To quote Andrea Dworkin in Woman Hating:

Every transsexual, white, black, man, woman, rich, poor, is in a state of primary emergency as a transsexual.

For many of us, our focus is finding ways to overcome that state of emergency: we transition to survive. We are not here to provide entertainment for cis people, nor to be the subject of cis centred academic theories. We cannot be socialised into being cis; neither can being trans be beaten out of us. We may not choose to be trans, but we are here, and we are trying to make our way in a world where we face prejudice and discrimination, bigotry, hatred and violence from cis people on a daily basis.

Yes, our journey is hard, but there are good things, too. We find others like ourselves and learn that we are not alone. We make new friends, trans and cis. We learn to face and overcome challenges and obstacles we never knew we'd face, and find strengths we never knew we had. We change, we develop and we become the people we always knew we were.

Or at least, some of us do.

Some - like the more than 160 trans people mentioned in the recent report of the TGEU’s Trans Murder Monitoring Project - don’t make it through. They are the ones we remember today: those members of my community who weren’t allowed to grow and blossom or find their true selves and who were murdered at the rate of three a week, every week.

Today, 20th November 2009, is the 11th International Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR). It is a day when we remember that every day, all over the world, thousands of trans people are excluded, persecuted, hated, mistreated, subject to aggression and routinely murdered or driven to suicide because of our so-called differences from other members of mainstream cis society. A system which tolerates and accommodates such hatred, prejudice and bigotry is unacceptable, and must be fought without concession, in the name of its past and present victims, and also in the name of its victims to come.

There are numerous events and vigils being held worldwide to mark this year's Transgender Day of Remembrance - many are listed on the TDOR website (link here) and I would urge anyone - trans or cis - who is able to attend any of these events to do so. Perhaps I may see some of you at the London event tomorrow (Saturday 21st November).

But regardless of anything else, today of all days, please spare a thought for those of my community whose lives have been sacrificed to transphobic bigotry and violence - and maybe ask yourself how anyone who believes in the basic principles of feminism can help us work towards ending transphobic hate crimes like this and this.

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(Cross-posted at Bird of Paradox)

Penelope Trunk, a woman in America, was widely condemned after sending the following tweet:

I'm in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there's a f**ked-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin.

1. it was insensitive to those who had had miscarriages and were devastated about it,
2. that it was an inappropriately detailed message, which her many followers did not want to read, and
3. that she was heartless and abortions are bad.

I think these are all different points, and the former certainly has more validity as a criticism. A miscarriage can be an utterly awful experience for a woman who wants the baby. And indeed women who aren't sure. There is huge grief, loss, fear and hopelessness. Penelope Trunk herself has experienced such a miscarriage, and said on her blog

there are many women who want the baby and have a miscarriage. I was one of them. I cried for days. I get it.

I am four months pregnant. But the baby is dead, inside me, and must be removed. I am devastated. I always knew this could happen, in the back of my mind. But you are never prepared for something like this to happen.

To all of you who said I should not be happy about having a miscarriage: You are the ones short on empathy. Any woman who is pregnant but wishes she weren’t would of course be grateful when she has a miscarriage. [...]

But if you have ever had an abortion, which I have, you would know that a miscarriage is preferable to an abortion. Even the Pope would agree with that.

But if you have just miscarried a wanted child, I can only imagine how awful it would be to have read it.

On to point 2, it was detail that people did not want to know, it was gory and personal, and who wants to hear the details of that?

This is where I defend Ms Trunk absolutely. Women's bodily functions are normal and natural, not dirty and shameful. I talk openly about my periods, about the joys of using washable sanitary towels, and about having endometriosis and PCOS and the problems that come with that. About spending 4 days of each cycle in agony and unable to move. About the amount of blood that comes out.

As a teenager I was as coy about it as everyone else my age was. But then after several years of medical tests, investigations, interventions and surgery, I realised that it was ridiculous that I was not supposed to talk about *that*, whereas if the problems I was experiencing were in most other parts of my body, people would not shrink away from hearing the details.

For centuries, women have been taught that their periods, along with other 'women's things' should be kept quiet. And why should they? One of my favourite things is reading feminist radical menstruation writings and looking round the Museum of Menstruation site. Partly because I like breaking patriarchy's rules, and partly because it is fascinating.

