Well, I'll go to the foot of my stairs...

2006-10-05T00:28:00.000+01:00

I've moved!

Lock stock and barrel to http://witchywoo.wordpress.com/

So readjust your bookmarks/favourites/whatever it is you use to keep coming back here so you can keep on going there.

Oh, and this weeks Wednesday Wow is already up there so if you have a comment to make, best do it there...

2006-10-04T20:45:00.000+01:00

Witchy-woo's Wednesday Wow this week...

...comes from amananta at Screaming Into the Void who asks "how long before they admit it?"

Amananta lists fifty incidents of male violence against women/girls that made the national news in America over the last four weeks and she says:

You can’t pick up a paper without finding at least one story a day about a man killing or raping a woman. And we all know many more stories never make the paper. Why not? Becasue there wouldn’t be room, because they have “more important” things to report on, because it’s so common it isn’t considered newsworthy unless there is some special twist to it.

and:

Men killing and raping women and girls is not news, it is common, everyday life we are supposed to politely overlook...

Ms jared over at sinister girl has also been picking up on this as have Heart and her commenters at Women's Space.

Either the news media don't make the connection between all these 'isolated incidents' of violent misogyny or they deliberately fail to report it - but it hasn't escaped our attention. Women have lived with it since forever and we know. Amanata again:

Men don’t respect women, don’t consider women human, don’t care if women are hurt or killed by other men, will not stand up for us, will not help us. They have done everything but declare open war on us - but a failure to declare war does not mean that we are not living under war-like circumstances.

Somewhere in the back of every woman's mind is the question "is it my turn next?" And the answer.... It might be.

2006-10-03T21:15:00.000+01:00

You will all no doubt recall that last week's Wednesday Wow included Vicky Vengeance from Because Sometimes Feminists Aren't Nice and her attempt to be heard by the Program Director of her local radio station when she pointed out the misogyny in a song that is (was?) often played by a particular DJ.

As a result of voicing her complaint Vicky has been offered a job "doing radical feminism on the radio" by said Program Director.

How fab is that! Congratulations Vicky - you rock!

Go read...

2006-09-30T04:21:00.000+01:00

Thank you Sarah...

...for this!

What kind of a blogger am I?

Your Blogging Type is Confident and Insightful

You've got a ton of brain power, and you leverage it into brilliant blog.
Both creative and logical, you come up with amazing ideas and insights.
A total perfectionist, you find yourself revising and rewriting posts a lot of the time.
You blog for yourself - and you don't care how popular (or unpopular) your blog is!

What's Your Blogging Personality?

Well, hey.... you know why you read here now, don't you? ;)

2006-09-30T02:35:00.000+01:00

This...

...is just brilliant. Made me laugh like a horse but also made me think 'hmmm.... it's not just women, then'.

I've put it in my faves....just as a reminder...

2006-09-27T22:35:00.000+01:00

Witchy-woo's Wednesday Wow returns...

...this week with a couple of wonderful examples of feminist activism.

Firstly, if you haven't already seen it yet, Charliegrrl has posted a report of the Northwest Fems, Object and White Ribbon demonstration against lads mags outside the Labour Party Conference venue in Manchester - with lots of pics!

The account of the interaction between a police officer and a NW Fem is a perfect example of the hypocrisy that attempts to silence women when we speak about misogyny. And doesn't the look on the police officer's face speak volumes - or is it just me?

Secondly, Vicky Vengeance from Sometimes Feminists Aren't Nice has posted her email correspondance with the program director of her local community radio station about the repeated playing of a song that promotes practical women hating through gender based violence.

It's obvious from his response that the program director has only half read Vicky's objection and not only has he totally missed the point but he's attributed arguments to Vicky that she didn't even make. And it's all rounded off nicely with his assurance that he, the DJ and the radio station "have no intention of offending our community". Well, you have offended, dumbass, so do something about it!

What was that about women not being heard....?

2006-09-24T01:36:00.000+01:00

What is this feminism lark, exactly....?

I know I’ve written before about how my mum and I talked about feminism when I was young and that just seeing what was happening to her was demonstration enough, for me, that something needed to change. My mum might have sparked and fed my feminism - but it was my own experience that really fuelled it.

When I was 14 years old and discussing O Level options with my form teacher I told her that I wanted to take Technical Drawing at O Level. I’ve always had an artistic hand and, back then, I wanted to be a cartographer. I seriously wanted to make maps. The boys at my school did TD from the first year onwards while the girls did needlework - although girls did get a turn at woodwork and metalwork in the first and second year while the boys got a turn at needlework and cookery. It was quite a forward thinking school, for it’s time.

My form teacher was also my needlework teacher and I’m crap at needlework – always have been – mainly because of the unrealistic expectations an unskilled primary school teacher had of a shy and lateral thinking eight year old (me!). So I wanted to drop needlework O Level and take TD instead because I knew that, if I was ever to become a cartographer, TD was the place to start and I’d need that piece of paper that said I could do it. My form teacher (who was also my needlework teacher, don’t forget) told me that I couldn’t because:

a) “The boys have already done two years TD and you’ll never catch up.” Um, how did she know I’d “never catch up”? Given that I had an artistic hand that was universally acknowledged plus a strong desire to take the subject I’d have thought it wouldn’t have taken too big a stretch of her imagination to think that I might? Besides, the boys were just starting the O Level syllabus so I wouldn’t have been miles behind anyway.

But this was the doozy:

b) “It’s a boy’s subject. You only want to take it to be with the boys.”

That made me so furious! But how can a 14 year old argue with that - “It’s a boy’s subject”? So only the boys get to be the people who make the maps? Only the boys get to be the people who chart the world; the land, the oceans, the mountains and hills, the cities, the streets? Only the boys get to be the people who make the drawings that let us know where we are in the world?

Not to mention the “You only want to take it to be with the boys.” I mean, what?? Ok, so I was fairly popular - but I’m going to base my whole career options just on “being with the boys”?? I have brothers for crying out loud! I knew from age 4 that boys aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. She knew that.

But she’d said it and her evaluation counted - she was my form teacher. It was so.

And there my personal journey into feminism began. Not by proxy through my mum and not in theory through the books and articles I was reading. My own, personal journey resulting from my own personal, recognised experience of sexism. And, yes, that sexist judgement of me as a girl at age 14 totally altered the course of my life. Not that I’m not ok with my life – I’m extraordinarily pleased with where I am now (though, I have to say, it’s been somewhat hit and miss getting here - more luck than judgement, you know?) – but the same can’t be said for hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of other 14 year old girls across the globe who have had, or are having, far worse sexist assumptions made about their futures and are having to live them.

I’ve been doing some straw poll research recently and, almost universally it seems, those who identify as feminist or pro-feminist, see their feminism as a journey – an integral part of their life and as fluid and organic and ever-growing and developing as they are themselves. And I’m the same.

My loyalty to and passion for women’s human rights springs from my own experience as a woman/girl child/female and every day my experience reinforces that loyalty. I learn something. Every day. Something happens, or I read something or I see something or I talk to someone or I just follow a train of thought to the end of an analysis but I learn something everyday. I also argue the feminist toss – with everyone, really - including other feminists. Their experience is different to mine, their lives are different, their knowledge and attitudes are different to mine – hell, sometimes, their whole idea of feminism is different to mine! It's a really difficult journey to describe.

But I’m no longer 14 years old and my feminism is no longer confined to my own experience. It’s grown a lot and now encompasses and examines the large-scale sexist injustices that women/girls have to live with on a global scale. Not that my journey is over by a long shot – that’ll happen the day I die, I guess – but my feminist vision is a lot bigger than it was when I was 14 and it no longer rests simply with what’s ok , or not ok, for me.

Is it 51 or 52% of the world population that are female? Whatever, it’s far too many individuals to count. But I know one thing for sure – almost every one of that 51/52% of female people are ruled, judged and made to behave in certain, sexist defined ways by patriarchal/racist/capitalist ideas and practices that restrict, confine and/or label them as “other” – always “less than”. Some accept that status, some even seem to welcome it. Some seem to think that by playing along with it they’ll be granted some kind of ‘elevated status’ or that they’ll gain some personal/political power. Some even seem to think they’ve got the upper hand – or some kind of different hand - because they enjoy what the patriarchy says they like. But, I’m thinking, not the majority.

And I’m not about to blame any woman for doing what she has to do to survive. I blame the patriarchy for putting her in that situation in the first place. Just want to make that clear…

And I know that this blog is read by some who feel their feminist journey is just beginning so this post is by way of a warning, really. Because once you start looking, you start to see more, and more…..and yet more of the sexist injustices and patriarchal assumptions and oppressions of women that simply serve to keep things the way they are - the way the patriarchy likes them - for women as people; no matter how they’re dressed up to appear somehow different or appealing to women/girls. Once your feminist journey has started it doesn’t stop. It does become part of who you are. It becomes undeniable.

And, yes, I acknowledge that when I was 14 my journey was all about me. I’m not saying that’s ‘wrong’ – I was young! - I’m just saying that feminism as a political movement has to be about women, not ‘woman’.

For me – now – my feminism is about considering the impact of the toxicity of patriarchal capitalism, in all its forms, on the lives of women everywhere and fighting that. I’m not about to accept the lowly place that patriarchal capitalism affords women without a fight – no matter how many individual women may be seemingly ‘happy’ with their lot within that power structure. It’s toxic for the vast majority of the rest of us. Too many women and girls die as a result of it – actually or figuratively - and that’s what I’m fighting. I realise that, in concentrating on that, I’m leaving out particular feminisms and I make no apologies for that. But I am aware. If you think I’ve missed something then please tell me – if only to make me aware.

But that’s my feminism.

Feminism’s an individual journey and I’m still travelling. I slip up sometimes. I miss things. I let things go unchallenged sometimes. I still make patriarchally influenced judgements, even after all this time – I’m as indoctrinated as the next woman after all - and, yes, it’s a struggle sometimes. It’s by no means ‘comfortable’. I get pissy and fucking angry sometimes. There’s no way I’ve ‘arrived’ and I’m always open to discussion and debate and, hell yeah, a slanging match if needs be (it has been known).

At least, these days, it’s no longer ‘all about me’.

There is a small but growing group of other, like-minded feminist women with whom I identify. We don’t always agree but we always discuss and, yes, I guess we’re all coming from the same place in that we all believe patriarchal capitalism and all its toxicity is bad for women, bad for people – bad for the world. I had no contact with anyone like that when I was 14. Oh... wish that I had....

Incidentally, I was eventually thrown out of needlework O Level by my form teacher who had fought so sexistly for me to stay in her class because TD was a “boys subject” and I only wanted to take it so that I could “be with the boys”. I was crap at needlework. She already knew that. I was an artist. She already knew that, too.

Sexism kills women. Actually and figuratively.

2006-09-16T00:47:00.000+01:00

Ok. Women and age...

...or 'aged' women. However you choose to look at it.

Two things have struck me today. One is the idea that fashion designers have decreed (yeah, ok, some while ago now - it's only just become apparent to me, alright?) that because women (generic) are happy and comfortable wearing jeans and a t-shirt - the most favoured clothing style of the most recent "yeah, so what? fuck you" brigade - then the uniform of "fuckability" has to be one that illustrates, nay, demonstrates youth. Middle aged women wearing the stuff of patriarchally defined fuckability needs to be changed, whether they're saying "fuck you" or not.

Youth, for women under the gaze of the patriarchy, largely means "barely legal (for sex)", "immature" - like, 'not impregnated yet ' - yes? So the comfy uniform for all women has to be made somehow different for the 'young' women and so the designers make the apparent youth - or first time impregnablity - of women implicit by exposing the midriff - the stretch mark area. And hasn't it reached ridiculous proportions!? Jeans and a t-shirt, comfy? Yes. Jeans about to fall down any minute because they're so low slung they have little or nothing to cling on to coupled with a t-shirt that barely takes notice of the weather comfy? No way.

I'd thought the pierced belly button thing was mark enough that a female had yet to be impregnated with the seed of the most studly in her cohort but, no. Apparently, we are all so blind that we cannot see a female's impregnability and we so totally, absolutely need the confirmation that the fashionista's so kindly provide... And I'm not talking evo-psych here so don't even go there - ok?

Why is it different for boys?

Which kind of brings me on to my next point about women and age....

Are men daft?

I ask in good faith - I'm not meaning to be snarky (though I acknowledge that, for some, I'm pressing buttons they might wish didn't appear so obviously) but it seems to me that men (generic), while they're taught by the patriarchy to espouse everything "young" about women/girls physicality, have no concept of the wisdom or humanity of the *older* (i.e. post pubescent) woman.

It's been brought to my attention that, as women grow and mature, we know more and become more knowledable - about ourselves and the ways of the world. Knowledge = real power - yes?. Women who have that kind of power absolutely cannot be acknowledged, acclaimed, adored or glorified. Women who have real power are "bad", therefore women's age is bad because women who have the knowledge that age bestows upon them are 'bad' by definition.

We're all told it's about 'reproduction'. The evo-psychs and pop-psychs frame our (women's) scariness in terms of our capacity to gestate. But it isn't about that, is it? Not all women choose to reproduce. Not all women can reproduce.

These are half framed thoughts that, I think, have a path to tread.

Walk with me?

2006-09-14T12:12:00.000+01:00

Do you ever think about...

...who might actually be reading your blog?

I've never given it much thought, to be honest. I look at my Site Meter stats from time to time (latest search words - 'get your tits out for free') but they don't really tell me much about who is reading. I know that regular commenters are regular readers and I guess that bloggers who have this blog on their blogroll look in from time to time but, apart from that, I don't have a clue.

So imagine my amazement on being informed that Sheila Jeffreys had directed someone this way. Yes. Sheila Jeffreys!

Cripes.

It feels like being told that Catharine MacKinnon reads what you write; or Germaine Greer, or Diana Russell or Catherine Itzin, Shere Hite, Julie Bindel, Kate Cook - or any other feminist thinker I've ever been wowed by.

It's kind of scary.

But it's also incredibly validating.

All the self-identified "sex-pos", 'feminist' men in the world can tell me to fuck off - as one or two already have. The radical feminist community is strong and brave and solid - and if sex-pos, 'feminist' men are telling me to fuck off and Sheila Jeffreys knows this blog exists, well, to my mind, I must be doing something right.

2006-09-13T23:24:00.000+01:00

It's time for Witchy-woo's Wednesday Wow...

...already! Wednesdays come round so fast these days, don't you think? I can barely keep up.

Anyway, my wow this week comes from Molly Saves the Day. With this post, Molly is opening the floor to questions from all those silent blog readers who are interested in but, as yet, uninformed about feminism. And I think that's a brilliant idea.

We all resent those Willfully Ignorant Trolls who expect us to be their 'homework bunny' even though they have no interest in or commitment to learning about feminism and our (rightfully) dismissive messages to them, as Molly points out, could scare off the genuinely curious who have honest questions about feminism:

when what they really need are honest, thorough answers to their queries that reflect current feminist thought AND personal beliefs.

Molly invites us all, as feminists, to join in - both in contributing our thoughts to the questions asked on her blog and by creating a similar space on our own blogs from time to time.

Isn't that a fab idea?

2006-09-11T21:00:00.000+01:00

The five year anniversary of 9/11...

...is being marked by bloggers in a variety of ways. Some simply extending sympathy and goodwill in their rememberance, some recounting where they were and what they were doing when events began to unfold and some offering global political analyses of events, then and since, while others describe their hopes and fears for the future of humankind. It's as you'd expect, really.

Well, mostly...

Dawn Eden is using this anniversary to further her vilification of Planned Parenthood because they offered free services to the women of New York City for two weeks after their city was trashed. Her take seems to be that PP were cynically using the tragedy that had just occurred in an attempt to ensure that

no baby goes unaborted just because their mother lacks the money to take his/her life

Doesn't that strike you as odd? I simply cannot imagine hoards of women rushing to have free terminations prompted by a terrorist attack, can you? I can imagine lots of women needing fresh supplies of lost contraceptives in a hurry or tests for STD's because they're worried about recently discovered symptoms and have no means to pay for those services because of the chaos. Or simply wanting pregnancy tests. But Ms Eden singles out their abortion service as the only reason why PP offered their services for free - and her diatribe against them is her way of marking the loss of 2819 actual lives?

