonishing. We're in the 21st century, I thought, surely we're past all of that?

Except that we're not. And it's one of those things I wish I'd known before getting married, because I would love to have had the opportunity to state my case. I didn't want kids. The idea of being pregnant, giving birth, raising a child...it all makes my flesh crawl. That's not to detract from those women who do have kids, and who are very happy about it; in fact, I sometimes question how normal it is to have such a visceral reaction to such a natural thing.

It's been three years since I married and I still don't want kids, which is a source of bafflement from some quarters. It's almost as if the ring on my finger means 'baby factory: opening soon!'

And so I react to this Royal Baby sweepstake bobbins with a measure of anger, because surely it's nobody's business but Will and Kate's? I wonder what would happen if they decided not to have children? It's almost a non-option really. The vows are exchanged, the ring's on the finger, ready, set, reproduce!

I've been very secure in my decision to marry, and I have never felt that it conflicts overly with my feminist ideals; my wedding was very egalitarian. We wrote our own vows (and 'obey' was nowhere in sight) My mum, dad and stepdad walked me down the aisle; his mum and dad stood with him. I took his surname, but only because my 'maiden' name was bloody horrible. I felt like I'd done my best to remove it all from its patriarchal roots.

And yet, I worry now that there is that piece of antifeminist baggage I can't shed; the expectation that I must, at some point, want children. There are only so many times I can smile and say 'no, I don't want children', and only so many times I can politely ignore the shocked reaction that follows. Is marriage, no matter how hard we try to ascribe new meaning to it, inevitably the shackle that ties us to the Bad Old Days? Is it impossible to remove it from the institution that created it?

I feel sorry for Kate. Whether she wants children or not, she will have to have them. At least I can make that choice.

The Daily Mail knows what's important

2011-03-21T14:35:00.003Z

With all the trouble and tragedy in the world at the moment, you'd be forgiven for thinking the Daily Mail might lose sight of the most important news stories.

Fret not, dear reader.

EXCLUSIVE: Woman leaves home, eats lunch

BREAKING NEWS: Woman wears dress, has breasts

DON'T MISS: Woman goes on holiday, wears bikini

SHOCKER: Woman wears same coat as other woman

LIFE-CHANGING: Woman wears green dress, orange cardigan

APPALLING: Woman wears clothes, is old

UNMISSABLE: Woman wears coat, has hood up

It's nice to know you can rely on them to keep you up to date on the really important stuff.

Lingerie shop to staff: wear make-up or else.

2011-02-22T19:38:00.002Z

I still remember the moment when I realised that Virgin's female air crew didn't all co-incidentally choose to wear bright red lipstick and high heels. I was crushed. As if that weren't shocking enough, in 2009 the Bank of England (whom you would expect to have a little more class) issued an edict demanding female employees wear make-up and stilettos. Sadly, this is just another in a long line of such stories.

It has been brought to my attention that at least one branch of a popular lingerie chain, which shall remain nameless to protect the identities of whistle-blowing staff, has instructed its female staff that they must wear "at least" light make-up every day or face disciplinary action.

One staff member, who wishes to remain anonymous, said that she had been criticised for looking "tired" when she arrived at work one day without make-up on, was advised to rectify the "problem" the next day. The same employee also pointed out that the majority of junior staff - who had been given the same advice - are very young women, with many still in their teens. Is it responsible, my informant wondered, to tell young women and girls that their natural appearance is not acceptable, and that they must alter their looks with make-up before they are fit to be seen in public? I'd say that's a no-brainer.

At the moment I do not know if this is a chain-wide policy or merely one shop manager getting a little to big for their boots, either way, it's a sad indictment of our superficial misogynistic society, which only reinforces the idea that a woman's worth is linked intrinsically to har physical appearance. Nameless underwear shop: FAIL.

Loose Women Is Not A Valid Argument

2011-01-28T15:03:00.002Z

It occured to me that it's actually a crying shame that Giles Coren's recent piece of obvious flamebaitery (and if it isn't flamebait, well...I don't know what to say except that I know a really nice anger management chap) didn't really have anything constructive to say about misandry. And it's even more of a shame that what he did say about misandry wasn't in the form of a clear, concise argument, but rather a slightly pitiful attempt to deflect attention from the wanton stupidity uttered by Messrs Gray and Keys re: silly wimmins not knowing football.

The argument, in a nutshell: but women are mean about men too. In fact, they have an entire TV show dedicated to talking about how stupid men are, and they don't get taken off the air, so therefore what Gray and Keys said doesn't seem quite so bad.

Okay. I may be taking creative liberties with my paraphrasing but certainly, that was the gist of it. And it really is a shame, because I'd love to see Loose Women taken to task. Loose Women represents a stereotype of modern feminism that really ought to be dumped in a skip and left there - the derisive giggling at silly men, the better-than-thou attitude, not so much "I am woman, hear me roar!" as "I am woman, hear me knock off yet another mildly amusing anecdote about the time my husband was unable to perform [insert mundane domestic duty here]"

That, my friends, is not liberation. How can it be? Is liberation sticking a bunch of women around a table and inviting them to be insulting? Are we supposed to be proud of this? I'm not; I don't want to be represented, as a feminist or a woman, by this kind of playground-level nonsense.

But I digress; the point at hand here is simply this: the fact that Loose Women exists, and is bobbins, does not diminish the fact that Gray and Keys were caught saying sexist, stupid things.

Okay? It's quite simple. Misandry exists, absolutely - although it is not as overtly ingrained into societal consciousness as misogyny, and certainly lacks its centuries long pedigree - and as feminists we ought to discuss it. The much lamented Ovenpride adverts are a pertinent example. A product of the same culture which tells us women belong in the kitchen, with a none-too-subtle nod to the logical extension of this unpleasant gender stereotype - that men, having spent less time in the kitchen than their dutiful wives, are inept in the ways of domestic drudgery. Why shouldn't we be interested in wiping out this stupid, insulting stereotype? It comes from the same place as those we rage about - the domestic goddess, barefoot and pregnant, with hands that do dishes & are as soft as her face, and on the flipside, her useless husband, who creates mess for her to clean.

Where sexism against men exists, it is often as a result of the same antiquated gender rules which keep ‘teh wimmins’ in their place. Divorce courts, for example, which often rule that the mother should get custody, seem to be operating under the attitude that it is the mother’s job to care for the kids, not the father’s, which in 21st century Britain ought to be considered a highly suspect attitude.
Even odder is the backlash that occurs whenever measures are put in place to ensure father’s rights – the recent move for paternity leave was met with outrage in many circles, and I still hear snorts of derision when it’s suggested that men should be encouraged to spend more time caring for their kids - why shouldn't they? The father's role is diminished in exactly the same way that the mother's role is elevated, to an extent which traps women - we must stay at home with our children, lest we ruin their childhood forever, career be damned, and the father is simply not a viable alternative, because children need their mummy. (Just read the Daily Mail's 'Femail' section for reams of this kind of steaming bullshit)

Unpleasant male stereotypes come from the same place as those that affect women. The drooling potential rapist is extrapolated from the idea, as supported by Nuts and Zoo and their ilk, that men are mad for sex and think about it all the time. The beer-swilling buffoon comes from a similar place: ‘lad’ culture, as perpetuated by the abovementioned mags, and The Sun et al, in which going out, getting smashed and getting into a fight is a good, blokey way of passing the time. I suppose there are men that are like this, but the gleeful acceptance and elevation to 'blokey role model' status makes it almost impossible for men to be otherwise. Boys don't cry; they drink until they puke, and gawp at tits, because that's what makes them men!

It is in the interest of all genders that we smash these assertions, these rigid gender roles, confining us to a small selection of life choices, and haranguing us - men, women, trans - if we do not conform.

This is a legitimate argument. Unfortunately, it's an argument diminished by Coren. His piece smacks of whataboutery, and fails to actually make any kind of pertinent point, besides complaining about how mean women can be. If Keys and Gray were wrong, then they were wrong regardless of what Loose Women or the Ovenpride ads say about men. Why must it be an either/or situation? Can't the sexism of Loose Women and the sexism of Gray and Keys both be considered offensive without being pitted against each other in a neverending war of more-offensive-than-thou?

"Whataboutthemenz?" is a phenomenon in which a debate about sexism against women is opposed with "but it happens to men too". It's equivalent to a debate about racism being derailed by a white person saying "but what about white people? People are racist to us too." I mean, sure, that may well be so, but what does it have to do with the actual point at hand? And is it not massively patronising to suggest that thousands of years of oppression and hardship are equivalent to someone calling you 'cracker'? The same is true of gender whataboutery. Yes, men suffer sexism too, but can it honestly be comparable to the sheer level of institutionalised, state-approved (thanks, religion) sexism that has kept women (and indeed, trans people) firmly in the 'second class citizens' category? It doesn't mean that misandry shouldn't be combatted. Indeed, I think us feminists should consciously avoid lowering ourselves to insults and stereotypes - the very things we are fighting against. Nonetheless, how can there be an intelligent discourse about misandry when most of the people complaining about it are doing so in response to arguments against misogyny?

Loose Women may be cack, but it's not the same as being told you cannot be good at your job because you have a vagina. If Coren hates it so much, may I politely suggest he petition to get it off the air. Christ knows I'll even sign it.

News flash - women not people, do not have feelings

2011-01-13T21:21:00.005Z

Or at least, that's what you'd think if you spent more than a millisecond in most internet forums.

Allow me to elaborate. On New Year's Eve a group of friends and I went to see one of our favourite bands play in Camden. Not only was it a great gig, but by some turn of co-incidence we ended up backstage afterwards, drinking, chatting with the band, generally having a lot of fun. All in all, it was a brilliant night.

While we were backstage, a photographer asked if he could take some photos of us, and we happily obliged. Then tonight, we happened across his blog where he had posted one of the pictures. The reason we found the blog is because is someone had posted a link to it on the band's forum. And later, in the same thread, someone posted the photograph of my friends and I.

And that's when we ceased to be people. Because we were women, and we'd dared to go out in public we'd surrendered our humanity and become objects to be stared at, jeered at, rated and ridiculed.

Some of the men (boys?) on the forum took it upon themselves to start commenting on the photo, reposting it several times, making comments about our appearance and ranking us in order of who they wanted to have sex with first.

I have never felt so degraded and dehumanised in my life and I'm a model for fuck's sake, it's practically in my job description. Who the hell do they think they are, literally treating us like pieces of meat on a restaurant trolley? They don't know who we are, they don't know a thing about us, yet they feel OK openly judging us, on a public forum? FUCK THEM.

Did they really think we wouldn't see? Given that we're fans of the band it's hardly unlikely that we'd occasionally go on their official website. More likely they just didn't think at all. They didn't think about the consequences of their actions, they didn't think that we're real people with real feelings that might get hurt. They didn't think about how they would feel if they found people doing the same to a photograph of their mothers or sisters. Let alone themselves. It'll be a thousand years in the future before men find their bodies viewed as public property in the same way that women do now.

No, they didn't think at all, because it's just a joke to them. And that's the saddest thing. That in our supposedly enlightened society, where I'm constantly told there 's no longer a need for feminism because "men and women are treated equally now" people still think this is completely normal, acceptable behaviour. It's just such a shame, too, because the band themselves are genuinely lovely, intelligent people; you would think they would attract like-minded people as fans, but clearly that's not always the case.

The only good thing about it is that the sexists are identifying themselves, so in future women will know not to approach them with a ten foot pole. It's hypocritical really, these pathetic little creeps, hiding behind the anonymity of the internet talking about who they'd most like to fuck, when in reality they're clearly such horrible human beings that staring at a photograph is as close as they're likely to get to a real woman without paying her.

So thanks, random internet misogynists, for ruining my memories of a great night. By way of equality, I tried to rank you in order of who's most Troglodyte, but it was a tie - you're all losers.

Update: I am genuinely touched by the kindness I have received from people who have read this and got in touch. Thanks especially to the lovely photographer whose innocent photo got mixed up in this for his support and to the moderators and others from the forum for deleting the offensive stuff and for general awesomeness. Consider my faith in humanity and music restored.

So, there is this horrible little man on Twitter

2011-01-08T21:12:00.003Z

I'm not going to name him, because I'm sure you know by now who it is, and doing so would rather undermine my message. He is telling women that it is their "duty" to be size zero, that to be overweight is "a sin" (interestingly/disturbingly he seems to equate anything over size zero with overweight).

This man is only after one thing, and that is publicity. He quite clearly does not believe what he is saying, no one could, and he is doing it purely for the attention only an ex Big Brother contestant craves. I have watched his follower count rise from a few thousand, to ten thousand, to nearly 20 thousand in the three or so days that he has been trending.

I imagine I am shouting into the wind here, as other people have been giving similar advice, but I thought I'd at least try. Do not feed the troll. Don't @ reply him, don't mention him by name, don't retweet him, STOP GIVING HIM THE BLOODY OXYGEN OF PUBLICITY.

The man is wanking in delight at every new follower. Ignoring the outside chance that he may actually pleasure himself to death, it's really better to just ignore the bloody idiot and then he will go away, I promise.

Prince/ss

2011-01-04T23:04:00.003Z

The Daily Fail can fuck off.

Well, ok, we knew that. But in this case, they can fuck right off, the fucking douchecanoes. He's five. And you know what - IF HE WANTS TO WEAR A DRESS HE CAN FUCKING WELL WEAR A FUCKING DRESS YOU FUCKING PRICKS.

The bit that really fucked me off is this -

"What young Dyson will make of this very public story of acceptance when he is older remains to be seen - most teenagers cringe when their mother brings out the baby photos, and such a widely available book will mean he has nowhere to hide."

Firstly, they're assuming that this is embarassing, that this kid who likes wearing clothing that doesn't fit with what "society" says kids of his gender "should" wear will not want to wear "girl's" clothing when he's older. Bollocks to that.

Secondly, they're assuming that he is going through a phase. He might not want to wear dresses when he's older - societal pressure might have made him decide he "should" wear trousers. He might decide that he wants to wear dresses when he's older, and decide to be a transvestite. He might be trans, and decide he wishes to become a woman. He might be trans already. Who gives a flying fuck? He's chosen one type of gendered clothing over another.

And you know what, Daily Fail? That's ok. His parents, and his sibling, are accepting of him as he is right now. That they're supporting him right now, and trying to change others' perceptions of this as "weird", is a good thing. That he's growing up wearing what he wants to wear, not what society says he should wear, is a good thing.

Dyson's mother Cheryl has it right -

"We need to start asking ourselves why we are condemning people and things just because they are different and make us feel uncomfortable."

If her son is transgender, and decides to transition, he will have a supportive family. He'll be very lucky. But he shouldn't just have a supportive family. He should have a supportive society - he should grow up in a culture that doesn't demand that boys wear trousers and play with guns and girls wear dresses and play with dolls - instead he should grow up in a culture where the clothes a person wears aren't invested with ideas of gender, and right and wrong. There are no "wrong" clothes for a child (push-up bras for seven year olds excepted). There are no "wrong" clothes for an adult, for that matter. Especially not predicated on ideas of gender.

[crossposted at Sensible Susan & The Ladylike Punk]

London Council cuts

2010-11-12T17:15:00.002Z

Councils in London are considering cutting £3.3million per year that is currently spent on supporting women and children who are victims of domestic abuse.

Whether you're in London or not, please sign this petition against the cuts:
http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/londoncouncils

Femininity and Male Entitlement

2010-11-11T22:28:00.003Z

People ask me a lot why I'm a feminist and/or what sort of issues I'm concerned with. I always find it tough to answer, because there are so many things that raise my feminist hackles, and they're often things that people not sympathetic towards feminism just can't wrap their heads around. So I thought I'd try and demonstrate through examples, from time to time.

Now, I never expected Emma Watson's hair to turn into a feminist issue, believe me. I've been looking at the articles about her haircut (lot of slow news days recently, I'm guessing. When I was a reporter and there wasn't much going on I had to ring the local fire brigade to ask if they'd rescued any kittens/children/grannies/other newsworthy characters recently, but each to their own), out of my own masochistic curiosity; since I have very short hair myself I have a morbid disposition towards reading comments about how she'll now never get a man, because only girls with long hair get laid - if anything, it's nice to finally be given a reason.

Anyway, I'm well-accustomed enough to these sorts of remarks now to have developed a kind of immunity, but this one was different:

"Why are there just pictures of a 10 year old boy in this article?

Im really sorry but she was like the hottest girl on the internet, in the world to be honest, i can promise that MILLIONS AND MILLIONS on guys are just crying and weaping because she decided to do this to her hair...

she is not Hermione anymore, if i was going out with her i would dump her, i really would, she went from crazy hot girl, to 10 year old boy overnight..

i am distraught, she looks awful, just awful ( if you disagree you are likely to have short hair yourself or think its ok but you are wrong because hair like this is reserved for cancer patients and 10 year old boys)"

- James D, Cambridge, 13/9/2010 1:41

I could point out that he has clearly been judging this woman solely on her appearance, and evaluating her worth as human being based on how "hot" he judges her to be, but that's feminism 101, you guys are smarter than to need that explained, right? (I could write a separate article on the Fail's strange obsession with this young woman, but it's not that tough to work out - it's partially owing to her good looks, partially owing to the fact that they prefer their lust-objects to be barely legal - less likely to back-chat, one would imagine - and largely owing to the fact that she's very middle class and moneyed, dontchaknow.)

No, it's the utter sense of entitlement that gets to the feminist in me. He's managed to make *her* haircut all about *him* (in specific, and men in general). The whole tone suggests he thinks she should have been made to run this idea by the male population first. Skipping gleefully past the part where he bemoans that she's "not Hermione anymore" before one of you bright sparks points out that Hermione is a fictional character from a book and TV series, and as such she has never actually *been* her, we get to the part which has been more and more of a regular feature on Fail article comments these days - the classic "well, I'm sorry, but I just don't fancy her!". Like she's actually going to care that some wanker (both literally and figuratively) from Cambridge doesn't want to fuck her; but the intention of the statement is to say "male opinion is more important than your autonomy over your own body, I must be heard and you WILL listen". I don't doubt he also intends his little fantasy dumping of Watson as a warning to other women that they can expect similar treatment from Mr D should they think of trying the same (I'll be crying into the pile of money I get paid to have a short haircut over the loss).

Finally, the most clear example of the expression of male entitlement over female sexuality (because let's face it, that is what this boils down to, sex), his dismissal of the opinion of anyone who "thinks having short hair is ok" - ie, "having short hair is not ok, women do not have autonomy over their own bodies, and must look sexually available (by adhering to male standards of female beauty) at all times".

And all this is further to the nastiness of just leaving the comment in the first place. People don't write nasty comments about men's appearance just for the sake of it, but women are served up by the press on a platter as objects to look at and either praise or destroy as appropriate. Both options being just as creepy and reprehensible as the other.

I sometimes wonder why some men have such a problem with short hair. I think that's a post for another day. With Ms Watson, I can't work out what is pissing the Fail readers off more, the fact that she has defied societal norms and as such has made herself supposedly sexually unattractive and unavailable, or that their favourite fuck-piece has disappointed them all by proving to have a mind of her own. Whichever it is, I do hope she keeps up the good work.

Hello all, it's been a while...

2010-10-23T16:20:00.002+01:00

...you can thank work and the Bar course for that one. I think I may be going into meltdown.

But this isn't about that. I'm growing a moustache from now until the end of November to raise awareness for both testicular and prostate cancer, two of the most diagnosed cancers of men in the UK, but with so little awareness, and raise funds for the Everyman Male Cancer Campaign. If you want to help me out, please donate a quid minimum here:

http://www.justgiving.com/sayem-rahman

Thanks for your help!

My Day of Misogyny

2010-09-30T20:07:00.003+01:00

A little backstory - after returning from a lengthy stint abroad, I haven't yet fallen into a regular work pattern. So I've been at home a lot with only daytime TV to entertain me (there's only so much time one can spend on Facebook). Having cable at my disposal that shouldn't be so bad (although Diagnosis Murder on BBC1 remains unmatched so far as shows involving crime-fighting physicians go) but I discovered a large part of what's on offer is a veritable visual feast of sexism.

I like comedy, so these last few days I settled on Comedy Central to soundtrack my post-morning paper day:

9am - 10am Frasier

I like Frasier. I used to watch it when it was originally shown in the nineties/noughties. However, revisiting it with more mature, feminist eyes, does diminish its legend somewhat.

The main female characters are Daphne, a live-in carer come housemaid, and Roz, Fraiser's radio show producer. Daphne is a Benny Hill type female cliche (ironically the actress, Jane Leeves, made her name as a Benny Hill girl, so that's possibly why she didn't flinch at taking on such a sexist role) - dizzy and distinctly unintelligent, she is continually mocked for being too talkative and her supposedly terrible cooking - not generally in a physical therapist's remit, so far as I'm aware - is a running joke. Her main part in the show is to serve as the love interest for Frasier's brother. Unrelatedly, her Mancunian accent is the worst I've heard this side Peru.

Roz is a more impressive character in that she has a successful career in radio. There the feminist glories end. The running gag with Roz is that she's promiscuous. Needless to say this is not presented as a liberated, modern choice, but rather makes her the subject of regular lewd jokes about her sex life. This is, somewhat confusingly, paired with the decision to gradually turn her into a Bridget Jones type. She is also desperate to find a husband and often frets about her age (she has passed that golden threshold of 30). She eventually finds redemption in motherhood.

The more peripheral female characters come in the form of girlfriends for our protagonist, Frasier, and his father, Martin. Frasier in his mid forties, is also on the lookout for romance; I have a theory that his failure to find a long term partner is based on the fact that he rarely dates women out of their late twenties to early thirties. Confusingly there are lots of women in their forties around - they are the love interests of his 60-something-year-old father. In the course of the series he is engaged twice to women two decades his junior. Only Niles, the younger brother, ends up with a woman closeish to his own age when he eventually marries Daphne.

Special mention also to Lillith, Frasier's ex-wife. She is the typical bitch ex wife, and stereotypical frigid "ice queen" type. Niles' estranged first wife, Maris is never seen on camera, but jokes are made about her obsession with food and her weight; she is constantly on the most ridiculous of diets and is so insecure about her appearance that she often refuses to be seen in public. As a psychiatrist you'd think her husband would recognise probable body dismorphic disorder and a large dose of agoraphobia, but instead the character is just written off a high maintenance, nagging harridan.

10-am - 11am Everybody Loves Raymond

I've also been aware of this long-running American sitcom for quite some time; I remember watching it in the mornings when I was at university.

It's a family set-up, our protagonist Raymond, along with his wife and children, parents and brother. His wife, Deborah, is again stereotype wife. Her terrible cooking is again a running gag, her housekeeping is poor, she denies her hapless husband sex and not an episode goes past where she isn't shown nagging him (not surprising when they have three children and he makes no contribution to the chores). The other main female character is Raymond's mother, a shrill harpy who constantly nags her husband (to be fair, he is also portrayed as a fairly unpleasant character) and exists mainly to fill the snooty mother in law cliche and make her daughter in law's life hell. The only other recurring character is Amy, Raymond's brother Robert's on-off girlfriend. A wet dishcloth of a girl, her main goal in life is to get married and her main function in the show is to quietly wait for Robert to propose, despite him cheating on her more than one and dumping her several times before eventually committing.

11am-12pm King of Queens:

King of Queens employs a device beloved of US comedy - pairing an overweight, under-achieving, slobby, "loveable rogue" character with a somewhat unrealistically beautiful, slim, successful and intelligent wife (see also Family Guy and any film involving Seth Rowland). Not so much of a problem in itself, you may say, but imagine the scenario the other way around - doesn't happen, does it?

