Southall Black Sisters boycott London committee hearing on violence against women over BNP presence

By Jess McCabe | 3 July 2009, 17:23

Southall Black Sisters and Eaves have pulled out of an evidence session, meant to feed into London mayor Boris Johnson’s violence against women strategy, because the BNP member Richard Barnbrook is on the committee.

In a statement posted on womensgrid, SBS said:

We were delighted to be asked to contribute to the strategy, however SBS is compelled to boycott the meeting due to the presence of the British National Party Representative -Richard Barnbrook (GLA member for Barking and Dagenham). We cannot see how we can have a serious and informed debate in the presence of a member of a fascist, racist, sexist and homophobic party.

Southall Black Sisters was born in the midst of anti racist struggles in the 1970s. We have fresh in our minds the memories of fascist and racist activity by the National Front in Southall and the ensuing racist police response to a community that sought to defend itself, culminating in the death of Blair Peach in 1979. Such memories and ongoing experiences of institutional and street racism continue to shape our struggles for equality. Contrary to popular belief, racism in the UK has not diminished. The recent horrific treatment of Romanian families by racists in Belfast shows why we must continue to oppose fascists and racists. We cannot afford to tolerate those who use violence, intimidation or even democratic means, to subvert the very principles of equality, human rights and justice.

How can a committee that includes a member whose political stance is to encourage hatred and segregation, address the call of black and minority women for justice in the face of domestic violence exacerbated by a draconian and punitive immigration system? The BNP’s agenda - to ‘preserve Britain’ for the ‘indigenous’ people of the UK - cannot mask its inflammatory anti-immigration and anti-progressive position. Its intention is to dehumanise and exclude all who fail to conform to its authoritarian, patriarchal and exclusionary notions of British identity. Such a stance is not conducive to shaping progressive public policies in any area, let alone on health or violence against women.

These are just some of the reasons why we urge all organisations who are due to give evidence to the committee to join SBS and the Eaves project in our boycott. Together, we can challenge and defeat racism, fascism and indeed all anti-democratic movements that seek to deny our common humanity and the rights that go with such recognition.

I don’t know what the process is for choosing GLA members for committees, but it seems patently grotesque to let a BNP member sit on this committee given they are an openly racist party, but also because of openly sexist policies as well.

It’s a real shame that the process will lose out on the expertise of these organisations as a result of Barnbrook being on the committee. I just hope it does force the committee to be re-formed, and that they don’t just plough on regardless…

Permanent Link | Comments (0)

Round-up!

By Jess McCabe | 2 July 2009, 23:44

An Australian woman has had a criminal conviction for making a false police report of rape overturned, after the man accused of raping her was convicted of attacking another woman. Abyss2Hope has more, but I think this is the key point (other than that it’s horrendous that women are getting charged at all):

Often those who repeat, “Innocent until proven guilty,” when responding to a man being charged with rape are the quickest to forget or abandon this concept when a girl or woman is charged with lying about rape.

A court in India has overturned a colonial-era law which outlawed gay sex. The BBC reports:

Delhi’s High Court ruled that the law outlawing homosexual acts was discriminatory and a “violation of fundamental rights”.

RIP Mollie Sugden.

Glasgow Women’s Library is hosting the International Heroines Exhibition:

The launch of the exhibition sees the well known local writer A L Kennedy perform readings from eight women who dared to speak out against human rights abuses and are profiled in this celebration of freedom of expression.

The featured women: Anna Politkovskaya, Lydia Cacho, Anushka Anastasia Solomon, Shirin Ebadi, Arundhati Roy, Wangari Maathai, Aung San Suu Kyi and Woeser.

AfterEllen reviews a book for young children about a lesbian sock:

How I Found My Pair! is only the first of Dottie’s adventures. Once she finds her pair, the little lesbian sock is going to star in a 10-book series, through which Gayle hopes to teach children to accept and respect themselves, as well as their peers. She dedicated the first Dottie story to four grade-school children who committed suicide after being tormented by classmates.