Having read the Planned Parenthood rememberance of that day I know who I'd prefer to have around in the event of an emergency.

Contrast Ms Eden's piece with this one from the Catholic News Agency in which some women made pregnant by rape or incest feel they're being used as a political football in the US abortion debate. According to the piece

studies cited found that approximately 70 percent of pregnant rape victims chose to give birth rather than have abortions, even though the option was made available.

If true*, that kind of gives lie to Ms Eden's impression of women gleefully gathering their skirts and running to New York City's PP clinic for a no-questions-asked termination in the wake of a devastating terrorist attack.

9/11 resulted in the loss of many lives and, according to this site, the estimated number of children left without a parent is 3051. Personally, I find that far more tragic than the fact that free reproductive and sexual health services were made available to women for a fortnight after the devastation of their city and the complete and total disruption of their lives.

I think the accusation of cynicism rests better with Ms Eden, personally.

*I realise that, being a Catholic enterprise, this News Agency will not be operating without bias.

2006-09-08T00:32:00.000+01:00

Cheers!

It's my birthday today and I'm already celebrating in usual style. (hic!)

Every year people ask me "what do you want for your birthday?" and every year my first response is "world peace". Someone actually got me a key-ring that said 'world peace' on it once...
Nice - but not good enough!

I've got my birthday off work and I plan to stay in bed until I want to get up. I shall then open my sackloads of cards and presents whilst eating a leisurely breakfast of... ooooh, I don't know yet...something yummy.

I'm being taken out to eat in the evening so keep a look-out for my pissed post before I think 'oh my god! you can't say that' and delete it. And on Sunday I'm going to Santa Pod - woo-hooo!

I'm quite enjoying getting older, actually. It's not half as scary as it's cracked up to be (for a woman).

2006-09-06T23:15:00.000+01:00

Yeah, I know...

...two posts in one evening!

*tuts*

But there is a reason - I've been tagged by both Ms Jared and Spotted Elephant with questions to answer about my blogging habits. So here goes...

Why do you blog?

Essentially, because I've bored all my friends rigid so now it's the turn of strangers!
*joke* (I hope.)

I blog because I'm a radical feminist and, because we're few and far between out there in the real world, it's a lonely place to be. Seriously. I know that anyone would think we were on the verge of revolution when you hear/read all the hysterical venom directed our way but the truth of it is we're very, very small in number. We just work hard and what we have to say is BIG. I blog because it connects me with other radfems around the world who genuinely know where I'm coming from so I feel less isolated. I am part of the radfem blogging community - part of a movement - and I know I'm not alone.

How long have you been blogging?

Wow! Since February! Doesn't time fly.

Self portrait

Note the glass of wine? And I do have a cigarette in the other.

Why do readers read your blog?

I'm not sure. Some readers have met me in real life and that tends to cement positive connections made on the internet - I've made some ridiculously good real life friends through blogging and boards and suchlike. And the radfem blogging community is solid and supportive. Others, though - those stray commenters who turn up out of nowhere and stay - I really don't know. simply wondered says "your shit is good". Maybe that's why.

What was the last search phrase someone used to get to your site?

"underwear vest bra comfortable PE -buy -sell -shop" Seriously! It's a strange world.

The most frequent search phrase that leads people to the foot of my stairs is "Hugh Heffner birthday".

Which of your entries unjustly gets too little attention?

None. I think they all get the attention they deserve.

Your current favorite blog:

I think that's a really unfair question! There are so many excellent blogs written with intelligence, wit, passion, humour and honesty it's too difficult to pick just one. But if I had to, it'd be a toss-up between Twisty and ginmar.
Oh, and I so miss Kaka.

What blog did you read most recently?

Trash Talks Back

Which feeds do you subscribe to?

Yep, I've seen them mentioned. Do I know what they are or how they work? Nope.

What four blogs are you tagging with this meme, and why?

Laurelin in the Rain
reSISTERance
I'm not a feminist but...
Ethically speaking

because they're all women 'from the internet' who I've actually met and consider as friends.

2006-09-06T21:50:00.000+01:00

Witchy-woo's Wednesday Wow...

...was generated by Pippi's invitation to Blog Against Classism. The whole idea was brilliant. It produced excellent posts that covered classism from a variety of angles and perspectives. Every single one of them taught me something and made me think in ways I hadn't done before.

So, thank you, Pippi, for putting that out here and thank you to everyone who posted - all the posts would be 'wow's' in a usual week but this week they've all come at once and they've certainly diverted my gaze away from my navel! If you haven't read them yet I urge you to check out Villa Villekulla for the links.

My pick comes from Trash Talks Back. Written with urgency and conviction, TNTrash's post points to what needs to be done to erradicate classism from feminism. Just to get you started...

I hear women of color tell me, and more radically-political white women, too that feminism has become "whitewashed," that feminism promotes an "ivory-tower" mentality, it's hidden and confined in academia, and is crafted purely out of theory and not within the grasp of those working-class women of color, without much regard for how things would play out in "material reality."

...and...

I feel that a shortcoming among the women's movement is it's acceptance of the current governmental/electoral system and willingness to spend lots and lots and lots of resources attempting to "work" said system, or use "proper channels" to strive for some sort of abstract "equality" in a world system where that "equality" CANNOT exist.

...and...

It seems to me that if this feminism stuff is going to work, we have to be able to come together and agree on a more radical politics, on formulating a politics where we are all first fully human. We have to understand that it's not a free "choice" that makes us "unequal" to men.

...and...

What we fail to see is where our practice, daily, illustrates how classism has eaten away at feminism as activism and the women's liberation movement as a whole.

Oh, the whole thing is fab. Trust me, go read.

2006-09-04T23:50:00.000+01:00

Blogging against classism...

...as inspired by Pippi of Villa Villekulla.

Pippi said:

I will blog against classism. I want to write about my experiences and thoughts on poverty, class and classism. Please join me by also writing a post on the day.

My post.

I grew up in relative poverty as I’ve described here. My father was a poorly paid psychiatric nurse with a penchant for whisky and women. He wouldn’t allow my mother to work so, with four children and their mother to support plus his ‘hobbies’ to pursue, there really wasn’t enough money to go round.

There are commonalities between both sets of my grandparents. Both my grandfathers were educated, professional men – middle class, I suppose - who married working class, uneducated women.

My maternal grandfather was a doctor in General Practice. He was held in very high regard by the community who had genuine respect and love for him. My mother’s family were well off. The family’s social standing in the community remained long after my grandfather’s death just before world war 2. Their means of support, however, became extremely tenuous under the nazi occupation of France.

My paternal grandfather was a professor of linguistics at an educational establishment in Liverpool. He was also an alcoholic who, come payday, would head straight to the pub and blow a whole month’s salary on drinking himself into a stupor. Sometimes, my paternal grandmother would send my father and his three brothers out to scour the Liverpool pubs when they were only little in an attempt to prevent him from spending all the money. This wasn’t always successful.

So both my parents grew up as middle class poor.

This was translated into working class poor when they met, married and had children. While psychiatric nursing isn’t considered a typical working class occupation, the fact that it was – and still is – so poorly paid determined that my parents didn’t own property. We lived in a council house in a street full of council houses. We didn’t have a car or a TV and I can remember the excitement of getting our first fridge on hire purchase when I was about ten years old. We were obviously ‘poor’ – not the poorest in the street but more poor than the families of the lorry drivers and foundry workers; the obviously ‘working class’ who made up the other residents in the street.

We may have lived in relative poverty but my mother, with the approval of my father, attempted to maintain the values and behaviours she had grown up with and my parents shared the belief that education is key. Ours was the only house in the street that was full of books. From art to poetry, science to architecture, the classics to contemporary fiction, books were everywhere and, as children, we were encouraged to read. We didn’t have TV but we had radio – usually tuned to the Third Programme while my mum listened to classical music and opera during the day and the Home Service when we came back from school. We listened to plays both ancient and modern, concerts and comedies and, of course, Children’s Hour with ‘Uncle Mac’.

Both my parents were Socialists and neither could be described as snobbish. I think my father thought of himself as a working class hero in that he used the experience of poverty of many of his patients in his analysis of their illness when in discussion with their psychiatrists and when interviewed by the media. (My father was jointly responsible for the day to day running of a unit that was revolutionising the treatment of schizophrenia. He was interviewed about it several times by various TV networks around the world and features were written about both him and the unit in the UK broadsheets.) My mother, having experienced nazi oppression during the war, was vehemently against any and all oppression of the human spirit. She saw “the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer” as the vilest oppression – a reduction in opportunities for the many for the comfort and benefit of the few.

I have the feeling that they might have come across as fairly aloof to our neighbours but this would’ve been purely due to a lack of shared interests rather than any delusions of grandeur. My mum didn’t play bingo and detested ‘gossip’, my dad didn’t keep pigeons or go shooting rabbits. As a family, we were liked well enough but considered a bit ‘odd’. Not having a TV meant we couldn’t relate to the conversations and catch phrases that became part of popular culture. We went to France for our holidays (paid for by my maternal grandmother and always without my father) and this was considered strange in a street where most children went to Butlins - if they had a holiday at all – with both their parents.

As children our parents taught us not to use the colloquialisms that were popular in our street and we were always called on bad grammar or pronunciation. My dad always said “If you can’t speak English properly you’ll never be able to read or write it properly either.” I don’t know how right he was with that but all of us learned to read very quickly and we all read – everything we could get our hands on – and so our horizons were broadened and we learned more. We were clever kids and that showed in our performance at school. I’ve since been told by a contemporary at that time that, because of the marked differences between our family and the rest of the street, we were thought of as “posh”.

But we were as poor as church mice. We had nothing. I’ve said before in the post about my mother that she made all our clothes apart from our underwear – I was about nine or ten years old before I had anything new made specially for me; prior to that I wore the much repaired things my sister had grown out of. We were well fed because my mother could make a meal out of just about anything – her priorities were a) make sure the rent’s paid and b) make sure the children eat properly. We had no toys to speak of. I always had some paints or crayons because I had a talent for painting and drawing but I used to use the least bloody sheets of paper that the butcher wrapped the meat in to draw on. When I’d exhausted those I was allowed to draw, in pencil, on the tiling around the fireplace till the next week when the butcher’s van came round again. I quickly understood that my artwork around the fireplace wasn’t meant for keeping! Generally, my siblings and I invented games to play with one another.

Our house was shambolic by comparison to those of most of our friends in the street. My mum kept it spotless but there were no carpets anywhere – lino downstairs, bare boards upstairs – a fireplace in every room but a fire was only ever lit in the living room during the winter; second hand furniture as old as the hills and already worn out before it became ours; no little niceties anywhere at all. Everything was threadbare.

We were poor amongst the poor. Not the poorest in the street but we definitely lived in poverty: and yet we were thought of as “posh” because of the differences in values and behaviour that my mother brought with her from bourgeois France and my father’s unshakeable faith in education and learning that had been passed on to him by his own father in his more sober moments. We were as much of an enigma to friends who lived in the bona fide “posh” part of the village for the same reasons – a father who worked as a medical professional, a mother who preferred opera to bingo, clever, well spoken children – all the signs of middle class but we obviously had no money because we lived in a council house. I guess we didn’t really ‘fit in’ anywhere.

This background of a childhood where stereotypical thinking around perceived ‘Class’ and its relationship to observed (or hidden) codifiers meant that the concept of ‘Class’ confused me for a long time. I didn’t understand how it could be applied to lives led by individuals when the signifiers can be so blurred. It wasn’t until I read Marx in my early twenties that the political realities of Class clicked in my brain.

Is it human nature to make judgements about people and put them into boxes according to pre-conceived, stereotypical notions? Because that’s how I grew up – being moved from one box to another depending on what the person doing the judging saw. The poverty or the culture. The hand-me-downs or my knowledge of the Impressionists. The poor or the "posh". All notions of social class that, once I’d read Marx's analysis, had their meaninglessness confirmed. It seemed as though the concept of social class was a red herring designed to distract the oppressed from their own oppression and keep them striving to do “better” for themselves and, in so doing, make more money for the bosses. Emphasis on social class meant distraction from political class and the imbalance of power relations.

I tend not to make judgements about people on how they live. People’s lives are complicated and it can never be said that because someone’s on benefits they’re lazy or that because they’re wealthy they work hard. It’s people’s actions in conjunction with what they say that informs me. Marxist analysis of Class is the one that most resonates with me but, in any discussion of Class, I always maintain that I belong in Class Woman.

2006-09-03T22:07:00.000+01:00

Random observations during half an hour...

...in a shopping mall on a Sunday afternoon.

Small girl - six, maybe seven years old - wearing white, strappy sandals with thin high heels. Not quite stiletto's, but almost. I don't understand why shoes like that are even made for children...

Big bloke walking about wearing a t-shirt that said YOUTRYTOREADTHISWHILEICHECKOUTYOURTITS. Very funny. Ha ha. I'd have poked his bloody eyes out if my companion hadn't noticed my fury and hurried me along. That'd teach him.

Trendy sports shop selling clothes and basic equipment. Lots of sporty type pictures and posters all over the place - pictures of men swinging golf clubs, pictures of men looking strong and in control in their trendy sports vests looking directly at the camera, pictures of men in action - kicking balls, running about - you know the kind of thing. One picture of a woman. A tennis player facing away. Long plait down her back, racquet in one hand and with the other she's lifting the skirt of her tennis dress to show us all her teeny tiny underwear barely covering her bottom.

Half an hour...

2006-09-02T02:34:00.000+01:00

Witchy-woo is re-defining herself...

...in the wake of recent experiences in the 'blogosphere'.

Seems to me that 'feminism' as a grassroots political concept that had the wellbeing of all women in mind has been corrupted by the patriarchy. Seems to me that, these days, if you have a vulva that kinda must make you a feminist, somehow. Seems to me that having a vulva kinda means you have to make it perform for the guys, somehow - and that, somehow, makes you a feminist, yunno?

Whether you're selling it, parading it, sliding down a pole with it, having it abused, shat on, spat on, beaten or abused, made 'less than', stripped, dressed in lace and 'fineries', wanked over, lied about, drooled over or stalked - there are elements of 'feminism' that try to make all/any of that kind of 'ok'.

Well, not this 'feminist'.

If this is what feminism has become - some kind of huge 'yay! it doesn't matter what happens to other women as long as the world/my man/any men/dig me and I can big up my own, individual sexual predelictions/means of survival/act out of my own abuse/bollocks to any other woman who doesn't hold the same patriarchally capitalist defined values as me' you can count me out. I'm not playing.

So much hard work has been done by so many women to make women, globally, not 'less than' and yet the patrirarchy seems to have succeeded in imprinting it's own values on so many. I wonder why.......seriously, I so wonder why.

But that's neither here nor there. The fact is that feminism, as a political movement, has been hijacked by the dominant ideolgy. We have 'raunch culture' - women supposedly expressing their 'sexual' selves - after all, what are women if not 'sex' as defined by the patriarchy?. Funny how women's innate desires about faux lesbianism absolutely and accurately reflect the supposed fantasies of men, isn't it? [/sarcasm] At the same time we have 90% of prostitutes wanting NOT to be prostitutes (well, would you? Think about it for 10 seconds...), we have women tortured and abused in the making of pornography aimed to get people (men) 'off', and we have women defending the 'rights' of other women to accept their lot as some kind of sex slave to the sweaty, stinking cock of the patriarchy. Other women's lives, seemingly, are expendable to some 'feminists'.

And that's 'feminism'?

Bolleaux.

This feminist, this woman who is deeply concerned about the lives of women and girls - globally - does not agree that all this is undertaken in the humanitarian interests of women. This is NOT feminism, from where I sit. This has nothing to do with female emancipation or equality. This is just more of the same old, same old and I, for one, am not buying it. I will not depend on the patriarchy for my survival, nor that of my daughter nor any other person with a vulva.

Feminism is now led by the nose by patriartchy?

From now on, I'm to be described as a Womanist.

I realise I may be (mis?)appropriating a woman of colour term - that hasn't escaped my notice. It was introduced to me as 'an ancient term for a woman who cared about women'.

