Photo of the Women Against Fundamentalism panel by helen.2006 used with a creative commons licence

On 12-13th March I attended the Women's Liberation Movement @ 40 conference held at Ruskin College, Oxford; the site of the original conference in 1970 at which several of the WLM's original demands were developed.

It was a really interesting couple of days. Along with wearing my fingers down to stubs by obsessively live tweeting the conference for those who couldn't make it, I enjoyed listening to various thought-provoking and challenging talks by various academic and activist feminists (although of course the two aren't mutually exclusive!).

There was a good mix of ages and a pretty positive atmosphere, although many attendees were concerned that some people couldn't attend as they couldn't afford the conference fee; a problem not just for this conference but all similar events held in Universities nowadays. Whilst subsidised childcare was offered, some were worried that mothers would not be able to attend, although others raised their hands and said "we're here!".

Whilst there would be a lot of interesting points to pick up on and so much to report, I'm not going to attempt to review every session. Instead I'll just mention a few general points and impressions from my personal perspective.

Click here to read more.

Comments have been left open on this blog post. Did you attend? Feel free to share your thoughts on this conference.

[Image shows a 'cloud' of 50 words (e.g. women, equality, men, belief); the words are different sizes based on how frequently they were mentioned]

They are produced from the answers given to our survey of 1265 UK feminists (for the scope and limitations of the survey, see more information here), as part of the research for my book with Kristin Aune Reclaiming The F Word (more of the survey results will be published over the next few months and I may cross-post some of them to The F Word, as I've done here.).

So, one of our survey questions was "What do you understand the term feminism to mean?"

These images represent the free text of the responses pasted into Wordle (above) and Tag Crowd (below).

I'm hoping to publish more detail about the actual responses to this question in due course. (One of my favourites was the person who wrote: "you're pulling my leg? i haven't the time to write this answer!")

Important points to note: The images represent the most frequent 50 words from the 824 respondents who answered this question online (we had 1265 survey responses in total and about two-thirds completed the survey online). Unfortunately we don't currently have the funding to type up all of the free text responses that were submitted on paper, but the paper responses were counted in our main (statistical) survey results which are in our book.

I removed the word 'feminism' from the responses before processing it, since that's what they were asked to define.

[Image shows a 'cloud' of 50 words (e.g. women, equality, gender, belief); the words are different sizes based on how frequently they were mentioned]

I've included both clouds as they look slightly different: the one above, for example, doesn't have the word 'men' in it. I'm not sure why that is, but it's interesting to see how it gives a slightly different impression.

Both of these make me very happy! More of this sort of thing to come, I hope!

(I'm concerned that these are probably not accessible to all readers, and I'm going to investigate if there is a way of fixing that. Advice very much welcome.)

Claudia Zeiske: Senzeni, we invited you to come to Scotland to address issues of women's self-perception, which are high on the agenda at the moment. You initially came up with a proposal to work with a group of women here. Can you remind us of your ideas before you came here?

Senzeni Marasela: I have been doing work on my mother's dresses for a very long time. I use her dresses as a canvas and tell the story of her life. My mother was a woman of her generation. She was never expected to work or have ambitions that went beyond the gate of her home. Essentially she never had a voice, in a way I speak for her and myself.

I wanted to work with Scottish women and look at creating narratives on dresses. I was interested in their silences. Many obviously were silent through the circumstances of their lives. They were far from the independent women we see on television. They were dependent on someone, often either a social worker or the social services. My culture also encourages dependency amongst women. We were going to take their stories and weave them into dresses. The idea was they could wear them and people could look at their lives.

CZ: ... dependency amongst women. Do you mean a network of support and friendship?

SM: I mean the dependency on men and the idea that you only have worth once you are married to a reputable man. After that you are forced into silence. Also because we are so gendered that we are groomed for specific roles, we see very few strong and powerful women. Women are not authors of their own experiences.

Click here to read on and comment

Curious about feminist science fiction, but don't know where to begin reading? Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century is a great place to start.

Justine Larbalestier has curated a collection of 11 short stories, each followed by an analysis from a feminist science fiction academic or critic.