Dottie isn’t written PSA-style. The language is simple and fun, the pictures are colorful, and the little sock’s escapade is believable: she’s just a girl sock looking for another girl sock to love her.

“The story I’m trying to tell is that Dottie is just like anyone out there,” Gayle told NBC. “It doesn’t matter if she’s black or white or Muslim or lesbian.”

Lithuanian president Valdas Adamkus has vetoed a bill passed by the parliament, which “would prohibit the discussion of homosexuality in schools and ban references to gay and lesbian relationships in public places where children can see them”, reports the Advocate.

Charlotte Cooper of Obesity Timebomb posts about the launch of Beth Ditto’s clothing line.

L’Oreal, as is widely reported, has been found guilty of racist discrimination against employees. Apu considers how the firm (and others) is responsible for perpetuating the belief that beauty is white, and the impact this has on women in India:

What does it do to a child to constantly hear that she is in some way inferior? What does it do to a South Indian child to be told that she ‘looks South Indian’, as if that were an infectious disease? Discrimination on colour is well and kicking in this country. Leaving aside the issue of media representations, until parents and schools start confronting it head-on, a large proportion of children in this country are going to grow up with warped ideas of what beauty is.

Over at Comment is Free, Zeinab Huq posts about the impact of sharia on women she knows.

A US theatre company is reviving the 1970s poem/play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, by Ntozake Shange, reports AfterEllen.

AfterEllen also looks at the Independent’s Pink List of influential lesbian and gay Britons.

As is often the case in U.S. lists of the same type (e.g. OUT Magazine’s Power 50), lesbian and bisexual women make up a much smaller portion of the list. Of the 101 people mentioned, only 22 are women. In an another unfortunate similarity to many other lists of this sort, there are only a handful of LGBT people of color included in it.

And apparently no ethnic minority women.

Pickled Politics links to an interesting-sounding podcast about the role of Jewish women in Bollywood history.

Dr Neera Desai, one of the founders of the first women’s studies programme in India, has died from cancer, aged 84, reports FeministsIndia (via Feministing).

The Tate Modern was last week the venue for a re-enactment of feminist performance art from the 1970s, Once More With Feeling - Charlotte has more info at Subtext. And The Guardian interviews French feminist artist Orlan.

Permanent Link | Comments (5)

Internship Opportunities at Refuge

By Laura Woodhouse | 2 July 2009, 15:42

Refuge is the country’s largest single provider of emergency accommodation and support to women and children escaping domestic violence. They’re currently recruiting interns, and we thought some readers might be interested:

Internship opportunities

Refuge is looking for capable and enthusiastic interns to provide a range of support in fundraising. Taking on an internship role at Refuge will not only provide personal development but also the opportunity to gain a wide range of work experience in a successful charity environment.

* Location: Refuge Head Office in central London
* Start date: ASAP
* Duration: 3 - 6 months
* Ideally, interns will work 3 days per week, although it may be possible to work 2
* Travel expenses provided
* Suitable for graduates or postgraduates
* Excellent IT and communications skills essential
* Candidates must have empathy with the aims and objectives of Refuge

To apply, please send a CV with covering letter (of no more than 2 A4 pages). Please outline any relevant experience including your reasons for applying for this post to: sonia_johal[at]refuge[dot]org[dot]uk

Please quote reference FW

The deadline for applications is 5pm, Friday 17th July 2009

Permanent Link | Comments (3)

Game competition about domestic violence

By Jess McCabe | 2 July 2009, 12:43

Regular readers will know I’m a disgruntled game-player. I love games. I just wish less of them sucked - both in the sense I wish more were playable and actually fun and in the sense that they didn’t FAIL quite so hard to not just pointlessly, boringly repeat and reinforce kyriarchy.

Ludum Dare is a competition for game designers to quickly turn around mini games in 48 hours, on a theme. Via Offworld I happened to see the latest theme for this tri-annual game was domestic violence.

The idea of using games in an interesting way to make political points is very appealing - and some people have done this successfully by “social game” developers - for example ICED is meant to raise awareness about unfair immigration polcies in the US.

