Further to previous coverage of the Roman Polanski (see here, here and here) I was interested to read this from Everyday Sociology about the difference in reporting of the Roman Polanski case and the Elizabeth Smart case which looks at some of the ways in which the media reporting of each case is affected by issues of class and power.

Over at Barbara Ehrenreich's blog is a question about women's happiness. The discussion is around whether, as some argue, feminism has made women happier or whether research into women's happiness has yet to find an answer as to what makes women happy (answers in the comments please!). Meanwhile (and I don't conflate longevity with happiness necessarily), the BBC reports that well educated women mean longer lives for both the women and their male partners (apparently non-straight couples weren't looked at....)

A woman's education and social status were more important for a man's life chances than his own education, the findings indicate. And a woman's education also affects her own mortality, with someone with a school education having a 53% greater risk of dying early than a university educated woman. The authors said: "Education is of great importance through a direct influence on mortality as well as indirectly via occupation and income."

From BBC News

Meanwhile it seems there are no depths to which Playboy will not sink to exploit women's bodies - Marge Simpson (yes the cartoon character) will appear naked in an issue. Allison McCarthy over at Global Comment says more on this...

And finally, courtesy of Feministing, a slam poetry performance on transgender experience which is amazing....

Enjoy!

And guess how many aren't white? Sadly not even tokenism appears to stretch to the inclusion of a black, asian or other minority ethnic judge (as far as I can tell checking biogs and pictures online).

As ever, if you drill down to who is doing the administrative work there is more diversity with the senior executive team having seven women (out of ten posts) one of whom (Head of Judicial Support) is from a minority ethnic group.

So why should we care? Well because the Supreme Court is the final Court of Appeal in the UK now and will make decisions on unresolved or tricky/arguable points of law (like when is consent actually consent, for example). A Supreme Court so hopelessly unrepresentative that you have to question whether thirty years of equality legislation has actually had any impact at all. In other words - rich white men continue to make decisions whilst women and minority ethnic workers are exiled into lower status, lower paid, less powerful jobs (I'd put money on the fact that their cleaners at the swanky, newly refurbed Middlesex Guidhall are generally women and generally from minority ethnic groups!).

Read more about the Supreme Court hereup and some of the debate around it's establishment here (BBC), here (JUSTICE), here (Law Gazette) and here (Scotsman).

Second up in the disappointment stakes is Michael Mansfield, QC who on Radio 4's morning programme today argued that Polanski should be treated "compassionately" and because his crime wasn't as bad as genocide in Guinea and Darfur it shouldn't be prosecuted. Yes the same Michael Mansfield who took on cases others wouldn't touch like the Guildford Four and Birmingham Seven, the Angry Brigade; the Orgreave miners; Stephen Lawrence's family; the Bloody Sunday families (yeah OK and some more dodgy ones like Michael Barrymore; Barry George and Mohamed al-Fayed). Don't believe me? Listen here at around 8.45am (give or take ten minutes I think).

Neither man here (Mansfield and an academic) mention that for crimes of rape, globally, prosecution and conviction rates are appallingly low and that in this saying this is an insubstantial or unworthy crime to follow through on is denigrating every single rape and child sexual abuse survivor in the world.

Update: Read this by Lauren at Feministe, this from Flip-Flopping Joy, this by Kate Harding at The Salon (in case anyone missed it) and (again in case you missed it) Kate Smurthwaite's piece at Cruella-blog for more insightful comment on this.

In case you haven't already responded to the national consultation here's some ideas of where to start - responses are welcomed from individuals and groups and it's important that women's and feminist voices are heard clearly during this work. The End Violence Against Women Coalition and the Women's Resource Centre both have fantastic responses to read and consider when working up your own ideas.

