Forty Shades Of Grey

Life on benefits

2012-02-25T12:17:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking about writing this post for a while, and I've always put it off because I couldn't be arsed with the hassle and abuse I've feared that I'll get for writing it. But it seems like the right time to do it now. All I'll say is - if you're thinking of slagging me off on Twitter or in the comments section, go fuck yourself. I'll take your terribly important job for a month and you can be on benefits if it's so damn easy.

I've been unemployed for six months now. In fact, I've been unemployed so long that my contribution-based JSA will run out in a week and I have to switch to income-based JSA. I've taken out what I put in to the system and am now officially A Burden. That's a crappy feeling in and of itself, and it's not helped by the 'scrounging youth' rhetoric so beloved by the Tories. I mean, I worked in a pub to support myself for five years - through college, university and after, while I tried (and failed) to get a proper job. I'd often find myself with only one full day off every three weeks. I'm not a shirker.

So, what are benefits like? Well, each week I get around £62 in Housing Benefits and £53 in JSA. Of my JSA, £13 immediately goes towards topping up my rent (£75p/w) - luckily, my rent includes utility bills and council tax. That leaves me with £40 a week left, or £160 a month (quick note - two thirds of all my benefits go to my landlord).

How do I spend this throbbing great amount? Well, it goes a bit like this:

I spend about £30 a month to travel to see either my partner or my family (I live around 300 miles away from each).
I spend £40 on food. I have the luxury of having the time and ability to cook all my meals from scratch, and being vegan means I can ease by reasonably cheaply.
£30 goes on tobacco. I'm not going to defend this, it's probably a bad choice. But a saving of £7 a week and nothing to really do with it leaves me with little incentive to quit.
I also have to pay £10 for my mobile (my only means of communication with most people) and £5 for internet access in my house.
I pay my bank £10 a month because, being so utterly bloody skint, I'm at the bottom of an overdraft and have to pay interest on it.

That's £125 gone, like that. Which means that each month, I have the grand sum of £35 to spend on myself. There's always a niggly something, like a birthday or having to replace essentials like toiletries which takes £5 of that, so at the end of the month, I get £30. £7.50 a week to spend on anything else I might want. Which leads me to the isolation.

You can't do anything. You can't make friends, and you lose the ones you had because you can't see them. If I want to go to a gig (£4 entry, 3 pints at £3 each), that's two weeks of disposable income gone. I literally can't do anything else that whole time. I mean, I'm lucky because when I'm with my partner he'll pay for me to go out and do things. But I hate that. I feel like a leech. When I'm away from him, I only leave the house to go to the supermarket and the job centre. This year, my little sister had to give me money so I could go for a few pints with her on her birthday.

Sure, there are things you can do for free, but it's still incredibly isolating. I've stopped getting involved in activist stuff down here because I don't know anyone, and when you're at the meetings you're focussed on the issue at hand. I tried, but if you can't socialise with people outside of meetings, they don't know who you are when you're there. Hard to believe, but I'm just the quiet girl in the corner. When I leave, no one will notice I'm gone, because no one noticed I even arrived.

So what do you do instead? Well, if you're me you buy a few bottles of the cheapest cider the supermarket sell (£1.50) to entertain you in the evenings, and you don't leave the house, and you let the depression and anxiety kick in. As much as right-wingers would like me to, I don't search for jobs all day, every day. I spend a fair bit of time looking, but the more applications I send to jobs which I could do but I don't have the necessary (unpaid) experience for without hearing anything in return, the harder it gets. I don't feel like I'm good enough for any job. I'm so used to not leaving the house or speaking to people or having to live up to anyone's standards, the thought of being made to do it five days a week terrifies me to the point of tears. I desperately search for jobs I can do though, fearing that the DWP will arbitrarily decide to stop my JSA or put me on Workfare.

The rest of the time I spend just occupying myself. I educate myself about issues I'm passionate about. I'm planning a conference. I read books, I play games, I watch DVDs. I do anything to keep myself from going into a pit of despair. I count the hours I have to kill until I get to go to my partner's next (133 hours, or 78 if I don't count when I'm asleep). I write, long rambly things like this and usually delete them before anyone else can see.

It always comes back to me though. I'm not good enough. No one wants me. I'll never be a proper person. Scrounger.

Things are changing though. I'm moving in with my partner next month, which means moving cities. That brings new challenges though. When I move in with him, I'll stop being 'a jobseeker'. This is good as it means I don't have to spend half an hour a week convincing some drone at the Jobcentre that I'm not tabloid-worthy workshy dolescum and instead need the benefits that I'm supposedly 'showered' in. However, it will mean that my partner will receive Working Tax Credits (of around the same amount as JSA) to support me. As in, I will have no independent income, and instead have to ask him for money whenever I need to buy anything. So now on top of everything else (I'm a horrid, pathetic waste of space who hasn't done anything in the two years since I left university and will spend the rest of my life being useless), I now feel like a failure to feminism too! I worry about this. I worry he'll get sick of paying for everything for me. I worry he'll get sick of working to pay the bills while I'm a useless shit. I'm worried about being a burden.

I also worry about the other people in the same financial situation as me. Comparatively, I'm lucky. I don't have kids to support, or have to worry about a massive unexpected bill coming from somewhere. If I were in the situation where I wanted (or needed) to leave my partner, I have family and friends who would help me do it. How are you supposed to get money to enable you to move away from an unhappy relationship if your partner controls all the money?

I don't really know what I've been trying to say in this post, but it's basically that being on the dole is shit. It makes you alone, friendless and feeling like crap. It makes you so wary of your precarious financial situation that even something awesome like moving in with the man you love just makes you worry about how you would cope if that wasn't the case. And then it makes you feel like a total shit for moaning when other people have it even worse. Asylum seekers, for example, get £35 a week, if that.

Actually, I think I can put it even more succinctly than that: Fuck anyone who thinks a person would voluntarily put themselves through this shit and is living the high life. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy*.

UPDATE: Please go read this wonderful and moving post by commenter Evsie on being a single father on JSA.

(*I would wish it on Tories and other people who think that benefits is easy and everyone's a scrounger, but only for a month to show them how hard it really is.)

INTERSECT conference

2012-02-23T04:46:00.000-08:00

Some of you may remember that back in December, I decided to set up a one-day feminist conference in Bristol, called INTERSECT. Well, after lots of behind-the-scenes organisation and discussion, and thanks to the many generous people who donated to help get the project off the ground, I am pleased to announce the launch of the official INTERSECT website!

On it you will be able to find all the details of the conference, including pages for all the awesome speakers we have lined up, travel routes, information about accessibility and remote viewing. Also (and most importantly) tickets are now on sale - priced at £3 for concessions (students/unwaged/NMW) and £6 full price.

You can follow progress with the conference on Facebook and on Twitter, or email conference@intersect.org.uk with any questions you may have.

Looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible on May 19th - and if you can't be there in person, the conference will be live-streamed and you'll be able to take part in Q&A sessions on Twitter. Tell your friends!

The Pill: Destroying civilisation since 1957

2012-02-10T08:13:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: Since the piece I am responding to is very cissexist and holds up notions of 'uterus holder = mother, sperm-giver = father', I will address it in these terms. It's stupid and wrong though, like the rest of the piece.

I read a lot of people saying really, really daft things on the internet. But sometimes something is just so utterly bizarre that it surprises even me. Step forward Michael Brennan Dougherty and Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, who have co-authored a piece titled Time To Admit It: The Church Has Always Been Right On Birth Control. I'm going to go through it with my trusty red pen, because you really have to see this in its entirety. While reading, please bear in mind that MBD is a politics editor and P-EG is a senior research analyst (i.e. in theory, very intelligent and not wild-eyed conspiracy-peddlers). So, here we go. From hereon, my words are in red, theirs are in black. No links or words have been changed.

Painting the Catholic Church as "out of touch" is like shooting fish in a barrel, what with the funny hats and gilded churches ~~and systemic coverups of rape, child abuse and paedophilia~~. And nothing makes it easier than the Church's stance against contraception. And the other stuff.

Many people, (including our editor) are wondering why the Catholic Church doesn't just ditch this requirement. They note that most Catholics ignore it (actually a whopping 98%), and that most everyone else finds it divisive, or "out-dated." C'mon! It's the 21st century, they say! Don't they SEE that it's STUPID, they scream. PERHAPS BECAUSE IT IS STUPID?

Here's the thing, though: the Catholic Church is the world's biggest and oldest organization. It has buried all of the greatest empires known to man, from the Romans to the Soviets (either they kept that damn quiet or it didn't happen. Given these guys' extremely tenuous grasp of history, my money is on the latter). It has establishments literally all over the world, touching every area of human endeavor. It's given us some of the world's greatest thinkers, from Saint Augustine on down to René Girard. ALL GREAT THINKERS EVER HAVE BEEN CATHOLIC. THERE WAS NO SUCH THING AS THE ISLAMIC GOLDEN AGE. SOCRATES WAS A CATHOLIC. ARISTOTLE WAS A CATHOLIC. IN FACT, UNTIL CATHOLICISM EVERYONE LIVED IN CAVES AND SHAT WHEREVER THEY FELT LIKE. (NB, I'm not saying there haven't been great Catholic thinkers (or at least, great thinkers who lived in times and places where it was dangerous to not be a Catholic), but let's not pretend they're the only ones by a long stretch of the imagination, or that all Catholics are good - as far as I'm aware, Professor Steven Hawking is not a Catholic, but Robert Mugabe is. Just saying, y'know? Shades of grey and all that) When it does things, it usually has a good reason. Profit? Domination? More people in their club than in the other clubs? Everyone has a right to disagree, but it's not that they're a bunch of crazy old white dudes who are stuck in the Middle Ages. Except when they are a bunch of crazy old white dudes who are stuck in the Middle Ages.

So, what's going on? The Church teaches that love, marriage, sex, and procreation are all things that belong together. That's it. But it's pretty important. I drew a diagram to illustrate my problems with these ideas. Here it is:

And though the Church has been teaching this for 2,000 years, it's probably never been as salient as today.
Today's injunctions against birth control were re-affirmed in a 1968 document by Pope Paul VI called Humanae Vitae. He warned of four results if the widespread use of contraceptives was accepted:

General lowering of moral standards
A rise in infidelity and illegitimacy
The reduction of women to objects used to satisfy men
Government coercion in reproductive matters

Does that sound familiar? Because it sure sounds like what's been happening for the past 40 years. As George Akerloff wrote in Slate over a decade ago, by making the birth of the child the physical choice of the mother, the sexual revolution has made marriage and child support a social choice of the father. Instead of two parents being responsible for the children they conceive, an expectation that was held up by social norms and by the law, we now take it for granted that neither parent is necessarily responsible for their children. Men are now considered to be fulfilling their duties merely by paying court-ordered child-support. That's a pretty dramatic lowering of standards for "fatherhood." Things that did not happen before these slutty women got their harlot-mitts on the pill: Sex outside of marriage. Children outside of marriage. Absent fathers. Absent mothers. Parents splitting up. What I find interesting about this though, is the quote they pick from Slate. Because what they are actually saying is that "if we DON'T give a woman a physical choice about whether or not she has a child, a man will have to stick around". They DON'T WANT WOMEN TO HAVE ANY PHYSICAL CHOICE IN WHETHER SHE HAS A CHILD. Excuse me while I go vomit my uterus out.

How else are we doing since this great sexual revolution? Kim Kardashian's marriage lasted 72 days. I'm confused. A minute ago they were all about the hetero-marriage. Now divorce is caused by IUDs? PLEASE TELL ME HOW CONTRACEPTIVES SPLIT UP KIM KARDASHIAN'S MARRIAGE, HEAT MAGAZINE MIGHT SEND ME A T-SHIRT FOR A WORLD EXCLUSIVE. Illegitimacy: way up. In 1960, 5.3% of all births in America were to unmarried women. By 2010, it was 40.8% [PDF]. In 1960 married families made up almost three-quarters of all households; but by the census of 2010 they accounted for just 48 percent of them. Cohabitation has increased tenfold since 1960. Gosh dammit, these sluts are so slutty with their coils and their implants and their live-in partners that they're having children with. How absolutely dare they use contraception to be slutty and have illegitimate children all over the place with their (usually) monogamous partners. Doesn't it make you sick? And of course, we never had any illegitimate children before 1970, heavens no.

And if you don't think women are being reduced to objects to satisfy men, welcome to the internet, how long have you been here? Since the early 80s! Not me personally, of course, but... you know. Anyway, I'll add 'objectification of women' to my list of 'things which did not occur before 1970'.

Government coercion: just look to China (or America, where a government rule on contraception coverage is the reason why we're talking about this right now). Contraception means that the government can coerce reproductive rights! Let's get the government to ban contraception in order to stop that happening!

Is this all due to the Pill? Of course not. But the idea that widely-available contraception hasn't led to dramatic societal change, or that this change has been exclusively to the good, is a much sillier notion than anything the Catholic Church teaches. Dramatic societal change like not punishing women for having sex like the filthy beasts that they are. Nope, we've truly regressed now. We were so enlightened when we used to force women in to Magdalene asylums! By the way, the Catholic church teaches that the same stuff that makes Flying Saucer sweets turns into bits of human flesh once you say the right words over it and that all babies are evil when they're born because of talking snakes. Which I happen to think is a much sillier notion than "I think it is nice that people can partake in consensual sex without fear and I don't think that this has brought about society's downfall".

So is the notion that it's just OBVIOUSLY SILLY to get your moral cues from a venerable faith (as opposed to what? Britney Spears?). LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE! Sorry, but what? I don't believe in Jesus so I'll just phone up Justin Beiber and ask his opinion on whether or not it's OK to steal, shall I? Then I'll email Jedward and ask what I should do if someone covets my ass. It's true, this is what atheists do ALL THE TIME. When I was growing up, instead of going to Sunday school to learn how to be a good person, I just read Smash Hits and watched MTV. And I grew up to know that it's wrong to rape people and abuse children. Britney Spears 1, Catholic Church 0.

But let's turn to another aspect of this. The reason our editor thinks Catholics shouldn't be fruitful and multiply doesn't hold up, either. The world's population, he writes, is on an "unsustainable" growth path. The Population Bureau of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations sees (PDF, h/t Pax Dickinson) the rate of population growth slowing over the next decades and stabilizing around 9 billion in 2050…and holding there until 2300. (And note that the UN, which promotes birth control and abortions around the world, isn't exactly in the be-fruitful-and-multiply camp.) More broadly, the Malthusian view of population growth has been resilient despite having been proven wrong time and time again and causing lots of unnecessary human suffering. For example, China is headed for a demographic crunch and social dislocation due to its misguided one-child policy. I'm too lazy to take these figures apart (if anyone wants to in comments, please be my guest) but seriously. We have around 7bn people on Earth. This is up from 6bn in just over ten years. Millions of people are starving. There is no room. We are running out of natural resources. Even 2bn more people is a really, really bad idea.

Human progress is people. Everything that makes life better, from democracy to the economy to the internet to penicillin was either discovered and built by people (as opposed to those damn freeloading non-people). More people means more progress, more war, more famine, more disease, more every other bad thing too! The inventor of the cure for cancer might be someone's fourth child that they decided not to have. Or the baby someone didn't have because they were pregnant with another child. Or didn't have sex while they were ovulating. Or died from starvation as a child because there were too many humans to feed. Or were birthing more damn babies instead of in a laboratory. This game is fun!

So, just to sum up:
It's a good idea for people to be fruitful and multiply; and
Regardless of how you feel about the Church's stance on birth control, it's proven pretty prophetic. Sorry guys, but:

So, there you have it. Before 1970 everyone got married as virgins, stayed married their whole lives and had lots of babies. Nothing bad ever came of this, and there were absolutely no deviations from this formula ever. Like, say, prostitutes in the Bible or anything like that. I'll finish with this:

A cut-out-and-keep guide to feminism for Louise Mensch

2012-01-24T19:21:00.000-08:00

CHRISTMAS HAS COME EARLY AT FORTY SHADES OF GREY TOWERS!!!

Normally I would roll my eyes at this non-linear procession of time as it would mean I have to put up with more people blathering about fairy lights and bows and other things I generally make it a rule not to give the tiniest atom of a flying fuck about. I mean, I'd welcome the general proliferation of hot booze (an essential part of any balanced diet), but it would also have to be balanced against the chance of snow and ice and hearing a Mariah Carey song and seriously, fuck that shit. Anyway, I digress. There has, to my knowledge, been neither a forwards nor backwards temporal shift. But I have a present!

Oh... it's the non-festive equivalent of a shit in a box hastily wrapped in the Daily Star - it's Louise Mensch writing about how she totes is a feminist no matter what the mean feminists say.

Now, I generally make it a rule to not posit myself as the Queen Of Feminism and dictate who may, or may not label themselves as what. I mean, there's plenty of feminists I disagree with and who I would quite like to give a quick whisper to in order to steer them in the right path. But in this case I am going to make an exception, channel my inner Inigo Montoya and say:

"Louise - I do not think that word means what you think it means."

I'm going to take out my trusty red pen now and fisk Mensch's article, in order to illustrate why I feel this to be the case.

Until further notice, text in black will be Mensch's piece, text in red mine. All links and wording in Mensch's piece as they appear. Continue at your peril.

Tory women bring feminism out of the ghetto

WOAH HOLD ON. The fucking ghetto?! I'm not sure if Mensch wrote this or if it was one of those pesky subs, but misappropriation of oppression much? This does not bode well.

The latest ICM poll is good news for the blues. David Cameron enjoys a five-point lead over Labour at a time when it should be miles ahead, opposing a coalition government that has to make drastic spending cuts and keep our heads above water as Europe threatens financial implosion. Faced with these conditions, Mr (red rosette) Potato Head ought to manage a substantial lead in mid-term polling. That's... lovely Louise. I'm really glad you got a party brag into this piece (although I suspect maaaany more to come from the woman who hailed the deposition of Colonel Gaddafi as a 'genuine triumph for David Cameron'). There's a part of me concerned about how she refuses to even name the Leader of the (Bloody Joke of an) Opposition - instead dehumanising him and making fun of his appearance. I would think that a self-styled superfeminist such as Mensch would realise that judging people based on their physical appearance is actually a really nasty thing to do and that patriarchal expectations of female beauty are one of the main things used to keep women down - just look at the way the BBC have gotten rid of talented female presenters because they are considered 'too old' and 'not attractive' enough to be taken seriously. NOT COOL MENSCH. WE DO NOT USE SYSTEMS OF OPPRESSION TO SNEER AT OTHERS. IT JUST CONTINUES THEM BEING USED AGAINST US.

Details of the poll will be particularly concerning to the two Eds: Labour is nine points behind in the Midlands (good for me, in Corby). The Tories are also nine points clear with men and have a two-point lead among women. Translation: More women hate Tories than men do but it's not as bad as Labour so yah boo sucks!

This last number is particularly cheering. For some time now the Labour party, led by Yvette Cooper, has made a sustained pitch to British women that the government is not on their side. They draw out selective research on the cuts and say it will particularly hurt women. They take Cameron's joking remark – "calm down dear", which ripped off a Michael Winner TV ad – and offer it as an example of sexism. They drop gender into every intervention and speech and have tried to claim feminism as their own, a thing of the left. This marks the first point where I lose my shit. Right. First up: the cuts FUCKING DO HURT WOMEN. Cutting corporation tax redistributes money from women to men. Cutting public sector jobs and freezing their pay hurts women. In-work conditionality hurts women. Stopping victims of intimate partner violence being eligible for legal aid hurts women. YOUR GOVERNMENT NOT JUST HURTS, BUT FUCKING KILLS WOMEN. Second up: patronising women and implying that they are too 'hysterical' to do their damn job is sexist. When I see Cameron smirking around men and making the same implications as he does to women, I will believe that he's actually just a giant scumfuck and not a giant misogynist scumfuck. Thirdly up: when you're oppressed in every part of society, you tend to see it in every part of society. Mainly because... well it's there. No, it might not be for Mensch, but it fucking is for the rest of us. If she had any idea what it was like to not be an over-privileged rich person, she might realise this, but no. She's toeing the party line as per usual and sticking her head, ostrich-like, in whatever stuff it is rich people would use instead of sand. Fourthly up: I'm not saying feminism is a thing of the left, solely, but I am saying there is no damn such thing as a feminism where you only help yourself - which is all Tory 'feminism' is.

Tory women aren't having it. A grassroots backbench movement of women MPs (with several sound male feminists who have our backs) determined that we would not give Labour the monopoly on women's issues. We sit behind a frontbench that we know to be relentlessly focused on social justice and women's issues. Who ARE these Tory grassroots backbench women? Who ARE these Tory male feminists? What do they DO? How is your front bench in ANY FUCKING WAY committed to social justice or women's issues? I mean REALLY. FUCK THIS. Look at the damn links above to see how damn committed this bunch are to 'women's issues'. Unless they actually think that what women are concerned about is "Oh, I just DON'T KNOW HOW I WILL GET BEATEN TO DEATH OR STARVE TODAY". I demand to see evidence of this 'movement'.

Tory feminism is holistic, not the ghetto feminism of the impact equalities assessment; it looks at women as a whole. Case in point: 80% of the lowest paid public sector workers exempt from the pay freeze are women. Changes to the state pension that will end penalties for women who take career breaks to care for their families are being put forward. Sustainable funding cycles for rape crisis centres and victim support have been proposed. Theresa May broke ground on flexible parental leave, thus helping to ensure that employers would no longer look askance at women of childbearing age (remember Labour peer Lord Sugar's remarks on pregnant employees?). The list goes on. Fucking 'ghetto feminism'? Does Mensch seriously think that we should be focusing less attention on women who are the most oppressed and more attention on women who are the least? Another thing - pointing out that 80% of the lowest paid public sector workers are women is a) admitting the need for feminism in the first damn place, b) admitting that there's a huge problem with women being underpaid, c) showing us which gender is seen as the more 'disposable' employee. Also, 'sustainable funding...for rape crisis centres'? Damn, if I wasn't so sure Mensch had private healthcare I'd ask for the number of her GP so I could get whatever she has. Because it ain't looking so damn rosy from where I'm sat. Also, when you read the part about women of childbearing age I'd like you to imagine the 'wrong answer' klaxon from Family Fortunes. It sounds like this. Because this became illegal way back in 1975 under the Labour government. Sorry Louise, you won't win the speedboat at this rate. (I will concede that Alan Sugar is a sexist arsehole, but would like to point out that he doesn't represent the whole party and even a clock as stopped as Mensch may be right once in a while. DAMMIT. This makes it sound like I'm defending Labour. Just to make it clear: I would never do that. I just dislike lies.)

Last week, Ed Balls capitulated and accepted the need for Tory cuts. The Conservatives' growing lead on economic credibility resonates with women, too. As mortgage holders – 70% of all women work outside the home – they benefit from George Osborne's low interest rates. They relate to restraint on council tax, a regressive tax that hits pensioners and those on fixed incomes hardest. Well hot-damn, this is an interesting use of statistics. Now, I do not work outside 'the home'. This is mainly because I don't have a 'home', per se. Or a 'job', per se. I am one of those poor unfortunate ONE MILLION young people who are on the dole. Anyway, I used to work outside 'the home'. However, I did not have a mortgage. My sister works outside 'the home'. She does not have a mortgage. In fact, of all my friends who have jobs, I can count a teeny-tiny number (one, off the top of my head) who have mortgages. So that's not 70% of women benefitting. That's 70% of women have jobs and if they happen to have been in a fortunate position and single quite a few years ago now they might have a mortgage. Also, since when did only women benefit from cheap interest rates ~~caused by the fact that everyone is fucking skint~~ instituted by our beloved Gideon? And, if I must say this again I will damn well scream it from the rooftops: WOMEN SUFFER MORE WHEN SERVICES ARE CUT WHICH IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU REDUCE THINGS LIKE COUNCIL TAX AND ONE WAY TO STOP THIS WOULD ACTUALLY BE TO TAX RICH PEOPLE MORE NOT FUCK POOR PEOPLE OVER.

When speaking of the deficit, in magazines or on the airwaves, Tory feminists use the language of other women – the debt we pass on to our children, and our duty to lift that burden off their backs. The more we shift away from the bad old days of economic dependence on a wage-earning man, the more women notice the tax-and-spend policies that affect all wage earners. Well, not my language. I don't have children. In fact, around 20% of women choose to remain child-free - which is around 5.8 million women the Tories aren't speaking for. And, forgive my mistake, but surely having children isn't just something women spontaneously do? MEN ARE PARENTS TOO. See, this shit is Feminism 101 - PARENTHOOD IS NOT JUST FOR THE BEARER OF THE UTERUS. Also, I'm sure children would prefer to have an alive mother and more 'deficit' when they grow up rather than a mother who got beaten to death in front of them because she couldn't get a restraining order because she couldn't get legal aid. Just saying, like.

Most Conservatives would define feminism as supporting equal rights and opportunities for women. In that sense it is a movement of women, not of right or left. But I like to think that, somewhere at the margins of all this, the noisy reclamation of the feminist label from the left is having an impact. The problem is though, as I am nearly bashing my head against the keyboard while I am saying this a-fucking-gain - Tories do NOT support equal rights and opportunities for women. What they support is 'well us women are fine, I really don't know what the rest of you are fussing about!'. LOOK AT THE GODDAMN LINKS ABOVE. So, by her own definition, Mensch IS NOT a feminist.

Conservative women are having a moment: Gaby Hinsliff's wonderful Observer cover story was the culmination of months of Tory feminists advancing our case whenever a media opportunity arose. Last December, Jane Ellison launched an all-party parliamentary group on female genital mutilation. Claire Perry works on opt-in options for internet porn. Amber Rudd MP, who is pro-choice, looks at alternate ways to combat teenage pregnancy. I stood up on anonymity for rape suspects and wound up debating with a feminist hero of mine, Naomi Wolf, on Newsnight. I also debated Tory feminism with Labour's Stella Creasy MP on Radio 4's Woman's Hour – a chance to explode the myth that "Tory" and "feminist" are oxymoronic to millions of women. And I just chopped my own damn arm off, but it's totally cool because I have this sticking plaster I had to make myself out of reused gaffer tape and an old tissue BECAUSE OF TORY CUTS AFFECTING WOMEN SO BADLY.

As a Tory feminist, you want to play in front of Labour's goal, advancing the case for social justice, welfare reform and Iain Duncan Smith's universal credit (which should lift a million people and 350,000 children out of poverty). Yes, we anticipate the colourful comments under our articles, but that doesn't matter. Tory feminists are looking for your support, looking to convert you. I am an MP today only because in his very first speech as leader, David Cameron – the most feminist leader the Conservative party has ever had – made it his business to challenge dinosaur attitudes that led us to a 91% white male parliamentary party. His work in opposition continues in government. I'm actually bored of dissecting this horseshit now, so, here we go. 1. Party pointscoring. 2. Child poverty is predicted to increase under the universal credit scheme. 3. David Cameron is also the most 'likely to have grown up in the 70's' leader the Tories ever had. That does not make him John Travolta. 4. I couldn't give two glittery unicorn shits if the Tory party was 100% female, because it would mean 306 Louise Mensches and my poor laptop could not cope with the stress of debunking this tripe that many times.

While we all expect that this poll lead won't last, the fact that we have recovered our ground with women is immensely comforting this far out from a general election. After all, the Tories have never won without women – and never will.

Fucking feminism, how does it work?

Back to me in black text now.

OH MY HOLY MOTHER OF AVIMIMUS, WHY DID I DO THAT TO MYSELF?