But that's what I am! A womanist - I am a woman who cares about women. The patriarchy (and all it's sychophants) can go fuck itself - I am a womanist and I'm proud of it. I care about the survival and progression of women and I'm proud of it. I'm proud of women. I'm proud to be a woman.I am proud of my re-definition.

2006-08-30T23:12:00.000+01:00

Witchy-woo has been wowed...

...by a few things this week - not least of which is the generosity of spirit of those who read this blog!

After my last, truly cranky, ill-tempered and ranty post - which I decided to leave up in the interests of 'warts and all' honesty - all I've had in response to my vent is acknowledgement, understanding and support with some affection an appreciation thrown in!. Wowed? 'Amazed' only just covers it...

Witchy-woo has wonderful readers.

But this week's Wednesday Wow is a piece in response to the news about the NHS 'postcode lottery' for women wanting IVF. reSISTERance makes some critical observations about the hetero-normative and patriarchially judgemental thinking around this issue which is in the news because of recommendations made by the British Fertility Society who say there is "a wide disparity" on the social criteria used for acceptance on to an NHS programme of treatment.

v says:

Ultimately I can't help thinking that it all ties into this one simple and warped idea, that a woman must have both a man and a baby to have achieved her role as Woman - anything else marks her as failure.

It's an excellent post - please read.

2006-08-28T01:28:00.000+01:00

I’m fed up...

I’m fed up with continually having to explain that, because I have breasts, I’m not ‘simply entertainment’. I’m fed up with having to explain that, because I have breasts, I am somehow made the ‘other’. I’m fed up with having to explain that my breasts feel pain and that the ‘otherness’ of that pain makes it somehow ‘less than’ that of the testiculared variety of human being. (According to MS Word, testiculared is a non-word. Hey, peeps, I just invented it. Live with it

I’m fed up with being made voiceless by those millions who belong to the “it’s only harmless fun” throng. Who has the fun and who isn’t harmed are my questions – but no-one seems to hear them, let alone voice an opinion.

I’m fed up with being classed as a sexless, humourless feminazi beeatch. But I can live with that, considering where it comes from.

I’m fed up with having to hear all the pro-pornstitution arguments defended by so-called feminists beginning with ‘I’.

You?

What makes ‘you’ more important?

You’re a feminist, right? You care about your sisters, right?

Do you actually see your sisters?

And I’m not talking in individualistic terms here, I’m talking ‘Class’.

I’m fed up with women who call themselves ‘feminists’ simply because it’s trendy or they need a fucking label for their whacky money-making techniques.

I’m fed up with internetty cognisant Class Woman making it kind of “ok” for the results of their actions; making it “ok” for what happens to the rest of us. IT ISN’T FUCKING “OK”, RIGHT??? Oh, but it is….as long as you’re making a quick buck, right?

That isn’t feminism. That's pandering to patriarchal capitalism, surely?

I’m fed up of trying to explain to some women that our lives are so much bigger than patriarchy defines them.

And they call themselves feminists? They want me to put my daughter in their hands?

Yay the radicals, as far as I'm concerned.

Give me a woman with vision…..anyone?

2006-08-25T01:51:00.000+01:00

simply wondered suggested it...

...and here it is. Witchy-Woo's one off Thursday Thrill*.

I love ms jared anyway. I love the way I feel like I'm eavesdropping on her conversations with her mum and yet I'm kind of included in them at the same time. I love the openness and 'familiarity' of her blog. I love her cats and I love the way she loves her cats. I'm a huge jared fan!

But this.... this has pulled me out of the slough of despond. This has made me yell "hell, yeah!" at my screen. This has put me firmly back on track. This is sisterhood in action and I love it. It's thrilled me!

*ok...so it's actually Friday. It's still my Thursday, ok?

2006-08-23T22:55:00.000+01:00

There's no Wednesday Wow this week...

...because, like amananta, "I'm having a less than stellar day. "

That's not to say there aren't some fab posts out there because there are. Ginger has written an account of some really creepy racial objectification of women that she witnessed whilst on a night out and I just found Women/Womyn/Wimmin at Linguistic Concerns which I found a very interesting and thought provoking post.

But no Wow - mainly because I'm not feeling 'wowable'. I feel tired and jaded and when I read amananta's first line...

Is it okay to say “I need help, I’m drowning”?

...it resonated with me. I commented there about the need to take time out and look after yourself and I've realised I really should take my own advice.

Nothing much will change if I take a day off - the world won't even notice - so, no Wow this week.

2006-08-17T02:16:00.000+01:00

Witchy-Woo's Wednesday Wow is about...

...communication, this week. There seems to be so much discommunication amongst people who say they have the best interests of all women at heart.

I'm looking antiprincess's post of 11 August.

Just because women need stuff - ordinary, everyday stuff that everyone needs, it's ok to prostitute ourselves because we're women....and that's our worth? We become 'sex' because we need the same stuff as everyone else?

As Anti-P says

"Regardless of how I feel about prostitution in the abstract, right this very minute some vast uncountable number of wretched and miserable prostitutes wish they could get into some other line of work. Right now, some vast uncountable number of women and girls are being sold into sexual slavery all over the world.

That's awful, if it's true - and I believe it to be true. I'd love to do something about that. I'd feel good about that - like I really helped women. I would love to put some time and money into helping them. I'd feel righteous and proud and good about myself if I did that.

But spot the feminist confusion so beloved of the patriarchy...

How you fuck, or whom you fuck, or whether you even fuck at all, does not make you superior to me.

And all I have to say about that is: everyone fucks. How you fuck, or whom you fuck, or whether you even fuck at all - and why you fuck (mine) - does not make anyone 'superior' but, all too often these days, is designed, dictated and designated by the patriarchy to make someone less than you are.

The comments are fab and telling - please, go read.

2006-08-09T22:02:00.000+01:00

Witchy-Woo's Wednedsay Wow...

...this week is a total scream - in more ways than one. Dr Socks at Reclusive Leftist is in a bad mood because of the stupidity of men as illustrated by quotes from letter writers at Salon about female pubic waxing.

Her post is pertinent in itself and has inspired some fabulous comments from Manxome and Dr Socks herself. There are eight comments there at the time of writing this - undoubtedly there will be more before too long.

2006-08-08T21:57:00.000+01:00

Can anyone explain to me...

...why male athletes in most track events wear a vest and shorts and female athletes wear a bra top and tiny little knickers - for the same events?

Seriously, I can't think of a reasonable explanation.

We were watching the athletics this evening (well...it was on...) and I voiced this question to my companions.

"Maybe it's something to do with aerodynamics? Perhaps there's more speed to be gained from running with more skin exposed?" was suggested. I dismissed that one - after all, if there was any advantage to be had from running with more skin exposed you can bet your bippy that's how the men would be dressed too.

I'd like to know if there is a sport-related reason or if it's just another case of sexing-up and dumbing-down anything women do for the entertainment of the male gaze. So, if anyone can explain to me why men get to compete in their PE kit while women have to do it in their underwear, please enlighten me.

2006-08-04T15:10:00.000+01:00

I've been tagged...

...by my dear friend Spotted Elephant for the practically impossible book meme.

I have to choose one book - yes, just one - to answer each of nine questions about books and me. How impossible is that! I'm a voracious reader - something that I attribute to the fact that I grew up in a household without TV. My siblings and I had the wonderful world of radio and books, books and more books to stimulate our imaginations and provide our escape routes. This is going to be so hard!

But here goes....

1.One book that changed your life?
Just about every book I've ever read has done that in one way or another but the one that immediately springs to mind is Illusions by Richard Bach. I was given a copy of this book by a close friend at a time when I was deeply troubled and unhappy. Nothing was said; just "here's a good little read for you" - and it is a very little read but it had a huge impact on me. It put me back in touch with parts of myself I'd all but forgotten about. It put me back on course.
I still read it whenever I'm emotionally/spiritually depleted by all the everyday shit that happens and I've given it to many of my friends whenever I've had the thought "s/he could probably do with reading Illusions".

2. One book you have read more than once?
Apart from Illusions? Letters from a War Zone by Andrea Dworkin. I love the way Andrea writes. I love her passion and her humanity. I love her outrage and her courage. I love the way her words reinforce me. This book, in particular, starkly reminds me of everything I'm fighting for.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?
The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles because I'm guessing I'll be singing a fair bit while I'm making myself comfortable, fighting my fears and waiting for that rescue plane to spot me. If it doesn't turn up for ages I'm going to need to be reminded of songs I know because I'll get bored singing my all time half a dozen favourites for months on end.

4. One book that made you laugh?
Rotary Spokes by Fiona Cooper made me laugh. It also made me cry. Bloody good book.

5. One book that made you cry?
Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keanally. The capacity for cruelty, courage and kindness of the human spirit had me in tears of despair and tears of joy. Reading that book completely exhausted me.

6. One book you wish had been written?
The one I have in my head! You never know... maybe one day....

7. One book you wish had never had been written?
Probably the Bible. I don't mean to offend anyone with this but I wish the original records hadn't been manipulated and re-jigged to suit those in power at the time to produce the Bible as we know it because, in my opinion, that's caused more long-term harm to humanity than good.

8. One book you are currently reading?
One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest (again) by Ken Kesey. Just a fab book.

9. One book you have been meaning to read?
I've had A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers on my bookshelf for about eight years. I bought it solely because of the title. Maybe I'll take it with me next time I go on holiday...

10. Now tag five people. I tag:
Laurelin
ReSISTERance
Alyx
Laura
Elaina

Phew! Did it!

2006-08-02T22:04:00.000+01:00

Witchy-Woo's Wednesday Wow...

...comes from Screaming into the Void and is a few days old now. Amananta not only writes so well but she does an inordinate amount of work too.

Her post "I love being challenged like this" is a thoroughly researched piece of writing with a ton of links that illustrate her point beyond argument. And they really need to be read. Anyone who can manage to read them all in one go deserves a prize. I couldn't do it! But I'm aware that amananta had to wade through all that poo, and more, in order to write that post - another reason for this being my Wednesday Wow.

amananta - I salute you!

2006-08-01T22:51:00.000+01:00

What exactly is...

...'freedom of speech' anyway? Wikipedia, that completely impartial and revered oracle [/sarcasm], says:

Freedom of speech is the concept of being able to speak freely without censorship.

Hmmm. Ok. That comes pretty close to what I've always thought of as freedom of speech - being allowed to say what you think without fear of recrimination or retribution. The Wikipedia entry goes on to state:

The synonymous term freedom of expression is sometimes preferred, since the right is not confined to verbal speech but is understood to protect any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used.

and:

In practice, the right to freedom of speech is not absolute in any country, although the degree of freedom varies greatly.

I wonder whether the right to absolute freedom of expression would be a healthy thing for humans. It's a fine idea, in principle, don't you think - total freedom of expression for everyone; no come backs, no accountability, no responsibility? Mainstream pornographers obviously think it's a fine idea in practice because that's how they defend their product - even though a product directing the same level of venom as is directed at women by pornography would be universally reviled as hate speech if it were to be directed at any other group, anywhere.

If pornography is "freedom of expression" I wonder what "information and ideas" it's seeking to impart... But, anyway... according to pornographers, their right to express hate speech against women has to be protected at all costs. After all, there's a lot of money to be made from whipping up latent misogyny and reinforcing it through male orgasm and, once you've got 'em hooked, you gotta keep 'em coming back for more otherwise your profit margins slump and you find you no longer have an outlet for the expression of your 'information and ideas'.

No need to worry. There are so many apparently willing consumers of the pornographers' products it seems they'll never run out of business; it seems the freedom of their 'expression' - women hating 'speech' written with - on - the bodies and lives of women - needs no protection. Yet the pornographers and the consumers of their product make such a stampy-footy, waah-ha-ha whenever any criticism of their product is made, whenever the slightest voice of dissent is heard. I wonder why? They believe in 'freedom of speech', don't they?

Freedom of speech. Being able to speak freely without censorship.

If pornographers and the consumers of their product believe in freedom of speech and expression then, surely, that's a universal - what applies to them must, by definition, apply to everyone? Or have I misunderstood? Does freedom of expression only apply to pornographers and the consumers of their product and any voice of dissent is not free and must be silenced?

A little, tiny website - The No Porn Pledge - has been hacked by consumers of pornography. It's a teeny weeny site where people can go and simply pledge not to use pornography. The site doesn't advocate censorship or, indeed, any kind of action against pornography, pornographers or the consumers of pornography - it's completely apolitical. It simply exists so that people can make public their avowal not to use pornography in their lives - for themselves, for whatever reason - and yet it has been deemed fit for invasion, partial destruction and pornographic intrusion by a group of pornography aficionados. Exactly who is censoring who, here?

So what, excactly, is 'free speech' again? Does it stop at the assumed 'rights' of pornographers to peddle sexualised misogyny and the actions of the bully-boys who belong to the pornographers' club? According to them, it would seem so. The 'freedom of speech' of pornographers effectively silences women - those used both in its making and its consumption - and the bully-boys act in defence of the 'rights' of pornographers and attempt to stifle even a tiny voice of dissent.

'Free' speech? Only applies, apparently, if you agree with the money-making misogynists. If you think for yourself - forget it.

2006-07-26T11:58:00.000+01:00

For Witchy-woo's Wedneday Wow this week...

...I am just loving this.

No comment or opinion - I'm just loving it.

2006-07-20T22:44:00.000+01:00

The wonder of modern science...

...means that we're well on the way to being able to produce sperm (don't you just love that dinky little diagram?) with little or no physiological involvement from men.

The current journalistic angle seems to favour the 'breakthrough for infertile couples' approach - which is fine - anything that helps has got to be good. But, I have to say, that wasn't my first thought. My first thought was "yay! real choice for women at last!" I mean, you decide to have a baby, you get inseminated with the artificial sperm and you have your child. No need to bother with men at all! No 'getting to know you' anxieties. No messy stuff. No false promises to share the childcare so you can still have some semblance of a life. None of the pain of 'staying together for the sake of the children' when it all goes horribly wrong and no vicious and costly residence and contact battles with some bloke whose only motivation is to 'make you pay' for 'trapping' him into this situation in the first place by using the fragile sensibilities of your offspring.

How fab is that?

If women had independent access to a procedure like this - if it became the norm - then even miserable old sods like Michael Buerk wouldn't be able to moan about men just being "sperm doners" because men really would be largely irelevant. It'd have a huge impact on the dynamics of gender relations - can you imagine it? How free would women be... free enough to be whole, human people. Free enough to be taken seriously. Imagine that.

Men, on the other hand, would probably experience a huge deepening of their current identity crisis. I mean, crikey, what's the point of having all this privilege if it actually gets them diddly squat in the great scheme of things? Gods. They might even have to start recognising and dealing with their bogus entitlement in ways that really go against the grain if they're to carve out a role for themselves in a world where women have real control of their own fertility. No more of that ridiculous idea of 'ownership' of women, no more laying down the law about what we can and can't do with our own selves, no more bullying 'boss-man' behaviour.

Women would have increased control of their own lives and men would lose control of women's lives. I do hope it catches on.

*Disclaimer* It's very, very hot here tonight (still 24 degrees at 10.00pm) and today, though Thursday, is my Friday so I'm feeling fanciful. This post is somewhat tongue in cheek and I am not a scientist.

2006-07-19T12:10:00.000+01:00

There was a programme...

...on BBC1 last night called 'Angry Wimmin'. It was about the rise and fall of radical feminism in the UK in the 1970's and a kind of 'where are you now?' for the leading figures in the movement at the time. It did my heart good to see all the old footage and all the old faces - literally old; those women are in their 50's and 60's now.

Back in the day, when they were young, they broke away from the political Left where, as feminists, their arguments for the liberation of women were brushed aside with words to the effect of "Yes, yes, yes. We'll deal with all that when the real battle's been won" by the men who, of course, were in charge and organising the agenda. The women were expected to make the tea and sandwiches, mind the children and be sexually available to the men. Socialist feminism didn't appear to further their liberation at all while men were in charge.

Having identified that the main oppression faced by women didn't originate with capitalism but with patriarchy and men, they formed their own movement and a large part of the programme focused on the radical separatists. Some women tried to erradicate males from their lives altogether. They set up women only houses where even boy children weren't allowed. One woman explained how her brother (whom she loved very much) came to visit her with his girlfriend and he had to sit outside in the car while his sister and his girlfriend were indoors chatting. Another woman explained how she left her children with their father to join an all women house. She had both a girl child and a boy child but couldn't separate them by taking only her daughter with her so she left them both; such was the strength of her conviction that women only spaces were the key to the liberation of all women that she left her children in order to achieve her aim.