Here's some ideas of my own....
Welcome the Consultation - it is a good first step to have a consultation but as WRC says a lot still needs to be done before this is an integrated and workable strategy to tackle violence against women. It is not enough to consult but this has to be matched by a willingness to act after the consultation and to act on the consultation responses. A consultation is a good first step but can only been seen as that, a first step, not a end in itself.
Gender Equality Framework - To borrow from WRC again: It is crucial that this strategy is clearly based on the principles of gender equality and human rights, and must provide clear targets and guidance for all levels of government to meet their obligations under the Gender Equality Duty, the Human Rights Act and CEDAW obligations. A gender neutral approach to gendered violence will not succeed. Violence against women is one of the ways that women’s subordination is maintained and normalised within a sexist society. There is a need to tackle public perception around sexual violence and the key myths which serve as victim blaming. Ending Violence Against Women must happen within a wider framework of tackling gender discrimination. The women’s sector must be embedded allies in this work and I am concerned about the ways in which they are marginalised and apparently sidelined here.
Naming Perpetrators - A major problem with both the Consultation and the questionnaire on the website is the unwillingness to name perpetrators of Violence against Women. Indeed that questionnaire, in the question on who is responsible for ending violence against women named everyone from the victim to the community except the perpetrators themselves.
Funding - There seems to be an implication that there will be competition for funding between relatively new Government run services such as Sexual Assault Referral Centres and existing, long-running services such as Rape Crisis Centres. The EVAW work on mapping the gaps of services for violence against women shows us that there are severe problems with some areas having no services whatsoever which makes a mockery of other areas where competition is being enforced by bad policy decisions.
Women's centred, voluntary sector services have consistantly suffered insecure funding and underfunding at the same time that they have been used to deliver statutory services. Such a situation cannot continue. The Government needs to make a commitment to ensuring appropriate service provision with a clear ethos of meeting women's needs (including single-sex services where appropriate) and to ensuring that funding decisions to meet those commitments allow service providers to deliver and to recruit, train and retain the best possible staff to do so. Stricter guidance for local decision makers involved in devolved funding is needed alongside education of local authories and councillors as to the real (empirically proven) situation regarding violence against women. Whilst for many things local-level funding is a useful and successful approach, in this case it will only be so with clear guidance about provision of single-sex, specialist and woman-centred services in appropriate settings.
Local bidding destabilises women’s voluntary sector services when what is needed is sustainable funding rather than three year project cycle funding. There are currently too few rape crisis centres, too few refuge places and too little money to enable innovation in provision. Making funding harder to gain will not help victims of violence.
Education - The Consultation suggests that education is the core way of ensuring that violence against women happens less. Whilst social change can be aided by formal education this places the solution as a matter of generational change Most violence-safety education has focussed on stranger-danger - the outmoded and incorrect assumption that women are most likely to be attacked by strangers in dark alleys at night. Schools are ill-equipped and unwilling to take on and deal with the issue that the majority of violence against women is committed by people they know in domestic settings. Additionally SEAL education in schools is unlikely to work well without proper deliverers and most teachers are not equipped or positioned to delivery adeqwuate violent prevention work. Teachers must, however, be trained in prevention of gender bullying, sexual bullying and how to handle disclosures of sexual violence which contemplates them both as reports but also as disclosures alone.
Intersectionality - The Consultation begins to, but policy must make more of, the links between violence against women, sexual discrimination, racism, stigmatisation, classism, ablism, heteronormativity and other forms of discriminatory behaviours which are inculcated in contemporary UK society. To ignore these links would continue the systemic discriminations which leave women trying to use single-issue laws to address multiple deprivations. For example female genital mutilation happens not just because someone is female or someone is from a cultural group that practices FGM but because they are female and from a cultural group that practices FGM. This multiple and overlapping positioning is fundamental to understanding why FGM happens as is understanding the heteronormative nature of those cultures, the double standard of male and female sexuality within them and so forth. Violence against women does not have a single cause and the understanding of the intersectional and overlapping nature of the problem needs to run throughout the policy making and implementation system, including the judiciary who at the current time seem more concerned with punishing victims of male violence against women than perpetrators.
Tackling Perpetrators - the Policing element - Restraining orders are not enforced in practice and the division between specialist domestic and sexual violence Police officers and general Police officers only further exacerbates this problem. Ghettoisation of these crimes is not a solution. It leads to women being let down when the specialist services are "off duty" or where the situation is acute and the first officers need to make a clear response. New powers are not necessarily the issue here - the issue is ensuring consistent and appropriate use of existing powers, such as Restraining Orders to protect women.
Tackling Perpetrators - the Judicial element - Despite moves to ban the use of victims sexual histories in rape cases, for example, the practice is still routine.
A judicial system committed to assisting women engage with the process would allow victim advocates at all stages of the process to support, prepare and equip women and would train judges at all levels in conduct of such cases. It is not enough to establish specialist prosecutors of sexual violence cases if they will be constantly prosecuting cases in front on judges who hold victim-blaming and misogynistic viewpoints. This is the time to call for specialist training of judiciary in violence and sexual crimes and in utilising the existing voluntary sector and academic expertise in woman-centred services and feminist research to co-ordinate and provide some of that training. The 22% of rape cases that were convicted as "not rape" but another crime shows a systemic problem with the construction of rape in public folklore/cultural imagination and in the way the cases are handled in Courts (by giving jurors options to release on rape charges but still punish). Custodial sentencing figures show the average sentence for rape to be 6.4 years which is strikingly low and almost 3% of cases found guilty receive non-custodial sentences. What the rationale is for non-custodial sentences in rape cases is unclear, unsafe and fails to send the message that rape is taken seriously.
Language Used - The Consultation has several issues where is becomes clear it isn't consistent about the approach being taken. For example it uses "violent households" in some places which assumes a family-violence model in which all adults are held co-responsible for the violence whether or not they are and whether or not the violence is qualitatively similar. Additionally the use of the phrase "male attitudes" misunderstands that women are often involved in encouraging other women to stay in abusive situations and in male violence against women. This problem is not just one of "male attitudes" but of victim blaming, anti-women attitudes.
Sexualisation of Girls - The report constantly refers to the “sexualisation of girls” which is an ambiguous term and the Consultation never clarifies whether it sees the problem as being the actions of girls copying media messages and therefore apparently presenting themselves “sexually” or persistent sexual objectification of girls and women. Insisting that the problem lies in the "sexualisation of girls" under the first definition is a way of blaming girls and women for sexual violence both collectively and individually.
In terms of offering help and support to boys and girls, youth services tend to be hugely normative both in terms of messages about heterosexuality and about gender roles. If youth services are to play an active part in tackling violences in young people (and laying down healthy roles for adult life) then they must move away from these highly gendered ideas and ensure they do more. Youth work for girls is not adequate when it simply covers sexual health advice and health and beauty tips (as Feministwebs has shown with their groundbreaking, feminist informed youth work ideas). Youth work for boys must also move away from rigidly reinforcing heteronormativity and traditional gender roles.
Role of the Media - Tackling the sexualisation and sexual objectification of girls and women, however, is difficult within a system in which the advertising self-regulation body refuses to acknowledge that sexual objectification is an issue on which they should take a stand. The ASA has repeatedly failed to take action on a number of adverts complained about which glorify sexual violence against women. Most often these complaints are dismissed before ever reaching the Panel and the Panel itself has no gender equality expert on it unlike other equality campaigns which are represented. Despite calls from women’s groups in the late 1990s and currently, the ASA continues to maintain that sexual objectification is not an issue within advertising as their role is to enforce the “prevailing attitudes of the day” - as decided by a group with a majority male, white and middle-class make up.
No Recourse to Public Funds - The Consultation fails to address the issues faced by those women who are subject to the "no recourse to public funds" clause of immigration law. In these cases, if they experience violence, they often have no place to go as voluntary sector organisations (on whom the Government relies to deliver statutory services) are not allowed to fund their help, support and escape from violence. There is little or no support for women in this situation during the application process and this must be addressed.