I shouldn't be surprised, ever. I've spoken to Louise Mensch once or twice on Twitter, and every damn time she's insisted she absolutely is a feminist, but when challenged on what she actually does to stop women being oppressed, or told how her party is oppressing women, she clams up. Funny that. So now, for her benefit - as I'm sure she actually would like to be a feminist, she's just not sure of the first things about it, I am going to put my Queen Feminist crown on (it's red leopard-print and decorated with the bollocks of men I have emasculated) and write up a quick cut-out-and-keep one do and five don'ts of being a feminist.

Commit to fostering equality for all women

DON'T

Insist that because you're not oppressed, no woman ever is
Think that all women are (or are even capable of being) mothers, and this is all they want/are good for
Shut down services essential to women's livelihood, safety, economic power or wellbeing
Insist that other women are too stupid to know what to do with their own bodies
Write facile articles that purport to be about feminism that are actually just party-political broadcasts, cheap jibes about the opposition and actually fuck-all to do with any feminism ever

I hope this helps.

Should feminists be vegetarian/vegan?

2012-01-18T13:32:00.000-08:00

When I was growing up, my mum and dad were vegetarian. When I ate with my parents, I ate vegetarian food. When I was at my grandparents' houses, or at school, or out anywhere else, I ate meat. When I was eleven, I did a school project about battery farming and vivisection and promptly became vegetarian (halfway through a chicken curry). Over the past year I've been eating less and less dairy and eggs. This is a consequence of dating a vegan, dairy and eggs being really fucking expensive and a growing discomfort with eating them. A little while ago I decided to nail my colours to the mast and go vegan.

What does it mean to be a vegan? It's defined here by Vegan Action as:

someone who, for various reasons, chooses to avoid using or consuming animal products. While vegetarians choose not to use flesh foods, vegans also avoid dairy and eggs, as well as fur, leather, wool, down, and cosmetics or chemical products tested on animals.

That's a fairly accurate summary of what I do (or rather don't do). There's different ideas and feelings and loads of wonderful lefty infighting surrounding veganism - I've genuinely seen an argument about whether it's 'truly vegan' to have a wormery. But the main thing for most people is to avoid animal products wherever possible (no one expects you to starve to death or severely endanger your health rather than consume an animal product, and the little boundaries are yours to define for yourself).

He's a level 5 vegan. He won't eat anything that casts a shadow.

Why am I telling you this? Because yesterday my interest was piqued by a podcast titled "Should feminists be vegetarian?" (accompanying article here). I mentioned it on Twitter and lots of people seemed surprised that some people draw a connection, so I thought I'd write about the show and my reactions to it so people were aware about another branch of feminism they possibly hadn't heard of before.

The show was set up in (to my eyes) a very odd manner. The first half of the show was an interview with Kathryn Paxton George, author of Animal, Vegetable or Woman? (A Feminist Critique of Ethical Vegetarianism), who does not just argue that no, feminists do not need to be vegetarian, but rather that feminists should not be vegetarian. This mainly consists of her knocking down strawmen (strawwomen? strawcows?) and exorcising what seems to be some unspoken personal issues. It is then followed by an interview with Sheri Lucas, who wrote a rebuttal to George's book titled A Defence of the Feminist-Vegetarian Connection, who spends most of her interview time rebutting George's (frankly odd) strawmen and about two minutes listing what some people seem to be the connection between feminism and vegetarianism/veganism. If I had done this, I would have interviewed someone who actually argues all feminists should be vegetarian/vegan (Lucas does not, she is a vegan for purely ethical reasons but is aware of the parallels drawn) and then interviewed someone arguing against them. But that's just me.

To make this article read a little better, I will list the main arguments in favour of the feminist-vegetarian connection with no comment, then will list George's arguments with Lucas' (and my own) rebuttals, and then offer an opinion of my own.

The feminist-vegetarian connection is usually illustrated using the following arguments:

Feminists should be against all oppression, not just one kind - especially as oppressions are so often interlinked
Women often speak about being treated 'like meat', and are often called names of animals to be degraded (cow, bitch etc.)
Animals, like women, are exploited for their bodies and what they can do
It's usually female animals who are exploited the most (male animals are studs or killed) - shown through the consumption of eggs, milk and so on
Women speak about being 'objectified' - when an animal is killed for food it is literally turned into an object

Carol J Adams wrote about some of these arguments in her book The Sexual Politics of Meat, which has been discussed by vegetarian feminists here and here.

Now before we can look at some of George's 'interesting' arguments, I want to quickly share the history she shares on the show. George turned vegetarian in 1986 after reading philosophical works on the matter (these seemed to be written by academics that she knew, she herself is a professor of philosophy). After a few years, she was reluctant to give her child a vegetarian/vegan diet (which is unclear), and had what appears to be a very messy split from the academic vegetarian community. Far be it from me to cast aspersions onto a respected academic, but one must wonder if the fervour with which George denounces the diets and the ludicrous and easily solved arguments she comes up with against them are the result of a personal vendetta against a community rather than the result of 'real' concerns.

The first argument George uses is that 'all the research' on the safety of vegetarian/vegan diets was originally conducted on men. Not only this, but because women and children have different dietary needs, this is positively anti-feminist as, she asserts, a vegan diet requires 'keeping up with men'. She then, for some reason, flat-out denies any environmental benefits to a vegan diet. As you may imagine, I have several problems with this. To start, lots of things were originally tested on men and excluded women. Medicine, for example. In fact, I'm fairly sure plenty of medicines require different doses for different people because of their fat:muscle ratios, height, body mass etc. I don't see anyone decrying that as 'anti-feminist' (oh and biological essentialism and binary gender theory much?). Also, I fail to see how women taking care of their bodies in different ways from men is 'keeping up with men'. It's just being healthy. Sheri Lucas points out that a well planned vegan diet can be suitable for all, and adds that slight nutrition problems in humans which can be rectified by a small change in diet or the use of supplements is trivial in comparison to animals suffering in factory farms and being killed. I'd like to further add to this that not only is it perfectly possible to have a healthy vegan diet, even a quite crappy vegan diet will be healthier than an average meat-eater's. *awaits flaming*

George then brings up the argument that because a vegan diet is not possible to everyone in the world it is somehow 'elitist' (although she does acknowledge at this point, and at several other points, that it is perfectly possible to have a healthy vegan diet 'in industrialised societies'). What, she asks, are we to say to Eskimos? They had to eat meat, you can't really grow vegetables on the Arctic tundra. Do vegans hate the Inuit people?!?!? Well, in a word: No. Lucas slays this straw-polar bear pretty easily (it's straw, straw is vegan, she can kill that), pointing out that just because some people can't afford to buy clothing that's not made in sweatshops doesn't mean those who can afford not to should buy it. The fact that some people are forced to make those choices is the issue we should be concerned with. She also points out that it's more 'elitist' to know that you could easily make an ethical choice but not do it because of your greed. When discussing Inuits specifically, and the fact that traditionally women have been involved with seal hunts, Lucas points out that not all traditions are inherently good by virtue of being 'traditional', and tradition has always been used as an excuse for sexism, racism, homophobia etc. For instance, 'traditional' circuses involve animals being abused, and that's not something people (even non-vegetarians) are prepared to put up with. Finally, a vegan diet is a personal choice about a person's own personal diet. It's not up to us to tell people (or cultures) what to put in their mouth, it's about what we want to put in our own, and no one is expected to starve in frozen wastelands rather than eat a bit of blubber.

At this point, the presenter asks George about one of the vegan-feminist arguments - that speciesism equals participating in oppression, and that feminists should be against all oppression. George brushes this off by talking about how the Animal Welfare Act means animals have to be killed humanely, therefore there's no oppression. Aside from the fact that adding the word 'humane' in front of it doesn't really change the definition of 'killing'. She says that women, on the contrary, are oppressed and have violence committed against them so men can enjoy greater social freedom. Yep, can't see any oppression or violence in a chicken being kept in a tiny cage and having its beak clipped off with burning tongs.

George is then asked about another argument - that parallels may be drawn between the objectification of animals and the objectification of women. Apparently because morality is built around human interaction, you can't talk about morality with regard to animals. She says this after just mentioning the Animal Welfare Act, so excuse me if I just dismiss this out of hand on that basis. She also says that 'those who objectify women can satisfy their needs in other ways' - and then five seconds later admits that this is true for humans eating animal products.

She then talks for a while about some super-dogmatic vegan she once met who thought that big cats in Africa could be trained to eat grass. And I'm with her on this, that's fucking stupid. But it's also fucking stupid to think that one vegan saying something ridiculous means no one should be a vegan. By George's own logic no-one should eat meat because of all the ridiculous things she says - earlier in the programme (I can't remember where), she asserts that no one should ever be vegan because babies need breastmilk. The last time I checked, women were humans. Lucas does raise an interesting debate about what vegan pet-owners feed their carnivorous animals (spoiler: usually pet food, since being vegan is about your own diet and no one wants to hurt an animal who's dietary needs have not been fully studied for their own beliefs).

Finally, the presenter asks George if there are ethical dietary choices to be made while rejecting vegetarianism/veganism. Her solution is for everyone to eat less, then erects another double-strawman about people having to put their own dietary needs before their ethical conscience. Well, no vegan is asking someone to risk their life to satisfy an ethical choice, and there's far more negative health impacts from eating meat than from not eating it. She makes vague allusions to other arguments during the interview, and I'd highly recommend reading the reviews for her book for a list of other reasons she is wrong.

After all this, Sheri Lucas is interviewed. As I mentioned above, she spends most of her time knocking down George's strawmen, but there were a couple of other things she discussed. Firstly, she discussed other arguments she's heard (from friends and family) against veganism, and a common one is what she terms 'the saint fallacy'. She illustrates this by talking about a relative who was challenging her on her diet who found out she hadn't yet registered as an organ donor, then tried to use this to say that because she wasn't perfect, she should just eat meat. All I can say to this is that no vegan is trying to be perfect. Not being the best at one issue doesn't mean that you should give up all your ethical convictions, you should just try to be better at the one issue! (Or not, depending on how strongly you feel about it - this is something we will return to)

She also points out, to people who want to try a vegetarian/vegan diet but are worried about the availability of substitutes and supplements etc. that the more people reject less compassionate options, the more ethical options become available - look at the boom of Fairtrade goods in the UK for one example of this.

Right, on to my opinions.

Do I think all feminists should be vegetarian/vegan? No. I mean, it would be awesome if they were, but at the end of the day, you don't have to be a vegan to be a feminist, and you don't have to be a feminist to be a vegan (as I have found out to my chagrin).

I think that the vegetarian-feminist arguments are important, insofar as they highlight interesting parallels to be drawn between systems of oppression and make us realise that there is no 'one struggle', but rather a system of kyriarchy under which everything is interlinked.

The main problem I have with meat eaters isn't that they eat meat - that's their choice, but rather how angry and argumentative they get when they encounter a vegan or a vegetarian. It's another interesting parallel to draw with feminism - people who perpetuate these systems of oppression seem to be equally adamant that anyone who challenges them is 'stupid' and can be argued out of their ethical choice with 'cunning' questions ("What would we do with all the animals?" and "What if some women like being harassed on the street?" being two eye-roll-worthy examples). Put simply, it's my body, it's my damn mouth and I'm not taking your meat away from you.

One final comment I'd like to make about this whole thing is that I see veganism as analogous to not smoking. It's a choice that's healthier and undeniably more ethical - however, as a smoker, I don't harangue non-smokers about why they're not smoking whilst citing some mild benefit that may result (some studies show smoking slightly reduces the risk of Alzheimer's), especially when I know that the health risks of my choice are far greater. I have made the decision to smoke, and the only reason for that is because I like it. I would suggest that it's the only argument in favour of eating meat too. But that's cool, it's your body.

Bearing that in mind, I'd like to ask that if a comment you want to make contains anything you see in the image below, you just don't bother saying it:

A small rant about agency and what's not your fucking business

2012-01-14T07:22:00.000-08:00

Before I start this post, I'd just like to say: Mum - I'm sure there's something much better you could be doing than reading this. Go on, get lost. Nothing to see here.

Yesterday I wrote a post for the F Word about the problems with people telling women they are 'wrong' for liking sexual acts that the teller-offer thinks are inherently 'degrading'. It's called Your nose has no place in my bedroom (unless it's invited). It was meant to be a short, off the cuff post, but internet commenters are a funny old breed* and so I'd like to add a few things here.

Even if you think I like something for the 'wrong' reasons (OH EHM GEE BRAINWASHED BY PATRIARCHY) - it's none of your fucking business if I'm enjoying myself.
I don't spend my life psychoanalysing why anyone wants to have missionary sex under the covers with the lights off, because IT'S NONE OF MY BUSINESS.
If someone DOES like something and you think (or fucking hell, even if they think) it's for the wrong reasons this does not make them doing that inherently bad.
Handwringing men - please STOP trying to deny my sexual agency by saying that I *must* be brainwashed by the patriarchy. You are not so fucking big and bad that I do not know my own mind.
Not all men are evil sex-beasts determined to make women degrade themselves. Please trust me to identify these men and allow them appropriate access to my knickers if I so wish.
There are SEVEN FUCKING BILLION people on the planet. Do you really think your rules apply to everyone and every sexual act ever?
Can we just stop pretending that every person who likes some submissive acts is a supine individual who just can't say no to the big bad patriarchy? BOUNDARIES. THEY EXIST. WITH GOOD PARTNERS, THEY ARE ADHERED TO. IF THEY ARE NOT ADHERED TO, THE PARTNER MAY BE GOTTEN RID OF.
Not every person who likes some submissive/degrading acts all the time. The facial is not an entire sex 'act', it is part of a sexual encounter. It is entirely possible for partners to switch roles DURING a sexual encounter, or to vary between sexual encounters. Put simply, how do you know that just before my partner came on my face I wasn't fucking him up the arse with a strap-on and calling him 'fucktoy'? Is he brainwashed by the patriarchy, or is that bit OK?

I'll end this with part of what I said in the comments on Marina's blogpost response:

we have a hell of a way to go before we can find an unfettered-by-patriarchy-and-other-surroundings expression of sexuality, and the best way to go about that is to promote communication between sex partners, destigmatise female sexuality and keep educating people to talk about GOOD consent.

Not by sticking your nose in my knickers and telling me I 'just don't know any better', unless I explicitly invite you to do so. (HINT: The odds of this happening are not in your favour)

(*spunkwaffling dickwits)

Female Privilege Checklist-agogo!

2012-01-05T02:42:00.000-08:00

Last night, a 'female privilege checklist' that was posted on Reddit/MensRights, (107 upvotes at time of publication) was doing the rounds on Twitter. Posted in a faux-concerned way (the OP just wants women to be aware of these things, you see), this list may as well be called 'Patriarchy hurts men too: A list', or possibly 'The MRA bingo card (what can we blame on eebil feminazis today?)'. Anyway, I took a bit of time to fisk it. I haven't included links (because most of these seemed pretty obvious, also I was working in a rush), but if you'd like me to explain my working or sources on anything, please just ask.

(DISCLAIMER: The list itself is heteronormative (to the point of homophobia) and completely cisnormative. It also only really applies to very western countries, and it helps to imagine that we're living in 1950. Also I got slightly bored towards the end.)

On average I will get much lighter punishment for the same crime. - No. There is no disparity in the guidelines issued by the Sentencing Guideline Council. Most defences are written from the 'male gaze' - i.e. Provocation requires a 'sudden or temporary loss of control'. Men and women usually (for various reasons, all of them societal) commit different 'types' of crimes - most women are in prison for drug and property-based crimes, more men for violent crimes. If women commit a 'male' crime, they are usually judged more harshly as they have transgressed the gender boundary as well as the criminal one.
PMS is usually considered an extenuating circumstance. (Example) - Only if it's so severe as to give the defendant the defence of Diminished Responsibility - at which point it usually takes on the characteristics of a mental illness. It's not just 'oh, I was on my period. Can't be blamed for anything'.
I am not expected to go to war or even drafted into the army. - One of the last countries to have a draft is Israel. Who draft both men and women. 40% of child soldiers are girls. Most countries now allow women to join the army. Women are more likely to suffer the consequences of war. Wars are usually started by men. Patriarchal pressures stop women serving on the front line.
It's always ladies first. Perhaps also children first, but always girls before boys. - There have been lots of times this wasn't the case. Also, If you give up rape culture, we'd be more than happy to give up leaving sinking boats first or being the first to go through a door. Honestly.
I have special protection from domestic violence and supposedly female-only issues, unlike my male counterparts. - Male domestic violence refuges and helplines exist. The way to get more of these is not to have fewer for women, as men's rights activists have campaigned to do in the past. Also, if women are so well protected, why do two of them die because of this a week in the UK alone?
In a sex-related crime (e.g. groping), and in the absence of conflicting evidence, my word will have more weight than a man's. - Nope, sorry. You saw what happened with Herman Cain, right?
If I am raped I can safely report it and my report will be taken seriously because there is a legal provision for it. - Premise accepted, in cases of male victims v female victims but I do not accept that it's a privilege. This happens because women are more likely to be raped than men, so it is more common to deal with. In any case, there is still a shockingly low conviction rate, and lots of female victims are not taken 'seriously'.
I can look at children for more than three seconds with no fear of being labelled a pedophile. - If there wasn't the women = childrearers, men = sexual beings dichotomy, this wouldn't be the case.
Usually, cases of female adult on male children sexual abuse aren't even considered in court. - Yes they are. And seriously.
Other cases of abuse are not given the same priority. Child abuse is only sexual in nature. (More) - I'm not sure what they mean by this.
If I get a divorce, I will invariably get child custody. - Due to the idea of women = childrearers. Feminists would like to get rid of this too, and just have whichever parent is most suitable (if it must just be one) to raise the children, because it is another reason that women are harmed economically.
If I get a divorce, chances are I will get alimony, even if there are no children. - Women more likely to give up work or opportunities for career progression when married, and do more work in the marriage. Alimony is a way of compensating this.
There is much more funding for breast cancer research than for prostate or testicle cancer research. - It's not a finite pot or a privilege. No one is stopping anyone raising money for research into these types of cancers. How about a male cancer equivalent of Race for Life?
If I marry a rich man so that I don't have to work, people will say I'm successful. - Or a 'golddigging whore'. Also, men are not pressured to give up work, whereas women are.
I am always protected from genital mutilation. Even in the few places where it is practised, genital mutilation is sometimes illegal, only for my gender though. - Although I do not agree with circumcision and consider it wrong, female genital mutilation is much, much more extreme and dangerous, and usually done at an older age. In countries where breast-ironing is done, it is usually done to make the woman less 'desirable' in order to lessen her chances of rape.
I have a longer life expectancy. - due to societal factors like drinking less, smoking less, eating less fatty food (hello body shaming!) etc.
There is a much lesser chance that I will be driven to suicide.- No, just a lower chance that women are successful in their attempts. Also to do with a culture in which men are seen as 'strong' and have to bottle emotions up.
Retirement age for me is lower than for my male counterparts in most places. - Not any more. Also due to men = strong, women = weak dichotomy.
The majority of the population in most of the western nations is the same gender as me. - We have a 1% majority and much fewer opportunities. No one is practicing gendercide on men in non-westernised countries though.
I can fight for my gender's issues with no fear of being labelled a whiny sexist or a chauvinist pig. - Really, men can do this too. They just so often do it while doing the other things too.
Everybody, from a very young age, is taught that they must not hit me. There is a Spanish saying, “a las damas no se las toca ni con el pétalo de una rosa”, which translates as “ladies cannot be touched, not even with a rose petal”. - that's not our fault, and very frequently a rule that's not adhered to.
Due to accusations of sexism, many places now hire preferentially or exclusively women (and that's even ignoring the sex industry). Such discrimination is, in some places, law. - Really, I can't say anything other than, no it's not, please show your working.
I have a much lower chance of being injured or dying for work-related reasons. - Societal pressures making more dangerous industries apparently only suitable for 'men'. Also, could probably be solved by greater H&S legislation, but try telling Tories that.
I have no pressure to be physically strong or to do most of the physically demanding work. - But we ARE labelled as 'abnormal' if we do.
I have little pressure to be a breadwinner. - Except if you need to be (single mother). Also, men aren't pressured OUT of careers on marriage.
I can live with someone my own gender with no fear of being labelled a faggot. - Why is homosexuality seen as such a bad thing?
Even if I do like my own gender I'm at an advantage – lesbians are generally better treated than gay males. - No really, this is just not true. Gay men have a (comparatively) very strong economic position, are more widely accepted to be the 'definition' of homosexual and are more positively (and realistically) portrayed in the media.
When I go to a bar, I get to decide whether or not to have sex tonight. Men are competitors; I am the judge. - Unless the men decide it's their 'right' to have sex with me. If I am raped it is my fault for being out at a bar. Also, bars do not equal sex.
I can get free entrances to bars and free drinks once I'm in. - Free entrance is to lure us into bars so men can try and sleep with us, free drinks usually the same reason. Again, not everyone goes out trying to get laid.
Even if I don't, a male is usually expected to pay for me. - I dispute this, however, if it is true, it's because men = strong protective breadwinning provider, women = economically stunted, need looking after. Also, I'll give up all free drinks if you give up rape culture.
If there's a crime or some other wrong and I'm involved, chances are I will automatically considered a victim. - Good job courts work with what we like to call 'evidence' then, isn't it?
If I don't like one of my (male) co-workers, I can ruin their reputation with a sexual harassment accusation. - for fuck's sake. Just no.
If I am straight I have it easier when looking for a male. - How? Is this because women are supposed to be 'passive'? Have you seen how much effort women are supposed to put in to getting a man? They're supposed to change their whole damn appearance!
If I am straight I will never be friendzoned. - Yeah, you might. Also, 'friendzoning' only means that the person likes your company but doesn't want to fuck you. It's not a great crime committed by them.
If I get a promotion it's gender equality, even if I didn't deserve it. If a male does it's sexism and I can freely denounce it. - Unless you're accused of giving sexual favours to secure it or jumped all over by men who have decided they must be inherently better than you so you only got it because of affirmative action.
I can show skin almost without fear of being arrested. - Just raped, and the chance to be blamed for it if it happens. Also, men can go topless in summer!
Even in colleges where most of the students are male, chances are a larger fraction of female applications are accepted. - Only recently, and because women outperform men in most exams. In 35. they railed against affirmative action, now they want it. Baffling.
I have a higher pain threshold. - Even if this is true (and there's no reliable way to test it), it's probably because of childbirth. We can swap if you want.
Paradoxically I have much more protection from pain – I am never told to “woman up” or to “take it like a woman”. - Ha! We imply you're weak and sickly and this does not benefit us! STOP SAYING IT THEN.
Maternity leave is much more common and has more benefits than paternity leave. - Yep, and this is another way women are pressured into giving up a career in order to raise children.
I can freely show my emotions, including crying, with no fear of being labelled a pussy. - Patriarchy hurts men too, episode #83459 - Also another example of saying women (or normative female attributes) are weak and undesireable.
If I get to retire and am still single, nobody will question my sexual orientation. - no, just called a wizened old hag if we try have a relationship with a man our own age, laughed at as a 'cougar' if we dare try to have sex with a man younger than us and constantly patronised and told we should be distraught that we never married or had children, even if we didn't want to. Also, lots of elderly childfree single women ARE labelled lesbians, and why the homophobia?
Public restrooms for my gender are almost always spotless. - Oh god no, they're not. Also, you piss on the walls!
I have virtually no chance of finding a janitor of the opposite sex on the public restrooms for my gender. And even if I do, I can speak to the manager who will make sure it doesn't happen again. - Not true.
Chances are I will never have someone of the opposite sex searching me, and my searches will be less invasive. - Firstly, it's illegal in every opposite configuration. Secondly, you think vaginal cavity searches are not invasive?
I can find sexist overtones in every negative situation, even if there aren't, and most people will believe me. - Trust me, even when I point to clear and concrete evidence of, say, higher instances of rape, someone will be waiting in the wings to argue with me.
When it comes to sex, I'm not required to maintain an erection for a long time or have high levels of stamina; in fact, it is I who sets the bar and can humilliate men for underperforming. - And it is I who was told until 20 years ago that if I didn't want to have sex with my husband, he could just rape me, and still get told that men should be allowed to rape me if I have 'led them on' (usually by existing).
Most of the best parts in choral music are written for my voice, whatever it may be. Such parts for males (usually tenors only) exist, but are much rarer. - Oh noes! 1) The Three Tenors. 2) Most old soprano pieces were written for castrati, because they didn't want women in choirs. Again, something I'm willing to trade for, let's say… an end to rape culture.
I may verbally defuse or refuse to engage in physical altercation without it damaging my reputation or viability as a sex partner. (thanks Space_Pirate) - Most het women I know wouldn't want a partner who was a violent arsehole. Also, this is the men = strong, women = weak dichotomy AGAIN. Blame patriarchy!
I have the privilege of being unaware of (or feigning ignorance about) my female privilege. After all, everybody knows the world is biased against females. - YAWN.

Here's the thing. I KNOW I have privilege. I know that I have privilege over people of colour, over trans* people, over people who don't pass as straight, over queer people, over non-western people, over disabled people, over people who don't pass as neurotypical, and probably a whole host more people I haven't mentioned here because of my privilege causing me to be an idiot. But not over white, straight, cis, able-bodied, neurotypical western men. Sorry, but the fact that the privileges MRAs seek (not seek for everyone, just themselves) sometimes bite them on the arse doesn't mean that they're actually benefitting women to a greater extent. Really, the best thing to do would be for people to see where we're *all* being fucked over, and work together to change it, but somehow I can't see that happening...

Top people of 2011

2011-12-30T04:22:00.000-08:00

After the 'pandagate' row the other day, I thought about putting a list together of my top people of 2011. Then I realised that would be hard and would potentially lead to more arguing, so I didn't.

However, there are some really ace people who I would like to pay a bit of tribute to, and those are the people I met off Twitter this past year, whom you should all follow. There's quite a few to get through, so I might miss someone out. Let me know if I do and I'll rectify it straight away.

Without further ado...

The first person I met from Twitter was @juliet_mcr. A wonderful woman, who was maligned by the Daily Mail and took them to court. As a result of this, now a law student. That same day I met @RopesToInfinity. Sarky but loveable git who writes No Sleep Til Brooklands, a great Mail-fisking blog, when he can be bothered to update it. Boyfriend of @other_red, who is awesome. Now, in order to make sense of things, I'm going to break the rest of the people up into categories...

People I have been out for drinks with:

@cpoffers - My most frequent drinking buddy in That London. Wonderfully acerbic sense of humour and a great source of cat pictures when I'm feeling down.

@stavvers, @mediocredave, @jedweightman, @seanjohalloran, @a_y_alex, @marxroadrunner - very funny, fiercely intelligent people who are often found plotting the demise of the Tories, of which I wholeheartedly approve.

@ludditewebdev, @iamminihorse, @karen_hackett - along with some others mentioned above, got me drunk on shots and kidnapped me at Victoria Station. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Had a great time with them and they're a pleasure to follow.

@scriptrix, @LosTheSkald - Classics-loving couple. Always have an interesting angle on politics and teach me a lot with their tweets.

@sonniesedge - one of my favourite people ever. Hilariously funny, totally on the ball and one of the best people to watch Doctor Who when hungover with (and one of the best people to get drunk with in the first place).

@scattermoon - great woman - gave me a much-needed place to stay after London Slutwalk and got me a job (even if it didn't work out!)

@JulietJacques, @ParisLees - fantastic Graun-writing trans* rights activists.