And they wore comfy clothes, these women. And shoes they could run in. Gone were the strict diktats of the fashion industry. Gone were any notions of having to buy beauty products in order to try to make oneself attractive to men. Nope, there was none of that for them. They were trying to find out who they could be as just themselves without the negative and negating influence patriarchy and men have on women and their lives. They were exploring their potential as women.

But it was all pretty fair. If you couldn't have a boy child in an all women house, nor could you have a male cat. This movement was totally female oriented. Totally.

The programme lingered a while with political lesbianism but not in a lascivious way - nor did it examine the issues of political lesbianism too closely. I guess that's for another programme... But the feeling was clear - all women for women: and men are the enemy. Male violence against women was identified as the major tool of patriarchal oppression - domestic violence, sexual violence, prostitution and pornography - male violence, or the threat of violence, against women was (is?) the major tool that curtails our lives, keeps us frightened of and dependent upon men; keeps us powerless. Action soon followed. Women marched against rape in the streets, set fire to sex shops, protested in numbers against the various ways men blatantly oppress women. They were loud and they were angry, they were strong and they were united. They were a force to be reckoned with.

Someone from WAVAW (Women Against Violence Against Women) in London said about how they'd have a meeting on Wednesday nights where they'd bring stuff they'd seen that week - a new strip club or sex shop, some sexist advertising maybe - and by Friday they had an action ready and would go along to wherever it was and cause mayhem. They were protesting against patriarchy's appraisal of 'women's place' and how that impacted on all women, everywhere. Nowhere at all did any of them blame another woman for her 'complicity' in the oppression of women. Academic radical feminist analysis at the time placed responsibility for the oppression of women fairly and squarely on patriarchial systems of oppression. It still does. Radical feminists did not - and still don't - point the finger at other women.

The programme showed lots of the old feminist slogans and almost all of them still ring true today but the one that gets me every time is "NO MAN HAS THE RIGHT".

You can see how the patriarchal establishment became worried. These women were seriously challenging the status quo and 'ordinary' women were agreeing with them! 'Ordinary' women were becoming politicised, starting to question things, objecting to the way they were marginalised by society, struggling out of the boxes they'd been forced into as girls by the expectations of men. 'Ordinary' women were recognising their own oppression and that of women everywhere. There was a potential uprising happening and, such was the rising level of feminist consciousness - sisterhood, if you like - the establishment was unsure which way to turn but, obviously, this whole movement had to be squashed somehow.

Unfortunately, the establishment didn't have to lift a finger. Feminism ate itself. Passionate (compassionate?) feminism was splintered by identity feminism. Where those women had been fighting for the generic liberation of women the movement was splintered when issues other than common genitalia were introduced.

Maybe the initial movement was too small. It didn't take into account the particular oppressions faced by disabled women, black women, ethnic minority women, lesbian disabled black women, vegetarian women, vegan women, women against the bomb, etc. But I don't think it could have. I believe those women who marched and torched and ripped and shouted and yelled and left their children and their families etc. were fighting for the basic liberation of all women and, as a result, were unable to specify the particular interests of those who felt marginalised by the fight. I think they were fighting for the liberation of women as a Class and I think that, without the rise of identity feminism, they'd have achieved more for women than they were able to at the time. The establishment, after all, was running scared.

The GLC (Greater London Council) under the leadership of Ken Livingstone (bless his heart, I'm absolutely sure his intentions were honourable) set up a Women's Committee as a direct result of the actions of WAVAW and Angry Wimmin and they did lots of good work. For example; it was discovered that women travelling on London Transport did feel scared and vulnerable when faced with endless adverts that depicted their physiology as sexually titillating and available to men so a Code of Practice was introduced that went some way to eliminate sexist advertising on the buses and tube in London. The Women's Committee had a funding budget for women's projects - most of which went into supporting childcare schemes but, even so, this free'd many women from 24 hour childcare duties and enabled them to become participating members of society.

Some of these ideas caught on to some extent. National Government has a Minister for Women (albeit a shared post these days). My local (Labour) council had a Women's Officer in the 80's while they were in power. 'Women's issues' were taken more seriously as a result of those angry wimmin. But when the funding for 'women's issues' was withdrawn the avenue for any political change was closed.

But they helped, those angry wimmin. We have Refuges for women escaping domestic violence and sexual trafficking and we have Rape Crisis Centres for women who have experienced sexual violence. Both hugely under-funded but at least we now have a network of organisations to mop up the damage done after male violence against women. Progress, of sorts.

I think there are lessons to be learned from those Angry Wimmin and what happened to their passion. They just cared about women and the shit that happens to us - they didn't give a flying fuck about what the establishment thought about them, they just wanted the patriarchal oppression of women to end - but their movement was destroyed by the blinkeredness of factions. It made me think. It made me think, in particular about how and why women as a Class are so easily separated from one another when we're ostensibly fighting for one another. It made me wonder whether we're still caught in the faction motivated but media driven backlash of identity feminism. Oh yes, the media quickly caught on to the political divisions within feminism - and they still wheel them out as 'news', even now.

It even made me wonder about 'feminist' as a label. 'Feminist', for me, is about fighting for women's freedom from patriarchal oppression. For me, the freedom for an individual woman to lapdance for some bloke comes way after the freedom of all women from the after effects of that action. I'm not an identity feminist, in spite of all my 'ism's', and I'm aware that what I do impacts on the lives of other women. Women as a Class matter to me so it's women as a Class first, for me. I can't be pro-pornography or pro-prostitution because i) I recognise the harm often (usually?) done to the individual and ii) I recognise the harm done to women as a Class by both pornography and prostitution. As a result, I can't defend them - at all. Ever. I have no feminist tools that enable me to say "this is good for women as a Class". Is there a 'women as a Class centred pro-pornsitution' person out there who can argue this with me?

I just really hope that support for 'performing' sex for male gratification doesn't bring down the fragile women's movement now the way that the passion of those Angry Wimmin was decimated by the self-obsessed factions in the 70's.

We all just want better lives for women, right?

2006-07-15T02:23:00.000+01:00

To all pro-pornstitution 'feminists' out there...

...The best way to stop the global scourge of sexual slavery of women and girls is not to reduce men's slavering for warm, wet fuck holes but to offer oneself to the task.

How does that feel....thinking about that? Would you?

Would you choose that as a way to feed your kids, pay your bills, keep your particular wolf from the door?

No?

Why not?

So how come you kind of 'elect' and hide behind those women/girls who don't have the same level of choice that you do? Poor women, women of colour, drug/alcohol addicted women, girl children, teenage runaways, sexually abused in childhood women, etc. Women and girls whose humanity you should actually be fighting for - as feminists.

Instead, it seems to me, you're saying it's ok that these women/girls are in sexual slavery because it's somehow their choice. They're somehow 'living their dream'....or is it your dream? The phallic dream? I don't know. Whatever.

All I know is that you're not fighting for them. You're complicit in their destruction. You're colluding with patriarchy in dividing women into 'them' and 'us'.

So.....

I want to see every pro-pornstitution 'feminist' put her money where her mouth is (hah) and do a six month stint in the job (or send her daughter in if she's 'too old') before she tells me that it's 'ok' for any other woman/girl to go through it. And I want a report about how great it is to command such power and how it's touched and released her innate sexuality and re-formed her as a woman and made her feel sooooo good about herself she does talks about it to girls in junior schools.

Actually, I don't want any woman on this Earth to go through it but, hey, seems to me that some women need to properly understand exactly what feminism means.

If you're pro-pornography or pro-prostitution you are NOT a feminist. These institutions are the props of patriarchy and have nothing to do with women's self determination, ergo they are NOT feminist.

2006-07-12T22:08:00.000+01:00

Witchy-Woo's Wednesday Wow...

...it's here at last!

2006-07-08T04:39:00.000+01:00

This...

...is an amazing post on an amazing blog.

However you think about women and weight, Christi Nielsen's message is poignant and powerful.

Everything she posts is so graphic. She posts it graphically. We are what we look like and if what we look like doesn't happen to comply with the accepted, patriarchial, 'attractive' norm - well then, we're fucked, basically. And that's how we feel - fucked.

I'm interested in female body image. I believe it affects how we relate to our world.

Without being intrusive, I'd like anyone who sees this post to take a look through Christi's blog, have a think about what they see and let me have their thoughts and comments. I'll be responding on this one.

2006-07-08T00:48:00.000+01:00

Ha ha! OMG! 'Bloke Coke'...

...is as mad as 'irons for men'.

Is patriarchy eating itself?

2006-07-05T22:28:00.000+01:00

Witchy-Woo's Wednesday Wow...

...is another one from Alyx at Mad Sheila's Musings.

In her post The Performing Sex, Alyx examines "the sexist co-option of female sexuality" and "how female [sexual] desire has increasingly become a performance of desire".

It's an excellent piece delivered in Alyx's own, inimitable style.

A taster:

Faking desire and feeling desire are two separate but easily confusable things. The reason the former is promoted as Female Sexual Expression Du Jour is because it’s good for patriarchal business, and the reason the latter elicits sneers from the penis gallery is because it threatens to send that business bankrupt.

Go read.

2006-07-05T00:10:00.000+01:00

I watched the BBC1 6 o'clock news tonight...

...and there was a comparison report on India and China - both potential big league players in Western economies, apparently. (I looked for a link to the report but all I could find was this)

There was footage from India...tapping in to Western 'needs' with individuals making a personal fortune from the cheap production of goods for consumption in the Western market. And then there was footage of people from China tapping in to the more costly production of goods for the upper end of the same market.

Or was it the other way round?

I don't know. I don't remember. I don't remember because the one thing that struck me in the whole report was the almost total absence of women. The only women that figured in the whole item were semi-clothed actresses gyrating in a Bollywood movie that some male, entrepreneur in India was filmed watching. Women were obviously relegated to entertainment value only.

Of all the hoards of 'money-makers' filmed getting off trains, doing lunch, going about their work-a-day business - not one of them was a woman. Not one.

If it's true that money = power (and, currently, I have no reason to dispute that) my observation of developing countries from tonight's news is a perfect illustration of Class Woman's global powerlessness.

Apart from the fact that this so totally sucks in more ways than one, it's provoked thoughts and ideas for me that - once they're more concrete - I want to write about. So I'm posting this as a reminder to myself but I'd also like to hear everyone elses thoughts and ideas about women and monetary power, about women's place as movers and shakers in the global market place, about the money = power thing, about some reasons why there were no women at all in that report (other than the semi-naked ones).

What are your thoughts?

2006-06-28T00:00:00.000+01:00

Witchy-Woo's Wednesday Wow this week...

...is a two parter. The first part comes from Putting the "Fist" in "Pacifist" and is such a wonderful expression of the anger and frustration that we've all felt at one time or another - a huge "grrrrrrrr" that's quite funny to read because we can identify with the feelings that caused it.

The second part, from The Primary Contradiction, asks us how we would deal with rather more essential affronts to our dignity or way of being - could you kill or maim?

She could have chosen to walk away from this egregious violation and process it with caring loved ones later. Instead, she chose to slake her rage with violence.

For those of us who face the psychic assault of oppression, this is a choice that most of [us] will face at some point in our lives.

And haven't 'most of us' been there at some point - so raging we're ripe for violence? But most of us either submit or take our violent impulse out on ourselves/innocent others at a later time.

As little girls, we're taught that anger is 'bad' and we shouldn't feel it let alone express it. So we keep it all in until we explode like Kimberly Arnold did. Like all the women on the Justice for Women books did. Like countless women the world over do, in one socially unacceptable way or another.

Because 'society' has this expectation that the oppressed - and women in particular, no matter which other oppressed group they may also represent - will just accept our place and take it. Our anger is somehow invisible. It doesn't count. It doesn't have the same importance that the anger of, say, your average hooligan has in the great scheme of things. But it's there. I'd hazzard a guess that, if you're reading this blog, you're angry - because I'm angry. That's partly why I write this thing!

My impulse, when I'm yelled at in the street, felt up in a crowd, intimidated, belittled or threatened by the assumed power of the Great God Penis or in any way made to feel 'less than' is to say "fuck off and die" - and I really mean it. Question is, could I do it? I don't actually want to go around killing people but I can understand how those who have reached the limits of their endurance of their oppression can just snap.

I can identify with that but, so far, I'm able to choose.

On a housekeeping note: I've updated the blogroll. There are so many fab blogs out there, it's hard to keep up.

2006-06-27T07:04:00.000+01:00

I comment a fair bit...

...on other feminist blogs. I try to say what I think in a polite way - I'm all for feminist discourse, me; I believe feminists have a lot to say to one another - but, I confess, sometimes I can get a bit stroppy. But, hey, just because I'm a feminist that doesn't mean I'm perfect, right? It doesn't mean I can't get stroppy? I apologise if I've stropped out on you - especially if your post triggered my troll-bells when you posted as 'anonymous' and you're someone who just can't be bothered to check 'other' and put your initials or something in the reply box. But, hey, I apologise. No harm intended.

Something I've noticed: there is a lot of (often media driven) stereotypical thinking about various feminist ideologies that simply aren't true.

"No shit, Sherlock!" I hear you cry.

These stereotypes are seriously pissing me off. They're confusing me. They're helping me to assume the views of other women without actually hearing them. They're creating differences and divergencies where, actually, there are none. They're also putting me into a box so that, when I identify as a radical feminist, I'm getting all kinds of shit thrown at me for stuff I don't think or believe and ways of being that have nothing to do with my reality - particularly with regard to the sex thing..

I've had enough of being misrepresented by the way I choose to define myself so I'm going to spell it out.

Sex is fab. Real, human, touchy-feely, non-commercial sex. I don't care who does it or how they do it - just as long as they both/all want it that way. There is no shame, no judgement, no requirement for public whipping/approval.

Sex is fab but not as essential as breathing...or water....or food.

Does that clear it up? I'm a radical feminist and I think sex is fab.

Are there any stereotypical notions about how you identify as a feminist that you'd like to clear up? Go for it.

2006-06-22T11:58:00.000+01:00

Witchy-Woo's Wednesday Wow comes to you this week...

...on Thursday. And it isn't a singular post, nor is it a collection of posts - it's an entire blog.

See any of this type of thing happening where you go? Use the camera in your mobile to record what you see and mail it to Charlie.

We're evidence gathering...

2006-06-20T21:42:00.000+01:00

This post is dedicated to:

My Mother…

…was born in a tiny seaside village in Normandy, France, in 1927. She was the second child of ten and the oldest girl. Her father died when she was eleven years old leaving my grandmother only just pregnant with her tenth child just before the outbreak of World War Two. My mother was devastated by her father’s death and I don’t think she ever quite got over it.

Her adolescent and early teen years were spent under Nazi occupation, never quite knowing where the next meal was coming from. Sometimes the soldiers were helpful and allowed them food. Other times, they weren’t. My mother told me about a raging gun battle going on behind her one time as she ran home from school through a field at dusk and there was a sexually abusive uncle around at that time too – though she didn’t say that he ever abused her. Mind you, she never left us alone with him whenever we visited as children.

When she wasn’t at school my mother was helping her mother care for her younger siblings. She didn’t have much of a life, really. Her ‘teenage rebellion’ amounts to one night when, after the Nazi imposed curfew, she and a couple of her brothers goose-stepped down a sleepy village lane shouting anti-nazi slogans. Pretty daring really, when you consider what could’ve happened to them if they’d been caught.

The Allies landed and the war ended. My mother became a typist in the nearest town. She found the work mind-numbingly boring and was totally hacked off because her mother took all her wages and still expected her to skivvy around the house. Her older brother kept all his wages and was allowed to do as he pleased. Not fair.

My mother was a vibrant young woman. She was full of passion for life. After years of occupation and oppression she seriously wanted to live a bit. So she responded to an advert for student nurses she saw in the local paper. The job was in the burgeoning ‘mental health belt’ just north of London, England. My mum’s English at that time was the pre-war French school variety – all ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and not exactly English like wot it is spoke – but she got a position and came over here for her big adventure in 1948. She was 21 years old.