Let’s look at the game which Offworld highlighted as “the best of the entries I’ve played thus far”:

Queens, a short (and, in keeping with the theme, appropriately brutal) treatise on patriarchal indifference, and, as auntiepixelante aptly puts it, “the expendability of women”.

queens is the best of the ones I played, certainly (warning: I didn’t have time to play any of these games to the end, so ultimately that might have changed my perspective). In basic platform games, it is taken as read that the character you’re playing will ‘die’ multiple times - that’s the point, to get through the level without dying.

In queens, a small white pixalated figure, pushes a small pixilated queen off a ledge, and you are then meant to navigate her through the game without her dying. There are multiple queens, so if you die your character doesn’t just jump magically back to life, you’re replaced with a different queen. Or, as autie pixelante says:

In queens, these lives are characters and the repeating cycle of their deaths and replacement is the narrative, suggesting the expendability of women (who are neither faceless nor nameless) to a henry viii-style patriarch.

What about the other entries though? After School, a text game in which you play a boy and you have to choose the right thing to say out of a list, to stop his mother from hitting him.

One of the most basic points about domestic violence is: it’s not the victim’s fault, and it’s not up to the victim to ‘be good’ in some way in order to avoid abuse. And as the game progresses, it makes clear that there is no magic combination of things that someone can do to avoid abuse in this situation, as every option ends up with the mother hitting the son. Domestic violence is “not a game”, as it says.

Then there’s Punch the Red Ones Only - you are a penguin. If you punch the red penguins, you score points. If you accidentally punch a yellow penguin, the game zooms in and ends, zero-sum, don’t hit the ones like you. This one doesn’t work at all for me and seems pretty problematic - after all, it just seems to segregate the penguin world into “enemies” it is OK to hit and friends it’s not OK to hit, and based, no less, on colour.

This one sounds terrible, but I couldn’t confirm by playing it ‘unfortunately’:

Domestic Abuse: The Fighting game!

Arrows is woman, needs to get to gun. Z and X is man, Z punches, X grabs. Punches only count if the woman isn’t moving backwards, grabs only work if woman is moving.

In all seriousness, someone thought that was a good idea - because equating domestic violence and a fighting game is appropriate!

I also didn’t like this one called “the domestic” - in which you have to balance going to work and staying home - because it seems to be justifying/saying that work stress causes people to be violent to their partner, and that is an unavoidable reaction.

So, ultimately, there’s some potential here. It wasn’t as FAIL-ridden as I expected when I read about the competition, and maybe stimulates some thoughts about what games are for and their potential.

But another game designer, who ultimately pulled out, sums it up best:

Lesson learned: some themes just aren’t meant to be fun.

Permanent Link | Comments (3)

40% of ethnic minority women in UK live in poverty - Fawcett

By Jess McCabe | 30 June 2009, 16:46

40% of ethnic minority women in the UK live in poverty, according to a report out today by the Fawcett society (and more specifically written by zohra).

The current recession poses a major risk that the numbers of ethnic minority women in poverty will continue to rise even further and women will be “locked in” to poverty, the report says, especially given that the government’s policies don’t really address themselves to the specifics of what policies would help ethnic minority women to improve their financial situation.

So, for example, the report critiques the government’s reliance on getting people into work as the solution to poverty, pointing out that the reality is for many ethnic minority women - particularly mothers - it doesn’t make sense.

The report says:

The fact that caring for families is under-valued and largely unpaid, and that this work primarily falls to women, is not addressed. This has particular implications for some groups of ethnic minority women, such as Pakistani and Bangladeshi women, who are very distant from the labour market and more likely to be caring for their families. Despite providing essential care for family members, these women are being treated as having made inappropriate choices because their caring work is unpaid. Mothering is being deemed unproductive in this policy paradigm.

• Ethnic minority women are four times more likely than White women to have often taken a job for which they are over-qualied and are more likely to be in routine or semi-routine employment.
• They are also disproportionately likely to be working in temporary jobs leading to patchy and insecure income.
• Largely as a result of childcare needs, three quarters of all part-time workers are women, affecting not just their earnings but also the prospect of promotion.