I have no doubt that while some people would prefer I kept it all quiet, I have every right to talk about bleeding, and I will continue to do so.

Why, then, should Ms Trunk *not* talk about her miscarriage? If I want women to be free to talk about periods, breastfeeding, childbirth, and other 'women-only' subjects, so we all know we are not alone, then miscarriage must come into that too. She should not have to keep it quiet in order to not offend the sensibilities of delicate men who are reading. Miscarriage is a fact of life, and it is often painful and messy and emotional. And the more women feel able to discuss it, the less isolated and alone other women will feel, whether the miscarriage is, to them, a relief or a profound loss.

The third point is perhaps the most enraging. How dare she feel relief at miscarrying? How dare she be planning an abortion at all? How dare she complain about abortion provision?

I'm not going to use this post to argue about why women deserve ultimate control over their own bodies. But we do. I hope I'm preaching to the converted, but if not, the debate occurs in so many places that it should not be necessary here.

Ms Trunk's situation does, of course, brings up issues of access to abortion. For a woman to have to be relieved to miscarry, because getting an abortion is so fraught with difficulties, is a really appalling situation.

I will not condem Penelope Trunk for sending that message. Not at all. At worst, it was perhaps insensitive, but this is a woman who was miscarrying in the middle of a board meeting. She might have been relieved, but it would nonetheless have been a difficult, awkward and painful situation. Sometimes women need to stop putting everyone else first and express themselves as they need to.

She had every right to feel relieved when she realised what was happening, and she should never made to feel shame at feeling that, nor should she be, or feel, silenced by others who find it distasteful.

Her body was going through something that millions of women experience. Some of those women are devastated, others are ambivalent, and some are glad. Some, like Penelope Trunk herself, miscarry more than once and feel very differently about each instance. And this is all common.

I recommend this post on the subject at DoubleX. She says,

not talking about a miscarriage or an abortion—or all the complicated feelings that can get rolled up in both—because it's just too personal is fine. But not talking about it because no one else ever talks about it—so maybe we're just not supposed too—is not.

On Saturday 10 October, thousands of women, children and men took to the streets of Edinburgh to re-enact the women's suffrage movement procession that took place along Princes Street a century ago to the day.

The original demonstration took place on Princes Street, Edinburgh's main commercial thoroughfare, which looks onto Princes Street Gardens and Edinburgh Castle beyond. However, due to ongoing tram-works in the city's centre, the 21st century recreation of the iconic historical movement was not able to retrace the original route, which was a real shame, but unfortunately an unavoidable one. Instead, the march, starting at Bruntsfield Links, wove through the Old Town past the City Chambers on the Royal Mile to terminate atop Calton Hill, where a rally of speeches, music and singing took place.

Click here to read on and comment

While researching recent posts on accessibility, we've followed up one potential lead so far and are looking to get a team together so that not all the work piles up on one person during times when several posts that day simultaneously need transcription or detailed picture descriptions.

Do you know anyone with skills or knowledge that could help us with this?

We have two problems when it comes to representations of women in film: not enough films which treat women as subject not object, and not enough women making films. It's not a hard and fast rule that the two are related: one of my favourite films that Jan Chapman has produced is Lantana, a thoroughly intelligent film with three dimensional female characters directed and written by men.

Still, here in the UK only 6% of film directors and 12% of screenwriters are women, according to Birds Eye View. A San Diago State University's Center for Study of Women in TV and Film study found that the picture is not so different in Hollywood. Only 9% of directors are women, 12% of screenwriters and 17% of editors. Producers appear to be slightly more representative - women make up 23% of all producers and 16% of executive producers - as well as 44% of production supervisors.

We are also in a situation where the stories we see told at the cinema turn the focus constantly on men, with female characters mostly acting as adjuncts, plot devices to demonstrate something about the male lead or eye candy.

I couldn't, therefore, pass up the opportunity of speaking to Australian film producer Jan Chapman, given her long - and successful - career in the film industry. Chapman often works with one of the world's highest-profile directors who happens to be female, Jane Campion of The Piano and Holy Smoke among other films (Interestingly, in Chapman's early career this included working with the Sydney Co-Op and women's film collectives, according to an interview with Senses of Cinema a few years ago.)