"I wanted to find a balance in this anthology between introducing people to long-out-of-print stories they would never otherwise read and reprinting better-known works that have never been the subject of study," Larbalestier says in the introduction. (You might recognise Larbalestier's name - she is also the young adult author who recently drew attention to the 'whitewashing' of the US cover for her novel Liar.)

Daughters of Earth opens the door to a selection of feminist and women's science fiction writing, then puts these examples in historical and literary context through critical essays written in a broad and accessible tone. These essays sprout hundreds of branches, tantalising the reader with glimpses of the history of US women's speculative fiction, the development of science fiction as a genre, the development of feminist ideas, feminist critique and the relationship between 'genre' and 'literary' writing.

Click here to read on and comment

The suspension will last for three weeks until something is done to all the issues that had been raised. Our position will be reviewed on suspension of the hunger strike if there are no changes to the problems and issues. Nobody wants to go on hunger strike, but if the authorities and immigration do not listen to us then we can resume the hunger strike on the 9 April 2010. This letter will be sent with a copy of the problems that we face at Yarl’s Wood.

Here are some suggestions on how to support the strikers.

The London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival starts tonight - sometime F-Word contributor Kaite Welsh has rounded up some of the highlights over at Lesbilicious. The site also considers the highlights for the Queer Up North festival in Manchester this May.

Meanwhile, Charlotte at Subtext notes two interesting films screening in London as part of the Human Rights Watch festival:

Sanctuary (4m animation) Sanctuary is the true story of one woman, Marjorie, who tries to seek asylum in the UK. Speaking of her experiences in her own words, this film illustrates the journey she goes through—her inner journey as she confronts the effects of her torture and her outward journey as she struggles for asylum.

Location: The Ritzy, Brixton Oval, London

Date and time:
March 21, 2010 5:00pm
March 22, 2010 6:30pm

Women Without Men
Shirin Neshat’s striking Women Without Men weaves together the stories of five women against the backdrop of the American- and British-backed coup that brought down Prime Minister Mossadegh and reinstalled the Shah in 1953. Contrasting the political drama of the time with the complexities of the women’s intimate lives makes for an imaginative and emotional film that engages us on a myriad of levels.

Location: Curzon Soho, 99 Shaftesbury Avenue, London
Date and time: March 23, 2010 6:30pm

US tabloid magazine Life & Style engaged in a particularly egregious bout of gender policing recently, putting Angelina Jolie's three-year-old on the cover with the headline: "Why is Angelina turning Shiloh into a boy? -A boys haircut and clothes -Calls her 'John' -No girlie things." Miriam at Feministing notes:

The idea of kids and adults standing in the grocery store aisle, looking at this cover, and absorbing the message it sends was too much.

Agendered is looking for writers to contribute to its Masculinity issue:

We’re looking for articles on things like ( but not restricted to):

Politics: can men be feminists? profiles of various feminist men…
Baby Daddies: the UK’s new paternity leave—how does it measure up to the Scandinavian countries’ paternity leave?
Sex and Dating: dating guides’ models of ‘masculinity’—is the man from ‘The Rules’ the same as the man from ‘The Game’? Or is it a different sport entirely?
Role Play: what do people who value ‘masculinity’ think about femininity?
Oxford Rites of Passage: does ‘masculinity’ vary from place to place? Is there an Oxford specific model of ‘masculinity’?
Mag Hags: ‘Men’s Health’ is now more popular than ‘FHM’—What’s going on?
Beauty: Masculinity and the female gaze—a review of ‘Filament’ magazine

Criticisms of how gender stereotypes are imposed on explanations of how the human egg is fertilised are well established and almost 20 years old. Elle PhD picks up on how they have not yet sunk into the minds of those at the National Geographic Channel, however:

The woman's body is represented as terrain to be overcome and defeated. Why do I say defeated? Because the narrator describes the process of fertilization and conception as an "epic quest," and "a war," calls the sperm "250 million genetic couriers... about to invade Emily's body" and talks in terms of "securing victory." For sperm, "landing in Emily's vagina is like D-Day."

