15 May 2008

If you hate Sex and the City…

…and you think it’s all about consumerism and shopping… then the lyrics of the film’s theme song “Labels or Love” by Fergie won’t do much to change your mind. May I present the full hideousness for your delectation:

(lyrics copied from one of those dodgy lyric sites, may not be 100% accurate)

Shopping for labels, shopping for love Manolo and Louis, it’s all I’m thinking of Shopping for labels, shopping for love 1,2,1,2,3,4 (?)

I already know what my addiction is
I be looking for labels, I ain’t looking for love
I shop for purses while I walk out the door
Don’t cry, buy a bag and then get over it
And, I’m not concerned with all the politics (?)
It’s a lot of men I know I could find another one.

Oughta know that I’m always happy when I walk out the store, store
I’m guessing Supercalifragi-sexy, nothing to be playing with
I love him, hate him, kiss him, just I’m trying to walk a mile in my kicks

(Chorus)
Love’s like a runway but which one do I love more
No emotional baggage, just replace it with Dior
Love’s like a runway, so what’s all the fussing for
Let’s stop chasing them boys and shop some more
1,2,1,2,3,4 (?)

I know I might come off as negative
I be looking for labels, I ain’t looking for love
Relationships are often so hard to tame
A Prada dress has never broken my heart before
And, ________
I’mma do the damn thing, watch me do the damn thing
Cause I know that my credit card will help me put out the flames
I’m guessing Supercalifragi-sexy, nothing to be playing with
I love him, hate him, kiss him, just I’m trying to walk a mile in my kicks

[Chorus]

Gucci, Fendi, Prada purses, purchasing them finer things
Men they come a dime a dozen, just give me them diamond rings
I’m into a lot of bling, Cadallic, Chanel and Coach
Fellas boast but they can’t really handle my female approach
Buying things is hard to say
Rocking Christian Audigier, Manolo, Polo, taking photos in my Cartier
So we can’t go all the way, I know you might hate it but
I’m a shop for labels while them ladies lay and wait for love

What can I say? Just… awful! Wrong, so very wrong on so many levels. Let’s all embrace our shopping addictions, yeah, that’s feminist, right!

Why is this relevant? Well, the series and the film is being spoken about as if it represents all women everywhere, and this is the sort of thing we’ll be told we (women) are supposed to be into: shopping, shopping, shopping.

Well, I suppose we shouldn’t have expected much more from Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas, who came up with My Humps, which Wikpedia notes was described as “one of the most embarrassing rap performances of the new millennium” and “really bad—transcendentally bad, objectively bad.”

On that note, did you catch Alanis Morrisette’s cover version of My Humps? See it. It’s very, very, good. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone sing as sarcastically as she does here. It’s a brilliant parody of the soullessness of modern pop of this type.

Before I turn myself into The F Word’s Sex and the City correspondent I’ll sign off.

Now get back to the serious stuff - go and take some action on Abortion Rights straight away!

Posted by Catherine Redfern at 15 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (0)

Futher on HFEA

Further to this there are a number of amendments to the Act being proposed lowering the time limit for terminations (with hat-tip to Left Women’s Network. These are (Proposer: Amendment):

Edward Leigh MP ‘In section 1(1)(a) of the Abortion Act 1967 (c.87) (medical termination of Pregnancy), for “twenty-fourth week” substitute “twelfth week’.

Edward Leigh MP (again) ‘In section 1(1)(a) of the Abortion Act 1967 (c.87) (medical termination of Pregnancy), for “twenty-fourth week” substitute “fourteenth week.’

Mark Pritchard, Nicolas Winterton, David Drew, Desmond Swayne, Keith Vaz, David Taylor, Nadine Dorries, Julian Brazier, Ann Winterton, Tim Farron, Edward Leigh, Damian Green, Jim Dobbin, Geraldine Smith, Ann Widdecombe and Angela Watkinson
‘In section 1(1)(a) of the Abortion Act 1967 (c.87) (medical termination of Pregnancy), for “twenty-fourth week” substitute “Sixteenth week’

Claire Curtis-Thomas ‘In section 1(1)(a) of the Abortion Act 1967 (c.87) (medical termination of Pregnancy), for “twenty-fourth week” substitute “Eighteenth week’

Nadine Dorries ‘In section 1(1)(a) of the Abortion Act 1967 (c.87) (medical termination of Pregnancy), for “twenty-fourth week” substitute “twentieth week’

There are also amendments making the abortion approval process longer like compulsory counselling.

Act Now! Go to Abortion Rights to find out how.

Posted by Louise Livesey at 15 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (3)

14 May 2008

When the personal isn’t political: abortion as taboo

Access to abortion in the UK is not as good as it should be. In less than a week, MPs will be voting on whether to make the situation worse by reducing the time limit. Kit Roskelly has dissected the issues for us; Sunny Hundal has outdone himself with a great banner and piece on ‘science abuse’ as practiced by some of the anti-choice lobby; and Laura Woodhouse has flagged the pro-choice protest that will be mounted for those able to be in London on Tuesday. Come!

Despite the excellent work that these and other writers have been doing, there is a worrying rumble just under our feet. It’s the rumble of public opinion that is being inundated with well packaged and emotionally persuasive mythology that is tapping into something deeper: a taboo.

For example, the terms of the public debate on the HFE bill have been largely set by anti-choice campaigners. Pro-choice campaigners seem to be on the back foot a lot, arguing why a reduction on 24 weeks is problematic. Yet our abortion law is 40 years old - and deeply behind the times. Even the shadow health secretary is proposing scrapping the two doctor rule; no other medical procedure requires the permission of two doctors.

Why aren’t pro-choice campaigners leveraging the time spent on the bill to visibly take the cause forward? The debate on the abortion law should be about improving access and advancing more progressive policies: in addition to eliminating the two doctor rule, restrictions on who can conduct abortions and where they can happen really need to be reviewed. Where is the campaign on any of this? Where is the surge of energy and lobby effort aimed at easing restrictions and promoting adequate access to this most important procedure?

The taboo is at work and the anti-choice lobby is using it to its advantage: what is actually an ideological campaign is being framed as being about science and medical advances. The result? The assault on women’s rights is being masked and there is a very real danger that the reduction in the time limit will be de-politicized. While Labour has a majority, this may not prove disastrous. Not so if the tides change at the next election.

Take a look at comments on recent pro-choice articles by ‘pro-choice’ readers: how many of them say, ‘I wouldn’t personally have an abortion, but I respect the right of another woman to make that choice’? What’s going on here? People are laying down their ‘pro-life’ credentials in the same breath that they espouse being pro-choice. They are playing into the idea that there is something shameful about having an abortion, assuring others that they would not be part of that, but still trying to maintain the ‘pro-choice’ label.

Why do I need to know whether someone would personally ever have an abortion or not? How is that relevant to the debate on whether abortions should be legal and available as needed? It’s not. It’s self-absorbed - a clear signal that one is conscious of the taboo and is feeling ashamed.

Don’t be fooled. Sometimes the personal isn’t political.

Photo by Laurie Pink, shared under a Creative Commons license

Posted by zohra moosa at 14 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (8)

Jewish women must beware trouser-wearing!

Fellow Jewish* women reading this will be interested to note that a male rabbi has decided we are not meant to wear trousers - even when we’re all alone in the dark. I am not kidding.

I learned of Rabbi Shlomi Avineria’s opinions on trousers via Rebecca at Jewess, who points out that this same bloke thinks that women shouldn’t enlist in the army. Well, I think there are some serious reasons against anyone signing up for the Israeli army given the current situation with Israel/Palestine, but this is not one of them: “We need you to function as a pure and clean woman… and not to undermine your mental foundation… remember: Army service for women, in any shape or form - is forbidden! Forbidden! Resist the temptation!”

Note: Avineria is rabbi for Beit El, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank built on privately-owned Palestinian land.

(On Flickr I found this photo as well, of the first woman in Israel to object to doing compulsory military service on specifically feminist grounds.)

Anyway, back to this rabbi’s views on trousers:

“in general, a woman must always wear modest clothes even when she is alone and in the dark, because the Holy one blessed be he is everywhere. And yes, trousers are a self-prohibition even when a woman is alone.”

(*In my case, it must be said, non-practicing).

Photo of sinful trews by Sim Dawdler, shared under a Creative Commons license

Posted by Jess McCabe at 14 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (3)

Shake Girl

Fifteen students and two professors at Stanford have produced an excellent graphic novel, which tells the story of a teenage Cambodian girl working at a stall selling shakes, and how she ends up getting doused in acid.