Click here to read on and comment

When discussing a recent high profile child abuse case on The Ten O'Clock News on the BBC, anchor George Alagiah asked if it was more shocking and more "disgusting" because women were involved in the abuse of these children. The reporter covering the case agreed, stating that there are more women involved in abusing children than the public might think: 25% of cases, he informed us. This small discussion struck me immediately. Gendered preconceptions were shifting the focus of the report away from the crime itself to the gender of those involved and saying a lot about society's deep-rooted beliefs about appropriate gendered behaviour for women and men. In cases of violence of any kind (I'm using 'violence' in its broadest sense to mean all forms of physical, mental and emotional abuse) the issue of gender can play a large role in the court process and media reporting of the case. The law should be genderless, but once faced with the decidedly human situation of the courtroom, ideas about gender roles begin to impact on juries, the media, public reaction and the very sentences dolled out.

We have a belief within our society that women care. I mean 'care' in two senses: caring for other people and caring about other people. Parenting or caring for elderly or other dependent relatives within the home, or the paid work of nurse, social worker or teacher is all seen as 'women's work'. The archetypal woman should be predisposed to care, her 'natural' femininity making her willing to work hard to nurture and protect those around her and, importantly, prevent her from being able to harm anyone, particularly children. If a woman does act to harm another person she has transgressed the natural order and will be judged accordingly as something less than a 'normal', 'proper' woman.

Click here to read on and comment

There will also be a book of condolence for Andrea Waddell, who was recently murderd in Brighton.

Additionally, I have added to the Events page (link here) the details of some other events scheduled in the UK to mark the Transgender Day of Remembrance. I hope to see some of you at the London event on Saturday.

Each year, when advertising the march, we receive comments and emails asking whether Reclaim the Night London is open to trans women. We also received comments asking about this year's march on our recent piece on the women-only workshop at the Feminism in London conference. Although we have been told informally that trans women are implicitly included in the 'women only' label, it appears that the lack of public clarity surrounding this has lead to some confusion and resulted in some women - both cis and trans - feeling unable to take part in the march.

As discussed in the Feminism in London post, the use of the term 'women-only' is problematic because trans women cannot be sure whether the term includes them, given that society in general and some feminists in particular refuse to accept them as 'real' women. For this reason, we at The F Word think it would be helpful if the London Reclaim the Night march were advertised as being explicitly open to trans women. A simple amendment to the promotional material and website would widen participation in this important and significant feminist event. Trans women experience misogynist male violence - in addition to transphobic violence - and should be able to take to the streets along with cis women to protest against it.

So we passed readers' feedback and this suggestion on to RTN organisers at the beginning of October in the hope that the website could be amended for this year's march and that promotional material for next year's march will make it clear that trans women are indeed welcome. We have received no official response thus far.

Reclaim the Night is a fantastic event which F Word bloggers have attended and enjoyed in the past and we hope to be able to support a fully inclusive march in the future.

The BBC announced this on Friday morning, saying that his co-host Tess Daly would take over his presenting duties. If you don't watch Strictly, usually Bruce is out in the ballroom, reading the links, introducing the couples, and eliciting the judges' comments; Tess is backstage getting the dancers' reactions after they've performed.

When I heard that Tess would be out front, I assumed that they'd get a chap in to do the backstage bits, for balance, speculating about former champions Mark Ramprakash and Darren Gough, or pro dancer Matthew Cutler. So I was delighted when the Beeb revealed later that day that Claudia Winkleman, presenter of the show's spin-off It Takes Two, would be taking on Tess's usual role.

Still with me? Good.

And then Strictly began on Saturday night, and Tess was joined on the dance floor by Ronnie Corbett.

RONNIE CORBETT.

Seriously.

A fine comedian, a great ambassador for British light entertainment, I'm sure, but with no tangible links to Strictly or ballroom dancing. Except, of course, for the fact that he's great mates with Brucie. If Corbett wasn't exaggerating, Forsyth asked him to take over for the week.

This leads me to ask first why on earth Forsyth is sorting out his own temp cover when he's off sick, and second why on earth the BBC put up with it. The effect of bringing on Corbett as a senior male figure, sitting on the sidelines to watch over Daly and Winkleman doing the hard work, is one of the BBC not trusting the girlies to be able to handle the show themselves, and Forsyth jealously guarding his territory.