Anyway, back to women-as-landscapes. There are forests and mountains and oceans. There is a rough, rocky road (aka the floor of the vagina. Yes, seriously). The woman's reproductive system is defined in terms of its treachery or pleasantness to sperm. "Everything in the vagina," says one of the scientists, "works against the sperm's survival." The vagina has a "dark side." The cervix is a "dark, treacherous maze of uncharted tunnels." It is "hell," a "twisted, nightmarish, urban environment." On the other hand, the fallopian tubes are "sperm heaven." But, it's not all sunshine at this point! The egg's short life span presents "a final, fatal hurdle."

Gordon Brown has promised to provide pregnant women with the legal right to a home birth and an extra 4,000 midwives by 2012.

Isata Denton Ceesay from the Mother's Campaign of the All African Women's Group talks about the recent march (note, I've not been able to watch this video myself):

Also, the 10th Carnival of Feminist Parenting is up at Mothers for Women's Lib.

LGBT Asylum News profiles a lesbian couple in Uganda.

Reille Hunter - with whom US politician John Edwards had an affair - was interviewed in GQ magazine. The resulting pictures unleashed some serious slut shaming.

The International Olympic Committee wants to require intersex athletes to have surgery before they compete, according to the Bay Area Reporter, which links up a petition to protest this.

Farmer's Weekly held a competition for 'sexiest farmer', with male and female categories. The news media predictably leapt on the story, but have been ignoring the winner in the men's category, only reporting on the "blonde" winner of the sexiest woman farmer category. Only Pete Mortimore's local newspaper ran a photo of him. Sociological Images breaks it down.

Bristol Reclaim the Night happened - sian and the crooked rib has posted her speech from the protest.

In ice-skating news, Sociological Images explains that competitive female figure skaters are required to wear skirts, after the International Skating Union was "scandalized by Debi Thomas’ unitard at the 1988 Olympics".

Over at Comment is Free, Annabelle Lever breaks down an interesting study about how racism operates in juries.

Melissa at Shakesville offers congratulations on the first same-sex couple to wed in Washington, DC, and some thoughts about love. Meanwhile, Sociological Images considers how a 'family' organisation 'accidentally' posted the wrong photo representing a lesbian couple wanting to adopt a relative's child, but also see the comments discussion too.

The Grand Narrative posts about how symbolism varies across culture - and how this makes it hard for Westerners to 'read' how gender operates in Korean advertising.

Lady Gaga and Beyonce's product-placement-tastic latest video Telephone has been kicking up a lot of discussion, with Fox News predictably 'outraged', but also some people with more valid criticisms - Lesbilicious has more.

More on the implicit/explicit racism and sexism of population control rhetoric - Pink Scare links through to this Facebook album looking at some of the images advocates of population control use:

Often simple depictions of women of color with children are associated with hunger, scarcity, overcrowding and environmental burden. Critically analyzing and understanding these fear-based images can help us remove the negative lens through which certain peoples are viewed as burden or threat rather than as integral members of a global community.

Over at the Women's Media Center, Latoya Peterson makes the case for focusing on the "wealth gap" as well as the pay gap:

Wage equity is still a large problem for women—while the gender wage gap is widest for white women compared to white men, black, Latina, and Native American women take home far less than their white counterparts. But earnings are only a small part of overall financial stability. What matters more than income in the long run is the accumulation of wealth. As lead researcher Mariko Chang explains in her presentation summarizing the data, “wealth confers benefits income doesn’t.” While income is vital for day to day survival, only wealth can generate further income, provide collateral for loans, be passed from generation to generation through inheritance, and provide the individual with the means to survive without a paycheck. Sadly, for many of women of color, the wealth gap is even wider than the income gap. Most women of color have no assets except for their cars—once the blue book value of the vehicle is removed from the calculation of median wealth, black women are left with a scant $100 in assets, while Latinas can only claim $120.

Finally, Ayaan Hassan at Muslimah Media Watch looks at how Muslim women immigrants are represented in the right-wing media in the UK.

You can support the campaign in a number of ways and sign up to receive the weekly campaign bulletin with updates, events and weekly actions you can take. The activist pack tells you how you can organise What About Women? hustings in your local area.

Sheffield Fems are hosting a hustings next Tuesday, 23 March, at the Quaker Meeting House, 7.15pm - 10pm, with Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem and Green candidates. Let us know if you're hosting one and we'll add it to our events page.