The storytelling could have turned patronising and hand-wringing, but the students navigated around this well:

You can read it here.

(Via Boing Boing)

Posted by Jess McCabe at 14 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (2)

Live Blogging: The One Show’s take on SATC

Grrr!

BBC’s The One Show has just “celebrated” the new Sex and the City film by having a gob-smacking montage of sexist comments about women and men.

First they interviewed seemingly all the sexists on the streets of London, who all said things like “Men and Women are TOTALLY different and will never understand each other!” “Men leave the toilet seat up!” “Women nag!” And so on.

Adrian Chiles said something about believing that women and men are the same really, but then introduced a clip from Child of Our Time which supposedly showed that men and women are genetically hard-wired to be different. The clip showed children tasting two drinks, Rocket Pop (blue) and Princess Pop (pink). The drinks were the same but the boys rated the Rocket higer and the girls the Princess pop. Very interesting, but this was presented as if it was conclusive proof that men were from Mars and Women were from Venus.

Then we were told that there would be a contest at the end of the show which would prove which sex was the better, ha ha ha, called, and I kid you not, “Heels or Wheels”. Hilarious!

Oh for goodness sake… I feel like I’ve just been hit over the head with a sexist mallet.

The thing that frustrates me about this approach to covering the sex and the City film is that SATC was so NOT about putting forward the Mars/Venus viewpoint. It portrayed men and women as human beings with individual perspectives and emotions. If anything I would say it actually tried to go against that whole Mars/Venus thing. I never once viewed it and thought, goodness, men and women are SO different and will never understand each other.

The other part of the whole SATC hype that I find quite interesting is the assumption that what we all REALLY want to see is Carrie getting married to Big. It seems that they’re assuming SATC fans think that getting married is the only really important goal, that this would be the end of the story.

Well I say - bollocks. Absolute bollocks. That’s not why I’m going to see the film. But I’ll talk more about this later.

Sorry if this post is rushed and crappy, but I’m sat here watching the One Show getting more infuriated. I’d better turn it off now… oh, it’s finished. Phew!

Posted by Catherine Redfern at 14 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (4)

Another reason to emigrate to Spain

I’m doing some research for my Spanish oral exam tomorrow, and was pleasantly astounded to come across the headline ‘Man condemned to 27 years imprisonment for locking his wife and children in apartment for two days’. The man locked them in their home while he went to work, taking away the woman’s mobile so she couldn’t contact anyone. Luckily, some family friends came to the flat, she was able to tell them what happened and they persuaded the man to come home and release her and their three children.

When he did so, he threatened to kill her, she locked herself in a room and he proceeded to dangle one of their children over the balcony by his ankles, saying he’d drop him if she didn’t come out. The police arrived in time to arrest him, and he has been sentenced to five years for each of the four cases of illegal detention, two years for each of the three cases of threatening behaviour and another year for mistreatment: 27 years in all. He is also banned from coming within 1km of his family for the next 40 years.

Can you imagine anything even near that kind of length of sentence being meted out in this country, if he was found guilty of anything at all?!

Posted by Laura Woodhouse at 14 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (7)

Amity responds on birth rape

Amity Reed has written a response to comments on her birth rape feature for The F-Word, made by an NHS doctor blogging under the name ‘Dr Crippen’. You may want to read this post for background

Having just emerged from yet another luxury shopping trip between school runs and coffee shop natters with my other part-time feminist friends (Ha! I am a full-time feminist and an at-home mother struggling to put food on the table many weeks, thank you), I was not at all surprised to read this scathing dismissal of medical and birth rape victims. The author’s characterisation of these women as fantasists, delusional and hysterical females with ridiculous expectations of bodily autonomy, was resignedly expected. Dr. Crippen exhibits the very lack of empathy that Debs and I dissected by dismissing these stories outright. In a move straight from the misogynist medical handbook - make them feel stupid and reinforce knowledge over personal experience - he follows the checklist to a T:

Refusal to acknowledge the patient’s experience? Check. Outright discounting of her interpretation of events? Check. Use of words such as ‘sophisticated’ and ‘high level of skill’ to reinforce authority? Claims of patient ignorance and ‘exaggeration of facts’ when he was not even present for the event? Yep, it’s all there, in all its ugly and hateful glory. This is exactly the kind of arrogant attitude that creates a chasm between those with a skilful and sympathetic bedside manner and those whose emotional detachment can lead to patient violation. Taking the human aspect out of patient care isn’t the practice of medicine; it is the following of protocol and technical training. Is this what was intended when the Hippocratic Oath, undertaken by all doctors, was written to say:

In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing…If I keep this oath faithfully, may I enjoy my life and practice my art, respected by all men and in all times; but if I swerve from it or violate it, may the reverse be my lot.

Respect is a two-way street. When medical professionals start disrespecting their patients’ wishes, how can they be surprised to discover that, in the process, they have lost the trust of those they are meant to help and heal? Doctors of the world, wake up and smell the revolution: being an MD (or a midwife or a surgeon or a nurse) doesn’t mean you get to play God, nor does it entitle you to make decisions on behalf of your patients in the guise of protecting them from themselves. As much esteem and power as you think your title automatically gives you, I and many others still think that you have to earn it. And that means listening, respecting, advising and learning to back off, even if it goes against your instincts and training. We still have the right to say no, even if your answer would be yes.

To specifically address Dr. Crippen’s comments about my article on birth rape, I would suggest he read more carefully my words. I never intimated nor stated that all obstetric intervention or even that all traumatic births are rape. I am fully aware that sometimes intervention is warranted and wanted. I am grateful for those interventions. I am aware that plenty of women experience traumatic births where no assault is involved. An unnecessary or botched c-section, pressure to have or not have pain relief, an early induction…the ethics of these things is questionable, indeed, and anger many people. If a woman reluctantly consents to these procedures under duress and later feels duped, tricked or unfairly intimidated into compliance, she will undoubtedly term her experience as traumatic, rightly so. Maternity care in the UK, and elsewhere in the so-called developed world, is in crisis and the conveyor belt of convenience that women are being hauled down in the ill-fated quest for perfect, controlled outcomes is damaging not only to women’s bodies but their psyches and well-being, not to mention what it’s doing to mortality rates for babies. However, this is not the rape of which I speak.

Let me say it again: birth rape is when a procedure or exam is carried out in which a body part or object (such as a hand, finger, suction cup, foetal monitor, episiotomy scissors, forceps, drug or needle) is inserted into a woman’s vagina without her consent and often after she has specifically declined interference. Holding a woman’s legs open to perform a vaginal exam while she screams “No!” is not and never will be okay. Putting something into her vagina ‘for her own good’ is assault, plain and simple, and no less abhorrent than the man who forces his penis into a woman because he feels it is his right to. Just lay back and let the people in charge do their important work, right? It will all be over in a minute, right? Wrong. The scars these women bear will last much longer than those inflicted on their bodies.

Practicing midwife and blogger Navelgazing Midwife talks candidly and openly about how her training led her to do horrible things to women in the name of convenience or gaining experience. By her own admission, she has been the perpetrator of birth rape. She recognises this and deeply regrets it. If she can acknowledge the harm being done in her profession and work to rectify that, why can’t others? She is a fine example of the saying “Doctors (in this case, midwives) are human, too,” which is to say that they make mistakes and let their personal prejudices, opinions and goals cloud their judgment. Of course they do. No one expects them to be perfect. But refusing to take a long, hard look in the mirror, own up to these errors and look for solutions, even after hearing pleas from those whose care is entrusted to them, is decidedly inhumane.

Dr. Crippen’s attempt to portray birth rape victims only as previously assaulted women who are transferring that abuse onto their birth experiences and unfairly blaming those who attended them is ludicrous and ill-founded. If anything, the anecdote from the woman who says that her birth experience brought back memories of the rape she endured at age 14 is evidence that something is desperately wrong with how childbirth is being managed. Though I do not assert that her story is one of birth rape, the woman quoted says:

I had an epidural (against my wishes) during transition. When being on my back and numb from the waist down it gave me flashbacks to the rape…I had no anger towards the doctor, only myself. Of course I was angry towards the perpetrator who raped me as a teenager but I just didn’t expect it to come flooding back to me when giving birth. I had no control over this. It just happened. Completely out of the blue.

