Marriage, expectation and Pippa Middleton's bum

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.

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.

Virgin/Whore/Lunatic then?

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?

1. Yes
2. No

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?

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

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.

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

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 internet is for porn

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.

Three little pigs...

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

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.

Prostitutes go to Heaven. It's their clients who go to Hell.

Some people say that feminism is all about choice, about giving women the freedom to do whatever they choose with their bodies. That's true, but it stops short of giving the whole story - feminism is about giving women freedom of choice, but it's also about helping them to make the best choices, for themselves and for all women.

That's where the title of this post, a quote by David LaChappelle comes in. There is no supply without demand. It doesn't make good business sense. Many women choose to go into prostitution, few do so because they actively *want* to. They feel they have to. But whether that young woman on the streets is there to feed her two-year-old son or her crack habit, if men didn't offer to pay for her services, if society as whole didn't dismiss serious debate about prostitiution with flippant remarks about it being the oldest profession, with jokes that marriage is "legalised prostitution", with wishy-washy legislation which at the moment punishes only those least responsible for keeping the industry going, far fewer women would make that choice. Maybe more women would be aware of the other options available to them, of the help they could get, until one day, nobody chooses to work in an industry that degrades *all* women.

This is why the proposed legislation on prostitution, which would make it an offence to pay for the services of a trafficked or "controlled" prositute, whilst legalising prostitution itself, are at least a step in the right direction. While men are still willing to pay for sex, desperate women will be willing to sell it, but if that demand dwindles, society will have to step up and look after these women, instead of leaving them to dice with fate, selling themselves to perfect strangers, many of whom have a propensity to violence towards women.

Of course, this legislation doesn't go far enough, because as a country we're not bold enough to say that buying women's bodies is wrong, full stop. But it's a start. The next step is for feminists, and especially male feminists, to stand up and say, loudly: "the purchase of female flesh is wrong and I will not be a consumer."

We are not for sale.

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.

Sleeping With The Enemy

Normally I try to offer some kind of comprehensive argument in postings, with background, both sides of the debate and proposed solutions.

But this time I’m just going to put it out there, because I am stumped.

Several conversations have been had recently about the so-called ‘rules’ of dating, and it’s slowly been eating away at me to the point where I am actually pissed off.

Dating etiquette states that women are not supposed to ‘put out’ on the first night, ideally not until the second or third, if you’re actually serious about taking it further: getting down and dirty early doors, apparently, means you are easy and is akin to wearing bells on your ankles the word “unclean” daubed on your face in menstrual blood.

For example, an English friend of mine always goes for it on the first date because, well, what’s the point in going out with someone if you’re not compatible sexually, something a lot of Northern Europeans seem to think too. She has a very good point, but most of the men she dates it seems disagree. “Job done” appears to be the overwhelming attitude. Now neither her nor I would suggest everyone follows her lead but, surely if the man is comfortable getting to ‘it’, then he is as responsible as the woman?

The implication is that that a woman has to act all coy and prim for, like, 10 hours, and then let it all hang out as if some mystical chirpse-threshold has been passed.

The man, meanwhile, is just a cock-on-tap ready to go when the light shines green but is tied inexorably into the ludicrous assumption that somehow following a pointless manifesto makes them any more or less desirable.

This is, well, insulting, to both men and women.

What do people think? Why is it that women are thought of in lesser terms when they do what most men would be prepared to do? Shouldn’t the fact that we are allowed and encouraged to sex each other outside of marriage have rendered such protocol redundant?

I am not sure. I know where I stand (not giving a fuck, if you’ll pardon the pun) but what about my fellow Femis? Answers on a novelty Sarah Palin condom packet please.

"Bad Mother" Bad Science from the illustrious author of "A Playdate with Death"

The wittily-named Femail (geddit? geddit? just in case we hadn’t twigged that the rest of the paper is a tad male-dominated) is always a fine emetic read, but they really hit the jackshit jackpot recently with a guest spot from author Ayelet Waldman. Her article – here comes the train, little baby, because it’s really quite a mouthful – “Why it can be good to be a bad mother in a world where modern parenting has become hideously competitive”, unleashed on 28/05/09, boasts like all the best literary works an impressive twist in its tale, achieved chiefly by beginning quite reasonably.

The byline is deceptively encouraging as "Ayelet... argues that no woman is a perfect mother, and the sooner someone stands up for Bad Mothers the better". Was infiltration complete, I wondered on a first reading - had common sense, like MRSA and pig flu before it, finally destroyed the moronic inferno from within? Alas not; the Daily Mail is simply as incapable of balanced reporting of its own content as of the outside world. “Stand[ing] up” for anyone is by no stretch of any imagination (and lord knows their readership’s is a fevered one) what the charming Ms. Waldman proceeds to do.

I must confess, I have yet to delve too deeply into Waldman’s back catalogue, though there have been some passable reviews for her most recent works, such as Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, if not for her earlier Mommy-track Mysteries series (distinguished, if that’s quite the word, by distinctly Goosebumpesque dust jackets and worse titles than you can shake a B-movie at). But from reading articles such as this and the scintillating “Truly, Madly, Guiltily”, I really don’t envy her editor.

