News flash - women not people, do not have feelings

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.

London Council cuts

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

Feminist Rage™ - the brand you can trust?

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.

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

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Love Music, Hate Sexism

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.

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

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.

Horny Hernu vs. The Front Page Campaign

What is it with the name “Piers”? The first that springs to mind is of course Mr. Morgan, but lately it’s been his equally slimy, paunched namesake getting (he wishes) on my tits; Piers Hernu, sometime Daily Mail contributor and, as I have had to hear twice on the radio this week, former editor of Front magazine and contributor to FHM. Journalism is of course the world’s second oldest profession – but no more so than in Mr. Hernu’s case does one suspect it was only an excuse to sidle a little closer to the oldest.

The reason for the BBC’s infliction of his dulcet tones is the Front Page Campaign, which, having recently won lottery funding, is now also receiving some media attention, leading to on-air debate between its founder (Amy King) and Piers Hernu. The campaign’s stated aim is “to protect children from offensive media and restore choice for adults”, particularly regarding “sexually explicit photographs and language”. In practical terms, this is a demand that such material be age-restricted and placed on the top shelf, out of sight and reach of children, but still perfectly accessible to adults. So what’s all the fuss about? Horny Hernu’s ego, apparently.

The first broadcast took place on 5live on Monday. I wondered at first if he's got real live friends to go out with at the weekends, because Hernu still sounded drunk; judging from his second performance on Radio Ulster on Wednesday, he’s either an inept alcoholic or has mugged one for their baseless bravado. When he wasn’t busy sniggering or talking over Ms. King (a tactic most of us leave behind with ill-judged haircuts and notes home from the teacher) Hernu repeated a couple of MENSAesque points over both interviews.

Firstly, lads’ mags are “clearly not sexually explicit” because “um, you know, I think that there’s a, a big, ermmm” – *wheezy silence* – “problem here with, with, with mistaking, erm, toplessness with pornography”. Well, quite. After all, the term definitely wasn’t “sexually explicit” rather than “pornography”, and anyway tits and ass have absolutely nothing to do with male heterosexual arousal – it’s really all just an NHS-sponsored biology campaign. Everybody else can tell that lads' mags are sexually explicit – why doesn't one of their own contributors have the Nuts to admit it?

Then, on Wednesday, he squawked that “if you were to suggest this to any other country in the whole of Europe, they would laugh you out, you know, th- they would just laugh at you, because the rest of Europe has a much more enlightened attitude towards nudity and sexuality”.

Question: has Hernu ever been to the rest of Europe? I know it’s a funny foreign place all the way across the channel, but had he ever lumbered aboard a Eurostar, he might conceivably be aware that, actually, the rest of Europe wouldn’t need to “laugh… out, you know, laugh at” anyone for starting a Front Page Campaign, because they simply don’t have a comparable lads’ mag “culture” to protest in the first place. Their “enlightened attitude towards nudity and sexuality” would balk as much at Zoo as it does every summer at its escapees’ yearly migration to Eye-beef-fah. (And if we really had a problem with “sexually repressed morality”, we might have less of a problem with teenage pregnancy which – oh look! – is the highest in Europe).

So far, so dense. But he wouldn’t be a proper little sexist without a good bit of cliché thrown in, would he? Never fear, he’s on the case; “it’s usually some embittered old harridan who’s got- who gets on her high horse about this, and, and, you know, nobody actually listens, ’cause this has come up time and time again, you know, various women have fronted these kind of campaigns and, as usual, it, er, it turns out that there aren’t lots of people up in arms about this, there aren’t lots of children traumatised by this, it’s just, it’s just not the case that people are bothered about it”. Well yes, of course; “women” – the word spat out like curdled milk – taking issue with it is entirely different from proper “people” doing so, isn’t it?

Ms. King’s citation of surveys indicating that 98% of the general public agree with the campaign was met with further bluster, and burblings about young men being “slowly broken in, as it were, to the harsh realities” – *snort*– “of the sexual world”. But whose sexual world? Lads’ mags have nothing to do with the delicate flowering of male sexuality and everything to do with the entrenchment of male sexism. An airbrushed, submissive, surgically-enhanced, Aryan model flaunting her knickers and knockers isn’t sex; it’s wank-fodder. Wank-fodder, no less, for the spotty teenager who can’t get a real girl because he doesn’t know how to - and Nuts and Zoo sure as hell aren’t going to teach him.

Well, maybe if he's really lucky he'll grow up to be as “embittered” about “various women” as poor old Piers Hernu himself. Sexual enlightenment, my arse.

Oh dear Cod.

Woman in not 100% utterly perfect shocker.

This article can't be serious. Can it?

I'd love to see "Daily Mail Reporter"'s flawless body, if he/she feels it's acceptable to criticise someone for having a slightly odd thumb.

This is quite possibly the most ridiculous case of body fascism I've ever encountered. From an objective viewpoint, Megan Fox is an attractive woman (not that it should matter whether she is or not), and to write an article trying to claim she isn't purely for having a slightly short thumb is absolutely ludicrous.

Yet, of course, they still find an excuse to publish multiple pictures of an scantily-clad woman, despite simultaneously castigating her for not being quite 100% perfect.

Has the Fail somehow descended into self-parody without us even realising?