Jessica Burton said:

Yay! Just caught the very end of this debate.

Some good discussion going on and despite the moderate amount of inane comments from persons who just don't have their facts straight there seemed to be several feminists there making excellent comments from many viewpoints.

That was fun.

Posted on 05 August 2009 at 1:58 PM

Karen said:

Thats funny, I thought I had my boobs done for my own self esteem! Cheers for pigeonholing, generalising and alienating me, Janice, thats really helpful. I'm a young feminist and yes I do give a damn. BTW, the latest score in the anti-porn stand-off is Karen 1 Pornos 0. So I don't care then about feminist issues because I'm young. Really? That's ageism for a start.

Posted on 05 August 2009 at 7:58 PM

polly styrene said:

I read that at lunchtime and was infuriated by it. Did Janice Turner do ANY basic research? Who was opposing lads mags a few years ago? Well how about this blogger, who became fairly high profile because of it.

http://charliegrrl.wordpress.com/page/16/

Posted on 05 August 2009 at 9:58 PM

Jack Leland said:

Polly,

I thought it was just me! No research, indeed! Also, anyone else notice how the "focus group" transmorphs into a "debate"?

Posted on 06 August 2009 at 1:12 AM

sianmarie said:

ugh, so bored of trying to prove we exist!
all she has to do is google young feminists and i am sure she wuold find a host of articles and sites and facebook groups and myspaces proclaiming us and our message loudly. for example. has she never heard of ladyfest? has she ever heard of the new feminist networks, both things which embrace women of all ages and are particularly full of young women? has she heard of fawcett's this is what a feminist looks like campaign?

i have officially given up reading cif after a particularly bad few weeks of blogger yelling, but i was constantly commenting on the assertion on the blogs that NO YOUNG FEMINISTS CAN POSSIBLY EXISIT because no young women think feminsim is a good idea. excuse me? i know dozens if not 100s of young feminists. i know many older feminists. we are working together and working hard and blogging and organsing demos and activism and shouting and having meetings and putting on art shows and fundraisers and gigs and constantly making noise and trying to make things happen. it's out there Janice Turner - just open yuor eyes, check a decent search engine and stop making these assumptions!

i think it was jess mccabe who said this regarding germanie greer bemoaning the fact young feminists don't exist - it would be a lot easier to get things done if we didn't have to spend half our time insisting we exist!!

Posted on 06 August 2009 at 8:42 AM

Catherine Redfern said:

This from the Times editorial today:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article6740663.ece

"today’s young women tend to be lazy, if not lapsed, feminists...

...Where have all the feminists gone?...

...The moribundity of modern feminism...

...The gap remains, yet feminists seem to have lost the ambition to close it..."

SO annoying. It's like they've got their fingers in their ears and their eyes closed going 'lalalalalalala I can't hear you... feminists, what feminists?'

It really annoys me that young women are always blamed for all the inequality in today's society.

Posted on 06 August 2009 at 11:39 AM

Anne Onne said:

To borrow a line from Labi Siffre:

The more you refuse to hear my voice,
The louder I will sing

It suits the patriarchy to pretend feminism is 'over', that there just aren't any feminists because there isn't any inequality. That when there is inequality, women just don't care enough to change it because they secretly like being unequal.

We're not going away, and we don't not exist, that's just wishful thinking on the part of those who would rather feminism was relegated to textbooks about suffragettes. We'll be here, regardless of how much anyone denies women young or old care about women's rights.

Posted on 06 August 2009 at 12:19 PM

Qubit said:

This confuses me because it fails to take into account social pressure.

I just wouldn't go out in a skirt without shaving my legs not for my own self esteem but because I know others would judge me for it and I don't want to deal with that. Not shaving my legs wouldn't challenge their prejudice just make life harder for me and in the end I don't care enough about my right to not have shaved legs to go against the grain and deal with the comments.

Similarly at university I learnt you DON"T enter physical relations with a new man without having shaved your pubic hair. It is obviously a choice but at the same time not doing so would be as weird as not brushing your teeth before bed. Men I have dated are less judgemental but it was made clear to me through women that this is what men expect. Maybe I dated different men to them or maybe there is miscommunication, I don't know.