@QOFE, @sandyd68 - my wonderful Brighton-based Twitteraunties - if you could get kettled with your aunties then go get hammered with them while you scream obscenities at Question Time.

@nautilusinred - Trade Union activist who always has something good to say.

@voqo - very clever lady. Great fun to be around.

@Puffles2010 - or rather, Puffles' bestest-buddy. Offers an interesting perspective from inside the Whitehall jungle.

@interama - very nice person. Incredibly intelligent and knows her baking.

@ruthiedee, @clogmuso - Labour party members I didn't want to fight - a rare occurrence. Lovely Bristol-based people.

@heyhayley - now housemate of mine - her fault I moved to Bristol. Thankfully :)

@commuterist, @amipepper - fab couple. Commuterist has taught me a lot about economics through his tweets.

@BookElfLeeds - great tweeter on the subjects of Marxist feminism, libraries and literacy. Can handle obscenely strong strawberry cider that's served from a box on the end of the bar very well.

@bolli_bolshevik - very funny radical feminist and organiser of Leeds Reclaim The Night.

@Stebax - very talented media blogger at Enemies of Reason and at the New Statesman.

@DocHackenbush - comic genius and awesome at captioning images. Made my Facebook profile picture. Totally worth getting lost for two hours trying to meet him and Hackenbush Jr.

@kit_withnail - the man for whom the phrase 'fiercely intelligent' was invented.

@jaykayell_ - helped me avoid the Royal Wedding in London. Deserves a medal just for that.

@5ChinCrack - brilliantly hilarious author of Five Chinese Crackers - gives out the not-coveted 'Tabloid Bullshit of the Month' award.

@Trishie_D - laugh-out-loud funny American ex-pat. Always willing to help people. Me in 20 years time, without the being funny or American or nice.

@JenClone, @pitandpendulum, @Oddtwang, @SuperRetroid - one of the funniest groups I've ever had the fortune to meet. All great tweeters, and introduced me to a story I can neither erase from my memory nor tell anyone about.

@jdthndr - lovely student of Proper Journalism (it can be done!) and great person to have around. Cheered me up many a time.

@atomicspin - brilliant science and media blogger at Atomic Spin. Moved countries just after we managed to have a pint together. These two events may or may not be related.

Bristol Feminists:

@sianushka, @annifrangipani - awesomely dedicated co-founders of Bristol Feminist Network. Tireless campaigners and organisers of Bristol Reclaim The Night. Sian blogs at Sian and Crooked Rib and has just published a feminist anthology titled The Light Bulb Moment.

@NimkoAli - another woman who seemingly never gets tired. Co-founder of anti-FGM groups Daughters of Eve and CLIT-ROCK.

@marstrina - awesome radical feminist. Blogs at Not a Zero Sum Game.

@madamjmo - writes a great feminist blog with an emphasis on book reviews at Madam J-Mo. Once saved me from being stranded in Birmingham.

People I've met at demos and similar places:

@kateosgreatos, @toivoperson, @andyhaden, @sinisterpics, @ayiasophia, @bristolnoborder, @nynyflower, @iaincollins, @latentexistence, @penners_, @seancourt, @mortari, @catalyst45, @anonymoosh. Special mention in this category goes to @SallyBercow, who took a picture of my chest at London Slutwalk and sent it to Guido Fawkes, who then put me in the 'top protest totty' section on his blog. Cheers for that Sally.

Super-special mention:

@Pani_Bufetowa and @NeverFadingWood - who I am sure would be the most awesome drinking buddies ever if they didn't insist on living in Poland. Wonderful, caring, brilliant, funny couple. Definitely top of my 'to meet in 2012' list.

Last but not least, my lovely boyfriend @Chris_GLS, who I started talking to about this time last year on Twitter and started dating in March. There's not much I can say here that won't make people vomit, but he's proper awesome and really helps me out all the time.

There you have it, my favourite people from 2011. Meeting all of you has made this year so much fun, and compiling this list has also made me realise how many more people off Twitter I'm absolutely desperate to meet. So... how's everyone's diary looking for 2012?

Crowdfunding for INTERSECT

2011-12-19T09:42:00.000-08:00

INTERSECT is a one-day conference taking place in Bristol on the 19th May 2012. It will feature speakers from several minority groups who are fighting for women's rights and give them a platform to present their organisations and aims and to inform attendees how they may get involved.

This conference was borne from the idea that many members of the groups invited to take part feel that they are not included or catered for within what may be termed 'mainstream' feminism, and the conference aims to make some way towards solving this problem. The conference will hopefully conclude with an open debate titled "How do we create a more inclusive feminism?".

Invited groups include anti-FGM campaigners, trans* rights activists, disabled women's rights activists, female refugee/asylum seeker's rights activists, female prisoner's rights activists and groups involved with advocating the inclusion of women in foreign political systems. We are also in talks with a prominent feminist comedian to chair the event.

Website, Facebook and Twitter accounts will be live by 5/1/12. For more information before then contact @TheNatFantastic on Twitter or intersectconference@gmail.com

Right, here comes the begging part:

I could really do with some sponsorship for this event. It's as simple as that. All donations will go solely to the conference for things like securing a venue and helping pay speaker's expenses.

This plea would have hopefully gone on a crowdfunding site (and hopefully will when technology stops being horrible to me), but I've been trying with two for over an hour now and can only conclude that I am at the centre of some kind of conspiracy because they keep going wrong.

Anyway, here's some incentives to whet your appetite:

Every single donation will get you thanks given on the website when it goes live (and in person!).

Donations over £10 will receive a mention of them or their group in the event programme (as long as the group abides by the ideals of the conference - you will be offered a refund if the group you wish to mention is considered unsuitable).

Donations over £25 will receive a quarter-page advert in the event programme (if they wish and the group advertises abides by the ideals of the conference - you will be offered a refund if your advert is considered unsuitable).

On the top left of the blog is a Paypal button which can be used (until I can get a separate account sorted later tonight) to make donations to INTERSECT. If you'd like to give anything you can to help this conference go ahead, please, please do. (This is currently my personal Paypal account, the balance pre-publishing is £0.00, so as soon as I set up a new account I will immediately transfer all funds to it and create a separate button)

On underage sex, bad science and pearl-clutching

2011-12-16T07:57:00.000-08:00

Batten down the hatches folks, we're in for a good ol' fashioned moral panic!

This week the NHS published the results from their annual Health Survey for England, which is a study that looks at general health among the population. Usually this would pass by without much of a fuss, other than the predictable sneering from some sectors of the media about rising obesity levels, but this year they decided to take a break from that and focus on the fact that teenagers are having sex.

I know, right? Unbelievable, isn't it? Teenagers. Having sex. With each other. Someone best pop over to the grave of Mary Whitehouse with some chalk and a silver dagger because this is some big shit.

What the survey actually found is that 22% of men and 27% of women aged 16-24 were aged under 16 when they first had sex. Cue the media exploding, both left and right, to use these statistics to promote their personal agendas.

The survey seems to have some problems with it (the methods used for gathering data may be seen here). Firstly, this is a self-report study. This means that the researchers have no idea whether someone is telling the truth or not. The obvious problem with this is that when people answer questions about their sex life, they might give what are known as socially desirable answers - for an example of this, see the fact that men in the study reported a mean of 9.3 sexual partners and women only 4.7 - who are all the men fucking?

A second, linked problem with this study is that there is no satisfactory definition of sex. I mean, yes, there's the very heteronormative idea that sex occurs when a man puts his winkie in a lady's vajayjay - but I can think of several lesbians I know who would be both insulted and confused by the insinuation that they'd never actually had sex, contrary to what they thought they'd been doing. Sex really isn't that simple - last night on Twitter, @interarma linked to this great flowchart from Autostraddle:

Other problems I have with this survey directly relate to the under-16s figures, and they are that the report doesn't tell us how much sex these teens are having - they might have had four partners but only slept with each one once, or they might have had one partner but spent the best part of a year holed up fucking away like demons. Also, the survey didn't ask these teenagers their reasons for having sex - which is why newspapers have been able to sell us their pet peeves as explanations.

So, first into the dock is the Guardian, who use an article titled "Quarter of UK women had underage sex, report finds" to blame their bête du jour - the 'pornification' of society for these statistics. Here's a fun fact: if you search for 'pornification' on the Graun's site, you get 42 results. It's not even a real fucking word.

Right, so here's my problems with the Guardian story:

The focus on underage female sexuality only. If I told you that 27% of 15 year old women and 22% of 15 year old men had eaten chocolate cake, would your response be to say "those greedy bitches!"?
That no emphasis is put on the fact that in the same survey 26% of women and 32% of men aged 16-24 said that they'd NEVER had sex.
It doesn't mention that the reason for the disparity between the male and female results may (if it exists, which there is reason to doubt) be explained by the fact that in heterosexual relationships, it is seen as normal for the man to be older than the woman, and aberrant for the woman to be older than the man. So a 15 year old girl may be sleeping with a 17 year old boy, but it is unlikely for the reverse to occur.
That bloody 'pornification' explanation, which I am now going to prattle on about at length.

Diane Abbott MP is quoted as saying:

"The underlying cause must be the 'pornification' of the culture and the increasing sexualisation of pre-adolescent girls. Too many young girls are absorbing from the popular culture around them that they only have value as sex objects. Inevitably, they act this notion out."

May I be the first to say: Bullshit. Get a damn history book. I hate this 'female sexuality is always weak and passive' narrative. It's just another side of your bog-standard misogynist 'women don't have a sex drive and only fuck men to get things' drivel. Seriously - broadband and access to high-speed internet porn has been around for what, about ten years now? Yeah, and teenage pregnancies only started happening a decade ago too. Oh wait except they didn't, because they always have done, regardless of the availability of porn. Get this - teenage girls usually have sex because it feels nice. I mean, goddamn. I went to an all-girl high school which was essentially a holding-pen for hormones. We were very interested in the whole 'fucking' malarkey. Has Diane Abbott really not realised the correlation between the discovery that playing with your bits can be fun, that other people playing with your bits can be even more fun and teenage sex? Or does she seriously think that all teenage girls would be nuns if it weren't for this damned pornography?

As I have said before, I do not like mainstream pornography*. Really not a fan. But not because I think that it encourages people who aren't ready for sex to have sex, but because it a) gives people who are not having sex an unrealistic idea of sex and of women's bodies and b) because it doesn't teach how to have good sex. (*Before anyone starts a flame-war about how awesome homemade queer porn is and how I'm a total prude blah blah blah please bear in mind I'm talking about Flynt-esque 'Busty Babez 4' types of porn.)

Anyway, the longer the Guardian and Diane Abbott pursue this pearl-clutching 'all young women are victims' shite, the worse things will be, since as we can also see in the results, 12% of all women and 9% of all men have been diagnosed with an STI. Which to me suggests that just suggesting to women that they don't have sex doesn't work and we need some fucking better sex education in schools. We don't need to tell people not to fuck, we need to tell them to only fuck if they are totally sure they want to, how to make sure the other person is totally sure they want to fuck, and how to use (and make sure their partner uses) a barrier method to prevent STIs. As I mentioned quite forcefully above, sex feels good. Once people realise this, telling them not to have sex is not going to stop them having sex. (I know that most of this polemic has ignored asexual people. I believe firmly that it is also important to teach teenagers both about the existence of asexual people and to make sure that asexual teenagers are able to actualise their feelings in the best way possible for them without stupid societal pressures.)

Next, the Daily Mail tried to stoke the fires of ignorance with a charming piece titled "Promiscuous Britain: one in four young women admit they had underage sex - more than twice as many as their mothers' generation" (direct link). As well as the recreation of all the Guardian's mistakes, here's the problems with this article:

It doesn't mention men and their rates of underage sex until the ninth paragraph.
It sensationally claims that "nearly 60% of women 'don't always' use contraception", then says "40% of men said they always used contraception". In other words, about the same bloody levels. But y'know, women are all harpies and sluts or something.
It quotes critics who "say that the rise in promiscuity over the generations is linked to increased sex education in schools that has 'broken down the natural inhibitions of children with regard to sexual conduct'". I'm just going to come out and say that the guy who said this is really fucking stupid. Have you ever seen a kid in a jacuzzi? I don't want to spell this out graphically but they're really big fans of sitting right over where the bubbles come out. (I'll come back onto the sex education part of the quote in a bit)
The box that looks at sex education 'throughout the ages' seems to conflate 5 year olds knowing the names for the parts of their body they wee out of with actual 'this is how you have sex' education. It also claims lessons were 'explicit'. Now, I fall into the 16-24 bracket and first had penetrative sex under the age of 16 (yeah, fuck you Daily Mail), but I don't ever recall my teachers getting us to make a big 'FUCKING IS FUN' banner to hang up on the wall next to our drawings of bugs. In fact, I went to a Catholic school where they taught us the biological stuff under duress then stressed our likelihood of going to hell if we ever practically utilised the information. WE STILL HAD SEX BECAUSE IT FELT GOOD AND WE WANTED TO.
They claim that 'one in seven women aged 16-24 who lost their virginity underage had contracted an STI'. You may note above that I point out that the survey showed that 12% of all women had had an STI. My maths is pretty dodgy, but isn't one in seven only around 14%? Also, people aged 16-24 are more likely to take the responsible measure of having themselves tested, which is how diagnoses occur.
They refuse to EVEN ENTERTAIN THE NOTION that the reason that self reported incidents of underage sex from women seem higher could possibly be because female sexuality is no longer viewed as an abhorrence, which would seem likely given that TEENAGE PREGNANCY HAS ALWAYS BEEN A THING.
They concede that teenage pregnancy rates went down by 7.5% between 2008-2009 (despite the horrific and borderline abusive sex education that is taught nowadays), but still manage to have a big fit and moan about underage abortion rates (which haven't changed, so the number of teenagers getting pregnant really is dropping) and our 'increasingly sexualised society'. While 20 out of 34 stories on their sidebar involve gratuitous perving at 'clingy' and 'revealing' clothing.

However, none of that could compare with the most stupid part of all, which I am now going to go on a very sweary rant about in order to draw together and reinforce all the other points that I've been making.

*clears throat*

The same dude quoted at (3), Norman Wells from the Family Education Trust (who sent out a fire and brimstone pamphlet to all secondary schools last year warning teenagers that premarital sex led to a 'lifetime of regret and misery'), is further quoted as saying:

‘Over recent years we have witnessed the systematic removal of every restraint which in previous generations served as a disincentive to underage sexual activity.
‘Sex education in many schools has had the effect of breaking down the natural inhibitions of children with regard to sexual conduct, and the age of consent is rarely enforced, so young people no longer have any fear of legal proceedings.
‘On top of that, the ready availability of contraception means that a girl’s fear of pregnancy is no longer considered a good enough reason for rejecting her boyfriend’s advances, and confidentiality policies mean that a girl need not worry about what her parents would think about her being sexually active, obtaining contraception, being treated for a sexually transmitted infection or even having an abortion, because they don’t have to be told.’

This is where I nearly put my head through the wall. As I said before, this guy is fucking stupid. He's just another hypocritical, evidence-denying misogynist bastard with a chip on his shoulder about those nasty dirty women doing their dirty dirty sex. Aside from what he said before, he should know that it's always been the case that if two 15 year olds fuck each other it won't be prosecuted because you'd have to prosecute them both for the same crime against each other, and how is it actually in the public interest to spend money going through the court system to punish two people for a consensual activity which, as long as they used an appropriate barrier method will have no further consequence than a vague feeling of disappointment? But oh no, he doesn't want them to be taught about barrier methods or contraception because nasty nasty dirty sex ew. Going further, he actually considers pregnancy an adequate 'punishment' for teenage harlots. And despite all the evidence showing that abstinence-based sex education DOESN'T WORK, this moron wants to stick his fingers in his ears and pretend like teenagers would never get those damn funny feelings in their groin if they never heard the word sex. Because, as I have said before, nasty filthy dirty biological urges yuck.

I am now going to reiterate the main point of this post in big letters:

TEENAGERS ALWAYS HAVE AND ALWAYS WILL FUCK EACH OTHER. THE BEST THING TO DO IS TO TEACH THEM WAYS TO STAY SAFE, HAPPY AND HEALTHY. IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY TEENAGERS HAVE SEX, ASK THEM. DON'T JUST APPLY YOUR PARTICULAR BRAND OF MORALITY TO AN ISOLATED STATISTIC AND IGNORE HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL EVIDENCE, AND REMEMBER THAT *SOMEONE* IS FUCKING ALL THESE TEENAGE GIRLS, SO AT LEAST BE CONSISTENT IN YOUR CONDEMNATION.

Shocking News! Rapists live in the same society as we do!

2011-12-10T05:15:00.000-08:00

This week, the internet has been abuzz with a press release from Middlesex University and the University of Surrey which posits the question "Are sex offenders and lads' mags using the same language?". The study seems to show that:

Lads' mags use the same way to describe women and female sexuality as convicted sex offenders do in interviews.
This is to the extent that participants in the study could not accurately tell where the quotes originated from.
A lot of men who took part identified with the statements expressed by the convicted sex offenders.

In other news, the sky is blue, grass is green and we live in a goddamn rape culture.

Jezebel got a list of some of the quotes used by the researchers - see if you can tell the difference (answers at the bottom):

1. There's a certain way you can tell that a girl wants to have sex . . . The way they dress, they flaunt themselves.

2. Some girls walk around in short-shorts . . . showing their body off . . . It just starts a man thinking that if he gets something like that, what can he do with it?

3. A girl may like anal sex because it makes her feel incredibly naughty and she likes feeling like a dirty slut. If this is the case, you can try all sorts of humiliating acts to help live out her filthy fantasy.

4. Mascara running down the cheeks means they've just been crying, and it was probably your fault . . . but you can cheer up the miserable beauty with a bit of the old in and out.

5. What burns me up sometimes about girls is dick-teasers. They lead a man on and then shut him off right there.

6. Filthy talk can be such a turn on for a girl . . . no one wants to be shagged by a mouse . . . A few compliments won't do any harm either . . . ‘I bet you want it from behind you dirty whore' . . .

7. You know girls in general are all right. But some of them are bitches . . . The bitches are the type that . . . need to have it stuffed to them hard and heavy.

8. Escorts . . . they know exactly how to turn a man on. I've given up on girlfriends. They don't know how to satisfy me, but escorts do.

9. You'll find most girls will be reluctant about going to bed with somebody or crawling in the back seat of a car . . . But you can usually seduce them, and they'll do it willingly.

10. There's nothing quite like a woman standing in the dock accused of murder in a sex game gone wrong . . . The possibility of murder does bring a certain frisson to the bedroom.

11. Girls ask for it by wearing these mini-skirts and hotpants . . . they're just displaying their body . . . Whether they realise it or not they're saying, ‘Hey, I've got a beautiful body, and it's yours if you want it.'

12. You do not want to be caught red-handed . . . go and smash her on a park bench. That used to be my trick.

13. Some women are domineering, but I think it's more or less the man who should put his foot down. The man is supposed to be the man. If he acts the man, the woman won't be domineering.

14. I think if a law is passed, there should be a dress code . . . When girls dress in those short skirts and things like that, they're just asking for it.

15. Girls love being tied up . . . it gives them the chance to be the helpless victim.

16. I think girls are like plasticine, if you warm them up you can do anything you want with them.

Right, now that I have got the formalities out of the way, time for a small rant about bad science...

I have seen a number of people, including some prominent feminists telling us that this study 'proves' that lads' mags 'cause' rape. It does not. It shows us the depressing reality that we live in a society where talking like this about women and female sexuality is normal, and is used by some people to 'justify' rape. While it may lend credence to other arguments that rape jokes and victim blaming 'normalise' rape in some people's minds, this study doesn't 'prove' it.

We don't full know the methodology used yet, and we don't really know what the samples were like (although this very good article in the Guardian explores the research and the results in the most detail I could find). As I scream at the TV whenever a right-winger appears, correlation does not imply causation! As @SciencePunk said yesterday,

"How can you possibly infer lads' mags normalise rape unless you show that how rapists talk about women is different from general discourse?... Couldn't I just as easily say "people couldn't differentiate pictures of schoolteachers from those of rapists ergo teachers = rapists"?"

The only thing this study reliably shows (and is bloody useful to point to, please don't think I'm knocking it) is that rapists talk the same way about women and female sexuality in the same way that most other people talk about women and female sexuality. It shows us that rapists are not the slavering beasts of myth who grab virgins in broad daylight and drag them down dark alleys, and any other rapist isn't really a rapist because those sluts knew what they were doing. It shows us that there's no point in telling women not to walk alone after dark to escape the clutches of a rapey-bogeyman when most victims of sexual violence know their attacker. It shows us that we live in a world where 'non-rape-rape' (i.e. fair maiden dragged off by hairy-knuckled dribbling stereotype) is so bloody prevalent that women in the US military are more likely to be raped by their 'brothers in arms' than killed by enemy fire. It shows us that a startling number of people believe the same victim-blaming, rape-justifying excuses of convicted sex offenders - as the infamous Amnesty International survey of 2005 showed us all too clearly. It shows us rapists don't have a big fucking neon sign above their head saying 'Watch out! Rapist about!', but instead look and act like most other people.

To reiterate: this is a bloody useful tool to make people remember that the public's attitude to victims of rape totally fucking sucks, and that 'othering' rapists is pointless and futile.

But it does not "show us that lad's mags cause rape". So please don't say it does. Misusing science in this way just leads to getting bogged down in arguments about what a study 'might' show rather than giving us the fuel to tackle what it does show.

Answers. 1. Rapist, 2. Rapist, 3. Lad mag, 4. Lad mag, 5. Rapist, 6. Lad mag, 7. Rapist, 8. Lad mag, 9. Rapist, 10. Lad mag, 11. Rapist, 12. Lad mag, 13. Rapist, 14. Rapist, 15. Lad mag, 16. Lad mag

In Defence of "SCUM Having Fun"...

2011-11-22T03:24:00.000-08:00

(Note: No, I can't bloody believe I'm doing this either)

In Sweden, a group of female theatre students are putting on a production based on Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto. In order to advertise this, they have released a short video on Youtube. The video shows a young woman giggling and shooting a dozing man. Her friends then run over and the group start dancing. A screen appears saying 'Do your part', then another with details of the production. Finally, the camera returns to the women who are laughing and licking blood from the man's head wounds. The whole thing is little more than a minute long.

So, the extremist hypocrite misogynist shitheels in the MRA movement have decided to offer $1000 bounties for the personal information about the women in this video, a la Redwatch. They want their names, addresses, phone numbers, places of work etc. Several have also made personal threats to the women, saying that they would like to hunt them down. David Furtrelle has covered this disgusting saga over at Manboobz.

If you have never encountered it, the SCUM Manifesto is a pamphlet written by Valerie Solanas in 1967, which argues that

"men have fouled up the world, are no longer necessary (even biologically), and should be completely destroyed, preferably by criminal means such as sabotage and murder .... [t]he quicker, the better" (Robert Marmorstein)

The SCUM Manifesto can be read in full here. It begins:

"Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex."

In short, it's not exactly cosy suppertime reading for your committed MRA gyno-supremacist conspiracy theorist, who seem to believe that every feminist ever takes it as gospel. However, in the Manboobz article, I also noticed Furtrelle and the commenters all trying to distance themselves from it - Furtrelle even refused to embed the video in the post. He says:

"Every feminist I know who has seen the video has been appalled by it. I’m appalled by it. It’s hateful, and it’s wrong."

Now, at the risk of exposing myself to the festering arse-pustule of the internet that is the ardent MRA trolls, I have to ask why this is being said?

These people are doing a theatre production based on the SCUM Manifesto. Having them not include killing men would be a bit like asking Quentin Tarantino to only depict the Basterds having a nice cup of tea and a chat with the Nazis. (Did I just Godwin myself? I don't think so, but it is probably always safest to check...)

Yes, it's fairly distasteful, but it's done as part of a theatre production. I'm pretty sure they're not actually advocating it. Like I'm fairly sure Tom Six doesn't advocate kidnapping people and stitching them arse-to-mouth. Nor do I believe Gyorgy Palfi advocates practicing taxidermy on oneself, or shooting fire out of one's penis... well, you get the picture. Basically, what I'm saying is that MRAs are hypocritical fuckheads who only have a problem with violence in films where it's women being violent to men, and people should point this out instead of pandering to the faux-offended little lambs. Call them out on this. For all they whinge about women somehow 'running the world', and feminism being 'a hate movement', as far as I'm aware, no feminist ever tried to hunt down the actors from Deadgirl, and that film sucked.

As for the SCUM Manifesto itself... well, there's several theories about that. The most common of these is what I like to term the Occam's razor approach - that it literally advocates the violent abolition of men. However, it can also be read as satire or parody of the Freudian approach - especially when Solanas talks about 'pussy envy'. Many of the arguments she espouses against men have either actually been used by men against women, or represent similar arguments. Further arguments state that for Solanas

"the plan for creating a women's world was largely nonviolent, being based on women's nonparticipation in the current economy and having nothing to do with any men, thereby overwhelming police and military forces, and, if solidarity among women was insufficient, under the plan some women could take jobs and "'unwork'", causing systemic collapse.

Oh, and just to stop anyone trying to argue this - SCUM is not a bloody acronym.

Whatever your opinion on the pamphlet as either a literary device or as a violent call to arms, the fact remains that it's been forty-four years now, and men are still here. I guess the stupid fucks at 'A Voice for Men' can sleep easy, although I wish they wouldn't. I wish them only a bed full of crumbs and nightmares about vagina dentata. Not because they're men, but because they're hateful, hypocritical arseholes who wouldn't recognise a logical argument even if it were dressed in a sexy robocutie suit and holding up a sign saying 'no fallacies here!'

Telling Channel 4 To Do One

2011-11-10T03:58:00.000-08:00

This is a guest post by my younger sister

Channel 4 have decided that the new year should bring a new programme titled 'Make Bradford British'. It will be a Big Brother style TV show where contestants from different ethnic minorities are forced to live together for a 'radical social experiment'.

Apart from stating that they chose Bradford because it is one of the most 'racially segregated cities in Europe' (massive overexagerration), it has also chosen some of its contestants from the group of people who did not pass the standard criteria test (ratings!).

All I can see this doing is stirring up tension where we need it least. This programme is playing straight into the hands of racists.

Many people, myself included, feel that Bradford has moved on from times of the riots, and yes we do have areas of a certain minority here, but what city doesn't? Chinatown in London? Chapeltown in Leeds?

Oh wait, those cities don't have a very volatile recent past do they? That's what brings the money in, I forgot!

This show has been chosen to air by some ninny down south, who doesn't know what its like living here, who thinks they can decide how people feel, and as soon as it all goes tits up and the racist views re-surface, can just scarper back down there.

I've emailed the show telling them what I think, and I'm asking you all to do the same. It takes 5 minutes, and you get a reply too.

What happened to seeing if social minorities can live together by LEAVING THEM TO IT?
So please, lets try stop this rancid show being aired just to cause trouble.

Channel 4, DO ONE.