Carrie, and I feel wearied typing the same words again, is a stereotype wife - she constantly nags her husband, doesn't like him spending time with his friends, doesn't want sex as often as he feels is appropriate. There are mercifully no jokes about her cooking, though needless to say she does all of it, along with the shopping; but there was an extra dose of misogyny in one episode I saw where the husband, Doug, bullied the beautiful, slim Carrie into going on a diet because he thought she was getting plump, all the while making no reference to the fact that he himself is grossly obese, despite the fact that the disparity between he and his wife's weights and general physical attractiveness is something he is shown to be aware of.

12pm-1pm Scrubs:

A shining light in my day. Maybe it's because it doesn't revolve around a traditional family/household set up, but there's no sexism that I can see in this programme. And it's very funny. YAY.

1pm-3pm Frasier and King of Queens repeated.

3pm - 4pm Two and a Half Men:

The misogyny of this inexplicably popular contemporary US sitcom is so legendary I barely need to revisit it. The set up sees two middle aged brothers living together, one having occasional custody of his young son. The elder brother, Charlie (played by Charlie Sheen - not himself known for showing a great deal of respect for women) is a notorious womaniser. the male equivalent of Roz in Fraiser, if you like, but instead of censure, his almost heroic promiscuity is rewarded with praise, luckless younger brother Alan referring to him once as an episode as a "lucky, lucky bastard" as he's seen ascending the stairs accompanied by two giggling pneumatic blondes.

Charlie is in his forties but shamelessly dates women two decades his junior. He has rules about not dating women over the age of 25 and devotes a large portion of one episode I saw this week to explaining why he could never date a woman of 40 (still significantly younger than him, by this point) - because they all have big ears, apparently. He treats the women he briefly knows with nothing short of contempt - the running "joke" in this series is that he pretends to be romantically interested in women to convince them to sleep with him, then sends them away with a fake phone number. Women who attempt to pursue a relationship with him are portrayed as pathetic, clingy, boderline stalkers. One early recurring character who disappears in later series, Rose, actually IS a stalker.

Younger brother Alan is a loser in love, and clearly supposed to be a sympathetic character, with more open minded views on women than his brother. He dates women in his own age group, and generally more bookish types than the stereotyped "bimbos" his brother brings home, but his ultimate goal is also casual sex, and through his eyes women are shown as little more than receptacles to fit this purpose. One episode focussed on the absolutely "hilarious" consequences of both brothers openly lusting after a 17-year-old child. It's ok though, it is made known several times, that she is, in fact "asking for it". From two paunchy middle-aged men. Obviously.

Alan is also the link to one of the shows female leads - his ex-wife Judith. Judith is clearly modelled on Lillith from Frasier; a frigid "ice queen", who never wanted sex with her husband when they were married, continues to nag him despite their divorce, and is a "ball breaker" who continually harasses and emasculates her ex-husband. She "screwed" him in their divorce settlement and Alan always being broke because he has to pay Judith alimony - presumably to finance raising their child - is a regular joke. Alan also has a second ex-wife after a brief failed married to a 22-year-old woman so deficient in intelligence that in real life sleeping with her would probably be regarded as abuse. She also somehow "made" him pay for everything during their courtship and marriage, including her cosmetic surgery and car (despite being so thick that realistically she would have choked to death brushing her teeth before the age of 16) and he has to pay her alimony after their divorce; she too is subsequently shown as a millstone around Alan's neck.

The other recurring female character is the mens' mother. She is - wait for it - a shrill, nagging harridan who the pair do their best to avoid at all costs. They make jokes about the number of sexual partners she had in their youth (their own mother!).

Berta, Charlie's housekeeper, is butch, bullish and rude.

One storyline saw Charlie break the habit of a lifetime and fall for one of his throwaway dates. They become engaged, but when she, eminently sensibly, has misgivings about marrying him, she becomes the evil bitch who ruined his life.

There is literally not one, single female character on that show, whoever brief her appearance, who comes out of it looking good.

And so concludes my day of sexist "comedy". The evening gives way to more highbrow legal dramas such as Law and Order; even this franchise, one of my favourites, is guilty of sticking to the senior partner = male, junior partner = female set up. If I didn't watch anything that was sexist I'd probably spend a lot more time doing things more constructive than watching television. Like writing blogs about television, for example.

Thank goodness I'm working tomorrow.

Feminism burnt my toast

2010-09-24T19:32:00.006+01:00

First there was the article in the Daily Fail.

Then Humphreys had Rose Prince and Rosie Boycott (Spare Rib founder turned Fail writer) on the Today Programme. The issue:

FEMINISM KILLED HOME COOKING AND MADE CHILDREN FAT.

Germaine Greer has spent the last 30-odd years running around force-feeding cakes to children, and because Betty Friedan has personally kicked all women out of the kitchen and into the workplace, and forced them to feed their children ready meals (Susan Faludi was preventing all the men from lifting a finger, obviously) - your children are fat.

On R4, both Prince and Boycott seemed quite happy to point the finger of blame at women - even though Boycott was ostensibly there to argue against Prince's feminist-killed-healthy-eating rubbish - to the point where Humphreys ended up taking her part, saying

"I'm going to have to defend women here... because neither of you are doing it. You treat women as though they're incredibly gulible and vulnerable to all these pressures"

At the same time, both women agreed that it is difficult to criticise families; what they do instead is criticise women, saying that as women are the primary caregivers, it is up to them to make sure their children eat well. Women are the scapegoat. The problem is not that women don't give a shit about their children eating healthily, but that modern capitalism requires women to work - there is no married man's wage, and most people would agree that for an average family, two average wages are needed. And if both parents are working full time - or the family has only one parent - they may not have time to cook from scratch each and every day. They may not be able to afford lots of vegetables; hell, I find vegetables expensive enough and I live in a household with two (admittedly low) incomes and no kids.

In her Daily Fail article, Prince laments that

"The way we cook has to change if the gentle art of feminine food is to be revived."

As opposed to what - the tough art of masculine food? Cooking isn't gentle, it's hard bloody work, taking time and effort - even if, like me, you enjoy cooking. No doubt Prince wouldn't consider sweating, swearing when I drop a potato, or getting flour on my jeans particularly feminine - but cooking can and does involve all of those things. And I guess if my partner cooks, then what he makes is masculine food - even if it's cupcakes.

Both Crumbs and Jessica Reid on CiF have excellent rebuttals to Prince's (and Boycott's) nonsense as well, albeit from different angles.

******

In other Daily Fail news: send your sons to private schools, girls will get enough education to marry well at the local state school - because everyone knows that private schools are always better, state schools fail boys, boys need special treatment, and girls get on with it, and don't need an education anyway because all girls are fit for is marrying, having babies, and cooking (in a gentle, feminine way). No doubt "they will both go to university and everything will work out", so that's ok then.

The article quotes "social commentator"James Delingpole - climate change denier, he of the "men don't want paternity leave" and "gays aren't normal" bullshit, who writes for the Mail and the Torygraph - saying,

"Girls can always marry a rich man, ... If a girl is middle-class and reasonably educated in the state system, the chances are she will marry well anyway.

"Boys, like it or not, are much more likely to end up earning their family’s crust as the breadwinner. Girls, being more sophisticated, socially adept and devious, are much more capable of negotiating the complexities of the state system than boys. It may not be liberated or politically correct, but it’s true.’

"... the state system is woefully geared against boys. Almost all the teachers are female, and a kind of ideological feminisation has crept into the system.
‘Boys aren’t built to sit still and conform in class. They are boisterous - they need to run about and they need to be challenged. "

Oh, fuck off you tit.

Indefensible (trigger in paragraph 5)

2010-09-13T20:40:00.002+01:00

Having a slightly masochistic streak I'm occasionally compelled to pick up the Metro, the Daily Mail's ugly little sister, on the train into work. This rag usually offers a bit of bile to start your week with and this morning's edition was no exception, with the story of a woman who neglected her children and let her dogs starve to death while playing a computer game as its front page offering. (The story is covered in even more gory detail in the Fail itself). By the time I'd finished reading I was shaking with rage, but possibly not for quite the reasons the editors intended.

This seems at first reading to be a continuation of the Fails' bizarre crusade against the evil interwebs: the addictive game in question is called Smallworld, to which "she received an invitation from a friend on Facebook", and is "an online boardgame featuring characters such as wizards, dwarves, orcs and giants" – clearly such a tempting prospect it can turn an ordinary mother into a neglectful monster. Look a bit closer though and the story gets rather more complicated.

It seems the problems started when she lost her husband to a heart attack, after which she stopped taking care of her dogs and her house, barely managed to feed her children and started obsessively playing the game. That doesn't sound to me like an addictive game ruining someone's life, it sounds to me like someone with severe depression taking refuge in a virtual world from a life that's become unbearable. It sounds to me like turning someone with a severe mental illness into a hate figure in order to fit with their anti-Facebook agenda.

Apparently she got a ban on using the internet and keeping animals and a suspended custodial sentence. What I hope she also got is counselling, a lot of hot cups of tea and a lot of friends reassuring her that whatever she's done they still care about her. What she certainly doesn't need is a media-maddened mob who can't imagine themselves ever ending up in that position to tell her what she did is inexcusable, I'm pretty sure she already feels bad about it.

Honestly, in my more tinfoil-hatted moments I sometimes wonder why the Daily Mail puts so much effort into making sure we hate each other. Do they want us to be too busy squabbling amongst ourselves and bitching over biweekly bin collections that we won't notice when Paul Dacre peels off his fleshmask and leads his army of Martian Lizardmen to victory or something? Maybe it's meant to be reassuring. We're not like those people, the narrative goes. We're not workshy scroungers sponging off honest taxpayers, or underdressed sluts who go out and get themselves raped (or probably make it up anyway) or foreigners inventing tales of persecution to leech off the public services we pay for. We'd never get addicted to an absurd game "featuring characters such as wizards, dwarves, orcs and giants". And we're certainly not the sort of weak, pathetic people who get depression.

Only it's a lie of course. It's hard to find a firm figure but it's widely accepted that about a quarter of us will experience some sort of mental illness at some point in our lives. No matter who we are or how strong our work ethic may be, we can find ourselves sick or unemployed, we may even be assaulted whatever precautions we take. And sometimes, maybe in response to bereavement, maybe because of something else, our brains can do things we don't like and can't control. Life can be touch, and possibly the one thing I'd agree with the Daily Mail on is the need to look out for each other – this story probably wouldn't have ended so tragically if this woman's friends or family had noticed she wasn't coping and offered to help at the beginning. But a little understanding and compassion is what would promote that sort of society, not the judgement, mistrust and condemnation peddled by this paper.

In short, there's some indefensible behaviour here, but it's on behalf of the writers of this article, not its subject.

P.S. I should probably point out that I'm a dog lover (currently dogless due to circumstances rather than choice), and while the idea of letting your dogs starve to death makes me feel sick, I'm not so self-righteous that I can't see how someone with depression could let that happen.

Sons and Daughters

2010-08-11T22:04:00.004+01:00

I've just finished watching a documentary on Channel 4 called "Cutting Edge: Four Sons versus Four Daughters". I'm not sure it was quite as cutting edge as it appeared, although it did give some food for thought.

The opening mark that struck me was the mother of four girls saying people often asked her, on seeing she had four girls, "Are you trying for a boy?"; the documentary started as if it were about to start exploring gender attitudes and nature vs nurture debates. However, the producers chose conventional families - the daughters liked pink, took dancing lessons, and arranged flowers with their mother; the sons were competitive, played football with their father, and had toy guns.

Both families were, again, “ideal”; the mother was a SAHM (although the mother of four boys briefly mentioned a part-time job, it was made obvious that she was the primary caretaker) while the father worked in a masculine industry. Both families appeared affluent; they kept the de-rigeur middle-class chickens; the eldest son had his own car. Both were white.

These aspects of the families situations was not the main focus of the documentary, but it is important to remember the other aspects of social inequalities when examining one - their middle-class affluence undoubtedly affected the girls' access to ballet lessons and pony-owning, and the boys' access to after-school sports. As a result, their "girliness" or "boyishness" is affected by more than just their biological sex - which in turn affects how their parents relate to them, and nurture their children to fit a certain ideology.

The documentary's use of gender stereotypes is consistent; the father in the all-girl family (John) is henpecked and feels outnumbered, while the boys' father would want to have “sporty girls”. The boys’ mother (Karen) is looking forward to a “girlier” house, and being with other women. Women want the company of women; Men want sons to relive their boyhood through.

Karen & Steve – have sons

John & Marianne – have daughters

Both sets of parents equally uncomfortable with their "new" families; idea that boys much more rough-and-tumble is enforced from the outset as the sons put John through an obstacle course involving a trampoline and water guns. The girls, in direct contrast, give makeovers to both Karen and Steve (they are shown earlier giving their father, John, a makeover, which he calmly endures while being asked leading questions about whether or not he'd prefer to have sons). The girls help with cooking the evening meal – the boys don’t (though they do barbecue). Both mothers do the main bulk of the cooking and caring. The stereotypes continue - girls like shopping; boys like go-karting. Fathers like boys, Mothers like girls. A father is only one who can teach “a boy to become a man”.

Karen, mother to the four boys, comments to her new daughters “I think mums do too much for boys… I think girls want to do it, that’s the difference”; she is pleased that the girls help out in the kitchen, but instead of putting it down to routine, she appears to attribute their assistance to their innate femininity.

The documentary did raise some points – are parents creating their children to be what they expect children of that gender to be like? Do they see children of their own gender as a conduit to relive their own experiences? Would the outcome have been different if the gender stereotypes had not been so clearly defined between families, with tomboys and boys playing with dolls? Or if the gender roles of the parents had been less clearly defined.

At the end of their three days of family-swapping, the parents were urged to reflect on gender differences – but not about whether the behaviour of the children is down to personality or their own expectations of sons or daughters. They do not question whether girls require a mother, or if a male-identified parent is able to parent a girly-girl. The personality of the adults and their rediscovery of their masculinity or femininity - in relation to their family standing, their children's personalities in particular - is considered, again raising further questions as to the effects of nature or nurture on children's development.

Had the programme not reinforced gender roles so determinedly, the documentary could have explored a great deal more in terms of gender and children's gender roles; instead it raised more questions than it answered, and served to repeat the ideal of SAHM, breadwinner father, daughters who do ballet and sons who play football.

Warning: contains no Daily Mail.

2010-08-07T21:37:00.003+01:00

This irritates the hell out of me. I'm arranging a mail redelivery, so that if I have forgotten to tell anywhere that sends me bills, the bills go to the new house. It's handy.

But the Royal Mail website asks me to not only provide a title (thankfully it now includes "Ms" as a choice) as well as my full name - but it asks for my gender. Why on earth, especially considering that there is a first name and a title, does it require me to state whether I am male or female. Why is there no other choice? Does the Royal Mail really need to know the contents of my pants in order to redirect a letter?

Christina Hendricks is not my role model

2010-08-04T20:16:00.005+01:00

It's nothing personal, it's just that "have big breasts" is not high up on my to do list. You'll have noticed last week the fuss over Lynne Featherstone, the equalities minister's comments on Hendricks and what a fantastic role model she is. The poor woman has been misquoted to a degree, with the Fail attributing to her "All women should aspire to be a size 14" (I can find no independent verification of her saying this and no other article uses this quote). Nonetheless, here's yet another minister/celebrity/journalist, no doubt well meaning, completely missing the point.

For a start, Christina Hendricks does not, as Featherstone claims, have any more of a realistic or attainable figure than Kate Moss/Victoria Beckham/latest popular target of skinny bashing. Yes she's a size 14. That's the average in this country. That's where any similarities with the average woman in this country ends. Hendricks might be a size 14, but there is not an ounce of fat on her. She's a size 14 because she's one of the few people out there who is genuinely "curvy" - she's got a generous chest and wide hips, coupled with a trim waist and long, lean limbs. In other words, she has an hourglass figure. Something around 8% of the female population is born with, and that cannot be achieved through any amount of diet, exercise or even surgery. Yeah, REAL attainable.

Secondly, as I've argued before, and hence will not give over too much attention to now, replacing one ideal of female physical perfection with another does not help. I couldn't be a size 14 if I ate nothing but lard for a month (and even if I could, I still wouldn't look like Christina Hendricks because I've got narrow hips and a small ribcage). All that achieves is shifting the pressure to conform from one group of women to another.

But thirdly, and more importantly, if we're going to start talking about role models, and what what women had ought to be "aspiring" to, could we leave the physical appearance out of it? Might we try aspiring towards academic and professional success? I know it's "out there" as an idea, but maybe Diane Abbott or even Featherstone herself are better role models than Hendricks, or that other cultural zeitgeist, Kelly Brook? Just a thought.

This post is about sex.

2010-07-30T20:07:00.007+01:00

It's true.

What kind of warped world do we live in when girls who don't sleep around are mocked? asks the Fail, referring to the earlier 'revelation' that some woman from Girls Aloud has only slept with two people.

Well now. I'm in two minds about this. Firstly, as far as I can see, there hasn't been any mockery. The news sources I've checked out have been fairly neutral (and most newspapers haven't mentioned it at all) so the article seems like an exercise in pointless hysteria. The way the article is presented is frustratingly puritan at times, bandying meaningless statistics about ("Research shows that promiscuity among the young is on the rise. People in the 16-24 age group have already clocked up an average of nine partners.")

"Promiscuity certainly isn't what feminism set out to achieve" says Rosie Boycott, one of the co-founders of Spare Rib magazine. And I find this a really interesting sentence: surely feminism set out to achieve sexual freedom? And doesn't sexual freedom include promiscuity?

See, I don't think sexual freedom is quite with us yet, not if this article is anything to go by. Because although the media has been uncharacteristically restrained about commenting on Ms Walsh's sex life, I have encountered an attitude (even among some feminists) suggesting that a woman who has had only a few partners is somehow missing out, or is sexually repressed. I know this because I have had the same number of partners as Ms Walsh: 2. Only one of those was a man. I am now married to him. I have been asked, on more than one occasion, whether I think I'll regret limiting my sexual activity to just one man.

Why would I? The interesting thing about human sexuality is how diverse we are in terms of our kinks and proclivities, our turn ons and offs. I've never felt compelled to have a large number of partners; I don't particularly want to go into detail but I'm perfectly happy with the partner I have, ta. I think the whole point of feminism as liberation is to give us this choice: to have as many or as few partners as we choose, to indulge our wildest kinky leather-clad fantasies or to make sweet love in a field of roses or whatever point of the sex/romance spectrum we find ourselves inclined towards. Hell, what about those people who just don't like sex? I've met a few asexual people who are perfectly happy not to fondle other people's floppy bits, and that's as valid a sexual choice as anything else.

So while the fearful puritanism that leads to the idea that more than four partners makes you an incurable slut, or the idea that a one night stand has to be unfulfilling and emotionally empty (and why should emotion come into it at all? What if you just want to fuck?) strikes me as weird and repressive, I'm also wary of the attitude that we should all have a few notches on our bedposts, and less than four partners means you're a frigid, priggish prude. We can't win, can we? We're either madonnas or whores, eternally.

That said, I really take umbrage with this: Young women today want the same fundamental thing I did: a loving relationship of the kind Kimberley Walsh is lucky enough to enjoy.

How fucking patronising is that? "Now then dears, you might think all you want is a good fuck with no strings attached, but what you REALLY want is a nice charming prince to sweep you off your feet and make you his bride!"

Ms Boycott, I say this as a married woman: Kindly fuck off.

All Women Are Ugly (Except Kelly Brook)

2010-06-26T14:17:00.002+01:00

Can you conceive of a world in which any woman can leave the house without fear of a photographer in the bushes, crouched like a predator, waiting to photograph them without their permission and sell those photographs to tabloids, who will ensure that even her most minor flaw is highlighted for the world to see and ridicule?

No? Neither can the Mail, apparently, because approximately 30% of their articles are based on the above formula.

This week, it's Peaches Geldof in the firing line. Now, I'm no real fan of Peaches but the Mail's obsession with is really quite inappropriate. Take this week's slew of articles for example. Starting with a creepy article about her 'extra curves' which features no less than seven pictures of her in a bikini. It would be bad enough, but it's also astonishingly hypocritical: "Last week, Peaches was the subject of cruel internet jibes when she was pictured looking bloated and out of shape at a water park in the city" the article simpers, quasi-sympathetic. And yet which paper ran the story originally? Interestingly, I can't seem to find the article online anymore, but the Mail reported on her 'unflattering' bikini, 'tacky' tattoos and 'bloated' abdomen with almost masturbatory glee.

And even though I can't find the original article, the Mail has kindly provided me with two more examples: This one, which insinuates that since Ms Geldof is wearing a loose-fitting black dress, she must secretly despise her body despite stating several times that she's quite happy the way she is, thanks, and is a lying liar whose pants are on fire. And this one, which rips into her 'unflattering' outfit and snidely points out that she 'drew attention for all the wrong reasons'

But! If you thought you could evade Fail scrutiny by being slimmer than Ms Geldof (who, being at LEAST a size 10, is the Mail equivalent of a pygmy hippo) think again! Two nobodies from an American TV show were this week criticised for being 'painfully thin'. How dare they assume they have the right to show off their bodies when it's quite clear they are imperfect? Everyone knows there's no such thing as naturally skinny people.

In fact, unless you're Kelly Brook, you may as well not even step out of the house. The Mail loves Kelly Brook. As the sheer abundance of non-stories about her wearing clothes, or not wearing clothe s, can attest. And let's not forget that she's the only woman over the age of 21 who is allowed to wear a short skirt. Put that minidress away, old crones!

Mind you, is any of this remotely surprising coming from a paper which suggests that a 5'4 woman 'ballooned' to 9st?

Don't Lie To Me

2010-06-24T00:00:00.003+01:00

Don’t lie to me. But that is what the Daily Mail does best. But worse, it does it with Science. I’m an engineer (hopefully, results not through yet) which means I’m not quite a scientist but also not a science fan. This means that I can recognise basic stats, scientific method and the role of experiments and analysis. And well as is often pointed out the Daily Mail is one of the worst papers for reporting anything science related. And by doing this it ruins science, the image of science, and the role science has in society.

Take for example this article on the relationship between abortion and breast cancer. After googling around for the original paper I found this abstract (linked, might I add, from a pro-life website). Now what do you see? The paper is about how breastfeeding reduces the risk of breast cancer by two thirds. The Daily Fail uses the spin done by a pro-life website to suggest that aborting the child increases the risk of breast cancer. The paper does mention abortion; it mentions it as a factor in the findings along with the menopause and exposure to passive smoking. But the main conclusion is that prolonged breastfeeding reduces risk of breast cancer. Which isn’t really about abortion is it. The whole ‘triple risk’ factor was in fact just a twist of the two-thirds decrease. So... the Daily Fail uses the spin by a pro-life website to warp the findings of a paper that has little to do with what the headline is about. This means that I can only conclude one thing; that the Daily Mail has a pro-life agenda.

But this is not the only thing dodgy about this article. The medical survey was of only 300 women, Sparta my film geek mind cries, and from that this graph was the conclusion. Now this is a research support study which is designed to aid major studies rather than be something that can be the basis of medical practice. But the whole point was that it wasn’t a major conclusion. It was a significant find, no doubt, but it wasn’t a major conclusion.

The last point I wish to make, is that the tail end of the article goes for the whole balanced approach by not being balanced with a view from both sides. The way the article goes it starts of quoting a scientific paper, it then has a sound bite from Cancer Research UK about how the study might be flawed and that there have been other studies that have claimed otherwise to be true. From this the article then elbows in this wonderful quote from what can only be described as a quack from a pro-life counselling service.

We have encountered from the pro-abortion lobby manipulation of the evidence on a truly disgraceful scale. This study is further evidence that has been gathering from all around the world that abortion is a major risk factor for breast cancer. When will the establishment face up to this fact and pull its head out of the sand?