The tales she told about the sexually predatory nature of English men towards all those young, foreign, non-english speaking nurses that had been recruited from all corners of a devastated Europe would feed your feminist fury but that was just ‘how things were’ for my mum and millions of women just like her. Luckily for her, my mum was a bright young woman who learned fast and wasn’t easily taken in. Till she met my father, that is.

1950 - and the male nurse from an impoverished background in Liverpool fell deeply, deeply in love with the bright French girl with the endless legs and that twinkle in her eyes. I believe he did love her then – I’ve seen the letters he wrote to her after they were married and she went back to France to give birth to my sister. He most certainly loved her then. He couldn’t wait for her to come home with their firstborn.

I was next, then my brother and then my other brother. My mother, obviously, couldn’t work and nurse’s wages were as poor then as they are now. I really don’t know how she did it but, despite being abjectly poor, we were well fed and well clothed - she made all our clothes and could create a meal from the most ridiculous ingredients. I guess it was a re-enactment of her teenage years during the war – all that traditional ‘women’s work’ - but my mother never stopped. Even in the evenings after a day of cooking and cleaning she’d be knitting, sewing, darning or mending. She was a drudge and her life was non-existent. Seriously, we didn’t have a bean. There were no labour saving devices and my mum had no social life whatsoever.

But, mysteriously, my father did have money for whisky…and women. When my mum became pregnant with my oldest younger brother my father didn’t speak to her for months - like it was her fault, or something. We children were just ‘links in the chain’ to him; evidence that my mother was conspiring against him having a life. But my mother loved the very bones of him and would’ve sacrificed just about anything if it made him ok. She loved us too – and it’s quite paradoxical really because I remember her saying when I was quite young that it was especially important that my sister and I work hard at our studies so that we would have a better life than hers.

He beat her. Sometimes, she’d be so bruised she was painful to look at. It was terrifying to be lying in bed hearing my father hurting my mother and to see her in the morning, all bruised and bloody. (Anyone who ever says of children and domestic violence “oh, they’re ok, they don’t know what’s happening”; believe me, they do.) My mother wasn’t allowed, you see? Whatever it was, she wasn’t allowed. She was his property and he was very controlling.

As I grew older, some nights my mum and I would lock ourselves in the bathroom in the small hours while waiting for my father’s drunken rage to subside and she’d brush my hair while we talked feminism. Isn’t it strange how mixed your feelings can be? I loved those talks – even though the world was falling out of my bottom with the fear I felt.

This was the late sixties/early seventies - the time of the rise of feminism in England. My mum rose with it. She grabbed it with both hands and ran with it. In feminism, my mum found a counter argument to ‘well, you made your bed, you lie in it’; she found a counter argument to ‘well, that’s what women are supposed to do’. She never actually met another woman who identified as feminist but she read everything that was going. And she passed it on to me – all the books, all the ideas, all the theories and the evidence. She made me know that no man has the right. She taught me that women are people too. She showed me how patriarchal capitalism is intrinsically oppressive – not just of women, but of everything. She sewed the seeds of radicalism in me.

After my mum divorced my father she qualified as a college lecturer and was an active feminist until old age did something to her capacity for reason. I think she was quite proud of me and my radical stance but she never fully understood my take on pornography. She thought I objected to the naked female body – huh? I live in one, don’t I? – and never quite grasped the atrocity that is modern pornography. Well, she’d never really seen anything apart from Health and Efficiency…. but she always supported me in my work with abused women. She was always interested in what I was doing; how I was helping, what I thought. And she always had her own particular take on women’s issues that I found extremely helpful. We had many a heated discussion about ‘things’ and generally found that we had similar beliefs but just reached them from different angles. I guess that’s the generation gap at work but her experience informs my views and, coupled with my own experience, deepens my understanding of the historical impact of ‘women’s place’.

She had a shit life, my mum, all in all, and mine is better. But mine is only better because of her strength, her resilience, her insight, her support and her love. It would probably have taken years for me to relate to radical feminism without her input. My sister doesn’t understand it…but then, she didn’t have those hours in the bathroom.

My mum died three years ago – a cantankerous and belligerent old French woman. And I don’t half miss her.

2006-06-14T22:39:00.000+01:00

Witchy-Woo's Wednedsay Wow...

...is responsible for articulating something that's been rumbling around in my head for years and years but that I've never actually had the courage to verbalise. Maybe I was too scared to say it because the implications are terrifying but Biting Beaver is blowing apart the myths in her usual, inimitable fashion and, yes, the implications really are terrifying.

BB addresses the often delusional aspect of sexual fantasy in relation to masturbation. As she puts it:

People seriously believe that we masturbate to things that we don't really want. Things we wouldn't really enjoy or that we don't think we'd enjoy. I call bullshit here.

She makes a convincing argument...

When masturbation exists purely as a pleasure seeking Pavlovian response we would choose to sully our pleasurable experience with images of things that turn us off? Things that disgust us?

...and reminds women that...

a man who is masturbating to violent rape is a man who enjoys violent rape. Don't let him feed you a line of bullshit saying, "I would never want to do this to you" because he's lying, he may NOT do this to you, but he absolutely WANTS to.

...and he needs to take responsibility for that.

It's an excellent post. Go read.

2006-06-09T00:55:00.000+01:00

I've just formulated a theory...

...and it's not scientifically researched or proven - nothing quite as academic as that - but it is based on a vast amount of anecdotal evidence and so it probably does hold water. (Huh? Who called me Alison?) (sorry....in-joke.)

My theory? Selective humanisation.

Laura's most recent post has crystalised my theory although it's been lying around in my brain for quite some time. I've wondered for years how men (generic) are able to selfishly deny the humanity of some women for their own pleasure? gratification? sense of 'power over'? gods...I don't know why they do it... but then they jealously guard the humanity of other women who, they say, are their friends, or lovers, or relatives, or mothers.

Laura posted about some men she knows who she thought were friends of hers. They went to Spearmint Rhino - a veritable palace of female dehumanisation; a place where women are reduced to sexualised, vulnerable nakedness so that men can experience that powerful sense of faked sexual desirability. Men can sit around drinking beers with conventionally attractive half naked women pretending they like them offering them their entirely naked and gyrating bodies to make them feel even more powerful and sexually wanted - for a fee.

Now, Laura cares about the lives of women and she's wondering how her male friends are able to separate her, their friend - a woman - from the women they're sexually subjugating with their quids. She's understandably confused by their duplicity and says:

How do I know that you actually give a crap about me? Because you sure as hell don't seem to give a crap about all the women that are being exploited and abused in the industry that you are supporting.

And it was those words "actually give a crap about..." that made everything crystal clear to me. As far as men (generic) are concerned, women are the 'other' and, actually, they couldn't give a crap about any of us. Until, of course, we become 'human' in their eyes through some kind of connection/ownership thing....one of us happens to be their mother/sister/lover/friend/cousin/aunt/significant other/baby-mother etc. etc. - they have some vested interest in our being alive... You get the picture...

Men (generic) are unable to see women as people in their own right, separate from them. Men (generic) are only able to see women as human beings in relation to their own existence - and selectively, at that.

I have no doubt that those male friends of Laura's love her to bits but their privilege and entitlement enables them to somehow make her humanity distinct from the humanity of the women they dehumanise. Laura doesn't see it that way but then she doesn't practice selective humanisation.

That men (generic) have the power and privilege to practise selective humanisation - and that they actually access that privilege - is evidence of patriarchy in action. We must all - each and every one of us - call the men in our lives on it whenever they exhibit it for the sake of our sisters (generic) because, quite frankly, if we don't, we're all selectively unhumanised - one way or another.

2006-06-07T02:05:00.000+01:00

Witchy-woo's Wednesday Wow this week...

...is inspired by two posts. The first one comes from Kiki at Saucebox whose wonderfully insightful exploration of the conflict between men's (accepted) biological and their culturally defined sexual response to women raises some interesting and thought provoking issues. There is stuff in Kiki's post that could be used over and over to counter those tired old arguments about men, women, sex, pornstitution and the general sexual oppression of women.

Truly, it's a fab post and I've had a hard time hanging on to it for a whole week! A taster:

If men are hardwired to want to mate with as many women as possible as often as possible, why is it that they are so picky about the weight or breast size or stature or proportions of the women they fuck?

Another....

Hence, I can only conclude that sexual response and sexual drives are at least as influenced by culture and socialization as they are by biology, if not more so.

And yet another....

Once you start accepting that the demonstration of desire, in whatever form it takes, is as inevitable as the desire itself, well you’re basically saying that men are not in fact rational and sentient beings capable of consciously choosing to treat women as people rather than sexual objects in spite of any uncontrollable sexual desire they may feel towards them. So which is it? Because if I were a man, I’d be incredibly insulted by the notion that I’m nothing but a slave to my penis and all the other inner sexual biological workings that my penis represents.

Ooooh... go read the whole thing... Really, it's fab. I really wish Kiki would post more often - she's so good.

The second wow comes from Spotted Elephant at The Bipolar View

There has been a lot of discourse of late amongst radfem bloggers about the 'beauty rituals' thing. Lots of my favourite bloggers (look right to spot the links ---->) have been arguing - yes, arguing - about the radfeminess or otherwise of complying, or not, with patriarchial 'beauty' values.

Some say pure rad-feminism demands a total rejection of 'beauty' procedures. Some say 'poo' to that; they're aware of the patriarchial nature of such procedures for patriarchially defined ends but that's not why they participate - and some say they understand both points of view but they're just not 'there' yet.

Some might consider that, by dividing us the way it seems to have over the issue of 'beauty' rituals, the patriarchy has scored another goal against the feminist movement. And some might say, yeah.... they might have.

Spotted Elephant says:

Are we only willing to fight alongside one another when we’re in full agreement? Don’t we have more important enemies than each other? The last thing any woman needs is other women as her enemies. Our numbers aren’t that strong. We’re far stronger together than we are apart. Can our community survive this? I think it’s worth fighting for.

And I totally agree. Our community is so worth fighting for.

For what it's worth: I do wear make up sometimes and, sometimes, I shave my legs and underarms - when I want to. I never feel 'less than human' when I don't. (Isn't that what patriarchy demands....that we don't feel like 'real' women unless we look like fake ones? That we feel 'sub-human' if we don't look like something from the cover - or centre-fold - of some 'men's magazine?) And when I shave/wear make up, it isn't the occasion that demands it - it's me. It's what I feel like. For whatever reason.

I identify as a radical feminist because I believe that patriarchial ideology is the root of the oppression of women and that we (collective) need to overthrow the patriarchy in order to achieve human status for women and girls. I also believe that is a huge journey for individual women to make. It's not easy and it's not quick. And, let's face it, there aren't that many of us to support one another along the way.

So; while I might feel quite ok going hairy-armpitted to a House of Commons Select Committee meeting but just might fancy shaving my pits for a village hall quiz night - just because it's all about what I want - I'm not about to diss another woman for wanting to do anything differently.

We're all just at different places on the same journey, surely?

Please... read Spotted Elephant's post.

2006-06-04T07:33:00.000+01:00

Women hating...

...women.

I got so cross earlier this week. We were watching 'Room 101' and Sarah Cox was in the hot seat. For those outside the UK; Room 101 is a BBC TV programme hosted by Paul Merton - a (usually) funny comedian - where minor celebs appear and list half a dozen or so 'things that irritate them beyond belief' in an effort to get them consigned to oblivion by convincing Mr Merton and the audience that their particular bugbears are too difficult for anyone to live with/shouldn't be allowed in civilised society...you get the drift...

Sarah Cox is an ex model now DJ-ing a mainstream BBC breakfast radio show and, if I remember rightly, was in the press sometime last year bemoaning the fact that men no longer whistle at her in the street now she's pushing a pram. She's known in the Brit media as a 'ladette' (not a good label) but she refuted that on the show.

One of the 'things' she wanted to be consigned to Room 101 was '19 year old girls'. Her rationale was that they're young and have 'fit' bodies and men, including her partner (the father of her child) lust after them. Apparently, on more than one occasion she's had cause to dig him in the ribs when a 'fit bird' was walking by and say something to the tune of "Oi! I saw that."

Like that's the girl's fault?

Seems to me that we are all so socially entrenched in cultural-normative patriarchal hatred of women that even some women are unaware that they're complicit in the denegration of their own sex. Rather than question her partner's privilege and sense of entitlement to reduce any old nineteen year old [only-just-a] woman who walks past him to the status of his current fantasy fuck, Ms Cox prefers to berate the high scoring 'object' of her partner's fuckability rating. Why?

The whole world revolves around the phallus (one way or another) it seems.

We have women saying that "pornography for women" is a 'good' thing - even if the images of women that it contains are not, intrinsically, any different to those depicted in the mainstream, made-for-men porn that distorts and defines women's sexuality into something that is so totally alien to most women it actually scares us. Whether it's lesbian pornography or pornography supposedly made for straight women it's still about the supposed availability of women's genitalia; it's still about women getting fucked; and it's still about women getting fucked over - only it's women doing the fucking over! Like that makes a 'feminist' difference? Most viewers are still going to be men anyway: men getting off on the 'feminist' corner they've forced women into because men, more than women, pay to see women's bodies being fucked; men, more than women get off on sexualised visuals of the current power dynamic. Most women regard our bodies as just the vehicle that we walk around in - the thing that enables us to live our lives.

A couple of points.

If this 'pornography for women' actually is for women, why on Earth would women want to be getting off on images of other women's bodies being degraded, hurt and abused? Why on Earth would women who call themselves feminists find images of other women conforming to patriarchal definitions of their sexuality sexually titillating?

Oh, sorry, I forgot. That patriarcial cultural norm - women hating. It really is so ingrained and pervasive that some women actually believe it's true!

Like the prostitution thing.

Some women actually believe they made a 'free' choice to become a prostitute - yunno, so they could get their kids through school and all that jazz. And that that somehow makes them 'different' from the drug addicted woman who has to prostitute herself to fund her addiction or the woman trapped and trafficked into prostitution to make wonga for her pimp.

I say 'don't kid yourself, baby', the patriarchy is forcing you to fund whatever it is you need on its own terms. Children, rent, drugs, a loan, food, a roof over your head, protection from the next beating/rape, school fees, a lifestyle ... whatever - keep women in poverty and there's an endless supply of cunt on which to perpetrate the ideology and act out the hatred. It might make you feel better to say you 'chose' prostitution but, in all honesty hon, you're the only one who cares about this aspect of you - the rest of us are caring about womenkind.

Some women actually defend sexual slavery. Some women don't care to look past their own personal situation. Some women say "I've been there, honey" with absolutely no acknowledgement at all of how all women are somehow placed in a similar situation - how we're all placed, as women, in patriarchy; as though defending the dearth of women's free choice is tantamount to denying women's free choice full stop. Well have I got news for you, honey...women do not posess the human right to 'free' choice' because (and it only takes two seconds to examine it) women are not considered to be human beings under patriarchy.

I don't want to believe that there are women who hate women. I'm a woman - and I work with and for women - but I do believe that there are women who are more prepared to believe and go along with the lies that are told about women by the patriarchy than what is said about their lives by real women themselves. I understand all that 'identifying with the dominant ideology' stuff that Sarah Cox does but I really, really wonder how women who claim to be feminists can promote it without even a pang of "Oh shit, my sisters" - with no acknowledgement at all of those women whose bodies and lives are being sacrificed in order that they can be totally mainstream, hip, right on, patriarchial feminists.

Seems a tad arse about face to me.

2006-05-31T23:41:00.000+01:00

Witchy-Woo's Wednesday Wow!

...comes from Laurelin in the Rain.

Following her hugely popular troll identification posts (parts I and II) and inspired by Ms Violet's post about sexual harassment in the street, Laurelin has analysed and classified the behaviour and motivation of those males who yell from cars, sound their horns, make uninvited comments and generally take pleasure in harassing women in the street.

While I was reading it I was reminded of the behaviour of internet trolls. Could there be a connection? Read it here and see what you think.

2006-05-24T11:59:00.000+01:00

Witchy-woo's Wednesday Wow!

...this week comes from nectarine at Anger to Activism who, like so many of us anti-pornstitution radfems, has been accused of alignment with the religious right because of a post she made about pro-porn 'feminists' and language.