So she had an epidural against her wishes, given under the orders of her doctor, which numbed her into submission. This reminded her of her rape because she was powerless, which led her to become angry with herself. Let me repeat that — angry with herself. She may think that anger was completely out of the blue, but it is very clear to me that by numbing her, her doctor was implicitly silencing her. There is nothing random about that. It may not have been rape but why, then, does it feel like it to her? What does it say about obstetrics and gynaecology that so many women, even in instances where rape was not actually perpetrated by the medical professional, end up feeling shamed, angry and/or violated? That they lack the terminology or are unable to put a finger on what went wrong or made them feel that way does not mean that medical abuse does not exist.

For too long, women have been treated as the sum of their parts. Even where we have made strides socially, when it comes to the physical we are still treated as the property of a patriarchal system that cannot and will not give us the deeds to ourselves. Sexually and reproductively, we are under the thumb and at the mercy of men. Pregnancy and birth in particular continue to be issues that those in power seem determined to hold onto, perhaps because they are exclusively women’s realm. And as we know, people in power often fear the unknown. There is nothing more loathe to some than that which they have little part in and which they will never be able to fully understand.

So when I, as a feminist, see abuses happening, I stop prettying it up and start calling it what it is - Assault. Rape. Injustice. Because I don’t care who it makes uncomfortable or whose delicate sensibilities it offends, only how it challenges their thinking and, hopefully, in turn, their behaviour.

Posted by Guest Blogger at 14 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (6)

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry…

This is the Marital Rating Scale developed in the 1930s to assess wives. Basically it’s a series of merits and demerits based on assumed gender traits (including that women should be subservient to men). Whats galling, and takes this beyond just the notion of arcane ephemera, is that the psychology PhD student (and their supervisor I assume) who draws our attention to it argues that is has “scientific” basis.

Although most people who read the test today find it humorous and obviously dated, Crane did attempt to make it scientific. His method was to interview 600 husbands on their wives’ positive and negative qualities. Then he listed the 50 demerits and merits that arose most frequently. Crane, did admit to using a personal bias in weighting the items that he thought were most important in marriage.

From the American Psychological Association Monitor

Here’s some issues I have with it:
1. There was only ever a “wife” scale (although apparently wives or husbands could complete it) thus making women responsible for the strength or weakness of their marriage.
2. This further reinforces that women should apparently make men’s concerns and desires central to their lives and that men have no responsibility in the success of relationships. Men can just be, women must fit around them.
3. The scale is based on illusory socially specific notions of femininity which are heavily classed and ethnicised. In short it’s based on a very white, urban, middle class sense of femininity.
4. The idea that the quality of a relationship can be judged on whether a woman swears or wears red nail polish is absurd and characterises men as a homogenous group without individual ideas too.
5. It also posits there is a one-size-fits-all notion of relationships.
6. Claims to “scientific” method are then undermined by imposition of the researchers own priorities on the results.
7. 600 men does not scientific research on happy marriages make. It’s a ridiculously small sample size, based on skewed notions of predictive capacities of such surveys and which is obviously gendered in it’s basis. I can (probably) find 600 men who claim that if a woman kisses a man willingly then him physically forcing her to have sex isn’t rape. Doesn’t mean that’s a scientific finding.
8. Joyce goes on to say that whilst dated there are paralells between this and how people might rate modern relationships on personal or annoying habits like not putting the top on toothpaste. I’d argue that there is a big difference (of scale for example but not just that) between toothpaste habits and a strict white, protestant, middle class straightjacketed notion of femininity and women’s roles.

Posted by Louise Livesey at 14 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (12)

Jack Straw’s just noticed….

I’ve heard of oblivious but Jack Straw has seemingly only just noticed that our judges are overwhelming white and male. Now he claims he wants to do something about it. Perhaps that will take less time than the 20 years it’s taken to notice the problem in the first place.

Concerns about white, middle class men dominating the bench were justified, he told the Justice Select Committee. Mr Straw said he was determined to ensure that the judiciary represented wider society better. “The expectation that a new system would lead to a more diverse judiciary has so far not been fulfilled,” he said in evidence to the committee.

From BBC News

This comes after the not surprising news that there are now fewer female judges and few from minority ethnic populations than under the previous selection process. Women now constitute just 34% of judges and minority ethnic women judges are rarer than stardust.

Posted by Louise Livesey at 14 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (7)

13 May 2008

Doctor blogger exploits stories of birth rape and assault, ridicules victims

When we published Amity Reed’s feature on birth rape, we knew it would be controversial. Amity wrote about the women who go into hospital to give birth, and leave having been violated.

She said:

Women are slapped, told to shut up, stop making noise and a nuisance of themselves, that they deserve this, that they shouldn’t have opened their legs nine months ago if they didn’t want to open them now. They are threatened, intimidated and bullied into submitting to procedures they do not need and interventions they do not want. Some are physically restrained from moving, their legs held open or their stomachs pushed on.

Meanwhile, Debs posted on a similar issue at The Burning Times, and she described what happened when she withdrew consent for a vaginal medical procedure, and yet the doctor continued on regardless. She also described this as rape, and wrapped up into a general discussion of this type of under-reported, under-recognised medical assault.

Whether these experiences counts as rape in a legal sense may well be open to question. But, in using this specific word, these writers were describing the real experiences of themselves and other women who have been subjected to unnecessary medical procedures, have been penetrated against their consent. Once upon a time, it was considered impossible for a husband to rape his wife. I am not sure if the wider definition of rape which is described and used by feminists such as Amity and Debs will ever be legally recognised as rape, or even if that is really the best term to use.

But the women who experienced it called it rape, even if it is not recognised as such by the wider world. And what I do know is that when women describe an experience as rape or assault or violation, those words are worthy of respect. It is not acceptable to dissect that story in your blog, to pick apart a personal testimony of assault, to ridicule and question the mental state of the woman telling that story, let alone in order to score points about “coffee chair feminists” and proponents of home birth.

Yet this is what ‘Dr Crippen’ from NHS Blog Doctor did in this post. Yes, when you publish something on the Internet, you are opening it up to commentary from anyone and everyone. But there are acceptable and unacceptable forms of commentary, and responsible ways of talking about these issues that do not appropriate stories abuse, assault and suffering, disregarding the impact that may have on the humans behind a computer screen somewhere reading your words - not only the women you attack, but the other women who have been through trauma and rape, and see what happens when you open your mouth and tell your story.

Debs has posted her own rebuttal to ‘Dr Crippen’s’ post, which goes through blow-by-blow what was said, so I won’t replicate her work - go there for the full account.

However, I would point to this remark from ‘Dr Crippen’:

No, Debs, you have not ever been raped. If you had, you would not be talking like this.

This blogger does not know Debs personally. He has no idea what prior experiences of sexual assault and rape in the ‘traditional’ sense that Debs has had. Has he been raped? I have no idea, but even if he has, it does not give him the right to define what reactions the victims of sexual assault do and do not have.

Rape victims are ‘supposed’ to act/talk in a certain way, and clearly people have got used to measuring up victims’ behaviour against this archetype, and now think it’s acceptable to set themselves up as judges of who has and has not been raped - that is the only explanation I can come up with for this arrogant exercise in toying with other people’s descriptions of being violated for blog fodder.

Posted by Jess McCabe at 13 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (26)

Racist hate in Russia

Just over two years ago a friend of mine Kayode Ogundamisi wrote a piece “Are you a Black man? Don’t go to Russia” in which is spoke of the racism experienced by African students in Russia…..

It is a shame that the Russian government is turning a blind eye on the growing level of attacks on foreign students and residents in Russia. Students of the international university in Moscow are the worst victims. I was shown video evidence of acid attacks and knife cuts. One African student, Nigerian Mukaila Odedina remains paralysed from an attack from right wing thugs in front of a Russian police station in Moscow, speaking with Mukaila brought tears to my eyes. He is in his final year and would have been a medical doctor in September 2005 now he cannot even raise a flight ticket back home; all contact with the Nigerian embassy yielded no result.

I remember meeting a Zimbabwean woman in 1990, who was to become a good friend, speaking about her similar experience whilst a student in the Soviet Union. “From Russia With Hate” is a video documentary by Christof Putzel which investigates neo-nazi groups in Russia. It’s bad enough that that racist violence is described as “out of control” but many of the skin heads have support from the government….One member of the Duma is interviewed condoning the violence because the “government is not doing enough [about immigration]” A very disturbing documentary particularly when looked at in the context of the British government’s increasingly anti-immigration rhetoric and accompanying legislation - one suggestion from Russia is to take away the citizenship of Russian women who marry foreigners!