You can almost see the specks of foam can’t you, and note that the pro-life guy is male. These two opposing viewpoints have clearly been conducted by phone or email as well as the former latches onto the whole 300 women part and the latter that it is a scientific study but neither seem to give a full description of the main flaw, that it wasn’t a study into the link between abortion and breast cancer.

But the final part of the article, the cherry on the sundae or the dead rat on the garbage heap if you will, is trying to link in the rise in breast cancer to the rise in abortions. Yeah that’s right correlation and causation being one and the same thing. Now it may well be in future that there might be a link just as there is a link between reading the Daily Mail and wanting to punch Richard Littlejohn or there might not be a link at all, such as there not being a link between reading the Daily Mail but still wanting to punch Richard Littlejohn. But either way stating to rises does not mean that they are related.

To draw this post to a close, it is difficult to determine the causes of cancer and anything we do towards finding something that might help us live healthier lives is all well and good. But what the Daily Mail has done here is taken a report, filtered and spun the information until it says something that appeases their rather aggressive anti-woman agenda and then spat out some disinformation to throw off anything that might be useful. Effectively it neuters scientific method and rigour and then uses the scepticism to fuel its own machinations.

The Daily Misogyny

2010-06-15T14:05:00.002+01:00

I fucking hate the Mail. I would happily pulp all known copies of the Mail and turn them into papier-mache sculptures of Germaine Greer and Emmeline Pankhurst sticking their middle fingers up at Piers Hernu (in fact, I might do that anyway)
In this case, I think the swear word is justified; I know they say that profanity is the last resort of the barely literate (or something) but bollocks, sometimes a well-time f bomb is the most effective way of emphasising just how godawful something is.

‘Non-stories’, usually involving celebrities appearing in various states of undress seem to be on the increase recently, pushing their body-fascist agenda.

Skim across the Mail’s website today (I did it, so you don’t have to) and the following articles appear at various points on the Sidebar of Doom:

Sarah Jessica Parker has ’sinewy, bony legs’
Elle McPherson ‘has lumpy foot’
Natalie Imbruglia ‘wears same dress twice’
Estelle ‘has new teeth, looks better’

It’s fairly standard dross and typifies the kind of judgemental non-story the Mail specialises in. There is no story in these articles; they are not in the least bit newsworthy. Just a couple of pictures of an invariably female celebrity not conforming to the rigorous aesthetic standards the paper sets. However small their deviation (and really, who gives a shiny shite whether Natalie Imbruglia wears a dress twice) it’s written as if the celeb has left the house in, say, full Nazi regalia (they'd probably quite like that) or perhaps with a strap-on and nipple clamps.

The really unpleasant thing about it all, though, is that it encourages us to pass judgement on anyone who is in any way different – be it because they dress in an unorthodox way (or perhaps dare to wear clothes they spent good money on more than once) or because parts of their body are ‘imperfect’. It is symptomatic of a society obsessed with criticising women who have not spent every hour of their life moulding themselves to fit the current image of perfection. So Sarah Jessica Parker has muscly legs and is a bit on the slender side. Who out there thinks this is significant? Who out there cares?

It might be fluff, but it’s also becoming the norm; where once we might have brushed these things aside as just a symbol of the incredible diversity of the human body, or a celebration of freedom of choice, they are now held up as fodder for mockery. Not only is it extraordinarily rude, it’s pretty depressing too.

A Brief History Of The Hourglass (Or 'Work Will Make You Fat')

2010-05-18T20:06:00.006+01:00

Did you know that the hourglass shape is under threat (despite being a figure possessed naturally by only around 8% of women?)

There's a problem with the fetishism of the hourglass figure, and it's that so much of it is based around this mythological assumption that women pre-20th century were all possessed of 36-24-36 figures, with bountiful bosoms and waists you could wrap a hamster round. The Fail, perhaps due to its obsession with women of 'a certain era' (i.e, pre Women's Lib, when good little women were seen and not heard and spent their days making their husbands dinner and not enjoying sex) is particularly fond of flying the hourglass flag. The article linked to bemoans the impending doom of this body type, despite the fact that very few women are fortunate enough to be blessed naturally with this Holy Grail of shapes.

You don't have to be a historian to know that women have always come in a wide variety of shapes, and these shapes have all been immortalised, at some time or another, by painters and sculptors - from the abundant curves of Ruben's women to the full busts of Amadeo Modigliani's nudes and everything in between, women have always been varied. It's not a modern phenomenon - Boticelli's Venus has little waist definition in comparison to Velazquez's depiction: the beauty ideal has changed with the centuries.

The hourglass figure was particularly coveted during the Edwardian period. Much is made nowadays of the detrimental effect the modelling industry has on young girls; how the 'thin is in' ideal has provoked anorexia among so many, and how celebrating the hourglass, as the Mail article seems to suggest, is somehow a remedy to the crushing self-doubt perpetuated by the unrealistic ideals of 'size zero'. And yet the hourglass figure has proven itself to be terribly oppressive.

You see, the hourglass is determined by a woman's genetics. Being a size 10 does not guarantee you hourglass credentials; your hips and bust must be proportionate, your waist markedly slimmer. It's a matter of shape, not of size, and of fat distribution rather than content. I'm a classic pear shape (slim ribcage, small waist, large hips and bottom) and have been despite ranging from a size 6 to a size 10; as my weight has changed, my shape has not. My bone structure is such that I will always have proportionally larger hips than waist. And breasts? Fuhgeddaboudit. (As my dear mother once told me, "From the back, you're like Lara Croft. Then you turn around...")

The hourglass shape, for those women not born to it, was obtained through punishing, restrictive corsets; the damage to bones and bodily organs was torturous. Some women became unable to support their own upper bodies without the corset as their ribs and spine had become so distorted. The desire for a body shape that was not their own so damaged some women that their bodily organs became permanently displaced.

These days, we have our own instruments of torture; the push-up bra, squashing breasts into a shape nature clearly did not intend. The magic knickers, sucking us in. They may be more subtle, but the point clearly remains; if the hourglass shape is so healthy and natural, how come we're going to increasing lengths to fake it? Liposuction, breast and bum implants, all creating the illusion of a shape fetishised despite its rarity. The Mail article suggests the hourglass is worshipped now precisely due to its rarity but let's face it; it's always been rare. We have just forsaken the painful, restrictive methods favoured by our forebears to create it. And rightly so.

The article ought to be take with a pinch of salt, as always; it can't be a coincidence that in a survey sponsored by Triumph (an underwear company whose sizes start at B cup) has the hourglass figure projected as the ideal. But if the Mail thinks the hourglass figure is somehow a healthier, more attainable ideal, it's just kidding itself - only through the luck of genetics or surgery can a woman become a hourglass. Body facism comes in all shapes and sizes, and writing disparaging remarks about Agyness Deyn in a bikini is just plain nasty (and the writer dares to call herself a feminist!) "I'm rather enjoying sitting back and watching other women struggle to attain the shape I've had since my teen years" she writes, perhaps missing the point so many feminists have been trying to hammer home for so long; championing one shape over another is inherently oppressive and exclusive. Since art across the centuries has celebrated a vast variety of female shapes, perhaps we modern, enlightened types might think to do the same....?

(Oh, and as an infuriating post-script: the article actually suggests that women's waists are becoming fatter in countries where 'women are more economically independant' - Work will make you fat! You heard it here first)

Why am I a male feminist?

2010-05-17T22:47:00.002+01:00

In response to V's candid and thoughtful post below, in particular the invitation for the male feminists amongst us to post something of our thoughts, I thought I'd get the ball rolling. Hopefully there'll be a couple more posts, naturally more eloquent and thoughtful than mine, from similarly-gendered peers with their own insight into being a male feminist.

* * * *

Why did I become a male feminist?

I mean, I have it pretty sweet as a guy, right? I’m always going to be on top, no matter what, because of being a man. Hell, I’m likely to be paid better, more likely to be considered for the job.

So what’s the big idea? Why am I – in some people’s eyes – irrationally going against the advantages I’ve got? Hell, let's call a soil relocation implement a spade - why am I being, horror of horrors, a "gender traitor"?

Part of it’s down to being Asian, and the racism I suffered as a kid, covert and overt. Incidents like a ball rebounding off your bike and a girl yelling, “Get lost, you Paki”, or cycling up the hill one minute, next minute a car speeds by with three chavs yelling, “YOU PAKI BASTARD!"

Maybe I should just stop cycling?

Hang on, I said covert, right? The odd cultural jibe I’d get at school about having a wife fixed up for me in Bangladesh, and the crap I’d get about the cricket team and corrupt governments.

Call it schoolboy joking if you want, I’d say that amounts to hurtful behaviour based on my cultural and racial background.

Racism, in short.

Now, why am I talking about racism on a feminist blog? When you have griefers giving you the verbal cosh for something you were born with and therefore can’t change like your skin colour (no MJ jokes or references please), you see the way prejudice blinds those who hold it.
And it’s the same for women – what I had to endure in racist taunts and the occasional bash-up in school, women have to endure in terms of wolf-whistles and touchings-up on the Tube, comments on their bodies and rape.

Sexism, in short.

The prejudices have their manifestations, and it seems to me that what’s been done to combat racism must be also be done to combat sexism. Women are 50% of the human race, yet they get treated in less than human ways. Lower pay, lower likelihood of the top job. Close to my own skin as an Asian, we have the spectres of “honour” killings and forced marriages to deal with. Why should women have to deal with this crap for being born with the XX chromosome? It makes as little sense as declaring an African person a slave just by virtue of his skin colour.

Why did I become a male feminist?

Look around you and tell me if this is a world where women have an even standing with men. A WORLD, not just the confines of whichever country you’re in, where the right-wing sections of the Press go on about the redundancy of feminism and the lack of requirement for it, glossing over what I mentioned above.
When you’re done trying to take in the poor conviction rates for rape, the difficulties created for women in trying to balance work and children, the fact that the right treats children as an obligation, rather than a choice, think about the other countries where feminism HASN’T taken off, where women have to marry whoever their parents tell them to, where acid attacks await as retribution, where women are treated as second class in a manner not too dissimilar to how women were treated here in the UK only 200-odd years ago.
And then you tell me that we don’t need feminism.

I became a male feminist because no-one should be abused for what they are born with.
Man, Woman. White, Brown, Black. Straight, Bi, Gay.
We’re all born different, but it doesn’t mean we have to be treated different.

Sometimes it's hard being a woman...

2010-05-07T21:28:00.004+01:00

Or rather, sometimes it's hard being a woman and a feminist at the same time. Don't get me wrong, obviously being a male feminist obviously brings it's own problems but that's possibly a post one of our lovely male femis would be better placed to write, so let me have my moment.

Anyway, being a woman, and a feminist, I feel like I'm swimming against the tide. Not only against the tide of opinion, but of my own emotions. It's like being constantly caught in the middle; being caught between knowing that the beauty ideal is a sexist myth perpetuated and sustained by the patriarchy and wanting SO badly to live up to that ideal. For me, feminism is a constant source of conflict with myself.

I'm trying hard to articulate this and I'm not sure I'm doing it all that well, so rather than writing this as a fluent post, I want to share with you some of the random some of the internal contradictions that have been troubling me, which will probably explain it better.

For example, I hate our society's simultaneous obsession with youth and fear of ageing. I hate that women are taught to be terrified of growing older, bullied into spending a small fortune on dubious anti-ageing creams which almost certainly have little, if any effect. And I know these twin obsessions are ridiculous, and I rage against them with everyone else, but at the same time, I'm unable to rise above them. For all my smug dismissal of the supposed qualities of anti-wrinkle creams, I still buy them. Last weekend I cried because I'm getting fine lines around my eyes, and as I write this I'm crying because I fucking hate myself for caring when I know I shouldn't, because by being sucked into the beauty myth I'm only helping to perpetuate it.

I hate the whole Bridget Jones thing, how the media would have us believe that if a woman isn't married by the time she's 30 she will be/should be a neurotic mess, desperate to find a man before it's "too late" and I hate that I'm in my twenties and live in a near constant state of panic about the fact that I'm single, that I'm genuinely terrified that I won't find anyone.

I hate myself for knowing that women come in all shapes and sizes, so many shapes and sizes that it's impossible for any one to be "right", and still being unhappy with my body because it's not "right".

I hate that people are so shallow that we value looks over everything else, and elevate people with no talent to the level of royalty because they're beautiful and sometimes I hate my face because it doesn't look like Cheryl Cole's.

I'm not saying I wish I wasn't a feminist, but sometimes the constant contradiction all just feels a bit much. Does anyone else understand?

Woman Does Something Involving Posting Links

2010-05-03T19:46:00.003+01:00

After the delight that was the news that a woman buys underpants, and has a broken elbow (I'm not going to go into the insinuation that she was injured smacking her husband around), the Daily Mail bring you further news....

WOMAN BUYS SEX TOY

Mind you, she's dating a baseball so the brazen hussy will clearly do anything.

Dear Daily Mail writers and editors:

If you can hear me over the frothing fury at a famous young singer having a sex life, let alone one that might actually involve her being an active participant, do you think you could stop masturbating long enough to actually check what you're writing?

Cheers.

Tip of the hat to Dr Petra for that link, via twitter.

And links:

Feminism 101: What's wrong with suggesting that women take precautions to prevent being raped? This. Read it. It says much.

A great post on disability and blogging at the F-Word

Don't Judge My Family - against David Shiny-faced Scum Cameron's tax breaks for married couples

Anna Arrowsmith's essay Ideas on Sexual Politics - and slightly related to that, two blogs I've been reading, mostly on feminist sex work: Quiet Riot Girl and Spanked, Not Silenced (nsfw).

Responses from Iran to Boobquake at Blag Hag

A project illustrating the Othering of transgender people from Sociological Images

Are you feminist in public?

2010-04-21T22:10:00.002+01:00

People clearly aren't afraid to be sexist in public. Sexist attitudes are so prevalent today that men and women have deeply misogynistic conversations in public, seemingly without having a clue that there's anything remotely offensive about what they're saying.

Example - at work today a couple of blokes were flicking though the Metro at lunchtime and started passing comment on the appearance of some female celebrity or other. It started off harmlessly - if depressingly - enough; all "Cor, look at her" and "She's a bit of alright" and the suchlike. Then in moved onto "But she can only get away with it because she's young", "Yeah, just wait until everything starts going south, hahaha". Charming. Still, not quite as bad as "Anyway, someone's probably going to rape her, dressed like that".

So, from objectification to ageism to rape apology in one idle lunchtime chit chat. The worst thing is, I don't think these men were genuinely misogynists - such views are so widespread that people do make these throwaway comments without even thinking about them. Sexism has become part of our lexicon.

The reason why, so far as I can tell, is simple frequency of use. People are sexist in public because other people are sexist in public, until it becomes an acceptable way of passing the time. One way to combat this, and to halt the dissemination of sexist views is to start being more feminist in public. I'm probably guilty of not being "out" as a feminist with everyone, when it comes to colleagues and acquaintances. I don't hide my views and I'm not afraid to call people out on their sexism where necessary, but I don't use feminist language with the thoughtless ease that people seem to spew misogyny. I don't make idle gossip about sexual discrimination and the objectification of women by the media. Because people aren't used to hearing such views, the last time I aired them in public with a group of strangers I was accused of being deliberately contrary.

But if these views were repeated loudly enough, often enough, surely they could become just as commonly accepted as the current trend for casual misogyny? If we're all feminist in public, with friends, with colleagues, with strangers on the bus and we treat this as though it's completely normal, maybe, just maybe, one day it will be.

Urgent abortion support appeal: help a teenage girl in Northern Ireland

2010-04-21T17:44:00.001+01:00

As publicised by the wonderful Penny Red:

Whether it’s a shortage of mange tout at the supermarket or a friend stranded abroad, we’ve all been affected by the cloud of ash from Iceland. But imagine if you had only a few weeks to navigate your way to England for a safe and legal abortion.
This week, we’ve heard from a number of women who were due to have travel to the UK this week for terminations, including a very young teen who is extremely close to the 24 week time limit for abortions in the UK. She had to miss her appointment earlier this week and is now coming next week by ferry and train – a roundtrip journey of more than 24 hours. Her mother solely supports her and her siblings with a part time job and now has to cover costs of £2,300 (procedure + money lost on cancelled flights + last minute ferry and train tickets).
Due to these extraordinary and extremely difficult circumstances, ASN has made a pledge to fund this young woman £500, much more than we usually commit to a single case. This is less than half of the costs she is facing. We would like to help more. If you would like to help cover more costs for her and women like her, please pledge to make a donation today.
You can do this by donating via PayPal (http://www.abortionsupport.org.uk/donate/), writing a cheque (email info@abortionsupport.org.uk for our postal address), or by making an online transfer (HSBC/Abortion Support Network/Sort Code: 40-11-18/Account Number: 64409302).
Please mark the donation “Iceland”.
Thank you in advance for any amount you can give – your donation will make a real difference to this family or to one of the other women who have had to re-purchase tickets to travel to England.

Virgin/Whore/Lunatic then?

2010-04-20T18:06:00.004+01:00

Company have re-printed a quiz published in Ellie Levenson's book The Noughtie Girl's Guide to Feminism. The original may well have been presented as a tongue-in-cheek bit of humour, but it comes across as a bit... shite, really. Instead of embracing the different facets of feminism and womanhood, it gives three answers for each question: doormat, man-hater, "normal" girl. It still presents the option of being a radical feminist as both foolish and wrong. It's not wrong, if that's how you roll - after all, marriage is a patriarchal tradition. Holding the opinion that more women should hold management and board positions in a company isn't radical feminism, it's fucking feminism.

Let's take a look at question four

"Your partner offers to take the male contraceptive pill as part of a trial study so you can give your body a break from the extra hormones. Do you...

Say "Actually honey, women's bodies are designed this way in order to bear children. We should be stopping contraception altogether and making a family - that's all I want in life."
Say "Why make the empty gesture, every time I sleep with you the act of penetration feels like a crime against women anyway?"
Say yes, but because you don't trust him to remember you secretly get fitted with a coil as well.

Where is option four - "discuss it reasonably, including whether you would be prepared to take the risk of an unwanted pregnancy and whether or not a second back-up method of contraception should be used"? Why the fuck do I have to choose between caricature doormat, caricature feminist, or distrustful woman? Why the fuck is it assumed I'm shagging a man anyway?

Why does each "normal" option, the one women are supposed to choose, include a slightly negative side. Why do I have to be secretly pleased when I'm wolf-whistled at by strange men? Why does offering to split the cost of dinner exclude the possibility to have sex with the dinner date in question? Why do I have to be a man-hating lunatic to be a feminist? I get that Company/Levenson are trying to say that feminism doesn't have to be scary, but - to borrow a phrase from a friend,

"Feminism IS scary because it questions the gender stratification of society and that's a good thing, scary is good when looked at that way"

The quiz makes feminism fluffy instead - like the book, it presents feminism as pink and fluffy and "girly"; it buys into the fallacy that women are supposed to (only) like pink fluffy girly shit, that their brains can't cope with long words like patriarchy - it seems to say that feminism needs to be fun and fluffy for women to understand. In patronises women. We do not need pink fluffy to make something understandable or attractive.

Today's feminism doesn't mean you have to hate on men. But it doesn't mean you should embrace being "feminine" (whatever the fuck that is). It doesn't even mean you need to have ovaries. Feminism doesn't need to be fluffy. It needs to be scary enough to make a bloody difference.

In an attempt to answer the question "are you a feminist?", Feminazery presents another version:

Question One: Do you think that an individual's rights and opportunities should be limited due to any of the following factors: their biological sex, their gender, their choice in sexual partners, whether or not they are mentally or physically disabled, what colour their skin is, what their surname is, how old they are, whether or not they are presenting as the same gender as the one they were assigned at birth, where they were educated, the accent they speak with, whether they fit a narrow definition of beauty, or whether they are over- or underweight?

If you chose option two, you're a feminist. How radical you are is up to you! If you want to hate all men, wear high heels, have kids, watch porn... whatever, it's YOUR CHOICE. As long as you take a moment to think about why you're choosing whatever, and decide if that choice is one that doesn't harm anyone else, then carry the fuck on.

If you chose option one, you're a twunt.

Feminist Rage™ - the brand you can trust?

2010-04-04T18:39:00.010+01:00

The Big Bad Feminist. It’s a cliché we all know and loathe – ugly, hairy, either too fat (and therefore minging) or too thin (and therefore bitterly bustless), lesbian because she’s been rejected by men (because we all know that’s how sexuality works!) and yet somehow hoping for some nice chap to “turn” her, possessed of a Victorianly hysterical victim complex, possibly vegan, and probably wearing organic hessian dungarees. But above all, angry. Not in a torrid, “feisty one, you are!” fuck-or-fight kind of way, but... well, dear me, pass the smelling salts, in a terribly unseemly, unfeminine way.

And of course, it’s all that ire and bitterness that makes her not only angry, but pathologically enraged almost to the point of statemented disability. To your left, ladies and gentlemen, the lesser-spotted Feminazi! See her (because it is always a “her”, naturally) stalk through free-range lentil markets! Witness her trade communist propaganda leaflets for mung beans! Recoil in horror as she kicks random innocent men in the balls! ...Yawn, verily. Haven’t been there, will never get the T-shirt, because it’s a load of groundless bollocks. Where exactly this stereotype comes from is more of a mystery (oh yeah, apart from the fevered imaginations of tabloids and louts’ mags) and I have yet to meet an avowed anti-feminist who’s ever met a real live feminist, let alone one like that.

... Are you waiting for a “but” yet? Because the problem is, there is one. Passion is integral to any kind of conviction or activism, usually on the angry side; strong belief in anything engenders a will to fight for it. And what a telling phrase that is in its aggression, for ’twas ever thus; when societal evolution goes awry, revolution is always against its status quo, whether that be slave-trading or whaling or serfdom or rule by monarchy.

Or sexism. I was struck reading Kira Cochrane’s interview with the author of Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism with how struck she was by Walter’s apparent calm; the article even opens, “I'm trying to establish just how often the feminist writer Natasha Walter gets angry”. Of course, Cochrane is no numbNuts, quickly championing the validity of feminist rage, and I am not about to rehash her article – but it got my pretty little head thinking. So much feminist debate and defence (even on this blog of late) centres on dismantling the fictional bully-girl/self-appointed victim who roams the organic markets of our adversaries’ imaginations, and in some ways, rightly so. Certainly none of the feminists I've met conform to this stereotype – if anything, quite the opposite.

Whether it’s contentedness born of having worked out what they believe and want in life, the independence and originality that tend to accompany openness to unpopular ideas, the fact that a well-developed sense humour is so essential to sanely navigating an insane world, or what, I don’t know – but all the female feminists I've known or met are confident, positive, witty, and generally just fun. What’s more, a great many (if not most, in my personal experience) are also – shock and rocky horror – in fulfilling, stable relationships. Mostly with – nurse! the sal volatile and a fan, at once! – heterosexual feminist men. It also bears mentioning that, on the whole, they’re a pretty damn good-looking bunch too (not “just” to their fellow feminists, I might add; a fair few models grace our ranks, donchaknow. I think that says a lot about how society treats even the “lucky” women who conform to its beauty myth). Overall, feminists are generally pretty productive, happy people – quite strikingly so.

And this is all fine and dandy except that, directed to non-, or (more to the point) anti-, feminists, it falls on frantically-plugged ears further deafened by the sand in which their owners’ heads are buried. Deciding whether to engage with these people at all is of course a Hobson’s choice between preaching only to the converted and trying to reason with what is often the intellectual equivalent of a brick wall, but if any debate is to be undertaken, I think we need to change its terms.