When punk exploded onto the British musical and cultural scene in 1976, it was thanks to the hard work of a merry band of mythmakers. The story of the Sex Pistols has been told, re-told, mythologised, de-mythologised and re-mythologised more times than I can count, and that's just one band.

This myth originated with Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood in 1975, it was re-spun by the tabloids between 1976 and 1979 as part of a textbook moral panic about punk, and was later reclaimed and re-told by a number of other interested parties, all of whom sought to put their own spin on it for their own purposes. They aren't the only ones, but accounts of punk, both in the popular sense and the academic sense, do tend to concentrate on a very specific canon, comprised largely of the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, sometimes The Jam, sometimes The Buzzcocks, sometimes The Stranglers, suggesting that not only was punk a purely British phenomenon, but (Buzzcocks aside) it was also exclusive to London, and to white young men.

The earliest punk books were a mixture of insider accounts (Caroline Coon's 1988: The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion, which was published in 1977, and Fred and Judy Vermorel's The Sex Pistols: Inside Story, which was published in 1978), personal polemic (Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill's The Boy Looked At Johnny: The Obituary Of Rock'n'roll, also published in 1978) and dense academic subcultural theory (Dick Hebdige's Subculture: The Meaning Of Style, which was published in 1979). With the exception of Coon's book, and - to a lesser extent - Parsons and Burchill's, they were not really interested in exploring the female experience of punk.

Click here to read on and comment

For almost 10 years I have suffered from a form of vulvodynia (vulval pain) known as vulvar vestibulitis, which, although it has made perhaps two brief forays into the media in that time, seems generally unknown except to those who suffer from it. Briefly, it has no known definite cause or cure and the symptoms are simply excruciating spots of soreness just inside the entrance to the vagina (making sexual intercourse, in my case, utterly impossible). This physiological (not psychosomatic - more on that in a moment) condition has had a fairly devastating effect on my sexual identity, marital relationship and general well-being, but it has also brought some clarity to my thinking about female (and indeed male) sexuality, and the prevailing societal assumptions of most healthcare providers. Essentially I would argue that the attitudes of healthcare providers to this type of condition are often phallocentric and negligent of female care. In my case I firmly believe my condition could have been treated successfully, had it been diagnosed immediately, treated as a serious condition and free from the obsessive focus on penetrative sexuality.

My first reaction when this problem started was utter terror and shame and fear, because I had no idea what the hell was wrong with me. I was 19 and only a few months into a still developing sexual relationship with my (now) husband and - despite having had very good sex education in terms of contraception and sexually transmitted diseases - was totally clueless about any of the other myriad problems that affect women in their sexual health. Why are students not offered this kind of information as part of our education system? It's almost as though as long as you are pregnancy and disease free, nothing else - such as enjoyment or comfort - matters. I worry that we fail spectacularly to provide young men and women with the knowledge and understanding of sexual issues that most of them will encounter. Indeed, of the many, many GPs that I saw, hardly any of them seemed aware of vulvar vestibulitis, and I ended up educating them! If healthcare professionals take so little interest in women's sexual health (and this is not a rare condition by any means), what does this say about society's priorities?

Click here to read on and comment

Photo by styler*, shared on Flickr under a Creative Commons license

Among other things, she talks about reporting on 'corrective' rapes in South Africa:

There is a challenge there in how to cover a story. I found myself challenged when I did the South Africa story last year on ‘corrective rape’ - with gangs targeting lesbian women. Was it patronising? Was it racist, as some men I met suggested, to go on about African men and rape? But the fact was, the story was not being covered in South Africa and the women’s group campaigners were so pleased to have someone keen to cover the issue.

The piece was focused on what the women themselves were doing. I met a network TV reporter outside the Johannesburg high court on my first day’s filming about a protest over delays to rape trials, who told me editors weren’t interested in the rape of some lesbian township women because there’s so much violent crime in South Africa already. I’m fascinated by how the poorest always get neglected and I was able to make that part of the story. The day after it ran the South African High Commission in London rang up to ask for a transcript. Some South African bloggers also picked up on the embarrassment for the authorities (whose complacency was implicated in the report) as I’d deliberately linked the story to the tourist drive for the upcoming football World Cup finals.