The irony is that in my humble opinion Tess did Bruce's job much better than he does now, and Claudia did Tess's job much better than she does now. When the time comes for a shake-up, I wonder if the BBC will consider an all-female presenting team? After all, there are no issues with all-male teams. Or would two women on prime-time television be too much oestrogen for the television-viewing public to handle?

It was 1997, and I was seven years old; my friend and I were sat in her lounge practising our times tables and discussing the Spice Girls. We were deciding which group members were most like our friends and, as always, because of my red hair I was Gerri and, because of her curly hair, she was Mel B.

"I'm so jealous of your hair, I think its so pretty... mine's just boring and brown," she said and smiled at me, dreamily surveying my fringed bob cut.

In my primary school days, I had come to the conclusion that I loved my hair, because everyone else seemed to, and my friend's faces were not framed by such distinctive manes.

Fast forward to 2003, when I was 13-years-old; the same friend and I were stood beside one another drying our hands in the toilets of a village hall, which was the venue for her 13th birthday disco. She had changed schools soon after that Spice Girls discussion and we'd drifted apart as friends and become different people. She was popular with her classmates, which is so important for 13-year-old girls, straightened her beautiful cherubic curls, wore makeup and kissed boys; to put things in perspective, I was bullied and enjoyed talking about my love for platform donning face-painted stadium rockers KISS... occasionally with boys.

This childhood friend and I had become polar opposites in six years, which was expressed perfectly in the image of us in the hall's toilets, a slender designer clothes wearing blonde standing betweenn us, looking down her nose at my tiny boyish frame. My childhood friend ignored me and, admiring her reflection, asked her newer friend whether she "looked ginger". My heart sank with the heavy disgusted tone of her voice, it was something I had become used to, but sounded even worse from the mouth of a girl who'd once been "so jealous" of my hair. They went on to cackle to themselves dropping various ginger-related insults, which I have and still do hear a million times.

Click here to read on and comment

Detectives from the Homicide and Serious Crime Command (HSCC) arrested and bailed (pending further enquiries) a cis man in connection with Ms Lauren's murder. (Via the Hampstead and Highgate Express [also the Press Association and Pink News])

Today I note the following update on the BBC News website (link here):

Police investigating the murder of a 29-year-old woman in north-west London have made an arrest.

A man in his 20s is being held in connection with Destiny Lauren's murder on 5 November.

[...]

Police previously arrested a 35-year-old man connection with the investigation, who has been bailed to return in December pending further inquiries.

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Sunday, 15 November: Reports from the Press Association (link here) and BBC News (link here) confirm that Leon Fyle, a 21-year old unemployed man, has been charged with the murder of Destiny Lauren, and will appear at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court tomorrow (Monday, 16 November)

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Monday, 16 November: From the Press Association (link here):

Unemployed Leon Fyle, 21, of Laleham Road, Catford, south-east London, was charged at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court with murdering Destiny Lauren.

A court official said he was remanded in custody to reappear at the Old Bailey on February 22 next year.

And from Pink News (link here):

A 35-year-old man who was arrested in connection with her murder has been bailed until next month.

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Compiled from posts at Bird of Paradox (links here and here)

Image via BBC News

Firstly, Clause 13 (formerly Clause 14) of the Policing and Crime Bill was passed without amendment and now makes it a criminal offence to buy sexual services from someone who has been subjected to "force, deception or threats". Hitherto, the only recourse for police was to try to charge a punter with rape, which relies on proving that he (or, I guess in theory, she) had reasonable cause to believe that consent was not freely given. As far as I'm aware there was no law against buying or selling sex, only in various activities inevitably associated with prostitution, such as keeping a brothel, streetwalking and trafficking. Clause 13 makes it a criminal offense even where the punter didn't know that the prostitute was controlled for gain. I'm no lawyer, but at face value this seems sort of analagous to it being an offense to handle stolen goods even if you didn't know ... that is to say, it puts the onus on the person receiving the goods or, in this case, services to be sure of their provenance before buying them. It's a clear shift of responsibilty towards the men buying sexual services (obviously I don't mean to compare women who work as prostitutes to stolen objects such as TVs, I'm just trying to make an analogy...)