It isn't surprising women are so concerned about such things even feminists. Often I don't think they are trying to attract people they just don't want to stand out as being the 'ugly' one. It is harder to define than being attractive because I think the aims are a lot lower. It is more similar to the need to shower regularly, you don't do it to be attractive you do it as a base level of hygiene and expectation. I am not sure where this pressure comes from but I think it incredibly strong and it seems silly to blame feminists for a failure to resist it.

Posted on 06 August 2009 at 12:28 PM

George said:

Qubit -

Contrary to your experience, I think I learnt at university that I could escape my high school beauty regime, which admittedly was a direct result of competitive pressure from other girls at school, without compromising my sex life at all. I also learnt that the sort of men who demanded certain things from my body hair weren't worth the time spent shaving, and I learnt that dressing up and wearing make up could be an occassional pleasure as opposed to an everyday pain in the backside. But I also had lots of good, feminist friends who were willing to join me in learning these things.

You're right, though - the looks that you get from merely talking about feminism are nothing compared to the ones that can be triggered by flashing a hairy armpit whilst dancing in a party dress! I guess I've just got to the I-don't-give-one stage.

Posted on 06 August 2009 at 4:46 PM

Roxsie said:

Qubit,

I'm at university at the moment and i can tell you from experience that it doesn't matter if you're shaven or not, guys are too damn grateful to be near a naked woman. Some guys i've dated have considered it weird that women do remove the hair from their pubic regions, as they consider it to be like returning them to the state of a prepubescent girl and implying all guys really prefer young girls.

I've also experienced no pressure from other people at university to shave my legs, in fact the only time i did feel that pressure was during PE at secondary school where all the girls were desperate to be "adult" and considered being adult to be shaving their legs.

Its amazing how much you can get away with if you just don't care. For example, since i bought pet rats i tend not to wear deoderant, except when leaving the house, as the rats tend to put their noses in my armpits and i'm worried about the effects of the chemicals on their delicate noses. I recently forgot to put some on and went out on a night out, no-one except for me noticed in the slightest.

Posted on 06 August 2009 at 8:33 PM

Rachel Feminista said:

I've managed to get from 15 to 39 without shaving any part of myself apart from, on occasion, parts of my head. Are women in their teens and twenties routinely removing their pubes?
I make my own compromises with social pressure - for work I cover my legs and armpits [but I wear a uniform as I work in a hospital]. Why fuck anyone who won't accept you looking like a grown woman?
What about lasses who are fucking each other? is it the same pressure?

Posted on 06 August 2009 at 10:36 PM

clarise said:

After witnessing July become "Prostitution is good for women" month at the very popular blog Feministe, I have to reluctantly agree with Janice Turner's assesment. Day in and out the F Word links to Feministe, Pandagon, Feministe, Womanist Musings and the other well read feminist blogs and I have never seen these popular bloggers cover Object's feminist campaigns or the campaigns of other antiprostitution, antiporn feminists. It is disengenuous to point to the Charliegrrl blog no one reads or links to as proof modern feminists are on the side of prostituted women instead of prostitution capitalists as they all appear to me to be when I read them.

I can't believe I'm the only one besides Janice Turner who sees the acceptance and very often approval of sex work as beneficial for women in a mainstream feminism that has no room in it for bloggers like Charliegrrl.

Posted on 07 August 2009 at 2:17 AM

Anon said:

Qubit, I used to shave religiously from the age of 17 and was adverse to sleeping with anyone, new or established, unless things were completely smooth. Then I slept with a friend of a friend who can only be described as a massive slut and subsequently found out he'd described the look as a "bit porny". Well, I decided that if a b-list cassanova was classing me as a "bit porny" it was probably time to embrace a bit of a fuller look down there. No comments since. I honestly question whether men accept or demand complete baldness, I think it's something we've managed to collectively talk ourselves in to because somewhere along the line we've been convinced we have to act out a porn fantasy.

Posted on 07 August 2009 at 10:22 AM

George said:

Anon, "b-list cassanova", ha!!!

clarise, I really don't think your impression is entirely correct. There is a wide range of feminist opinions about these issues on the web, ranging from pro-porn to anti-any form of objectification. If you type in "prostitution" into the search here, you get articles about Object, the Fcap, the Swedish model, etc. Other sites will have different policies and approaches. Even those writers who are pro-porn and working within the industry themselves are usually well-versed in this complicated and ongoing debate.