The plain and plaguing fact is, she just doesn’t know what she’s on about, as like the proverbial Blackadderian pencil she bounces pointlessly from one self-contradiction to another, without any apparent sense of, well, contradiction. It’s hard not to feel her next franchise should be a Mommy-track pantomime when mummy-bashing is at once “utterly unfair – because… no one hurls criticism like this at fathers” (OH YES, IT IS!) and yet sound grounds for a newspaper article because “so-called Good Mothers can be downright bad for their children” (OH NO, THEY’RE NOT!) until she remembers that it’s really “time we all accepted ourselves for… mothers who do our best” (OH YES… etc). This is no logical pre-empting of a counter-argument to reassert one’s original point; she just can’t make up her muddled mind.

Indeed, the more I eviscerate this article and research its author, the more inclined I am to agree with the reviewer on www.librarything.com who describes her debut novel, Nursery Crimes, as “Waldman's forum for rather nakedly communicating her own opinions and preferences [in a] self-indulgent, amateurish” manner. So far, so livejournal, and it wouldn’t really matter but for one thing; her petulant insistence on dragging feminism down with her.

Waldman is clearly dissatisfied with various things. Maybe it’s her kids, maybe it’s her mother (both get a good raking over in the article) or maybe she just likes a good moan – but none of these is justification for this cack-handed and irresponsible attack on the movement that gave her the voice to deride it in the first place. Like a Pantomime Dame approaching a banana skin, Waldman repeatedly misses her own points; oh yes, it is awful that parenting pressures are centred so one-sidedly on women, that the workplace has not yet caught up with gender equality, but oh no, it’s not her mother –sorry, feminism’s– fault.

The feminists of Waldman Senior’s generation did indeed “[sacrifice] much to give [women today] the opportunities they never had”, such as the right and expectation to work. So far, so fair – until she erroneously blames them for the fact “the workplace isn’t conducive to being a working mother”. If earlier feminists “were convinced they had sorted everything out for their daughters” they have been proven wrong; but they are not culpable for the work they started not yet having been completed. Neither the fact that Waldman’s own feminist ideals were shattered by “punishingly long” hours and missing her firstborn, nor the truth that some women probably do feel they had “better jolly well be Good Mothers” to justify the sacrifice of giving up their careers, are any indictment of feminism, but rather of the very forces it challenges. In attacking the effects of patriarchy and blaming them on feminism, Waldman pulls off a truly extraordinary non-sequitur.

But why? To spout such nonsense generally requires either acute stupidity or spite. In a Harvard graduate it is hard not to suspect the latter, particularly given her repeated reprobation of a mother depicted as the kind of Crazy Feminist™ Pat Robertson so feared. But actually, I don’t care why – and nor should anyone give a shit about Sophie on the swings or anything else Ayelet Waldman says or does or writes so long as she uses personal neuroses to legitimise sexism. You’d think such a self-trumpeting Former Classmate Of Obama’s might know better.

Because wanting to be treated like equals is just like invading Poland

The goal of our collective writings as Feminazery is to be a group of free thinking feminists who believe in individual freedom.

Our goal is not to be a group of feminists hell bent on the destruction of the male gene, nor is it to promote any single world-view, to encourage hate, or to sew distrust. At our core is a paper that warps its readers’ minds to suspect, hate and fear anyone who is not "like us", that it promotes an agenda that is devoid of anything worthy, and claims to be reporting the news when all we can see is a hate filled, oppressive, xenophobic, hypocritical, greed loving, freedom hating, fashion fascistic, homophobic, and above all paranoid load of crap - which is unfortunately being read by the largest share of the newspaper reading public. That is the Daily Mail.

So we here at Feminazery seek to blog about the various failings of this foetid paper, but with the focus on women. Women, according to this paper and its readers are too fat, too thin, too misshaped, too old, too poorly dressed, too wrinkly, too botoxed, too flat-chested, too big boobed, not virginal enough, not sexual enough, too skanky, too whoreish, not whoreish enough, too happy, too sad, not working enough, not at home enough, not white enough, not motherly enough, not rich enough, too homosexual, too famous and too masculine. Having read articles and comments to articles that seem to follow these complaints we are sick to death of it and seek to retort in this haven.

Not all of us are female, but we are all Feminists. No matter what genes we have or how we identify ourselves, we recognise that within every intelligent person is a part of them that rejects this hate, this bile and wants to hold up something against it. However not all of us are liberals, not all of us agree to any particular left wing agenda or right wing agenda, we are all individuals with unique political, social and environmental ideals and thoughts. The only real political agenda we all share is that of being on the other side of any debate that seeks to denegrate human beings

The one thing we all stand for is the right of every person on Earth, regardless of sex, gender, race, age or creed to be treated as equal. This is us trying to do something towards that.

And no, we are not waiting for a nice man. Or woman.