There is a multi-blog debate going on at the moment between that teeny, tiny minority of vocal, articulate and monied career prostitutes with web access and IT skills who are arguing in favour of the unionisation of sex workers in the UK (without sparing a thought for the impact that would have on the the lives of the vast majority of those unwilling sex workers who have little or no voice at all in the debate) and those of us with a slightly wider view.

The teeny, tiny minority simply don't seem to want to recognise that legitimising what men do to them has a huge and very destructive impact on the lives of every woman and girl, everywhere - sex worker or not. It's an incredibly blinkered stance.

nectarine voiced her concerns about the sexually negative connotations in language used by pro-pornstitution 'feminists' in that post she made at the weekend and, hey, guess what, she's been labelled as aligning with the right wing religious fundies! Of course! (Well, it's got to be either that, or she's a prude...)

Like nectarine, I, too, am tired of that inarticulate, unreasoned, juvenile and aggressive response from the defenders of men's absolute 'right' to sexual access to women's bodies. There seems to be no room for an exchange of ideas with most pro-pornstitution 'feminists'. Any discussion I've been able to have that hasn't ended with me being labelled a right wing religious fundie or a prude has ended up with "well, what about meeeee?" from a woman who is in total denial of her complicity in the rule of the cock over her 'sisters'.

I believe that feminism is about taking women's lives out from under men - in every respect - (that's all women, everywhere) and 'what about me' really doesn't cut it when you're arguing to legitimise the most basic subordination from which all oppression of women stems. Feminism is about the freedom to actually be human - not a commodity.

Like Julie Bindel says:

"...it is the very act of women's bodies being bought and sold by men that sustains the subordinate position of women and children on a global scale".

I just wish the pro-pornstitution 'feminists' could understand that that's how patriarchial capitalism rules all of us - women and men, those with the power to purchase versus those who are purchasable - not a whiff of anyone's humanity in there at all. And the religious right are as patriarchial as you can get.

As for the alignment of radfems with the religious right and nectarine's post, here's a taste:

I AM ANTI_PORN BECAUSE IT DEGRADES WOMEN AND TREATS THEM AS OTHER

Why am I anti the religious right?
Oh yeah because it degrades women and treats them as other.

Makes perfect sense to me....

2006-05-20T01:24:00.000+01:00

Ok, so...

...what's this about, then?

Here we have a picture of a (stick thin) dark haired woman, hips thrust forward in a mini-bikini, supposedly pulling the long (blonde) hair of a slightly more dressed (but still stick thin) blonde woman who in turn is, seemingly, almost jabbing the stiletto heel of her (almost there) shoe into the clitoris of the bikini'd woman.

What the fuck is that about?

I went shopping today - while my car was being serviced (yes, ok, I'm no BB [look back to her original post] when it comes to cars) and whilst I was just out-and-abouting I saw this as a window display in FCUK. It's a huge promotional picture in the FCUK window. And I have to admit, my initial reaction was to walk away...far away, it scared me...but then I reminded myself of aradfem's fearless use of the camera in her mobile and I went back and took this pic.

There is implied pain on the face of the woman who's having her hair pulled and there is implicit pain to come for the woman with the stilleto being jabbed in her pubis.

This is a promotional window display in a shop that sells clothes?

This is how they think they'll make us want to buy their clothes? I'm sorry (not) but, fuck, I walked straight out of that mall when I saw this. It was only the thought of aradfem's bravery and defiance that made me go back and take the picture.

I ask in all seriousness - what is going on here?

As an advertisement, what are they trying to say? That women will buy their clothes because they make them think they can physically hurt one another to get the men off?

Or is it that they believe some women will relate to this imagery because it's a popular theme of pornography and we're all so accustomed to it that we'll all want, automatically, to be on the side of the woman who isn't 'implicitly' threatened with sexual harm and, therefore, buy their clothing?

All I know is that I'll never, ever shop at FCUK - ever, and I'll tell everyone I know not to either - and that I love aradfem for giving me the courage to do this (amongst other things).

2006-05-17T17:06:00.000+01:00

The XV Carnival of Feminists is up...

...at Self Portrait and it's fab. Go take a look.

2006-05-16T14:05:00.000+01:00

Witchy-Woo's Wednesday Wow!

...this week comes in the form of a clear and thoughtful post from gendergeek (scroll up) that articulates the radical feminist perspective on prostitution in response to one commenters assertion that "Feminists do not simply dislike prostitution they dislike prostitutes as they are an affront to their respectablity."

There are some wonderful analogies to be found in Emma's post. I particularly like this one:

Those who argue for the legalisation of prostitution ofter reference those happy few high-class call girls who earn enormous sums of money and travel the world draped in Theo Fennel jewellery with Manolos dangling from pedicured toes. This is as meaningful as arguing that children in the former Nike sweatshops should have been allowed to choose to work in a dangerous environment for pennies a day because Coco Chanel’s seamstress quite liked her job.

Excellent.

And, so far, the comments are intelligent too (having said that - my comp clock says 02:04 so....don't take my word for it....)

2006-05-14T13:20:00.000+01:00

The cute little Clanger...

...is taking a well earned rest and Witchy-woo has now taken her place as Guardian of the Blogpic. With many thanks and much love to my mate Sarah and her knitting skilled mum.

2006-05-13T08:35:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I just wish...

....that a blog I click on or someone on a message board I belong to or the BBC news site or Society Guardian or someone has found the answer to ending the suffocating patriarchal oppression me, my daughter and my sisters endure every day.

I get quite despirited at times. This is one of them.

2006-05-13T00:35:00.000+01:00

Crikey...

...it's been a bit of a heavy week in the radfem blogoshpere. What with juvenile MRA-in-the-making trolls (I'm convinced they're fourteen year olds) insisting that feminism should address the ever-present issue of the oppression of straight white males - I kid you not, look - and an eight year old girl trying to hang on to her underwear in the playground whilst being asaulted by her male peers and I think we're all a bit too stunned to write anything about this yet. In all of this Kat is still missing and people are getting seriously worried about her....all in all, it's been a helluva week.

But tonight is Friday night and my beloved and I have been out for dinner together. We've had a few bevvies and I'm a tad squiffy so I'm not feeling particularly serious (actually, I'm feeling quite fine). One thing we talked about at the dinner table was toilets. Yes, yes...I know....polite conversation and all that...but, harrumph, this is toilets from a feminist perspective.

'But what brought this on?' you might ask, believing that a meal out with one's beloved at the end of the working week would be an ideal opportunity for...oooh, I dunno...romance, maybe...reconnection...affirmation of the regard in which we hold one another? Nah. We do all that stuff every day - but we don't talk about toilets from a feminist perspective every day. Oh no.

Last weekend we went out to a gig at a local venue that we both used to frequent as teenagers but haven't ever been to together before. Most of the audience were people of a similar age to us. In the queue for the 'ladies' during the interval my queue companions and I were discussing how much things don't ever change. We were reminiscing about having to queue for the loo at the very same venue all those years ago when we were teenagers; how the queues then stretched out of the door and round the lobby - and our queue still did that!

Why are there never enough toilets for women at entertainment venues?

Think of the circle at the Hammy Odeon (or whatever it's called these days) four toilets for women! Aren't women supposed to need the loo? Or are we not supposed to go out in numbers? Or are these buildings designed by men who have no idea about women's toiletting requirements? You'd think they could ask, wouldn't you?

This venue last weekend - masses and masses of unused 'mirror space' (well, maybe not totally unused - several of us adopted that 'if I scrutinise myself for long enough maybe it'll distract my thoughts away from how much I need to pee' approach while we were queuing) but not enough cubicles! It was like that when I was a teenager and it's still like that now. Why??

My beloved and I talked about various scenarios....like the seated audience for the second half of every gig at the Hammy Odeon being predominantly male while all the women rushed around and used every available toilet. He came up with some practical solutions for the women's loos that, I felt, would have women saying "ah, forget the gig - I'm staying here". But, underlying all our jokes, was a recognition of the fact that women's needs often (usually?) aren't considered by architects and planners. I mean, the huge amount of mirror-space compared to the laughable amount of pee space was soooo telling! It said 'what you look like is more important than what you need' in such an 'in yer bladder' kind of way - totally male oriented.

This particular building we were at last weekend went up in the sixties - a time when the humanity of women was supposedly starting to be recognised. It so wasn't. That was a lie that so many of us believed. Ok, the Hammy Odeon is an elderly building but, even so, you'd think that any architect worth his [ha!] salt would know that women need many, many more toilets than men who, maybe, are happy with the communal peeing thing. But why have they still not recognised our needs? Why do women still have to waste all the interval queuing to pee but the men get time enough to sink a couple of beers while they're waiting for us? Crikey, it's not as though we preen ourselves for them in front of the mirrors anymore - there's no time left to do anything like that! Anyway, given the choice, I'd take the beers, personally.

Best venue I've been to for adequate provision of women's loos is the Barbican, I think. There's still always a queue but it moves quite fast and my companion only has to wait five minutes at the top of the stairs for me to emerge, empty bladdered, from the foray. It's the best of a bad bunch - but it's still not good enough.

Squiffy Friday night dinners. Don't you just love 'em?

2006-05-10T22:25:00.000+01:00

New feature at the bottom of my stairs....

The Witchy-Woo Wednedsay Wow!

Wednedsay is such a wishy-washy day - don't you think? It's well enough into the working week to be wearisome and still well enough away from the weekend to be woeful. It's a bit dull.

Not anymore! Oh no... because every Wednesday, for your delectation and delight, I'll be highlighting a blogpost - or maybe more than one - that's wowed me enough for me to say the word out loud. Wow.

And first up for this accolade? It's this fab post entitled Why this Sheila likes Sheila Jeffreys from Mad Sheila's Musings. Here's a taste:

Bottom line: If you want solipsistic satisfaction sans accountability, Wendy McElroy’s libertarian feminism is the place to find it. If you want to do the retro married-with-kids thing, then Caitlin Flanagan will ardently defend your right to dependency. And if you want sexual fulfilment sans substandard shtupping from a human partner whose damn humanity gets in the way of you pursuing the ultimate goal—orgasm at any cost—then the Toys In Babeland girls are always willing to give advice on how to expand your remedial repertoire. The post-feminist world is dedicated to giving its customers what they want.

And that is why we need feminists like Sheila Jeffreys: As a young third wave feminist who loves Buffy, loves pop culture (discerningly), and loves to entertain the notion that there are no limits to what I can achieve if I set my scone to it, Jeffreys’ whispering like The Ghost of Feminism Past about the Dark Age atrocities that still plague women in our modern world is often not what I, nor any of my Gen Y cohorts, want.

But sometimes, it is exactly what we need to hear.

Go read it and be wowed - if you haven't already.

2006-05-09T23:50:00.000+01:00

The talks given at the Andrea Dworkin Commemorative Conference...

...on April 7th in Oxford are now online here Several of us UK radfem bloggers are transcribing the talks - a full list of who's doing which one is up at another radical feminist.

What follows is my transcription of the talk given by Professor Alison Assiter and the questions session that followed it. I've identified people where I knew who was speaking and I've indicated where I couldn't make out what was being said. This is a faithful transcript of those sessions which we felt were the most contentious of the day. It's pretty long so make yourself comfortable...

Your thoughts and comments are, as usual, welcome.

Andrea Dworkin Commemorative Conference – Friday 7 April 2006
The Centre for the Study of Social Justice
Department of Politics and International Relations
Oxford

Professor Alison Assiter - University of the West of England and author, Enlightened Women: “Pornography: its significance for feminism”

Hi. Good morning. Thanks very much, Sheila, for that inspirational talk. I’m just going to begin by telling you a little story before I say a few things about Andrea Dworkin and talk about what I’m going to talk about. I think, first of all, it’s completely fortuitous that Sheila and I are actually talking on something very similar but from directly opposing angles and I think it’s absolutely wonderful because I had no idea what Sheila was going to talk about and I’m not really going to talk on what I said I was going to talk about but I’m going to talk about something a little bit different but it’s on exactly the same topic but from a very different perspective. I think that’s absolutely great – so that we have a debate.

First of all, I’d just like to tell you a story and it’s a story about -- it’s not really directly related to Andrea Dworkin but I just want to tell it to you anyway. It’s a story about a feminist academic who decided to change the subject of her talk – which is exactly what I’m doing – and she decided she was going to talk on alcoholism and she brought in a couple of props. Let me just bring…let me just show you a couple of props. One had, like this, a glass with water in and one had a whiskey in. And she also brought in a worm and she put the worm in the glass that had water in and it squirmed around and it was fine and then she put it in the glass that had whiskey in and the poor worm squirmed around a bit and then died. And then she said to the assembled students in the lecture theatre “what point do you think this illustrates?” and one student from right at the back who was really feisty and brave says “well, of course, if you have worms, drink whiskey - that’s the point it illustrates.”

And so I’m telling you this, I think…sorry, I’m just going to get some water – but it’s really whiskey [audience laughter] – I’m telling you this because I think it’s absolutely fascinating because I’ve prepared a few remarks today which are on something - I’m going to talk about Islamic fundamentalism, very briefly - and it’s very directly connected with what Sheila’s just talked about but it’s very, very, very different and it’s purely fortuitous. But I must begin by saying that I think it’s absolutely wonderful that this conference is happening today. I feel extremely honoured to be asked to talk in a conference celebrating the work of Andrea Dworkin. I think she was an enormously important thinker. I think the fact that this conference is happening today, in Oxford – it’s not actually in Somerville College and I was a bit worried because I used to be a student at Somerville College and when I said “the Manor Road site of Somerville College” and the taxi driver said “What? There’s no such site” and so it’s not Somerville College but it’s put on by Somerville College. I feel extremely honoured and particularly as I’ve always profoundly disagreed with Andrea – with the work of Andrea Dworkin – and in a way that makes it more of an honour for me. She’s a much greater thinker than I will ever be. It makes it all the more of an honour for me to be here speaking about her work and being able to disagree with her because I think that is fundamentally important.

And I just would like to say something else about, I mean, we heard a little bit about Sheila’s history. I published three books on pornography in the early… in the late eighties early nineties. One was called Pornography, Feminism and the Individual and the other was called Bad Girls Dirty Pictures, the second. The third one was a book that came out of an organisation that I was a part of that was called Feminists Against Censorship and actually Sheila and I in the seventies and eighties were on directly opposing [S. J. – “We might still be, Alison”. A. A. – “We still will be - we will be, don’t worry”] directly opposing camps and I’d just like to say something which I think some of the younger people – younger than us, that is to say, because we probably might be of similar ages – will perhaps not be aware of.

I remember hearing Andrea Dworkin talk in the eighties in Conway Hall in London and the hall was absolutely packed – full to the brim – and Andrea talked and she was the most amazing – my next slide – the most amazing orator – amazing. She was absolutely incredible. She was mesmerising as a speaker and she mesmerised the audience with really powerful stories, personal testimony, from women who’d been subjected to abuse of various kinds by men. Mesmerising stories and the audience was transfixed and I was in the audience and I actually wanted to make a point, which was a point of discussion, and I’m sure that Andrea Dworkin would’ve been absolutely happy to hear my point and - this was the climate at the time - and I put my hand up to speak and the person in the Chair said “Andrea Dworkin would now like to take questions but please don’t speak if you disagree with her”. She didn’t say that, and I’m sure she would never have accepted that, but that was the climate and that was how I felt at the time. I was castigated as someone who was prepared to sleep with the enemy. This was the climate and, you know, sleeping–with–the–enemy, that’s what I was described as doing. And because I didn’t wear dungarees, you know, that was another characteristic of me for which I was denigrated. I chose not to wear dungarees. I chose not to shave all my hair off and I was denigrated for that. And I think it’s very important that we remember that climate because in the UK and in the West, as Sheila has pointed out, we’re not in a climate like that. We don’t live in a climate like that. And actually, I just wanted to say that, one of the pictures that Sheila showed, as you will be aware, was Victoria Beckham and I think we would have had a different impression if we had seen that picture of Victoria with David Beckham in a sarong and he is, as many of you will know, the prime representative of something that is called metrosexuality and what’s important is that we in the West have the possibility of choosing to be like that if we want to and I’m going to talk about countries in the world where that is not possible in a minute. So…and link it to Andrea Dworkin. These are very small points.

