Roorback
By means of inexplicable though not wholly surprising incompetence I failed to secure a postal vote for today so at quarter past eight this morning I was in a church hall at the end of my road, marking my X and contemplating twenty somewhat less than successful Sunday School renderings of the assumption of Mary in purple finger paint.
I have always felt somewhat underwhelmed by the polite, Protestant nature of the British democratic process; I'd like to see this country attempting to do the kind of election hysteria perfected by small African states after thirty years of dictatorship. I want queues forming from the early hours (though if they could be significantly dwindling by the time I got there that would be handy), kept in line by the military (or the Territorial Army or at a push, Boy Scouts) with huge threatening guns (or water pistols if it was warm) and there's lots of excitement and shouting rude slogans about certain candidates' hairstyles before the police rush in to calm everyone down with tea and a plate of digestives with no more bodily injury than a few small paper cuts from excessive placard making.
At the very least, I'd like the ballot papers to come with a space next to the candidates' names where you could leave thumping endorsements or scathing dismissals along with your vote. I think a lot more people would be willing to engage with politics if they were allowed to write a giant ARSE next to the BNP's listing and it might just provide me with an answer to the question I've been pondering for the last few weeks: just who is it that's backing Boris? While I appreciate - with no small dismay - that not everyone is like me and my liberal hippy Commie agitator friends, whoever it is can't live in London, surely?
As I was leaving the hall, I noticed that the Sunday School had cut a giant HALLELUJAH out of shiny paper and stuck it up over the crucifix on the far wall. The Jesus on the cross was unusually Caucasian even for the Catholic church with a plump, white face and messy blond hair.
ARSE.
57th Carnival of the Feminists
Welcome to the 57th Carnival of the Feminists, Littlejohn Baiting Edition.
Roles and Society
Holly from Menstrual Poetry comments on a survey by The Telegraph that states (with admirably restrained glee) that many men believe society is now run by women and men are merely 'waxed and coiffed metrosexuals' who have to abide by female rules and long for a good only fashioned 'return to manliness'.
The World is Now Dominated by Women, Where Have I Been?
"It seems as if once women set their footprints in the wet concrete of history and start making own choices without having to consult a man before doing so, the men start to get all uppity."
Fannie offers a step by step guide to the kind of worriedly becoiffed men in The Telegraph who are fretting about the influx of women into the pubic sphere, by taking a lesson from Iraq on keeping women in their place.
"Where in the world could one look for inspiration, for a guide on how to keep women in their place? Where could we possibly look for a shining model on how to integrate fundamentalist religion with government while using the correct gender-conservative ideals declaring that each gender has a proscribed place in society?"
Cara at The Curvature tries hard to keep a straight face at the pundits insistence that the wife of The New York governor caught cavorting with ladies of the night is somehow to blame for the apparent easy downward motion of his trouser fly.
Another exciting round of Men Can?t Be Held Responsible for Their Actions, Let's Blame The Wife!
"In the end, there’s nothing that you can’t turn around and blame on a woman. This time, we’ve got: Well, she didn’t have enough sex with him! In other instances, it will be: Come on, what’d she expect if she was going to burn the roast — and then talk back?!"
Sexual violence
Julie and Maia from The Hand Mirror present a duo of complimentary posts on anti-binge drinking ads from New Zealand that reinforce the responsibility of women to prevent rape by not enjoying themselves too much.
It's the victim blaming; it's not how you victim blame and Actually, She Wasn't Asking For It At All
"Anyone who believes the rape myth that women are responsible for rape if they have been drinking can do real harm to women who have been raped. This advertisement is one more reinforcement of a myth that is already way too prevelant."
Another pair of linked posts from Holly at Menstrual Poetry, this time on the commercial sex industry, offering some statistics on prostitution and thoughts on the reasons why men use sex workers.
The Truth About Prostitution and The Psychology Behind Men and Prostitutes.
"It is said that while politicians, in particular, are used to wielding power and keeping people under him in check, no one is working for this man without getting something in return–and that is where the appeal of prostitutes comes in."
Rape survivors Marcella at Abyss2Hope and Amanda at Pandagon present two differing views on the 'I Was Raped' t-shirt designed by Jennifer Baumgardner, a shirt designed to let rape victims “own the experience,” an "help chip away the cone of silence that surrounds a crime with humiliation at its core."
