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.

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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.

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

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

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.

In a press release today the mayor announced:

Islington and Westminster councils have taken the lead to deliver new Rape Crisis services in north London using £370,000 of funding from the Mayor. With the full support of four other north London councils they plan to run Rape Crisis services in each borough with the work centrally co-ordinated by an existing women’s service provider. This means that women in north London will not have to travel across boroughs but can access services locally.

A similar plan is underway in east London where Redbridge is leading work to deliver a new Rape Crisis Centre for the area with £370,000 of funding from the Mayor.

The new Rape Crisis Centre for west London, run by the Women and Girl’s Network, will start operating on April 1. With £375,000 funding from the Mayor along with resources and additional funding from Ealing Council, the centre hopes to run satellite services across West London.

Since receiving £260,000 from the Mayor last year the Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Centre (RASASC) in Croydon has doubled the capacity of its helpline and increased by 30 per cent the level of face to face counselling it can now provide to victims of rape and sexual abuse.

Well done to the activists at Boris Keep Your Promise, who have no doubt helped ensure this goes ahead.

Vanessa Engle’s three-part documentary Women, taking a look at the second wave movement, motherhood and current feminists in the form of the London Feminist Network, today launches the BBC’s month-long celebration of International Women’s Day.

In a phone interview with Engle she told us that the series spawned from her interest in motherhood today - being a mother of two young children herself, she wanted to examine how and if second wave feminism has changed the family - and explore the new generation of feminists. The three hour-long programmes are at times exciting, enlightening and engaging, and no doubt will act as conversation starters for heterosexual couples on their division of labour and young women finding feminism for the first time, but we couldn’t help but feel unsatisfied.

After watching all three documentaries we were astonished by the lack of black and minority ethnic women interviewed, in archive footage, in the representation of feminism - from the 1970s up to the current day, in the US and the UK - 40 years of women’s liberation, 40 years of erasure.

Click here to read on and comment

Eight thousand* women marched through central London yesterday for Million Women Rise, to demand an end to the "continued daily, hourly, minute-by-minute individual and institutionalised male violence enacted against women worldwide".

The third Million Women Rise was just as inspiring and amazing as ever, as chants of "women, join us!", whistling, shouts and singing reverberated through the crowd of women from across the country and beyond. It's also great to see The Independent ran some photos!

Only one issue cast a pall on the day - the MWR organisers' reluctance to make their own stated policy public and clear on their website and flyers that trans women are welcome on the march and included in their signature chant, "One woman, One song, One body, One love".

They say sit back - We say fight back!

They say silence - We say justice!

They say submit - We say don't quit!

Power!

Power!

Power to the women

Cos the women got the power

Sister, can you hear it?

Getting stronger by the hour

Say it once, say it again

No excuse for violent men!

Say it once, say it loud

We are women, we are proud!

Cath Elliot with a Unison flag - Cath also spoke at the rally.

Women from the Butterfly Project.

The musician Sarah Kate Bennett

Sabrina Qureshi, co-ordinator of Million Women Rise, starting off the rally

Activist Michelle Daley

Patsy McKie, Mothers Against Violence

Judith Adorkorach, from CARE International, spoke about Northern Uganda.

More:

All my photos on Flickr
Charlotte Cooper's photos on Flickr
Hannah Nicklin's photos
Videos from the march

* According to the march organisers - also, this is 3,000 more than last year!

1. Overview

The F-Word blog collective is made up of feminists with a wide range of identities, backgrounds and feminisms.

However, we recognise that to some extent the blogging collective does reflect and may reinstate power imbalances in society, through under-representation of some groups, and we are committed to working to change this through the measures outlined below. We also aim to actively address the impact of all types of oppression and power imbalance in a broader sense through the blog.

This goes beyond simply avoiding forms of discrimination (such as ageism, cissexism, classism, dis/ablism, heteronormativity, lookism, racism, sexism, transmisogyny, etc), and discriminatory attitudes, (such as biphobia, homophobia, lesbophobia, transphobia, etc). It means working to make this commitment a basis for the blog and actively welcoming contributions from as many different perspectives, histories and identities as possible within a broad interpretation of feminisms.

As such, The F-Word is and will remain committed to finding ways to engage with a multiplicity of voices and perspectives, ideas and identities, histories and beliefs, and accepts that not everyone will agree with the posts that arise from that engagement. We will try to engage with those disagreements too and include them, wherever possible, in comments and response threads, but would ask readers to bear in mind that we often walk a fine line between honouring different points of view and trying to keep the space friendly. Readers can also respond by submitting a guest blog post or feature.

2. What we try to do

2.1 Actively welcome, encourage, embrace, solicit and strive to include a broad range of feminisms and feminist identities on the blog.