And then you have to consider poverty in old age:

Yet having worked in paid employment does not eliminate the risk of living in poverty once retired. Of employed women of working age in the UK only 40% of White British/Irish women had an occupational or personal pension, and only a very small number of Pakistani (9%) and Bangladeshi (4%) women had such a scheme. The systematic disadvantage ethnic minority women experience throughout their lifetimes is compounded in old age, extending their risk of poverty.

The report goes on to detail how financial abuse and the financial chaos caused by domestic violence all compound the risks.

Policy-makers are basing their assessment of whether someone is in poverty by looking at the whole household together:

Despite over thirty years of evidence on households consisting of heterosexual couples indicating that resources are not shared equally between women and men, policy makers continue to analyse and approach poverty alleviation using the household unit. For example, the benets and tax credit system is based on policy analysis which measures poverty at the household level, assuming that all household resources are pooled and decision making over, and access to, these resources is shared equitably amongst all adult household members.

…

Statistics on household poverty that are not broken down by gender mask what is
actually happening within households. Women’s individual poverty is therefore concealed, as they are more likely to make financial sacrices for the benefit of other
household members.

And, of course, the assumption of heterosexual nuclear family-dom is a problem in general. But it just doesn’t reflect the experiences of large proportions of women, particularly women of some ethnicities, for example: “43 percent of Black African mothers and 50 percent of Black Caribbean ones are lone parents”.

Without analysing the needs of ethnic minority women separately to those of all other women or all other ethnic minorities, the reality that they have distinct priorities does not become apparent. The needs of ethnic minority women are not intrinsically invisible - it is just that no one is looking at them.

Meanwhile, the report notes, ethnic minority women “lack voice in policy arenas”:

They are virtually absent in Parliament, with only two Black women out of 646 MPs in the House of Commons. There are no ethnic minority women in Cabinet, or in either of the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly. They are largely missing within government as well, constituting only about one percent of the senior civil service. And they make up less than one percent of local councillors in England and just over one percent of the House of Lords.

…

As a result of this relative absence, policy debates affecting ethnic minority women end up being conducted without them.

Permanent Link | Comments (2)

New Women’s History Magazine - HerStoria

By Catherine Redfern | 30 June 2009, 15:35

Whilst in Liverpool recently I stumbled across the amazing shop News From Nowhere which if you don’t know is a fabulous, not for profit, radical and community bookshop, and also a worker’s cooperative.

Anyway, whilst browsing this wonderful treasure trove, enjoying a free vegan truffle and stocking up on various zines and interesting magazines such as Dublin’s anarcha-feminist magazine The Rag, I spotted a new one I hadn’t come across before which I thought might interest some of you.

HerStoria Magazine is a UK based women’s history magazine. From the website:

HerStoria magazine explores the past to discover how the other half lived, telling the story of ordinary - and extraordinary - women. We’ll bring you opinions about the fairer sex from across the centuries, and investigate the ways in which women responded and lived their lives…

…Debate the issues that influence the way history is made: Are women making themselves heard on the radio and TV? Are young historians in school learning about women’s history? Are women given an equal voice in popular and high brow history? Do museums and heritage centres provide a balanced view of history? Are our public memorials fair to women? Do we forget our heroines too easily?

So there you go. Check it out!

Permanent Link | Comments (9)

Excuse me while I have a little rant…

By Laura Woodhouse | 30 June 2009, 11:14

I’m one of those girls who’s always got on better with guys as a general rule, and I’ve had serious relationships with guys since I was 15. So there are a lot of men in this world that I care deeply about. But every now and then I feel so bloody alienated from them that I want to scream. Why? Because they will never, ever understand what it is to be a woman in a society dominated by and created for the benefit of men. They will never understand how it feels to grow up in a world where you are a commodity, where the opposite sex has access to - and feels entitled to access - your body and your sexuality for their own gratification.