On Romance, Proposals and Pressure

2011-11-05T05:42:00.000-07:00

Today I had the grave misfortune of witnessing something no one should ever have to see. Just to observe it made me feel so unclean that I wanted to peel my skin off and soak it in bleach. I'm talking about this:

(apologies for me being shit at HTML and not being able to embed it at the correct size)

If you can't watch it, I don't blame you. This was my face when I saw it:

The story goes like this - some poor, innocent woman is on her way home on a London Overground train. She is minding her own business, and then some twat starts singing. He is joined by several more twats. OH NOES! IT'S A FLASHCHOIR, HOW EMBARRASSING. Poor, innocent woman carries on sitting around in a bemused fashion while they do their little piece. The relief in the carriage is palpable when they look like they're about to stop... surprisingly no one has pulled the emergency brake and done a barrel roll out of the nearest window... THEY'VE STOPPED! Finally! Oh wait, what's this? Oh god... oh... no. NO. It's poor innocent woman's boyfriend, wielding a ring. He proposes, she cries, a nation vomits.

It's things like this that make me certain that there's no god. Any benevolent deity would have smited this bloke into next week before the idea had even crossed his mind.

I understand that this couple are happy, in their own special little way, and that's great for them. I'm genuinely pleased that two people who like that atrocious song have found each other and have decided to publicly declare that they don't want to knob other people. Honestly, I am. But it worries me.

The thing about proposals of this ilk, is that apart from being so toe-curlingly mortifying that kittens spontaneously combust whenever they are mentioned, they are pretty fucking creepy and demeaning.

This schmaltzy crap annoys the fuck out of me. All I can think when I watch it is "but what if she wanted to say no?"

The pressure faced by people who are subject to this kind of overblown public gesture is immense, and worrying. Check out this video, where the woman says no:

Even from a few seconds in, strangers are shouting at her to "SAY YES!". When she eventually runs away, everyone starts calling her 'brutal'. Which, you know, I consider a bit fucking harsh. The suggested videos all tell the same story too, with titles such as "Poor guy gets rejected".

It's like people want these women to just say yes just to please them. The woman has no decision - the man she ostensibly loves has gone to all this effort and spent all this money to make a big, ridiculous, over-the-top gesture. Who is she to say no after that?

I don't even believe that it is done for the benefit of the proposee. It's done, as with other big romantic gestures, so the guy looks like a hero. Look how much work he did! Isn't he awesome?!

Romance shouldn't be about one flash gimmick designed to make people who don't know you think you're cool. It shouldn't cost the earth and require all your efforts. It shouldn't be a cliche from a film, it should be something personal between the people involved. One of the nicest things my boyfriend has ever done for me was to get a pizza delivered to my house when I was too hungover to move. That, my friends, is real love.

On Free Speech and THAT NS Article

2011-11-04T03:22:00.000-07:00

As you may or may not know, I recently contributed to this article in the New Statesman, titled '"You should have your tongue ripped out": the reality of sexist abuse online', where I and several other female bloggers discussed the abuse we suffer for being that most disgusting of creatures - Women With Opinions On The Internet.

There was... somewhat of a mixed reaction in the comments (109 of them at the time of writing). These mainly fall into four categories:

Women agreeing and sympathising with what we'd written and sharing their stories.
Men sympathising with us and saying they hadn't even been aware how bad the problem was for women.
Men telling us it was our own fault and we shouldn't be so whiny, threatening to rape someone to death isn't even gendered abuse anyway! Are you bitches crazy or something? You are WAAAAY too sensitive, you must be PMSing or something. I mean, this is the internet! Whatever happened to free speech anyway? You stupid whores just want the moon on a stick. Given to you by a man.
You cannot be fucking serious.

I'm going to address category 4 first, because fuck me, they are funny. First up, we have 'Hermaphrodite', who ventures that:

For all we know many of these rape threats were made by misandristic feminists trying to portray men in a bad light - there's no way of knowing with the internet

SHIT. They're on to us. In Hermaphrodite's world, there is no financial crisis brought on by the world's banks, the poor did it to make the innocent bankers look bad. There is no prejudice against travellers, just lying gyppos. Dogs never attack anyone, it's just cats in disguise. Personally, I love this argument. Next time I fuck up, I'm going to pick a minority group and blame it on them trying to make me look like a shit because CONSPIRACY THEORY, YO.

What Hermaphrodite fails to realise is that none of the women involved have ever experienced any kind of abuse, ever. In reality, we have hordes of Man-Slaves who bring us bonbons while we scratch out our hateful misandrist missives. We only claim to get rape and death threats because, frankly, it's HILARIOUS.

Next up, we have a man calling himself 'Me'. He has written two comments, one of which is easily over 1500 words of sheer 'what-the-fuck?-ery'. I feel like this guy should be thrown a parade by the protagonists of manboobz. In his comment, he manages to assert that:

Saying that we receive misogynist abuse is unfairly labelling misogynist abusers and, as such, we are awful bullies
All women ever do is get fat and ugly and then harass men for leaving them
Men are now no longer allowed to swear ever because if they do, women will have them shunned by all society
Workplaces should be separate so men can prosper and women can fail because they're shit and maybe then they'd know their place
No one should ever discuss problematic issues, they should get out there and DO SOMETHING (apart from him, apparently)
Threatening to rape someone is basically like telling them that they're shit, but a bit more extreme

My favourite part, however, is this little gem:

Can you not understand that the phrase I want to rape you might mean something quite different depending on who said it and where they come from? That it might not mean what you think it does? Did you consider that?

That loud noise you just heard was your head exploding.

I get it! It's all so simple now! I should have seen it all along - women have all the power ever (along with all other 'minorities'), and we use it just to oppress straight white cis men because... well, just BECAUSE.

Someone call the WWF, I just found a new endangered species.

Anyway, that's enough of them. I want to move on to category 3.

There seems to be a hell of a lot of bro-dudes in this thread shrieking "BUT FREE SPEECH!!!!!". Now guys, before I do anything, I'm going to post a picture of a kitten for you to look at if what follows below gets a bit to much for your AWESOME MANLITUDE to have to cope with.

Kitteh says: "THE STUPID! IT BURNS!"

There now follows a small rant about free speech:

Free speech is great, but you are arseholes. In much the same way food is great, but mushrooms are shit. I DO NOT HAVE TO EAT YOUR MUSHROOMS. You have the whole goddamn INTERNET to be a wanker in, asking you to not be a wanker to me is not endangering your free speech in any way. I will not come to your house and gaffer tape your mouth shut so you can't sit there spluttering your inane froth. To borrow a phrase, "this is not about free speech, this is about being a goddamn decent human being".

I mean sweet unicycling baby jesus, what the shit is wrong with you people?! Is it REALLY that hard to see a website written by a woman and not go storming in, waving your dick about and shouting abuse? So much so that to ask you not to do it is actively harming you? GET HELP.

And for all you smart fucks that are like "Well, you know, this is just how the internet is. If you're too much of a pussy to deal with it, GO BACK TO THE KITCHEN LOLOLOL". Now, in telling me to shut the fuck up and not have opinions so that you can make your rape threats in peace, guess who is stifling who's free speech? OH YEAH.

To conclude:

YOUR RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH DOES NOT TRUMP MY RIGHT TO CALL YOU OUT ON BEING A MASSIVE PIECE OF ROTTING CROTCHFILTH.

/rant

Occupations, Safe Spaces and The Privilege Denying Left

2011-10-17T04:35:00.000-07:00

TRIGGER WARNING: The nature of this post means that it will contain very triggering language for all minority groups.

A Story on Occupations

I spent last Saturday at Occupy Bristol, a camp set up on College Green as part of the wider occupation movement that has spread across the globe. I don't think that this camp will change the world, but what I did find to be an extremely positive part of the occupation was that many people from different strands of the left were able to get together and discuss thoughts, issues and ideas, and to share their knowledge. I became part of a group comprised of myself, an old-guard radical feminist and two male socialists who talked about everything under the sun for about six hours. It was wonderful, people would join and leave the discussion, contributing their own experiences and opinions and it was a very nice place to be.

But something else happened that night. The occupiers had discussed whether or not it would be appropriate to have a fire. Obviously, people wanted to be warm, and people wanted to have a nice atmosphere, but the land we were camped on is owned by the cathedral. They had told us they were happy to have us, and supported the movement - asking only that we not make a mess, ruin the grass or play music on the sound-system during services. So, the majority voted against a fire.

At this point, a group of people who I can only describe as being the protest equivalent of "up the punx" decided that, fuck us, they were going to have a fire and a party and that was that. So the group split (I know, I know), with them taking it upon themselves to move about twenty feet away from the main group and start a fire.

I got very pissed off at this show, and went over to tell them that their refusal to listen in consensus-based discussions (they had been heckling people telling their personal stories earlier in the day too) was risking jeopardising the whole camp, and that I thought they were being very selfish. They responded by calling me a "bitch" and a "cunt" and shouting me down.

Later that night, I regaled this tale to two men I was talking to, using it to illustrate my point about intersectionality in left movements, and how men will use gendered slurs to silence women. They asked me if I had possibly been over-aggressive with them (gaslighting, much?) and to consider that they were probably just on the defensive. I pointed out that telling everyone in the camp to go fuck themselves, declaring themselves more 'radical' than any of us and then starting a fire was a teeny bit aggressive in itself. I also said that even if they were on the defensive, it does not excuse insulting me as a woman to shut me up. The chaps then told me that they "don't believe" in politically-correct language, and that if a minority group is offended by an insult based on their disadvantaged position in society, that is "their choice to be offended".

This is my 'are you fucking serious?!' face. I have to use it a lot.

I was a bit gobsmacked at this, and it was left to one of the other blokes I'd been talking to to try and explain to this white, cis, straight, well-educated, healthy young man why what he'd said was so daft that my head was about to explode and cover him in chunks of brain which would then remember what he had said and explode into smaller chunks, which would then continue to explode into smaller and smaller chunks until they were just atoms and that could potentially cause the end of the universe.

I left at that point.

So What?

It is not the first time I have seen attitudes like this, and sadly, I doubt it will be the last. Now, I expect privilege-denying rubbish like this from the right wing because, well, they're the right wing. But I like to think that the left is a bit nicer. So I ask you now: If we have a movement that excludes and alienates certain minority groups that are also being fucked over because we cannot acknowledge our privileges, then what is the fucking point of having a movement at all?

IF A MOVEMENT IS NOT A SAFE SPACE, YOU ARE FUCKING PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT AS WELL OFF AS YOU AND THAT IS NOT BLOODY ON.

So, let me count the ways in which I am privileged. I am a white, western, cisgendered, healthy person. I pass as straight, and I have an education to university level. This makes me lucky. However, I am also working-class, unable to continue my studies above undergraduate level, unemployed and a woman with mild mental health issues. This is what is known as relative privilege, and we all experience it to some degree.

Being privileged does not make you a bad person. No one can help how they were born, their upbringing or their opportunities. Refusing to acknowledge your privilege is the problem. Let's talk about some privileges, and how the privilege-denyers on the left have been busy alienating the groups without those privileges.

So, You're White: Recently, the Slutwalk movement has been shrouded by infighting after a white woman turned up at the NYC Slutwalk holding a placard saying "Woman is the nigger of the world". Now, instead of listening to the women of colour who were rightly very offended by this, some slutwalkers have been excusing it and telling them that they shouldn't be offended. Which, in itself is VERY BLOODY OFFENSIVE, as Flavia Dzodan points out very well in "MY FEMINISM WILL BE INTERSECTIONAL OR IT WILL BE BULLSHIT".

So, You're A Man: This weekend, Occupy LSX invited Julian Assange to speak. You know, the man who's own lawyers admit is a rapist. This has made women who want to be part of the occupations very uncomfortable, and has led them to question whether there is a place for us in the movement.

So, You're Cisgendered: What better way to celebrate LGBT Pride than by abusing trans* people? Or, if you're cisgendered alleged super-feminist Caitlin Moran, why not make jokes about 'trannies' on Twitter then block anyone who tries to tell you it's an offensive term? As Ray Filar points out, You Can't Smash Patriarchy With Transphobia. (By the way, white trans* people, you have some privileges too, and don't forget it.)

So, You're Straight: If I hear you describing something you don't like as 'gay' one more time, I will set you on fire. Consider that a warning.

So, You're Relatively Wealthy: The fastest way to alienate less economically privileged people from your group is by staging demonstrations that only people with certain amounts of disposable income will be able to attend, or feel wanted at. I am looking at you, Fawcett Society. Sady Doyle has written about the left and the class issue here.

So, You've Had A Good Education (aka So You Read Some Books): If someone does not know about Montesquieu's theory of Separation Of Powers, this does not mean that they oppose it, or that I am any better than them because I do know about it. Likewise, sneering at people who have not read the obscure Hungarian anarcho-syndicalist philosopher who wrote about macro-economic models in prehistoric Somalia that you have achieves the precise sum of fuck all. They might believe the exact same things as you, but just not know the academic terms for their beliefs. Try explaining, instead of patronising.

So, You're Able-Bodied: How many of you ever think to make sure the place you want to hold your demo is accessible to those using wheelchairs before someone asks you to? Just saying on your press release that the venue has two stairs or that a ramp can be made available can make the world of difference and let people know that they are wanted at your event.

So, You Have No Mental Health Issues: You know what's hilarious? Calling Melanie Philips 'Mad Mel'! It's funny because she doesn't believe the same things as us and she tortures logic to make a point, so she must be fucking crazy! Yes, bloody hilarious to those of us who actually are crazy. See also: nutter, mentalist, headcase, etc.

So, You Don't Have Learning Difficulties: My late Aunt, Maureen, had Down's Syndrome. She was not 'Down's'. She did not 'suffer from', nor was she a 'victim of' Down's Syndrome. She most absolutely emphatically was not a mong, a mongol, a retard, a spastic, a spacker, a window-licker or any other horrible word like that. She was a person. Here is a guide to language specifically relating to Down's Syndrome. Making jokes using words like that is in such incredibly poor taste that it makes me want to punch a hamster in the face, because even that would be better.

So, You're Thin: While I can offer no links to back this up, I have been told by more than one person that several fat-phobic jokes were made by the comedians at UKUncut's 'Block The Bridge' action. So you can guess how welcome some people felt.

This is obviously just a list of some privileges and some ways I have witnessed people with those privileges alienating those who do not have them.

I Am Not Asking For The Moon On A Stick

All I ask is that people are aware of their privilege and try to make sure that their actions do not harm others. Consider other people. Think before you open your mouth. And seriously, if someone from a minority group tells you that your actions have personally harmed or offended them because they are a member of that group, do not tell them that they should not be offended and that you know better.

COMMENTS POLICY: In exploring this issue, I hope to raise awareness of some sections of the left alienating others. If you do not do these things, then great! I'm not addressing my points to you! So don't leave me comments saying "Oh Ehm Gee! I can't believe you said all anarchists hate blind people!", because I didn't, and your comment will be deleted. Do not derail, for your comment will be deleted. Do not use triggering language without warning, or your comment will be deleted. Do not use insulting language, or your comment will be deleted. And I swear to Mary Wollstonecraft, if you dare to try and deny that any of these issues exist, not only will your comment be deleted, but I will also come to your house and wee on your carpets.

Pro-Porn Bullshit Strikes Again

2011-10-12T03:35:00.000-07:00

Today in the Guardian's Comment Is Free section, Anna Arrowsmith (better known as pornographer Anna Span) argues that Porn Is Good For Society. Now, I've written before about why I oppose the porn industry, so I won't be going into too much detail about the issue as a whole - I just have several points to make about Arrowsmith's article.

Firstly, the whole article seems to rest on that most ridiculous of fallacies - that pro-porn = pro-sex, and anti-porn = anti-sex. Without going into too much detail, let's just say that it's bullshit. I am proof that it is not the case.

Secondly, Arrowsmith links to an article by Brooke Magnanti (AKA Belle De Jour) which argues against a scheme to allow 'opt-in only' access to pornography, with ISP-blocking coming as the default. This serves to drive home her first fallacy ("Look! Both us women love sex and pornography!" - without mentioning that they are both very lucky women to a) not have been personally harmed in their chosen industries and b) make lots of money in the industry, when 99% will not have had those experiences) and also to introduce a new fallacy - all people who are anti-porn are pro-censorship. Again, bullshit. I'm opposed to censorship in any form, but censorship of the internet is particularly bad. It's unenforceable, and will surely be used to block other things. For instance, o2's opt-out default childlock blocks some feminist websites, because the technology is not sophisticated enough to differentiate between porn and talking about porn, or sex, or bodies. One of my friends wrote this very moving but hilarious piece about how a 'pornblock' would have affected her life as a trans* teenager.

Arrowsmith's only piece of actual linked research is to a paper [PDF] which claims that as porn use went up, rape went down in certain US states. The only problem is, that's not what actually happened. The paper measured how when internet use went up, rape went down. And that's... well, that's a very different thing. When this piece of bullshit research first came around in August, Sianushka wrote about it brilliantly, so I won't dwell on the matter.

Arrowsmith chucks out a few more canards in her quest to paint everyone who is anti-porn as anti-sex, claiming that

Women's rights are far stronger in societies with liberal attitudes to sex – think of conservative countries such as Afghanistan, Yemen or China, and the place of women there. And yet, anti-porn campaigners neglect such issues entirely

which manages to ignore both the fact that liberal attitudes to sex do not equal love of porn and that, be they anti-porn or not, feminists are usually the very people campaigning for stronger women's rights in those places. I have been involved with both issues.

Arrowsmith also argues that

Likewise, porn keeps many marriages going. How many couples do you know whose partners have identically matched libidos? Not many. Porn is an outlet for the sexual pressure built up in such relationships and also for (mostly) men who feel that communicating or finding a woman to have sex with is very difficult to achieve.

Which seems a bit... well frankly, a bit silly. If you can't even talk to the person you've married about your sex life, I don't see how watching 'Busty Babez 3' will suddenly magically solve this.

Then Arrowsmith brings out the big guns, claiming

One man wrote to me recently saying that he had suffered cancer of the face, which left him heavily scarred and almost completely without confidence after a subsequent divorce. He said that chatting to webcam porn stars kept him from suicide.

Which is a bit like David Cameron's "I met a black man who supported my anti-immigration rhetoric!" and Nadine Dorries' "Honest, loads of people have told me the same things as I believe. No, of course I can't say who." But, you know what? Someone once emailed me to tell me about how kicking an orphaned kitten with a broken leg right in the fucking adorable face caused his backache to go away. So I propose a programme of kitten-booting for all with chronic back problems. On a serious note though, of course I feel sorry for this man - but I would suggest that anyone talking to him in a pleasant manner and appearing to care about him would have lifted his self esteem. It seems a bit ridiculous to insist that them having their tits out must have actually been what did it.

So, that's basically it. The rest of it is "Of course the industry wants access to be stricter!" (which we then find out is so they can make more money from it).

But I'm sick of this bullshit. These pro-porn arguments are always selfish and immediately debunk-able. Arrowsmith wants to make money. The people who will cite Arrowsmith in an argument want quick and simple access to mainstream porn without consideration for the impacts it has on other people and societal interactions and oppressions. And frankly, it's boring. I'd have a lot more respect for someone who said "Yes. I accept the pornography industry is a horrible thing that treats people in it appalingly, is done to make the most money possible and doesn't care about who it damages in the long run, but I've thought about it and decided my 'right' to look at stuff while I masturbate is greater" rather than "Oh but no! Porn is the best! If I have children, that's what I want them to do. It's all gumdrops and rainbows and everyone is just super-awesome!". Because at least the first person wouldn't be a fucking selfish liar.

EDIT: I've been trying to post this as a response to Sian and Alex's comments yesterday, but my blog won't let me (yeah, if anyone can explain that, let me know), so just sticking it in here. Will respond to other comments tomorrow:

I wrote this comment after Sian's and Alex's comments yesterday, but couldn't post it. I'll try respond to the rest of you tomorrow:

Sian - I completely agree, and great post as usual. I think this sums up the Mothers' Union argument perfectly:

Alex - also, great points as ever. There's a real problem with defining porn (which is one of the many reasons why a filter wouldn't work). I tend to make a distinction between stuff done for profit (mainstream stuff to make money and/or amateur stuff done for the purpose of breaking into the professional type) and stuff done not-for-profit, which is usually where you'll find the stuff that's women-positive and isn't as transphobic, sexist, racist or whatever as the mainstream (i.e. stuff done for the love of making pictures of yourself fucking etc.). Obviously the second type requires a certain amount of profit to keep going, but that's not the main motive.

I've got no problem with people wanking or what they wank to (obviously within limits), I have a problem with the mainstream industry.

I also second your point about people being able to indulge in whatever practices they want without being 'degraded' - and also second your coughmumble. There's a good post here about submission in BDSM and how it can be positive if that's what you enjoy: http://feministsforchoice.com/bdsm-can-be-what-a-feminist-looks-like.htm

But I think it boils down to choice. I'd have no problem with my partner cracking one out over my face if it were my choice - and that choice would exist in a vacuum if I were just as free to do the same to him and it didn't have any effect on the rest of our interactions. Those obviously don't apply to your average porn actress/porn film.

Sorry if this was a bit rambly, I'll try and clear any issues up if I didn't make sense!

On The Pub Industry

2011-10-10T01:16:00.000-07:00

I grew up in a small village in Bradford. It's a great place, with a wonderful sense of community where everyone looks out for one another and you know all your neighbours. When I was growing up, as well as his regular office job, my dad always worked in one of the three local pubs for a few hours a week in order to have a bit of extra money coming in to the house. Consequently, I spent a fair bit of time in them myself as a child. Five years ago, the project my dad worked for was winding up. At the same time, the landlord of the pub he worked in was looking to sell the place. The stars aligned and at the end of October 2006, we took it on.

My dad took to it like a duck to water. We all did. As well as my dad and his wife, my cousin and I lived there too, all pitching in and trying our damndest to make a real success of it. It's bloody hard work, running a pub - you get up at 9.30 in the morning and don't get to bed until about 3 the next morning, and there's always stuff to be done. I've done it on my own for up to a week at a time and felt like a zombie for the whole week afterwards. I don't know how my dad's done it, but he always has.

At first, we made a great go of it. Profits tripled thanks to us working our arses off, putting on events, getting real ales into the pub and always wanting to do more.

At this point in the story I'll break off and explain how most pubs work. A PubCo (in our case, Enterprise Inns) own the building and lease it to the landlord. As a condition of the lease, the landlord has to buy certain products from the PubCo or its affiliates. This is called a 'tie'. We were reasonably lucky in that our tie was only for lagers, bitters, ciders and one real ale (out of 3 real ale pumps) - basically anything that comes out of a tap. The wine, spirits and bottles we could source ourselves. Now, the reason for the tie is that anything you buy from the PubCo will be around 50-100% more expensive than getting it from, say, the cash and carry. It's essentially a racket - and some pubs have to get everything from the PubCo, which is something the Competition Commission have been interested in for some time, but multi-billion pound corporations have a surprising way of making these things be ignored.

Anyway, after about three years of us being in the pub, everything was still looking rosy. My cousin and I had moved out. I continued working there, and my dad loved it and poured his heart and soul into the place. Trade had slowed a bit due to the recession, but we were still in the 'safe zone'. Then it came time for the Rent Review - every long-term lease has a clause that allows the rent to be changed after a certain period of time. We got a letter from Enterprise saying that because we'd been doing so well, they wanted to double our rent and give us a full tie. Considering that we were already paying £26,000 per year in rent alone to them, we thought this was a tad unfair. Eventually I read through the lease (all 400 pages) and found out that doubling the rent was not allowed under it. We threatened them with going through arbitration at the local courts. They kept piling on the pressure and making veiled threats about the 'massive legal bills' we'd face if we lost. Considering we had a pretty airtight case, we held firm and eventually, the day before we went to court, we received a letter saying "Actually, keep the tie as it is, we just want a 20% rent increase". I can't help but think that was their plan all along - say something so ridiculous that anything sounds reasonable afterwards.

So we started paying over £32,000 in rent to Enterprise per year. As this happened, the Tories came to power and people started losing their jobs left, right and centre. Everyone was skinter. People who'd come to the pub twice a week started only coming in once. Some people had to stop coming all together. Still we were being cock-hammered by Enterprise because of the halcyon days. Now my dad can't afford it any more. He's told me he's been hemorrhaging money, but will never tell me how much debt this has left him in. He's leaving on the 30th October, exactly five years after starting his dream job.

Enterprise Inns (and all other PubCos) are robbing vulturecunts. Enterprise barely put a penny into the pub. When the smoking ban came in, they refused to even consider putting any money towards a smoking shelter - we paid for it. They are thieving property-developers who know nothing about the pub industry but just skim any profit a landlord might hope to make away. Pubs are closing at a rate of knots due to these bastards. And they don't give a shit. Here's the thing - when the good landlords leave, they install shitty temporary landlords at a fraction of the rent, and if they fuck up, it doesn't matter, because they can just sell the pub. Most pubs were bought at the beginning of the 90s and are now worth many times more than what was paid for them. Oh, and when they sell them, they insert a clause in the contract saying that the building can't be used as a pub for 25 years, to protect their other investments.

It's one of the ugliest faces of capitalism (not that it has a good side). This industry and countless landlords and their families are being throttled by a handful of companies, squeezed for every possible penny they could provide. And there's nothing you can do. Pubs that aren't owned by PubCos are as rare as rocking horse shit, and the people that have them won't give them up quickly.

PubCos don't give a fuck about anything other than the constant drive to make more and more money. They don't care about pubs being the hub of the local community. They don't care about all the good they do. It's just PROFIT PROFIT PROFIT. And the landlords can't take it any more.

I am going to miss that pub so much. When I go home for a few days tomorrow, I know that will be the last time I ever go there. By fuck we had some good times. But I will never pay a penny of my money over that bar to the management company that will be taking it from my dad.

And if I ever see Ted Tuppen, CEO of Enterprise and all round nasty shitehawking bastard, I'm going to set the utter shitprick on fire.

Another 'Hilarious' T-shirt

2011-10-07T10:40:00.000-07:00

Wow, has it really been a whole MONTH since the Topman t-shirt shitstorm? You remember - they compared women to dogs and blamed them for being victims of abuse then hastily pulled the t-shirts and issued a swift "Oh, we're sorry you don't have a misogynist sense of humour"?

Oh, what's that? It's not even been a month?

Well fuckdamn, look what's on Chargrilled T-shirts' website!

In case you can't see that, or just don't believe your eyes (I didn't) then yes, that IS a t-shirt saying 'No + Rohypnol = Yes'. Charming, right? I bet ALL the cool guys want that t-shirt. I bet he's beating the women off with a shitty stick. Or not. Doesn't matter, he'll just do all the raping he wants instead!

So, now I want you all to go complain. Very noisily.

Their contact details are here. I've sent them an email and eagerly anticipate their offices opening back up again on Monday morning so I can shout at someone in person.

Here's the email I sent. Feel free to use/adapt:

I am writing to express my utter disgust at a t-shirt offered for sale in your store. Your 'No + Rohypnol = Yes' t-shirt is so wildly offensive I am almost at a loss for words. Except these:

Rape is a CRIME. I would have thought that grown-ups who own a business would be aware of that fact, but apparently I expect too much of people in a civilised society. Here's another thing - take a look at section 44-46 of the Serious Crimes Act as well. Those would be the parts where encouraging the commission of a crime is also a criminal offence. Nice one, master criminals.

I wanted to be civil in this email but seriously, fuck you. I mean yeah, rape's all a big fucking joke isn't it. Yeah. Huge pissing laugh. Until you're one of the 47,000 people raped in the UK each year. By my reckoning, that's 129 a day. Or, five an hour. Or two since I started writing this email.

But well done you. Well done to the buyers, the designers and the stockists. You've really pushed the boundaries of comedy with this little number. Hi-shitting-larious.