There is a tendency (understandable given the PMT-ridden, irrational-not-intellectual popular “bloody women” construct) to shy away from our emotions in feminism, to show how detachedly logical it all is. I think this is a mistake because it can be not only transparently disingenuous, but also a spectacular own-goal. Maintaining the kind of Socratic serenity needed to argue protractedly for feminism is a noble but (for a good 99% of us, anyway) impossible goal, and I would challenge most human beings of any socio-political persuasion to defend something they’re passionate about that dispassionately without an unholy amount of Valium.

Ironically enough, I think we stand a better chance of maintaining calm by acknowledging turmoil; in a debate so popularly (gender-)constructed as women’s emotional overreactions vs. what “everybody knows” the world is “really” like, as passion vs. reason, we’re missing a trick by buying into that binary. It’s a truism that the personal is political; I believe passion and reason are just as intertwined. “Angry” is an adjective not an insult, and even our worse dismissal, “bitterness”, cannot be triggered in a vacuum; we shouldn’t be trying to explain how feminism isn’t angry and bitter, but why it has reason to be. There are few more logical laws than that of cause and effect.

So really, so what if they call us us angry feminists; what's it to us when we can cogently articulate why our anger makes perfect sense? But wait, what’s that rustling in the bushes? To your right, ladies and gentlemen, the greater-spotted “make me a sandwich” brigade! Watch in amazement as they fail to argue their way out of a Subway bag.

Feminazery Future

2010-03-18T01:36:00.003Z

Just a quickie (gosh, a sex synonym - that'll upset all the impotent male rage aimed at this blog recently) but given the number of idiots who have doddered over to our corner of the internet recently to vent their confused spleen at feminism, what do you say we put up a second Personifesto, a Fuckyoufesto if you will, explaining in suitably caustic but nonetheless clear language what feminism is, why it matters, and why we write this blog? Would writers and readers be amenable to this kind of feminism101-type deal?

Or I could just collect the best clangers for a post all of their own, make them feel more at home, the little darlings?

Over and out. x

We're not in a supermarket - please stop sticking labels everywhere.

2010-03-17T20:48:00.003Z

What type of feminist are you? First, second or third wave? Anarcha-feminist or Difference feminist? Anti-pornography or sex positive? And most importantly, does it really matter?

Now, before we start, I'd like to say I am fully aware of the irony involved in writing a blog denouncing feminist in-fighting by engaging in what looks suspiciously like feminist in-fighting. I'm not perfect, okay?

What has me a little riled is some of the terminology that's been bandied about in the publicity surrounding Anna Arrowsmith (AKA Anna Span, porn director) and her standing for the Liberal Democrats. I say this may look like in-fighting because I take issue with the way Arrowsmith describes herself: as a "pro-sex" or "sex-positive" feminist.

For those not au-fait with all the various forms of feminism purporting to exist, pro-sex or sex-positive feminists are generally pro-pornography and to varying degrees, supportive of the sex industry, from stripping and pole-dancing to prostitution (I don't claim to be especially well versed in the intracacies of the pro-sex movement, so be kind if you feel I'm misprepresenting you). The ideas follow largely on from those first touted by second-wave feminists.

I am, to stick yet another label on myself, anti-pornography. I do not believe that stripping or pole-dancing are "liberating" or without negative impact on women and while I agree with legalising prostitution (but criminalising men who use prostitutes) I'd be far happier if the oldest profession ceased to exist altogether. But here's the rub: I'm not "sex-negative". As Hadley Freeman of the Guardian put it in an article on the same topic today, "I've never met a feminist who was 'anti-sex'".

No one actually uses the terms "sex-negative" or "anti-sex" concerning feminism as far as I have seen, but they are implied by their positive opposites. "Pro-sex" instantly sounds argumentative and snide: if you're not "pro-sex" you must be anti, therefore your opinion on issues relating to sex and feminism is not valid because you're just an uptight prude. Maybe I'm reading a *little* bit too much into people's intentions with their terminology, but you've got to admit, the implication is there.

And it's not helpful, not in the slightest. Whether you're "sex-positive" or "anti-porn", first wave or third wave, we're all working towards the same overall goal. Why weaken the movement by dividing ourselves into little groups and cliques? What's great about your in-house bloggers here at Feminazery is that we all have different ideas and opinions about what feminism means to us personally, but we're all good feminists and largely good friends, because we know we're united where it counts - working towards equality and fair treatment for women everywhere. The detail is just a distraction.

Oh no you did not just say that

2010-03-09T12:55:00.004Z

I was catching up on my procrastination when Hairy Bloke (the manly man himself) twittered this, in hipster magazine Platform. And I know that anything he refers to as "impressively, deeply, deeply offensive stuff" is probably going to be bad.

So I read it.

And then I frothed at the mouth.

And now I blog.

The article is titled "Ways Not To Fuck Up A Fuck". I hereby suggest it be retitled "Lessons In 'Nice Guy' Douchebaggery and How To Be A Misogynistic Arse".

The first how-not-to is called "Lying about having already done it", and the result is, apparently,

"Two things then happen: she feels totally violated and refuses to talk to you (this shit is worse than rape for some girls), and the guy tells everyone what a fucking loser you are for lying about it."

Oh yes. Because some silly skinny-jeans wearing trust-fund "artist" tells his friends he's had sex with you in order to mark you as "his", this is somehow worse than rape. I wonder if Robert Foster has ever found himself agreeing with the sentiments "she was wearing a short skirt so she was asking for it" or "having her handbag stolen is more traumatic".

On to the next section, titled "Getting mad that it’s not happening":

"After a few weeks of being a nice fucking guy (probably about a month of talking on the phone, meeting on lunch breaks and staying over but getting nothing) things get pretty frustrating. If nothing at all has happened at the six week mark, leave it, because she knows what the fuck is up but she just doesn’t find you attractive and the best thing you can do is walk away, cos if she’s the kind of self-involved bitch that keeps a sucker hanging around for 6 weeks then she’ll miss the attention and be on your dick in no time".

Buh? Maybe, Robert Foster, she didn't want to jump into bed with you straight away because she had an inkling that because you're a "nice fucking guy" you are actually a woman-hating entitled dickwad who thinks being nice to someone with tits and a vagina automatically results in you being able to put your penis inside her. Here's a tip, Robert Foster: no, it doesn't.

Furthermore,

"If you haven’t been intimate with someone but they gave you the gift of their number or their BBM, they might be a little into you, which is totally fair enough, you’re a nice guy and you were funny and you bought her a drink but didn’t force her to hang out with you overly long, follow her around the bar like a psycho cos you got too drunk or wink at her or any of that shit."

Still doesn't entitle you to a shag. Ever. Do you know why, Robert Foster? Because you bought her a drink. She gave you her number. It's not an all-access pass to her vagina. But it's ok, because you're a "nice fucking guy" who equates dating-but-not-having-sex as ruining some poor man's life.

But Robert Foster doesn't stop there.

"Sleeping in their bed and trying it on over and over again
If you’ve been trying and trying with a girl who’s not so sure but at least keen to talk to you, and it gets really late and she says you can sleep over at hers, but then stipulates a ‘no funny business’ clause in the verbal contract of you sleeping in her bed, then you’ve got to suck it up and take it, pal. ‘No’ does sometimes mean ‘yes’, but if she’s been firm about it before you’ve got under the covers, then just roll over and go to sleep, safe in the knowledge that you’ve made some healthy baby steps towards wetting your dick but tonight is not the night.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you really did read that right.

"'No' does sometimes mean 'yes'"

He said it.

What. The. Blithering. Fuck?

Really?

You know what that is, Robert Foster? That, Mr "nice fucking guy" is called the Women-Hating Rape Apologist's Favourite Line. And it's BOLLOCKS. No =/= yes. It is that fucking simple. They are two entirely mutually-exclusive answers. Opposite answers, in fact. No is used to express refusal or denial, and yes is used to express permission, acceptance. If you, or anyone else, is having issues confusing the two, might I suggest a quiet evening spent with the dictionary, or possibly a role-playing scenario. Or therapy.

The entire article is a stream of women-hating douchebaggery, of the worst variety, because it tries to come across as funny and cool. It's not funny. It's not even a little bit funny, it's just offensive. It's just nasty. It's misogynist claptrap. And it's really, really not fucking hipster.

Exotification and infantilisation – even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious

2010-03-04T19:51:00.004Z

So atrocious, in fact, that my über-white Microsoft Word didn’t recognise either word. It helpfully suggested ‘detoxification’ in place of exotification – that’s far more fitting with our culture, you know.

Well, no. It isn’t. The exotification and infantilisation of women of colour – particularly Asian women – are things we see all the time. Firstly, let me be clear: I’m white. I’m aware than I’m meandering round in the cosy warmth of the herd, and I can’t know the half of what women of colour experience every day. But, from where I’m standing, on my humble little podium of privilege, it’s becoming clearer all the time that attitudes toward women of colour are not improving.

I have a good friend, a Filipina (something else that Microsoft Word doesn’t recognise). Whenever we were together (alas, cruel distance separates us now), she experienced the kind of sexist discrimination you can probably imagine. Old guys making kissy-kissy noises at her on the street, soap-dodging shop keepers asking me to tell her how pretty she is – in short, men on the street shamelessly regarding her as some cute accessory - something I’d brought with me and that might, possibly, be available if they were charming enough. It’s the age old “Thai bride” syndrome (did you not know that every woman from the Far East is Thai?) – exotification in the extreme.

Sadly for these charmers, my friend has an MA in Post-Colonialism and is infinitely more likely to tear them a new one than offer them a happy ending of any sort. And I’m not even going to tell you where she’s going to shove than lotus blossom.

Something which has been creeping up into my awareness, though, perches uncomfortably on the opposite end of the spectrum - that rack of pigeon holes society tries to fit us into.

Another good friend (yes, I have two!) – an Indian Muslim – wears a headscarf and Western clothes which she adapts to suit her choice to cover up. We go out together - shopping, to a café, whatever - and never fail to attract looks. There’s a difference, though. These aren’t the kind of pervy-paternal, admiring glances that my Fili friend attracts. No, these are mistrusting, cold stares, which start at the headscarf, work their way down to her feet and then slide sideways to me – what, precisely, am I doing with her?

It seems that there are two very clear brackets for non-white women to fit into, and it’s pretty obvious which one gets the thumbs up from men. Filipina, Thai, Chinese, Japanese... it’s all about the delicate features and the almond eyes (tell me you haven’t heard this before). Even our sisters in Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh are getting it – lucky girls! – as long as they’re not choosing to cover up. The minute you cover up, something changes and you become the lowest of the low.

You’ll see it almost daily from the Great Unwashed who comment on the Daily Mail stories. Non-white women are constantly touted as the best thing since sliced bread – “You really should try one!”. Muslim women, though, are different. They’re sly. They’ve got something to hide. They’re up themselves – “Who wants to look at you anyway?”.

It’s almost as though their sweet, brown flesh – so inviting – is not their own and, by covering it up, they’re depriving these white men of their right to feast upon the exotic beauty. They’re removing themselves from the pigeon hole these men have shoved them into. But that’s not why men are angry at them. No, that’s not it at all. They're angry "for them". And there's always some justification - some reason that a woman who covers up is wrong:

She does it because her husband makes her.

She does it because she’s oppressed.

She does it because she’s so blinded by religion that she just has no choice.

Let’s get one thing straight – we all do things because we are a product of the ideology we grew up in. Even if we rebel, it’s because we have something to rebel against. It is categorically impossible to be outside the system. Every choice we make, we make for a reason. It’s just that when that choice involved covering up, it seems to attract more anger, more vitriol than many others. Men abuse women in headscarves, they question their ability to decide things for themselves, they try to force legislation through that will make that woman show herself. They remove those women’s rights to make their own decisions. They infantilise them.

It simply cannot be, they say, that any woman in her right mind would object to showing her body. There must be a reason. Desperately they snuffle for one, completely ignoring what is – in most cases – the obvious. Muslim women, like other women, wear what they want.

Irrespective of our views on organised religion and the patriarchal (or not) roots of faith, I think – if we’re honest with ourselves – we know these men don’t care about the liberation of women of colour. The arguments don’t hold up. White women used to cover their hair. My great-aunt had a fabulous collection of rain-proof, sun-proof and industrial hair-spray-proof headscarves. Why did she wear them? Because she wanted to. She thought it was smart. She thought it was decent. Other women were wearing them.

It seems that men simply cannot bring themselves to accept that some women of colour choose to cover up. They don’t care about the reason, although they cite it until they’re blue in the faces: They’re being oppressed! Even the BNP – that woman-hating cesspit of a party – cites this as one of the key reasons Islam is “a wicked, wicked religion”. And this from a party full of gang-rapists, whose policies would systematically remove women’s rights to autonomy.

White women are deified if they’re the kind of middle-class, married, stay-at-home mums the 1950s dreamed of. Women of colour – and this is the uncomfortable truth – are supposed to be that juicy, exotic bit on the side, who’ll look up at men with their big, brown eyes, and think nothing but sweet, lotus-scented thoughts. We’re all being pigeon-holed, it’s just that they’re forcing us into different pockets. Divide and conquer.

Let me be blunt. I am white, and I cover up. I don’t cover my hair, but there’s not much else you’ll see. And why? Because I feel oppressed by the acres of female flesh used to sell, attract, flaunt, manipulate and coax us into submission. I’m rebelling, gently enough, against a system I can’t get out of. Sure I’m frigid. I’m a dyke. A stuck-up feminazi, who hates men and has an attitude problem. The big difference is this, though: no one questions the fact that it’s my choice. It’s time to reiterate our support to women who choose not to buy into the ever-changing, ever more sexualised image of women today, and that includes our sisters who choose to cover up.

Idiot's Guide to Blaming Rape Victims

2010-02-15T20:50:00.003Z

Below is a handy cut-out-and-keep list of all the situations in which it is acceptable and right to blame the victim of a sex attack for their own misfortune:

1.

Now, you may notice a lack of actual situations presented. And the reason for this is quite simple. It's never acceptable. A recent survey suggests that 71% of women think a victim who dresses provocatively, goes back to the attacker's house for a drink or gets into bed with their attacker ought to take some blame for what happens. This is, of course, horseshit.

I don't get the cult of victim blaming in rape cases. When a man is mugged, do we question whether or not he was 'asking' for it? Maybe he was dressed too smartly, made himself look like rich pickings. How stupid of him to wear expensive clothes! He was practically asking to be targeted. Particularly if he was walking around late at night, all by himself.
Maybe he'd given money away in the past, quite willingly. A man with a history of giving money away surely can't be surprised when the police don't believe the money was taken from him forcefully.
We don't make these assertions because they are utterly ridiculous; the blame lies squarely with the person BREAKING THE LAW, the perpetrator. In no other crime is the victim so harshly scrutinised, so quickly judged.

Listen. It's very simple. If I go out at 11pm at night, by myself, and I'm wearing lipstick and a short skirt, and Cod forbid, I am raped, it is not my fault. If I meet a guy at a bar and agree to come back to his for a drink and he decides to take things further against my will, it is not my fault. It is the fault of the man who decides that these factors make me fair game. He should have the presence of mind, the self control and the decency to realise that I am a human being, not a disposable fuck rag, and treat me as such. Unless I specifically state that yes, I would like sex with him at that time, he has no right - NO right - to force that upon me. My clothes, my company, and even my presence in his home are not qualifiers. They do not render me his possession, therefore there is no reason to assume the light is now green. To suggest these are valid reasons is to simplify rape, to dehumanise the victim - the rapist is no less in the wrong if the victim is butt naked than if she is wearing a full suit of body armour. The crime is exactly the same.

Men are not incapable of self control. They are perfectly reasonable, intelligent human beings capable of knowing right from wrong. Painting them as helpless brutes enslaved by their hormones and primal instincts, clubbing women about the head and dragging them back to their caves because they just can't help themselves, not with all that temptation, is massively disrespectful to men on the whole and does a disservice to them. Men know that to force sex upon women against their will is an act of violation. It's not like there's any ambiguity about this, not when you actually use your brain.

It's very simple. Unless she clearly consents, you are raping her. A short skirt is not consent. A cup of coffee or a glass of wine in your living room is not consent. If you make the logistical leap from "a woman has agreed to come to my house" to "a woman has agreed to have sex with me" then the blame lies squarely and clearly with you. So when Rich, UK makes the following post on a BBC message board, I can't help but think he's a) an insensitive dick and b) completely misguided on what constitutes the conduct of a decent human being around a highly vulnerable woman:

Sadly, the main reason my marriage ended was because my then wife couldn't take any responsibility for her attack. Rape is wrong. But if a woman on medication for bi-polar disorder that specifically says not to drink alcohol, decides to go out on her own and drink herself into a stupor, cavort with various men in a sexual manner and agree to leave a nightclub with a man, then gets attacked, some blame must surely be attributed to her as she ultimately put herself at risk.

The philosophy behind victim blaming is not particularly complex. It's known a the 'Just World Theory' (or sometimes the 'Just World Fallacy') - People to want to believe that the world is just and fair. This is their personal comfort zone, and when they are thrown out of their comfort zone by witnessing something which is inexplicably unjust - such as rape - they will attempt to rationalise it by finding reasons to blame the victim for their own misfortune. They can maintain their belief in a just world, but only by blaming the victim for something that was not, objectively, their fault. Their comfort zone remains undisturbed. They feel safer; they know that such an injustice won't happen to them because they won't invite it upon themselves like the rape victim did. As a form of defence, it's equivalent to sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending that not hearing something means it didn't happen.

A 1999 study by social psychologist Linda Carli shows victim blame in action. From Wikipedia: Female and male subjects were told two versions of a story about an interaction between a woman and a man. Both variations were exactly the same, except at the very end the man raped the woman in one and in the other he proposed marriage. In both conditions, both female and male subjects viewed the woman's (identical) actions as inevitably leading to the (very different) results.

Victim blame is not new. It's not shocking. But it is tiresome, and it is about time we exposed it for the pile of steaming, rancid illogic that it is.

(Quick edit: It seems I misinterpreted the BBC report. The 71% refer specifically to the number of women who believe getting into bed with a person means they should accept responsibility for the consequences. The actual report itself is a real shocker, particularly when you read that 15% of women believe that just accepting a drink and engaging in conversation provides grounds for victim blame. The report, in it's entirety, can be found here. Thanks for the heads up CMaster!)

Do you know what rape culture is?

2010-02-01T22:07:00.007Z

Do you know what rape culture is?

Rape culture is all around us, in MTV videos, magazine racks, rape and sexual assault conviction rates, and casual victim blaming. Melissa McEwan expands on it much better than I ever could at this point in time, because earlier today, I was assaulted.

Out on a mid-afternoon powerwalk, taking a break from work, I reached the top of a steep hill, where a group of schoolboys were standing around. There were six or seven of them, and none of them could have been any more than nine or ten years old. I was wearing large headphones, and listening to classical music, and as I got nearer to the group, the music hit a quiet section, and I could hear them catcalling me.

"Hey Darling....Hi Darling....give us a kiss love....." I walk on and give no indication that I've heard anything....."Oi, we're talking to you.....OI!!....bitch....slut.....fat slag.....you're ugly anyway.....LESBIAN" And I kept walking.

I progress about 50 metres down the other side of the hill, I hear footsteps behind me, and suddenly I am hit very sharply from behind, and one of the boys appears in front of me, running on. I'm fairly sure he had been aiming for my bottom, but managed to hit my cocyx instead.

At this point, I have an awful flashback to the time, almost four years ago that I was sexually assaulted. It all swims in front of me, but I keep on walking. My thoughts jumble up like a ball of yarn the cat got at, and I keep walking. The boy is waiting at the next junction, looking for a reaction. I struggle to think of anything I can say. My reasoning spins. I don't break my stride. I keep walking. I am ten minutes from home. I keep walking. I don't break step, I don't get faster, I keep walking.

Once I pass that corner, and am sure I 'm no longer being followed, I start to cry, and am immediately horrified at myself for letting it get to me. After all, when I was sexually assaulted in 2006, the local police hadn't even taken a report. All they did was advise me to go and find my boyfriend-at-the-time because he would apparently protect me." This despite me telling them I'd been sexually assaulted by 5 men, much bigger and older than myself, in broad daylight, in a city centre. (Yet another example of rape culture - "if you'd stayed in the company of a man, nothing would have happened to you - silly girl for wandering off on your own in a strange city!") That memory made me cry today. That and the fact that a group of children are apeing the behaviour of older males they see around them, in life and in popular culture.

I get home and call the Metropolitan Police. I want the incident recorded, logged, added to the book. I want all women who've experienced assault/violence/abusive catcalling to take courage, and report it, so that when crime reports are being compiled for statistics, someone will look at it and say "There is a problem with these children, we need to take some action on this."

The Met was fantastic. The officer to whom I made my report was wonderful, and even called me back to ask if I'd like him to send an ambulance, because if the pain in my back didn't subside quickly, it would probably need looking at. He said an officer from my local station would be told to get in touch with me. About 20 minutes later, my doorbell rang, and standing on my doorstep were two police officers, who came in, took some more details, were very sympathetic and told me that even though a crime had been committed, the boys were probably under the age of criminal responsibility. Which made me think - do they really know not what they do?

They were young. Nine year old boys generally haven't reached even the early stages of sexual development. They were copying the behaviour of others, no question. From what they have experienced in their short lives, this may be the standard way to treat women and girls. Perhaps their father beats their mother. Perhaps their parents are abusive towards them and allow them to watch violent pornography. Perhaps they are in a gang with older boys who behave in this fashion constantly, assaulting and abusing any and all females in their circle, and randomly on the street.

My little run-in with some junior misogynists today illustrates perfectly that rape culture is nothing to do with sex. Its about power, and control. Those boys weren't hoping that I'd turn around and affirm their attractiveness, or fuck it, their existence. They weren't doing it because I'm a clone of Megan Fox and was wearing a skintight Lady GaGa inspired catsuit (For the record, I was wearing hockey bottoms, a ski-jacket, running shoes and no make-up and am extremely average looking). They weren't expecting me to turn around and offer to perform oral sex on them, because fuck it, their penises don't function in that way yet, them being children and all. They wanted to be in control. They tried to get it by catcalling, as they've seen (some) older boys do. They didn't get it, so they used abusive language and misogynist slurs, just as (some) older boys do. They then felt the need to teach me a physical lesson, just as they may have seen older boys, perhaps their fathers, characters in films, people on MTV do to women and girls.

What happened to me today would have definitely have been sexual assault had the perpetrators been a few years older. I find it truly frightening that boys so young could already be so damaged by the environment of rape culture that they think nothing of running after a stranger, a 25 year old woman to hit her for not smiling at them and acknowledging their derogatory catcalls, or showing that she was disturbed or intimidated in any way by their attentions. What is most alarming is that they were tiny. I'm very tall, and given the speed at which I was walking up a steep hill before they even started on me, it would have been fair to assume that I am strong enough to have beaten every single one of them to a pulp if I'd had to. However, the part of London in which I reside has a problem with knife and gun crime, and its very possible, in fact very likely that they had weapons. And I'm sure if I'd tried to kick the little fucker's head in, the least of my problems would have being done myself for assaulting a child, with all his mate's words against mine. And fuck it, I'm not becoming a martyr for the Daily Mail. Oh, and yeah, so far so fine for me to talk know about how I could have torn each of them a new one, from the safety of my own home, conveniently forgetting that I went on "flight" autopilot in the immediate aftermath.