2.2 Sensitively handle any conflicts this may create.

2.3 Seek first to understand what commenters mean, so as to engage with them constructively and edit comments appropriately.

2.4 Work towards, encourage and provoke a respectful exchange of views on issues of importance to women and feminisms. It is important varying viewpoints get heard within the boundaries of appropriate and acceptable conduct.

2.5 Take reasonable care to ensure what we publish is accurate. However, as this is a blog, we will often be linking to other journalists and bloggers and sometimes their sources will be incorrect or they will just be suggesting their opinions. There will be times when we will be proven wrong and, when that happens, we will do our best to handle that appropriately and sensitively.

2.6 Be open to constructive feedback and offers of help for the site and its development.

3. What we try not to do

3.1 Uncritically publish ageism, biphobia, classism, dis/ablism, heterosexism, homophobia, lesbophobia, racism, transphobia or any other form of discrimination/discriminatory speech.

3.2 Publish comments which engage in the "oppression Olympics". (Drawing parallels, where oppressions might share certain similarities, can sometimes be helpful and illuminating. However, we would say that denying and trivialising one group's suffering or implying it is somehow a thing of the past, in order to posit the oppression of another group, is not.)

3.3 Restrict contributions only to those who have academic qualifications or are widely read in feminism.

3.4 Provide a platform for trolls or for abusive, exclusionary or discriminatory comments. (Holding feminist views does not make a commenter exempt from this consideration.)

3.5 Get involved in personal disputes within feminist circles, including the blogosphere. We aim to bring news and analysis of relevance to women and feminisms and, in order to do so, may sometimes link to posts other people don't agree with (or where they don't agree with the author generally). This is not taking sides.

3.6 Claim to represent the 'voice of feminism'.

4. What you can expect

4.1 Blog posts which inform, challenge, appraise, critique and sometimes amuse or infuriate.

4.2 Serious thought given to everything we publish, even when we make mistakes.

4.3 Similarly serious thought given to the moderation and publishing of comments on blog posts and a response, where appropriate or requested, when we think they need to be edited, rewritten or denied a platform. This may not always come from the original author of the blog post, but will always refer to our comments policy when making decisions on whether or not to publish a comment.

4.4 An openness to engage with and think about adaptations to the site based on constructive criticism from readers.

4.5 Occasional appeals to readers for ideas about content, layout, design and other aspects of the site.

5. How the Blog Works

The F-Word blog is run by volunteers working in our spare time
and around our other commitments. The blog operates as a collective in that we each write individually from our own perspectives and we each subscribe to collective decision making about the blog.

People are invited to blog on a guest basis at first and then sometimes as permanent bloggers. Potential guest bloggers could be people who have contributed to The F Word in the past, bloggers for other sites, people we meet at feminist events or online or people who approach us with ideas for posts.

All the bloggers (permanent and guest) write and post when they can on issues of interest to women and feminists, under the broad heading "feminist news and views”. We don't have a set definition of "feminist news and views" because, frankly, that'd take a long time and be redundant as soon as we finish, and because we rely on the creativity of the blogging team to refresh content.

Blog posts are not subject to prior editorial approval and are the opinions of the writers themselves; they do not constitute a monolithic F-Word viewpoint. All bloggers agree to abide by the ethics and spirit of the site, including the aims and aspirations expressed above.

Our comments round-up for your feedback on January features and reviews is up now, ready for your perusal.

Massive thanks once again to Helen G for compiling and coding all the comments; and like last month, the delay in getting them to you is mine not hers!

Our interesting feature from the archive this month is Megan's piece arguing teenagers deserve the same autonomy over their bodies and the same access to contraception as adults. When she wrote the piece back in 2004, Megan was in school, and their board of governors had just voted to allow all girls access to the morning after pill.

Image via Spelling with Flickr

The Equality Illusion, subtitled The Truth About Women & Men Today, aims to blow away the myth that feminism's work is over, and gender equality has been achieved.

As editor of a feminist website, I am perhaps not the ideal reviewer; I don't need convincing. Nevertheless, in as much as I can judge, Kat Banyard makes good headway in shredding the misconception that we're in a post-feminist utopia, backed up with references, studies and many interviews.

Her book is loosely structured to show how sexist oppression affects women from the moment the alarm goes off in the morning (beginning with body image issues) through to the end of the day with a chapter on 'Bedroom Politics', covering some of the ground of reproductive justice, such as abortion access and sex education. The book closes with a chapter on 'Tomorrow', outlining examples of what activists are doing to address the problems she highlights in the book, with guidance on how to get involved and Kat's own policy ideas.