Posted by Sokari Ekine at 13 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (1)

Caliente Cab settles

Do you remember the case of Khadijah Farmer, who was thrown out of the women’s loos in a New York restaurant by a bouncer who thought she was a man - even after producing ID showing she is a woman? Well the restaurant - Caliente Cab - has settled the resulting lawsuit, says Monica at TransGriot:

“I’m very happy that the restaurant has taken appropriate steps to ensure that all patrons, regardless of how masculine or feminine they appear, are treated with dignity and respect,” Khadijah said of the settlement. “People come in all shapes and sizes, and they shouldn’t be discriminated against because they don’t match someone’s expectations of how masculine or feminine they should be.”

The restaurant has adopted a policy on gender expression and taken some other action, including compensation for Khadijah. Check out TransGriot for more - incidentally, a blog well worth watching. I’d also recommend checking out Monica’s recent post Destruction of the Black Transwoman Image, which considers the impact of media representations of black trans women being overwhelmingly of sex workers.

Posted by Jess McCabe at 13 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (1)

12 May 2008

This poster is meant to stop trafficking

Via feminocracy, this poster is meant to address the issue of women being trafficked into Austria and Switzerland, in response, at least possibly, to demand created by hosting Euro 08.

A laudable aim, of course, but this slightly coy, ‘sexy’-type image of a white woman’s legs held together by a tiny chain, fails to get across the vicious reality of trafficked women. Doesn’t it slightly eroticise the idea? Isn’t that creepy? Look, I think it’s really important to do this work, but it’s important to consider whether or not the images and approaches used will be effective.

One commenter on AdsoftheWorld.com, where this comes from, put it like this:

yeah, this is confused shite. it seems a more effective as an ad for naughty escorts. not the message i think they’re after. it’s a lost opportunity to do something meaningful and great. shame on you switzerland.

From the website:

* Information: People attending the Euro 08 and all related events must become aware of both the extent and repercussions of the trafficking in women.

* Prevention: Anyone who comes in contact with a victim of trafficking must behave in a responsible and adequate way. Our focus will mainly be on raising awareness amongst men who are the most likely - as clients - to come face-to-face with victims of trafficking.

* Victim protection: Protection of victims and their rights must be assured and strengthened. This includes the right to stay. Our goal on this appeal is to gather the support of a minimum of 25,000 people.

And what about this site, aimed at men buying sex from prostitutes? It is called, by the way, “prostitution without compulsion and violence”.

Just… argh…

Posted by Jess McCabe at 12 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (10)

New feature: The Oxbridge sex workers

Laurie Penny considers why so many Oxbridge students are going into prostitution and stripping, and the impact the media coverage of their stories has on women in less privileged positions

Teacups are tinkling in outrage as an army of Oxbridge-educated prostitutes terrorises the Home Counties. Maths prodigy Sufiah Yusof has been outed as the latest Oxbridge girl-genius to exchange her blue stockings for suspenders and a push-up bra, while literary ‘happy hooker’ Ruth Fowler becomes the latest in a tired line of well-educated young beauties to land a book deal for her racy autobiography. The story, of course, is an old favourite just screaming to be partnered with extensive photographs of the scholars in various states of graphic undress. And the story is an old favourite precisely because of what it seems to say about women: even the highest-achieving and most privileged are still just whores who only really want to be fucked roughly for money after very expensive dinners.

The blogging revolution has led us to expect to get into our hookers’ heads as well as their knickers, but it’s still a tacky fantasy, far removed from the reality of prostitution for most women. Fowler and Yusof are not saying anything new. After the News of the World ratted Yusof out as a fallen child, she had the temerity and strength of character to stand up for her choices and declare herself more than a hapless victim of circumstance. Good for her. The message that she and Fowler have been complicit in sending, though, is neither groundbreaking nor feminist. This is all we’re good for - that’s the only sub-text every time a well-heeled young woman decides to rent her pert little academic arse at a hundred for hire. Johns everywhere must be rubbing their hands with glee: even the clever ones, the posh bitches who think they’re better than you, will turn into the willing nymphettes of your stickiest wet dreams at the flash of a fiver. We’ll let them into our elite universities, but under their scholar’s gowns they’ll always be slappers.

Read on here

Posted by Jess McCabe at 12 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (11)

Alcohol FOR GIRLS

Occasionally - and you may find this difficult to believe - I find myself in a local hostelry, at the bar, seeking some form of refreshing beverage.

This was the case last week, when I was in a pub in Bloomsbury with a male friend. We were scouring the menu, and realised this particular establishment was currently advertising a Festival of Ciders (I know, right?). I glanced through the cider list, looking at names, prices and descriptions. Then I began to turn purple with rage.

“What’s the matter?” my friend asked. I could only splutter and gesticulate wildly at the CiderFest promotional flyer, which boasted the Jacques Orchard Fruits, and described it as being “perfect for the girls in the house. This lightly sparkling cider comes in a wine-like bottle, which is ideal for the more caring and sharing types. So come on, ladies, think Jacques as the perfect alternative to ‘a glass of white wine, please’!”

Notwithstanding the terrible copywriting - cider for girls? I mean, I know that particular forms of food and drink have been marketed as aimed at men and women for years and years and years, but cider - really? I’d never really considered that a gendered drink. And I’m not entirely sure how one form of fizzy fermented apple juice is more suitable for “the ladies” than another.

Anyway, suffice to say, once I’d recovered my aplomb, I ranted at my friend for a bit. Then I went to the bar and did not order any form of cider.

Posted by Carrie Dunn at 12 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (24)

11 May 2008

Ladyfest London photos; thoughts

So, Ladyfest London is officially over. For readers who couldn’t make it, you can see the photos I took over on Flickr.

Looking back at the weekend, I am left feeling like the workshops I attended, the music I heard, the films I saw, stalls I perused - all of it was brilliant, but the experience was more tantalizing than satisfying. The sheer range of options was brilliant - but one blogger can’t be in four equally-appealling places at once, not even taking into account other commitments, so this is by necessity a bit of a sporadic account, or random collection of thoughts - about the workshops, as those were the most thought-provoking.

The riot grrrl workshop today was organised as, very interestingly, a ‘long table’. Based on a concept by the artist Lois Weaver, a long table is (from the handbook put together for the occasion by F-Word contributor Cazz Blase):

Literally a long table - with paper table ‘cloth’ and pens, with panel and chair and anyone in audience seated around the table - other folks can sit in chairs around the central circle and if anyone leaves then they can be replaced by one in the outer circle. It has to be facilitated and people encouraged to join the table.

As you might suspect, this was a success, but not an unmitigated one. I think with more exposure to this format, it could work very well as a ‘more feminist’ way of conducting this sort of workshop.

This was suggested by Lucy Thane, who was also at the long table and actively took part in the debate, and had some interesting insights on early riot grrrl and the films she made documenting the movement (sadly not very widely available). Interesting words were said about what riot grrrl is - an identity or a verb? A historical moment or a current movement? How dangerous is/was it? Is it good or bad that riot grrrl is now being studied in universities and written about by academics (many of them former grrrls), and how can that be done without commodification/appropriation?

From one extreme to the other: another interesting workshop that I went to was on ‘women and the vote’. Actually not about suffragettes, but the lack of women in parliament and government, the feminisation versus the feminismisation of politics (meaning more women MPs and ministers versus more feminist policy-making).

In fact, these two workshops do relate to each other, in as much as feminists we must ask ourselves questions about where we want to put our energies and what we want to achieve. Given the divisive debates I’ve personally seen on the basis of what must, to the outside world, seem like relatively minor shades of opinion, how much are we willing to make the much greater leap of compromise necessary to engage in a flawed party-political system, and do we want to? And yet, what are the consequences if we - at least some of us - do not?

Following on from the mayoral elections here in London, I’ve given serious thought to the notion of joining a political party for the first time in my life. Even though I already vote basically along ‘party lines’, like most people, actually joining up seems like an affirmation of an assortment of dubious policy positions that I utterly oppose too far. Not that I’d consider it, but the concept of actually having to tow the party line on these policies as an elected representative? Ugh.

Yet important work is done by feminists who do swallow their scruples and sign up. And where would we be if everyone took that attitude?

Some of the most interesting insights, however, were to do with the ways of analysing women’s role in a political party: paying attention not only to how many female candidates are put forward at the general election, but the numbers in winnable seats; not only to whether women’s groups are at work on policies on issues like domestic violence, but how ‘embedded’ those groups are in the party structure; to whether change is being forced through by an individual, or whether that same structure is designed to take proper account of a women’s - better yet, a feminist - perspective as a matter of course.