Here's a post about why rape jokes aren't as hilarious as you chucklefucks in the t-shirt industry like to think:

"To all those men who don't think the rape jokes are a problem:

I get it—you're a decent guy. I can even believe it. You've never raped anybody. You would NEVER rape anybody. You're upset that all these feminists are trying to accuse you of doing something, or connect you to doing something, that, as far as you're concerned, you've never done and would never condone.

And they've told you about triggers, and PTSD, and how one in six women is a survivor, and you get it. You do. But you can't let every time someone gets all upset get in the way of you having a good time, right? Especially when it doesn't mean anything. Rape jokes have never made YOU go out and rape someone. They never would; they never could. You just don't see how it matters.

I'm going to tell you how it does matter. And I tell you this because I genuinely believe you mean it when you say you don't want to hurt anybody, and that it's important to you to do your best to be a decent and good person, and that you don't see the harm. And I genuinely believe you when you say you would never associate with a rapist and you think rape really is a very bad thing.

Here is why I refuse to take rape jokes sitting down…

Because 6% of college-aged men, slightly over 1 in 20, will admit to raping someone in anonymous surveys, as long as the word "rape" isn't used in the description of the act—and that's the conservative estimate. Other sources double that number (pdf).

A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists. That's not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists?

Rapists do.

They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again.

Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape.

If one in twenty guys (or more) is a real and true rapist, and you have any amount of social activity with other guys like yourself, then it is almost a statistical certainty that one time hanging out with friends and their friends, playing Halo with a bunch of guys online, in a WoW guild, in a pick-up game of basketball, at a bar, or elsewhere, you were talking to a rapist. Not your fault. You can't tell a rapist apart any better than anyone else can. It's not like they announce themselves.

But, here's the thing. It's very likely that in some of these interactions with these guys, at some point or another, someone told a rape joke. You, decent guy that you are, understood that they didn't mean it, and it was just a joke. And so you laughed.

Or maybe you didn't laugh. Maybe it just wasn't a very funny joke. So maybe you just didn't say anything at all.

And, decent guy who would never condone rape, who would step in and stop rape if he saw it, who understands that rape is awful and wrong and bad, when you laughed? When you were silent?

That rapist who was in the group with you, that rapist thought that you were on his side. That rapistknew that you were a rapist like him. And he felt validated, and he felt he was among his comrades.

You. The rapist's comrade.

And if that doesn't make you feel sick to your stomach, if that doesn't make you want to throw up, if that doesn't disturb you or bother you or make you feel like maybe you should at least consider not participating in that kind of humor anymore, not abiding it in your presence, not greeting it with silence...

Well, maybe you aren't as opposed to rapists as you claim.

You can find the full post here: http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2011/03/feminism-101-helpful-hints-for-dudes.html

Oh, and I've attached a fact sheet about rape and rape convictions. Do be a love and read it next time you consider printing another 'funny' t-shirt.

Natalie

The PDF I attached, from the Fawcett Society, can be found here. It has lots of stats about the prevalence of rape, rape conviction rates and attitudes towards rape, and lots of lovely citations.

Go forth and shout.

****UPDATE****

I received the copy and pasted email 'apology' from Chargrilled (see comments for full text) and note a few others have. Here's my response to them:

Dear CharGrilled,

I'd like to thank you for taking all of four seconds to forward me your lying, half-arsed apology regarding your advocation of rape as a solution to being turned down for sex. Your apology would have been noted (not accepted, because I don't for one second believe your 'rogue designer' story), but there are two things that strike me as somewhat disingenuous about it. Firstly, I'm not sure how you can claim to 'not endorse rape or sexual violence in any form' whilst still stocking beauties like this (If you don't believe in oral sex, keep your mouth shut!) - Did you know that Section 1 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 includes forced oral sex in the definition of 'rape'? Here's a link. You'd do well to familiarise yourself with it: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/1

Secondly, I note that on Twitter, your director has taken to calling people who ask him not to advocate rape and sexual violence 'ugly feminists' with no sense of humour. That's pretty shit PR right there. But what would I know? My vagina had rendered me good only for being fucked, not for having opinions and rights of my own, right?

Finally, not that I would judge a person's worth by their physical appearance (not being a complete and utter wanker with the emotional maturity of a banana), but someone ought to inform Mr Shiner about the saying about chucking stones if you live in a glass house.

Yours,

Natalie

If anyone wants to C&P that and forward it, please do. Hopefully they'll appreciate the irony.

****UPDATE 2****

In addition to emailing Chargrilled yesterday, I phoned their press office about Charlie Shiner's tweets. They didn't sound impressed at all - the woman I spoke to took my details and said she'd speak to the managing director. I haven't heard anything yet, but his Twitter account was deleted pretty much immediately. What a shame that we got screengrabs.

Also, doing a bit more digging* reveals that these weren't the only rape advocating t-shirts:

Those links lead to "sorry, this product is no longer available" messages, but the '9/10 people enjoy gang rape' t-shirt is still available on their Amazon store, where it's been since 2010 - rather blowing their "rogue designer" story out of the water.

(*Googling 'Chargrilled tshirts rape'. I'm the second result!)

Why Tories Want To Scrap The Human Rights Act

2011-10-05T02:31:00.000-07:00

Last night, a friend asked me why the Tories are so keen to get rid of the Human Rights Act, and what effect replacing it with a Bill Of Rights would have. I thought it might be useful to people if I re-posted the email I sent him here:

(N.B. This was done off the top of my head in quite a short time, and I don't have access to my beloved legal textbooks at the moment, so it doesn't go in to great detail, but I will update this post when I have got them back to provide more references and detail and generally clear it up a bit.)

Right, I don't know how much you know about the Human Rights Act, so I'll start from the beginning:

The main task of the HRA is to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law. This is a condition of accession to the EU - all new member states must sign up for it. The HRA can be used against any public body, and section 3 provides that all legislation of the UK must be drafted and interpreted with the HRA in mind to make sure it complies - the UK can face sanctions from the ECtHR if it fails to re-do legislation that it has been advised does not comply - see prisoner voting.

Even if we didn't have the HRA, we would still be a signatory to the ECHR, and it's very difficult to see how they would get around this, but one effect of scrapping the HRA would be that the only way HR breaches could be remedied would be by the European Court of Human Rights - and this is a remedy that is very time and labour consuming - not to mention way too intimidating for most pro-bono/legal aid lawyers, who usually take breaches to the UK courts (with the ECtHR being at the top of the appeals process).

The Tories talk a lot about replacing it with a 'Bill of Rights'. This is a smokescreen - the ECHR is universal and applies to all public bodies. A BOR could exclude situations (i.e. 'this right does not apply if the person concerned is suspected of breaking a law'), people (i.e. 'this right applies only to full citizens of the UK') or public bodies (i.e. 'the police force of the UK are not bound to uphold these rules'). This is my main concern.

There's a bit more to it than that, but that's the basic overview.

Hope this is helpful to anyone who was a bit confused. Like I say, will post properly on the matter in a couple of weeks, but after Theresa May's horrific speech yesterday, I thought the basics could do with being stated now.

I Don't Know Why I Do This To Myself

2011-09-30T02:06:00.000-07:00

Dear reader, I have a confession to make. I'm bored of feminism.

Now, before you all rush to the window to check for four suspiciously thin dudes on ponies cantering across the skyline, let me assure you that I am not bored of the notion of equality among all, but rather having the same bloody arguments time and time again. The reason we can never get anything done is because we spend our entire lives trapped in the same cycle of Arguing With Morons. It's not one of Dante's circles of hell, but it sometimes feels like it.

You know how it works:

Feminist: "Actually, it would be quite nice if we didn't live in a rape culture."

Moron On The Internet: "OH MY GOD YOU HATE ALL MEN WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, YOU MISANDRIST. YOU'RE HYSTERICAL. RAPE CULTURE IS NOT A THING. YOU HAVE NO SENSE OF HUMOUR. YOU HATE SEX. PROVE ME WRONG."

Feminist: "Here's a really good article on Rape Culture 101. Misandry is a word invented to argue with feminists. I'm not hysterical, stop gaslighting me. By the way, I am fucking heeyylarious and yeah, sex is awesome."

MOTI: "Oh, look at you, with your EVIDENCE. It's just part of the feminist conspiracy to eradicate men. You just want to be sat on your arse eating bonbons while men toil away and you deny them sex."

Feminist: "I think you're thinking of what we call 'Imaginary Feminism'."

MOTI: "THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT ALL FEMINISTS THINK ALL THE TIME EVER."

Feminist: *sighs* *realises rape culture will remain in place another day* *wanders away from the internet to make tea and read the SCUM manifesto*

So, yeah. If I could actually add up the time I have spent trying to engage with people who have decided that I'm a man-hating hag for suggesting that it might be nice if women were offered the same opportunities as men, I would probably try and drown myself in a vat of cookie-dough ice cream. And the thing is, it's not just stopping the progress of the feminist movement, but actually harming it. When an editor of a usually-reputable newspaper announces a new policy of massaging statistics on rape to shut up MRA trolls, well, that's BAD.

It's stopping me saying what I want to as well - a couple of weeks ago I was asked by a website that I really like to write a piece about gender representation on Mock The Week, and I had to turn it down because I knew exactly what the comments would look like before I'd even written a single word. Thankfully, it's been covered by women braver than I here, here and here.

I don't know what these people want. I swear, baby fucking Jesus himself could toddle down from heaven, inhabit the body of Gibbs from NCIS (the most authoritative person in the history of humankind) and present them with gold-plated evidence written by the University of SCIENCE and still they would come out with the same boring, tired, privilege-denying arguments. And I am tired of it.

Last week, I suggested to someone on Twitter that his idea that any man who didn't picket the women's-only fringe event at the Labour conference was a "gender traitor" made him a bit of a cock. I tried to explain that if women were adequately represented in the main conference, then it wouldn't be necessary to have a fringe event for them. Apparently this made me a 'fascist Jim Crow-style seperatist who hates equality and men'. When I tried to question him about this, he got all huffy and blocked me, claiming I was "swamping him" with my "abhorrent views". Our full exchange may be viewed here.

So, does anyone have any ideas about how to deal with people like this or am I just to stick with my usual recipe of cigarettes, facepalming and punching a pillow as I pretend it's the face of the patriarchy?

(For anyone who doesn't often delve into the murky world of Being A Feminist On The Internet, while looking for the link on gaslighting, I found what can only be described as The Stupidest Waste Of Pixels I Have Ever Seen - the comments seem to nicely sum up what we're fighting against.)

Thanks

2011-09-13T07:21:00.000-07:00

Regular readers to this site might remember that about a month ago, I had a little bit of a shameless beg for donations. Well, you were AMAZING. In less than 24 hours, you wonderful, astonishing, brilliant people donated enough for me to pay for a deposit on a new place.

I've now been living in Bristol for a week, and have already got involved with the Bristol Feminist Network (Reclaim The Night is coming up in November) and seen lots of lovely people, and done a lot of reading, writing and planning for my future while I look for employment down here. I'm still poorer than a church mouse with a nasty crack habit, but hopefully my benefits payments will be sorted soon!

So, thank you all from the very bottom of my heart. I still can't quite believe how generous people were, but I appreciate it so, so much. You are all AWESOME and I would like to hug each one of you individually. Hug you RIGHT IN THE FACE.

Nat x

Mini-Review - Living Dolls and Sexuality

2011-09-10T03:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I finally got round to starting to read Living Dolls by Natasha Walter. I have been very impressed with it thus far, her insights into 'Lads mag culture' and the pressures on young women to be sex objects has been truly enjoyable and enlightening to read. I am personally planning on buying my younger sister a copy of it for christmas, even if I have to resort to Clockwork Orange-style tactics to get her to read it.

However, I feel very let down by Chapter Four. This chapter is about young women's attitudes towards casual sex. Walter discusses a modern promiscuity, but during doing this, she seems to descend into some sort of 'slut-shaming' attitude, which left me totally cold. The chapter features interviews with several women around my age - half of them are interested in, and have, casual sex, and the other half seek more emotional bonds with the people they wish to copulate with. Instead of using this divide to acknowledge that everyone's sexual experience is different and that people should do what makes them happy (obviously with regard to the fact that choice does not exist in a vacuum and so on), Walter dismisses the opinions and experiences of the self-confessed 'promiscuous' ones with a kind of "well it's what they think they want, but I know better" attitude. She only considers that the opinion of the 'chaste' girls (that sex should only come about as a result of a strong emotional tie) to be valid, using Anais Nin's diaries to back up her viewpoint.

Well, I'm sorry, but no. Without going into too much detail (hi mum!), by patriarchal standards, I am a slut. I've had long-term monogamous relationships (five years), I've had short term flings, I've had sex with friends, I've had one-night stands and pretty much everything in between. I'm not ashamed, and although I am currently in a monogamous relationship, there is nothing to say that I wouldn't do it all again. I only tell you this to assure you that I know what I'm talking about.

I firmly believe that while sex with someone who you are emotionally bonded with can be great, it is not the be-all and end all, and saying that it is is not a message we should be sending to women. What are we, Ann Widdecombe?

I believe that Walter makes this distinction because she sees the promiscuity of some of the girls to be a symptom of the 'hypersexual' culture she (brilliantly) rails against, and seems to think that the reason they are promiscuous is because they are willing participants in said hypersexual culture. What she fails to realise is that correlation does not equal causation. I identified with a lot of what the interviewed girls said ("I met this guy in a pub the other night. We had sex once and... he says, are you going to sleep with other people? I thought, who are you? Why are you asking me this? Of course I'm having sex with other people."), but I do not consider myself to be part of the 'Living Doll' culture. I don't shave, I'm usually to be found wearing bovver boots, I don't wear make up and I dye and cut my own hair. My promiscuity is to do with a liking for sex, not a search for an emotional connection. It's because putting other people's bits in your bits feels good. If you can have strong emotional connections without sex, why can't you have sex without strong emotional connections?

I think a much more positive message to send to young women should be "Do what makes you happy. Take pleasure in pleasure and don't feel you have to justify your sexuality. Just always be safe, and don't let yourself be pushed into anything you don't want to do".

Sometimes, people just want to fuck because it feels good. We should not add any caveats to that.

I will review the rest of the book when I have finished it, I just had to get this little rant off my chest.

Help Save The NHS

2011-09-07T14:28:00.000-07:00

The Health and Social Care Bill passed its third reading in the House of Commons today, by a majority of just 65. This means that the next stage of this bill is for it to be debated in the House of Lords. If it passes in the House of Lords, it will become law, and our NHS will be sold off piecemeal to the highest bidder. So, here's what I want everyone to do:

1: Go to Going To Work and adopt yourself a peer. It's like having a Tamagotchi, but they don't die if you forget to feed them. Now, isn't that lovely, you have a new pet! And no litter trays to clear out!

2: Copy and paste this letter into the email form:

Dear [Peer's name],

I am writing to you today because I would like to highlight some concerns I have about the Health and Social Care Bill which you will shortly be asked to debate.

The organisation 38 Degrees consulted solicitors at Harrison Grant and the specialist barristers Stephen Cragg and Rebecca Haynes about two provisions of this bill - specifically, the impact of the removal of the Secretary of State's duty to provide or secure provision of NHS services, and the impact of competition and procurement law on the NHS. Their full findings may be found at http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/content/NHS-legal-advice/, but I would like to reiterate the main fears surrounding this bill.

Firstly, I fear that the removal of the Secretary of State's duty to provide or secure provision of NHS services will have one of four effects:

1. There will no longer be a National Health Service

The duty, that Parliament has given the Health Secretary, for ensuring that the NHS provides the service that people need will be lost and the NHS will from here on in simply be little more than a series of quasi-independent commissioning entities and providers, basically free to get on with the job.

2. A loss of accountability - the government will wash its hands of the NHS

Removing the Secretary of State's legal duty to provide or secure provision on health services, and introducing a "hands-off clause", significantly reduces democratic accountability for the NHS. The responsibility for securing the provision of healthcare services will lie with unelected commissioners who will only be accountable to an unelected national quango. The bill will make it impossible for the Secretary of State to direct that certain services are available and difficult for the Secretary of State to step in if these groups deliver poor healthcare to the local community. These changes would shift the main responsibility to unelected officials, representatives of private companies and GPs.

3. A loss of accountability - Local representatives and health watchdogs lose their right to appeal

Because the government is removing the Secretary of State's duty to ensure the NHS delivers an appropriate service, appeals from locally elected council bodies and health watchdogs will no longer be decided by the Secretary of State but - if any rights of appeal survive - a national quango.

4. A 'Postcode Lottery'

Because of changes in the bill there is a real risk of an increase in the “postcode lottery” nature of the delivery of some NHS services. The power to choose what health services are closed or improved in a local area will be passed on to local unelected bodies with little scope for the government to intervene. This will mean patients can no longer expect the government to ensure a consistent level of healthcare regardless of where they live.

Secondly, I fear that opening the NHS up to Competition Law may also have pernicious effects. The Bill contains a number of measures which will increase competition within the NHS at the expense of collaboration and integration and/or make it almost inevitable that UK and EU competition law will apply as if it were a utility like gas or telecoms. This includes:

a) Giving Monitor the duty to eliminate so-called “anti-competitive” behaviour

b) Removing the limit on the amount of income NHS hospitals can earn from private health services

c) Handing significant new procurement responsibilities to the new Clinical Commissioning Groups

d) Permitting these new groups to outsource commissioning work to private companies

e) Writing additional rules on competition into the law and making Monitor enforce them

This could have several effects:

1. Exposing the NHS to UK and EU Competition Law

Taken together, these changes increase the likelihood of NHS services being found by the courts to fall within the scope of UK and EU competition law. The likelihood of this is further increased by other government NHS policies, for example the extension, announced in July 2011, of the right of Any Qualified Provider to be given a contract to deliver health services.

2. Create costly and complex procurement procedures

The new commissioning groups will be subject to EU procurement rules whenthey commission local health services. This is likely to be costly, given the likely larger numbers of commissioning groups as compared to PCTs now and our Counsel warns that it appears the government have not planned for this significant increase in cost. Furthermore, it is not clear that the commissioning groups have the necessary procurement expertise to deal with the complex procurement process and to avoid legal action from disgruntled private healthcare providers. This could mean that the NHS ends up spending a lot of time and money fighting legal action instead of investing in patient care. Or worse, it could mean they are reluctant to commission any services for fear of being sued.

3. Create fertile ground for private health companies (and their lawyers)

Companies that bid unsuccessfully for NHS contracts will be able to challenge commissioning decisions in the courts. Private health providers have far more expertise and legal capacity than either public bodies or charities, and so are likely to be best placed to exploit these laws. Litigation could be time-consuming and costly for commissioning bodies.

4. Open our NHS to private companies - and thus create privatisation by stealth

These plans will lead to a system geared heavily in favour of private companies. The legislation does not currently contain measures to stop:

a) private companies being contracted to provide commissioning services to consortia and therefore profiting from spending multi-million-pound health budgets, or

b) private companies poaching services in a way which undermines the ability of the NHS to deliver essential services like Intensive Care Units, A&E, emergency cover, teaching, training and research.

I wholly believe that this bill is not just unnecessary for the future of the NHS, but actively puts it in danger, and I would like it if you could step in where the Other House has failed and halt this bill in its tracks.

The NHS is one of our proudest achievements as a country. It was created at the end of a war, at a time when our country could have been in ruins. Instead, we banded together to create something wonderful and give everyone, no matter their background, an equal opportunity to live life.

I would like to implore you, one more time, to put a stop to this bill and to allow us to remain proud of one of our country's crowning jewels.

Yours, [your name]

3. Print that letter off and post it to your adoptive peer.

4. Go donate some money to 38 Degrees to show your appreciation

5. Have a cup of tea and a sit down

6: Go to step one, and pick a new pet Peer!

We can beat this if we fight hard enough. Never give up.

Nat x

Public Service Announcement

2011-09-01T05:05:00.000-07:00

This is a public service announcement (unfortunately, without guitar) for anyone who has a Facebook profile.

Yesterday, I was Googling my own name (got to check what potential employers might see), when on the second page, I came across a link to "my profile" on ThankYourWank.com [NSFW, and I wouldn't advise clicking on it anyway]. This is a profile I did not set up.

ThankYourWank is a 'hilarious' new 'social networking' (or 'netwanking'?) site, which enables you to

"Find out how many people wanked to you, thank those you wanked to by clicking +1 on their profile, get instant alerts for mutual wanks, create a list of your favourite wanks (may also be used as a to-"do" list), and see the most wanked to people on earth!"

How... delightful. And not at all disgusting, creepy and objectifying.

As a commenter on this Jezebel post about the website says:

"It also strikes me as a power play, in the same men ordering women to smile on the street is a power play, but instead of "I want just want you to know that you are lesser than me and I have a right to order you to behave in ways I find appealing," it's "I'm fucking you in my brain and there's nothing you can do about it." Basically yet another way to remind women no matter who they are or what they've accomplished in life, they are nothing but a set of holes for men to fuck and they should never forget it."

Anyway, I soon found out that it's not just me. If you have a Facebook profile that's in any way public, you're probably on it too. Seems our friends at TYW have been helpfully giving anyone they could find a profile, without regards for the consequences. How thoughtful of them!

So, it says on the site that the only way to remove your profile is by logging in using your Facebook details and clicking 'delete'. Well, fuck giving them my details. Thanks to a friend, I found out that the best thing to do is to go to their Facebook app page and click 'block' on the left hand side. This should revoke all access, but Google might take a while to update.

Other than that, I'm not sure what to do. I found out that the site is 'based' in India, and the domain name provided by GoDaddy (yeah, these charming misogynists). I called GoDaddy yesterday to put in a complaint, (this website is in violation of their ToS) and received this back:

I do apologize Natalie, I was in the process of creating and sending up this issue but it appears the site is not hosted with us. Because it is hosted with another company we would not be able to take anything down, what I would advise doing is going through and doing a who is search and find out who is hosting the site by looking up the nameservers and contact that company, they would be the ones who would be able to get this issue taken care of for you.

So, now I'm a bit stuck. I'm not sure what to do, other than to urge as many people to revoke access to their profiles and hope this hideous site dies the death it so clearly deserves.

Tell your friends.

As an aside, I was very much amused that this was the picture on my profile:

Thanks to all who helped me find the information for this post.

Arguments I Will No Longer Have

2011-08-30T12:21:00.000-07:00

This post was inspired by the shit the amazing @sianushka has been seeing on her blog this week. She is an inspiration, and I don't know how she copes with some of the drivel on her comment threads, but she does, and she has my utmost admiration and respect for it.

I'm bored of arguing with anti-feminists. I'm bored of seeing the same shit in comments that I see all day, every day, everywhere. There are certain arguments that are as predictable as the rising of the sun, the passage of time, or Nadine Dorries being an evil stain on humanity, and I'm so utterly, utterly bored of them that I find myself not wanting to write, because I know I'll encounter them. So I have decided to write a list of the most common ones, and why I will not be having them any more, so I can just point people to it and say "Look, sunshine, here's why you're being an unproductive, derailing wanker".

1. "Prove it"

Some things are so commonly written about and cited that not every feminist blogger feels the need to link to them all the time. They are common knowledge. Women are paid 22.6% less than men. Only 6.5% of reported rapes will result in a conviction of the attacker. So if you come blustering in, demanding proof of something that's widely available on Google (where do you think I get my stats from? Some magical database only feminists can access?), you will be given a citation, and I expect it to be left there. Don't tell me that my argument is completely ruined by not including a link that you could have found yourself by typing three words into a search engine.

2. "Stop being so angry, sweary and rude"

In a word, no. In slightly more words, don't dare tell me how I can speak about the awful things I see every day. Like it or not, I am angry. I have to be. I don't see how anyone could not be hideously angry all the time by all the injustice in the world. It's not up to me to put something in terms that are palatable for you. As this brilliant post points out:

The tone argument – essentially “I’m more right because you weren’t nice about my being wrong” – is absurd and a means of derailing in the first place. However, when men use it against women it is especially pernicious. Women are expected, socially, to not get angry. They are expected to remain calm and emotionally available at all times. Thus, when men use the tone argument on women they are essentially relying on patriarchal gender constructs to help them win an argument and to undermine that woman’s message. They are using their privilege to their advantage to silence women, and there will never ever be anything feminist about that.

3. "You're using ad hominem arguments, so I'm not going to listen to you!"

I swear to fuck, if I never see the words 'ad hominem' on the internet again, I will know I have died and gone to heaven. This surely is the most over-used, and mis-used accusation in all of cyberspace. Let me explain. An ad hominem argument is a logical fallacy whereby an irrelevant personal characteristic of the ad hominee is used by the ad hominer to disregard their entire argument. For example, "You can't talk about economics, because you don't even have a job" is an example of an ad hominem attack. "You're a mansplaining wanker with the social graces of a particularly unpleasant strain of norovirus, and here's why you're wrong..." is not. It is an insult. You may feel that this insult is unduly rude, at which point I would refer you to argument 2. Oh, and "You use ad hominem attacks, so I won't listen to you talk about feminist issues" is an ad hominem attack.

4. "What about men?"

Ah, the fabled "whatabouttehmenz?" argument. Surely you know how it goes by now, but here's some examples:

Feminist writes about problem of female rape victims being disbelieved unless they are blonde nuns who have never even seen alcohol and were wearing a suit of armour at the time of the attack and have a signed confession from the rapist saying "Yes, I did it". A comment appears saying "but men get raped too!". Yes - and this is obviously disgusting, but if they are brave enough to come forward, they're not asked what they were wearing like it ever made a difference. That's the problem we're discussing. HINT: We know all rape is bad. You don't have to explain it to us.
Feminst discusses problems of Intimate Partner Violence from a gender neutral perspective. A comment appears saying "Well men suffer IPV too, and they don't have refuges so you're all evil". This type is particularly interesting, as what they are really saying is "I am aware of a problem, yet I personally refuse to do anything about it, and instead I expect you to drop whatever you're doing and FIX IT IMMEDIATELY".

This one has always baffled me. If these people are so concerned about men's issues, why not fight for them themselves, instead of telling me I have to spend 50% of my time and energy doing it for them, otherwise I'm a misandrist? These are the people who would rather close down women's shelters than fight for men's shelters.

5. "Well X isn't a feminist and she doesn't notice the things that piss you off"

No, I doubt she does. Probably because she's preconditioned by a patriarchal society to see things like street harrassment and rape culture as an expected inconvenience in her day to day life, and something she doesn't vocally complain about. If you asked her to think about the times she'd been treated badly because of her gender, chances are she'd come up with a few examples. Try it. You'll be surprised by how much women will put up with until they start to really think about things. Here's a story for you - I used to read a lot of women's magazines at work. Heat, Company, Cosmopolitan to name but a few. One day, I stopped, purely because I realised they were boring and full of adverts to sell me clothes I would never buy in a million years. Do you know what? The disordered eating and self-loathing of my own body that had plagued me since I was 11 stopped almost immediately. I genuinely hadn't even noticed that these magazines were designed to make me hate my own body in order to sell me things until I stopped and looked.

6. "She's a woman, you should support her"

Newsflash: I don't choose who I like based on the fact that we share the same reproductive organs! Radical, I know, but hear me out - just because a woman is a woman does not mean she is a feminist. If all she is doing opposes everything I stand for, I will not support her. Much like I wouldn't not support someone purely because he is male. It's completely idiotic. "HEY LADIES. I know Michelle Bachmann wants you to be submissive to your husbands, take away your right to bodily autonomy, demonise you if you end up as a single mother and doesn't even believe in homosexuality, you should totes support her, because she has a vagina! That makes her a feminist!". Just... NO.

