Prince/ss

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]

Sons and Daughters

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.

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?

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.

Sharia Law vs Daily Mail Law

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.

Popstars: The Rivals *

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.

Love all?

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.

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.

Gender and Law: A Bedraggled Law Student's Comment

It'll be about a month ago, during the period of my life I'll always remember as revision hell, when Baroness Hale and Her Honour Judge Case came to speak at my college. Having smarted from yet another kick in the pants arising out of my lack of legal knowledge, I thought I'd take a nice break and sit down and hear the good Lady herself.

For those who may not know, Baroness Hale is the first female Law Lord (Law Lady?) and HHJ Case is a Circuit Judge who mainly works in Chester and is Treasurer of the UK Women Judges' Association.

Right, now I have that out of the way, I should add I would have given you all a transcript of what was said, but I don't know if I'd be allowed to, and my Zen died, along with the recording on there. So you'll have to put up with what I remember.

Anyways, back to the show. Baroness Hale made her speech first, and it was mainly about her experiences as a woman working within the legal world. She'd actually come up from an academic background, which is surprising, considering that most if not nearly ALL the judiciary tend to come up from the ranks of the barristers (with the occasional solicitor slipping through...). A recurrent comment throughout her speech was upon her status as the “second woman” in everything (except the House of Lords capacity clearly), which she'd felt had been more difficult, in certain ways, than being the first woman. She had also given a very entertaining discourse on the meaning of the word “feminist”, with the very first definition confusing the political and social views with femininity, and gradually gaining its proper definition, significant of course because she described herself as a feminist. On the whole, the speech was mainly about her career, but focusing on the difficulties she'd faced coming up through the ranks and the support she had along the way, which was interesting in itself, considering she's been around for years and would have definitely had to put up with a lot grief, not all of it explicit, over her gender. One thing I enjoyed about the speech was the optimism that seemed to radiate from it with regard not just to female judges but also judges from ethnic minorities. But I'll cover that in the questions section.

Judge Case made her speech next, her one being along the same lines as Baroness Hale's, but this time with her doing the law degree, taking time off to have her children and then coming back into the law again. What was interesting to note was what was said to her at the time when she had finished her law degree and decided to have her family. She had been told, in very stark terms, that the career of a barrister would never leave room to have children. It was either one or the other. Perhaps more pessimistic than Baroness Hale's speech, since she had ended on such a note, saying that her advice would be to mothers thinking of a career in the law to think about the choice that had to be made, between a career and children.

Question time came and this was where the most interesting part arose. Someone had actually pointed out Judge Case's pessimism to her and told her that moves were being attempted to help barristers who had children as well, an example being a creche set up in one of the chambers. Her Honour had reacted with delight to this, and I was thinking to myself, I'm surprised they didn't come up with anything like that before. Another question had related to a point I mentioned earlier, about judges from minorities, and how there was talk of putting positive discrimination legislation in to encourage both woman and ethnic minorities into the judiciary. This has always been a particular bug-bear of the right, who feel that their privileged domain is being invaded. Baroness Hale's answer was very encouraging, to say the least.

She had given a very good positive argument for it, stating that this would encourage people from different backgrounds and experiences to be part of the office that would make a difference to the way the country was run. Rather than ruining the institution, it would be enriched by being informed by so many different experiences of life. With England becoming a more multicultural country, this is something that would reflect that multicultural makeup, and all these different experiences would come together to help develop the law.

Well, speeches and questions ending, I decided to return back to my study group. But I came away thinking that with someone like Baroness Hale at the very top, a feminist Law Lady keen on diversifying the judicial complexion of the country, perhaps change is finally happening. Perhaps we can finally get into the positions which matter the most, and not compromise our principles for them. Of course, many obstacles will always remain, not least a Press that feeds on ignorance like pigs on manure (and I have to apologise now... to the pigs that is), not least an entire economic class that fears that change, mistakenly thinking they will be swept away, when that change will do nothing but benefit them.

Are we truly so tied down to the past that we can't look at the future in front of us? Is it really such an impossibility, such anathema to "common sense", for those in positions of power to be from our minority sections of the population? I suppose the word "minority" is facetious in relation to women, since they make up 50% of the world population. Therein lies the nub of it, the contradiction at the heart of everything: those who make up a sizeable portion of our population, women, Afro-Carribeans, Asians, the "minorities" who help keep this country going. Why don't they get a say in running it?

As I say, with a feminist Law Lady, that change is beginning. Now we have to keep it rolling.

Who knows? Maybe we'll have a Lord Rahman up there some day :-P.

By the way, if my blog entry does not do the good Baroness justice, a much better profile may be found here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/jan/09/lords.women.