Apparently the European Women's Lobby have been told by "high-level European decision makers" that women obviously don't care about equal gender representation in Europe. The reason? Apparently they didn't get "enough" (define that for me!) individual signatures on a petition on the issue despite having over 2,500 organisational signatures from women's organisations.

So here's the petition.

Whether you agree with the Europe Union or not equal gender representation is a good thing to have there. The 50/50 campaign is a campaign for women and men to be equally represented in all European Union institutions. No democracy without gender equality!

An Appeal to the United Nations, the World Health Organisation and the States of the World

Every day, people who live at variance to expected gender1 norms face violence, abuse, rape, torture and hate crime all over the world, in their home as well as in the public arena. Though most cases of violence never get documented, we know that in the first weeks of 2009 alone, Trans women have been murdered in Honduras, Serbia and in the USA. Trans men are equally victims of hate crimes, prejudice and discrimination despite their frequent social and cultural invisibility. The basic human rights of Trans people are being ignored or denied in all nations - be it out of ignorance, prejudice, fear or hate and Trans people overwhelmingly face daily discrimination, which results in social exclusion, poverty, poor health care and little prospects of appropriate employment.

Far from protecting Trans citizens, States and International bodies reinforce social transphobia through short sighted negligence or reactionary politics: Because of the failure of national law and social justice, in far too many States Trans people are being forced to live a gender which they experience as fundamentally wrong for them. In most countries,any attempt to change one’s gender can lead to legal sanctions, brutal mistreatment and social stigma. In other countries, legal recognition of gender change is subject to sterilization or other major surgical intervention. Trans people who cannot or do not wish to submit to this, cannot obtain legal recognition of their preferred gender, and are forced to ‘come out’ whenever they cross a border, run into a police patrol, apply for a new job, move into a new home or simply want to buy a mobile phone.Contributing factors include that current International health classifications still consider all Trans people as mentally “disordered”. This outdated vision is insulting and incorrect and is used to justify daily discrimination and stigmatization in all aspects of Trans people’s lives. Recently though in some countries with very different social and cultural contexts significant legal advances have been made. Following in the wake of bold judicial decisions, State action has led to increased acceptance of Trans people within their society. This demonstrates that understanding and progress is possible. Currently Trans people everywhere in the world rise up to reclaim their human rights and freedom.

They carry an unanimous message that they will no longer accept to be labelled sick or treated as non human beings on the basis of their gender identity and gender expression (such as transvestite, transsexual, transgender and other cultural identities related to cross-gender dressing and living)

This is why we ask:

• The W.H.O. to stop considering Trans people as mentally disordered and to promote access to adequate health care and psychological support, as desired by Trans people.
• The United Nations Human Rights bodies to examine the human rights abuses that Trans people face around the world and to take action to combat these abuses.
• The States of the World to adopt the international Yogyakarta Principles and ensure that all Trans people benefit from appropriate health care, including gender reassignment if they so wish; be allowed to adapt their civil status to their preferred gender; live their social, family or professional lives without being exposed to transphobic discrimination, prejudice or hate crime and that they are protected by the police and justice systems from physical and non-physical violence.
• We call on the UN, the W.H.O. and the nations of the world, in adopting these measures, to refuse transphobia and welcome the right of their citizens to live fully and freely in their prefered gender, assumed as an expression of cultural freedom.

Sign the petition here.

The BNP, apart from their generic racist, sexist, homophobic atttiudes are suggesting

• repealing protection of witnesses in ">rape cases


• reformation of family law to benefit men on the basis that:
  

  Divorce and family laws and maintenance arrangements discriminate against men, and innocent men who are falsely accused of rape have their lives ruined while their lying accusers cannot even be named.

  From p7 of the BNP Manifesto



• arguing for tax reforms which will re-establish women as dependents of their husbands


• Nick Griffin (the Party leader) has said he doesn't recognise human rights


• Nick Griffin describes claims for equal rights between men and women as "feminist poison".


• The Party is also anti-choice

The BNP have taken down the webpage with their White Paper on Family Policy, I don't know why but it might have something to do with being written by Nick Eriksen who was the BNP London Assembly candidate who said "women are like gongs, they need striking regularly" and women were more troubled by handbag theft than rape because rape was just sex and women liked sex (he was later removed from his position). There is some discussion of it here.

Whilst the BNP are fielding some women as candidates, sadly some of them seem to be "off-message" as evidenced here including one who argues the BNP isn't in favour of extraditing non-whites abroad (in direct contrast to the BNP's own website!).

So what's the message - Ensure you are registered to vote and then go out and vote in the European and Local Elections on June 4th!