I also think that I have learnt a lot from paying attention to those who have a different opinion to myself, esepecially individuals who work in porn etc. This hasn't made me change my main opinions*, but check and refine them. I think this is very important!

What I would agree with in Turner's work is that somehow, young girls have become 'pornified' at such a young age (buying Playboy pyjamas and calling themselves "littleslut_2009" online) - and we, as feminists, need to work out what the hell is going on. But jumping to the conclusion that today's young feminists are responsible, and that feminism as a whole has been forgotten, is i) incorrect ii) out of touch iii) oppressive in and of itself.

(The only thing that I really get pissed of with is that my friend and I have a sneaking suspicion that riot grrrls have put down their guitars, and put on corsets and started doing strip shows. Which I think sucks. But that is a whole different kettle of fish to be argued about!)

*I personally have no problem with erotic images as a theory, but I am deeply sickened by the whole porn industry. As for prostitution, I think that the act of purchase removes consent, which therefore makes the purchaser morally reprehensible... but this is quite a radical opinion, and I respect and listen to those who hold other ones. I mean, I have Object on facebook, but I also read Feministe very often - and I don't think I'm alone in this!

Posted on 07 August 2009 at 11:15 AM

Monty said:

On the subject of hair removal,in the early twentieth century people who wanted to make a few dollar, mainly gillette, through advertising successfully turned womens armpit and leg hair unsightly and the practice of shaving en masse has been with us ever since. Nowadays gillette are doing exactly the same thing aimed at men.

Posted on 07 August 2009 at 12:57 PM

Davina said:

Just to add to the hair convo - I really wish that I could go around unshaven (legs) but there's just no way I could do it with my hair, which is very thick, black and copious - it grows, and it grows fast. On top of my Bangladeshi heritage I have a larger than normal amount of testosterone than the average woman (I discovered this when I was tested for PCOS). I also prefer wearing skirts/dresses to trousers. I get away with it in the winter by just wearing tights all the time, but during summer it's irritating having to remember to shave. Then again, when I do shave I like how my legs feel. Thankfully the boyf couldn't give a shit - as Laura mentioned above, he cares more about me having a good time than what my legs look like!

Regarding pubic hair, guys and girls have been most vocal about this - one guy (before uni) wanted me to shave it all off, then another guy (during uni) - when I had shaved it off - said it was a bit stubbly. So I said fuck it! then met my boyf who, again, could not give a shit. I trim it occasionally just for a change but that's it. I don't think the subject ever came up with my girlfriends though.

My problem with hair doesn't stop there though as every single hair shows up on me - so the hair on my arms, shoulders, neck, back and belly looks like it's a lot but it's actually the same as everyone else's. Although this kind of hair is finer than the rest of my hair, I still get self-conscious about it - especially when I was speaking to my friends (one is French-Algerian but dyes everything blonde, the other is Kenyan-Indian and very light-skinned) and found out they regularly had their arms waxed (I kid you not) even though, in my eyes, there was no need. I thought they were crazy, but I still felt ashamed of my own arms. Which is ridiculous!

Facial hair is another thing I get self-conscious about, and it's another thing that I completely forget to do, and then it's extra irritating waiting for the cream to work - but I found a US-based thread the other day which had loads of women posting about how they regularly shave their faces - not just their upper lip but their cheeks and necks - and they were all ages and races. A bit of a gender-role-fuck - shaving an area where men and men only are meant to shave. Is women's skin softer on their faces than men's? Or is that just the overwhelming impression I get from all those stupid face cream adverts? Why do I find it such a radical idea - women shaving their faces?

Posted on 07 August 2009 at 11:14 PM

Mobot said:

I think that whatever age a woman/feminist is, she has no business dictating what other women should believe, much less woman-blaming to the point where the old addage of 'divide and conquer' is more than a little apparent. There was an article on 'in-fighting' on here a while ago and I didn't agree with the tone of it but the ensuing discussion I think pretty much established a belief that debate is healthy, but pushing your views disrespectfully onto others is not. So, while I might have my own views on prostitution, pornography etc (which I am not going to get into right now), I am willing to listen to those with more knowledge on the subject, including those with experience within these areas and those opposed to them. What I am not prepared to do is put up with being told that 'to be a feminist you must believe *insert views here*' because as far as I'm concerned, all you need to believe to be a feminist is that women deserve equal rights, respect and citizenship to men. Anything beyond that is up for (healthy) debate.