I Was Raped T-Shirt Not A Statement Of Victimhood
"Smart and rational rape survivors are supposed to carefully guard their secret unless they are being brave by cooperating with law enforcement. If you don't shut up about rape or don't only reveal what happened to you in hushed tones then you are suspect. The dangerousness of coming out as someone who has been raped is what should have all of us concerned and dedicated to eliminating this danger."
You know who needs to take ownership for rapes? Rapists.
"Pressure to “own” a rape probably doesn’t do rape victims a bit of good, because that puts it back into the dominant narrative about rape, which is that it’s a woman’s fault if it happens to her."
The Feminist 101 blog comprehensively debunks the views of a BNP London Assembly candidate Nick Eriksen who said earlier this month that "Rape is simply sex. Women enjoy sex, so rape cannot be such a terrible physical ordeal.To suggest that rape, when conducted without violence, is a serious crime is like suggesting that forcefeeding a woman chocolate cake is a heinous offence. A woman would be more inconvenienced by having her handbag snatched."
If women like sex just as much as men do, then why is rape so bad?
"I suggest that anyone tempted to make such objections really think a bit harder about the difference between doing something when you choose to do it, and enjoying doing it when it is your choice, versus being forced to do it at someone else’s choice with no care for your safety or dignity, and that someone being gratified at you being powerless to stop them."
Sex and Reproductive Choice
Mary from Womenstake is shocked to the core - as all of us Decent, Right-Thinking citizens are - by a recent news article that young people are Doing It and what is more, Catching Things.
Young People Are Having Sex! (And this is "News"?)
The recent “news” that STDs are running rampant among young women is already old to those working in public health. What other outcome could we expect when the federal government is funding abstinence only education, which deprives students of the basic information needed to make sex (which they are apparently having) safer?"
Author of Hoyden About Town, Lauredhel presents a well reserached analysis of free choice in birthing care and infant death from unnecessary caesarean intervention.
Death twice as likely by caesarean??
"Truly free choices are almost impossible within a societal and medical patriarchy in which birthing is considered a stupendously dangerous, messy, primitive, terrifying process which must be timed and controlled and scrutineered and interfered with in the normal course of things."
Greta poses the question: Why don’t they make a birth control pill for men?
Sex, Lies, and Contraception: The Male Pill
Because this isn't simply a question of sexist men dumping the responsibility for birth control onto women. It's a question of whether women would be willing to place the responsibility for birth control into the hands of men.
The F-Word rounds up the press reaction to my personal favourite story of the year so far, Thomas Beattie, the pregnant transman. I've tried to avoid reading any tabloid coverage of this due to a desire to keep my head unexploded until at least May this year, but Jess has suffered the rage so I didn't have to.
How the press reported on a pregnant man
"The concept that Beatie doesn’t feel like being pregnant threatens his identity as a man seems to be difficult to understand for those who are still not entirely comfortable even with those who break down gender roles, such as a female boss, a stay at home dad, etc, let alone challenge the concept of gender as a simple binary divided by an impenetrable wall."
Twisty Faster - gentleman farmer and spinster aunt - from I Blame The Patriarchy gives further thought to the 14 year old girl in the US who was threatened with the head-meets-wall lunacy of murder charges for miscarrying on an aeroplane.
The continuing exploits of the fetus-lovers
"Why is this even in the news? Because even though it was just a miscarriage, it involves scandalous dirty female sex behavior in the shape of teen pregnancy and a trash can, that’s why. Homicide cops, faugh. Why not just institute the Houston P.D. Criminal Uterus Unit and be done with it?"
Eye-wateringly sanctimonious articles about enthusiastic devotees of abstinence movements are not new, but Jessica from Feministing neatly sums up why public promotion of the lifestyle choice hurts the chaste as well as the sluts.
Why glorifying virginity is bad for women
"Perpetuating the virgin/whore stuff hurts all women, not just the "whores." Until women's morality is divorced from their bodies and sexuality, we'll continue to be defined by what's in between our legs - instead of in our hearts."
Bitch PhD writes a extremely familiar story of social and self-imposed embarrassment over menstruation and learning to let it go.
Coming out of the menstruation closet
"Fourteen years after I started bleeding every month, I feel like I've mostly gotten the hang of it. But the other day, I realized the extent to which having "gotten the hang of it" is only true within the limited context of our culture of concealment. Getting the hang of it means learning how to conceal it as best as possible, so no one ever knows you've got it."