Crucially you need time - not two minutes - to give all that context. I had nearly seven minutes. And I do feel while there are some terrific foreign correspondents, (the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen and C4’s Jonathan Miller spring to mind) there are still far too many ignorant ones who go in with an arrogant attitude and little empathy. Some of the accounts I’ve heard from producers over the years about the insensitive questions or attitudes to traumatised people are really shocking.

Read the whole thing here

Hidden Herstories: Women of Change is a documentary which tells the stories of four influential women (Octavia Hill, Amy Ashwood Garvey, Claudia Jones and Jayaben Desai) who haven't had their rightful place in the history books.

It was made by 20 young people from West London, and you can see it for FREE at Nettlefield Hall on Norwood High Street on 26 March.

More details and info on how to book (as places are limited) on Facebook!

I have recently set up a publishing and information initiative, HammerOn Press, to publish my book, Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory and empower people to self-publish their own work, through giving workshops and providing resources. I want to share with readers of The F-Word some of things I have learnt along the way and how I think my adventures in self-publishing relate to the history of feminist publishing.

For much of my activist life I have been involved with do-it-yourself (DIY) politics, and the publishing cultures they engender, such as zines and blogs. I see zines and blogs - which have shaped how contemporary feminists connect and communicate with each other - in continuity with publishing books. I don't think I'd have ever considered self-publishing my book, which is a creative and popular re-interpretation of my PhD thesis, had I not been involved in DIY networks.

HammerOn is a queer and feminist initiative, but it also links to a wider tradition of DIY cultural production. I am doing what people were doing in the late 1970s, but with books rather than records. Although feminism inspires me, I think economically it was a DIY/ punk ethic that pulled me through and said "yes, you can do this." Living in Bristol helps because there is a lot of support for alternative/DIY cultures here (for example, a feminist, queer vegan co-operative cafe).

Self-publishing provides an alternative for people not wishing to engage with the mainstream publishing industry, which of course is structured massively by capitalist market logics (what sells essentially is what gets published). There are massive barriers for voices that challenge the norms of society to overcome before they're seen as viable, publishable. The answer to this is: take it into your own hands and publish your work (either in a zine, blog or a book).

Click here to read on and comment

Talk/discussion 2-4pm Sunday 21st March, LGBT Centre, 49-51 Sidney Street, Manchester (Behind 8th Day Co-op off Oxford Rd)

David Kato, LGBTI activist from Uganda and member of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) will talk about his experiences as an activist in the context of recent legislation threatening the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality", the campaign in Uganda to stop the new law as well as international efforts for decriminalisation. To be followed by questions/discussion. David is on a short tour of the UK and this is his only Manchester date.

David will be joined by Sokari Ekine, activist, writer, sometime TFW blogger and founder of Black Looks, a site documenting social justice issues in Africa and the diaspora with a focus on LGBTI rights, gender-based violence, militarism as well as literature and popular culture.

Delicious cheap food and cafe available from 12.30pm.

The event is free but voluntary contributions towards travel expenses of participants gratefully received. The venue is wheelchair accessible and all on the ground floor. If you have any queries please contact mikewupton@hotmail.com

This event is brought to you by Manchester Queer Reading Group. For more info or to hear about other events, subscribe to their mailing list

GenderCC, a group of women working across the spectrum on climate change, from NGOs to business, today called for the situation to be addressed. They said:

While we are aware that the appointment of women does neither necessarily translate into women's empowerment nor gender equality, we need to ask: Has the world run out of women experts? Is the planet consisting of men alone? Is it not for such imbalances that this climate crisis exists?

As Elizabeth Becker and Suzanne Ehlers pointed out over at Grist on Monday, this is especially ironic (not to say hypocritical), as Ban Ki-moon has called for more involvement of women in the UN negotiations to create a global treaty to tackle climate change - and has repeatedly highlighted how gender inequality puts women in a particularly vulnerable position regarding climate change.

The secretary-general himself has noted the need to include women in all aspects of decision-making on climate change. In a speech last September, he called on member states “to foster an environment where women are key decision makers on climate change, and play an equally central role in carrying out these decisions...We must do more to give greater say to women in addressing the climate challenge.” So why have they been ignored yet again?