The European election voting system means that the BNP can only win if turnout is low. The fewer people that vote, the better the BNPs chances are of getting representatives elected because they can and will turn out their hardcore supporters, sensing a miasma of politically opportune apathy at the moment. So go and cast your vote, but don't let the BNP win through a willingness to not oppose them.

HOPE not Hate has a campaign page here and are advocating four things you can do - join the HOPE not hate campaign, tell your friends, find an event and go and vote!

HOPE not hate was set up to counter racism and fascism in elections and beyond. Over the past few years the British National Party has seriously contested council elections all over the country and achieved 55 councillors at district/borough level after the May 2008 local elections, though this has since fallen to 54. The BNP is now concentrating all its resources on the European elections, in the hope of getting Nick Griffin elected to the European Parliament. Once there, he would link up with other European fascist parties, to gain international influence and, above all, funding beyond the BNP's dreams. At Searchlight we want to make sure that people know the full story about who the BNP are and what they really stand for. The HOPE not hate website aims to do just that, serving the anti-fascist movement and providing up to date news, good practice and analysis.

The Escort agency nor their clients seem to be facing any legal action here despite clearly having broken the law. Local women's group are calling for the Police to take action against both the agency and the clients.

Clare Phillipson, of charity Wearside Women in Need, said: “They need to investigate the agency if they haven’t already done so. The police have gone to her house and seized the money [she earnt], but have they made a list of her clients, and are they going to prosecute them?

From Chronicle Live

The girl had the money taken off her as "proceeds of crime". Yep I'd agree - the crime was the sexual exploitation of a child, pimping of a child and rape of a child. The perpetrators are the agency and the men. Yet it seems to be that only the child here has suffered?

Wendy Shepherd, children’s service manager for Barnardo’s Sexual Exploitation Children Outreach Services (SECOS), oversees child exploitation matters around North East England. She added: “Child sexual exploitation is an issue for a number of towns and cities across the North East. It is not unusual that young people are coerced and groomed into sexual exploitative relationships, and they don’t always understand fully what is happening.”

From Chronicle Live

English Courtesan points out that:

At a normal escort agency rate of around £120 an hour, or less if they were longer bookings, that £8000 represented 67 punters. That was the true cost in this story...a 15 year old escort spreading her legs 67 times...Did the magistrates bother to understand that sum? Did they ask the girl what she’d been saving her money for? Did they consider their role as ‘magister’ and what they were teaching a teenager about justice? Or was it just a matter of smug moral principle and reclaiming £8000 for The Crown?

Walls Come Tumbling Down highlights Alastair Campbell's New Statesman initiative to find out what one sentence people would want in the next election manifesto. My suggestion would be:
"To take seriously tackling all forms of oppression against women ranging from the pay gap to sexual violence, from objectifying advertising to limited opportunities and to ensure that women become important, autonomous and unoppressed individuals in society"

See here to make your own suggestion and to see what's being suggested by others. Remember to cross-post your suggestion in the comments on this post too!

Meanwhile, in activist news of other sorts. Amber Rudd, Conservative Party spokesperson for Hastings and Rye has published an article claiming, amongst other things:

I certainly believe that most people accept that there should be equality of opportunity between the sexes.

So we are all feminists now.

Equality is what feminism means - don't let the radicals hijack the word to mean something extreme.

Nobody assumes any more that women should play a certain role.

Yes, of course, so next time I'm told I have to be defined by my marital status ("Is that Miss or Mrs?", next time I read working women "hurt" their children, or that a rape victim "was asking for it", next time I overhear, or have shouted at me, that a man would "fuck me" or "give me one", next time I see women's bodies exploited to sell deodorant or see an advert suggesting I'm so dumb I'll allow any man wearing a certain product to insert his penis into me, the next time I hear about a woman experiencing domestic violence or being coerced to have sex by her boyfriend, after all those things, I'll just remind myself that Ms Rudd is, of course, right and I'm not assumed to play a certain role or socially constructed as a sex object with no identity outside of my sexual and marital relationships. Of course.

More positively - the End Violence Against Women consultation is out including a survey and the formal consultation. Go be an activist and take part!

Trans-politics is an area where intersectionality is clearly demonstrated. Why? Well because access to legitimation as transsexual or transgendered (see also here and here) is heavily inculcated within existing patriarchal structures including class, race and perceived gender roles. But also because for most, if not all, trans peoples there are links with other forms of privileges and identities which require negotiation. At the level of politics, and feminist politics in particular, transgender raises pertinent and important issues about the rigidity of social boundaries and the ways in which we all move in and out of privilege and acceptance.

In the UK the Gender Equality Duty clearly and explicitly covers transsexuals but not as explicitly all transgender categories - the current advice is, however, that the legal protections afforded here to transsexuals are, de facto, also for all transgender and that will, eventually, be formalised by case law. The provisions of the GED are to:

• Eliminate unlawful discrimination and harassment that is related to a person’s gender.
• Promote equality of opportunity between men and women and other people
• Promote good relations between men and women
• Promote positive attitudes towards women, encouragement of participation by women in public life and the taking of steps to meet women’s needs.
• Meet expectations and responsibilities around employment, goods, services and facilities provisions.