From my little incident with misogynists-in-training in South London, to builders on scaffolding getting shirty and abusive when their "smile-love-it-might-never-happen" is ignored, to groups of men groping women who crowdsurf at rock concerts, to corrective rape, there is one constant - rape culture is not about sex. Ever. Its about power, and control, and putting women in their place, beneath men. The lessons these little gurriers in my neighbourhood have absorbed from their daily lives is that they can act however they want and say what they like to women, as they see their role models doing. And with porn sold alongside fashion magazines in every newsagent's shop, porn comics sold alongside quality newspapers, things like this at the top of the charts, and no one to tell them that misogyny is wrong, that hitting people is wrong, that gathering in packs on South London street corners at dusk looking for women and girls to terrorise is wrong, who can blame them? Why should they act any differently?

If you have experienced any incidence of assault, sexual or otherwise in London, please make a report to the Metropolitan Police. It doesn't matter how long ago. You can do it online here, or by phone on 0300 123 1212 . Yesterday I received a request from a fellow feminist on twitter to report this facebook group. Its called "Hitting Women" and it has 539 fans at the time of writing. Please go there and report it to facebook mods, and spare yourself reading the wall posts or discussion boards. Small strokes fell big oaks. Misogyny and violence against women cannot go on being accepted by society as normal and indeed, inevitable.

Visible Disabilities, Clothing, Advertising, and Gok Wan

2010-01-26T19:19:00.003Z

I originally wrote this for my own blog, but this is an edited version.

Isabel on the DMHFfH facebook group raised a question about Gok Wan's new series of How To Look Good Naked, which started on Channel 4 in the UK last week. It is devoted to women with visible disabilities (Tracy, who is in a wheelchair, was the focus last week - the other women are blind and an amputee) who want to have a makeover and feel more confident in their bodies. MsKitton (she of our twitter feed) linked to this blog, and which point I decided I wanted to have a look at it.

I hadn't heard about this particular series, as I don't watch an awful lot of TV, but the idea struck a chord with me. After going to see a gig on Sunday, I decided that I needed an extra leg getting home and got my walking stick out (I have fibromyalgia, a chronic illness, that affects my mobility, co-ordination and ability to think clearly; I use a stick occasionally to help keep my balance - otherwise, I am not visibly disabled). I was wearing a miniskirt (with mini bustle bum-ruffles) and pink tights and boots, and I thought I looked alright. Apparently, however, I was accessorizing with a second head the way I was being stared at once I got my stick out. Attention people: just because a person has a walking stick, doesn't mean they immediately lose all interest in clothing, or mutate into an old lady. If you don't stop staring I'll shove said stick so far up your arse you'll be able to taste it.

So, yes, anyway. How to Look Good Naked... with a Difference was on Channel 4 last week, but I watched it on 4OD earlier (I fucking love internet tv catch up stuff, despite what I said about not watching a lot of tv). I don't usually watch HtLGN, mostly because I'm not a massive fan of makeover shows - I'm uncomfortable with the public critiquing of women's appearance, although at the same time I can see how it can help women become more open with each other about their body issues. I do like that HtLGN encourages body-acceptance over surgery or diets to change the women's physical appearance - it's message of confidence in one's self is a good one, at heart. That and I find Gok Wan a bit much a lot of the time. Ah well.

Like Sadie Stein at Jezebel, though, my biggest issue is that they feel they need to devote a whole series to disabled women - in a way, it is still excluding a group by virtue of circling them out for "special attention". To me, it shouldn't be a special attention thing - there should just be disabled women involved in the "regular" HtLGN series without a big thing being made about it. However, because disabled women (and men, for that matter) are so rarely seen outside of alternative and fetish modeling, perhaps drawing a big red circle and screaming "oi, dickheads, pay attention" is the way forward; we have to increase the visibility of disabled persons in shows like HtLGN (and not Britan's Missing Top Model, which was just endless rounds of trying to make typically-attractive girls who happened to be disabled look like able-bodied models while still screaming "no, they're disabled, see, they're different, we're being inclusive") before they can be seen as a normal part of the advertising and fashion industry.

I liked Tracy (the first participant) for her honesty - and her bravery - in admitting that she didn't like her body. I understand her anger at having a body that doesn't quite work "right", at being that one step further away from being "perfect". I admire her confidence, and how much she did change (while I might get almost-naked for LSG's charity drive for Haiti, total strangers in a very public place is not happening). While I don't think being confident in one's body requires the ability to get naked in front of a crowd of strangers, or that it's particularly feminist to do so, at the same time I do like that HtLGN does not require the women taking part to be typically beautiful to do so - there is a part of my feminist side that sees nudity of all forms as an important move away from restrictive bodily ideals.

It is important that disabled women and men have the same access to fashion as able-bodied people; while Tracy showed that there are sometimes clothing has to be adapted to meet the needs of a disabled person - elasticated panels in the waistband of jeans, for example - there is no real difference between asking yourself "will the sleeves catch in my wheels?" or "how long can I wear these heels for before I won't be able to walk any more?" and "will this top be too big in the chest?". They're just bodies, different sorts of bodies with different needs - but the people who inhabit them want - and deserve - the same access to and enjoyment of clothes.

The Torygraph article on the show, which is quite good.

Next step: realising just because someone isn't in a wheelchair or using a stick, doesn't mean they're not disabled.

Don't Be A Silent Witness

2010-01-20T21:02:00.003Z

Could I please talk to you about this?

"A number of people witnessed the start of the incident but mistakenly thought the boy and girl were just a young couple arguing.

The court heard the girl ran away from Tappin, but he pursued and caught her, forcing her to the ground. She was shouting at him to get off her but witnesses still did not realise they were witnessing an attack rather than a domestic row.

Mr Gioserano said Tappin marched the girl away with his arm around her shoulder. He took her to a secluded area, tore her top and raped her at least twice."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1244405/Father-turns-Scout-son-raped-18-year-old-girl-getting-drunk-church-hall-party.html#ixzz0dBkukgDR

Do me a favour please? Next time you see a woman being brutally attacked in the street would you mind calling the police quickly? And remembering that even if it turns out to be "just" (snark) a "domestic" it's still sort of bad to beat your girlfriend/wife to a bloody pulp too, not to mention raping her? Kthanxbai.

Your handy round-up of Daily Fail sexism

2010-01-19T22:18:00.002Z

This week, I've mostly been frothing at the mouth about the following choice cuts of sexism, misogyny and good old fashioned stupidity.

Woman in "Natural State" shocker! Mo'Nique, star of movie Precious, dared to show her face at the Golden Globes knowing she had not depilated her legs, as is required of any and all women over the age of...well, birth. To add insult to injury, the brazen hussy proceeded to show off her legs, as if hairy legs weren't something she ought to be ashamed of! Men across the world recoil in horror at this hideous sight, and women are warned not to follow her example lest they be cast out of civilised society.

Woman wears tracksuit, eats takeaway! Kerry Katona, a notoriously vile human being, has been spotted both wearing a tracksuit AND, horror of horrors, purchasing and indulging in FISH AND CHIPS. Yes, you read correctly. Fish and chips. When will this waste of skin realise that she isn't permitted to choose her own clothing and certainly not what she eats? Disgusting.

In similar news, everyone's favourite washed-up pop star Britney Spears ignored a court date. But that's a mere detail: the real story here is her ill-fitting underwear! An eagle-eyed photographer, zooming in on her bust, revealed Britney's boobs to be spilling over her bra! When will these women learn that it's their duty to appear neat, pretty and well-dressed at all times?

Footballer's wife takes clothes off! It doesn't matter that nobody knows who she is. Look at her tits! Look at them!

And finally: Woman stalked and harrassed by man for years - but I'll let the comments do the talking.

You'd think he would have chosen someone prettier.

- Spy Bee, Wrexham

But I thought we lived in a free country, he didnt threaten her, or are we now a police state where people can be barred from being in public areas at the whim of another person?

- tyler, humberside

If by chance you have ever tried to speak with someone more than once who didnt want to speak with you that, the crime of 'unwanted conversation', is criminal harassment and de facto makes you a stalker. Ill defined laws can be very scary.

- linda, uk

And here's a piece of advice from the ever-astute E Jawed:

What is it with some guys, they can never accept rejection. She's not even good looking, so why doesn't he get a life. He's probably lost his job, ruined his career, gone to jail and made a fool of himself for nothing. What a silly plum.

- E Jawed, Manchester, UK

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to rub my arms and legs vigorously with a cheese grater, then apply vinegar to the wounds. It'll be by far a less painful experience than reading the Fail.

2010-01-17T14:06:00.002Z

We've added a picture link to the sidebar over there ====>

Because we feel it's important.

And because our twitter friend @jamiesport has been working so damned hard for the DEC this last week that we want to show our support for his work.

Please give what you can, even if it's only a couple of quid. Or text "GIVE" to 70077 if you're in the UK, to give a fiver to the DEC (it's added to your phone bill). If you're in the US, text "HAITI" to 90999 to charge $10 to your phone bill for the Red Cross.

There is also this option - Non-Believers Giving Aid - which uses paypal. And obviously doesn't include any religiously-affiliated organisations.

I think I am going to be sick

2010-01-13T13:57:00.005Z

This fucking disgusts me.

Basically, to summarise: Woman discusses her sexual fantasies, which include group sex, with a potential partner. I repeat: fantasies. Not "I desperately want to do this before the end of the week" needs, but "the thought of this turns me on" fantasies. Got that bit? Right.

Woman goes to meet potential partner for sex. Man brings several friends, who then proceed to rape her.

As in have non-consensual sex with her.

Woman, rightly so, goes to the police, and the men are arrested and it all goes to court. When her fantasies, which she discussed with the man, are brought to court, the prosecution asks for the case to be thrown out, and the judge instructs the jury to return a not guilty verdict.

Therefore: if a woman has ever entertained the thought of group sex, gang rape is perfectly acceptable. We can construe then, perhaps, that if a woman has entertained thoughts of having sex with a man, and discussed with a man that she would one day like to have sex with a man, then rape is perfectly ok.

WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?!?

Really? Gang rape is ok if a woman has entertained group sex fantasies? Would slitting my throat because I once had a dream that I talked about with a friend that I was being murdered be ok? Really? Would it be ok to burgle my house if I said I wondered what it would be like to be burgled?

Really.

Fuck you, Judge Robert Brown. Fuck you, Prosecutor Michael Leeming. You are worthless sacks of donkey gobbling pond scum and right now I am entertaining fantasies about smacking you round the head with a large bit of wood marked "clue-by-four".

Therefore it's perfectly ok if I head up to Liverpool and do this, yes?

Edit to add a further thought/clarification following a discussion with some friends: The woman in the case may have said, at some point in the conversation "yes, I would like to have group sex". This does not translate to "invite your mates round and I'll be fucked by them too". Saying "I would like to go to France" doesn't mean you can kidnap me and take me to France against my will, does it now? We don't know all the facts (we can't - we weren't there) and there is a miniscule chance that the chat log may have said "I will willingly have sex with you, and several other men, at your flat, on a given date, and you can surprise me with the presence of your friends too". But seriously - would you then go through the courts, knowing the low rape conviction rates, how the courts tend to view victims? Really?

The Bolton News reports that the woman entertained ideas of group sex, and may have had group sex before. Doesn't mean she can't be gang raped.

Protecting women's rights - by removing their freedom of choice

2010-01-10T13:40:00.003Z

I'm referring, of course, to France's 'progressive' proposition to fine Muslim women £700 for wearing the veil in public. The president of the ruling party claims that the new ruling is "intended to protect the ‘dignity’ and ‘security’ of women." It's a move for sexual equality, says Jean-François Copé, and nothing to do with religion (to which anyone with a modicum of intelligence will likely reply "Pull the other one!")

A nice thought, but let's look at what is really being suggested here. We make the assumption, first and foremost, that women do not choose to wear the veil. This is a very dangerous assumption, and is based primarily in ignorance and in the patronising Western idea that all Muslim women are victims of an oppressive patriarchal religion - as India Knight points out in her recent Times article, '....basically that they are all tragically mute victims of an especially monstrous patriarchy and are probably beaten or set fire to if they don’t cook supper nicely'.

Now there's an element of truth to this. Certainly some Muslim women do wear the veil because it is forced upon them; because their culture states it is what 'good' Muslim women do, or because their husbands demand it of them. And that's an unsavoury thought. But what I take umbrage with it the great white assumption that our way of life is somehow superior - that by 'freeing' a woman from the bonds of the Burqa and integrating her into our society we are somehow rescuing her, awakening her to a whole new world of feminine freedoms.

The problem is, that's largely a falsitude. Can we really talk about women's liberation from a country with the lowest rape conviction rape in Europe? When we penalise women in rape cases for utilising that "freedom of choice" and wearing a miniskirt? "She was asking for it" is still a valid criticism in our society. We are free to brand women 'sluts' and 'whores' when we consider them underdressed by our superior Western standards, or alternatively we objectify them - a woman in a tight pair of jeans is obviously asking to be leered at! Of course, the freedom to choose what we wear is only afforded to us if we fit the current 'body beautiful' - the fat woman who dares to bare is as public an enemy as the niqab-wearer. So much for freedom...
The Daily Mail, tellingly, is particularly critical and at times downright lecherous when women step out in public showing any amount of flesh. The Sun, Britain's most popular newspaper, is practically built on the "Phwoar" factor. How is any of this any less oppressive than feeling bound to the niqab? I don't doubt there are many women out there who long for the privacy and invisibility afforded by such a garment, if only to hide occasionally from the judgemental gaze of a society which rates us as bodies first, human beings second.

The biggest fallacy of all, though, is pretending that forcibly preventing women from exercising their free will (and let's not kid ourselves here that all burqa-clad women are forced into it - choice informed by religion is still choice) is somehow liberating. It is, at the end of the day, a garment like any other - no less oppressive than the push-up bra, which some women wear with gusto and others wear out of a sense of having to conform to the "maximum cleavage" type of cheap sexiness thrust upon us by 'Nuts' and 'Zoo'.

In an ideal world, Muslim women would truly have the freedom to really choose whether the veil brings them closer to Allah or serves as an obstacle to the outside world, and that's an aim worth working towards - our Muslim sisters ought to have the right to express their religion in whichever way they see fit. But taking the veil away from them means that France is no better than, say, Saudi Arabia. Oppression is oppression, whether you're forcing a woman to cover up, or forcing her to expose herself for no better reason than 'to be more like us'.

Attention middle-aged perverts, GREAT NEWS: Having sex with 13-year-old girls is now FINE.

2010-01-08T23:34:00.003Z

At least, this judge seems to think so:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1241635/Soldier-41-sex-girl-13-spared-jail-woman-judge-says-did-running.html

If you'll indulge me, I'd like to point out some fatal flaws in this choice statement:"Judge Mowat continued: 'It was clear from the evidence that she was a disturbed girl, that her behaviour was precocious in several respects, that she looked and acted older than her age and she made most of the running in this action.'"

1.) She was "disturbed". Not only was she "disturbed" but "clearly" so. What kind of fucked up monstrosity of a man wants to have sex with anyone who is clearly disturbed and thus obviously not thinking straight, regardless of their age? At a guess, a child rapist maybe...

2.) "Her behaviour was precocious in many respects". Yes and she was 13, and he was 45 and aware that was 13. I fail to see what her "precociousness has to do with anything.

3.) "She looked and acted older than her age" Yes and (please forgive me for repeating myself) she was 13, and he was 45 and aware that she was 13. I don't care if she looked 30, YOU DON'T HAVE SEX WITH A 13-YEAR-OLD CHILD. Simples!

4.) "She made most of the running". It doesn't matter if she turned up unnanouced in his bedroom, naked but for a sign saying "Take me big boy, I'm yours" - SHE WAS 13. A 13-year-old girl cannot consent to sex and you, sir, are a rapist. End of discussion.

What is so awful is that the judge doesn't realise that the most dangerous person involved in this whole case is herself. She says she gave the guy a light sentence because he is unlikely offend again and for what it's worth I agree with her; but the hugely ill-advised statement she made, seemingly in his defence, is likely to cause many, many other men to offend, because she's basically just said it's ok if she looks a bit older than her age.

I’m wearing a silky leopard-print pushup number with apricot lace trim and peepholes

2010-01-07T17:15:00.005Z

Bollocks I am, and if I were I wouldn't be telling the world about it but would be keeping it as a nice surprise for someone with the patience to find it under the twenty six layers of woven sheep currently protecting me from the snowpocalypse engulfing London. The following message just landed in my Facebook inbox however, suggesting that someone thinks that broadcasting details of your unmachinewashables to the entire internet is a rather good idea:

"Hi gals........had this sent to me ......some fun for us only...just write in ya status the color of ya bra nothing else just the color. and send this on by inbox only to all ya female friends NO MALES it will be neat to see if this spreads the wings of breast cancer awareness. it will also be fun to see how long it takes all the men to wonder why all the girls have a color as their status"

This message could be criticised for a number of reasons – I'm going to let the application of the word girls to my peer group of betrothed, bemortgaged and bePhD'd women slide as the writer of the original message was clearly around fourteen but seriously, how much time do you really save by turning "you" into a two letter word? – but the main problem I have with it is the idea that it will somehow raise awareness of breast cancer. It makes no mention of how you can check for breast cancer or how you can donate to breast cancer research. All it raises awareness of is the fact that around 50% of the UK population uses fragments of fabric and wire to cover the front part of their thoraces.

Truth is, breast cancer is always going to be the easiest cancer to talk about because the majority of the human population will either possess boobies or become very fond of them indeed at some stage of their existence. I think that most people are by now very much aware of the existence of breast cancer, possibly because events like this make good headlines and better pictures. You know which cancer needs a little awareness raised? Bowel cancer, that's which. Thirty seven and a half thousand people are diagnosed with it in the UK every year, making it the second most common cancer in women and the third most common in men (ref), but we don't have a whole industry selling poo-coloured t-shirts and shit-scented candles to publicise it and few people know which symptoms to watch out for.

Call me a humourless Feminazi if you like, but this email is not about raising awareness of breast cancer. It's about using a disease that has a devasting impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people as a spurious justification for discussing saucy undies. It's about women trying to show that they're uninhibited and up for a laugh by inviting their friends to speculate about them in their underwear rather than to think about them as sentient, intelligent human beings. It's about women objectifying themselves. And for anyone who believes that the updates are really only for us gals I'd invite you to compare the number of updates saying "red satin w little bows" with the number saying "grey cotton (orig. white), straps frayed, bought Bhs 2001".

I have a couple of dozen friends on Facebook - colleagues and ex-colleagues, my friends' Mums, my family, my brother's girlfriend, my supervisor - who I'd rather not have wondering about what the colour in my status meant about my underwear thank you very much, and I'd rather the rest of themwere thinking about me in the context of how I write or the music I like or how good I am at throwing fireworks parties than what I'd look like with my t-shirt off (currently goosepimply and a delicate blueish colour). I leave you with an example of the only dignified way to respond to enquiries about one's undercrackers, as demonstrated by President Obama who when asked whether he wore briefs or boxers replied:

"I don't answer those humiliating questions. But whichever one it is, I look good in 'em!"

The New Body Facism

2010-01-04T22:52:00.003Z

"Real women have curves!" "Men prefer curves!" "Curvy is in, skinny is out!"

How many times have we all heard those phrases in the past 12 months or so? Facebook is awash with groups titled "Curves are beautiful, size zero should be illegal", "Real Women Have Curves", "F**K Size Zero, I love my curves". Channel 4's documentary series, Battlefront, has even commissioned a campaign against size zero (http://battlefront.co.uk/campaign/who-wants-to-be-a-size-zero-anyway/) From the national press, Cosmopolitan to the blogosphere, the seachange in public opinion is clear to see - skinny is out and a more attainable, more "womanly" figure is in. Great - right?

Wrong. Indulge me, if you will, fellow feminazis, and I shall explain why the rise of "curves" is just as pernicious as so-called "skinny culture".

First off, this new culture of curves is NOT about celebrating fuller figures, it is about denigrating slender women. How many more screaming "So Skinny She Looks Like She'll Break!!!" headlines on the frontpage of Heat Magazine, how many more paparazzi shots of "Worryingly thin Lindsay" in the Dail Fail, how many more scare-mongering ITV documentaries on the "dangers of size zero" before people realise that there is no new culture? The culture is exactly the same, it's just that the target has changed. We've swopped fat-bashing for skinny-bashing and exchanging one prejudice for another isn't an advancement in women's rights, it's a step sideways.

Secondly, to the "more attainable, more womanly" part. Who is to say what is "womanly"? Women come in all different shapes and sizes and only a fool would try to attribute a higher level of feminity to one over the other. Really this argument belongs to the first point I made - it's not about celebrating so-called "womanly" figures, it's about taking a dig at slimmer women, saying they're "manly", less "real". Who cares which women we're picking on, as long as we can still pick on women, hey?

As for "more attainable", let's investigate this, shall we? In the last week two websites; MSN Lifestyle and the Daily Fail have run articles on the "most desirable" body shapes, with an emphasis on "curvy" woman such as Kate Winslet, Halle Berry and eponymous Kelly Brook. The Fail, in particular claims this as a great victory for women, because such figures are supposedly more realistic a goal for the average woman. Really? Neither Winslet, Berry nor Brook can be more than a size 10 at most, and with the average dress size in the UK now up to a 16, that's quite a gap. More pertinently though, "curves" of the type that these women have are not something you can ever achieve. They have big breasts, and wide-set hips, set off by tiny waists. No matter how much you diet you can't change the width of your pelvis, you can't grow your breasts without implants - you're either born an hourglass shape or you're not. Don't get me wrong, I think Winslet, Brook et al have fantastic figures (as do Kate Moss, Cheryl Cole and Victoria Beckham) but promoting them as "better" role models than your average supermodel because their figures are "more attainable" is ludicrious because a girl with a straight-up-and-down body type has as much chance as naturally growing a second head as she has of ever looking like Kelly Brook.

What I'm trying to say, in my tired, rambling way, is that despite the rhetoric, we are still being sold an unachievable dream. All this adds up to is a continuation of the body facism we all know and hate, which tells women they should look a certain way and chastises those who fail. All switching the hatred from large women to thin women achieves is to alienate one group of women, to make one lot of women feel good at another lot's expense - in short, it is turning women against each other. I've said it before on this blog and I'll say it again: divide and conquer is a tool to keep women down - we'll never beat sexism if we're too busy being at each other's throats.

The moral of this story is, body facism is alive and well, and women, more than ever before are encouraging it. The aforementioned Facebook groups are almost all founded by women, and boast an almost all-female membership. Women have grabbed onto this trend with both hands. Your mission, should you choose to accept it? Stop it. Revoke your membership to "Real women have curves", write to Heat and ask them to stop demonising women who happen to naturally be less than a size 10 and even more so the ones who are unnaturally thin, because last time I checked, laughing at women with eating disorders wasn't helpful, just cruel. If you're a man, write to women's magazines and tell them that actually men don't "prefer curves" but that different people have wildly differing tastes. If you're a woman, write to women's magazines and tell them to stop insulting your intelligence, and that implying slim women are unnattractive to men is no friendlier than shouting "you're going to die alone, fatty!", and no better for the female pysche as a whole. Hug a skinny girl.

Who Wants To Be A Size Zero Anyway? I do, actually, because that's the way I was born, and it's impossible for me to be anything else.

A glut of links

2009-10-28T15:34:00.002Z

Being an excitable wee femi, I've got some links for everyone - some of which I've put on the links bar over there, and some interesting articles.

First up, Hollaback UK, inspired by Hollaback NYC, which aims to fight back against catcallers and street harassment of women and LBGTQ people by sharing stories - and posting mobile phone pictures of the idiots who think sexual harassment is an acceptable form of social interaction.

Then The Women's Resource Centre, which apart from anything has a massive list of local and national women's groups, campaigns, aid groups and charities. And their twitter feed - @whywomen - is brilliant too.