Oh, and as for the whole shaving thing, yes I agree Monty that it's a fashion thing plugged by companies to make money... But I'm not sure that the pressure on men to remove body hair has the same connotations as the pressure on women. I've been experimenting with not shaving recently and while I find this pretty liberating, I've caught myself almost apologising at points for my hair pits etc. And that's coming from someone with very strong views on the issue!*

*not that I believe nobody should remove body hair, but I think it sucks that most young women feel they have to.

Posted on 08 August 2009 at 11:43 AM

Nella said:

Having reached the fine old age of 44 with delightfully fuzzy pits and never-shaven legs and pubes, I can recommend going natural to anyone. I've never had any bother off lovers, apart from one "joky" comment, which was rapidly retracted anyway after little more than a withering look. Most people don't bat an eyelid and some find the natural look - and the guts required to go natural in an appearance-obsessed patriarchal culture - positively attractive. It's worth pointing out too that many men find the fakeness and conformity of body topiary (to say nothing of the disturbingly pre-pubescent look of a shaved off muff) positively unattractive. You're never going to please everyone whatever you do. It makes sense to me, therefore, to just get on with being yourself, and if some people don't like it - too bad for them. Really, save yourself the bother, the money, the shaving rash and constant bombardment of chemicals. If lovers don't love you as you are, dump 'em. People round and about do stare sometimes, especially at fuzzy pits, but they'll just have to get over it. Personally, I quite enjoy freaking out posers at the swimming baths. For the record, there's nothing unhygienic about body hair - the human race has survived millenia with it after all! As for scraping yourself with sharp blades and applying chemicals to sensitive areas, well, that doesn't sound so hygienic or healthy to me. It is, of course, a personal choice, but it makes me sad that so many women feel they can't even try it. And that so many women find our natural state "ugly". I think we're beautiful as we are. Why pay companies whose main aim in life is to convince you you're ugly?

Posted on 08 August 2009 at 3:49 PM

Shan said:

Omigoddess I think I'm SHOCKED! Not embarrassed but acutely amazed! I came across a girl in a novel who shaved her pubes but I thought she was just eccentric. It sounds awful if young women feel they OUGHT to. How terribly uncomfortable and pubic hair is so NICE.

For the record I'm now 60 and have covered two continents with my lovers over more than 40 years. I've never shaved my armpits, legs, pubes ... anywhere like that and never one of my "cast of thousands" as one friend called it, ever found it odd or unattractive. Quite the reverse.

However I do pluck the hair that grows on my chin since I passed 55. I have strong feelings that beards belong to men - I like beards and my beloved has one maybe that has something to do with it? Call me conventional if you will but that's how I like it - on him. I quite enjoy doing it though, plucking it's quite mediational; it doesn't hurt and it's not like the hair grows evenly in a pretty pattern. If it did I just might see it differently.

On young women being feminist I'm afraid I have to say that my general impression is that most young women dismiss feminism as old hat, past it. Apparently feminism did its job, and created as many problems as it solved, and we're all equal now so feminist fuss is not welcome. GRRRR!
I'm only speaking here from direct experience both in everyday life and online forums.

Which is why I'm over the moon to discover Fword and related sites at last. I thought I was a dinosaur.

Posted on 09 August 2009 at 4:39 AM

Anne Onne said:

@ Shan: You're not a dinosaur, far from it.
I think a lot of the pressure to shave falls on young women and girls because it's a more recent craze. The mainstreaming and easy accessibility of porn* has somewhat fed into this. I think that whilst men and women of all ages have access to it, and may all be affected by a lot of the messages differently it's the youngest of us who tend to have the least experience. This may be what young men are first exposed to, and what young women are brought up believing men want. A good example is that sex education programme that was on TV, they asked some teenage boys about unshaven vulvas, and the boys said they'd pressure their girlfriends to shave if they weren't. Obviously this is not representative of all men (or most), but there is definitely more expectation than there used to be for women to be perfect. I do think that there are different expectations amongst men and women of different ages, and that a lot of us who have grown up before the 'noughties' may not realise just how extreme pressures on younger women are.