7. "You're censoring free speech!"

Last time I checked, free speech was still a thing, and one feminist blogger calling someone out for being a misogynist didn't stop them speaking. Here's the deal - I will defend to the death your right to free speech, but I will also defend my right to call you out on being a bigoted dickhead. If you're stopping me doing that because of your (or X's) 'free speech', guess who's denying who free speech?

8. "Here's a link to the Daily Mail that shows you why you're wrong!"

Oh, just fuck off.

N.B. I am aware that I have approached this post from a cis-normative point of view, and I'm sorry. This is because these arguments are usually approached this way. I have also seen these arguments used on trans* activist blogs, and feel they may be read similarly from both approaches. I haven't forgotten.

An Open Letter To A Stranger

2011-08-26T11:51:00.000-07:00

Dear Man Who Stopped Me In The Supermarket Today To Demand That I Smile,

Fuck you. No, seriously, fuck you. Sorry if that seems a bit harsh, but I'm sick of men doing this.

Here's the deal - you don't get to tell me how to feel. Not even if, as has been asserted to me by other men policing my facial expressions, you think I'm "too pretty" not to smile. When you stop a woman and demand that she smiles, you're taking away her right to feel feelings just because you don't fancy seeing someone look a bit narky.

Why didn't you stop my boyfriend and say the same thing? He wasn't walking around wearing a shit-eating grin either. Why pick on me? Is it because I have tits I'm supposed to be all sweetness and light*?

You looked pretty horrified at the look I gave you, (although, in fairness, if you heard what I said about you when I'd walked away you'd probably look a bit more horrified) but why was that? What did you actually expect? That I'd break into a beatific grin because you, a man, demanded it?

Did you even think about why I might not be smiling? Today I'd had an argument with my sister, was worrying about money and moving house in a week, was very hungry and had period pains so bad that I was half convinced my uterus was trying to break out of my body a la Alien. Also, I fucking hate the supermarket. As it happens, I wasn't thinking about any of those things at the time. It's just - NEWSFLASH, DICKHEAD - I don't walk around grinning like an idiot all the time because of the wonders of femininity**. That's just how my face looks, and if it offends you, tough fucking shit. Mind your own damn business, and if you can't possibly do that, why not ask me why I apparently look so down, rather than just demanding I hide my feelings to avoid upsetting you?

Yours,

The Scowly Girl At The Co-op.

*I know tits do not a woman make, but I doubt this guy did.

**This is not a real thing.

Yes, Apparently I Am This Shameless...

2011-08-16T03:30:00.000-07:00

Hello, dear readers.

I try not to talk about my personal life too much on this blog, because I know that people aren't really interested in the ins and outs of my life. Twitter is, of course, a different story.

If you follow me on Twitter, you might be aware that my professional life is somewhat of a shambles, and I've had a pretty shit time of it since I graduated last year. I wrote about the difficulties of trying to get into law here a few months ago, and since then it's not gone much better. I left my job as a barmaid a couple of weeks ago to start a job at a legal publishers, and was then promptly fired without reason two days into my contract.

So, now I join the ever-growing ranks of the unemployed. Cheers for that, Shinyface*. To cut a long story short, I can't claim Housing Benefit for the place where I'm living now, so I have to move. I've been offered a great place in Bristol, which is somewhere I really want to go, as it's full of brilliant feminist projects such as this.

Now, the problem is, because I haven't quite succeeded in smashing capitalism yet (much to my chagrin), this is going to cost money for deposits and things like that, which is something I don't have a lot of at the moment. So I've stuck a 'donate' button at the side of the blog, and just ask that if you enjoy the blog, or my tweets, you consider chucking in a couple of quid to help me get my new life sorted out, and I'd be eternally grateful. On the plus side, unemployment means there'll be a lot more time for this blog to be updated and I will hopefully be able to work on improving my writing!

Nat

P.S. Before you start looking at me like that, just remember - it worked for Liz Jones...

(*Yes, I am blaming the Tories for this, because as far as I'm concerned, everything is their bloody fault)

I Will No Longer Have Anything To Do With The Pod Delusion

2011-08-06T14:56:00.000-07:00

Firstly, quick apology for lack of posting recently - real life has been getting in the way somewhat, for good reasons and bad.

Anyway, for those of you who do not know, the Pod Delusion is a weekly podcast "about interesting things". It's usually a good mixture of science, skepticism, atheism and current affairs, and I've been listening to it for a while now. I've also contributed this, this and an amended version of this to it.

The Pod Delusion enjoys somewhere in the region of 10,000-12,000 downloads a week, and has recently featured interviews with Richard Dawkins, Polly Toynbee, PZ Meyers and other such luminaries. However, it's got a nasty habit, which is one I can no longer ignore. It is not a safe space for anyone other than privileged white men.

I've taken umbrage in the past to contributions that the editors have allowed on unchecked. The most notable of these was Pete Hague's contribution in episode 92, which reduced feminism to a monolithic, misandrist movement (for a great takedown of this trope, see Pervocracy's theory of Imaginary Feminism). The editors allowed me to respond to this in episode 93. In episode 94, a contributor used the horribly ableist phrase 'window lickers'. He was picked up on this in the comments and subsequently apologised for not thinking about how insensitive his words were. A response to this was done by Phillipa Willetts in episode 96. However, episode 96 also featured the editor saying that if Morrissey is a vegetarian, not a vegan, he guessed his attitude was "Meat is murder, dairy is rape, but sometimes rape's OK".

*sigh*

OK, I really can't improve on this post about why 'rape jokes' are bad, so I'll leave you to look at that and then come back. You back?

So, here's my problem. The Pod Delusion seem to allow their contributors free rein to say whatever they like (however, my response piece to Pete Hague was vetted after he raised concerns that 'teh feminazis' would make personal attacks on him. Because he is a man and he is THAT SPECIAL and you see, these womens libbers really have no argument other than to resort to ad homs about teh menz). In the spirit of free speech and all that, this is ostensibly a good thing. However, surely someone using their right of free speech to be a bigoted dickhead isn't as important as the right of people to be welcomed into a space without feeling discriminated against? All it would take is for the editors to say to the contributors "you can talk about whatever you want, and we have no political affiliations, but can you please refrain from using language that will alienate a good chunk of our audience?". It's really not that hard. However, they seem incapable of this. So not only will I not be contributing to the Pod Delusion again, I will not be listening to it either. I will miss it, because it genuinely is 99% good, interesting stuff, but the refusal to even consider minority views and feelings is too offputting. They seem to only want to consider themselves, and then if they are called up on it, apologise later. It's not good enough. Awareness of privilege is all it takes, and it's not bloody difficult.

A Left-Wing Call To Arms

2011-07-14T08:05:00.000-07:00

It's time to start kicking arse and taking names. And this time, I mean all of you. I'm sick of being alienated from scenes I like, and I'm not the only one.

Here's the deal: Challenging one dominant ideal in society (patriarchy, theism, capitalism etc.), whilst displaying sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic or any other discriminatory traits is not on, and I'm calling you all out on it.

It is not enough to simply say "well, our group doesn't discriminate" when patriarchal, white, cis-centric values are the norm.

If you're not actively fighting oppression, you're propagating it.

I'm not asking for the moon on a stick, all I'm asking for is people to check their damn privilege and make sure their movement is not doing things to make people they should be allied with feel uncomfortable.

Kyriarchy. Smash it.

Here's some examples of what I'm talking about:

Stavvers on Manarchy
Blaghag on sexist atheists
Feministe on racism in the LGBT community
CN Lester on cissexism at Pride
I Live Sweat on pretty much every problem in the punk scene

Actively fighting one lefty fight doesn't give you a free pass on all other lefty issues if you ignore them and hope they go away. Just remember - we're all in this together.

Feminist Direct Action NOW PLANNED FOR SEPTEMBER

2011-07-10T07:35:00.000-07:00

So, SonniesEdge and I were talking last night about the frankly horrific state of affairs in mainstream women's magazines, and decided we'd quite like a bit of direct action against the body fascism, body shaming and crap sex advice they give. So, we're just testing the waters with this, but here's what we'd like to do:

Date: Mid-September

Target: National Magazines HQ - they own Cosmo, Company, Reveal etc.

Plan: We'd like to see people dressed as beauticians outside the HQ, offering "You look fucking great" cards out to all passers by, possibly a "free makeover" booth where we do nothing, because nothing needs to be done, and some placards mocking the cover splashes of the magazine ("What men find hot: Confidence and bodily autonomy", etc)

Inclusivity: This is an all inclusive event. These magazines do not only marginalise and shame women who don't want to buy into their "ideal women", but also women of colour, L/B women and all trans* people. Men are also encouraged to be there, because the magazines peddling of this fascistic ideal also reflects badly on them.

What to do: This is NOT a concrete plan. We are testing the waters. If enough people are up for it, it's all systems go. So, let me know if you're interested in the comments section, and also let me know any suggestions you might have. If there's enough interest we'll finalise all details and plans and create a FB event and so on.

Dick Privilege

2011-07-06T06:57:00.000-07:00

Another week, another furore surrounds Richard Dawkins. The latest one, swiftly dubbed ‘Elevator-gate’ by those incapable of feeling revulsion at someone’s actions unless the word ‘gate’ is included in a sentence, really struck a chord with me, and a lot of other women.

Here’s what happened. Rebecca Watson, who writes Skepchick, delivered a talk in Dublin about sexism in the skeptic and atheist communities. After the talk, she was in the lift going to her hotel room, and an attendee of the talk cornered her and tried to chat her up. Later, she uploaded a vlog, where she said

“Um, just a word to wise here, guys, uh, don't do that. You know, I don't really know how else to explain how this makes me incredibly uncomfortable, but I'll just sort of lay it out that I was a single woman, you know, in a foreign country, at 4:00 am, in a hotel elevator, with you, just you, and—don't invite me back to your hotel room right after I finish talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that manner.”

That’s all she said. She didn’t call for the bloke to be hung by the nether-regions or an end to all sexual activity between humans ever, she just asked for a little bit of common courtesy. Then Dick got involved.

Commenting on Pharyngula, his first comment was:

When he was called up by people asking whether he was arguing that because worse things happen in other areas of the world, we shouldn’t concern ourselves with bad things that happen, he replied with:

Then, he decided to make a third comment, saying:

Well, Dick, here’s what you don’t ‘get’.

You don’t get obscenities shouted at you in public because you dare to be out of the house while in possession of a vagina. You don’t get men refusing to move out of your way at work so you have to rub up against them to get somewhere you need to be immediately. You don’t get forced to not wear a top you like because it’s a bit low cut and the last time you did a customer literally stared at your tits for two hours solid. You don’t get patronised because your reproductive organs are on the inside. You don’t get seen as a being that is only good for sex one minute and reviled the next if you dare to reveal yourself as a sexual being. You don’t get forced into choosing between a career and a family. You don’t get told that you won’t succeed because of those pockets of fat and muscle on your chest. You don’t get treated as a member of a minority group when you in fact, form the majority of the population. You don’t get accused of being a hysterical, over-emotional, boring bitch when you don’t want to fuck someone and you don’t want to be propositioned for sex at 4 in the morning in a hotel after you JUST SPOKE about how uncomfortable this made you feel. You also, and I can not make this clear enough, do NOT FUCKING GET to tell people who this stuff actually happens to on a daily basis how to feel.

It really is as simple as that. Dick, when you get all these things, or even engage your humongous brain to, for once, empathise with someone who’s not a rich white straight cis-gender bloke, you might realise why the culture we’re brought up in means that if we’re cornered by men, it makes us uncomfortable.

The thing about this is that Dawkins is the one that turned this into a huge shit-storm. He took one woman saying that a man who ignored her personal feelings and did the very thing she’d just publicly spoken about feeling uncomfortable about so he could try get his dick wet was insensitive and rude and turned it into “Oh, these awful women are so fucking touchy that we can’t even chat them up! It’s so unfair!” And do you know what? I could have happily have denounced Dawkins for being the out-of touch old git that he so clearly is, and moved on. But then other commenters got involved and twisted Watson’s statement into something it clearly wasn’t intended as.

So for everyone who is whining “Well how are we supposed to chat women up if we can’t go near them?”, just put yourself in her shoes, and see if it could make her uncomfortable. If you even think that there’s a chance it might, don’t do it. If you can’t see any way to get a woman without creeping her out, I would prescribe a brief period of taking a good look at oneself to see why you think that’s the case.

I’ll tell you what I don’t get. Why do these men defending Dawkins think that their ‘right’ to tell us that they want a woman’s body trumps the woman’s right to feel safe or comfortable? Why do they think that ignoring women’s wishes will ever get them the shag they desire? Here’s the deal: Yes, you might not be a rapist, but we don’t know that. It’s like Russian Roulette. You might be the one that looks normal then feeds us to chinchillas from the feet up. This is how we are conditioned to feel by a society where rape and assault does happen, and they happen disproportionately to women. You can’t simply say that no western woman should ever feel uncomfortable because of what a man might do until he actually does it. I’m not saying all women are, or should, be scared when they’re in an enclosed space with a strange man who wants to fuck her, but some do, and saying “Well you shouldn’t be, and if you are, you’re a hysterical, overreacting bitch” is emphatically NOT a solution.

To end this, I’m going to quote PZ Meyers’ take on the whole thing, because he sums it up beautifully:

"Imagine that Richard Dawkins meets a particularly persistent fan who insists on standing uncomfortably close to him, and Richard asks him to stand back a little bit; when he continues, he says to the rest of the crowd that that is rather rude behavior, and could everyone give him a little breathing space? Which then leads to many members of the crowd loudly defending the rudeness by declaring that since the guy wasn't assaulting him, he should be allowed to keep doing that, and hey, how dare Richard Dawkins accuse everyone present of trying to mug him! That's exactly analogous to Rebecca Watson's situation. She did not make these hysterical accusations everyone is claiming, she did not compare herself to the oppressed women of the third world, she did not demonize the clumsy sap in the elevator — she asked for some simple common courtesy, and for that she gets pilloried.
Sorry, people, but that sends a very clear signal to women that calm requests for respect will be met with jeers by a significant subset of the atheist community, and that's not right."

This has also been covered by Watson herself, Amanda Marcotte, Jen McCreight, Discover and Almost Diamonds, to name but a few, and all are well worth a read.(PROTIP: Do not go beneath the line)

Why Oppose The Porn Industry? (Part 2)

2011-06-28T04:06:00.000-07:00

This is a response to a response written to my previous post written by SnowdropExplodes, which can be found here. It's a good post, and makes some great points, and I’ll try and keep my response short.

“She starts by quoting Dines and Jensen, which is always going to get on my bad side. I take nothing they say to have any validity. They are despised by the people they claim to want to help (sex workers) and they do not try to engage with the lived realities of those people - or, indeed, the men whom they appear to despise”

This is a criticism of a lot of academic feminists. However, that argument is to do with sex-workers. You can’t deny everything someone has created during the course of their career because you disagree with their views in one part of it. The article I quoted from Dines and Jensen exists to point out the hypocrisy of those on the left who oppose other industries that have harmful side-effects, yet have no problem with pornography, and yes, I find it a bit bloody disingenuous that people who will regulate massive parts of their lives according to their political and moral views, for example, being vegan because they are opposed to the side-effects of the dairy industry, won’t regulate their need to get off in the same way. I’m sidetracking here, but I will return to this point later. To reiterate my original point - criticising Dines and Jensen for failing to engage with the lived realities of sex workers doesn’t mean that anything they write about that involves the interaction between sexual organs is wrong.

”I'll draw out only one thing, which is Natalie Dzerins’ own extraction. She writes:

I also oppose pornography for the body fascism that is endemic to the culture and the way that it seeps over into the mainstream as a ‘norm’.

Except that in the porn I've seen, bodies have tended to be much less conforming to contemporary beauty standards than in womens’ magazines, or lads' mags. In general, the more mainstream the media, the more misogynist it is - hardcore porn, for all its surface problems, arguably has fewer bad messages about women than stuff you can buy in your supermarket.”

I’ve got two problems with this argument: Firstly, it assumes that I am only opposed to the porn industry. Of course I’m not. I’m equally opposed to any industry that fosters gender inequality. Saying that other people engage in the same nasty activities (by which I mean creating problems for women as a whole) doesn’t make it alright. Secondly, there is a seepover whereby what is popular in pornography becomes popular in the mainstream. I’ll concede that in pornography, things like a complete lack of body hair below the eyebrows was, to begin with, a cinematographic device (I understand it’s easier to see the penis/vagina interaction* if there’s none of that pesky natural hair in the way), but now according to mainstream media it is de rigeur for all women. I think that this occurs because softcore porn magazines (like lads’ mags) see this trend occurring in pornographic films, so reflect it in their pictures to make them more ‘edgy’ and more like ‘real porn’, and then this trend is picked up by womens’ mags, who say ‘this is what men like so you should do it’, and thus, another aspect of body fascism is born. It’s not how all body fascism comes about, but it is a cause of some. If there were no trendsetters, there would be no trend.

(*No, I can’t believe I just said that either.)

”The post's co-author Georgie writes:

In a culture of gender inequality it is impossible to make porn which isn't oppressive.

However, I was of the impression that feminist analysis (particularly of a Marxist type such as that described by Ms Dzerins) says that all media suffers the same problems. It isn't porn per se, but media in general.

This sounds like a reason to be opposed to any form of writing, television, movie-making, or whatever!”

As noted above, I am opposed to anything that propagates gender inequality, especially media propagation of such. However, porn is one part of the media. It’s possible to write books and make films that don’t propagate gender inequality, and for them to be popular, but I don’t believe that in this capitalist porn industry you can make porn that doesn’t. I feel I must reiterate that I’m not opposed to people watching other people fucking, and I don’t think that fucking inherently creates gender inequality; I’m opposed to this capitalist porn industry. I wouldn’t have a problem with people creating porn that didn’t oppress women, objectify them or create problems for all women, but the industry we have right now is not going to do it en masse, so I am opposed to the industry.

”She starts with the "choice" canard, as a common challenge to her position. I am not a fan of discussing this, because (as Dzerins points out) choices are not made in a vacuum, and it is also quite possible to say "I support your right to make that choice, but I think it is a poor choice to make" (or, as Dzerins puts it, "I do not oppose the womens’ right to be in the films, I oppose the films themselves.")

The question about choice and sex work, though, should be on choosing how to make the rent. Some people will be happier working in a shitty waitressing job, and others are happier to make their money by spreading their legs (either on camera, or for paying customers - porn or prostitution). Both are equally exploitative of poverty and, according to the socialist feminist position that Dzerins seems to take, it would appear that we should also be opposed to restaurants and diners for their exploitation of women who need to earn the rent.”

Of course I am opposed to restaurants (or any other businesses) that don’t treat their workers fairly. But this misses my point, which is about an industry that encourages the suppression of those who aren’t even part of it.

”I do not look at sex work as being about "empowering". It can be an empowered choice, or it can be a forced choice (see remarks above), but in itself it is not empowering. It is "empaychecking", as Renegade Evolution (porn performer, stripper and all-round sex worker) puts it, and as noted above, that is sometimes very important from the point of view of keeping a roof over one's head and food in the belly, and all those essentials of life. It can also provide the dosh to get nice things. If we are to be opposed to the commercial porn industry, then a lefty person really ought to consider how the men and women who earn their living from it should go about filling those gaps in future. As I wrote several years ago now, mining is a terrible job, but when the Thatcher government tried to close the mines, the miners fought tooth and nail for over a year to keep their jobs, despite how disgusting and dangerous and degrading the work could be. While the money may not be empowering, having it taken away certainly would be disempowering.”

Of course I agree that this should be a consideration. The reason I didn’t address it in the OP is because I was trying to write ‘anti-porn 101’, and it’s hard to get everything in. However, surely one argument against slavery (and I am loathe to make this analogy) is “well, who would pay money to employ the slaves if we free them?”. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t oppose removing this society-created ‘need’, but that we should make a better society to give these people more opportunities. I don’t want to ban the porn industry, I want to create a society where there’s no demand for this porn industry, and such an egalitarian society would have more opportunities, especially for women.

”I struggle with the concept of "female-friendly" porn, because I don't know what that means. There is something very clear that needs to be pointed out here: Dzerins’ position, going from this answer and from her post title, is about the current state of the industry. But many of her arguments are about the concept of pornography. The implication from Dzerins is that "female-friendly" means "non-misogynistic", but I think that usually it means "intended to appeal to women's sexual fantasies". The problem with the latter position is that plenty of women I know happen to like the fantasies portrayed in other porn, and find "female-friendly" porn to be boring. Other women don't like either, and other women like both, and some like the "female-friendly" stuff.”

I did mean ‘porn intended to appeal to womens’ sexual fantasies’. I find it trite fluff, intended to allay an entire industry built on oppression by one token gesture. I want to make it clear that these parts were my responses to arguments I see all the time, not things I’d necessarily bring up myself. Personally, I think that the equalising effects of ‘female-friendly’ porn are so inconsequential as to be removed from the debate entirely. It’s worth pointing out that the industry classification of this kind of porn as ‘female-friendly’ belies the fact that it views its other output as ‘female-unfriendly’.

“What if the women like being submissive during sex?

I have no problem with women enjoying submission during consensual sexual encounters which take place with the knowledge that the submission only belongs in the bedroom.

Well, gee, how magnanimous of you! D/s and M/s relationships do not always have scene-delineated premises. Sometimes the consensual power-exchange operates throughout the whole relationship. I suppose I could be generous and assume Dzerins means "the submission only belongs between her and her partner", and BDSMers (especially subs) usually know very strongly the distinction between "I submit to you" and "I submit to no one else".

But here's the question that you haven't answered: how that relates to men and women's desire for BDSM porn (which is different from rough sex porn and so on, but might fall into the category "depicts violence against women" if you're not on the same page regarding BDSM). Is your case that the moment a couple video themselves and share that video, that they are suddenly corrupting and destroying women's rights everywhere?”

“I'm sorry, but actually I do need to see images of humiliation, "violence" and (in some people's interpretation) objectification and degradation, because that is my kink. I am a sadist and a Dominant, and wishing my sexuality away won't make it change (Lord knows, I tried, and suffered because of trying - like trying not to be gay, I guess). To me, vanilla sex is not sex. If it hadn't been for sex education at school I might never have figured it out - sex to me involves pain and domination and bondage and stuff. The gender of my partner is secondary (although I go mostly for women, male subs interest me as well).”

I’ll admit I worded that one wrong. FWIW, I sub. I haven’t got a problem with people doing what gets them off, I really don’t. I have a problem with the industry that commodifies these kinks. What I was trying to say when I said ‘only belongs in the bedroom’ was there’s a difference between normalised and systemic abuse of women, whereby all women are targets for bad treatment (whether by violence or lack of opportunities etc.), and an understanding between two or more people that this will be done for the purposes of sexual gratification when I said ‘only belongs in the bedroom’. Even in the most extreme D/S relationship, the S can always back out of the agreement. Women can’t back out of inequal societal arrangements.

If a couple are into BDSM, that’s great. If they upload a video of themselves for their own gratification and the gratification of others, great. However, BDSM should be seen for what it is, which is a kink. The porn industry normalises small parts of it like they should be ritual in everyone’s sex life, and these are the parts that oppress women in the wider world, and that’s the problem.

”How do you distinguish in using peer pressure to make porn unacceptable, between "porn is not okay, but sex is"? Unfortunately, the same pressures that could be used to attack porn used in this way, would also work very strongly to attack women, because they would serve to make "slut" an even stronger assault. To make being openly interested in sexual material into a source of shame, one cannot avoid generating a sense of shame about interest in sex. And who already receives the most attack for being interested in sex? Women. That's why "slut" is such a nasty word in most usage. If the rest of the world weren't so sexist, this plan might work, but unfortunately, it is. And that's how come porn tends to be sexist too. Just to be clear - I think peer pressure against sexist attitudes should be used; but I think that peer pressure against porn would be a bad move.”

I think there should be a distinction drawn between making being interested in sexual material shameful, and making being interested in the use of an industry that is so harmful to women shameful. Obviously, for the reasons stated, it is the latter we propose, and as a sex-positive feminist, I see no shame in a person being interested in sexual material that is made in a positive and unharmful way. Saying that ‘the world is sexist so we should ignore this problem’ isn’t solving anything, it’s just continuing the same line of oppression that’s been going on for centuries. We should be fighting to change society, not just shrug our shoulders and say “well, that’s just how it is”.

EDIT: I just want to say that I know these posts have been very hetero- and cis-normative. I don't want to alienate anyone from the debate, but since the majority of industry output (and the stuff I have a real problem with) is hetero- and cis-normative, that's what I've trained my focus on.

Why Oppose The Porn Industry?

2011-06-24T14:12:00.000-07:00

I’d like to open this post by saying that I’m sorry mum, and please stop reading now.

With that out of the way, I’d also like to tell you what this post will (hopefully) achieve. I self-identify as a pro-sex, anti-porn socialist feminist. It would be helpful, at this point, to define and clarify some of that. When I say I’m pro-sex feminist, it means just that. I think that the act of sex is a wonderful, natural thing, and encourage everyone to do what makes them happy*. Honestly, all I can say on this matter is that good sex is one of the finest pleasures in life, and if more people were sexually fulfilled, I think the world would be a better place. We shall come on to the anti-porn matter in time (pun NOT intended, take your mind out of the gutter). Socialist feminism I think is best described this way:

"Socialist feminism (sometimes known as Marxist feminism) is different than liberal feminism in that it emphasizes that true equality will not be achieved without major overhauls within society-- particularly economic overhauls. Socialist feminists argue that there are fundamental inequalities built in to a capitalist society because power and capital are distributed unevenly. Thus, it's not enough for women to individually work to rise to powerful positions in society; rather, power needs to be redistributed throughout society. Liberal feminists focus on individual empowerment, while socialist feminists focus on collective change and empowerment.”

I should also point out at this juncture that I am an anti-capitalist, which informs my views on feminism and pornography. If anyone would like me to expand on this in comments or a separate post, I will. With this post, I hope to set out the reasons why my political philosophies mean I cannot accept pornography, and I hope to also answer the most common counter-arguments I encounter when espousing these views. This post was written with the invaluable help of Georgie (AKA @mortari), to whom I am eternally grateful. I will denote the parts she wrote in italics.

(*within obvious boundaries)

Now that the disclaimers are out of the way, let us approach the main course of the post - why do we oppose the pornography industry? I would recommend, as a must read, this post by Gail Dines and Robert Jensen. I feel that it represents my ideas most excellently. To quote;

“As leftists, we reject the sexism and racism that saturates contemporary mass-marketed pornography. As leftists, we reject the capitalist commodification of one of the most basic aspects of our humanity. As leftists, we reject corporate domination of media and culture. Anti-pornography feminists are not asking the left to accept a new way of looking at the world but instead are arguing for consistency in analysis and application of principles.”