For transsexuals the Duty includes explicit provision for:

• Transsexual people feel supported and valued as employees/trainees.
• Transsexual employees, trainees and apprentices undergoing transition are retained as valued members of staff.
• Transsexual trainees undergoing transition on training courses complete the training.
• 
  Barriers to the recruitment and retention of transsexual staff have been identified and removed.
• A clear and workable policy for dealing with harassment of transsexual staff/trainees.
• Support mechanisms to protect the health and welfare of transsexual people in the workplace, and in vocational training.
• There is evidence that the public authority promotes and maintains a culture of respect for the dignity of individuals and difference.
• There are appropriate protocols for management of sensitive and confidential information about a person's transsexual status.
• Practical matters related to transition such as access to changing and toilet facilities are resolved quickly and respectfully.

Of course the GED in it's broadest sense and specifically in terms of trans people is not perfect, but Global Comment is right, it's a start. Some of it's flaws are huge - the GED doesn't give legal weight to equality between trans people and non-trans people, for example, which is one of those massive oversights you'd think someone might have noticed. But the GED does try to base itself on an acknowledgement of intersectionality

Women and men, including transsexual people, will experience different forms of disadvantage depending on their age, ethnicity, colour, religion and belief, sexual orientation, marital or civil partnership status and whether or not they have a disability. In order to understand and address questions of gender equality under the duty, public authorities may need to consider that complexity and whether particular groups of women or men are experiencing particular disadvantages.

From EOC Guidance

Trans activists have long argued that feminism isn't a welcoming space for trans women, indeed The F Word has seen it's share of that in recent times. The problem, it seems to me, is often a defensiveness around the fact that feminists have spent a long time carving out an acceptance and any recognition of gender issues and a misguided sense that trans-politics confuses that or undermines it. Of course we know that the recognitions gained have often been in terms of particular groups of women in particular circumstances (so for example critiques by WoC and lesbian women have included that the fight for domestic violence refuge places has been on the assumption of white or non-religious women escaping heterosexual relationships) and that it has been assumed that one form of feminism can speak for all feminisms - a notion which is entirely misguided (and not to mention racist, classist and ableist).

I am not underplaying the anti-trans rhetoric by some theorists, I am, before anyone asks, fully aware of Shelia Jeffries, Germaine Greer and Janice Raymond’s stream of argument around trans-identities which argues that trans peoples merely reiterate the boundaries of gender, rather than challenging them and the appropriation of trans politics by other feminists in the stream of thinking exemplified by Judith Butler which claims gender identity is merely performative and therefore limitlessly fluid anyway. I also don’t wish to replicate the trap I’ve seen elsewhere which seeks to argue in some way that there is a simple solution of pre-gender reassignment = male and post-gender reassignment = female and therefore we can simply reduce the complexity of experience Before GRS and After GRS.

I come to this, instead, as someone thinking through these issues, as an ally but also as a feminist who appreciates, from both sides of the argument, that you can't simply conflate trans-issues and feminisms in any simple way. Practically, at the very least, I see this as a space where Nira Yuval-Davis's notion of transversal politics should be explored. Transversal politics argues that old models of assimilationist politics particularly seen on the "old" Left and, I'd argue, some strands of feminisms. The problems of this universalising are it's assimilationist consequences (assuming all groups fit within the claims for one, assuming no difference exists) and it's essentialising consequences (assuming that group are all alike). Transversal politics, however, argues for an acknowledgement of standpoint - that we all see the world based on where we're standing and what we've experienced and "from each positioning the world is seen differently thus that any knowledge based on just one positioning is 'unfinished'". This demands dialogue between positions and that in itself is a step forward especially as the second demand of transversal politics is that the dialogue must come from a place of difference by equality (acknowledging differences exist but including rather than ignoring them). Thirdly transversal politics recognises, explicitly, intersectionality and the way that mediates the impacts of position.

Several implications can be drawn from the above. One is that feminist and other community activists should not see themselves as representatives of their constituencies (unless they were democratically elected and are accountable for their actions). Rather, they should see themselves as their advocates, working to promote their cause. However, even as advocates, it is important that the activists should be conscious of the multiplexity of their specific positionings, both in relation to other members in their constituencies, as well as in relation to the other participants in the specific encounter. One of the problems with both identity politics and - probably even more importantly - with multiculturalist policies, is that such activists and 'community leaders' too often become the 'authentic voice' of their communities."

Nira Yuval-Davis (1999) "What is transversal politics?" in Soundings

How does this help with trans? Well firstly it foregrounds the need for a conversation based on equality and it foregrounds that no one position holds the answer. And that’s where I’d like to leave this for now, as the opening up of a conversation between trans politics and trans peoples and feminist politics and feminists peoples. I’m particularly interested, I guess as a starting point, of views on the Gender Equality Duty and it’s implementation and where the flaws lie in it but also more generally in how conversations can move forward.

So who wants to build a transversal alliance and start talking?

Does the woman in your life really need a job?

Yes apparently working women caused the credit crunch. Not those irresponsible bankers over lending on toxic assets, no it's mere tomfoolery to suggest such a thing apparently. Just another way of blaming men - see the writer (Newton Emerson) suggests it's wrong that "from Iceland to Australia, men are blamed for causing the credit crunch" no 'cos those bankers weren't men (in the main), not at all, and capitalism isn't an essentially masculine concept based on competition and, frankly, a lot of willy-waving nonsense. No not at all. Poor menz being blamed for, erm, well, their actions.

But Newton isn't finished - far from it - as he avers that "Women also have an important role to play in jobs that are too demeaning for men, like teaching" (because obviously educating the next generation is demeaning rather than, well, crucial and I assume he'd draw the line at women teaching science or in Universities because that's far too butch for us and we might break a nail /end sarcasm/).