The blogging workshop with Annie Mole from Going Underground and Laurie from Penny Red, was small but interesting, considering issues such as the accessibility of blogging, how to deal with trollish and abusive commenters and how the anonymity of the internet can provide opportunities, but also invisibilise - Annie mentioned how readers often, wrongly, assume she is a white man.

Well, those are my rather uncollected thoughts on a tiny sample of what I saw, let alone what was on offer. It was a great time, and congratulations to the organisers who worked so hard on putting it all together!

Incidentally, Ladyfest Madrid is due to start in a few days from now, with its own brilliant-sounding programme including “autodefensa feminista”, “produccion de radio feminista”, Lydia Lunch and “iconografía menstrual”.

Posted by Jess McCabe at 11 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (3)

New feature: A slice-by-slice attack on women’s right to choose

The campaign to ban women from terminating pregnancies after 20 weeks is only the beginning, says Kit Roskelly

In a matter of days, the House of Commons will vote on whether to slash the current time limit on abortions from 24 weeks into a pregnancy to 20. A movement spearheaded by Nadine Dorries MP, and The 20 Weeks Campaign, and supported by The Daily Mail, is putting pressure on MPs to vote in favour of this restriction on women’s rights.

A four-week gap may seem like a small issue, but this is what might be call ‘salami tactics’ - the reduction of reproductive rights by thin slices. This is an issue with huge repercussions, because the agenda of this campaign is not limited to that four-week gap.

You need only look at this list to see that the campaign is wholly anti-abortion. The reasons given are either heavily emotive, or rely on some pretty dubious scientific claims. (Liberal Conspiracy counters these claims here).

While the campaign claims to be founded largely on scientific advances that they claim make foetuses viable earlier on, the core concerns of the campaign do not stop at the 20-week threshold. One of the 20 ‘reasons’ given in Dorries’ campaign is: “Lowering the limit to 20 weeks for normal babies will save almost 2,300 young lives per year.” It is clearly based on emotional appeal rather than reasoned debate and, of course, the implication is ever more “babies” would be saved if the time limit was lowered even more, or abortion done away with altogether. The campaign completely ignores the fact that these foetuses are not babies, and do not exist in isolation; each is reliant on the body of a woman to survive and that woman is an autonomous person with the capacity and right to make choices about her own body. Women, if they are mentioned at all in these arguments for the rights of foetuses, are ignored or blamed, and this is in itself an act of misogyny.

Read on here

Photo by Steve Rhodes, shared under a Creative Commons license

Posted by Jess McCabe at 11 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (6)

Mad as hell

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is an American handbook that lists different categories of mental disorders and the criteria for diagnosing them, and is widely used by mental health professionals worldwide, including "clinicians and researchers as well as insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and policy makers" (wikipedia). To say that it’s something of an influential document is a bit of an understatement.

After all, until 1974, homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder, according to the DSM-II. But after activists campaigned loud and long, protesting at APA offices and at annual meetings from 1970 to 1973, the Board of Trustees voted to remove homosexuality as a disorder. However, the DSM-III (1974) introduced a new category of "sexual disorder not otherwise specified" which can include a state of distress about one’s sexual orientation, as well as the diagnosis of "gender identity disorder".

The APA has been subject to controversy in other areas: in 2003, activists from MindFreedom International staged a 21-day hunger strike, challenging the APA to provide evidence of its claim that mental disorders are due to chemical imbalances in the brain.

More recently, when it emerged that US psychologists and psychiatrists were helping interrogators in Guantanamo, the APA stated that psychiatrists should not take a direct part in the interrogation of prisoners, but could "offer general advice on the possible medical and psychological effects of particular techniques and conditions of interrogation, and on other areas within their professional expertise".

And in 2005, the APA president said that American psychiatry had accepted "kickbacks and bribes" from pharmaceutical companies, which had lead to the over-use of medication and neglect of other approaches.

So it seems that the APA is not exactly a paragon of propriety - and yet, the DSM which it produces still retains global credibility as a hugely authoratitive and influential work.

As I mentioned, the most recent (and current) revision - DSM-IV - was in 1994 but has been under review since 1999 with the aim of producing DSM-V, which "is expected in May 2012". There are 13 work groups involved in this process, and they began meeting in late 2007.

Lynn Conway has now reported that on 1st May, the APA named the members appointed to revise the Manual for Diagnosis of Mental Disorders in preparation for the DSM-V. Such a revision would include the entry for GID. To quote Lynn’s piece: "Ken Zucker, who heads a reparatist clinic for gender-variant youth in Toronto, was named as Chair of the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group for DSM Revision. Ray Blanchard, widely known for pronouncing that transitioned women are "men without penises", was appointed as a member of that Work Group. Any bets on how this is going to turn out?"

According to TS Roadmap, Zucker is famous for - Actually, that whole page is a must-read. I really can’t find any single quote I’d want to abstract from it… *pauses briefly while mind boggles*

And Blanchard, head of the gender program at the Clarke Institute in Toronto, has established its reputation as "one of the most notorious facilities in the world in terms of controlling access to medical services". Their technique involves a reparative therapy apparently very similar to that used by other groups who claim to "cure" gays and lesbians. Blanchard himself is arguably equally notorious for inventing the mental illness he terms autogynephilia ("a man’s paraphilic tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman")

According to Mercedes Allen, guest blogging in this post at The Bilerico Project, "Drs. Blanchard, Zucker […] and a small cadre of others are proponents of dividing the transsexual population by sexual orientation (‘homosexual transsexuals’ vs. ‘autogynephilic’) and have repeatedly run afoul of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH, formerly HBIGDA), and openly defied the Standards of Care that WPATH maintains (modeled after the original SoC developed by Dr. Harry Benjamin) in favor of conversion techniques".

Mercedes sees this as a "very serious danger to the transgender community" and I, for one, support hir fully in "calling on the various Transgender and GLBT organizations to band together to take action on this. I am also calling upon our allies and advocates in the medical community and affiliated with WPATH to band together with us and combat this move which could potentially see WPATH stripped of its authority on matters regarding treatment of transsexuals".

"Men without penises", my arse.

—————

Later edit: Zöe has an extensive and meticulously detailed analysis of this on her blog; I recommend it unreservedly: Transsexual Causation, the American Psychiatric Association, and Interpol. I want to quote two paragraphs of hers verbatim; she is so eloquent and succinct and I really couldn’t phrase it any better myself, no matter how hard I try:

"And that is why both Intersex and Transsexual groups are up in arms about this. The more scientifically literate, and that is a very high percentage, because of the "junk science" that will likely lead to greater persecution. The rest because of the insult such views offer us, to be mischaracterised and misrepresented in such a blatant way, our honest narratives dismissed as lies by lunatics."

"Should this state of affairs be allowed to continue, should the fringe views of a few paleolithic neo-Freudians be adopted as Gospel, then an avalanche of discriminatory regulation will likely ensue. The long-standing rights to correct birth certificates, to marry in the correct gender, even to work near children, will likely be withdrawn. After all, we’ll be officially "self-mutilating male perverts or gays" according to the APA, no matter what the specialists in the area might say."

—————

Even later edit (11 May):

1. Mercedes Allen’s original post at The Bilerico Project - or, more accurately, the comments on her post - is (are?) worth revisiting. Link here.
2. On 10 May, Transadvocate posted this Update on Zucker, Blanchard and the Revision of the DSM.
3. Also on 10 May, Zucker himself compares ethnic identity conflict and gender identity conflict in this post.
4. For those who are minded to voice their objections, Drakyn’s post Action Alert contains a useful selection of contact details, link here.
5. There’s an online petition here for anyone who wishes to lodge an "Objection to DSM-V Committee Members on Gender Identity Disorders".

Finally, in case it needs to be said; this issue is likely to affect anyone who doesn’t conform to gender stereotypes because, given the probable influence and input into DSM-V of the two most senior panel members (Zucker and Blanchard) it seems almost inevitable that we will no longer have the right to self-define our gender variance.

(Cross-posted at bird of paradox)

Image licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 Germany License

Posted by Helen G at 11 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (10)

Sexist culture drives women out of science

As something of a geek, I’m a little perturbed to read this piece in the The Sunday Times, Sexist culture drives women out of science.