Because I said I was going to talk about pornography I thought I just need to mention a couple of things about pornography. I think the cause and connection that some people asserted existed between pornography and rape is actually not proven. Rape is a horrific, horrific practise – don’t get me wrong – and Andrea Dworkin and her followers played the most vital role – and others - in pointing out how horrific it was and in getting rape cases – Sue Lees, also, who was not a follower of Andrea Dworkin, did some very, very important work in the UK on getting the rape laws changed and they’re still pretty horrific …just hearing about someone who’s been in a court case recently shows how horrific it is.

I also wanted to make another point that, at the time, this is a quote by… from Robin Morgan who is not a critic of Andrea Dworkin. She said any censorship legislation that’s produced that is designed to censor pornography would have been, at the time, more likely to have been used against women and she actually talked about it being used against self-help manuals produced by women. Which actually did…was the case if you remember, any of you who might think back to this time, the raids that were made, at the time, on women’s bookshops where they tried to show… to sell lesbian sex romances.

Ok. But the most important point I want to make - and this is where I think it’s absolutely great that Sheila has spoken on what she has just spoken on - I want to make a point that Andrea Dworkin’s writings were actually anti sex and I think.. it was really fascinating to me that Sheila said, at the end of her talk, that she found herself agreeing with Norman Tebbit because I think that was always the position. I was always aligned, as it happens, with the pornographers which I think was a huge slight but of course we can debate about this.

It was actually in the US when Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon – and she’s going to speak later I think, at least I hope she’s going to speak later – produced their Ordinance in Minneapolis they were aligned with the far right. I think this is still the case and the problem I think we’re left with now, in 2006, is that the image of women that is presented by the… by feminists who remain followers of Andrea Dworkin and others like her in the West play into the hands of the Islamic fundamentalists and my work at the moment – I actually work in political theory like Val Bryson who’s here – and the most recent book is a philosophy book on political theory – but I’m also doing some work on the Iranian resistance and it’s fascinating… it’s kind of fortuitous that Iran is in the press at the moment as the new regime on the axis of evil because I started on doing this work long before that and I have a lot of friends in the Iranian resistance in the UK, in Europe and the US, and what I’m going to say comes directly from them. This is Muslim women who are Iranian and who are very, very critical of the regime in Iran. What I’m going to say about that comes directly from them.

But I just want to give you some famous quotes from Andrea Dworkin first to show you the similarities. This is from Andrea Dworkin’s book Pornography – Men Possessing Women – this is just such wonderful, fantastic powerful language, isn’t it? – “A sabre penetrating a vagina is a weapon. So is the camera or the pen that renders it. So is the penis for which it substitutes. Vagina literally means sheath”. Now if you think of …and it depends, of course, where your fantasies or imagination… where you go with this metaphor – if you think of rape, if you think of violence in the home – and this is really, really important – I don’t for a minute want to denigrate what Andrea Dworkin and others have done in bringing an awareness in a public world, in a world of citizenship, of the worst horrors that have ever been perpetrated against women and the worst horrors occur in the home. That’s always been the case and there are 19th century, mid 19th century – Sheila knows about these women – mid 19th century socialist feminists who argued…who are not…who are forgotten now - in France, in Germany, in the UK, in the US, who argued that feminism must change, socialism must change what goes on in the home. They argued that but nobody heard them. Socialists, activists in the 19th century were too busy thinking about wages, thinking about shortening the length of the working day or thinking about getting the vote to worry about what went on in the home. So Andrea Dworkin is not new she’s just presented in a very, very powerful way and she had a huge impact and, you know, a very proper impact. But you might think this…. when I wrote about this in the context of this being, in the women’s movement, very, very influential I thought “the penis? a weapon?” I thought “God, not the ones I’ve seen.” You know…”what kind of weapon is it?” you know “a bit floppy…a bit, you know”. So it depends how you think of this, you know. A weapon? The idea of it being a weapon you think “oh my god”, you know, “a bit painful”, you know, “if it was... if you tried to hit it”, you know.

And I think also I just want to say something – and this will be a bit controversial if anyone here is …very controversial if anyone here is a follower of Andrea Dworkin – but it is important I think to point out…sorry, did somebody say something? [From the audience: “This is a commemorative event”. A.A: “Yes”. Audience: “It is a commemorative event about Andrea Dworkin”. A.A.: “Yes, it is about her” Audience: Inaudible A.A.: “Yes, yes, yes. Sorry”] I just want to say that there’s another side in the UK. There’s a lot of evidence presented about stories about women who have been victims of abuse. There are also stories of children who have been taken away from their homes by very pious, zealous, pious, zealous social workers. Dragged away in the middle of the night – these are the people in Rochdale in the UK in the early nineties who were taken away by social workers - the parents were accused of child abuse and it turned out that the stories were actually not true. So there are those kinds of stories which I think…and there are many stories about men who were suspected of being paedophiles and there’s a famous story of someone who’s a paediatrician who was actually... whose home was pelted and bombarded with eggs and other things because people thought he was a paedophile. Anyway, it’s, you know, understandable – or not. But this is the point I want to make… is that, in the anti porn movement, pornography was simply equated with violence.

In her book Intercourse – and I think that is, again, an absolutely wonderful book – there is a chapter in that book which is called Virginity and the main subject matter of that chapter is... it’s about Joan of Arc and Andrea Dworkin writes about Joan of Arc who was a 15th century military woman who was actually killed as a witch at the age of nineteen. Horrific thing to have happened. But Andrea Dworkin’s chapter is headed ‘Virginity’. She’s… here’s a quote. She says “Intercourse and women’s inequality are like Siamese twins - always in the same place at the same time, pissing in the same pot.” Joan of Arc...one of the elements she admires in Joan of Arc is her virginity. “An essential element of her virility, her autonomy is her virginity”, she says that….she writes that men were able to sleep in the same dormitory with the young Joan of Arc and not dare to touch her which is absolutely great if she wasn’t wanting to be touched by any of them. But to make her virginity an essential element of her power, her authority, her virility is… seems to me to be slightly odd. And she says it symbolises…her virginity symbolises her power, her independence and her resistance from patriarchal values. Why her virginity? Why not the fact that she was a great military hero - which she was – and why not the horror of actually… in having her be killed as a witch when in fact she was a great military hero? Those things are the horrors, not her virginity, surely?

And it seems to me… before I just make these points about Islamic fundamentalism, it seems to me that care, sympathy, love, an acknowledgement of dependence are key moral values. Dependence, an acknowledgement of dependence, are key moral values which should be encouraged in all of us and not denigrated. Dependence. Autonomy is fine. But dependence is also an important human value which should be acknowledged and recognised. And love, you know, Wendy Holloway who was one of the feminists against censorship people, she wrote an article about love and about relationships and she talked about love as being a relationship of mutual dependence where each party can trust the other to such an extent that they can feel the kind of safety that they felt as a small child in the womb. That’s what love between two adults – whether they’re same sex or different sex – is all about. It’s an acknowledgement of reciprocity, recognition of the other. She takes a lot of stuff from (?)Hegel but I think it’s really, really important - that point of view.

And I think, secondly, the anti sex perspective plays directly into the hands of the religious right and specifically of fundamentalist religions. And the fundamentalist religions could be Christian but I want to talk specifically here about Islam. But I just want to give you, before I do that, one little denigratory remark about love which I thought was wonderful that I found when I was reading the feminist literature. Love starts, it says, when you sink into his arms – this is you, the woman – when you sink into his arms and ends with your arms in his sink. So I just thought that was a nice little quote as a little aside, you know, about love as a wrong kind of love.

But anyway, ok, fundamentalism which it plays into the hands of… and I think a lot of the material that we heard from Sheila... but, I mean, this is happening in the UK, in Europe, in the US but it’s certainly not happening in many countries in the middle east and it is most certainly not happening in Iran. And this is a quote here…”I use the term fundamentalism and fundamentalist specifically for the Islamic state in Iran and those who share the same beliefs and values.” That comes directly from an Iranian Muslim woman who is critical of her own state and of the human rights abuses that are conducted by that state. I think I’d just like to tell you first of all that in the early eighties in Iran, after the revolution, carried out by Homeni in 1979, 120,000 people were executed according to the Iranian resistance. Executed. Some of them, you know, for what reason? I’m going to tell you why in a minute for what reason they were executed but 120,000. The figure is maybe contested but these are the figures.

From this perspective, the anti sex perspective, sexual vice, being concerned with your appearance, is the most ignoble sin. Moral decency is measured, primarily, in sexual terms. And it’s interesting to me that Elizabeth Wilson who was one of the Feminists Against Censorship who wrote in the early 80’s about the sort of feminism that Andrea Dworkin espoused Her article in a book called Sexual something edited by Lyn Segal and Mary Mackintosh, her article was called ‘Fundamentalist Feminism’ . So I think it’s not coincidental that we now are seeing the resurgence of a fundamentalist Christian and a fundamentalist Islamic world and in the 80’s anti sex feminism was called fundamentalist feminism.

Ok. It’s difficult for me, of course, to talk about Iran as a white woman but, as I say, and I risk you know, Sahid’s words, sort of denigrating Islam… the sort of Western thing of denigrating Islam and I don’t want to denigrate Islam at all. I think there are many versions of Islam that don’t share the kind of views that I’m going to talk about briefly in the next five minutes. But this article is written by….this quote here comes from a feminist from Iran who is a Muslim and she uses the terms fundamentalism and fundamentalist specifically for the Islamic state in Iran and those who share the same beliefs and values. Fundamentalism is about absolute control of the female body and mind. Now that is, as I say, a follower of Islam, that quote.

This is a quote – and she says Iran because Iran is the first and only state based on the principle of Bell Ayat Al Fahd (?) which means that the Sharia Islamic code is enshrined in the constitution. This is a quote from one of the Iranian resistance members about…. it’s a quote from a Friday prayer leader in Iran – here we are, he says: “One of society’s moral and psychological and social problems is, quote, those who do not observe the Islamic dress code in the hospitals and elsewhere, are improperly veiled, apply make-up in public and show themselves to strangers. Such women must be viewed as diseased patients who must be cured. They lack human dignity and nature.” And one of the most significant forms of oppression of women in Iran is the enforcement of a dress code.

Article 638 of the Islamic Punishment Act which was ratified in 1996 states, quote: “Anyone who commits a forbidden act in public will be fined, imprisoned from 10 days to 2 months or given up to 74 lashes. If the person commits an act which is not punishable but offends public decency he or she will be imprisoned from 10 days to 2 months or given up to 74 lashes.” Now recently, Agence France, an agency in France, reported a list of Islamic regulations which had been published that had to be observed by women. This is the newspaper in which they were published. And basically these regulations banned trousers or skirts worn with a jacket that’s not fully covered by a long gown. The gowns should be long sleeved and may not be of shiny material or bright colours. Among other things banned were brightly coloured socks with designs on them.

Now recently, in 2006, on International Women’s day, women marched in Tehran. According to Human Rights Watch, which is a human rights organisation in the US, police dumped cans of garbage on the heads of women who were seated. Many of the women who handed out some 2000 copies of the resolution about International Women’s Day were arrested and a woman from Iran who’s based in the US said “Unfortunately, I think their verdicts will be execution”. Now what was the…what were they wanting…what were they marching for? They were marching for the right…for example there are pavements for women and men in Iran. They were marching for the right to wear brightly coloured socks. They were marching for the right, if you’re female, a young female of 16, to walk along the road like this, fully clothed, fully covered, with a 16 year old boy next to you. They were marching for the right to do that and they could be stoned or executed and for the last 27 years Iran has been the only country that has had this kind of fundamentalist regime in power. This is what the resistance movement said.

Now, ok…I’m going to finish now. I’m not saying that Andrea Dworkin would endorse any of this but I want to link it back. However I think that there is an image of woman presented and I think it’s very interesting that Sheila, I think, has presented a similar kind of image. There is an image of woman presented as, in order to be powerful and independent you have to be sexless. You can’t wear clothes that you might like to wear, you can’t wear colourful scarves. I mean I think a lot of the examples that Sheila described I would personally would not want to practice and, in fact, Sheila and I are in agreement in actually being sceptical about the writings of Judith Butler. I think it’s very interesting actually that Judith Butler talks about women enacting their gender and she talks about women being able to choose their gender and, in fact, it’s only about 1% of women – and Sheila and I are agreed about this – who do actually want to change their gender. It’s a tiny proportion of women, on the basis of which she advocates for this thesis or argues for this thesis that women enact or choose their gender.

But I think that there is an image that women’s bodies are denigrated in both forms of thinking and there’s a whole body of feminist literature, feminist writing in the US, the UK and Europe which offers a very different picture. It offers a picture, this overtly feminist writing, about sex. Pat Califier was one of the big, early women who wrote…who wrote about women’s erotic desire. And there’s a whole body of literature doing that. [S.J.: “She is now Patrick” A.A.: “Yeah…um...yeah, absolutely”] And there’s also, I think, a problem for many men if we adopt this view of women. I just found a recent quote…well maybe it’s not very recent actually, but I found a quote that...which relates…I don’t know whether you noticed that there was a survey conducted, I think, just in the last couple of days over what is women’s and men’s, in the UK, favourite novel of all time and by far and away the favourite novel for women came out as Jane Eyre which is about, you know, as you know, you all know what it’s about - that she desperately loves Rochester...Jane Eyre. By far and away the favourite novel for men was Camus The Outsider and I just want to end with a quote because I think this image of women as being sexless plays into the hands of this view about men: “Men are creatures with emotional disabilities that we women can help them overcome.” Now, I mean, I don’t know whether you want to agree or not with that quote but I just want to give you that quote because I think if we present an image of women as having to be virgins in order to be autonomous, powerful women then I think we’re playing into the hands of that view about men.

Ok. Thank you.

[Applause]

Chair: Alright so we’ll start with some questions and you’re of course free to disagree with either of the speakers if you want to. And we’ll start with you.

Questioner: I would like to say that Andrea Dworkin’s work was not anti sex it was anti sex abuse and [inaudible] you seem to be very confused about the issue that she was talking about - which is abuse. Why have you defined her work as anti sex? It is not anti sex.

A.A.: I think we’d have to read…have you read her book Intercourse?

Questioner: I’ve read many of her books.

A.A.: Yeah. Well, I mean I’ve given a couple of quotes. Of course I could give many more quotes but I think it’s very interesting that that book, to me, I mean, one of the chapters is called ‘Dirt’, another chapter is called ‘Virginity’, that it seems to me…that there are quotes I could give you where she says that it may be the case…she’d say it much more strongly and powerfully than this, but if there were a society where women and men were completely equal then heterosexual sex might have disappeared. There is a quote – I’m sorry I can’t remember where it comes from but it’s something like that - that there’s almost a view that comes from the book on pornography that pornography is inherently violent, that, in order to be powerful, you have to be…you know, not have to be but it’s almost as though, if you’re female, you represent yourself as a sex being then that plays into the hands of male oppressors. I think there is that view there.

Questioner: But the women are not presenting themselves as sex beings. They’re being sexually abused by men for profit and masculinity. That’s the point Andrea Dworkin is making. Pornography isn’t about sex it’s about abuse. It’s about the power differential. It’s about male dominance and female subordination as an institution. You’re coming from the patriarchal perspective on pornography. This is a feminist perspective on pornography which states it’s abuse.

A.A.: Well, you see, I mean, you’ve said just then I’m coming from the patriarchal perspective on pornography. I mean, I’ve never been interested in pornography, I’ve never looked at pornography in my life and you’re saying I come from the patriarchal perspective.

From the audience (ww aside - was it you, feministfirst?): How can you defend pornography if you’ve never looked at it because I’ve looked at it and it’s horrific?

A.A.: But I wasn’t defending pornography. I was saying that…I’m not setting out to be a…to align myself with people who make millions of pounds from producing pornographic magazines. I’m not setting out to align myself with them. But all I’m saying is that women, if they want to, they should have the choice of looking at – and men – should have the choice…

[Audience interruption of outrage]

Chair: There is a queue of questions so we’re going to try to get through them in order. I think actually you wanted to respond on that?

S.J.: Yes. You did have the advantage of being able to respond to me and identify me as sexless whereas I have not actually had the opportunity to respond to you.