Talking of twitter, are you following @Feminazery? That's us. We like you.

Eaves' Nothing Personal Campaign. Actually, any of Eaves' projects are excellent, from their Weekly News newsletter to their work with victims of domestic violence.

The A-Z LBGT Comic Book Character Superlist. Rather self-explanatory.

And an interesting CiF article entitled "Climate change is a feminist issue". Just don't read the comments. It suffers from the usual CiF issue of being vague but inflammatory, so can be read any way you damn well please, but the intention behind it is good - the need for all women in all countries and cultures to have safe access to contraception (and sex education) which is accepted by the men they have sex with, in order to choose how many children they have. Although it does also raise interesting notions of cultural imperialism and the need to find a way to not limit other countries' industrial (and therefore polluting) development without being massively hypocritical, as well as the need to encourage people to limit their own pollution (although I would argue that, as long as we have Trafigura and other global businesses not doing much, my energy-saving lightbulbs and recycling bin are going to do diddly squat).

No amount of bias can damage the BNP as much as Nick Griffin did.

2009-10-23T10:26:00.004+01:00

I don't think this needs any real introduction: Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time has made front page news and even our friends over at the Stun are foregoing their usual Jordan-based headline to squeeze Jolly Saint Nick in.
Somewhat predictably, the far right backlash has started to kick in, attempting to make a martyr of hapless Mr Griffin. Let's look at their primary argument:

"Nick Griffin was victimised, not allowed to speak. The whole show was a Lefty set up"

Interesting accusation. Having applied to be in the audience, and having recieved a response from the BBC telling me they were rejecting my application on the basis of wanting a fair representation of pro/anti BNP politics in the audience (coupled with the occasional cheers for Nick Griffin heard on the show) I think it's fairly evident that the audience was not a hostile block of Guardian-reading lefty "knit your own yoghurt" types. Plenty of the aforementioned type in the audience, yes, but not the complete lefty whitewash theorised by Griffin's supporters. Griffin was offered several opportunities to speak, asked for his opinions on various matters along with the rest of the panel.
It's not the fault of the "Guardianistas" that whenever he did open his mouth a gust of nonsense escaped. It's not the fault of the 'liberals' that Nick Griffin spent more time laughing, trembling and grinning inanely than actually defend his policies and viewpoints. How can this man profess to aspire to becoming a 'mainstream' party if he can't cope with opposition? Did he expect people not to fiercely contest his divisive policies, his slapdash summary of Islam, his dressing up racism as 'immigration policy'? Really? Honestly?

The same people deriding the BBC and audience for "victimising" Mr Griffin are lapping up the same treatment of Jack Straw. Dimbleby's protestations that Straw answer the question, that he was evading the issue, were no more or less vehement than his protestations at Mr Griffin's constant refusal to properly answer any question posed to him. The same people railing at the audience for deriding and mocking Griffin are cheering at the same treatment afforded to Jack Straw. Hypocritical much?
That the audience responded by jeering was testament to Griffin's lack of coherence and the glaring idiocy of what he eventually did say. That they responded with personal remarks shows just how close to the bone the BNP's hateful policies cut. People with non-white friends and family, people with black parents or Asian partners or gay children - these are the people who hate the BNP. It's not a leftist conspiracy, it's the reasonable anger of those excluded, derided and hurt by Griffin's politics. Personal responses are entirely justified, in my opinion, by policies and statements which base themselves around the personal beliefs of the knuckle-dragging far right trolls the BNP call their support. If suggesting that gay men ought not kiss in public because it's 'creepy' isn't personal, then what is...?

When asked about his previous denial of the holocaust, Griffin replied 'I can't explain why I used to say those things. I cannot tell you any more than I can tell you why I changed my mind. I can't tell you the extent I changed my mind.' On homosexuality Griffin revealed himself both to be hideously intolerant and more than a little bit childish - "A lot of people find the sight of two grown men kissing in public very creepy" - before going on to slam "militant" homosexuals teaching kids about homosexuality (Invading a primary school near you!) It's astonishingly ill-thought out comments such as these that made Nick Griffin a laughing stock, not an 'orchestrated campaign'. The idea that Griffin was victimised by people who wanted to foster prejudice is hilariously ironic in the face of Griffin's own politics, which uses fear and misinformation to attack the "other", who talks of the evil in the Koran without stopping to consider the evil in the Christian Bible (how about this lovely quote about unbelievers?
"Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people." (Deuteronomy 13:8-9)"

Or about women?

"If however the charge is true and no proof of the girl's virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father's house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death..." (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)"

The point being, of course, that it is deeply ironic and misguided for this man to claim Islam to be a hateful religion based on his apparently cursory understanding of the Koran when clearly he is not aware that his own religious book preaches the same morals. And yet here he is, lambasting Islam and Sharia law without comprehending that the religion he wishes to base his society on is equally capable of throwing forth hateful, bigoted statements. Pot, kettle, indigenous.

The fact remains - and it is a fact - that the BNP are a party whose policies are not based in politics at all, but rather social commentary. A lot is being made of the manner in which Griffin was treated and yes, even I believe there could have been a little more decorum. But don't be fooled. Under the anger and the sniping it was clear that Griffin is an ineffectual racist. No amount of orchestrating from the left could have incriminated him more than he incriminated himself. What we saw, underneath the furore, was a man with a frail grasp of his own ideologies - unable to explain exactly what he meant by 'indigenous' (which is a farcial concept in itself given Britain's history of invasion and occupation spanning centuries) and ineffective in the face of criticism. He was unable to answer, when asked directly by an audience member, a key question regarding his wish to return Britain to it's 'great white roots' asked by a British Asian (of the type the BNP refutes the existence of) He repeated "I was misquoted" like a mantra despite Youtube providing primary evidence to the contrary. He was like a school bully with his pants pulled down.

It's shame the Question Time audience and panel didn't quiz Griffin on his party's policies beyond the issue of immigration and race. For seasoned BNP watchers like myself, the show just confirmed what we already knew - that Griffin is a parody of xenophobic hysteria, a one trick pony filled with hot air and soundbites and very little else. For the average viewer, tuning in out of curiosity or hoping to learn something, it was a massacre. A deserved massacre, and one which showed beyond doubt that the BNP have some truly abhorrent beliefs. But to question him about the economy, about education, about crime - these questions would have shone a torch upon the gaping hole in the BNP's manifesto. They don't have any ideas. They don't have any plans - beyond kicking out the forruns, they haven't actually thought of what to do with the country. The emperor may think otherwise, but he's definitely not wearing any clothes.

The BNP's popularity - and let's not forget that "popularity" is a very relative term - can be attributed solely to their occupation of a gap in British politics. They exploit the disenfranchisement of the working class (believe me, I am working class myself) by pretending that their problems are caused by brown people rather than the rich middle-class white man (of which Nick Griffin can count himself a member) and exploit the discontent of the middle classes, angry at the sharing of their previously exclusive privileges by telling them that when the country is emptied, they can go back to enjoying their perks. There are issues not being addressed by any of the major parties (not even you, Baroness Warsi, covering your rampant batshit homophobia under the guise of "not being quite as bad as Nick Griffin") but to believe that the BNP will address them with workable policies ("Pull up the drawbridge, shut the doors and kick out the wogs" is not a workable policy) is to be suckered in by Nick Griffin's snake oil patter. If Question Time showed us anything, it's that the BNP can't truly be considered a viable alternative, no matter what the failings of the Big Three might be.

We are taking part in an orchestrated internet campaign to say "Jan Moir, you're a twunt"

2009-10-16T18:17:00.005+01:00

It has taken me several attempts to write this. My first attempt looked like this:

dsfgsdfgdsafgiojhgRoiv['hnWS' IOFJNADF'IL VJNADJ' FJC'WO

accompanied by incoherent shouting, rapid twittering, and frothing at the mouth. After a few hours of calming meditation, crocheting some oatmeal, twittering, and listening to Women's Hour, I managed this:

Jan Moir is a vile, homophobic, horrid waste of perfectly good oxygen.

That's as far as I got before the frothing started again. But you've probably figured out what I'm on about. That Jan Moir article published today, previously entitled "Why there was nothing 'natural' about Stephen Gately's death" (the title has since been changed).

Moir, as far as anyone can tell, is blaming Gately's death on his "gay lifestyle" (if anyone can come up with a description of this that doesn't involved luriddigs.com, you know where the comment box is). Not, you know, his undiagnosed congentital heart condition - which, as Charlie Brooker pointed out, 12 young people die of every week, irrespective of their sexuality.

She links Gately's death to that of Kevin McGee (who had previously been married to Matt Lucas). As far as anyone with even a pinch of rationality can tell, the only thing connecting the two young men was their sexuality, and that Gately was married, and McGee had been. Somehow, in Moir's mind, this means they died of Teh Gay Marriage Disease. Nevermind all those people who die, from various causes, who are straight and married.

I'm not going to witter on about though. Anton Vowel, over at Enemies of Reason, has put it much better than I could. As has Charlie Brooker at The Guardian. There's plenty going on at twitter under the #janmoir hashtag.

Moir has since released a statement. It doesn't say much, other than a complete lack of apology, and Moir claiming a "heavily orchestrated internet campaign" (spearheaded by Teh Ebil Gays, no doubt) has resulted in people reading her article and not being overly impressed about her homophobia. She still doesn't admit that Gately's autopsy revealed a heart condition - instead insisting that going clubbing until the early hours, smoking weed and having sex was the cause of his death (in which case, I'm surprised there is anyone aged 14 upwards left alive to read this). She doesn't say much of anything really, except "no, no, you didn't read it - I like gay people but they're a bad influence on young people and would you please pass me that big shovel there as this hole I'm making isn't quite big enough yet."

I'm so looking forward to what happens tomorrow. And whether Moir gets her adverts back.

Redrawing the battlelines: I am not childless, you are not a mother. We are women.

2009-10-05T19:36:00.006+01:00

To the naked eye, this article might almost look like it has the makings of a feminist piece on discrimination against child-free women. Almost:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1217345/Friends-selfish--having-kids-best-thing-I-ve-done.html

A few years ago I was pleased to see articles like this pop up; after all it was rare to have someone defend the position of the child-free by choice against the barrage of both subtle and direct accusations that choosing not to procreate made you a failure as a woman.

Indeed, this article was warmly received in some femi-circles I move in. But over the years I have realised: it's a trick. A dirty rotten trick.

First of all, this article isn't for child-free women, it's against them. See the way they repeat the accusation over and over, and put it in bold in the headline that child-free women are selfish? Fair enough, this woman says a friend called her it once, but I'm not sure that justifies the emphasis the article puts on it, which is increasingly suspicious when you realise that "selfish" is the Fail's very own favourite accusation to level at women who choose not to have children.

Second of all, if this were a book it would flop, because the protagonist is so inherently unlikeable. She's unbearably smug: not having children means she and her husband can go five on luxury holidays a year. And for the author of what momentarily sounded like a semi-feminist statement, she's the perfect embodiment of the Fail's sexist attitude towards women and mothers: by not having children she is able to devote every free moment to pampering her husband; it wouldn't be fair of her to have children because her having a career would mean she would be neglecting them (wherever have we heard that before?). I'm seriously starting to think this woman may be a plant.

But more than all that, this article does women, child-free or not, no favours, for two reasons. One, it's clearly designed to set women against each other. Look at the comments (a depressing 500+ of them), an equal split of "Who's going to look after you when you're old? You'll be in a home paid for by MY child's taxes!" and "Who's going to pay for your kid's education? MY taxes!". It's classic divide and conquer; we can't fight sexism if we're too busy fighting each other. Two, drawing such distinction between mothers and the child-free only serves to encourage women to define themselves by their reproductive status, which re-enforces the belief that a woman's sole purpose in life is to procreate, and once she has done that her contribution and usefulness to the world is over (hence the blatent discrimination of post-menopausal women by just about everybody). Well, that's simply not true. All of us, whether we choose to have children or not, have more to offer the world than our uterus. We are not just mothers, or the childless of child-free or whichever label you choose to use. We are more than that. We are women.

The Polanski Debate - Some Corrections and Responses

2009-10-02T10:53:00.003+01:00

Since I seem to be unable to comment on Slummy Mummy's blog, I'm writing this quick note of my own to address some of the confusion in the comments after.

Number one - it has NOT been proven in court that the sex was consensual. Polanski was convicted of unlawful sex with a minor - aside from the fact that this is a crime because a minor cannot legally consent - they did not rule on whether the girl consented, only that sex occured.

Number two - Polanski was originally charged with rape, sodomy, providing intoxicating substances to a minor and a few others I don't recall right now. The reason he was only convicted of unlawful sex with a minor was because the victim could not face the trauma of facing her attacker at trial, hence he was offered a soft plea bargain he would be foolish to turn down, on the grounds it was better to get him on *something* rather than let him walk. He has NOT (and I'd double underline that if I could) been cleared in court of rape or any of the other charges, because he has NOT faced trial for them. Since he pleaded guilty there was never a full trial, only a plea hearing and a scheduled sentencing hearing, which, I'm sure you'll recall, he didn't attend because he was too busy absconding from justice.

Number three - I'm frankly apalled that anyone is questioning the issue of consent, in the face of the evidence heard at interview and in the face of common sense. She was 13 for crying out loud. When I was 13 I wanted my parents to take me to see Boyzone, and to get my ears pierced. I didn't want to have anal sex with an ugly 44-year-old midget. Now obviously, I'm not the victim here, but I do think the taste of 13-year-old girls worldwide is fairly universal. And anyway that's all academic, because she was 13 and couldn't bloody consent by law!

Numer four - expand your mind with some research - Polanski has admitted in interviews to what he did. He's just too much of a coward to accept his punishment.

But why let any of that get in the way of a spot of victim blaming, which our rape apologist friend obviously likes to indulge in, eh?

Because stopping women getting cancer is wrong - according to the Fail (sometimes).

2009-10-01T13:53:00.003+01:00

Pop along to the Fail's website, and there's an almost daily stream of articles on the evils of the cervical cancer vaccine.

Apparently it will encourage promiscuity and bring numerous health problems.

Now, sadly, a fourteen year old girl has died. Unsurprisingly, the Mail were quick to blame her death on the cancer jab she'd had two hours before - either "an extreme reaction", or a dose from a "rogue contaminated batch".

Neither of these turned out to be the case, and it turns out that Natalie had a tumour in her heart and lungs. Her death shortly after receiving the jab was just an unfortunate coincidence, but one the Daily Mail were all-too-happy to blame on Cervarix.

Out of one million girls, 4,657 have reported side effects "including sore arms, dizziness and swelling". I, and many of my friends, had these after being given a meningitis jab at the age of 11/12, yet the Daily Mail seem to have no qualms about children being immunised against meningitis.

The Daily Mail's major concern seems to be these fears of "promiscuity". The argument that a vaccine will prompt a nation of 13-year-old girls to go out and have sex is just astounding. Despite what the Mail seem to think, teenage girls aren't all complete idiots. Yes, some do get pregnant. But the vast majority of 13-19 year old girls DON'T. Having a cancer vaccine isn't going to change these facts.

Their stance against the jab is even more shocking when you consider their constant coverage of the death of Jade Goody. This woman's painful and traumatic death was front page news for months. I do not want to go through that. I don't want anybody to go through that. I'm amazed that some parents are still denying their daughters the innoculation, when we've seen first hand what cervical cancer can do to a young woman.

But what's this?

"The Irish Daily Mail launched a campaign in November calling on the Government to reverse its decision to axe the cervical cancer vaccination programme...The Irish Daily Mail will not relent and will continue to urge the roll out of the vaccine"

Words actually fail me. I didn't think even the Fail could be quite THIS hypocritical.

Guest Post by Slummy Mummy: Roman Polanski

2009-09-29T19:32:00.004+01:00

I read an article in the Independent today, which moved me more than anything the Fail have ever managed to come up with.

Harvey Weinstein, the uber powerful Hollywood producer, made an empassioned plea, on behalf of his close friend Roman Polanski, who has suffered a miscarriage of justice so heinous, that he, and many of his hollywood compatriots felt compelled to write about it on his behalf. Not since Live Aid have we seen so many celebs moved.

Roman Polanski was arrested by Swiss Authorities at a film festival, for a 'so called crime' he committed, aged 44.

When he was 44, the internationally renowned director took a 13 year old to the home of his friend Jack Nicholson. He promised to take her photograph for Vogue. He gave her champagne, and Quaalude. Then he told her to get into a jacuzzi, and while she was dazed and confused, he raped her orally, he raped her vaginally, and he raped her anally.While she asked him to stop. She repeatedly asked him to stop. He told her to keep this a secret from her mother. She didnt.

Then he plea bargained, and when he believed he may actually be punished for the crime he committed, instead of the one his lawyer managed to get a deal for- he fled.He fled for 32 years.

Mr Weinstein speaks from the heart when he talks of the artistic merit of his friends offerings, and of the life path he took which was filled with tragedy. Mr.Weinstein talks poetically about the suffering his friend has gone through, by not being allowed to re-enter the US. He dismisses the crime of drugging, and raping, a 13 year old child- as a 'so called crime'. He speaks with confidence of the connections he, and his friends have, and how they will use them, to get this 'matter' cleared up. Apparently he is going to go visit Governer Arnie, and others are going to petition the Clintons, they even have the ear of Nicholas Sarkozy.

He tells us that Mr Polanski served his time, 'whichever way you look at it'. Now I may not be the brightest spark in the box, but in which country is living around the world, in palatial homes, continuing to direct acclaimed films, a punishment. Apparently the fact that he didnt get to pick up his oscar in person- is enough on the statute books that serve Mr.Weinstein and Mr.Polanski-to be considered justice. I had never seen that on our statute books.

And herein lies the problem. Apparently Mr.Polanski belongs to a set where the same rules dont apply. His artistic genius, his survival of the holocaust, and the tragic loss of his wife- means that he apparently has carte blanche, to do as he pleases. If Mr.Weinstein and Mr.Polanski, and their friends, donot view the drugging and raping of a child as a crime, the only question I have, is -at what income level, level of celebrity, level of connection, do you just get to bring children to the homes of your friends, and rape them, and it become just a perk? Sarkozy, Schwarzenegger, and Clinton, are apparently not elected officials- who are answerable to the people-how could we have thought that?. For people like Mr.Weinstein, the ears of these people, is a perk of celebrity and power.

Mr.Polanski, Mr.Weinstein, and everyone of the morally bankrupt celebrities today, who have spoken up about this 'miscarriage of justice', shows me very clearly the world we live in. I am reassured to know that people with this kind of power, and this kind of money, fully believe they have the right to use the connections that they have, to help a friend evade prosecution for this 'so called crime'. It makes me feel very positive about the world, that the drugging and raping, of a 13 year old child- is not rape, as long as it is a powerful celebrity that is raping her.

It reassures me that women like Deborah Winger, and Whoopi Goldberg- are standing up to tell the world that this 'so called crime' is not really that bad, its not like its 'rape rape' after all. Well if a case where a undisputed facts are that a 13 year old was repeatedly fucked against her will, after being drugged, is not rape= then really, I would like to know what constitutes rape at all?

Oh wait, I am not reassured. I am fucking angry. Disgusted. Horrified. Dumbfounded. They are words I would use to describe how I feel, when I see the stance of those crying out, about the injustice of arresting a man who used his money and power to groom a child, then drugged and raped her. The shock compounding itself, after realising so clearly, we live in a society where celebrity is all, and rape is just a perk to that celebrity- and while Harvey Weinsteins article was abhorrent- it may just be a very true reflection of the society I live in.

Slummy Mummy is a regular on the Daily Mail Hating Feminazis from Hell facebook board. And we heartily recommend her own blog, Deeply Flawed But Trying.

Daily Mail - "Feminists are evil!"…now with added irrelevance!

2009-09-23T13:13:00.004+01:00

The Daily Mail have published a story entitled “Why I Loathe Feminism…and believe it will ultimately destroy the family”. Which is just fine and dandy. Except that the article isn’t about feminism at all. Save a few cursory references, such as the one below:

“Thirty years later, when feminism exploded onto the scene, I was often mistaken for a supporter of the movement. But I have never been a feminist, because, having experienced my mother's violence, I always knew that women can be as vicious and irresponsible as men.”

The article doesn’t expand on this, but goes on to tell the story of Erin Pizzey’s abusive childhood at the hands of her mother. An awful story, yes, and it sounds as if Pizzey’s mother was an awful person (and a racist to boot. Are you listening, Daily Mail?) Her hatred of feminism is built on a singular foundation: that women are as vicious as men and that feminists deny this.

Well, yes and no. I think you’ll be hard pressed to find a feminist who denies that women can be violent and cruel. We’re not fantasists; we know that women aren’t perfect. But we are acutely aware of the fact the perpetrators of domestic violence are still far more likely to be male. Amnesty International figures state that in the USA, women accounted for 85% of the victims of domestic violence in 1999 (671,110 compared to 120,100 men). That’s a hell of a majority. These findings are backed up by a study by the United States Bureau of Justice, which estimates that women are six times more likely than men to be victims of domestic violence. Amnesty International also estimate that domestic violence accounts for nearly a quarter of all recorded violent crime in England and Wales - one in four women will be a victim of domestic violence in their lifetime.

These are worrying statistics. We shouldn’t ignore the reality of female-initiated domestic violence, we certainly shouldn't pretend it's not as serious. But we also mustn’t be cowed by sensationalist journalism which attempts to turn this issue on its head. “What about the men?” should never be an excuse to pretend that male-on-female domestic violence doesn’t make up the majority of recorded incidents. It shouldn’t sweep under the carpet that nearly half of all female murder victims in the UK are killed by a current or former partner. And it definitely shouldn’t attempt to justify the prevalence of male violence against women by suggesting that men are lashing out on the counter attack – that women bring violence upon themselves by verbally abusing their partners. This is not justification. No woman deserves to be hit or beaten because she spoke out of line. The same is true for men. It’s a massive insult to the victims of domestic violence, male or female, to suggest they were asking for it and it’s scarily similar to the rape apologist’s proclamation that an inebriated or scantily clad women is inviting rape.

It’s sad and unfair that Erin Pizzey experienced such abuse at the hands of her mother. But that isn’t feminism’s fault - it wasn't feminism that made her mother a horrible person. And surely, without feminism, she would not have the privilege of being able to publish her story in a national newspaper...?

The Politics Of The Bikini Line

2009-09-14T21:06:00.005+01:00

The somewhat hyperbolically-titled "To Wax Or Not To Wax: Have women ever faced a greater dilemma?" raised some interesting questions for me, and after discussing the matter with my fellow femis, here's a blog on this apparently terribly important matter.

The article itself seems to gently persuade the reader to 'give it a go', which irritates me somewhat because it seems very evident that she doesn't actually want to. It bothers me that Rowan Pelling compares a painful, expensive procedure which literally rips the hairs from their follicles with hot wax to...buying a pair of racy stockings. "It suggests a woman has put a bit of extra effort into seduction." Pelling states, which is a horrible smug little sentence, almost suggesting that a woman should depilate herself in order to show she's actually putting some effort into her sex life, regardless of the fact that stockings can be put on and taken off with no pain, discomfort or itchy regrowth. Pelling gives the illusion of choice whilst not so subtly promoting the joys and 'benefits' of a hairless undercarriage...even Iranian women do it, she simpers, as if Iranian women ought to be the benchmark of backwards sexual practises.

Of course, the real issue here is addressed in the comments. A startling number of people argue that a Brazilian is cleaner, which is complete rubbish (if it were cleaner, wouldn't thousands of years of evolution have gone some way to addressing that? And if hair is so unhygenic then why aren't men removing theirs?) Among other things, pubic hair cushions and protects the genital area, keeping it warm and protecting the (very) sensitive skin down there. It also traps and holds pheremones, which are an integral element of human sexuality as we understand it. There's a reason we all have pubic hair! (and besides, hair or no hair, if you don't wash regularly it will be unhygenic!)