The gist of it is that "[a] time warp of 1970s sexist attitudes is driving women in their late thirties from careers in science and technology and undermining key sectors of the economy". It’s hard to abstract full details of the report itself, but the ST quotes the lead author of the study - Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist at the Center for Work-Life Policy in New York - as saying:

"It is the hidden brain drain. We have this amazing, talented pool of women who have left the industry. It is highly destructive to our society and economy."

The study, which will be published in the Harvard Business Review on Thursday, found that "while women made up 41% of newly qualified technical staff, more than half dropped out by the time they reached their late thirties".

I can’t help but wonder if the study’s conclusion is a bit simplistic, to say the least. A sexist culture is only one form of discrimination faced by women at work, and I don’t see how a woman in that environment is going to be forced to choose between "family life and pushing for promotion at work".

(Cross-posted at bird of paradox)

Posted by Helen G at 11 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (15)

Black / Women of Colour Bisexual Group

At Ladyfest London’s Race and Activism workshop, I met Jacqueline Applebee, a writer who is looking to set up a group for black / women of colour bisexual women and their friends/allies.

If you’re interested, email her at contact@writing-in-shadows.co.uk.

Photo by vanpelt, shared under a Creative Commons Licence.

Posted by Catherine Redfern at 11 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (1)

Word of the week: liminal

"Liminal": according to Ask Oxford (the online Compact OED), it means either relating to a transitional or initial stage or at a boundary or threshold, but I really like William Gibson’s explanation, referring to ‘liminal spaces’ he says: "They’re not even places, they’re thresholds that lead you into someplace else. I always find those interesting. Often there’s literally nothing going on in thresholds, it’s not the room, it’s not the house, but you can’t get into the house or room without going through the threshold.". (Via)

The concept has been in the back of my mind for a few days now. After my recent stint as Guest Blogger here came to an end, I was surprised to find myself in just such a liminal space. The problem was, I didn’t know what threshold I was standing on, or what lay beyond. I had a hunch that writing was going to be part of it: I have been keeping a personal Journal about my transition since 2006 and it has helped me realise that there were - are - things I needed to write about, matters with some bearing on my personal politics which I believe would also make a useful contribution to the wider debate about how transsexual women are viewed by, and contribute to, contemporary society.

Blogging at TFW had really helped me to start thinking about, not only feminist issues, but also feminism as an ideology, and how my experience as a trans woman informed my thinking, and vice versa. So I’m really delighted to have been invited to rejoin the team as a regular blogger; hopefully the rusty wheels which have begun to turn in my mind can gather a little momentum and my thoughts find an outlet here. I am still in search of a personal belief system, my own trans feminism, and I hope that by posting here we can all engage in a useful dialog that will help us to see things in a different light, and from which, maybe, we can learn.

In my liminal state I wrote a couple of pieces, one of which I’d like to (re-)post here. It’s primarily a reflection on the way my Guest Blogger residency has modified the way I see feminism, and I originally planned to make it my farewell post - how things change in such a short time… I apologise for any repetition to my friends, co-bloggers and any others who may recognise the content, but I think it’s a useful point for picking up the pieces before we move on to other discussions, other topics around the intersections and overlaps between feminism and trans* issues.

So here are some random thoughts from the past few days; I hope that I - we - can use them as a basis for further discussions, and I look forward to posting at TFW more regularly in future.

———————-

I believe that both maxims, ‘the political is personal’ and ‘the personal is political’ hold true and I came to TFW hoping that I could learn more about both aspects as viewed through the lens of feminism. I hoped to find a more political side to my ongoing transition, which is unarguably a personal experience first and foremost. Having focused on that personal side for some 18 months, my journey of transition had brought me to a point where I believed I was ready to think about other aspects apart from the ‘prime directive’ of simply surviving. Having been a reader of TFW for some time, I believed that there was a sense of community, of inclusivity and tolerance of a wide range of views and opinions. And I welcomed the chance to take a more active role in that community, if only for a short while.

During the early days and months of my transition, my sense of feminism seemed to come quite naturally, albeit in an almost instinctive/intuitive way. I don’t consider myself particularly well-educated; I find book-learning difficult and have tried to piece things together as best I can with the help of the interwebs, so there are, unsurprisingly, many large gaps in my knowledge. Perhaps more than anything, the so-called Real Life Experience aspect of my transition really helped me to see the inequality and injustices that women suffer, as well as offering a new perspective on the other problems facing me as I began to build a new life as a trans woman.

In putting these things together, I wondered if I could begin to find a synthesis of my experiences as both a trans* person and as a woman: a trans feminism in which I could reconcile my personal and political beliefs and experiences. I’m still looking for that holy grail, but at the time of writing, I’m not optimistic. My current thoughts are that my search for that synthesis has more in common with the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The basic idea(s) of feminism made sense but didn’t go far enough: problems were identified but I saw no clear solutions. I began to look at radical feminism but, although it offered a suggestion (dismantle the patriarchy) it didn’t seem to have a definite plan for doing that. In that sense, it seemed remarkably familiar to Engels’ idea that, after the working class had risen up and seized power, the state would simply - somehow - just wither away.

And then there were the radical feminists… Or rather, some radical feminists, who would have me believe that, oh, d’yknow, I just don’t have the energy to rake over those old and cold ashes. Suffice it to say that I found myself fundamentally opposed to their "analysis" of trans women. And I’m not convinced that "once a man, always a man" is a particularly useful stance from which to discuss trans women.

Yes, the existence of transsexual people does pose a problem to certain feminists because it directly contradicts some very strongly held assumptions about gender, gender identity, gender roles and gender expression. The problem, I think, originates here: to me, as a trans woman, gender is first of all personal - whereas it seems that feminism views gender in political terms. And it is there, in the reconciliation of those two diametrically opposing views, that we should be searching for common ground. Instead, it has become a battlefield, and me, well, I’m a pacifist, I don’t see why there needs to be conflict, or yet another binary. Is it really so difficult to simultaneously hold two different views, or is it easier for me because I’ve had to do exactly that as a sufferer of gender dysphoria and its integral dissonance?…

Had de Beauvoir known about gender dysphoria, perhaps her assertion that one is not born woman but becomes one would have been less binaristic, less dogmatic, less silencing.

As long as transphobia of the magnitude that I have experienced continues to exist then I’m not sure I want to think of myself as a radical feminist. How can I possibly be part of a movement that condones such hatred towards me simply because of who I am, because I have the temerity to undergo massive social, hormonal, psychological and surgical changes in order to alleviate my gender dissonance and live in my ‘true’ identity as a woman, even though I was born and raised male?

All of which leaves me, where, exactly? At this moment, I really don’t have a definitive answer; I doubt I ever will. I feel isolated, confused, lonely, alienated, disconnected, disenfranchised, a long way from home (wherever that is) - but there’s nothing new there. I still think that women - including trans women - are oppressed by patriarchy, amongst other power structures, and I feel strongly that that imbalance needs to be addressed and redressed as a matter of urgency by everybody, irrespective of gender. But feminism needs a plan - a consensual and inclusive plan - of how, exactly, society is to change and be changed. I hope when that stage is reached, I will still be around to take part - although, given my age (51), I’m not sure how likely that is. Right now I’m feeling, in the words of Antonio Gramsci, a ‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will’. It’s a massive disconnect and there is much work I need to do…

(Cross-posted at bird of paradox)

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Posted by Helen G at 11 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (2)

10 May 2008

Helen joining as regular blogger

This is a quick note to say that Helen’s two month guest blog spot is up - but I’m glad to announce she is going to be joining The F-Word as a regular contributor!

Read Helen’s posts so far here.

Posted by Jess McCabe at 10 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (1)

24 reasons for 24 weeks

Penny Red and Jess [ed: credit where credit’s due, I had some minimal input, along with others, but Laurie compiled this herself!], have put together 24 reasons for 24 weeks in response to anti-choice MP Nadine Dorries’ campaign 20 reasons for 20 weeks. Unfortunately for Dorries, who repeatedly spouts lies about the scientific evidence on foetal viability, results of a new study confirm those of last year’s Commons Science and Technology Committee, which found that there has been no significant development in foetal viability below 24 weeks. I’ve copied the full 24 reasons below, and you can find an excellent take down of Dorries’ 20 weeks arguments at Rhetorically Speaking, along with a whole range of posts highlighting this woman’s ignorance, lies and real anti-women agenda.

1. There has been no improvement in the survival rates of infants born before the 24-week time limit during the past decade, according to the British Medical Association.