Body Image
Two posts about the fraught relationships women have with their body hair, the first from The Jaded Hippy and the second from Anji at Shut Up Sit Down.
"Women have body hair. We choose to manipulate it or get rid of it. But pure and simple, WE HAVE IT. And I have always been of the opinion that we should be able to simply HAVE it, and should not feel obligated to do anything about that."
"Put down the damned razor and love your body the way it is naturally, not the way you've been taught it ought to be. By refusing to participate personally, but becoming one more woman who challenges the status quo by loving her body hair, you become one more soldier in the army fighting towards making women's bodily self-esteem and equality a reality."
Rachel from Women's Health News reviews Locker Room Diaries, a book that purports to be a wake-up call for women to stop obsessing over body image but the text reveals something different.
Locker Room Diaries - An Initial, and Unpleasant, Review
"I don’t think I can bear the obsessive weighing and measuring of women’s bodies in what, one would assume from the title, would be a work precisely about refusing to let numbers rule women’s lives."
Inspired by this post, Samara at the F-Word wonders why, from scratchy lace arse-floss to crippling stilettos, women are still considered increasingly sexually attractive the more uncomfortable they are.
"I wonder if vulnerability = sexiness. Would I have been even more “sexy” if I’d been wearing shoes so uncomfortable I’d been struggling to walk? Is a woman who can’t fight back the best kind?"
A woman after my own (eminently sensible) heart, Nine from Rage Against the Man-chine is mystified by commercials in which women appear to gain some kind of curious sexual pleasure from cake, marvelling at the misogyny that leads food to be thought of as a forbidden pleasure.
I don't give a shit about chocolate at all.
It’s perfectly acceptable for these women to behave lustfully with regard to food, which is odd considering the fact that they aren’t permitted to do so when it comes to actual sex. I suppose it really isn’t much of a shock; women aren’t allowed to express sexual desire without being labeled sluts, so it has to go somewhere. Best direct it toward something that doesn’t threaten men’s control over the realm of sexuality. Something like cake."
Feminism
From Jessica Hoffman at Alternet, the compelling and necessary On Prisons, Borders, Safety, and Privilege: An Open Letter to White Feminists.
"If feminism is about social change, it is about recognizing that safety in this society is a fantasy afforded only by assimilation to power, and the cost of that fake safety is the safety of those who cannot, or will not, access it. If feminism is about social change, it is about radically challenging prisons and borders of all kinds."
Helen offers a very personal take on the transfeminism debate at F-Word.
"Perhaps, then, trans women do have insights to offer in the debate as to why our issues have a place in feminism: if nothing else, we must surely agree that gender variance, and how we express it, should be a right common to all if we are serious about ending discrimination."
Zuzu writing at Feministe uses the example of mass media misogyny towards Hilary Clinton to explain how using sexist language to dismiss and denigrate a woman you disagree with damages all women.
Why calling out misogyny matters
"I’m calling this shit out because this shit hurts women. Women like me. Women like many of you. Women like your daughters, your sisters, your mothers, your friends, your spouses, your SOs. If it’s okay to dehumanize a US Senator and presidential candidate as “that thing” or dismiss her as “that bitch” .... then we now have an environment in which it’s okay to dehumanize, demean and diminish ordinary women because they’re women."
Lina argues at Uncool on why there cannot be a single definition of feminism and by extension, why there are many ways to be 'feminist'.
On Patriarchy, or Why there cannot be a universal definition of feminism
I don't want to get all postmodern on your asses again, but the day of the metanarrative is (or ought to be) over. It's far better to engage with the language, the key words, and figure it out for yourself. In short, do not be told what feminism is (or patriarchy for that matter!).
Finally and with pleasingly neat contrast, there are also many ways to be unfeminist. Katie gives us a tongue in cheek yet annoyingly accurate top 10 list of all the ways some women manage to make life difficult for the rest of us.
Dollymix's guide to giving the sisterhood a bad name.
"5. Develop an irrational hatred for a woman you've seen in Heat magazine (but never met or spoken to), and make a point of saying "I *HATE* that stupid bitch/cow" whenever you see a picture or article about her, as though she has personally wronged you in some way."
And finally finally, April 18th is Blog for Equal Pay Day. More details here.
Xanthippe
There are many pleasant things about being sterile. There's the children thing, obviously. And the fact that every couple of years someone will pay you £600 to tell your shocking story to the readers of their women's magazine who have obviously forgotten you since they last read about you somewhere else. But my personal favourite is the sense of inner peace and beatific calm that settles upon you when you are able to finally let go of the constant low-level fear that is worrying about the tardy arrival of your period.