The other clause of interest, Clause 26 (formerly Clause 27), reclassifies lap dancing clubs so that they require licensing as sex establishments rather than as cafes and bars. This gives much more scope for local objections to the granting of licenses, and allow the police to shut down lap dancing clubs where they're near 'sensitive locations' such as schools.

The Act also modifies existing offences such as kerb crawling and loitering.

There was a huge amount of work and pressure for this legislation from the feminist Demand Change! coalition, headed by Eaves and Object. Sasha Rakoff, Director of Object, said:

"These provisions in the Policing and Crime Bill mark a major victory in the fight against the dehumanisation of women in the sex industry. The mainstreaming and glamourisation of lap dancing and prostitution promote sexist stereotypes of women as objects, and not real people. It is a no brainer that purchasing a woman who has been exploited should be illegal, and that lap dancing clubs should be regulated as part of the sex industry and we are delighted that Parliament has prioritised the voices of those who have been exploited and who care about equality above the voices of profit and sexual entitlement. Today's victory in Parliament shows that treating women like sexual objects is not inevitable or unstoppable and that it has no place in the twenty first century"

On Thursday evening the pilot episode of Misfits was broadcast on E4. It seems that E4 has decided to jump on board the current superhero revival and make it's own programme about kids with superpowers. Being a comics book and superhero fan for most of my life I was intrigued enough to watch.

The show is a world away from Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Mutants. It's about five young offenders who gain superpowers whilst completing their community service. But I don't really want to talk about the plot (which although seems like it was written in the E4 canteen was rather entertaining) - I want to talk about the superpowers the characters obtain and why I was so angry once the programme finished.

Of the three male characters one can turn invisible, one can turn back time and the last has not yet had his power revealed. Of the two female characters one has a psychic ability and the other...well, she's developed the power to make men so attracted to her they try to rape her when she touches them. No, really. The character, Alisha, is someone who is not afraid to use her sexuality to try and get her own way. By giving her power to make any many attracted to her to the point of rape is obviously the writer's attempt to juxtapose a "consequence" to her actions. She's a tease! Look what men are like if you tease them! They can't stop themselves! She's getting the superpower she "deserves".

More than that, I have read many female superheroes becoming depowered or killed or raped...but I have never seen a female superhero be given a power from the start that actually DISEMPOWERS her. Everyone else gets something cool - Alisha gets to be an example to all sexual women in the UK. And here also lies the myth of female empowerment via sexuality...patriarchy always tells us how we have "power" over men due to our sexuality, but punishes women viciously if they try to use it (think about the word slut, think about Katie Price, think about how people bring up previous partners of the victim in rape cases...). Alisha is basically the avatar for this misogyny.

This is one of the most blatant examples of rape culture I have ever seen. A woman punished for using her sexuality. A woman who can be raped without consequence because it isn't the man's fault as her powers literally "make them" rape her. A male-gaze fantasy who was "asking for it" and was given powers to fit! A woman who has the worst damn superpower I have seen in my 15 years of reading comic books (and I have read some damned sexist stuff!).

By watching the trailer for the next episode it does indeed seem that Misfits will include an attempted-rape or rape scene with Alisha. This is a programme that I really could have enjoyed, but instead I felt a bit sick after watching it.

You can watch the first episode of Misfits on 4OD

The Representations of Women in the Media Project was set up three years ago by the Bristol Fawcett Society, who spent a day in June 2007 collecting evidence exploring representation, from the number of films showing in the local cinemas that were directed by a woman (none) to how many pictures in the newspapers were of men and women (twice as many of men). The project grew in 2008 when, joining forces with Bristol Feminist Network, the two organisations decided to take a snapshot of how women are represented in the media over a month long period, between October and November.

The results were shocking.

We counted how many women performers, artists and directors were featuring in Bristol’s “alternative” venues. In one arts cinema, out of 28 films on show only 4 were directed by women, whilst a second arts cinema and gig venue had 1 woman directed film out of 19 films in total. Comedy also showed its exclusive side, in one month a local alternative comedy venue had no female comedians performing.

One mother watched Cbeebies over a day, to find that none of the stories told on the channel that day had a female narrator. Character representation didn’t do well either, whilst 70% of the characters on the Cbeebies shows that day being male, only 30% were female. Regular TV was no better; one volunteer recorded who was appearing on her screen as she switched it on throughout the day. Whereas a woman appeared on the screen 5 out of 10 times, men were present 8 out of 10 times.