Also,

“Pornography is fantasy, of a sort. Just as television cop shows that assert the inherent nobility of police and prosecutors as protectors of the people are fantasy. Just as the Horatio Alger stories about hard work’s rewards in capitalism are fantasy. Just as films that cast Arabs only as terrorists are fantasy.
All those media products are critiqued by leftists precisely because the fantasy world they create is a distortion of the actual world in which we live. Police and prosecutors do sometimes seek justice, but they also enforce the rule of the powerful. Individuals in capitalism do sometimes prosper as a result of their hard work, but the system does not provide everyone who works hard with a decent living. Some tiny number of Arabs are terrorists, but that obscures both the terrorism of the powerful in white America and the humanity of the vast majority of Arabs.
Such fantasies also reflect how those in power want subordinated people to feel. Images of happy blacks on the plantations made whites feels more secure and self-righteous in their oppression of slaves. Images of contented workers allay capitalists’ fears of revolution. And men deal with their complex feelings about contemporary masculinity’s toxic mix of sex and aggression by seeking images of women who enjoy pain and humiliation.
Why do so many on the left seem to assume that pornographers operate in a different universe than other capitalists? Why would pornography be the only form of representation produced and distributed by corporations that wouldn’t be a vehicle to legitimize inequality? Why would the pornographers be the only media capitalists who are rebels seeking to subvert hegemonic systems?”

And:

“Contemporary mass-marketed heterosexual pornography - the bulk of the market for sexually explicit material - is one site where a particular meaning of sex and gender is created and circulated. Pornography’s central ideological message is not hard to discern: Women exist for the sexual pleasure of men, in whatever form men want that pleasure, no matter what the consequences for women. It’s not just that women exist for sex, but that they exist for the sex that men want.
Despite naïve (or disingenuous) claims about pornography as a vehicle for women’s sexual liberation, the bulk of mass-marketed pornography is incredibly sexist. From the ugly language used to describe women, to the positions of subordination, to the actual sexual practices themselves - pornography is relentlessly misogynistic. As the industry “matures” the most popular genre of films, called “gonzo,” continues to push the limits of degradation of, and cruelty toward, women. Directors acknowledge they aren’t sure where to take it from the current level.
This misogyny is not an idiosyncratic feature of a few fringe films. Based on three studies of the content of mainstream video/DVD pornography over the past decade, we conclude that woman-hating is central to contemporary pornography. Take away every video in which a woman is called a bitch, a cunt, a slut, or a whore, and the shelves would be nearly bare. Take away every DVD in which a woman becomes the target of a man’s contempt, and there wouldn’t be much left. Mass-marketed pornography doesn’t celebrate women and their sexuality, but instead expresses contempt for women and celebrates the charge of expressing that contempt sexually.”

I also oppose pornography for the body fascism that is endemic to the culture and the way that it seeps over into the mainstream as a ‘norm’.

In a culture of gender inequality it is impossible to make porn which isn't oppressive. Society commodifies women's bodies such that any monetising of female sexuality will reinforce the objectification and degredation of women. While woman are considered sexual things first and human beings second, any sale of sexual material featuring women will be dehumanising and exploitative.

On the problem with porn:

Is is hard to describe just how violent and degrading most pornography is. A 2010 study analysed the content of a selection of popular pornographic films (*footnote). Its findings included:

88% of scenes contained physical aggression, including spanking, gagging, and slapping.
nearly half of all scenes included name-calling, most commonly "bitch" or "slut".
Women were overwhelmingly the targets of aggressive acts, and men the perpetrators.
Following instances of aggression towards women, in 95% of cases the women expressed pleasure or neutrality.

The message of these porn films is clear: not only is violence and verbal abuse against women acceptable and sexual exciting, but woman enjoy and are aroused by this treatment.

As Gail Dines said, "Pornography is the perfect propaganda piece for patriarchy. In nothing else is their hatred of us quite as clear."

Footnote: Bridges et al. analysed a randomised selection of 50 films from a list of the 250 best-selling and the 250 most-rented videos from December 2004 to June 2005, as selected and reported by pornography industry publication Adult Video News. These 50 films comprised of a total of 304 scenes.

Now, to the counter-arguments, and our counter-counter-arguments.

Isn’t it all about choice? Surely that’s what feminists want, women to be able to choose their own paths? The women in pornographic films chose to appear in them.

Yes, in a manner of speaking they did*. However, choice does not exist in a vacuum. I do not oppose the womens’ right to be in the films, I oppose the films themselves. Here is a rather good post about why a person’s freedom to conform to a certain stereotype does not mean that it is good for the people as a whole. (*I would point out that many ‘porn stars’ are failed actresses that needed to make the rent. This is obviously not true of every woman in porn, but I would suggest that it is rare to find a woman making pornographic films who had made a conscious effort to do so as a vocation.)

Well, they make good money. Surely that’s empowering?

Without willing to sound glib, there are plenty of things people do for money. Just because you enjoy the things they do does not make it empowering for them. Imagine if I paid you a million pounds to eat elephant shit. Would you consider that empowering because you were paid such a high amount?

But women produce female-friendly porn!

Yes, they do. I still find this objectionable because of my anti-capitalist views. I also feel that the fact that ‘female-friendly’ porn is a thing, and such a tiny proportion of the pornography market rather reinforces my opinion of the industry as generally misogynist. If porn were truly equal to the sexes, it would not need to exist.

Women can hold sexist attitudes too, and female-produced porn can be just as problematic. A 2008 study found that female-directed pornography was just as likely to contain aggression against women as male-directed pornography.

Porn degrades men too!

Not to the same extent as it degrades women, or with the same consequences. Women have traditionally been oppressed, so images that propagate this are, I feel, more harmful than images which break the gender binary and show something unexpected. (see also, my opinions on misandrist comedy as an allegory in this old post)

What if the women like being submissive during sex?

I have no problem with women enjoying submission during consensual sexual encounters which take place with the knowledge that the submission only belongs in the bedroom.

I/a friend of mine worked in porn and enjoyed it.

My answer (inspired by Meaghan Murphy) would be: I am glad that you enjoyed your experience, really. However, just because you as an individual woman found this empowering, that does not mean that the porn industry is not harmful for women generally. There can often be conflicts between what is good for us personally, and what benefits us as a group. The intention here is not to demonise women who have worked in porn - they need to pay the bills just like everyone else, and the point is not to criticise their choices. However, whatever the feelings of the performers involved might be, selling images of women as sexual objects which exist for the titillation of men only reinforces sexist attitudes.

What about if it isn’t a capitalist venture?

I feel that consensual pornography made for users by users with no capitalist aspects would tend to have less misogyny and therefore be ultimately preferable to any output from the porn industry.

Do you just want to ban all sexual thoughts?

I absolutely do not want to ban sexual thought. What I do object to is people thinking they have some kind of god-given right to act on their sexual thoughts. For one example, see street harassment. If I am walking down the road and see someone that I think is really attractive, it would never occur to me in a million years to shout something or believe that they would appreciate me doing so, or to do it and be offended if they don’t respond positively! Also, see objectification. I get that we all see other human beings sexually, but when it becomes ALL people see women as, it's a problem.

Can anti-porn feminists coexist with pro-porn feminists?

Of course we can coexist peacefully. Our main objectives remain the same. Feminism is not a monolithic culture that should always share the same opinions. I like to think that feminism is allegorical to Christianity – even though we may disagree on the fine details of how to practice it, we all have the same central objective.

So do you want to censor/ban porn?

No. I am not a proponent of censorship, and even if I were, a ban on pornography would be practically unworkable. Making pornography illegal would make it harder to regulate the industry, which could be dangerous for the women working in it. I would like to live in a world in which pornography was eradicated because there was no market for it. My desire is to persaude people that they do not need to see images of objectification and degredation to satisfy themselves sexually.

But all men watch porn! How could this ever change?

It is important to question men who use porn, and to challenge them on its sexism. It should not be socially acceptable to use porn. Like the use of racial epithets or other hate speech, sexist attitudes and the use of porn can be denounced by social peers. If porn were not so tolerated, people would think more carefully about its social consequences and would be less likely to use it.

So there you have it. With regards to the comments on this post, I’d encourage reasonable discourse about the points I address. I will try and answer everything (caveat – I will be mainly offline between Monday 27th – Friday 1^st, but will try address everything eventually). Obvious usual comment rules apply, but I’d also like to add that I don’t want to see derailing. We’re talking about the pornography industry. We are not talking about prostitution. Any arguments or suppositions about my feelings towards women (or men, trans* people) who work in the sex industry are unwelcome and probably wrong.

And one last thought: You have imaginations. Use them. Embrace them.

Why I Am So Angry

2011-06-15T04:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday someone linked me to this, a poster that they thought I'd like. I do like it. (Click to make BIG - also, as I understand, it's free to print and reproduce it, and you are encouraged to do so)

But I'd like to add a few things to that, because it doesn't cover nearly half the things I feel angry about on a daily basis. So, here goes:

"Fuck patriarchy. Fuck rape culture. Fuck victim blaming, fuck slut shaming, fuck any bastard that would choose a clump of fucking cells over the life of the woman that hosts it. Fuck body fascism. Fuck lads mags. Fuck womens mags. Fuck objectification. Fuck saying a woman is empowered because you give her money to conform to your misogynistic ideals. Fuck binary gender norms. Fuck not citing your sources and churnalising some bullshit pseudoscience that landed on your desk. Fuck all pseudoscience. Fuck homeopathy, fuck acupuncture, acupressure, acu-whatthefuckingever. Fuck anything not proven by re-testable science. That includes God, you small-minded fucks. Fuck anyone who would use an imaginary sky pixie to push their bigoted, money-grasping agenda. Fuck economic libertarians, the selfish cuntpricks. Fuck EU sceptics, fuck climate change sceptics. Fuck James fucking Delingpole and every lie he's ever published. Fuck Littlejohn, the fat prick, railing against how bad it is in the UK from his mansion in fucking Florida. Fuck Melanie Philips, the delusional bitch. Fuck Philip Davies, the rent-a-gobshite. And fuck Nadine fucking Dorries, the evidence-denying, lying fucking shitwhore. And Frank Fields. Who thinks women are too stupid to choose but bright enough to raise kids. Fuck Eric Pickles. Fuck Theresa May. Fuck the police, fuck the riot squad, fuck the TSG, the violent twathounds. Fuck the CPS. Fuck the courts. Fuck the prison system. You think it works? Meet evidence. Fuck ATOS. Fuck anyone who would punish the worthy sick for the greedy well. Fuck racists, the fucking chodes. Fuck war for oil. Fuck the war on terror, fuck the war on drugs. Fuck The Big Questions. Fuck Question Time. Fuck Prime Ministers cocking Questions. Fuck giving my time to right-wing reactionary fucknuts. Fuck Moral Maze. There ain't nothing moral. Either you're a weeping dickshit or you're not. Fuck those who piss about the 'nanny state' because they're too fucking thick to have grasped metric in over 40 fucking years. Fuck those who think the ECHR is part of the EU. Fuck those who think that having your bins collected once a week is more important than foreign aid. Fuck people who want to take away minimum wage. Fuck the bastards exploiting the situation the banks gave us and calling the unemployed lazy when there's five unemployed to every job vacancy. Fuck unpaid internships. Fuck gap years. Fuck mummy and daddy paying for you to climb the corporate ladder. Fuck you bastarding fuckers who make my head want to explode every time I remember every shitty thing you've ever done."

Stay angry people xx

Dear Tesco...

2011-06-13T08:01:00.000-07:00

NB: A copy of this blogpost has been CC'd to customer.service@tesco.co.uk - perhaps you'd like to do your own?

To whom it may concern:

Today on Twitter, @calluna_ posted a picture taken inside one of your stores:

As you can see, this clearly shows a division between magazines that you have deemed to be 'for girls', and magazines that you have deemed to be 'for boys'. Now, I have just a few questions for you:

Would you care to explain to my seven year old sister why you think it is inappropriate for girls to read magazines about Doctor Who, The Simpsons, Pokemon etc. - all of which are gender neutral and encompass strong female characters that many parents consider to be better role models than the simpering 'girly girls' found in the characters in the magazines on the other side of the divide?
Would you also care to explain to her best friend why you think it is inappropriate for him to care about animals or nature or arts and crafts or to like the colour pink?
What have you got against apostrophes?

Now, discussion of this led to the revelation that in your stores you also frequently stock publications like New Scientist in the section for men. So, I've devised a solution for you, and it's really not that difficult.

Instead of stocking magazines by gender, how about stocking them by category?

It's really simple, it honestly is. The magazines for children could be divided into 'comics' and 'hobbies', and the magazines for adults could have further divisions. For example, you could have a 'Science and the Natural World' shelf, where you keep publications like New Scientist and National Geographic, a 'Politics' section where you stock The Economist and Private Eye, and a 'Misogyny and Body Fascism' section where you stock Cosmopolitan and FHM!

There's no need to thank me for my suggestion, but I'd really appreciate it if you could answer my questions. Any reply I receive will be published at www.fortyshadesofgrey.blogspot.com, as this email already has been.

Regards,

FSOG xx

EDIT: PICTURE CAN ALSO BE FOUND HERE

I Am More Than A Womb With Fancy Wrapping

2011-06-03T00:28:00.000-07:00

OK, so yesterday I had a bit of a rage on Twitter about the King Blues:

Basically, what happened is that the King Blues (a band widely acknowledged, even by their former members to be hypocrites and sellouts) decided to exclusively premier their new single in that classiest of places, 'lads mag', Front Magazine (link NSFW. Or for computers with any vague concepts of feminism).

Now, leaving aside the problem of supposed 'punk' bands and self-styled-voices-of-a-disaffected-anti-capitalist-generation using a mainstream rag to hawk their wares, the reason I got my ultra-lefty knickers in a twist and called them hypocrites is because of one of the other songs on their album is supposedly all about feminism and respecting women. Which is kind of the opposite of Front's raison d'etre. Anyway, that song is called 'Five Bottles of Shampoo'.

I've heard that song a few times, and remember that when the album came out, lots of people saying that I'd really like that song, precisely because of its pro-feminist message. Then when I was thinking about it this morning, I remembered that when I'd listened to it, I'd always felt a bit uncomfortable about it, but couldn't put my finger on why. So I decided to look up the lyrics:

She pushed in before me,
in the supermarket queue.
Pretending not to see me in the way women do.
She put on the counter some bread and milk too,
and then she pulled out 5 different bottles of shampoo.
And I thought to myself, "I will never understand women."
And I hear some of you saying "Yeah but all men are the same,
they all think they're so cool and are ruled by their dicks."
That might be true of me, but it ain't true of all of us,
so don't point that finger so quick.
I do see some of the blokes though,
in the clubs, pinching girls asses,
trying to be intimidating, making obscene passes.
"Man, she's a goddess,
you can tell by the way she dances."
But you call her a slag when she don't accept your advances.
You just show you got no respect for yourself.
Show you ain't got the balls to just talk to a girl.
So when she chats to me,
you spit at her and shout "WHORE."
Well, it's written in the art of war,
to fight only the battles you can win.
But I will defend your honour until they kick my face in.
If you have to scrape me, broken boned, bloodied, bruised and battered up off the floor,
well fuck it.
Integrity is what black eyes were invented for.
So down with the dictatorship,
they're so cock sure,
they use rape as a weapon of war.
Fuck the man that thinks it's okay to give his wife a punch.
Fuck the judge that said it weren't rape cause she was drunk.
And if you're pro life,
I mean, if you're PRO life,
then become a doctor, or foster a kid,
make it possible for people who are alive, to LIVE.
But don't you dare tell women, what they can and can't do,
when it was a woman that gave life to you.
Yes, I'm a man who may be stereotypical,
but I ain't afraid to say it, I think all women are beautiful,
and strong.
Too fat, too thin,
that's just media spin.
You look best when you're comfortable in your own skin.
So I'm sorry, if we made you feel untrue,
if truth be known, I love all of you.
You're a giver of life, and a warrior too,
so do you really need 5 different bottles of shampoo?

And then I realised why I've never liked it. For all its attempts, it just completely fails at feminism. It all starts in the opening five lines, where Itch characterises all women according to some crude stereotype of the haughty bitch who ignores the poor male protagonist, and is so obsessed with her appearance that she buys five different bottles of shampoo because she's so blinded by media portrayals of how she should behave, and then (almost laughably) says "That might be true of me, but it ain't true of all of us,/so don't point that finger so quick" when discussing male stereotype.

Well. Newsflash number one: I am a woman and I am capable of both being a nice person and being rational enough to realise that I don't need five kinds of shampoo to make me happy.

Itch then goes on to talk about how he'll always stick up for women, saying "But I will defend your honour until they kick my face in./If you have to scrape me, broken boned, bloodied, bruised and battered up off the floor,/well fuck it./Integrity is what black eyes were invented for". Well, Itch, sweetie, it's lovely that you're willing to get the shit kicked out of you in order to bring a little bit of chivalry to the room and all that, but newsflash number two: My feeble ladybrain is capable of telling some dickhead that I don't want to talk to to piss off and leave me alone without you stepping in to defend my honour.

The line that really, really winds me up though is the penultimate line, which reads "You're a giver of life, and a warrior too". Ah yes, that old chestnut. Women as 'life-givers'. The notion that we should celebrate the female of the species because she bears the babies! But, wait a minute. Where does that leave the childless women? Are we not women if we don't squeeze tiny humans through our vaginal canal? Are we not worthy of celebration merely for our accomplishments as humans? Is getting knocked up really the best thing I can ever hope to do with my life? Final newsflash: I AM MORE THAN A WOMB WITH FANCY WRAPPING.

So, I suppose that I should stop bemoaning the King Blues losing any credential as a feminist band, because they never bloody had any in the first place.

(N.B. Yes, I know that the rest of the song is good and all that, telling blokes not to slag women off if their advances aren't reciprocated, and not to rape/abuse/victim blame/take away personal autonomy etc. But frankly, with the other parts of the song being the way they are, it's just not good enough.)

Ryan Giggs Shagged Imogen Thomas

2011-05-22T11:01:00.000-07:00

Dear Ryan,

I'm sorry to have to break your injunction like that (although since it's been broken so many times now, you're probably getting used to it. Not so much as a 'injunction' as a... not-very-injunctiony-thing, right?).

Anyway, apologies aside, I've decided to write you this letter for a reason. I don't care if you decide to sue me. I'm very easy to find with a bit of internet poking (although, given that you don't understand the internet very well, you might want to pay someone to do that for you). Also, I don't have much stuff that you could take. Unless you're very interested in women's size 5 shoes (shit, did I just break another injunction? It's hard to keep up).

Here's the thing, Ryan - I didn't know who you were until a few days ago. I mean, I was aware that you were a footballer, but I don't know who you play for, who you're married to, or where you're putting your knob, and nor do I care. This post explains why I don't. I didn't know who Imogen Thomas was either, and frankly, if someone had tried to explain to me, I'd have let the words 'Big Brother' escape their lips and then zoned out. But I know who you are now, because you've pissed me off. Why have you pissed me off? I'll try and explain it as simply as I can, but put basically, it's because you're a selfish cunt.

Everything that has happened so far with this whole debacle is a result of you being a selfish cunt. Every single thing. And every potential consequence which I will explain will also be the result of you being a selfish cunt. Here's why:

Firstly, and basically, just to set the scene - putting your knob in someone who isn't your partner (presumably) without her knowledge or consent = selfish cuntery. I'm not holding up monogamy as an ideal, but if that's what you've promised someone, that's what you give them, and it's selfish, and cuntish, to do otherwise.

Then you got an injunction. Now, as I said before, I don't care about your private life, but I do care about the way the media is regulated. The media shouldn't be free to run roughshod over poor people's lives (see: Chris Jeffries) while not being allowed to talk about rich people's lives. What we need is a tougher, and more accountable, press regualtion scheme. That would solve both problems. Instead, what we get is injunctions. What this means is that poor people continue getting fucked over because the rich people (like you) are happy, because they can afford legal recourse.

Then, the shit kind of hit the fan, and here's where you pissed me off. You decided to take Twitter to court in order to obtain the details of those who had broken the injunction. It's kind of obvious that this has blown up in your face, and it's tempting to just laugh, think it serves you right for trying to censor the internet and move on. But I can't.

You've started a dangerous ball rolling here, Ryan. If you'll excuse me here, I'm going to give you a short lesson in how law works so you can understand my worries. Parliament makes a law, and it is the job of the judges to interpret this law. This is because Parliament can't anticipate every situation, so they make law intentionally quite vague, and then the judges refine it. Think of it like taking an off-the-peg suit to a tailor to have it made to fit you. Sometimes, the suit is just too ill fitting, and we can see that it was never made to be worn by someone your shape, and sometimes it just requires a few clarifications, and it's you all over. That's lesson number one.

Now, in order to keep things reasonably stable in these interpretations, we use systems called 'judicial precedent' and 'persuasive precedent'*. What judicial precedent means is that if a case with similar facts has been decided by a higher court, we have to apply the decision reached by the higher courts to the case we're looking at. Persuasive precedent is where a court looks at decisions from other (lower or foreign) courts to help it reach a decision. This isn't binding, but it's how a lot of decisions are made.

Got that? OK. Here's why you pissed me off:

1) When you act like a selfish cunt and then selfishly go to get an injunction using s.8 of the Human Rights Act 1998, you're helping to develop this judge-made law further and have it apply to more and more situations, just to suit your needs. That's all well and good for you, but what about if the law that you helped extend is then used to censor something that undeniably is in the public interest - like the Trafigura case? Then people get hurt. People get really hurt. Not like 'my husband is porking a z-list celebrity' hurt, but physically hurt. And you helped that.

2) If you eventually do succeed in forcing Twitter to hand over the details of anonymous users that apparently broke your injunction, then (aside from it being insanely hypocritical) you've potentially made it so that Twitter can be forced by other companies and agencies to give out details, because of the whole 'judicial/persuasive precedent' thing. I'm going to assume that you were too busy bumping uglies with wannabes to pay attention to current affairs, but there's been a lot of civil uprising recently, and a lot of it has been brought to attention via Twitter. Now, if you get your way, and Twitter are forced to give up the details, what's to stop other agencies using it? What's to stop the government getting the details of everyone who talks about protests on Twitter and using the pre-arrest tactic more often? What's to stop governments that are a bit more torture-happy from getting details of protestors from Twitter?

I don't think you thought about this. You just wanted to get your end away and suffer none of the ill-consequences. But you've started it, and the decent thing to do now would be to stop it, before the ripples from a few illicit fucks and your selfish cuntery lead to a lot worse things than repressing the media.

*I'm trying to write so a footballer can understand.

EDIT: Changed all occurrences of word 'superinjunction' to now read 'injunction'. I know there's a difference (even the existance of superinjunctions can't be reported), but everyone else was/is calling it a superinjunction, so I used that word to ensure people would know what I was referring to. Anyway. All gone now. Every news agency is reporting it after John Hemmings' comments in the HoC this afternoon. Even Newsround, apparently.

The Morning Advertiser Think I Don't Have A Sense Of Humour

2011-05-19T10:20:00.000-07:00

I was a bit bored at work today, so I accidentally* read the Morning Advertiser. It's a pub trade magazine that tends to boil my piss because of the sychophantic, kow-towing, deferential way they treat PubCos (who are strangling the industry with their shitty business practices), and seem to think that all pubs should be mega-glossy, gourmet gastro-pubs, with no time for wet-led** pubs. However, today was a bit different.

The last page in the magazine is devoted to the 'Snifter' column, which is sort of like a 'gossip and funny stories from the pub trade' column. This issue (May 19th) contained this:

Punter's fury over pub sign

The Hand & Spear pub in Weybridge, Surrey, has been criticised for encouraging its male customers to get their dates drunk. An irate female customer photographed a 'thought for the day' sign saying: "If at first you do not succeed, buy her another beer" and promptly sent it into the local paper to vent her anger. "I thought the sign was totally inappropriate", she told the Elmbridge Guardian. "Pubs have a duty to ensure people drink responsibly and to imply you should get a woman drunk to sleep with her is pretty distasteful and massively unprofessional." It's official - some people seem to have had their sense of humour surgically removed.

So, just a couple of points:

The original 'thought for the day' is pretty damn offensive in and of itself. I mean, do I really have to spell this out? Implying you should get a woman drunk in order to sleep with her is neither a) funny or b) professional and teeters very close towards advocating rape.
The language 'Snifter' uses to describe the woman is that so beloved by the closet misogynist. "Irate". "Vent her anger". "Sense of humour surgically removed". Oh YAWN. I mean, damn us humourless feminists, all seething balls of holier-than-thou anger and earnest finger pointing when all anyone wants to do is have a laugh. It's the bloody Keys defence, isn't it? "Only a joke! Sorry if you got offended!". Let me spell this out again: Implying that a woman is a hysterical banshee because you can't be arsed to engage with what she's saying is neither an argument nor a defence to what she is saying. It's you being a dick.

Anyway, I found some Morning Advertiser people on Twitter and asked them this:

One of those I mentioned (Ewan Turney) got back in touch with me and asked him to email him, so I sent him this:

Hi, I tweeted about the 'Snifter' column. I strongly object to the reporting about the Hand and Spear pub sign. I'm going to write something about it, so I wondered if the Morning Advertiser could explain why it thinks it is acceptable, and to clarify its position on rape?

I'll let you know what they say.

Oh, and just to prove I do have a sense of humour, here's something that really made me laugh:

*I was procrastinating.

**Dry sales are food, wet sales are drinks. So, wet-led pub are pubs that don't serve food, or don't serve much food. Real pubs, in other words.

Uganda's "Kill The Gays" Bill

2011-05-11T05:20:00.000-07:00

This week, the Parliament of Uganda has revisited a controversial piece of anti-gay legislation that was originally proposed by an MP in 2009, with fears that it may be hastily implemented before the Ugandan Parliamentary session ends next week.

Although homosexual acts are already illegal in Uganda, earning you up to 14 years in prison, the bill, proposed by MP David Bahati would originally have made the offence of “aggravated homosexuality” punishable by death. The bill defines “aggravated homosexuality” as homosexual acts with a disabled person or a person under the age of 18, as well as being an active homosexual with HIV. Also, the bill in its originally proposed form contained a provision for capital punishment for ‘serial offenders’ under other parts of the law.

Despite worldwide condemnation of the bill, it looks likely that it may pass, apparently having the support of "99% of MPs" (according to John Otekat Emile, an independent MP). However, it may not pass in the form it was originally proposed. Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, despite voicing his support for the bill, has said that he thinks the death penalty provisions are too harsh. The Minister for Ethics and Integrity, James Nsaba Buturo, has also said on several occasions that the death penalty provisions will be dropped, and even Bahati himself has said that the death penalty provision is “something we are moving away from”.

So, this is a good thing, right? Well, yes and no. Obviously the fact that the Ugandan government now no longer proposes to execute people for being homosexual is a good thing, but in all the uproar about the death penalty clauses, people seem to have overlooked the other horribly draconian and inhumane parts of the bill that will pass.

It seems likely now that the offence of “aggravated homosexuality” will, instead of being punishable by death, be punishable by life imprisonment. It could also introduce penalties of seven years imprisonment to those who ‘aid, abet, counsel or procure’ homosexual activities, or to anyone who rents a room or house to a homosexual, and penalties of three years to anyone who is aware of an occurrence of homosexual activity and doesn’t report it within 24 hours – including doctors treating patients. It was also proposed that the law be extended to allow extradition back to Uganda for any citizen living abroad who engaged in homosexual activity.

In an email to me, Frank Mugisha, the executive director of SMUG (Sexual Minorities Uganda) said: “The bill if passed whether in its current form or watered down will stigmatize and increase harassment of gay people in Uganda, drive them underground even further, which will hinder them from accessing treatment, and this will increase on the HIV /AIDS pandemic in Uganda.”

So how did Uganda end up taking such regressive steps away from gay rights? Many lay the blame on a workshop organised in Kampala in March 2009, which included talks by three American Evangelical Christians, Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer, all of whom actively oppose gay rights and see homosexuality as a dangerous and promiscuous lifestyle choice which can be cured by prayer. Brundidge himself is a ‘former gay man’. The theme of the conference was ‘The Gay Agenda’, and it featured talks on “"how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how 'the gay movement is an evil institution' whose goal is 'to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity'”. Some of the most vocal advocates for the bill attended and reported on these sessions.