I wish that just for one day we could turn the tables and straight men could feel what it’s like to know that their female friends and lovers could go out into any number of bars or clubs in their town and perve on beautiful men, pay them to bend over for them and rub them off; that at a click of a button they could access millions of images and videos of men which exist solely for their gratification; that they could turn on MTV and see almost-naked men gyrating around a fully-clothed woman who sees them as just another piece of meat to get her off; that they could pay to gain a man’s consent to sex and not give a shit about whether he really wants to have sex with them. How would they feel if they knew that every year hoards of women go on holiday to places like Vegas and Amsterdam where they will be offered men to use as they please at every bloody turn, and that that’s the very reason they go there?

I wish men could know what it feels like to grow up desperately trying to prove that you are just as sexy and desirable and fuckable as all those millions of women and girls that they can perve on all over the goddamn place. I wish they could know how much that fucks with your self esteem. And I wish they could feel what it’s like to know that the people you care about - however nice or sweet or caring or socially aware they may be - often help perpetuate this situation that makes you feel like shit. They don’t mean to make you feel like shit, but when the status quo is designed with them in mind, when it benefits them and they’ve never been encouraged to question it, when their privilege and sense of entitlement have been propagated since birth, it’s hugely unlikely that they’re going to do anything but take at least some kind of advantage of what’s handed to them on a plate. I don’t blame my straight male friends when they do, but I wish to hell they could understand that every time they benefit from this woman-as-sex-object culture it reminds me where my place should be in this society, and it certainly isn’t on an equal footing with them.

Disclaimer: I know there are a hell of a lot of other ways in which it would be nice to turn the tables for a day so men could see what life is like for us, but this is what’s particularly irritating me at the moment, so please forgive the rather specific focus of this post. Also, this is a very personal post, I’m not saying all women feel like I do - I recognise that this is very much based on my own hang-ups and insecurities - but I feel that these hang-ups and insecurities are to a large extent a product of growing up in this society, so I felt it was appropriate to let off a little steam here

Permanent Link | Comments (64)

Most conventionally-attractive female players scheduled for centre court, admits Wimbledon

By Jess McCabe | 30 June 2009, 10:10

The All England Club has admitted that it schedules matches between “attractive” female players for Centre Court at Wimbledon, reports the Daily Mail.

In the men’s tournament, five-times winner Roger Federer and British hope Andy Murray invariably play on Centre.

But on Friday, after Federer left the court, the next match was Victoria Azarenka of Belarus against Romania’s Sorana Cirstea.

While both 19-year-olds have top form in the glamour department, Miss Cirstea was seeded 28 while Miss Azarenka, who won, is ranked and seeded eighth.

That same day, second seed Serena Williams was relegated to the new No 2 Court for her win over Italian Roberta Vinci.

The All England Club didn’t even bother to deny it:

Spokesman Johnny Perkins said: ‘Good looks are a factor.’

The Mail speculates that Wimbledon organisers are trying to cater to the BBC. An unnamed “BBC source” said:

‘No one has heard of many of the women now, so if they are pretty it definitely gives them an edge.

‘Our preference would always be a Brit or a babe as this always delivers high viewing figures.’

The tennis players have, unsurprisingly, noticed too, and are none-too-happy:

The fifth seed, who was knocked out on Saturday on No 1 Court, said: ‘It’s weird. If you look at the schedule, it’s not only about me.

‘It’s about Dinara on Court No 2, Venus (Williams) on Court No 1 and the girls who are not very highly seeded they play on Centre.

‘I respect them. They’re great players for sure. But this is what’s weird for me; what’s their strategy, what’s their plan of making the schedule?

‘This is what surprises me a little bit.’

Twice champion Serena Williams even got lost on the way to No 2 Court on Friday.

She was nearly ten minutes late for her match.

(Of course, the Mail, champion of women, took the opportunity to illustrate the story with huge photos of the players labelling who played on centre court and who didn’t, and captioning one with a reference to the “Battle of the Babes”.)

UPDATE: Reader Audrey emailed in with the info on how to complain - go here for details on how to write to the All England Club.

Permanent Link | Comments (27)