No more tearing of hair, no rending asunder of clothing, no praying to gods both major and minor for the damn thing to arrive immediately and deliver you from days spent discussing silicone versus plastic teats on a brownfield estate in Amersham. Or in my case, being forced to watch Loose Women from a TV on the ceiling with my toes pointing skyward as a doctor sets about my business end with a the upholstery attachment from a Dyson. No. You can trip frivolously about town with a sunny disposition and a tinkling laugh (though possibly not in light coloured clothes), safe in the knowledge that whatever else Auntie Flo might be doing, she will assuredly turn up sooner or later.
The downside of this of course is that I have no need to keep any track of even the general kind of time in which this might occur. Which means I no longer know when I'm premenstrual. If I was the kind of woman who raged and snarled, ate black forest gateau with a potato masher and constantly fell off the back of chairs when her period was due, it would be obvious. But I'm like that all the time. The only way I can tell is because my sense of taste, never all that much to begin with, slips quietly but firmly into the twisted bowels of lunacy.
This time, I bought a bag. It is large and it is green. It has one diaphanous maw at the bottom of which you cannot find anything and six tiny pockets that could only be of any use if you're the kind of woman who cannot leave the house without lipstick. It has a collection of woollen pompoms and clattering brass trinkets hanging off it that let friends and colleagues alike know where I am at all times. It is lined with carpet from an episode of George and Mildred. And it is made of moss. I can never go near another goat in my life. Not that I do so on a regular or even incidental basis, but now that I actually can't I find myself disproportionately agitated by this seemingly easily avoided curtailing of narrative possibility.
The time before, I bought a yellow satin prom dress that made me look like a slab of melting butter. And 2,500 ear plugs that I then left on the bus. Despite my almost constant hectoring, the major pharmacutical companies seem curiously reluctant to print DO NOT GO SHOPPING on capsules of Evening Primrose Oil. In league with the retailers, I don't doubt.
Still, better than that time I bought some salad.
57th Carnival of the Feminists - Call for submissions
Armed with nothing but a pair of stout reading glasses and a cauldron full of bubbling pique, I am hosting the 57th Carnival of the Feminists on April 9th. The carnival aims to showcase the best posts by feminist bloggers both established and (especially) new and to promote the work of these bloggers to those who might not otherwise see it. And to annoy Richard Littlejohn.*
I know laydees, I know. Us feminists lead very busy lives putting contraceptives in the water supply, fornicating outside of wedlock with communists and gathering ingredients for spells to turn other people's children into homosexuals. But should you have found the time after hard day destroying the very fabric of decent society to have written about your tireless efforts, I'd like to hear about it.
You can send me submissions through the carnival submission form or at pandemian AT pandemian DOT com until 7th April. There's no theme but the post should have been made since the last carnival, number 56 currently up at Redemption Blues. Ta.
* Strictly speaking that might just be my own general life's goal and not something necessarily endorsed by the carnival organiser.
The minor fall and the major lift
I've never made a mix tape for anyone in my life.
I realise, in some circles, this is as bad as thinking Oliver Letwin has the right idea or looking speculatively at five year olds. I don't know that anyone who likes Morrissey will ever speak to me again. Nevertheless it is true. I am lazy and find merely asking if someone would like to fuck takes much less time and effort. You can always talk about music afterwards and if it turns out he owns more than one Coldplay album well, at least you got laid. Probably just the once though, eh?
Anyway, I appreciate that there may well be subtle pleasures in the actual creation of the tape itself and the whole process is not necessarily about marching inexorably to a fruity outcome. So I made one. For my own educational edification and absolutely not because everyone else is also doing it. And certainly not in order to attract the how's your father, but if your surname is Oldman, Rickman or Bowie I'm happy to open a dialogue on the matter. It gave me pleasure. Also a punctured toe, from dancing over a drawing pin.
It's not the soundtrack of my life because that is an ear-meltingly eye-gougingly face-punchable piece of linguistic titwank if there was ever one and besides which it's inaccurate; my life sounds like Ian Paisley doing the vocals for Aphex Twin and despite tireless efforts I couldn't find any of that on Limewire. But here. 12 songs that fill me up with the sherbet from seventy-two Dib Dabs and then shakes me until I froth. If you feel like taking your knickers off by the end that can only be a bonus.