But wait for it, not only is teaching apparently demeaning but Newton thinks it can simply be abolished - along with medical jobs like being a doctor or nurse or policing or in immigration or tax posts (that'll help the credit crunch surely be restricting the flow of revenue into the government (don't blame me, it's as sensible as Newton's dodgy grasp of economics) and all other public sector work...

It would be ludicrous to suggest that women should be sacked purely to give men their jobs. In many cases, their jobs should be abolished as well. Women are twice as likely as men to work in the public sector. They account for two-thirds of the Civil Service and three- quarters of all public employees. Yet they are barely represented in the useful public services..

Right now for the economics bit according to Newton this is the problem

Women working = families with more money = high house prices = credit crunch

Anyone else seeing flaws here? I am, like the fact that most higher house prices was a side effect of 90-100% mortgages making credit more available even where evidence that repayment was possible was limited. But wait that'd be asking bankers to take responsibility for their actions and Newton can't do that so guess what? He'll blame women.

So Newton's solution to the credit crunch is that women shouldn't work. Now there is an inherent contradiction because either Newton mean's it's OK for some men to be demeaned by doing those pesky jobs like teaching or those pesky jobs won't exist. Which won't create more work for men, it'll just create more people unemployed. See the problem?

Add to that the fact that, y'know, for some families women's income is the only one they have either through single parenthood or through the man being unemployed already or disabled or being single women or being in a lesbian relaitonship.

The "additional benefits" of the article is laughable, by the way - citing the fact that twice as many women as men travel to work by public transport Newton argues banning women from work would halve the pollution problem. Conveniently ignoring that men, we therefore surmise, travel by car which is a far more pressing environmental issue assuming they don't liftshare.

(H/T to Penny at The Anti-Room)

some of the vitriolic comments on the “Grown Up” section of the channel’s website were so nasty that they had to be removed. “Is it just me, or does anyone else think the new woman presenter on CBeebies may scare the kids because of her disability?” wrote one adult on the CBeebies website. Other adults claimed that their children were asking difficult questions as a result.

Here's a hint to any parent struggling with this - 1. get over yourself and 2. tell your kids the truth, some times some people are born with disabilities and sometimes they develop them in later life, it's unlikely your child doesn't know someone who's asthmatic, diabetic or who becomes temporarily disabled by injury - does that give them nightmares too?

So how long did it take for the backlash to a woman's achievement to start? Seconds flat. She's been vilified and insulted. Here's a random assortment for your reading pleasure(?)

"Each answer was met with a smug grin or a cocky smirk. My normally placid girlfriend ended half-poetically seething: 'Not a friend did she own at school', before physically turning her back on the screen so she didn't have to bear this odious little smug specimen."

From Guardian article

"'a hateful know-it-all' and an ' annoying bitch'....a 'horse-toothed snob' who 'ruins University Challenge every time she is on it with her "better than thou" attitude'

From Daily Mail article

"'so brain-rupturingly irritating and smug' that they hoped science would come up with 'a screen that you can reach through and punch those inside'. " From TV Scoop (by the way this site has published a disingenious, half-assed apology here

"Bright, she may be, but the girl is "proper butters" as we say over here. I mean, I'm turned on by exceptional intellect like the rest, but it has to be carried in a vehicle of reasonable visual excellence, and this bird is considerably sub par!

Comment from Failed Muso on Riemann's Cut

Father Jack Hacket over at Fark.com ""She is now studying for a doctorate in Latin literature."She can't be that smart then."

From FastFude.com"Judging from her hair, one can only imagine the state of her vast, unkempt etc etc."

Defences of Trimble have been interesting, another commenter on Fark.com, Perducci, hits the nail on the head:

There are plenty of smart people out there who others really like or respect (Ken Jennings on Jeopardy, Stephen Hawking, Obama, Malcolm Gladwell...). Not everyone loves them, and they have plenty of detractors, but when they're attacked it's for their ideas, conclusions, opinions, etc. -- not their attitude.

And - they're all male. Being male and clever isn't seen as a problem, being female and clever is.

But perhaps even more frustratingly is that where publications have sought to defend her, it's been by reference to her being, well female and good-looking. "Men have been captivated by "hot lips Trimble" and "tasty Trimble", and she has been described as "a fine young lady, beautiful in a scholarly sort of way"." The Observer. Trimble herself has been asked about her status as a "sex symbol" and her brother was approached over Facebook by Nuts magazine asking whether they could do a semi-naked photo shoot (according to Trimble on Radio 4 this morning). Quite why her brother was asked and not, say, her I don't know - maybe Nuts believes that close male relatives are the people who can consent to this?

As Ruby at The Anti-Room points out:

Once again we have an extraordinarily bright and academically excellent woman being reduced to her physicality...Why are people threatened by others who are cleverer than them? But this case is certainly about ability as much as it is about gender and Trimble herself says in the article:

“I don’t feel I would have been treated the same way were I a man.”

It’s true. Patriarchy dictates that all the intelligence (and the centres of power that come with that intelligence) should reside in the heads of men. Women shouldn’t dare try to match - or gasp, exceed - their intellectual levels. Smart women are bitches who are too clever for their own good and are asking to be challenged, negated and put down.

So apparently it's OK to be smart if you are also deemed heteronormatively attractive, because that, of course, makes everything OK! (One site coined the new phrase "smexy" (smart + sexy). But being smart and female is only OK if you don't put blokes of wanting to have sex with you apparently.