The secretary-general and the co-chairs of the advisory group can correct this by expanding the membership of the group to include meaningful representation of female officials before the group’s first meeting in London at the end of the month.

It is impossible to believe that the secretary-general couldn’t find any women with expertise to participate. On today, International Women’s Day, we hope the secretary-general reconsiders the membership of this important group.

The Women's Environment Network has also just released a major new report assessing the gendered impacts of climate change worldwide, which I'm still kicking myself because I've not had time to read, but specifically concludes:

The most effective way of ensuring that all three of the above priorities are met is increasing the representation of women in decision-making bodies, particularly at the national and international level.

Photo by Oxfam International, shared on Flickr under a Creative Commons license

This will come as no surprise at all to many readers: it seems more victims of domestic violence have been officially let down by the police. According to BBC News, Greater Manchester Police have been heavily criticised in a new report by the IPCC, which highlights the force’s failings in two cases of women murdered by their ex-partners. These findings come on the same day that authorities in Sheffield apologised to two sisters for failing to protect them from their abusive father, who subjected them to repeated rapes and beatings over a 25-year-period.

In Greater Manchester, Clare Wood was strangled by her ex-partner George Appleton, a man who had been in prison three times for assaults on previous partners. Before she was killed, she had contacted police on several occasions to report that he had caused criminal damage, harassed, threatened and sexually assaulted her. The Manchester Evening News has a detailed breakdown of the force’s failings in Wood’s case, some points of which are:

"Police took more than 24 hours to respond after Clare frantically dialled 999 when Appleton hammered on her front door.

A police officer took four months to submit a file to prosecutors after Clare went to Pendleton police station and said that Appleton had threatened to smash her windows, burn her house down and have her stabbed.

Appleton was bailed after the allegation of sexually (sic) assault despite his history of domestic violence.

Police failed to correctly fill in 13-point risk assessment sheets for domestic violence victims.

Prosecutors advised the officer to give Appleton a harassment order but he did not because Appleton was on bail for the sex assault. Three days later he killed Clare."

“The police officer who recorded Clare's complaints - known as officer A - underestimated the threat posed by Appleton. It says the officer did not consider there was a genuine threat to life and perceived Appleton as a 'quiet mild man' and thought his threats were 'throwaway comments'.”

How many deaths are caused by attitudes like this? ‘He seems like a decent bloke.’ ‘He probably didn’t mean what he said.’ ‘He wouldn’t do such a thing.’ Why does the belief stubbornly persist that domestic violence just doesn’t happen, even in supposedly highly trained professionals like police officers, who you’d think would be used to the fact that violent people exist? Why do some officers evidently believe you can tell a potential murderer just by looking at them? My mother, working for Women’s Aid in the 1980s, encountered attitudes like these from the police, and I encountered them myself when spending a day at a women’s refuge in London several years ago. Here they are again. What will it take to make them go away?

GMP insist they are already making improvements to their service following Clare Wood’s case. I hope that’s true. However, I remain cynical about the effect these will have. In my opinion, as long as ignorant and harmful attitudes about domestic violence exist in society at large, they’ll exist in the police force. The idea that one can send a police officer on a training course in how to fill out a particular risk assessment form and then expect all their preconceived notions about domestic violence to vaporise (most men accused of domestic violence are probably ‘good blokes’, women lie and exaggerate because they like ‘drama’, perhaps she nagged him, etc) is utterly naive. These ideas are stubborn, and need to be aggressively and systematically challenged in all areas of life.

I already know the answer to the question I asked above: the removal of misogyny from society.

Per has obtained the support of Baroness Sarah Ludford (Liberal Democrat MEP for London) and she has recently tabled a written question to the European Commission asking whether the Commission considers that EU legislation sufficiently protects citizens who identify as non-gendered or differently to that registered at birth, and whether there are any plans to revise EU Directives in a more gender neutral way.

The question was tabled after Christie approached Baroness Ludford to request her support and assistance in taking the issue forward to Europe (armed with the 'Sex Not Specified' initiative that has taken place in Australia), as per felt that the pace of progress in the UK has been intolerably slow to date and seems unlikely to change any time soon.