2. Last autumn, the Commons Science and Technology Committee of MPs found no medical basis for a change in the law.

3. Research shows that lowering the time limit does nothing to lower the number of abortions taking place.

4. There are many far better ways to reduce the number of late-term abortions. People who object to late term abortions should be fighting to make early abortions easier to access, and to increase the availability of proper sex education and access to contraceptives.

5. No contraception is foolproof, and anyone can find themselves pregnant against their will; until foolproof contraception is available, legal pregnancy termination up to 24 weeks will remain necessary.

6. Some vulnerable women need late-term abortions because severe abnormalities in pregnancy, such as Edward’s syndrome, are rarely identified until 20-21 weeks. Reducing the time limit would force some women to carry severely impaired or dying fetuses to term - an horrific experience.

7. Some vulnerable women need late-term abortions because an abrupt change in personal circumstances - such as domestic violence, which often escalates in pregnancy - leaves them unable to continue with the pregnancy.

8. Some vulnerable women do not realise that they are pregnant until later in the pregnancy, because they are taking contraceptives, because they are menopausal, or because their periods do not stop. Young women in particular may also go into denial, a serious psychological phenomenon, before they find the courage to approach their GP.

9. Even taking these cases into account, only a tiny proportion of terminations take place after 20 weeks, and 90% of all abortions in the UK are carried out before 12 weeks.

10. Accessing an abortion is already difficult and traumatic enough. The UK does not have abortion on demand, unlike many European countries - it can take months for a woman to have a termination, and hostile doctors can make the process more difficult or delay women in the system until beyond 20 weeks, especially for Irish women who have crossed the sea to access
abortion services in the UK.

11. Only 15% of fetuses born before 23 weeks survive to leave their neo-natal units, and most will suffer severe health and/or physical problems. Babies born as prematurely as 21-22 weeks are nearly always born brain damaged and severely disabled - meaning that they may have very little quality of life to look forward to.

12. There is no option for ‘viable’ fetuses to be removed from the womb early, so women who carry unwanted pregnancies to term after 20 weeks are forced to carry the growing fetus in their body for months more and then undergo labour, causing permanent physical scars, pain and trauma.

13. When women have to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, they risk losing their jobs and damaging their long-term mental and physical health.

14. Fetuses cannot feel pain until much later in the pregnancy, according to experts. “The idea of fetal pain is an absurd and cruel one,” said Dr Stuart Derbyshire PhD, a researcher at Birmingham University.

15. Fetuses are never ‘alive’ after abortions: their brains are not developed enough to sense, think or feel pain.

16. Lowering the time limit to 20 weeks will create a black market trade in unsafe late-term abortions, endangering thousands of women’s lives. Eighty thousand women every year die from complications following backstreet abortions. We don’t want that to start happening in the UK.

17. Fetuses are not viable at 20 weeks: they cannot survive alone, and keeping them alive outside the womb requires complicated and expensive medical technology. Even with that technology few survive for long, causing incredible heartbreak to all involved. The idea that fetuses usually survive alone before 24 weeks is “a cruel deception for prospective parents with
premature babies,” according to Dr Evan Harris MP.

18. Safe, legal abortions at 20-24 weeks rarely have negative psychological effects - but the mental trauma of undergoing an unwanted pregnancy can last a lifetime.

19. In this country, we do not legislate over moral questions such as adultery, and abortion laws should not be the exception to that proud tradition. It is unacceptable to make laws on a moral question where there is any doubt. Pro-life campaigners are already free to make their views heard and to influence individual decisions.

20. The right of a woman to decide what happens to her own body should not be subject to the whims of changing public opinion.

21. Keeping late-term abortion legal will mean that abortions which are going to happen anyway will be carried out safely and hygenically. Many thousands of abortions up to and beyond 24 weeks happened annually before abortion was legalised in the UK in 1967. Those abortions were unsafe and many women died as a result. ‘We used to see women from the local community
bleeding to death in accident and emergency after backstreet abortions,’ said retired nurse Iris Fudge.

22. Seventy-six percent of the United Kingdom is pro-choice. The majority of women in the UK want their rights to safe, legal termination to be protected.

23. Those who are campaigning to reduce the time limit want to end legal abortion entirely - a dangerous and arcane concept. Reducing the time limit will bring them one step closer to their goals.

24. If faced with an unintended pregnancy, a woman in consultation with her doctor is the best person to decide on how to proceed.

Now get yourself to the protest and contact your MP, because Dorries and her ilk won’t stop until our right to abortion and bodily autonomy is totally destroyed.

Posted by Laura Woodhouse at 10 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (10)

1970s feminisms, feminisms now

I’m liking this short article on why feminism needs to still exist from Pasadena Weekly (of all places)!

Posted by Louise Livesey at 10 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (0)

9 May 2008

Tourist Guide for Woman-Watchers

A speech writer for Bernard Kouchner (France’s Foreign Minister) has written a book advising on the best places in Paris to look at beautiful women. According to Pierre Louis Colin, people go to Paris to see the city’s magnificent women as much as they go there “to admire the Mona Lisa and the Eiffel Tower” and he wrote The Pretty Women of Paris because he couldn’t find any such guide already in existence. The French feminist group SOS Femmes has taken a critical view of Colin’s book and this has, somewhat predictably, been sensationally described in the press as “feminist fury”.

Though arguably not quite worthy of my “fury,” I discussed this thinly veiled effort to keep the sexes in their traditional places on the Richard Bacon show on Tuesday (scroll through to about an hour and a half in). Colin has said he is “blowing a raspberry” at so-called “political correctness” and this obviously makes the book sound edgy but there isn’t anything very rebellious going on as far as I can see. If anything, he just seems to be blowing a raspberry at women in celebration of the fact that we get looked at more than men do.

Judging by what Pierre Louis Colin said during our discussion and the quotes I’ve read, I’d say this “guide” is basically one man’s quaint, misty-eyed fantasy of a culture where men who fancy women stride about, all-seeing and all-knowing, while we lovely ladies feel special because -oh joy!- these lofty adventurers might have something flattering to say about us. Here’s a prime quote:

In this troubled century, while from America come the echoes of another moral order, the responsibility of the contemplator is immense: in his respectful courtesy depends a part of the survival of our civilisation of liberty, of gentleness, and of grace.

Surprise! The contemplator is framed as male. If you were in any doubt with regard to the unequal conditions that underpin this assumption, here’s a Daily Mail comment to contemplate:

Now that’s my kind of elected official. The kind of guy you can sit down and have a beer (or a glass of wine) with and shoot the breeze about sports and women.

Doesn’t this commenter realise that smugness is deeply unattractive? Okay, I admit I’m being obtuse now…

That said, I’ll admit that I have been known to “shoot the breeze” about men. I’ve also done a fair bit of roaming about, quietly observing and contemplating them. Of course, all that hanging out alone in public spaces sometimes leads to me being interrupted by some random guy who has decided to loudly make it clear that he is going to contemplate me but, hey, what the hell. As we are constantly told -in no uncertain terms- equality has been achieved! If I get frustrated, I can always pop to my local newsagent to grab one of the many magazines showcasing sexy men with full boners, getting thoroughly rogered by anonymous women for my pleasure…

All that talk of the freedom to “contemplate,” along with the author saying he is on a “high mission,” seems to allude to the intellectual. Perhaps such high-mindedness is beyond me because I have to admit I’m having trouble appreciating the great philosophical high ground to be gained from making a special trip to the Spiral staircase at Cafe Louis Philippe to look up women’s skirts (one of Pierre louis Colin’s recommendations in the book). Perhaps I would understand if some randy lover of men informed me of the cunning ways that I could invade men’s privacy by sneaking a look at their cocks without their permission. Perhaps a tour of the urinals is in order? I wonder what the Daily Mail would have to say about that? (They don’t seem to have much faith in men so I’m guessing the words Asking, For and It would figure somewhere.)

In all seriousness, I don’t really think there is anything wrong with anyone admiring another person’s beauty. Being a sex object from time to time is fine if it doesn’t drown out everything else or become unmanageably one-sided. As I’ve said before, I also happen to think men miss out when society doesn’t fully appreciate the beauty of their bodies.

Hopefully, for the women of Paris, this book will prove to be a passing novelty item. If it doesn’t, they can probably expect some very annoying tourists.

Photo by KRFulton, shared under a Creative Commons Licence.

Posted by Holly Combe at 9 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (7)

Friday round up….