I know this is really hard as an organizer but what are the highlights of this years’ programme? What are you most excited about?
The highlights are the re-introduction of the community events. Lottery funding has enabled us to support a series of events across the City, Spotlight on South Oxford, Rosehill, Strictly Come Barton.

On the international scene, two very special highlights. Bringing two women to Oxford from Leon, Nicaragua. Sophia Sanchez Sirias and Milagros Mairena Delgado, will be in Oxford for two weeks, appearing at a number of events, running workshops in schools.
Also, Hanan Bannourah, first women Union leader from Ramallah in Palestine

What are the challenges of programming an International Women’s Day festival like this one?
The challenge is to create a cohesive programme, from a disparate array of events; that is representative of all women in Oxford yet has an international flavour on a low budget
with too few core workers.

The festival has recently had funding problems, why did that happened, and how did you work around it? What advice would you give other women’s events in a similar position?
The funding problems weren’t new, they have been ongoing but did come to a head in 2008 as we received no funding from the City Council for the 2009 Festival. The reasons for this were two fold, their criteria changed and the Festival having lost many of the direct community links to a greater extent fell outside the criteria.
We had also maintained a very low programme entry fee for a very long time. It is a graded fee, commercial organizations pay more than non profit making but in either case it is an excellent deal. Where else would an organization/individual be promoted in 20,000 quality publications, enjoy distribution through the Scene (professional distributer) plus the Festival’s network, entry in the web and benefit from media releases to all local agencies? The fees of £20, £30 and £60 plus the income from the sale of advertising covers only a portion of the print run; it would seem good sense to review this for 2009.

My advice, start early, calculate minimum and maximum costs, review income streams.
Research Funding organizations, local and national, study their criteria and create a percentage of events or parts of the whole that will fulfill the criteria of the funding agencies. Use this as a base for the event. Gather together a small team that make fundraising their focus.

How has the festival changed over time? How does it compare with, for example, the first few festivals?
The Festival was original part of the Oxford City Leisure programme. To some extent it is a social history of women’s issues. Equality in the workplace, health issues, violence against women. Some have seen improvements e.g. childcare, some remain contentious issues e.g. equal pay.

Some members argue that the programme has become too frivolous and others feel it too serious and middle class. Any Festival designed to be representative of all women
will have these tensions. The aim is to get a balance of material that is inclusive of all women. The setting of a theme each year can help achieve this, allowing groups and individuals to interpret it to their own ends. Some themes are more successful than others. To succeed they need at best to be topical, memorable and broad enough to appeal and inspire.

There has been a lot of speculation about younger women being less involved in women’s events and campaigns, what is the experience of the OIWF?
I think young women probably have a different view of ‘Feminism’ to those of us that were on the front-line in the early sixties. This isn’t to say there isn’t a meeting point, it’s just that they are approaching it from different directions. As young women move into career, marriage and motherhood they probably begin to recognize some the common issues which were originally front line. It is essential women seek and find the shared objectives rather than differences; it is the synergy from the whole that will continue to move women forward.

‘A Girl’s Day’ was always a feature of the International Women’s Festival. We lost this some years ago, perhaps an aim for 2010 should be to re-introduce it.

What message would you want to give to all women out there about International Women’s Day events?
Marvel at the energy and ingenuity of women. Reflect how far we have come, celebrate these achievements and support and empower women in countries less comfortable than our own to achieve the education and skills to do the same. Demonstrate achievable role model status as an example for girls and young women.

The programme for the Oxford International Women's Festival is available online here. If you are nearby do have a browse and get along to some events - it's all very exciting!

Anyway here's a round-up of interesting links....

Firstly can I recomment the fantastic Pink Stinks! campaign which aims to challenge the ubiquitous "culture of pink". And whose blog highlights this delightful nugget that men should apparently be taking advice on women from a 9 year old boy who talks like, well, a nine year old boy. Alex Greven talks about girls in typically gender stereotypical ways - apparently “There's a Girl for Every Boy” (“You are like a magnet and girls are the metal”) (i.e. you're the active agents, girls are just big lumps, cold, hard metal) and "“Pretty girls are like cars that need a lot of oil,”" (of course I'd question what a 9 year old knows about car maintainence too!). Apparently this (the none year old dating guru, not degendering cultural products) was picked up by the Metro but I can't find that, so here's an MSNBC link instead and a preview chapter of the book. Pink Stinks highlights the hypocrisy between promoting this and complaining about sexual bullying in schools - "here’s a boy who talks about girls like they are animals. And somehow we are supposed think that this is cute?". I'd also flag the hypocrisy in general of how newspapers report young women's sexual choices - from the Metro apparently teenagers (19th February) prefer music to sex but (17th February) girls are shagging from the age of 12 (and by the way that may well be disclosure of child sexual abuse but let's not be picky shall we).

Who ever thinks a nine year old giving dating tips isn't an example of the sexualisation of youth would do well to read this from the Times Educational Supplement where this scarily paralell story is told:

At a school where I was teaching, a nine-year-old girl asked me with genuine furrowed-brow anxiety: "Is Playboy rude?" She had been given a Miss February Playboy necklace as a gift from an older sister and some of her more worldly classmates had begun to make her feel that it might not be the obvious and uncomplicated object of envy she had imagined.

Around the world and in other news - Spain may soon allow first term abortions after a report recommending the legislative move was approved by Parliament. Currently Spain and Poland have the most strictive abortion policies in the EU.