Objectification was another issue we wanted to explore. We spent an afternoon flyering lad’s mags in city centre newsagents to try and discover how normalised pornographic imagery is in society, making a film to try and explore creatively how women are objectified. We counted magazine covers to discover the percentage of idealised women and men, and active men and women. 85% of magazine covers in WhSmiths and Borders showed idealised women, 15% of idealised men. And, in an uncanny reversal, 85% of covers on display showed active men whilst only 15% showed active women.

()

This November we are doing it all over again, and we’re getting even bigger! We’re looking at airbrushing in magazines, and how minority ethnic women are represented. We’re exploring how queer women are represented, women adverts, gender stereotyping in children’s media, gender of storytelling in films. We’re finding out how often women appear on comedy panel shows, checking how domestic violence and rape is reported in the news, and much more.

Our research is based around counting and stats, but it is also based on creativity, exploring how we feel and experience representation in the media and expressing how we want to be represented. We know that our research may not be scientific, but it creates a snapshot of how women are experienced through the media today, and offers examples of how women appear across the media. Our evidence testifies that, contrary to popular belief, women do not have equality of representation in the media.

Bristol Feminist Network and Bristol Fawcett Society will be presenting the project findings at the Malcolm X Centre, Bristol, on the 28th November. We are setting up at midday and the talks will begin around 3pm. Please keep checking Representations of Women in the Media Project> for further info.

We want to start by asking for some reader feedback to help influence this process: particularly -

• What are the top five things you'd like to see more of?
• What are your top five gripes - things you'd like to see work differently?

Feel free to leave your lists as comments - or email me.

Photo by m-c, shared under a Creative Commons license

Yes, ladies, it's 'first ladette' Greer we have to thank for binge drinking, casual sex, high heels, violence against women, teenage pregnancies, the breakdown of holy matrimony, the loss of good ol' fashioned feminine demureness and the prospect of more women dying at sea should a large cruise liner hit an iceberg any time soon:

When the RMS Titanic sank in 1912, a large proportion of the female passengers survived, but 80 per cent of the men on board went down with the ship, doomed by chivalry. They had observed the code of 'women and children first' to the lifeboats.

Would that happen today? After the onslaughts of sexual equality, it seems unlikely. Anyone using such a term on a modern-day Titanic would probably find himself rapped on the shoulder by the ship's diversity champion and told he had uttered a sexist comment which would be investigated by the relevant authorities, just as soon as the lifeboats reached land.

In Shakespeare's day the gap-toothed country girl offering easy pleasure would later exact her price - the ball and chain of marriage.

Yet thanks to the messianic toil of the equality crowd, marriage has gone down the khazi, discarded by scowling intellectuals as a form of religio-sexual bondage, institutional sexism minted at the altar of a male-run religion.

And so women have been denied the financial and romantic security which came with marital vows. Women's lib gave men an excuse not to make a commitment and many of them promptly took it.

Hedonistic? Exciting? Novel? Daring? Germaine Greer's glory days were all of those. But the loss of dignity they entailed meant that the standing of women deteriorated.

With that, the conduct of men worsened. They no longer felt they owed their female acquaintances any sort of behavioural discount.

Statistics suggest that violent behaviour against women - and even by women against men - has risen. If women were to be treated equally, as Miss Greer demanded, surely it became no worse to hit a woman than a geezer. So certain cavemen seemed to think.

The very notion of being a gent became redundant if men and women were the same.

I almost feel sorry for the man.

Firstly, it really helped me. The encouragement that I am doing ok, I am doing good things, and I am making a difference, even if I can't necessarily do the 'outside' things.

And secondly, that it touched so many people. Not especially that my words helped, but that talking about disability and feminism seems such a rarity, and that many people were reading about it for the first time. I'm so glad I could do that, and I'm so glad that it provoked thought for some and reassurance for others, but we need much more!

I mentioned on my main blog that I had posted here, and one of the commenters there said,

Isn't it a shame that writing about disability and feminism and inclusivity is something that is still a remarkable thing?

I appreciate that some groups have limited resources, or not much choice of venue, but seriously, if you are a feminist group and you are not meeting in an accessible place, what are you thinking? Would you meet somewhere that excluded other groups of women? Some kind of white-only venue?