Having started the process, per will nevertheless continue per fight here in the UK in the hope that the proposed changes to existing legislation might eventually bear fruit, although this might be overtaken if per campaigning directly at the European Parliament succeeds.

I have always tried to stress the point that legal recognition and equality of treatment for the most marginalized human beings who lead a socially invisible existence outside the gendered societal structure is a HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE whereas the perception within the United Kingdom tends towards designating anything 'trans related' into a 'health issue'. The pathologisation (and resultant stigmatisation) of what is fundamentally an innate inability to conform within a gendered societal structure is something I totally oppose.

Christie adds that it could take up to six weeks before per receives a response from the Commission, and per next step will be decided upon after that.

At the publishers' request, the male translator (H.M. Parshley) removed over 10% of the original content. Extensive description of women's history and references to historical female figures are omitted, along with qualitative evidence of women's oppression in marriage and within the home, while illustration of men's dominance and superior social status is retained. These omissions have in some cases served to fuel accusations that Beauvoir privileged men over women.

Key philosophical terms, drawn from Beauvoir and her partner Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist theory, were translated inconsistently and, in many cases, wholly inaccurately, to often disastrous effect. The first academic to analyse Parshley's translation, Margaret A. Simons, points out that the existentialist term for human consciousness , être-pour-soi (implying a potential for free choice), was not translated by the standard English equivalent 'being-for-itself' but with various versions of 'in accordance with one's true nature'. This wholly distorts both Beauvoir's feminism and its philosophical basis. According to Beauvoir, there is no human nature: femininity has been constructed and positioned as natural in order to oppress women and keep them in a state of inauthenticity (existence that is not freely chosen or determined).

Beauvoir asked Margaret Simons to publish a new translation of the work, and feminist scholars have approached the publishers with requests for a new translation, but to no avail - until 2005. The resulting new translation was published in November last year, although I hadn't heard about it until a few weeks ago, when a friend forwarded me this review by feminist academic Toril Moi.

And oh how my translator's brain and my feminist heart hurt when I read quite how royally Beauvoir has been let down - again.

For a start, the translators are neither philosophy nor feminism specialists; they're English teachers who write textbooks and cookery books. They're barely even professional translators, having only minimal French-English translation experience. Quite why the publishers thought they were suitable, particularly given the obvious importance of the task in the face of such cutting criticism of the original translation, is anyone's guess, but Moi's review is damning.

She argues that the new translation has three 'fundamental and pervasive problems: a mishandling of key terms for gender and sexuality, an inconsistent use of tenses, and the mangling of syntax, sentence structure and punctuation'. The basic translation errors are bad enough; check out this beauty:

In the chapter on ‘The Married Woman’, Beauvoir quotes the famous line from Balzac’s Physiologie du mariage: ‘Ne commencez jamais le mariage par un viol’ (‘Never begin marriage by a rape’). Borde and Malovany-Chevallier write: ‘Do not begin marriage by a violation of law.’

If you're interested in translation, I suggest you read the full review: there's plenty more where that came from. I'll stick to highlighting the distortion of Beauvoir's feminism, which unfortunately appears to occur along the same lines as the distortions in the original translation.

The translators render the French féminin/e (of or pertaining to women) as 'feminine' (essentially female), meaning Beauvoir's work now 'teems with references to the "feminine world", "feminine literature", "feminine reality", "feminine individualism", "feminine magic", "feminine destiny" and so on'. Littérature féminine is simply literature written by women. Given that Beauvoir rejected the notion of a female essence or nature (in contrast with other francophone feminists such as Luce Irigaray) and that her entire work aims to expose femininity as a social construct, this is a massive error.

This error is compound by the interchangeable translation of la femme as 'women' 'woman' and 'a woman'. Moi explains:

Parshley translated ‘On ne naît pas femme: on le devient’ as ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.’ Borde and Malovany-Chevallier write: ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, woman.’ [...] This error makes Beauvoir sound as if she were committed to a theory of women’s difference. But Beauvoir’s point isn’t that a baby girl grows up to become woman; she becomes a woman, one among many, and in no way the incarnation of Woman, a concept Beauvoir discards as a patriarchal ‘myth’ in the first part of her book.