The BBC has profiled Lt Col Yvonne Bradley (right) who is the US military lawyer who helped free Binyam Mohamed.

Lactivist has published a Breastfinding Bingo! card for all those tired arguments by those who complain about public breastfeeding. It's fantastic!

Muslimah Media Watch makes some interesting observations about the Desi Dolls which appear to be somewhat, well, confused about what they are representing.

These dolls may be causing more damage than good among the children they are hoping to help. The underlying racism may go undetected at the superficial level, but my fear is that these young South Asian children will nonetheless receive the subconscious message that the ideal desi Muslim girl or boy is light skinned, wears the hijab (or cap for boys), doesn’t wear traditional desi clothes, and speaks Arabic with an Arabic accent, not a South Asian or English one. I worry that the message being perpetuated by these Desi Dolls is that to be a better Muslim, one should try to be more Arab and less desi.

And finally, a sports story, over at FemAcadem is a piece on the treatment of a female coach/manager (I dunno, not my thing) of a football team who, on being "allowed" to be in charge of a local league game was verbally abused by men chanting “Get back in the kitchen” and worse and the opposition manager refusing to shake her hand at the end of the game.

As for the press, they were just as bad. From last Thursday, in thelondonpaper, columnist Brad Ashton wrote:

She was upset that nobody took her seriously…what did she expect? Powell was no more than a managerial mascot, part of a gimmick for her club that generated plenty of publicity but did little for the club’s reputation…Whether she likes it or not, women and men’s football simply don’t mix…far greater names have been subjected to far worse.

What did she expect? Maybe she expected the simple courtesy of being taken seriously, given that she probably knew more about the technical aspects of the game than the majority of those watching. Maybe she expected that in 2009, it was no longer socially acceptable to abuse an opposing manager purely on the basis of their gender.

Now I was with Ashton on the tokenism point right up to where I realised he wasn't arguing that tokenism isn't enough but that the problem was being female. Apparently we women should know our place - sadly for Ashton I disagree where that is!

This piece on Islamic Feminism is also exciting, sadly the only coverage of this I could find in my limited time was from Time magazine - anyone with non-western coverage please let me have links and I'll put them up.

Penny Red has something interesting on new moves from to force single mothers into work when their child is a year old, yes you read that right, one year old.

And Sociological Images has something interesting about obesity and liklihood of death. Taking a BMI of 23.5-24.9 as "ideal" and alloting death rates at that BMI as 1.0 the table clearly shows that women with a BMI of under 18.5 had 2.03 deaths (i.e. double the "normal) whilst obese women with a BMI of 35-39.9 had 1.49 deaths. Yes you read that right the scale goes 23.5-24.9 = normal, 35-39.9 (i.e. morbidly obese) = 1.5x and under 18.5 = 2x. But it's the weight that'll kill you, obviously!

Meanwhile the UN has published their most recent findings of research into trafficking and has found that sexual exploitation accounts for the biggest reason for trafficking of people across borders.

According to the Report, the most common form of human trafficking (79%) is sexual exploitation. The victims of sexual exploitation are predominantly women and girls. Surprisingly, in 30% of the countries which provided information on the gender of traffickers, women make up the largest proportion of traffickers. In some parts of the world, women trafficking is the norm.

The second most common form of human trafficking is forced labour (18%), although this may be a misrepresentation because forced labour is less frequently detected and reported than trafficking for sexual exploitation.

From UNODC

The report is available here.

And Vegan Ideal has something, continuing our PETA need to get a grip series about a stunt in which bloodied cross-dressers will parade under the tagline "Fur is a Drag". Yep I am now convinced PETAs approach is to insult everyone they possibly can except white, straight men (who they lurve - see the previous one on faux-lesbians).

The "Fur is a Drag" campaign is part of this continuum of violence and oppression against tansgender people. It is a mistake to view the appropriation of the term "drag" as a cute or silly pun. The assumed "joke" is deeply transphobic, and is just as oppressive as any White supremacist, misogynist, or homophobic so-called "joke." (Of course, PETA does also use White supremacy, misogyny, and homophobia in its campaigns.) In this context, "Fur is a Drag" is akin to PETA having a campaign titled "Fur is Gay." Obviously, the latter campaign presents being gay as objectionable and, likewise, the existing campaign presents being trans as objectionable.

Vegan Ideal

I spotted a poster near Heathrow yesterday and intensely disliked it immediately. Why? Lets see Duffy who won a plethora of awards at the Brit Awards and who has become a household name is not a "superwoman". Well if she isn't then no other woman, despite what they achieve, can surely claim that tag. Plus why is it averring to be nothing special is being presented as a good thing? I'd much rather have an advert that says "I am special and so are you" than an advert which tells young women (and lets face that's who they're appealing to in audience here) that even if you achieve your dreams, win awards and are plastered around town by the largest multinational corporation, you're still nothing special.

I guess there is an alternate reading of "I'm not a superwoman" so you can do this too but I find that harder to discern from an advert to which most people's response would be "well if you're not who the hell is?". Is it too much to ask that advertisers might celebrate women's achievements, once in a while, rather than either denigrating them or just using their bodies? Can anyone name adverts which do celebrate women's achievements?

Lets just be very clear - it's really important women are screened regularly for cell abnormalities on the cervix. Really important. Don't put it off. But Camden - rabidly bad advertising idea!

Thanks to K for bringing it to my attention!