You wouldn't, because, even if the founding members of the group were all white, you would know instantly and instinctively that this went against every human and feminist value you have ever held. You would not want to associate yourself with a venue like that, nor would you want to support that venue in any way. If you did meet there, that would give out a message to black women that they were not welcome, so they would not enquire about the group, which might give you the impression that black women did not want to join the group, so it was ok, for the moment, to meet there. This might eventually give you the false impression that actually, meeting in a white-only venue wasn't so bad, black feminists weren't trying to join so it was less of an issue than you had predicted, and after all, the room hire is free.

You know, reading that, that it's wrong! And meeting in an inaccessible venue is the same. Even if no disabled feminists have enquired about the group, this may be because they know they can't use that venue. Or maybe they even turned up, waited outside for a while when they couldn't get in, then went back home. What if one of your regular members becomes disabled? Will they be no longer welcome?

However, overall there was a really positive message from the commenters to my original post, which is that online activism is relevant, is important, and does make a difference. Raising awareness, taking action and sharing stories and experiences can all be done extremely successfully online, and even more effectively than in real life at times. This is a good reminder to me, and to all the women who responded who also have limited spoons, whose uses have to be carefully chosen.

Kitt, in the comments, said

I know disabled feminists have a lot to offer - we have been forced to plumb the depths of our ingenuity to do the things we want to, using as few spoons as possible, and to choose our battles because we simply have to prioritise everything, everyday. Feminism has always benefited from the ingenuity of women - letting disabled people in will only add to this. We are another voice in the choir that will make the song sweeter and stronger.

Along with this, I took part in two discussions on BBC Three Counties Radio last week. The first was on Jonathan Vernon Smith's show and was about body hair, in the light of the Daily Mail's vicious and gleeful criticism of model Danielle Bux for daring to go out with hair showing under her arms. (The topic begins from 2.01.32 and my contribution comes in at 2.43.35.) Jonathan quite rightly suggested that it didn't matter whether or not Bux's body hair was intentional or the result of her "forgetting to shave" and pointed out that, while it's true that men are generally expected to shave their faces, people don't tend to look at them and say "ugh!" the way many of them unfortunately do when talking about body hair on women. However, he also said he hadn't heard from a male caller saying it was "disgusting" and brought up the apparent tendency for women to be the ones doing the disapproving during our discussion. I'm fairy sure there actually were some male callers making negative comments during the course of the show and, in any case, hairy women is sadly something I've seen women and men reacting badly to. Indeed, during a conversation before the show, Jonathan told me that Naomi Campbell had recently admitted to Jonathan Ross that she waxes her big toe, only for him to be taken aback that she even has it there in the first place!

The second discussion I got involved in was with Katherine Boyle and Tara Gungaphul on the Nine o' Clock show. It was focused on the decision to replace Jerry Hall with the much younger Kelly Brook as the character "Celia" in a theatre production of Calendar Girls (0.04.40 and 1.05.30). Apart from naked calendars being extremely commonplace (i.e. banal rather than daring) at the moment and this not being helped by the rather obviously conventionally sexy slant being given by Brook, it also has to be said that the original plotline was about older women, so it seems decidedly suspect that a woman who is only just about to reach 30 should be in the cast. And that's just one of the issues. We didn't even get around to touching on a woman's greatest asset apparently being her looks and that the need for older women to be included in that in order to feel "fabulous", or whatever, is arguably flawed from the start...

Photo by vår resa, shared under a Creative Commons Licence.

Thanks once again to Helen G who has compiled and coded the comments. Her help means this month's comments are up once again in a timely fashion :-)

This month, Kate's piece on sexism in primary schools received lots of great responses.

And, from the archive, Anne's article on how male privilege affects men's role in feminist activism got another interesting comment.

Photo of an abandoned feminist surf school in Costa Rica is by linkzilla and shared on Flickr under a Creative Commons license

Once again this is a real community response to domestic abuse and sexual violence and the Spinnaker tower will be coloured purple, we will be marching through Gun Wharf and then onto the streets of Portsmouth. At the Guildhall, we are hoping for refreshments and then the candle light vigil. We anticipate that the evening will end approximately 9pm.