While the new translation deals more appropriately with Beauvoir's existentialist vocabulary, Moi suggests the translators get too caught up in philosophical language, often replacing ordinary words with philosophical terms:

Borde and Malovany-Chevallier doggedly translate ‘alienate’ and ‘alienation’ every time the word turns up, regardless of what it means. The result is that they translate ‘aliéner les biens immeubles’ (‘dispose of landed property’) as ‘alienate real estate’.

To top all this off, the translators' insistence on trying to reproduce French linguistic style in the English - a basic translation error, and one of the reasons why translation is much trickier than many non-linguists assume - apparently makes the reader's job far more difficult than it should be; Moi says: 'I feel as if I were reading underwater'.

I haven't read the translation myself, but I trust Moi's judgement, and I'm hugely disappointed. At least I can add 'write a decent translation of The Second Sex' to my list of things to do before I die.

Photo by cdrummbks , shared under a Creative Commons License.

“Mama Says Good Girls Marry Doctors” is for all girls from immigrant families who deal with good girl/bad girl issues often around topics such as careers and sexuality. These girls often run into clashes of values between what being a good girl entails (such as listening to the family, picking a career the parents approve, or finding a partner that is suitable for family).

Where this is a life journey that most women encounter, it can sometimes have upsetting consequences within immigrant families. The main reason is that often the good girl attitude is about holding cultural values for fear of them being diluted in UK’s culture. As such, it may be more important for families to have good girls or women who stay true to their cultural values for the sake of passing on the heritage from one generation to another.

However these situations can often be violent. The number of women who want to make choices with respect to their career, sexuality or choice of spouses are often NOT representative of what cultural values reflect as a good girl. There are many instances where young women are coerced financially, physically or emotionally in order to subscribe to the cultural good girl paradigm. This clashing of values can be extremely traumatizing for the good girls and their respective families. Some women have faced being ostracized by their family, suffered a loss of family financial support for their education and careers, or forced to be disowned in their community gatherings.

What is often mistaken is that this is a false dichotomy. There are multiple ways of being a cultural good girl, though it may not be recognized by our families. Currently feminism is redefining women and their roles in their cultural heritage. The idea is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater as there are multiple paths for women to express and strengthen their cultural heritage while be a key player in the UK. What results are women forging new roads and a new type of feminism. Young diasporic women are forging new feminist grounds and redefining how feminist tools are useful.

This new type of feminism is exciting to watch. I hope you’ll join me in spreading the word of this project. Stay tune next week for Part 2: Are you a bad girl?

Josephine is part of a two person team duo launching "Mama Says Good Girls Marry Doctors" along with Piyali. You are welcome to submit a story about your own good girl story. Check us out at Goodgirlsmarrydoctors.webs.com.

The subject is My world: Visions of 21st Century Feminism and the competition seeks images that make a creative and powerful statement on the theme of "21st Century Feminism".

To submit an entry you must be:

• Female
• Aged between 15 and 40
• Resident in an EU Member State or Candidate country

A maximum of three entries per person are permitted and the closing date and time of the Competition is 11.59pm on Saturday 31 June 2010.

The full Criteria and Rules of Entry are available to download here (MS Word document format). Click on the image below for an A4 PDF version of the poster.

Josephine Tsui works in women's rights and international development. As a graduate from the University of Calgary and the School of Oriental and African Studies, her research has focused on gender analysis and agriculture. Recently, Josephine worked with the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe on the Beijing Platform Review +15. Mama Says Good Girls Marry Doctors is her first anthology.

Piyali Bhattacharya is a writer and editor. With a BA from Bryn Mawr College in English and South Asia studies and an MA from SOAS, University of London in critical media and culture studies, she is currently a blogger of Asian interest stories for the Wall Street Journal and a columnist on South Asian feminisms for EGO magazine. This autumn, she will be starting as an assistant editor at Yale University Press in New Haven, CT. Mama Says Good Girls Marry Doctors is her first edited anthology. She is also excited to be working with Josephine on the Mama Says Good Girls Marry Doctors blog.

Please also encourage your MP to sign the Early Day Motion in support of the strikers.

Read more on the strike and conditions in Yarl's Wood here.

Via Feminist Fightback.