Of course, it should be up to the individual whether they want to bare all, and in an ideal world we could say that every woman has that freedom of choice. But thanks in part to the rampant pornification of society, and the expectation for all women to match the plucked and preened centrefolds young boys are growing up with as their representations of the naked woman, there is an immense amount of pressure on women to have the full Brazilian wax. There's a strange idea that women with pubic hair are somehow unkempt and untidy, and therefore ought to spend countless woman-hours removing every last sprig.

What Rowan Pelling should have made abundantly clear is that any man who tries to persuade his partner to wax or shave when it's quite clear she doesn't want to is being a domineering prick. It is a decision that should be made by the owner (or non-owner) of his or her own pubic hair. If a woman wants to have a full Brazilian, or even just a bikini line trim, fair enough - that's her decision, and nobody has the right to tell her she's wrong. But there's a lot of unfair pressure on women to imitate this fashion statement, the fear of being found unsexy or not making enough effort to seduce. We're already cowed into removing our underarm hair and leg hair whether we like the idea or not (a practise made popular in the early 1900's - not so long ago!). Surely 'what lies beneath', abdundant foliage or otherwise, should belong to us, and only us?

The Problem With Pornography

2009-09-10T11:07:00.003+01:00

This is a programme I think every feminist should watch:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search/?q=Hardcore%20Profits

I've always hated porn, and the reasons have been pretty straightforward - it reduces women to the sum of their orifices and pepetuates the idea that women are mere objects to be used purely for male pleasure. The number of rapes and sexual assaults have risen with every year that consumption of pornography has increased for obvious reasons, and women are never going to be seen as equals, at home or in the workplace as long as men are conditioned to view them as vaginas that talk.

But Tim Samuels' documentary (and I'll warn you, he's a smug git of the highest order) has exposed a darker side to the industry than I knew existed and it's time for us all to face up to some home truths. I won't spoilt the programme for those of you who haven't seen it, but here is a summary of the most shocking points:

*Only one porn production house enforces condom use - the others essentially ban it. The porn industry doesn't give a toss about the sexual health of it's "stars", despite there being an outbreak of HIV just five years ago.

*The invisibility of condoms in porn is fueling the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in Ghana, where there is no sex education, but plenty of western porn. Women are reporting increasing incidences of rape and sexual assualts carried out by men who gather together to watch porn in the village at night.

*Women in porn are rarely happy or willing. A male porn star interviewed for the programme admitted he found it "difficult" to work with girls who were "crying in the toilets between takes" - yet he didn't seem to have any inclination to stop doing so. What a nice man. A female porn star also interviewed said no women in porn were happy and all had "pyschological issues", and yet she was hell-bent on pursuing a career in the industry. It was later revealed that her pimp - whoops, I mean manager - was also her boyfriend, and was shown on camera to be controlling and verbally abusive, at one point dragging her across a room by the wrist.

*Agencies exploit young women who are breathtakingly naeive about what porn involves. Samuels interviewed a 20-year-old actress who had just signed with a porn agency. She watched porn for the very first time a few hours before her first shoot so she would "know what to do".

*There is apparently a market for porn where men ejaculate directly onto women's eyeballs.

*Worse, there is a market for porn where women are forced to perform oral sex until their throats bleed and/or they are sick, and where women are forced to ingest their own excrement.

The last two points in particular make me think more than ever that porn is not supposed to be arousing simply because of the sex, but because of the depiction of the subjugation and degradation of women. That men aren't actually turned on by women vomiting over themselves, but by the violence. And considering how wildly popular pornography is, that makes me really fearful about what so many men actually think about women. It's no surprise that lads mags were a reaction to the sexual liberation preached by women's magazines like Cosmo, and that porn has got more extreme and more violent with every stride women have taken towards equality - it's all about putting women back in their place, letting them know who's really boss, etc etc. Porn is made by people who hate women, for people who hate women. It's really sickeningly scary. I could throw up thinking about it - I hope that doesn't turn anyone on.

Boris Keep Your Promise

2009-09-08T23:57:00.003+01:00

Just a quick one to say - the BKYP petition needs 3000 signatories, so if you haven't put your name on it, go here and do so: LINKY

Basically, BoJo promised, during his election campaign for London Mayor, that he would secure the £744,000 of funding needed every year (during his term in office) which would maintain four rape crisis centers in London (as it is, there is only one, in Croyden). Making him keep that promise seems like a good thing to do.

the internet is for porn

2009-09-07T21:40:00.006+01:00

Ah, feminism and porn. Let the battle begin. I'm throwing some thoughts out there, rather than connecting them to the single Daily Fail article. This piece was actually started by a number of things, including spending time with the other femis at our Fascinator Funday (there are pictures on facebook. It was awesome.), the post about Filament magazine on The F-Word last week, which also linked to Erotica Cover Watch, and me taking on a role as Office Bitch at the gloriously wonderful Coffee, Cake and Kink.

I like porn. There we go. I don't expect you to, although bonus if you do. Everybody has something that turns them on, whether it's naked men, naked ladies, or men dressed up as raptors flapping their "wings" while a cave-lady blows them (I draw the line at the people with a fetish for dragons fucking cars. Dude. seriously. what. the. fuck?).

However, I have noticed this, and you'd be an idiot not to. A lot more men will admit to liking - and watching - porn than women. And the vast majority of porn is made for, and consumed by men. Even the images of naked men are produced, in the vast majority, for gay men. If you go to fleshbot, there is a "gay" filter if you want to look at naked men, and "straight" for naked women (you don't have to choose a filter, though). Why? Both options assume I'm male - despite fleshbot coming from the same group as Jezebel. ECW talk about this issue here. Redtube at least allows me to choose my gender and interest - but all the adverts are aimed at straight males. Pornotube does the same as Fleshbot - gay, straight, all. But once again, the adverts (the facebook of sex! github for lesbians!) are for men. And they're skeezy.

Anyway. There is a point. Feminism, at least for me is - partly at least - about the right for women to control their own bodies. If women make the choice to sell their bodies for money, then I think they should be entitled to - although I also think that women in porn and prostitution need a great deal of support. No woman should ever have to sell her body - but if she wants to, with both eyes open, then ok*. Same goes for porn - if a woman wants to make porn, then sure, why shouldn't she? And if she wants to watch it, hurrah! If, for any person, watching porn is a part of embracing or experimenting with their sexuality, then why the fuck should they be made to feel bad for doing so?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to wrestle my flowery chick-lit "girl porn" romance off my boyfriend.

*And mandatory health checks and no pimps.

The Daily Mail: Legitimising lechery since 1896

2009-09-07T13:25:00.004+01:00

Let me preface this rant by stating that I am not a prude. It's unfortunate that I have to state this, because I would hope that most sensible-minded people would be able to see the difference between a woman terminally pissed off at the way women's bodies have become public property for sale and exchange and a woman afraid of the female form. Hell, the human body is an amazing thing - an infinitely variable masterpiece of evolution. But that would be too highbrow for the Mail.

So with that said, here is today's bone of contention: "Proof that men just can't help looking at women's boobs", an article which manages to insult both men and women in one dash of its greasy misogynist fists, as well as cleverly shoehorning Kelly Brook into the article as an irrelevant piece of window-dressing. According to the article, a whopping 47 per cent of men notice a woman's boobs before anything else. Which, er, directly contradicts the headline - less than half of men notice a woman's chest first. And that means that more than half of men look elsewhere.

But let's forget this small, unimportant statistical detail, because without it there'd be no basis for an article essentially stating "Men are going to look at your tits whether you like it or not. Deal with it". And this is insulting to both genders. It suggests that men are drooling morons driven by their basest instincts and are incapable of escaping their caveman urges to check out a lady's fertility (based on her cup size, naturally) It suggests that they cannot engage their brains enough to realise that there is a living, thinking woman behind those two lumps of mammary tissue - 'it's evolutionary!' wails the article, in an attempt to portray dirty-mac wearing perverts as perfectly reasonable men acting on instinct. Well, Mail, if this is indeed the case, how come more than half of men are able to "resist" this "natural urge" to park their peepers in a woman's cleavage?

The comments are the usual hovel of despair and decay:

I could have told them this and saved tem a lot of money. What gets me is, women wear a plunging neckline and then complain men do not look them in the eye. Give us some time-we will get to your eyes, Honey ! Admit it, you like it or you would all be wearing turtlenecks.- Bernard ex pat, Pawleys Island USA

In many ways this comment is exemplary of the most depressing type of comment: the right to own and possess women's bodies. Because what Bernard is suggesting is that, unless a woman covers herself from head to toe (Perhaps in an oppressive burkha! Ho ho, the irony) she is automatically consenting - nay, asking - to be regarded as a collection of component body parts to be measured and weighed and rated from 1 to 10. Which is utter bollocks, of course. If I wear a short skirt, it might be because I feel warm, or I like the skirt. It isn't because I'm asking to be judged by every passing man.

"Breast size is a lot like Coke and Pepsi. Men have a preference but will take whatever's on tap. As long as it's not flat.- rebecca, mallorca

Of course! Because if you admire a lady with less than a B cup, you must be gay. Or not a man. Rebecca knows these things.

I am often tempted to pin a £50 note or a photo of a nice pair of shoes to my chest just so I can walk around shouting "Hey lady, eyes up here, talk to the face" when women look at them.Why do women who put the goods on show then moan that people look at them?- brad, NIMBY

This inflamed arsehole is the worst of the bunch, by far. Not only does he employ the old and offensive stereotype of Teh Wimmins being drawn to pretty shoes or banknotes of a high value (as if men aren't!) he refers to breasts as 'the goods'. 'The Goods'! Did I miss the memo stating that my breasts were a commodity? Did I miss the meeting where it was decided that if I wear a low cut top of any kind I obviously deserve to be ogled? No. When I buy a V-neck in a shop, it does not come with a certificate stating that, on wearing the garment, I have turned myself into an object for the perusal of any man that might wish to reduce me to pieces of aesthetically pleasing meat. (Or, judging by the shouts of 'Grow some tits!' I often encounter whenever wearing said garments, less-than-aesthetically-pleasing. Hey, looks like rebecca was on to something...)

The fact is, this whole article is filled to the brim with rancid shit, and coming from a paper that preaches sexual morality, that claims to despise the sexualisation of our 'yoof', it's somewhat ridiculous to have to swallow the idea that women should submit to the lecherous gaze of the poor primitive male, that unfortunate creature who is but a slave to his instincts. Because to believe that would be to cheapen and insult the male gender, to objectify and dehumanise the female gender, and to reduce the infinitelt comples ideas of beauty, aesthetics and attraction to sneaked peeks at cleavages and surreptitious glances at the bra-line.

Love Music, Hate Sexism

2009-09-03T16:07:00.004+01:00

Apologies first of all, fair readers, that this post is not directly linked to the Fail. Oh, I know it's a great read, but my head was turned by baser reading material this week; yes, that's right, I almost bought a magazine about a genuinely interesting topic, instead of which skin cream will bag me a bachelor but give me cancer if I don't cook for him.

Almost, but not quite. You see, I do like bands. But I also like being a girl.

I remember quite vividly the first time it occurred to me that these two things could be incompatible. I was fourteen, we'd just got the internet, and a whole new world of fandom was opening before me. And then there it was; a scan of Kerrang magazine, Davey Havok and Dexter Holland sharing the cover with the headline, "ROCK IN THE DOCK: is rock music sexist?" I never did track down the article, but I even neverer forgot its title.

Those words have come back to me a lot over the years, most times I've read about Courtney Love or Brody Dalle, and every time I've flicked past yet another male-targeted advert in a music magazine. (Yes, I sometimes read the NME; no, that does not mean I aspire to style my manly hair into so improbable a quiff that women will dance on tables in its honour thus allowing me to look up their skirts, Shockwaves haircare). But this week really took the balls-up biscuit. Shipped out to Marylebone because Euston thought it might perhaps possibly be on fire and with a four-hour train journey ahead of me, I trudged into WHSmiths for something to read. Oh look, a new Q! But oh wait, it's shrink-wrapped to FHM.

Er, what the fuck? I stared at it for a moment, processed the fact that one of my favourite magazines had just turned to shit before my very eyes, and walked out of the shop.

I don't care how much it comes down to publishers' alliances, I don't care what snivelling little marketing strategy is behind it, I don't care if some girl whose face has started popping up in the London Lite has taken her "hippy chic" clothes off, but I am fucking livid that a magazine I really respected precisely because it was so much more interesting, well-written, and generally grown-up than its peers has done that for which every successful band risks crucifixion in the music media; sold out.

Well, I'm not buying it. I'm not sure what I'll buy instead (the NME's too flimsy, no-one at Artrocker can spell... maybe Clash will fill the gap) but Q can stick it; I'm sure FHM can tell them where.

Sharia Law vs Daily Mail Law

2009-08-25T10:46:00.007+01:00

Much is made by the Fail of the inherent evils of Sharia law. Now, I don't like to speculate on the relative merits of cultural law without doing my research first. So below, I've outlined some of the basic tenets of Sharia law (focusing mostly on gender equality) and contrasting them with the Daily Mail's own opinions on the same subjects. The results probably won't shock you at all if you're a seasoned Mail-watcher.

WOMEN IN EMPLOYMENT

SHARIA: There is a hadith (Sahih al-Bukhari 5:59:709) in which Muhammad is recorded as saying that people with a female ruler will never be successful ("When Allah's Apostle was informed that the Persians had crowned the daughter of Khosrau as their ruler, he said, "Such people as ruled by a lady will never be successful."), however historically Islamic women have had access to education and employment unheard of in many other societies. The Muslim scholar Ibn Asakir states that, as early as the 12th century, women were able to study and become scholars and teachers. During the years of Caliphate rule, Women held respectable jobs in a variety of sectors. Muslim women also held a monopoly over branches of the textile industry, which was the largest market-oriented industry of its time. Europe, by contrast, had very few working women.

What about modern Muslim women? Some interpretations of Sharia law suggest that women should not take prominent jobs, for example in government. Women are generally encouraged to work, although there are conditions. Women working outside the home must dress appropriately to maintain their modesty. It is also important that a woman's job does not affect commitments seen by the Muslim community as more important, such as family. However, treatment of working women varies from country to country; Morocco, for example, legislates that certain fields of work are restricted to women and under 16's . Though this is often defended as protection of women as potential child-bearers, it also suggests that women are less able to protect themselves. A 2005 survey found that while 16% of Pakistani women were in employment or considered able to work, 52% of Indonesian women were - there are glaring discrepancies despite the overall attitude to working women being rather positive.

According to the Islamic Voice website, "when a woman earns something from her work, her earnings belong totally to her. If she is unmarried, her father cannot claim her earnings as his own. Similarly, a woman’s husband cannot put any claim to her earnings. "

DAILY MAIL:

The Mail, despite considering itself far more progressive than Islam, consistently asserts that working women are doing themselves a great injustice. The Mail assumes that most women of childbearing age, whether they realise it or not, want to have children and that working mothers not only do their children a terrible injustice but secretly wish to return to the 'good old days', when men worked and women cared for the home. "Nine In Ten Working Women Want To Quit To Become Housewives" states that "The worry is that since for most women in our society marriage, conception and children are connected - consciously or not - there is a danger that by the time a woman decides that marriage is not for her she may have left it too late to have the child she so desperately wants."

This article reinforces the long-held Mail belief that working mothers are detrimental to a child's development, and to family life. In this respect, Sharia Law is completely compatible with the Daily Mail.

RAPE AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

SHARIA: A Sunni hadith states unequivocally that the punishment for rape is death. Elsewhere in Islam it is generally agreed that a woman should not be punished for being raped, and that there is no sin on the part of the victim. However, the requirements under Sharia law (4 witnesses, usually 2 male and 2 female) mean that rape is very rarely reported and even more rarely punished. That said, many Muslim scholars believe rape falls into a different area of Sharia law, hiraba, which does not require four witnesses. There is also no mention in the Qu'ran of stoning, which some Muslim countries offer as punishment for women convicted of adultery - a criticism of Sharia law is that rape cases are sometimes turned on their heads by the rapist, leading to a wrongful conviction of the victim for adultery or some other sexual crime.

The Qu'ran states that rape, within or outside of marriage, is wrong and a reprehensible act. Further information can be found here. However, there is a verse of the Qu'ran often quoted by apologists of domestic violence - "...and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them" (The Qur'an, chapter 4 (An-Nisa), verse 34) . Some scholars have sought an alternative interpretation, unfortunately it certainly seems that this verse advocates violence when a woman 'asks for it'.

DAILY MAIL The Daily Mail's attitude to rape is very telling when one 'searches' the Daily Mail homepage using the keyword 'rape' - the page of results is dominated by stories of women 'crying rape'. Much like the Sharia system of four witnesses, the Mail often errs on the side of the perpetrator, as evidenced by not only the number of 'cry rape' articles but the general attitude of commentors on rape articles. The Mail seems to subscribe to the Sharia idea of requiring absolute proof from the victim before a conviction can be made. Intriguingly, the Mail expresses outrage in articles written about recent laws passed in Afghanistan making it effectively legal for a man to rape his wife, or Saudi judges ordering a rape victim to be lashed. Much like Sharia, the Mail almost suggests that sexual violence can be considered more acceptable if the victim was 'asking for it'. The Mail is also fond of asserting that claims of domestic violence ought to be treated with suspicion.

DRESS AND BEHAVIOUR

SHARIA: The Hijab is required of both genders and refers to modest dress, although it is now used mainly in reference to the headdress worn by women. Extreme examples of hijab include the burqa, which is not required by Islamic law but is instead enforced by some governments in Islamic countries - in contrast, the Tunisian government try to discourage wearing of the veil. It is, however, required that women act and dress so they do not draw sexual attention from men. Some scholars believe that women must lower their gaze when speaking to men in order to enforce this. In some Muslim countries women are actively forbidden to communicate with men who are not their husband or close relatives - this 'purdah' was strongly enforced under Taliban rule.

DAILY MAIL: While the Mail doesn't lay down any concrete rules for women in terms of dress, it is extremely quick to criticise women who do not fall under its umbrella of 'acceptable appearance' - from today's Mail, we find several examples ('Sharon Stone's not wearing makeup!'

'Helena Bonham Carter dares to wear a swimsuit!' 'Nadine Coyle's not wearing a bra!') the standards of acceptable female appearance seem unattainably high and only Kelly Brook ever seems to tick all the Mail's boxes. The Mail lists smoking cigarettes, eating food and taking the Pill as just a few examples of undesirable female behaviour.

Obviously this is a fairly superficial overview of both Sharia law and the Mail's gender politics, but it's pretty fascinating to see how close the Mail and Sharia Law are, despite the Mail's constant assertions that Islam is the greatest evil to pillage our earth since Chris Deburgh.

Three little pigs...

2009-08-04T18:55:00.006+01:00

This is a little... unconnected. I had three rants, but none of them warranted individual blogs. So you get a bumper-blog of leftovers. I'm good to you.

Harperson's Warpath

You don't have to like Harriet Harman. You don't have to agree with her. However, I don't really think that her comment "Jack [Dromey, her husband] is not waiting for dinner to be there in front of him or he'd be starving" is exactly a feminist war-cry up there with some of the statements coming out of I Blame The Patriarchy, is it now, Daily Male? Yes, she is a feminist. She is open that she wants to see more women in positions of leadership. Reading endless articles like this - which don't actually appear to tell us very much about Harman's policies are*, beyond an "equality agenda" (oh noes! equal rights!) and her making a comment that the number of women in the workplace is not reflected in the number of women in boardrooms and decision-making positions, particularly in banking - it's easy to get depressed about the state of politics in the UK. The article itself isn't overly hectoring, or particularly nasty - for once - but still, there is this constant undertone of "uppity woman should go home and be a good housewife". It doesn't applaud her outspokenness, doesn't view a politician with determination as a good thing (she's too bitchy, see?), and doesn't do anything to actually argue why Harman is wrong.

LibDem repeats ideal previously popular with DM readers, is shot down

The DM likes a good moan about unobtainable beauty standards, especially if run with beauty articles (with airbrushed models) or finger-wagging "vaguely famous person has gained/lost weight/looks a bit tired/isn't smiling like a cracked-up clown on laughing gas/is wearing something not overly flattering" articles. So do those writing the comments. Except for David, in London, who thinks that

"Maybe it's not the airbrushed ads that are at fault, maybe it's all the ordinary women who just need to make a bit more of an effort! Come on girls, raise you're game a little."

Yes. Excuse me, David. Once I've quietened the urge to circle your abuse of the common apostrophe in red pen, I'll just slap on a bit more lipstick. Maybe then my breasts will double in size like Keira Knightly's did in that film poster.

Now I'm just bitching

Dear Liz Jones

You did not learn to shear. You washed a fleece, although I suspect that was done for you. You did not card it, or dye it. You did not spin it, you merely posed for a photograph with a spinning wheel (a rather nice one, but a little overly-fancy for your needs, and don't tell me you can move properly in that jacket, you'd be covered in lint too). You did not knit that lace shawl. You admit that in your third to last paragraph. So why the fuck does your title claim you made the shawl with your own hands from your own wool? (this I will allow - it is your wool). Finally - who the fuck is Alison Haggas? Why did you not link to people like British Wool if you're so concerned about the plight of the British wool industry (which is, admittedly, in need of a helping hand), or speak to Jo Watson, who organised UK Ravelry Day. Or link to fucking Ravelry.com, if you're so into your yarn and needles.

Yours,

Fucked-off Wool Hugger who is actually just jealous of your spindle and your sheep.

P.S. Holistic shearer my left dicknipple.

*except intimating that she'd probably like to have all men castrated or something

Let's all laugh at fat people

2009-07-31T21:30:00.002+01:00

More Daily Mail body fascism

A brief one today, but the Daily Mail is inviting us to laugh over pictures of 'some of the skinniest and most desirable' celebs 'looking as if they have been let loose at a hamburger stand' (because eating lots of burgers is the only reason people are fat, ever!) The whole article reeks of spite and bitterness. I've been very slim for most of my life and yet I cannot stand the perceived superiority a person is imbued with if they are thin. Of course, it's not enough to just be thin, because there's the 'right' kind of thin (with large breasts and a dayglo tan) and the 'wrong' kind of thin (any of the following: small boobs, prominent collarbone, UGLY KNEES.)

On the other end of the scale is the frankly irritating idea, as presented by commenter 'Brucie from Liverpool', that big girls are 'real women' (so I suppose skinny girls are just pretending?) You just can't win, really. Where's the middle ground here? You know, the one which embraces the reality that all women, regardless of their body shape or size, are equally real and equally deserving of a little bloody respect.

Just a small piece of annoyance

2009-07-28T23:48:00.003+01:00

This cropped up today. A rather bleak story of how a woman committed suicide, and I found myself wondering why the article was intent on mentioning very little apart from her being a working mother.

True there was a detail of her death, and where her body was found, about how she was a caring mother of three (about four times) and was just restarting work after maternal leave (about five times) and that’s it aside from her final text message. But from that there is precious little to piece together, and to fill this void in the article the Daily Male’s writer inputs a number of times that she was juggling a career and children. This is odd seeing as it seemed equally likely to be postnatal depression, which affects any number of mothers (from 5 to 25%) but the overall effect can be pretty severe in some cases. Such as with most forms of depression. And this was for the most part just added as an extra.