Dollymix blogger Natalie Lue did an interview with the Daily Mail’s ‘Femail’ section, only to be misrepresented, misquoted and stuffed into a piece about women taking revenge on their exes online - despite being assured otherwise.

As well as the insight into the ethics of the Mail’s hacks, here’s a little detail about the process you might be interested in:

A photographer came around the following day and told me that I couldn’t wear jeans because the Daily Mail likes it’s women to wear skirts or dresses! I felt like I was back at my convent school being chastised by the nuns!

Surprise, surprise, eh? You can check out Natalie’s actual blog about dating - not a revenge at all - here.

Still with the Daily Mail, this must surely be one of their worst articles in a long while. The headline? “Why women are to blame for killing off real men”.

The saddest thing about this story, is the writer Carol Sandler’s long description of all the work that women are expected/take on, in the pursuit of ‘reforming’ male partners:

And so we taught them the merits of changing their socks and soaping their armpits.

Perhaps we bought them style magazines, the odd designer label and a dab of face goo, too, that we might enjoy a kiss without our faces being rubbed raw.

We forced them to learn one end of a nappy from another so that they might bask in the admiration of friends when they demonstrated their dexterity with a safety pin.

We patted them on the back for donning a pinny and cooking a four-course evening meal.

Especially if they’d shopped for it, too.

We preached to them the importance of equality, within and without the workplace. We harangued them for their “sexism”, real or imagined.

We praised them beyond measure if they managed to shed a public tear.

We belittled the essence of masculinity. Even when, on the face of it, we meant no harm.

Clinton has been fucking up again, making comments that imply hard working Americans=white Americans - Ampersand has a round up of links covering the issue.

Time Magazine put out a list of top leaders. Suffice to say it was lacking in women (and included Vladimir Putin as fawned over by Madeleine Albreight. Ugh.) So Feminist Peace Network is compiling an alternative list, including Jennifer Drew, whose name you might recognise!

Meanwhile, our illustrious mayor is attending Pride this year, Pink News reports:

It will be the first Pride event that Boris Johnson has attended.

No shit.

Lesbian Dad has some thoughts on the process of re-interpretting children’s books from margin to centre:

The Philharmonic Gets Dressed is a current fave. Highly recommended, with the caveat that I keep having to ad lib a coupla mannish lesbians getting dressed in men’s duds (all 105 orchestra members are tracked from their showers to their dressing up to their subway rides to Philharmonic Hall; it’s pants for the mens, dresses for the womens, and the devil — that would be me and my cross-dressing kin — take the hindmost).

It’s a familiar routine, though. She’s quite well aware how un/underrepresented our family structure and her Baba’s gender are, in most of the media we consume. And she’s also learning first-hand how you re-write whatever it is you’re reading, so as to push yourself from margin to center.

Black Women in Europe links up some places where you can click banners to ‘end world hunger’ - i.e. corporate sponsors will make donations to charities that supply food to areas where there are shortages. Food is a feminist issue, Diary of an Anxious Black Woman points out (via Jender)

Quench zine considers the Body Image Project, set up to provide a place for women to tell their stories.

Black Looks notes that the 15th of May is blog for human rights day.

Over at pregnant drug dealing prostitutes, Davita Cuttita considers thin privilege at some length. The post is well worth reading in its own right, but she links to this great essay at Fresh Yarn, in which Kimberley Brittingham explains how she came up with the idea of a fake book jacket, in the style of those self-help manuals, called “Fat is Contagious, How Sitting Next to a Fat Person Makes YOU Fat”.

On two separate occasions, I spied women sitting opposite me jotting down the title and author on the back of a phone bill or a drug store receipt, scrawling hastily between surreptitious glances from beneath an overhang of hair. I wondered: were these women seeking to learn which trendy nutritional supplement would protect them from the perils of infectious fatness? Or were they burning to write a venomous letter to the author, verbose in its feminist ideologies?

And, finally, 60 students at a New York high school staged a cross-dressing protest in support of a transgender student, The Bilerico Project has more.

Posted by Jess McCabe at 9 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (3)

Sexual assault at British Embassy in Iraq

Iraqi staff working at the British Embassy in Baghdad say that allegations of sexual harassment were brushed under the carpet, reports The Times.

I wish I could say this was unbelievable or surprising:

The middle-aged cleaner told The Times that a British contractor with KBR, the company hired to maintain the embassy’s premises, offered to double her daily pay if she would stay the night with him. When she refused, she said, her pay was cut and she was later dismissed.

The Iraqis accuse the embassy of leaving the abuse unchallenged and failing adequately to respond to complaints against several British managers for KBR. The company was allowed to conduct its own inquiry, an arrangement criticised as a very serious conflict of interest.

The complainants - the cleaner and two male cooks who worked in the embassy canteen - say that some KBR managers groped Iraqi staff regularly, paid or otherwise rewarded them for sex and dismissed those who refused or spoke out.

So, you’re an official at the British Embassy. Staff members tell you that managers working for a contractor are sexually assaulting and harassing them. You get the contractor to investigate?!

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We’ve discussed [the investigation] with KBR in detail and are satisfied.”

The Iraqi claimants say that they were never interviewed by KBR investigators. They told The Times that their KBR managers accused them of “poor work” and “lying”. The managers, who denied the charges, were reinstated after month-long suspensions with pay. There are no claims of wrongdoing against staff directly employed by the embassy.

(via Jezebel)

Posted by Jess McCabe at 9 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (1)

New feature: Sexuality and sainthood

Cranach painted Venus to titillate Luther’s contemporaries and chaste virgins aimed at keeping women in check, argues Itala Atteih

As soon as I had heard that a poster of Lucas Cranach the Elder’s ‘Venus’ was initially banned from display in the London Underground, I knew I had to go see the exhibition that is causing such a stir.

My original perception of Cranach was of a German artist working in the Northern Renaissance period. More crucially, I knew of him as the close companion of Martin Luther and a participant in the religious Reformation taking place at the time, and so to hear of a risqué portrayal of Venus by the artist surprised me.

Many have speculated over the reasons for the ban, suggesting it may be because the figure resembles a young girl rather than a woman, or that certain religious groups have asked for it to be banned, or it may just be because the painting is a depiction of an overtly sexualised, full-frontal female nude. Whatever the reasons, I was intrigued and so I visited the exhibition with many expectations and burning questions.

Read on here

Posted by Jess McCabe at 9 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (1)

Those Dove ads were retouched after all…

Do you remember the Dove campaign for ‘Real Beauty’? It divided feminist opinion and caused all manner of controversy.

But we now learn the photos were substanatially retouched. (Oh the irony.) In an interview in The New Yorker, Photoshop guru to the stars, slips in this admission:

To avoid such complaints, retouchers tend to practice semi-clandestinely. “It is known that everybody does it, but they protest,” Dangin said recently. “The people who complain about retouching are the first to say, ‘Get this thing off my arm.’ ” I mentioned the Dove ad campaign that proudly featured lumpier-than-usual “real women” in their undergarments. It turned out that it was a Dangin job. “Do you know how much retouching was on that?” he asked. “But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.”

(Via About-Face)

Posted by Jess McCabe at 9 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (11)

8 May 2008

Emergency protest: MPs vote on abortion time limit

MPs will be voting on whether to lower the abortion time limit from 24 to 20 weeks on May 20th. Abortion Rights is organising an emergency protest outside parliament:

Tuesday 20 May, 5.30pm

Outside Parliament - details to be confirmed

Tube: Westminster

On Tuesday 20 May Members of Parliament will debate and vote on the anti-abortion amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. The key amendments aim to lower the time limit for abortion. This vote is taking place much earlier than expected and with very little notice. In the limited time available, it is vital that everyone who supports a woman’s right to choose does everything they can to show their opposition to any reduction in the time limit. Please attend this crucial protest - and encourage your trade union, women’s group, student union or other organization to send a presence. Please also write to your MP in advance of the 20th to urge them to vote against any amendment to reduce the time limit. A model letter is available here.

I really wish I could make it, but I’ll just have to sit in my French exam with my fingers crossed :-(

Posted by Laura Woodhouse at 8 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (2)

For Your Listening Pleasure

Blogstress Smurthwaite (that’s me) will be appearing as part of a panel to discuss the week’s news tomorrow on the institution that is Women’s Hour on BBC Radio 4. Please tune in at 11am, or failing that try the “listen again” option any time in the following seven days.

Posted by Kate Smurthwaite at 8 May 2008 | Permanent link | Comments (3)