Uganda’s opposition to gay rights may also stem from the country’s fear of HIV. Uganda is a rare success story when it comes to HIV, with the infection rate dropping from 30% in the 1980s to 6.4% by the end of 2008, despite modern contraceptive use being low. If the citizens are told by their religious and governmental leaders that homosexuality leads to an increased HIV infection rate, is it really surprising that they will turn against homosexuals?

Whatever its cause, since 2009, anti-homosexual feeling has run at an all time high in Uganda. Prominent gay rights activist David Kato was murdered in January of 2011, after successfully suing the country’s Rolling Stone newspaper, who had published his picture in 2010 (alongside the pictures of other ‘known homosexuals’), with a banner saying ‘Hang Them’.

Regardless of whether this bill passes into law in its original form or an amended one, or indeed at all, now is the time for the international community to extend a hand to the gay people of Uganda to try and stem the tide of human rights abuses that they are suffering.

EDIT: It looks like they've dropped the bill from this Parliamentary session - whether this is for good or not, we don't know. Before last week it looked like they had quietly shelved it - offering it next to no attention for 18 months, and a new Parliament is due to be sworn in over the next week. We'll have to see, and keep our fingers crossed that the legislation is not enacted. However, something still remains to be done about advancing LGBT rights in Uganda, not just stopping regressive measures.

Ann Summers: You're Doing It Wrong

2011-05-04T07:31:00.000-07:00

While in Brighton last weekend, I walked past an Ann Summers shop and had to stop in disgust as I noticed that the mannequins had their ribcages on display. Mannequins. With visibly protruding ribs.

Yes, apparently now it's not enough to manufacture and display unfeasibly tall, skinny mannequins with concave stomachs and ridiculously tiny waists, apparently now we must all be told that to appear normal and attractive in lingerie that our ribcages must be showing. Never mind that a woman of that height and size would be dangerously underweight* and possibly suffering all manner of horrible side effects, such as osteoperosis, a weakened immune system and infertility.

While I appreciate that some people are naturally the size and shape I just described and are happy, healthy and normal, I think we can all agree that images such as this are designed to make the vast majority of women feel bad and to buy into the patriarchal, capitalist mindset of "if I buy this, then I too can look like that, and be valued by men and envied by other women!".

But, as horrible as that is, that's not the only reason to hate Ann Summers.

I must, here, point out that I'm not a prude in the slightest. I'm not a sexless feminist, and I'm not attacking them because I have a problem with people trying to improve their sex lives, or to increase their enjoyment. I just have a huge problem with the way they go about it.

Firstly, they try to encourage female sexuality by superimposing a version of the stereotypical 'male' view of sex on to it, and hoping for the best. It implies that we should all be hyper-sexual, all the time, and defined purely by what is going on in our (crotchless) knickers. Now, this doesn't work. Not because us feeble womenfolk can't handle the stereotypical male view of sex, but because it doesn't work for men, either. The idea that we should be primarily concerned only with shagging is, frankly, insulting. Yes, it's good to enjoy sex, and yes, it's good to have a happy sex life, but surely we have greater concerns in life? I mean, come on guys - there's Tories sliming around Downing Street and I'm supposed to be constantly thinking about knobbing? I mean, that thought alone is enough to put anyone off it for a month. But joking aside, the implication that you're nothing without an active crotch can be a very damaging one. Society shouldn't dictate to us that possessing only a narrow set of attributes makes us a valued and worthwhile person.

Secondly, on a related note, everything Ann Summers does and sells approaches sex from such a narrow perspective, and that's harmful. In their world, there's no spectrum of sexuality, there's no gender spectrum, and everyone's white and skinny and likes sex that's just ever-so-slightly-to-one-side-of-vanilla-to-impress-the-men-without-being-too-overtly-sexual-or-implying-that-we've-thought-about-it-too-much-because-that-would-be-disgusting (We need a name for this. Magnolia sex?). Again, it's indicative of a society that tells us how we should behave, and what narrow sets of attributes we must possess in order to be desireable, and it ostracises anyone who doesn't fit neatly into their box.

Thirdly, if you have a problem in your relationship, or with your sex life, that's not going to be solved by donning some nipple pasties and hoping for the best - it will be solved by honest discussion and a desire to improve things. But that would fall outside of their desire to make you believe that all life's problems can be solved quickly and easily by going shopping, so this is what we get instead. It's not a desire to help us be 'liberated' and to reclaim the orgasm, but a desire to give us a new range of things to covet and pay for, and they do it by telling us that we're not good enough and we would be much improved, and make others happier, if we'd hand some of our cash to them. It's the capitalist's wet dream.

I also hate them because they promote the same poisonous Cosmopolitan and Sex And The City bilge narrative that has dominated female sexuality for too long. The idea being that we all sit around with 'the girls', sipping crudely-named cocktails and talk about hand-job techniques, and ways to impress the men, and that's the only way to be. On the website, the tag-line for the male sex toys is: "Treat your man, with an Ann Summers male sex toy! We have plenty to choose from, all of them designed to deliver overwhelming pleasure that’ll keep him coming back for more, time after time." - the implication being that the only thing you should want to do is to snare a man and keep him, and the only way to manage that is to be 'adventurous' in bed. It's not a choice you have, or something that you're in to, it's something you must do, to impress the men. Because heaven forfend a woman should just like using toys on a man.

Their advertising, their products and their whole ethos seems to be about displaying our sexuality to titillate men, with a tag-line of "This is how we're all doing it. If you're not doing it like this, then you're wrong and even worse, you're UNSEXY".

So fuck off, Ann Summers. I am not defined by my appearance, by my sexuality, or by how attractive men find me. If I want to have sex, I'll bloody well have it with who I want and how I want, not according to how your faux-liberation dictates. You propagate the patriarchal ideal of women as objects to be lusted over by men, and jazz it up by offering us a few dildos and telling us we are now empowered. So you can stick your straws shaped like genitalia where the sun don't shine, and stop telling me what to do.

Brighton May Day

2011-05-01T04:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was in Brighton for the May Day march. It was an eventful day:

At about noon we went to the West Pier, on the sea-front, to start the march. There were about 40-50 people there when we arrived, with a sound system playing. There were a mixed group of people, but the atmosphere was very calm, people were just milling about talking and handing out leaflets to each other. We were handed a banner to carry, but didn't open it. More people came along, and by the time the march was ready to begin, the numbers had swelled to about 200. A dice was rolled to find out the destination of the march, and landed on the Town Hall.

We stood up and started walking down Kings Road, flanked on each side by police and being filmed by FIT members from every angle. There were about 100 police officers, and at least 4 mounted police from what I could see. People were chanting and making noise (bells, whistles, drums), and there was a nice air to the march. We turned up Middle Street, which is a fairly narrow road, and continued up it, still totally flanked by police. We witnessed our first arrest, of a young man, but the police wouldn't say what they were arresting him for. We turned into Ship Street and into our first kettle of the day.

We were kettled for about half an hour. The police numbers had gone up by this point to about 150, and there were 4 riot vans. The police were in riot-gear, with helmets on and batons strapped to their sides. A few of them looked like they were spoiling for any excuse to start a fight, but there was no violence. A few protestors got a bit mouthy, but only about the disproportionately heavy police presence for such a (relatively) small group of people. We saw our second arrest at this point, but again, they wouldn't say what for. We unfurled our banner and found it said 'A better world is possible' on it. The clowns were out, playing with the police officers, most of whom took it good-naturedly. Still, the atmosphere was very calm. People were out to have a good day, they weren't out to smash stuff up, cause trouble or fight the police. Eventually, we were allowed to move.

As we were now carrying the banner unfurled, as we turned down North Street, my friends and I were encouraged to the front of the march. We led the march down North Street, walking behind two mounted police, as photographers and passers-by jostled to get pictures of us. We turned onto East Street and walked a short way, when we heard a shout to turn the march around. When we turned around, we were kettled for a second time, but only for about ten minutes. Again, people were just sat around listening to music or dancing to it and chatting to their friends. There was no one set on violence or causing trouble.

When we were let out of this kettle, we moved through Pavilion Gardens, very peacefully. Families having picnics waved at us and took pictures. Nothing was disrupted, nothing was spoilt. Leaving there, we headed towards Regent Street. Outside Tesco, there seemed to be some kind of commotion. All that was was that the police had apparently decided that we were planning something there, and had placed a heavy presence on its doors. As people were walking by, they were shouting at the police that they shouldn't be protecting businesses, they should be protecting people.

After this, people started running. We ran around Victoria Gardens and up Church Street through the North Laines, sadly losing our banner in the process. At this point, two friends and I peeled off from the march and went to sit down for ten minutes (we're not that fit!). Checking the brightonmayday hash-tag on Twitter as a guide, we decided to head towards the station, as there were reports of a 'counter-demonstration' by the EDL in that area. Walking along Queens Road, we saw three vans full of riot police up a side road, and a very heavy police presence, but no protestors. We actually walked past the EDL 'counter-demo' without even noticing them, since their 'demo' took the form of 15 knuckle-dragging skinheads getting pissed in a pub (the Royal Standard).

We decided to turn back and walk back in the direction of the sea-front. Walking past Boots, we noticed that the side entrance was being guarded by five riot police, and the main entrance by more, even there was no protestors in sight. Everyone was just getting on with their shopping and enjoying their Saturday. There was no disruption to trade or to people going about their business.

We picked up a few people who were looking to rejoin the march, and carried on towards the sea-front. Walking down behind the Churchill Square shopping centre, we noticed a group of people surrounding a man who had been arrested (for saying 'fuck' apparently). He was pressed against a wall, penned in by four police officers. One of the group surrounding them was Caroline Lucas MP, who was trying her best to find out what had happened and what was going on. As the man was led away, I asked her if she would be issuing a statement condemning the disproportionate police response to a peaceful march, and she assured me she would. After we left, I was told that she de-arrested the young man, but I can't confirm this.

At this point, we went and had a drink on the beach. We'd been there about half an hour when we were told that people were planning to occupy Topshop. We made our way over to the Clock Tower, where we met a group of about 12-15 people. Everyone was sitting and chatting, and a couple of people were having a beer. We were being watched by about seven police officers, and after about twenty minutes, a group of twelve police surrounded us and told us to stop drinking. One of the police officers telling us to stop was nice and reasonable, allowing the people he was talking to to finish their beer. The others just confiscated it.

We wandered over to Topshop in groups of 3-4, and when we arrived up there, we found four hired security guys looking extremely conspicuous in the doorway, and about eight police officers. The protestors were stood to one side, not doing anything. We quietly decided to cross the road and try to occupy Vodafone, but couldn't get in there because of another group of hired security. We stood outside, chanting 'Vodafone, pay your tax!' and singing 'If you don't pay your tax, we'll shut you down'. There were around 15 of us there, and I counted at least 20 police officers that I could see then (including the now ubiquitous FIT). After ten minutes we crossed back to Topshop and stood there singing and chanting for about another fifteen minutes. The numbers of police were increasing, there were about 30-40 of them by this point (there was still only 15 of us). One protestor was arrested and dragged off, and we all ran over to find out what was happening. We then found that we'd, rather stupidly, let ourselves get trapped in a very small kettle. There were lines of about 15 police at our front and back, and a riot van on our sides, penning us in. There were lots of other police hovering around behind the lines.

We accepted that we'd been tricked and were trapped, so we sat down and started listening to music and talking among ourselves. We rang a legal support group to find out what we could do, and were just told to sit tight and not say anything.

Then the police began removing us one by one in order to search us and get our details. I was one of the first to be taken away - I was walked up a side street that had another 30-ish police officers on and asked my name, date of birth and full address, and searched. I was threatened with arrest if I didn't comply and the whole thing was filmed by FIT. This happened to each of us individually, and nothing was found on any of us (apart from a pen-knife which the owner had forgotten about which was confiscated, and a back-pack full of 'ASBO Army' t-shirts that were being taken to be sold at a gig. The police were not entirely amused by this). The police weren't interested in dispersing us, even though that was the power they used to search us, as once they had our details, they let us continue to stand around and wait for our friends. The kettle ended with one guy remaining being guarded by 30 police. He gave us a sing-song to keep us amused. Once that was over, that was it, and we went for a well-deserved pint.

I saw nothing yesterday indicative of any violence, any planned violence, or any disruption to the usual running of the town. It was a group of people who wanted to take part in a Workers Day march, and a completely over-the-top police response. One can only imagine how much police money was wasted by the excessive deployment of resources - especially the final encounter we had.

However, an important point to bear in mind is that this wasn't the fault of (all of) the police. It's easy, when faced with having your civil liberties infringed as much as ours were yesterday, to simply say 'all coppers are bastards' and take against them as a group. Yes, I saw some police yesterday who were being facetious, who were refusing to tell us things for no reason other than to annoy us, and who looked like they were waiting for any excuse to give us a good kicking. But the majority of them were just people who were trying to do a job, and it's not their fault that the plans of their superiors were so obviously over-the-top and counterproductive. If we are to condemn anyone for what happened yesterday, we should condemn the commanding officers and the people making the decisions and calling the shots, not the majority of the front-line police, who were just doing as they were told - because, let's face it, they are the ones who will soon be hit by the cuts we are against, not the top brass. Just as we don't want to be judged by the actions of a violent minority, we shouldn't judge the police in that way.

The local paper, The Argus, has included in their article a list of the eight people arrested, and what they were arrested for:

They were: a 25-year-old man, who refused to provide his address, on suspicion of violent disorder following the TUC march in London last month; a 23-year-old man from Chiselhurst, Kent, on suspicion of using threatening and abusive language; a 22-year-old woman from Macclesfield, Cheshire and a 28-year-old man from Brighton, both on suspicion of failing to remove face masks; a 30-year-old man, who refused to provide his address, on suspicion of assaulting and obstructing police; a 25-year-old man, who refused to give his address, on suspicion of assault, obstructing and resisting a police officer; an 18-year-old man, who refused to give his address, on suspicion of common assault and using abusive language; a 28-year-old man from Brighton on suspicion of failing to surrender alcohol.

Hardly the result of violent extremists wreaking havoc on the streets and terrifying ordinary citizens.

One set of pictures from the day

Some of my pictures from it

Thank you, Poly Styrene

2011-04-26T14:03:00.000-07:00

I don't remember the first time I ever heard the X-ray Spex. I assume that my mum must have played them while I was growing up. But I remember the first time I ever heard them.

I must have been thirteen years old, sat in my bedroom. At the time, it was covered in posters of people I wanted to be like, from a music scene I'd discovered aged eleven and devoured wholeheartedly. I'd found one of my mum's old tapes - a punk compilation from the early 80's that I still have, and I'd been listening to it for a couple of hours. The final song on the tape came on, and I was riveted. It was The Day The World Turned Day-Glo. As soon as Poly Styrene's opening lyrics began, like an ethereal tour de force, I was in love.

I copied my mum's vinyl copy of Germ Free Adolescents to a tape that I still frequently listen to. The howling invective of the vocals filled me with joy. These were shouting, screaming, pleading, but ultimately joyful songs, and they felt like they were made for me. They were songs filled one minute with unbridled anti-capitalist fury, and the next with delicate innocence.

The X-Ray Spex became a constant soundtrack to my teenage years, and beyond. Shouting the opening line from Oh Bondage! Up Yours! at my friends by way of greeting, dancing like a furious dervish to I Am A Poseur, and scowling along to Identity at my lowest ebb. The first time I properly met my ex's dad, we stayed up until the wee small hours of the morning, drinking white wine and listening to GFA, sharing a particular love of Warrior In Woolworths. We were firm friends after that. All these songs have a deep personal meaning to me.Whatever mood I was in, however I felt, Poly Styrene had always been there, and felt that before.

This might sound like childish, naive idealism, and in a way, it is. I came to the X-Ray Spex 24 years after the recording of Germ Free Adolescents, but the pertinence of the songs still rings true. I read reports about the dangerous political climate we face, and I am reminded of the chorus to Plastic Bag ("1977, and we are going mad/1977 and we've seen too many ads/1977 and we're going to show them all/apathy's a drag"). I look at the culture of celebrity and I Live Off You pops into my head. These are songs of life, with a supersonic, dischordant twist - that was brought purely by Poly's huge talent. Her stamping, bounding, often surreally haunting voice put the X in the X-Ray Spex, and made anyone who listened to them feel alive.

For all the songs spoke to me through their lyrics and melody, there was another important factor in making me stick with them all these years, despite their miniscule discography. Poly Styrene was a woman. Although the punk scene is irrevocably tied with progressive, liberal notions and ideas of equality, women are sorely under-represented in it. Yes, there are other brilliant women flying the flag, but Poly always had a special place in my heart. Angry but loving, screaming but soft, brilliant but flawed, with one turn a lost little girl, and the next a highly sexualised force of nature, she was a beautiful and compelling dichotomy, and her music shaped my life.

So thank you, Marian. For all the good times, the memories, and mostly, for the music. The world will be a much less colourful place without you, but we'll keep playing your songs.

Daily Mail Opportunism

2011-04-26T01:22:00.000-07:00

Well, the Daily Mail strike again. Reading like something I would have written at Daily Mail Death Articles, today the Mail decided to smear the names of the family and friends of a dead child, along with that child herself, with a healthy dose of OMG INTERNETZ and OOH LOOK AT THESE CELEBRITIES thrown in to boot. The whole slice of hideousness reads like a scene from Paul Dacre's most enthusiastic wank-fantasy. Titled Ecstacy death girl, 15, 'idolised drug taking musicians and was hooked on the internet' [istyosty link], this piece shows Arthur Martin and Tamara Cohen up for the subhuman smut-peddling scum that they are. It's red pen time here at Forty Shades of Grey Towers...

She was a promising schoolgirl from a stable family background. But Isobel Jones-Reilly had become sucked in by the drug-taking exploits of the celebrities she idolised. Lots of teenagers 'idolise' celebrities. Lots of celebrities take drugs. Ipso facto, it's celebrity's fault that this happened. Probably.

In the early hours of Saturday, the 15-year-old died after taking a cocktail of illegal drugs at a party at an academic’s house.

Isobel, described as a ‘member of the Myspace Generation’, used at least seven social networking sites and would spend hours posting comments about drugs and celebrities. She also posted pictures of herself with famous faces, including one of comedian Russell Brand, a self-confessed former drug addict. Social networking sites are ubiquitous nowadays. I myself have profiles on at least six social networking sites that I can immediately think of. That doesn't mean I'm an internet addict, it means that I'm a member of this generation. Young people talk about celebrities because, well, it's pretty much all they get shoved down their throat. Is it any wonder when all mainstream media, especially a certain rag (who's name might rhyme with Faily Heil) insist on stuffing them on a diet of prattle and gossip about 'stars' like it's actually important? Also, I really can't stand Russell Brand, but to link the fact that he used to take drugs (as I understand it, he has been clean for some time and now talks about how meditation is his get-out-of-consciousness method of choice) to the death of a 15 year old girl from drug-taking really is low. Could this be to do with the fact that he has a film out soon and this might get them Google hits? I'd put money on that.

But one of her teachers blamed her downward spiral on an addiction to the internet. Jaye Williamson, who was Isobel’s English teacher at Chiswick Community College, in West London, said: ‘She was into the kind of things that teenagers get into, but she got hooked on the worldwide web. She was part of the Myspace generation. She got caught and we are devastated.’ Firstly, what in the name of holy fuckery is this girl's English teacher doing giving soundbites to the gutter press? In what way is it any of her business? I would very much hope that she is disciplined over this. Being a teacher does not mean that you are placed to comment on any part of a student's private life. How does Williamson know what Isobel did with her spare time? But now we see where the Mail have got their conjecture that makes up their appalling headline.

Isobel, known as Issy, had been at a party on Good Friday at the home of Brian Dodgeon, an academic in children’s development. Paramedics tried to revive her, but she died in hospital.

Last night Mr Dodgeon’s daughter Beatrice Hadjipateras, 14, and two of Isobel’s classmates Jamal Clarke and Harry Barton, both 14, who also took drugs that night were still in hospital under observation. So we decided to hound him and smear his name in public.

The 60-year-old academic was arrested on suspicion of possessing drugs and child abandonment and later released on police bail. Yesterday, his partner Angela Hadjipateras, 54, was interviewed under caution by detectives. If these parents had these drugs in the house and the teenagers found them and randomly decided to take them, I will eat my hat. I've been a teenager.

Parents of Isobel’s friends told how the promising student failed to realise the dangers of taking Class A drugs.

Diane Bardon, 50, whose son David was at school with Isobel, said: ‘Like many teenagers she idolised musicians who took drugs and it was hard to tell them the pitfalls of copying such behaviour.

‘These bands seem to have it all and the kids just want to copy them. It’s just desperately sad that it’s ended in the death of such a beautiful and lovely girl.’ Mrs Williamson said her son was also at the party but left early because his parents asked him to be home by midnight. ‘He was picked up by a friend of mine. Otherwise, God knows what might have happened,’ she said.

'I would see Issy in the corridors and I used to pull her into the classroom to make sure she did well at school.’ Who the hell is this woman? I'm also willing to bet that the Mail phoned all the parents of people who were friends with Isobel until they found one that was daft and insensitive enough to give them a quote that accorded with their narrative. This is where they got the second assertion for their headline, by the way.

Isobel and about 15 of her friends were at the party in Ladbroke Grove. Mr Dodgeon and his partner had left for the night, leaving the children unsupervised. It is understood that some of the teenagers started taking a mixture of drugs – thought to include Ecstasy, amphetamines, LSD and ketamine – at about 2am.

Police are investigating whether the drugs were brought into the house or if they were found in the house at the time of the party.

Two hours later, Isobel suffered a cardiac arrest and collapsed. Neighbours were woken by screams – and within minutes, paramedics arrived and took Isobel and her three friends to St Mary’s hospital, in Paddington.

Jeremie Mbiola, 15, a classmate who was at the party, said watching his friend collapse had changed his life forever. ‘I can’t believe what I saw with my own eyes and I now keep getting flashbacks,’ he wrote on Facebook. Mail journalism at it's finest. Stalking the Facebook profiles of children connected to a tragedy to picture and quote-mine (In the article, there are five pictures of Isobel - all of them obtained from social networking sites).

Yesterday, more than 150 classmates and relatives attended an impromptu memorial on Chiswick Common, near Isobel’s home in Acton. As friends sang songs in tribute, parents questioned why there were drugs at the party. I'm guessing - and bear with me here - that there were drugs at the party because the kids decided that they wanted to take drugs and bought some. It's horrible, and it's stupid, but it happens.

One father said: ‘My boy was at the party but he shouldn’t have even been there. When I found out, I went to pick him up at 11.30pm. He didn’t take anything. They hadn’t gone looking for stuff by then. It was about 2am they found them and by 4am Issy was dead. I heard she died in her friend’s arms.’

Mr Dodgeon’s boss at the University of London’s Institute of Education, Professor Chris Husbands, said: ‘The Institute was deeply sorry to hear of the tragic events.

‘My senior team and I will be meeting...to make appropriate decisions on the way we will proceed.’

[SUB ARTICLE] Academic who left children to party alone

As a respected academic and former social worker, Brian Dodgeon is exactly the sort of parent you’d trust with children.

He and his partner, charity manager Angela Hadjipateras, are high-fliers who doubtless want the same for their daughter.

Their £1million terrace home in Notting Hill in West London is a testament to Mr Dodgeon’s success, after a modest upbringing in Blackpool with his parents and elder brother. There, he excelled at school and won a place to study maths at Bristol University, graduating with a first-class degree. Property porn. Colour me surprised.

His partner works for a charity supporting development projects in Africa, and the pair have been involved in running the charity Stepping Stones to tackle prejudice surrounding HIV.

A friend of Mr Dodgeon said he was a ‘liberal dad’ with an active social life, who held lively house parties.

‘I’ve been to quite a few of his parties but I’ve never seen any drugs there,’ said the friend. ‘You might see the odd guy staggering around but that would be from alcohol, like at any party. He’s a liberal guy, like most middle-class people from Notting Hill. He would have been the sort of person to let his daughter have parties, but I would be surprised if he had left them alone.’

‘Brian is very sociable, he works as a DJ sometimes in 1960s music. He’s a great dad and has never mentioned any problems with his daughter. I can’t imagine in a million years he would buy drugs. My first thought is it must have been the kids who brought them in. They are a lovely normal middle-class family.’

Neighbour Michael Sutton, who has known Mr Dodgeon and his partner since they moved to the area 15 years ago, saw the ambulances arrive in the early hours of Saturday. He said: ‘We got on well with them. I’ve seen them going out cycling’.

Mr Dodgeon may have first-hand experience of families blighted by substance abuse. After graduating, he took qualifications in social work, and was a social worker for Hammersmith and Fulham Council in 1975. He currently works at the Institute of Education, researching social problems including alcohol consumption. He also works part-time teaching Alexander Technique, a relaxation method.

Mr Dodgeon will answer police bail in June. Last night, he and his partner were at their daughter’s hospital bedside. What does this show us? Nothing. It's just an attempt to paint this 'liberal' man as ultimately connected with the death of a 15 year old, when all that really happened is that she was friends with his daughter and was at his house when she died. He wasn't there. His own daughter is in hospital. Leave the man alone. It is perfectly normal for a group of 15 year olds to be left in the house alone. He is not a monster.

[SIDEBAR] A rap fan caught in a downward spiral

Described as ‘extremely popular’ by her teachers at Chiswick Community School, where they said she was doing well, photos and stories of the youngster paint a picture of a contented life with her family in Acton, West London.

But as she entered her teenage years, she became engrossed in an intense social whirl.

At one point, she wrote of her life: ‘It’s drugs, it’s sex, it’s family and every minute I make mistakes. I don’t mean to but I do and I’m sorry for those mistakes.’

The teenager described herself as a ‘down to earth girl’ who ‘people like to hate’ in another entry.

On one of her most prolific online profiles, Isobel, a huge fan of controversial rappers 50 Cent and Kanye West, posed as a 21-year-old.

More recent pictures show her with dyed red hair, smoking a cigarette and drinking from a can of Strongbow cider. Again, what does any of this have to do with anything? Does it tell us anything about her death? No. It's just typical Mail internet scaremongering, combined with a smidgen of 'rap-music-is-evil' on the side.

So what does this show us? Nothing. It's just another example of the tabloid press jumping on the bandwagon of a young girl's tragic death in order to flog a few more copies and get better Google hits. They have no shame about smearing the name of a respected academic in order to push their hateful 'modernity-will-kill-your-children' ideas forward, and again show their truly reprehensible nature by using out of context quotes to sully a dead girl and make it look like her death was her own fault.

A child died. Three children are in hospital. The media spin their narrative, and this is what we hear. This is the fault of the parents! It's the fault of celebrity! It's the fault of the internet! It's not. The children, as hard as it might be to hear, decided to obtain some drugs and take them. From the fact that one of them died and others were hospitalised, I will stick my neck out and say that they got some bad drugs, which were probably stronger than, or contained something different from, what they were expecting. They played russian roulette with their health and are now suffering the horrendous consequences of their actions. They and their families have to live with this. So why is the media queueing up to make them look even worse? This is a tragedy, not an opportunity to have a self-indulgent mass-froth at everything that the media feels is wrong with the world. Use this to educate children on the dangers of drugs, not to push forth a hateful invective and ruin lives further.