But, as I digress, for some reason I’m still drawn back to this point of a working mum. I got the subtle feeling (or as subtle as a brick through the window subtle) that the article was actually anti women working. The repeated use of mother and working with little reference to her life as well, made it feel like the author didn’t want women to build a career. But also the singular case would then be added the pantheon of hate this rag perpetuates in its readership. A similar tack is used with immigration. There was and will be a series of small stories ranging from the casual sh*te surveys the paper digs up to articles like this whereby a single event has happened and then be applied to the whole. There will be anecdotal type stories and pieces submitted by hacks hoping to earn a small living.

Finally this sort of thing is then topped up with irony as the columnists (a career perhaps) such as Liz where’s-my-horse Jones or Melaine You-either-agree-with-me-or-you’re-anti-Semitic Philips writing dithering codswallop about how either their ‘friends’’ lives have been affected by working or how their own ‘lives’ have been affected. And maybe have Peter the-c*nt Hitchins* write some dumb diatribe in his usual blathering way and then blame it on the government.

And hey presto you have the nation** wanting women to stay at home, tend to the children and house and be submissive to whatever the husband brings her. So yeah a minor annoyance but expect in a few weeks sudden articles on why women are happier as housewives and how women with careers are unhappy.

* Wasn’t feeling that original, was going to say how misogynist, regressive, bible-blinded, hate-monger but really that one word sums it up

**I.e. Daily Mail readers and the legions of commenters that scour the web and letters’ pages, in other words people whose opinion is as fair and balanced as a judge at a show trial.

Popstars: The Rivals *

2009-07-14T20:15:00.004+01:00

You know how Cheryl Cole and Danni Minogue hate each other? Oh, they're always at it like cats and dogs, never have a nice word to say about each other. Danni's jealous you see, because Cheryl is younger than her, and because younger automatically means more beautiful, of course. The rivalry between them has got so bad that all at war has erupted on the set of the X Factor - a style war. Every day they try to outdo each other in that uniquely feminine way, with their outfits. so far Danni's trouncing Cheryl (apart from an embarrassing incident yesterday when they turned up both wearing the same shoes - NIGHTMARE!) and boy, isn't she smug about it.

Dear reader, you may have noticed that the previous paragraph is pure, unparallelled bollocks. I don't know Danni Minogue or Cheryl Cole, they're pop singers and judges on a tv talent show; I live in Essex and have savings totalling 47p, our worlds have yet to collide. They've never publicly said a bad word about each other, no "sources close to (either) star" have been quoted dishing the dirt on their "feud" and there's no evidence whatsoever that any more thought has gone into their outfits every day of last week beyond recognising the need to not leave the house naked.

Yet the Fail has presented every one of the ideas stated in the first paragraph as fact. Daily. I don't like the X Factor (though I'll admit to watching the auditions - yes, I'm a horrible person), Cheryl Cole (the "tv personality" I suppose, as I don't know her as a person) irritates the hell out of me and I have no strong feelings towards Danni Minogue, but Cod, I know every detail of their "feud", thanks to saturation coverage in the Fail.

It started when Cheryl joined the show on the last series. The Fail reported on the day of her appointment that Danni would "obviously feel envious and threated by her younger, thinner rival". She "could not compete" looks-wise, simply because Cheryl was a decade younger. Before filming even started they reported that Danni "would hate" Cheryl. All pure speculation, of course, and ignoring key points like the fact that beauty is subjective and thus not ruled by age and dress size.

And so it went on, and goes on, the last week being dominated by reports of how the judges were "trying to outdo each other" with their choice of clothes, with daily updates suggesting that one was "smug" and the other "furious at being outdone" without ever providing any evidence other than a photo of each of them smiling gaily, and quotes regarding "rumours" that they started, and have not been reported anywhere else.

If you're wondering what my point is, it is this. This "feud" is as manufactured as Girls Aloud theselves. It exists only within Fail writers own minds. Yet they slavishly report on it every day, along with innumerate other "catfights" between female celebrities for which no evidence exists. Why? Because they get to perpetuate their own ridiculous views on female beauty, by both implicitly and explicitly implying that Cheryl is 'more beautiful' because she is younger, and that more beautiful is 'better'. This in turn encourages women to judge each other on these terms and society in general to dismiss women as petty, insignificant creatures obsessed with make-up and clothes. Female solidarity is replaced by in-fighting; the Patriarchy rumbles on undisturbed.

The idea behind this blog was to bring our own brand of Facebook activism into the wider world, where we might one day help to inspire change. With that in mind, while there's no petition to sign and no ombudsman to complain to, we can all do something to help fight this characterisation of women as shallow bimbos in constant competition with one another - don't believe everything you read. At least if you read it in the Fail.

* With apologies to those quite rightly uninterested in fake tv talent contests.

Too Much Shit In Newspaper Hampers Readership Prospects

2009-07-12T15:34:00.013+01:00

Only joking, sadly; The Mail manages to garner readers even with non-articles like "Too much cleavage in workplace hampers promotion prospects". Just as well we're here to rip them to shreds too, eh?

In contrast to Ayelet Waldman's unfortunate foray into Mailanism, it seems fairest to distinguish this drivel from its ostensible source ("an author... Elizabeth Squires" who is quoted but sparingly) as from research it is hard to tell precisely how stupidly sexist she is in her own right, as compared to through the Daily Mail looking-glass. Reviews for her boob books are split down the middle from the evangelical to the eviscerating, and I am loathe to make as prejudiced use of her material as the anonymous Daily Mail Reporter responsible for cobbling together this waste of words.

Dislaimer dispatched, it must however be said that for an article barely 300 words long, it packs an impressively idiotic punch - aided and abetted most of all by Ms. Squires' own research. While it is the commonest of sense to know that one should dress (and speak, and write, and behave) professionally in a professional context, this article stretches that most basic truism far beyond the bounds of objectivity.

Like many a Mail article, "Too much cleavage..." begins with a veneer of reasonableness. Many women probably have "stopped power-dressing in preference for wearing tighter and more skimpy outfits at work", and it's probably not a good idea. As a woman naturally endowed with large breasts, I know that there are some styles of top that I should steer clear of for work, in the same way that a male colleage would be expected to dispense with his Hawaaian shirts/shorts/vests/stupid T-shirts. I may not like it, but I can understand it, as part of a sartorial paradigm to which both genders must submit between the hours of nine and five. A sartorial paradigm, no less, which can be hard to negotiate at times; "I don't think women are stupid, I just don't think anyone knows the rules", says Squires. So far, so fair (if also somewhat frustrating). But not for long - this is, after all, the Daily Male.

For, after labouring this obvious point for a few pedestrian paragraphs, the Emperor's new clothes dissolve to reveal the usual bile beneath. Why, for instance, does it matter that Ms (or, interestingly, "Miss" - Christ on a bike, is this woman unmarried?! What's she doing being quoted in a national rag, ye gods?) Squires is "a mother of three"? Oh yes, it doesn't. They just don't know how else to categorise us breeding stock.

But most of all (and on Squires' head let this squarely fall) why is the research on female professional attire cited based entirely on "men examin[ing] photographs in a generic workplace in various outifts"? And why do these photographs feature "different bra sizes" rather than "different cleavages"?

The first variable assumes an almost exclusively masculine workplace, when in fact other women's opinions of these same pictures would have been just (and in some sectors, arguably more) relevant. We may still be battling the glass ceiling, but it's sure as hell getting crowded in the female wage basement, so to survey only men is sloppy to say the least. Unless of course you believe men both do and should have the first and last say in any professional sphere... goodness, I almost forgot I was reading the Male

The second variable is altogether more sinister, though. Dress is elective, and we must all pay for our choices in one way or another; however, to promote "medium-sized breasts" as a professional accoutrement is outrageous. What are we meant to do, list breast reductions or augmentations on our CVs along with which software packages we can use? "Fully fluent in French, German and your company's narrow definition of what constitutes mammaplastic professional perfection"? (Not to mention dressing "discreetly" - because if you have to be heard, you had better not be seen as well).

But perhaps this article's biggest failing is one of omission; the question should not just be how to dress for work, but also why "increasing numbers [are] showing more cleavage at work by wearing plunging necklines and tight tops". It couldn't possibly be that in institutionally sexist environments, some women have decided that if they're going to be judged on their looks anyway, they may as well exploit the system, could it? And it couldn't be that this professionally unprofessional approach will only disappear when male sexism does, could it? Of course not; this is not just sexism, this is Daily Mail sexism - hotpot most definitely included.

Middle-aged woman in ageing shocker

2009-07-11T21:23:00.003+01:00

Sorry for my absence in recent weeks I have been, um, otherwise engaged.

Also, the piece I was due to tear to shreds – a sickening article in The Telegraph where a quite frankly amateurish “scientific” study on rape at the University of Leicester was further misinterpreted to say that a. women who dress provocatively deserve a raping and b. men who sleep around a bit are more likely top be rapists (puh-lease!!) – was pulled and apologised for by the aforementioned pseudo-intellectual right-wing rag. Cheers to Ruth for pointing it out though.

However, I have found something else to get my hairy, gluten-free goat. The Heil website leads with this piece:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1198795/Elle-Macpherson-shows-fine-Bodywork-46-gleams-car-launch.html

To spare you the horror of having to read these loathsome twats’ ‘work’, I will summarise:

- Elle MacPherson has some cellulite just above her knees.

- The fact that Elle, 45, has some cellulite just above her knees is of some surprise.

- Elle is 45. Elle shouldn’t be 45, or something.

- And, the biscuit-taker (direct quote):

'Creping is also more common in skinnier people. Fat tends to pad out the skin and supports it more. If you have a very low body mass index like Elle does then basically you have skin travelling over muscle with no fat in between. Whereas if she was slightly plumper, she would not have the creping phenomenon as much.'

Ooh I could crush a grape.

So women should not have cellulite. They also, it seems, should not get older. Especially not if they are supermodels. Furthermore, they should not be skinny. Yet, inevitably, people get a. older and b. their metabolism slows down.

So what to do? Cull all women above the age of 35. Especially if they’re really attractive former models. Shit, time’s running out Karo…

I Don't Have Much To Say...

2009-07-09T14:55:00.002+01:00

I didn't want to miss my blog spot but the net is a bit all over the shop at home and to be honest I'm struggling to find inspiration.
The reason for this is that my landladies have split up. Do they still love each other? Yes.
The reason they are splitting and one is leaving with the kids in just under two weeks is simple: the teenaged daughter made a concerted effort from the outset to split them up. Not really because she disliked Liz, though she now says she "hates" her, but because she doesn't want her Mum being gay. Her methods of doing this have utterly shocked me, and I grew up in a fractured, messy family. She even asked her Mum if, now she had split, if she would "go back to the other side".
So I'd like to thank the Fail and everyone else for peddling homophobic bile and making out Clause 28 is the antichrist. Maybe if that wasn't the case, a teenaged girl (who was bullied and assaulted by homophobic fellow pupils, who no doubt got their lovely opinions from their parents) would not be doing such terrible things. Or maybe she would, I don't know.

All I do know is it's very sad.

Love all?

2009-07-08T19:04:00.005+01:00

So Wimbledon is finally over, and I'm breathing a sigh of relief for two different reasons. First of all, I don't enjoy tennis; it's dull as anything and so far as I can tell, designed exclusively for the upper classes. Who else would pay £12 for strawberries? However, for the week Wimbledon was on, I happened to be working in an office full of people who think tennis is the sport of kings, or possibly Gods, and as such the big screen in the reception area where I worked was duly switched to the BBC for all day coverage, leading to there constantly being a gaggle of suited bankers hanging around my desk all day chatting almonst themselves (or worse, to me) about the tennis. This, in case you were wondering when I was going to get to it, leads me to the second reason I'm glad Wimbledon is over: it brought out amongst these men and women such misogyny that I had to spend seven hours a day restraining myself from reaching over the desk and smacking them in the mouth.

I speak, of course, about Venus And Serena Williams. Now I never heard anyone once comment on Andy Murray's physique (a bit weedy looking, if you ask me) or ponder if the male player who was 6'7 had an unfair advantage. But when it came to the Williams sisters, two dedicated atheletes who are famously known for having the muscular physiques of, um, a dedicated athelete, the bile poured.

"Oh, I hope she doesn't win - look at her, she looks like a man", "yuck, I hope she gets knocked out, she's revolting, so manly", "it's unfair for them to get this far, they look like men", "I prefer Venus to Serena, at least she's a bit more feminine looking..." - yep, my charming colleagues, male and female, were rooting against two talented players because they don't have the most feminine of physiques (I'd also ask whoever wrote the book saying muscles were a masculine attribute, but I fear that's a different topic for a different day).

It just goes to show how thin the veneer of equality we have these days truly is. Yes, we can have female atheletes but heaven forbid they actually *look* like atheletes. Women players now get equal prize money to men, but we only really approve if they remain slim and delicate, and you know, non-threatening. Because that's what it's about, isn't it? We, men and women, don't like strong women, still. Women should be fragile, delicate, submissive, or so the Patriarchy would have us believe, so we freak out when someone comes along who challenges that ideal.

Add to that the fact that Wimbledon officials have admitted to putting the most attractive female players on centre court, regardless of ranking, or the importance of the match (hence Serena Williams, 2nd in the world found herself playing an important match on court number 2, which attracts virtually no tv coverage while two unknown but nubile blonde beauties battled it out for the cameras on the centre stage) and the constant lingering close-ups of whichever women in the audience that day had made the sartorial mis-step of wearing a low-cut top in the sweltering heat, and I think we can all agree tennis is a strong contender for the prestigious title of Most Sexist Sport Ever.

"I don't hate gays, I just don't think kids should know they exist"

2009-07-04T15:25:00.004+01:00

...is the general theme of this ridiculous piece of fearmongering journalism, which I shall proceed to gently critique. And by gently critique, I mean 'expose as the hateful ramblings of a paranoid homophobe'

The first piece of telling evidence is contained within the first few paragraphs:

Of course, attitudes towards gay rights have changed a lot in the past 21 years. But it is still wrong for councils to spend their residents' money promoting homosexuality.

Ridiculous. Councils are not promoting homosexuality. The long overdue apology over Section 28 is nothing to do with 'promotion' of any sexual persuasion. Section 28 forbade councils to distribute any material which portrayed homosexuality as anything but abnormal. To overturn this rule, and then (rightly) apologise for it ever having been put in place (thanks, Tories) is NOT promoting homosexuality - it is recognising the right of gay couples to regard their lifestyle as normal, and for others to accept homosexuality for what it is - a sexual and romantic preference for the same sex present in a person from the day they were born.

There's the key; a person is born gay. They do not choose homosexuality like they choose to, say, dye their hair or wear skinny jeans. Homosexuality is not a trend or fad - it's a genuine, honest affection for the same sex.

Of course, the coincidentally named Harry Phibbs seems to think that telling our kids about gays will turn them all into the pink-wearing, limp-wristed flouncy poofters Conservatives still believe make up the vast majority of the gay population:

Another book called The Milkman's on his Way explicitly described homosexual intercourse and, indeed, glorified it, encouraging youngsters to believe that it was better than any other sexual way of life....From my experience of those children, it is difficult enough for them to understand normal sexual relations without having homosexuality foisted upon them.
'I find it horrifying that anyone would support that.
'All of that was stopped dead by Clause 28. Clause 28 was introduced for that purpose, and that purpose alone.
'It was not intended to harm people who, as adults, decided that that was the way of life for them.

Quotes from Baroness Knight, and may I humbly suggest she takes the stick out of her arse and begins to realise that learning about sex will not turn kids into little shagging demons with penises for teeth and STDs coming out of their ears. And Phibbs uses this as an apology for Section 28. He suggests that it was little to do with homophobia and more to do with a 'Won't Anyone Please Think Of The Children' type mentality.

But why shouldn't children learn about homosexuality? Why shouldn't they be given the opportunity to learn about some of the things that make human beings different? There are a lot of excellent reasons why kids should know about 'Daddies and Daddies' as well as the traditional family unit.

Firstly, as the Mail constantly bemoans, the traditional 'Mummy, Daddy and Baby' family is no longer the only valid option for parents these days. An increase in single parent families, adopted families and step families cannot be halted by closing your eyes and singing 'la la la' until they go away. Our kids will have better self esteem and become more well-rounded, less prejudiced people if they realise that growing up with two daddies, a mummy and a mummy or even just one mummy doesn't make you any less of a human being than the other kids whose parents married, stayed together and remain together. Children who hit puberty and discover their own homosexual tendencies won't feel trapped by their sexuality, won't feel forced into a false heterosexuality in order to feel 'normal' - all of this is progress, and all of this is good.

Unfortunately for the Fail, it also stands against the rigid, traditional values they hold so dear. But, as a final thought, what would the Fail say if a law were passed forbidding local councils to create or distribute materials portraying Christianity as 'anything but abnormal'? What would they say if Baroness Knight suggested that children were too young to be exposed to the adult world of religion? (After all, while one is born gay or straight, a child is taught religion - no child is born a Christian) Is it not, to paraphrase the Baroness, hard enough for children to understand the world around them without having religion foisted upon them....?

And so we have the overprotective mother...

2009-07-02T00:02:00.003+01:00

Hokay so it’s my turn to write a blog post, bit late I know. And while the issue about France’s recent ban on burkas has got me thinking about the imposing of clothes on women by state and/or religion, I found that writing as a white, atheistic-secularist male I wouldn’t really be able to comment much beyond that of wtf. So instead this post is about three articles by Penny Marshall, Middle-England’s defender from sex and pornography.

Anyway, there are three articles in the Daily Fail archives to choose from. The most recent is about lipstick lesbianism and how it is an evil and corrupting force that destroys young girls, the next is about the TV and how it is an evil and corrupting force that destroys young girls, and finally an article about teenagers making their own porn (which actually is disturbing, but the scapegoat of TV returns as the evil and corrupting force that destroys young girls). And from these three articles I got the picture that Penny Marshall is conservative and over-protective and elitist. Three properties of an individual I consider diabolical and unnerving.

The first article, that is the one about lipstick lesbians, I got the feeling that the writer was not only homophobic but also shocked at the type of culture her conservative upbringing never allowed. However in trying to defend her way of thinking, that sexuality should be like a binary labelled object such as a consumer product might have, and pointing to the problems of peer pressure that occurs in youth culture, she comes off as sounding a wee bit homophobic and sounding more like Mary Whitehouse. Pointing at famous lady liplockers (horrible phrase I know), whose lip-shtick whatever shenanigans are more likely to appeal to lonely male divorcees than teenage females; it hawks more of Edward Woodward’s Sergeant Howie screaming at the Wicker man than a serious article about the connotations of association from the media-infused culture delegating the practices of young women.

But then the problem, that they are doing it for the sake to appeal more attractive to potential mate, is surely a problem about the current media obsessed necessity in coupling, pregnancies, marriage and the alienation of people being single for the sake of being single. Shoot if two girls are kissing to appeal more attractive to males then surely the problem is not the kissing but the apparent necessity to be non-single. But we can’t be blaming the press can we?

As to article two, the TV viewing, this is just hilarious. ‘PARENTS YOUR CHILDREN ARE WATCHING FILTH’ to paraphrase the humour. I’m not sure whether I’m a prime candidate to criticise, having watched the likes of Monkey Dust, Neco Z Alenky, the Godfather, the Shining, Alien, South Park: the Movie and series and Trainspotting before the age of fifteen, I’ve supposed to be a mass-murdering, cynical junkie with a deeply dark sense of humour. Well the last bit is true but as of twenty I haven’t murdered anyone yet and in being a very moderate drinker I don’t think diving into the filthiest toilet in Scotland for a hit is going to happen anytime soon. But it is funny the angst the author has about what the teenage girls are watching. It is like seeing a nervous breakdown in typographical form. See as TV shows are lined up and criticised for being corrupting and wrongly influential (as opposed to say the popular press pushing criticisms of any famous women who are not married, with children, without a strong voice, within a certain body image, and are not Kelly Brooks).

But then that worried mother screaming “Won’t somebody please think of the children!?” (as Helen Lovejoy would cry) is just what suites the Daily Fail. That is, cheap criticism on modern culture (that doesn’t feature ITV) and the degradation of youths, and the collapse of morals. This brings me onto the third article, the actually mildly disturbing article.

This article’s content is mildly alarming. Not because what is happening, that teenagers are making their own porn and distributing it among their peers (this is more disturbing than alarming and has a whole range of problems not least that the Daily Fail is probably the culprit), but the way that this article insists that this thing is a problem because it has ‘infected’ middle class girls. For the sake of Pete I cannot abide by this elitist bullshit any more than I can abide the Daily Mail itself. Because what it is saying is that it is okay for teenagers to make porn of themselves so long as they are of what was once called the working class. Hence because some prissy private (dick-)eds and grammar girls are doing it it is now a moral decadence that must be stopped for “Won’t somebody please think of the children?”.

In closing I look forward to more Penny Marshall articles, as she strives to defend teenage girls from reality, as they’re nothing short of stereotypical wailing that can never be taken seriously.

2009-06-30T17:36:00.003+01:00

Worshipping at the Altar of Abortion

2009-06-30T00:34:00.004+01:00

Which, as Tracy pointed out over at the DMHFFH Facebook HQ sounds like a brilliant name for a riot grrl band, is the best comment so far over at today's anti-choice article:

"Two or more abortions could more than DOUBLE chances of a premature birth next time"

Well ladies, that's you told, isn't it.

However, even the DM admits that fertility doctors have said that the research does not prove a link. As they've not actually provided a link to the actual study, or indeed who carried it out, I did a little internet digging, and found this gem of a quote from Dr van Oppenraaij, the man who headed the research team: "[m]ore large controlled studies, ... are needed to confirm our findings." What the DM also failed to mention - and here's the key part - that the study didn't conclude just abortion caused an increase in premature birth. The list of causes included a range of problems, from previous miscarriage, a history of premature birth, high blood pressure, being over or under weight, vanishing twin pregnancies... the list is pretty long, actually. So it's not just abortion, then.

Back to the article. The DM quoted some experts as saying the evidence was "compelling" - however, obviously, it didn't say who the experts were. Possibly because they might have been from the group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, a pro-life (of the "let's involve a Christian Priest variety") organisation, according to sourcewatch.org. It's not dissimilar to asking a Tory if Gordon Brown is a good PM.

A few links on the same research:
Sciencedaily.com
Teh Grauniad
The research article itself

No, Burger King, I don't want your seven inches in my mouth

2009-06-26T11:56:00.003+01:00

So Burger King have got a new phallus shaped burger called, wait for it, the Seven Incher (oh hee hee, ha ha, such wit). How are they going to advertise it? By posing a woman like a blow-up doll and shoving into her mouth of course! With clever headline about "blowing" your mind, natch:

http://perezhilton.com/2009-06-25-do-hamburgers-make-ya-horny#respond

*Sigh* Because that's all women are, just vessels, waiting anxiously to take your seven inches, any which way we can get them. Except if you look at this model closely, her eyes are widened in alarm/terror. She doesn't want your seven inches. But your going to make her take it anyway, yeehaw!

Because rape is HILARIOUS, obviously. Maybe that's an extreme reaction to this, maybe most people won't see it as incitement to commit sexual assualt. Hopefully. But what is clear to anyone viewing this advert is that women are subservient, women are here to provide sexual pleasure to men, whether they say they want to or not, women or of little value. Hey we're just a marketing tool, sex sells, after all.

And just when will the cock jokes start to wear thin? I always wonder how men feel about having their anatomy reduced to an un-funny one liner. I guess advertising execs will stop making penis jokes at about the same time they make an advert alluding to the idea that women are sexually dominant over men. I.e. never.

NB: A word to the wise, avoid the comments on that article if you want to avoid the rage. Nobody is implying that oral sex in and of itself is demeaning to women. If you don't get that, you're not clever enough to be allowed access to the internet, imo.