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

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 views expressed... are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline."

In this litigious age, guest publications about toothpaste tubes on Have I Got News For You probably feature many a disclaimer, but the Daily Mail must need them more than most. After all, even a police force that is itself still enormously sexist and racist might have to hold them to account if they printed their readers' comments without such equivocation. Of course, anywhere that invites public comment will draw its share of fuckwittery (just look at dear old CiF) but just how much responsibility should the Mail bear for the user-generated bile throughout their website?

Their Terms and Conditions make interesting reading. In amongst all the usual legalese about "waiv[ing] all your moral rights" by submitting content (that must really stick in their self-righteous readership's craw!) they also prohibit anything "threatening, defamatory, offensive, abusive, liable to incite racial hatred, discriminatory or" - of course - "blasphemous". This might seem reasonable enough, but for two things; firstly, the fact that they select what to publish, and secondly, that they deviate from their own guidelines.

Accurate journalism (forgive my inclusion of this phrase in a blog about the Daily Mail) depends upon reporting all angles of a given story, including those you don't like. This would excuse the decision to publish the gamut of submitted comments were there not such a clear, discriminatory bias; even with a wealth of objective and printable comments to choose from, the Mail consistently chooses to publish the most bigoted, even if this means repetiton of the unintelligible. Perhaps most tellingly of all, they would rather publish none at all than any that undermine the party li(n)e; the tale of Hans Blomberg's live televised sexual harassment of his co-host, for instance, remains conspicuously comment-free despite a number of cogent submissions made by various groups and individuals. Thus, although the Daily Mail cannot be held responsible for the content submitted, they are distinctly accountable for its editorial use.

On then to their supposed distaste for the offensive, abusive and discriminatory (I omit the small matter of "racial hatred" only for reasons of time, space and theme - feel free to submit your own treatises on this issue!) Prohibiting something in one's Terms and Conditions would seem to imply its unsuitability for publication, certainly on so controlled a basis as the one upon which Daily Mail commenting operates.

Behold, then, a few pearls of wisdom from merely the previous week that the Daily Mail considers neither offensive, abusive nor discriminatory*:

"She's quite hot, and just the right amount of stupid."

"Looks so much younger and really soft and pretty, just as women ought to be. Take note, girls..."

"people are losing their homes and havent got jobs and this silly women are having cash thrown at them... get some kids, a dog and a tubby hubby"

"Women should realise that men prefer long hair on women. Those who say they prefer short masculine styles are lying (to their wives/girlfriends with horrible short masculine hair)."

"As a red blooded male, I think [Cheryl Cole] looks fantastic, so get to the back of the queue all of you fatties."

"Single British women... are not comparable, most are overweight, bossy and lazy and oh, CAN'T cook"

"only a blind man would prefer UK women to what is the 'average' girl in Eastern Europe"

"There are Not many single women over 25 in the UK that are worth the effort 4 a relationship 2day. Wane be men/Power trippers/ drunks/pretentious, and all the problems they get into."

"Come on English women - start being feminine again!"

"British women...are too forward and not sophisticated."

"You only have to look at what British woman have become to realise why men are now looking elsewhere."

"Woman want their cake and eat it. Sorry ladies, you can do everything we do, but we can't have the kids so make a choice for crying out loud. is this why we have spoilt middle class kids running amok, spoilt little brats the lot of them. is this why marriages are falling apart. JOB OR KIDS not both."


And the award for Most Prejudice In One Post goes to:

"Although it may be easy for people to mock these guys i know exactly where they are coming from.
I am a guy in my early thirties not too ugly and doing fairly well for myself.
However, finding a woman in Britain who doesn't swear constantly, is fairly intelligent, keeps fit and healty and is not engrossed with chav celebrity pap is almost an impossibility !!!! and add to that pretty, single and can cook, no chance.

Its only a matter of time before they cotton on to this sort of business in Africa where i'm sure the women may actually be greatful."


*All comments quoted sic, much as it pains my linguistic sensibilities.

The Motherhood Penalty

As any seasoned Mail-Watcher will doubtless be aware, being a mother and having a career are completely incompatible (unless, of course, you are a Terrible Person and don't care about your children, who will run amok while you selfishly indulge yourself by going to work and earning money. They will, of course, go on to have nine children by the time they're thirteen, forcing Broken Britain to hurtle towards hell in a handcart - (c) Richard Littlejohn - but that's a different article altogether)

So what of those women who do opt to work? It's no secret that there is still a pretty sizeable pay gap separating men and women in big business - the metaphorical 'glass ceiling'. Given that society is supposed to have moved on since the glorious 1950's, the days of Tupperware parties and depressed housewives on Valium, you'd think that this would be widely considered a Bad Thing.

Not so, squawks Penny Vincenzi, who covers all her bases in her opening paragraph by setting a scene filled with highly successful women who manage to juggle business and family (all of Vincenzi's successful woman friends are married, of course) But, herein lies the twist - they were successful BEFORE pesky equality legislation PC-ified our over-feminised society. Quoth Vincenzi:

Smiling sweetly at me over her glass of wine, she then added: 'All the whingeing that went on from women because they said they were being discriminated against, I just didn't get it. The truth was simply that they weren't good enough.'

Now, if you'll excuse my French, this is patently bollocks, and it's convenient for Vincenzi to paint her little social group as a microcosm of working women from 1970 onwards. HER friends were already successful, and that means that ALL women can be successful if only they'd really put their backs into it. Never mind that years of evidence can show that women have consistently been overlooked in the workplace - all the evidence Vincenzi needs is sat around a table quaffing wine. It's a woman's fault if she takes time off to give birth and finds herself replaced when she gets back. It's a woman's fault if she is sexually harrassed - she shouldn't have worn a miniskirt (god forbid we should have the freedom to choose what we wear, and if a miniskirt is acceptable within a company's dress code, then why on earth should a woman be penalised for wearing one?)

Then she lets loose with this gem:

very few women are actually comfortable working 12-hour days while their children are very small. Most of us go for a softer option - but that's not because we face male oppression, it's because we want to be home for bathtime.

Mhm. This is where Vincenzi stumbles over the straggly tail of her own logic. She hasn't asked the key question - where are the men in this scenario? Why aren't the men bathing the kids? Why aren't the men taking time off work to look after the babies they had a 50% stake in creating? Why are women singly shouldering the burden of childcare, and, more to the point, why are we being blamed for doing so when we are doing it out of sheer necessity?

This article is essentially a poorly veiled variation of the Fail's standard 'working women vs mothers', in which women are once again levelled the ultimatum: be childless and miserable, fly high in the boardroom (but ultimately remain unfulfilled) or be a good little woman, stay at home and don't strain your feeble woman's mind about matters that don't concern your gender.

And on that note, back to work, where I can work at being as good at my job as I can be (but still, not quite as good as a man)