Banyard combines often heartbreaking interviews with girls and women with a battery of statistics and studies to demonstrate the issues that these individuals face are common and take place in a broader political context. This is by no means an easy book to read; one chapter piles on top of another creating a cumulative impression of just how bad the situation is. As I made my way through the book, the interviews and descriptions of various forms of violence against women became unrelenting. (This was exacerbated because, stylistically, The Equality Illusion sometimes reads more like a policy report than a book for a general readership.)

Click here to read on and comment

Today the Guardian runs a piece by Kira Cochrane looking back at this event, which is full of interesting details.

This amused me:

There were many distinct leftwing groups in ­attendance, including Marxist-Leninists "who were most forthcoming to volunteer to take minutes," says Graessle, "then rewrote them to suit their view of history"

And later:

It simply isn't possible to work at such a clip for ever. Then there were internal divisions - a chart produced in 1979 defined 13 distinct types of British feminist, including "eurocommunists", "humanists" and "redstockings".

But generally this is an interesting - if brief - look at what happened at that conference:

As Graessle's sticker campaign showed, feminist organising was already under way - there had been the highly influential 1968 strike for equal pay by female machinists at Ford's Dagenham plant; and a 1969 women's issue of the revolutionary newspaper, Black Dwarf. But the activity was disparate, disconnected, and it was therefore unclear how many people would turn up at Ruskin. Rowbotham says that they were expecting "perhaps a hundred or two hundred people". Five hundred showed up. "Everybody arrived with their sleeping bags on Friday night," she says, "which was turmoil, and then they managed to extend the conference into the Oxford Union, an extraordinarily stiff environment that was meant to produce male orators who would become prime ministers. I remember being really scared of speaking in that room."

In Once a Feminist, Wandor writes that papers were given on "the family, motherhood, delinquency, women and the economy, the concept of 'women's work', [and] equal pay", among others. Mary Kennedy, who was also at the conference, says that "there was a real buzz of excitement. As a child I had been very angry about being a girl, in terms of the way that I was treated, because the boys and the men had all the power. Then, here came this turning point, and we were all able to speak out."

As all forbidden fruit should be, Christiane Inmann's cross-cultural history of women's role as readers and writers is mouthwateringly tempting from the moment you open the cover. Its pages are thick and satisfying, its golden text shimmers seductively and James Tissot's autumn portrait of Kathleen Newton stealing into amber-drenched forests invites you to investigate further.

Forbidden Fruit: A History of Women & Books in Art does exactly what it says on the tin. Social and cultural historian Inmann claims to have produced the first account to trace the history of women's literacy through various works of art and the development of writing by and for women. Presented in chronological order, beginning with the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia, Greece and China, the reader is led through the ages, and across the globe, exploring the female struggle to obtain the power of the written word for themselves, opening the window to their education and increasing their freedom.

It sounded implausible that one volume could satisfy such a vast topic and maintain my interest. I suspect that all too many of us are familiar with those 'critically acclaimed' works that entice with dazzling packaging but are either too light on content, or over-stuffed with academia. Forbidden Fruit provides a pleasing balance; it's comfortable, informative, easy to become acquainted with and beautifully presented.

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"I hate Hello Kitty.

"I hate her for not having a mouth or fangs like a proper kitty. She can't eat, bite off a nipple or finger, give head... She can't even scratch your eyes out. Just clawless, fangless, voiceless, with that placid blank expression topped by a pink ribbon."

The cutesy, mute Asian cartoon character Hello Kitty, beloved so many, is the surprising villain at the heart of Angela S. Choi's darkly comic debut novel. She tells the tale of Fiona Yu, a Chinese-American lawyer whose parents are desperate to see her married - or at least wearing lipstick - and Sean, her childhood-best-friend-turned-plastic-surgeon with a grisly hobby.

Whilst all Fiona's parents want is for their daughter to get married, all Fiona wants is to be left alone. Oh, and her hymen back. The novel begins when Choi's heroine, determined to lose what she terms as her "family's honour", takes her own virginity only to discover that, by a biological quirk, she never had a cherry to lose in the first place.

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She's also been interviewed on GRITtv (summarised with some quotes over at Jezebel):

As Red Chidgey said at the transnational feminist Grassroots Feminism project:

Hanna and her co-conspirators over the years have contributed massively to an underground challenge to male dominance in women's everyday lives. Riot Grrrl was not just a North American thing but has been picked up across Europe, Down Under, in Latin America, South Africa, Malaysia and the Phillipines. Whilst its power as a subculture fuelled by sounds and fanzines have diminished over the years- as is only right for a healthy, self-generating feminist counter culture- its legacies are still incrediby powerful and shape many punk rock feminist dreams still.

(Earlier this month The F-Word also published Heather's article revisiting the impact of riot grrrl.)