My grandmother certainly wouldn't dream of some of the pressures (eg to shave) that I face, and even my mother had a hard time believing just how bad the pressure to be perfect on the youngest generations can be. The pressures are so pointless (seriously, what is the point of trying to be as absolutely skinny and perfect as possible when you're never going to be?) that she found it hard to understand why anyone would be pressured to look like a photoshopped model, or would want to look like one.**

Obviously, people of all generations can look and examine what is happening today, and I'm not suggesting that it has all passed them by, rather that it's human for all of us to not realise what pressures fall on someone else when they did not affect us in the same way. I wouldn't say it's a privilege exactly, but there are different experiences that other people may not have experienced in the past (or in the next generation, for that matter). As our ages are different, we experience different environments, different pressures as we age. It just makes it more important for all of us to explain how the patriarchy affects us, because we're al experiencing different versions of the same discrimination.

I hope that girls and boys in the future will face less pressures than we (the current 'young' generation) do.

* Not that all porn is to do with shaven pubic areas or is degrading per se, etc. Just that the pressure that private parts should look a certain way has certainly increased with the media's focus on 'perfection' even in a sexual context.

** Obviously as women age they face discrimination of a different kind, and I'm not saying that older women don't face ageism or plenty of other pressures to look young forever. Just that they may not have taken in the pressures to look like a photoshopped supermodel pornstar to the extent that a young girl taking in these messages would. And that they may well have plenty of experience of sex and what partners want, and how to be yourself and have fun.

@ Davina: I actually don't find the idea of women shaving their faces remotely radical. They're (most probably) not doing it to reverse gender roles, but under the implication that even relatively downy female face hair or the odd bristle is *disgusting* and needs to be eradicated so that women can look hairless and flawless. I don't really believe there's any unspoken rule that women *shouldn't* shave their faces. Men may or may not, it's considered manly to have facial hair to keep or shave off. But women are expected to be hairless, and shaving anything, even areas that are fairly hairless, is seen as something expected of many women. of course, there are plenty of people who don't care, but there are plenty of companies marketing hairlessness as beauty, and plenty of people to shame women into doing it.

For all the 'but men don't like this so why do silly women do it?' kind of talk, we forget that there is never pressure for no reason. Women do not simply do things because other women tell them to, even though men have no problem (whatever some people say!). There will always be at least just enough shaming from men and women to get many women to comply whether it's dieting, shaving, etc.

Posted on 09 August 2009 at 10:39 PM

Saranga said:

In regards to the shaving discussion, I would just like to put my hand up and say there is at least one reader here (me) who shaves her muff purely because she likes the feel of it. The first time I shaved there was under suggestion from my boyfriend but the reason i continue to shave there is because *i* prefer the feel of it during sex.
Not to denigrate the pressures that other women feel but I am always concerned during these discussions that they tend to be framed as women only ever shaving their private bits because of societal pressures. That is not the case and I think it's important to recognise that.
For the record, I pluck my chin hair out because I can't bear not feeling smooth on my face (which is entirely down to my control issues), I wax my lip hair off when I can afford it (because it tickles when it gets rather long) and given the choice I would grow my leg and underarm hair to it's full glory, however my boyfriend prefers it not too long so I make a concession to him and shave my pits and legs once or twice a month. More likely once a month. I'm in a loving relationship, it's a compromise. I request that he removes his odd lone thick hairs too.

I fully agree that women shouldn't feel like they 'ought' to remove body hair and I also feel that more men should get over it.

Posted on 10 August 2009 at 5:21 PM

jan said:

I don't bother shaving because I spend my life in jeans and long sleeves. When I casually mentioned this to a male friend he went apeshit and said I was a bullshit feminist who hated men, and then told me why that makes me a bad person. Yeah, because I wake up every morning thinking up ways to piss off bigots!

Posted on 31 December 2009 at 1:18 PM

Miss Caragh said:

I am only 15 years of age and i feel that porography of naked women is every where! it's like me and my girl friends can't watch movies without some naked pornostar being in it! Its very degrading i must say. Even the titanic contained female nudity , its not the dark ages anymore , now a days its about equality so if theres gonna be naked women in a film why not equil it out by putting some naked men in the movie?

Posted on 01 January 2010 at 3:58 AM

Elmo said:

Jan, I hope you dont feel obliged to continue being friends with this lovely man!

Posted on 01 January 2010 at 10:14 PM