A.A.: I didn’t say you were sexless

S.J.: Oh, I think you did, in the end. [audience laughter] I don’t know that sexless is really an insult! I mean, if I’m sexless, I think I’m great, you know, maybe it’s the way to go…
But when you’re accused of being anti sex or sexless you have to rush in and say “I’ve had a very active sex life” right? Because it’s the only way. It’s a bit like the accusations of witchcraft – you have to quickly say… anyway, I won’t even bother to say that to you – you can probably find out on the internet. [audience laughter] but…but… some of my old girlfriends are getting active. [audience laughter]

Now, I think that the problem here is about the definition of what sex is. What Andrea Dworkin does is she criticises the construction of sex in patriarchal culture. If she’s got a chapter called ‘Dirt’ it’s because she’s criticising the way women are seen as ‘dirt’ and the way sex is used against them as ‘dirt’, right? Now that’s very clear to me. I do not understand why anybody should think that Andrea somehow identifies with the views of women and sex in the culture. What she’s doing is criticising them and saying that sex is, you know, the main mechanism through which women are subordinated in culture. She’s, I don’t know whether she’s, you know, into sex or not – I have no idea about that part of her life – but what she is against is sado-masochistic sex. It’s a sex of power and domination against powerlessness and subordination. Now we should all be against that because that is fundamental to the subordination of women. Anyone who’s not against that sex is actually wanting the subordination of women to continue. So, yes, I’m against that sex. Do I think that sex can be different? You know, even for some of the individuals here, and in the future, I think sex could be different. But what we’ve got to have is the sex of equality. Now that’s called sexlessness? And it’s seen as, as I often say, about as exciting as a cold rice pudding but, I’m sorry, it’s where we’ve got to go. Thank you. [Applause]

Chair: We’ll take some more questions

Questioner: Thanks very much for both of the talks. I felt really invigorated by Sheila Jeffreys saying things that I’ve felt… the inspiration that came from Andrea Dworkin but I was very disturbed by Alison Assiter. I thought “oh no…she can’t be saying that at a commemorative conference” but, in fact, it really struck me when you both talked that you’re both against the same thing and Andrea Dworkin hated those same things - we all hate the same things together. The question is what are the…you know…how do we sort of frame the enemy …how do we then destroy it? It felt to me as though Alison Assiter isn’t angry enough about the way that women are coerced in the West, you know. I have two teenaged daughters. My fourteen year old spends an hour preening before she goes to school every day. You know, I love her. I don’t want her to feel a fool when she does that. But what do you do? This is coercion. You should be more worried about that. But on the other hand I felt Sheila Jeffreys should maybe be a bit worried – and maybe Andrea Dworkin should’ve been as well – [falters] But that [inaudible] is so violating and so aggressive and, you know, ordinary women who feel their breasts are too big and uncomfortable or feel their labia are uncomfortable or whatever, you know they should also be.. we should be concerned about them and the line that I think Andrea Dworkin [inaudible] I can’t remember where it was…in a paper, an article on Hedda Nusbaum [inaudible] and the phrase she uses, she said - you know Hedda Nusbaum got done for failing to care for her baby when she was battered – and Andrea Dworkin said yes, we’re very worried about the baby, we’re worried enough to send Hedda Nusbaum down but who loved the woman that the baby was going to become, you know, who loved Hedda Nusbaum? Women aren’t loved enough. And so I guess I’d like you both to say a bit about this whole loving of women.

Chair: Ok. There’s a question at the back and then we’ll take …

Questioner (Julie Bindel): Yes, I feel that I have to speak up for the children of Rochdale really. It was the comment that Alison Assiter made that I think was deeply offensive. It was wrong and it was outrageous. To suggest that another failed child protection incident meant that the people who abused those children simply were not convicted of it. In so many statutory rape cases time and time again – and any of us who do work on sexual violence will know – that if you rape or abuse an under five year old you’re pretty much guaranteed to get away with it. And if you rape a woman, per se, you have got a very, very good chance of getting away with it. Ok? So please don’t make statements like ‘the adults of Rochdale, it was discovered that they hadn’t abused these children after all, somebody was lying’. Children aren’t believed and women are often not believed and unless, for example, with rape if you think that 93% of women – 94% of women – who make complaints about rape are lying – we actually have a 6% conviction rate – then we’re in a very bad situation.

And I also don’t think that Sheila and Alison do hate the same thing. I think, Alison, I think you hate radical feminism - and you hate feminists who point out that men are destructive and sexually abusive - to rather a large extent. I really don’t think that Alison hates pornography or violence towards women at all unless I’ve misheard what you say.

A.A.: Do you think it would be possible….I don’t think I insulted anyone…d’you think it would be possible, if you don’t mind me saying this…that, you know, one person has accused me of being confused and you said that I don’t hate violence against women. I find that, I’m afraid…it’s just like the things I was accused of in the 80’s because I wrote a book called Bad Girls Dirty Pictures I was accused of not accepting that there is violence against women. I was accused of sleeping with the enemy and I was accused of not deserving the title of feminist many, many, many times. And I’m afraid the tone of the two contributions where you say…one said you were deeply confused – maybe I am. I accept I’m deeply confused, perhaps we’re all deeply confused, in the end – and the other at the back who says I cannot be against violence against women – of course I’m against violence against women..

Questioner (J. B.): Excuse me, I didn’t say that you couldn’t be against it. I said that you have said nothing which could lead any of us to believe that you hate violence against women as much as you hate radical feminists.

A.A.: I don’t hate radical feminists… really.

Questioner (J. B): And quite frankly you can’t get away with making statements like ‘these adults were found not to have abused these children in Rochdale’ when you can look at what the conviction rate is for those people who rape under five year olds. It’s outrageous what you said. You cannot possibly qualify it and therefore I think you should leave it out of your talk.

Chair: Ok. We have two questions over here and we’ll take this one first.

Questioner (Catharine MacKinnon): Piling on a little bit... I do question… I feel as if I’m in a sort of Orwellian world when I hear you speak… where things mean the opposite or things are certainly not of a similar understanding to me. There is, for example, I’m hearing some of the lines that I’ve heard over and over again during the controversies over pornography in the eighties. One of them, for example, seems to be the facile assertion that pornography is somehow connected causily with rape was argued not to be true – or ‘not proven’, rather - but on the other hand the assertion that pornography, that opposing pornography readily leads to censorship passed easily without being, in any sense, proven. There was no scientific proof for that – not required.

I began to wonder what the word ‘alliance’ meant when I heard that Andrea Dworkin, or whoever played the perfect target, was allied with the far right. Where was the proof or the understanding of just what ‘alliance’ meant? If you happen to be standing on the same spot at the same time which is very common in politics.

With respect to the behaviour of the police and the treatment by police: I thought it may be useful, if you have not done so, that you would read Sheila Jeffreys' book The Spinster and her Enemies for it’s very informative discussion of the Contagious Diseases Act and the all too typical use of that Act as an excuse for police to maltreat women.

And finally I would just say that ‘pissing in the same spot’ - same ‘pot’ excuse me – is obviously a paraphrase of male attitude – based on what men say and what men write and what men think. One might look at Joan Smith’s work for a reminder of that. It seems odd to misunderstand or misread a paraphrase for the attitude of a person who is paraphrasing someone else’s [indecipherable] behaviour.

A.A.: Ok. When I said alliance…. and this was in the, as you are well aware, of course this was in the 1980’s…the radical feminists and the Christian right were taking the same line. Ok, the word alliance was used loosely, if you like, but I think we often use the word alliance when two groups of people who are otherwise opposed... I mean, Sheila Jeffreys and I happen to be allied in our view on Judith Butler. We happen to be allied in our view on post modernism that doesn’t mean we’re directly working to counter post modernism but we happen to share the same view. That’s the sense in which I was using the word alliance.

S.J.: Like me and Tebbit maybe, Alison?

A.A.: Yeah. You know, you don’t like it Sheila but I don’t like being allied with right wing pornographers either. I don’t like it.

Questioner (C.M.): Excuse me but why conflate them? Why go out of your way to conflate them?

A.A.: Can I just say…can I just finish please will you just let me finish the response if you don’t mind because you made a point that the language - and Sheila made the point as well - that what Andrea Dworkin is talking about is not… she’s not, if you like, expressing her own view in calling a chapter ‘Dirt’ she’s talking about the patriarchal view – the way that women are represented. Now, absolutely – I don’t for a minute deny that but all I’m saying, and this is exactly…you’re saying that what I’m saying plays into the hands of the pornographers – ok – you may be right but I think there is something which is equally frightening and worrying which is very current today and that is Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism. And I think that the sort of quotes that are used…I’m glad there’s somebody nodding - one person in the audience is nodding and that gives me a little bit of reassurance and it makes me think I’m not completely insane which is, you know... maybe I am insane? – I certainly felt it in the 80’s. But anyway, the sort of language that’s used, the choice of metaphors, the choice of cultural icons, the way those cultural icons are described is the same language as the language used by the Christian right in the US and by Islamic fundamentalists. It’s a language that denigrates women as sex beings and it represents women and it, it…by implication it depicts women who are good, strong, active, feminist women as being, by implication…I’m not saying for a minute that Andrea Dworkin or Sheila or anybody is actually… actually does not have a sex life – I’m not saying that. I’m saying that the image that is presented [audience laughter] maybe you’ll be glad to know that… I’m saying that the image that’s presented almost makes out…. the image…the sort of cultural icons, the way those cultural icons are described, it’s almost as though, in order to be a feminist hero, you have to depict yourself as sexless. That’s all I’m saying and that’s exactly what the Islamic fundamentalists do, it’s exactly what they do. They say ‘women cannot be, in public, sex beings because they’re…women are dangerous’. Women as sex beings are dangerous people. You cannot show that you are…you cannot show a bit of hair because, if you do, you’ll stir up some man to go and rape some woman somewhere. Just showing a little bit of hair. And I’m simply saying that it plays… it’s a similar language and it plays off that…

Audience interruption [inaudible]

Question: I’d like to know, both Sheila and Alison, what we can do about the future. So I’d like you both to comment on where you think – obviously individually because you’re both very different people – what’s feeding the energy that makes things the way they are for women still the way they are for women? Why, when so much has been written, so much understood about equality and the benefits of all sorts of good behaviour, where…what’s the driver for the continuing discrimination, prejudice and violence against women in our society?

S.J.: Yes, I think…I think one of the things that’s happening and what lies behind the practices I was talking about earlier is that we’re in a stage in which the culture is being pornographised. As a result of the fact that in - as a result of the work of Alison, and others - pornography was de-censored, normalised and allowed to become an enormously powerful industry from the 1970’s onwards. [applause] The effect of this industry; this industry is now everybody’s pension schemes - they’re actually wound up in it – we’re all going to live off the earnings of prostitution - General Motors is in pornography now, right? So we’re all living and will live in our older years off the earnings of prostitution – the prostitution of poor women, marginalised women, the most vulnerable women and the terrible violence done to their bodies in pornography and prostitution. We will live off that. Now, that’s the world in which we live. In the last 25 years pornography has spread out as it’s become normalised to be what the entertainment industry is – there’s little difference now between porn models who open gigs and are in the porn videos. They are also the fashion models – pornography creates the styles that women are supposed to wear - that’s why they have to show all their body and wear ‘slut pumps’, the shoes that are pointed, they’re slut pumps. So all of those practices come very much from pornography as does labiaplasty as does brazilian waxing as does breast implants and so on and so on.

Now why is all that happening? Yes, of course, it’s a huge market sector but I think also it’s happening because it’s the compensation to feminism. Right? Yes, women have some more opportunities now. There are many things that women are able to do now, and I would not deny it, than when I was young and I could only think of being a teacher or, possibly a civil servant. Women can do all kinds of things, not in huge numbers and not as we would like but as a result of that I think men are being offered, compen.., and I mean quite understandably really, by male dominated governments all over the world, the huge compensation of the pornography and prostitution industry which allows men to have a subordinate class of marginalised and poor women on whom to act out their rage and create their dominance. So I think that’s a huge part of what’s going on.

A.A.: Shall I respond or do you want to have some more questions? I mean I…

Questioner: I’d love to. I’d love to know what you have to say.

A.A.: Ok. Let me just tell you about one of my students. One of my students recently did a project on women in the UK, women erotic dancers and she interviewed a lot of them and all of them, she said, all of them said they feel powerful when they’re doing their erotic dancing. They feel..[audience laughter] no, no please let me finish. You’re laughing but this is what they said. They feel powerful when they do erotic dancing. This is what they all said. Now I just want to contrast that because I personally think that the fundamental problem, the big problem in the world today, is fundamentalist religion. That’s what I think is the big problem in the world today. And I think it’s very, very serious and the kinds of human rights abuses that are actually carried out in the name of fundamentalist religion, I think, put – I don’t for a minute…please let me say this again and again – I don’t think that violence in the home against women is right. I think it’s horrific. I think that the numbers of women who have been destroyed, they’re also made because they’ve managed to overcome it. You know I’m actually trained to be a counsellor and one of my clients is somebody who overcame horrific abuse and she is going to be the most wonderful woman because she overcame it and, you know, many women have. I don’t want to denigrate that but I think the sort of abuse that can cause you to be stoned and executed… you can be married in Iran at age 9, if you’re a girl, you can be stoned by…and there’s debates about the size of the stone. This is really serious stuff…debates about the size of the stone that is used against women for simply doing things like walking in the streets, wearing colourful clothing or walking on the wrong pavement and if the stone is too small it won’t… it’ll just hurt the woman. If it’s too big it’ll kill her too quickly. This, it seems to me, and this Sharia law is coming into existence in Iraq at the moment. There’s a combination, if you read the Iraqi constitution, there’s a combination of Sharia law and some woolly-minded, liberal democratic constitution. This, to my mind, is the fundamental problem facing women today and I would want to devote all my energies, as far as I can, to working with the Iranian resistance because I think they’re the hope for Iran at the moment and not bombing Iran, which the US or UK could easily do, and for helping women worldwide. That’s my answer.

Chair: Ok. There’s a question at the very back? Which is next in the queue..yeah…

Questioner (ww aside; Finn Mackay, I think): I just wanted to say to Alison... you know, you suggested that you’ve got a bad reception here and you’re asking people, you know, not to throw, sort of, insults at you. But you have come here and we have listened to your talk. But to me it’s just a case of ‘which side are you on’. Right at the beginning you said that you were proud to ally yourself with the pornographers and you said that quite clearly. Right at the beginning you said during the intro you were proud to ally yourself with the pornographers

A.A. interrupts: I didn’t. Please. I didn’t say that. I didn’t.

Questioner: Ok well maybe I misheard but that is what I got from your speech [inaudible] you were talking about where you were positioned in the 80’s and so I think, yeah, why? Why defend that [inaudible] there are many [inaudible] you can have, and as Andrea said, with regard to arguments over rapes, you know, it does come down to which side you’re on.

A.A.: Sorry, I think there are many, many sides. Look, let me just say this. I don’t think that all women form a class. Radical feminists talked about a sex class. I don’t think they do. I think the problems faced by the women I’ve just been talking about which you didn’t mention are far, far more extreme than problems faced by any woman in the West. Any woman.

From the audience: Bullshit! Women are being killed in their houses on a regular…

A.A.: Ok. Ok. Ok. I just wanted to respond…

Chair: We’re just going to start taking questions two at a time because there’s quite a few of them remaining. I think next in the queue there was one from you?

Questioner: My question is for Sheila Jeffreys. I really enjoyed your paper it was very fluent, it was funny and it was very thoughtful and you presented a very persuasive case that we have a [inaudible] gender now. One of the things I liked about your paper is you have a very strong sensitivity to the unequal playing field that women are still operating on and I think it’s that sensitivity to the politics of gender in our society that is perhaps lacking in our other speaker today.

But what I want to ask you is do you think there’s any prospect of a third wave of feminism? You know, the second wave of feminism was made up of both a social movement with women theorising. We still have women theorising but we don’t seem to have a social movement anymore. So is there any prospect of a third wave of feminism?

Second questioner: All I can see feminism at the moment is faced with tackling the problems, both the problem of fundamentalism in Iran and we’ve got the continuing problem in our society of why aren’t things improving as much or as quickly as we thought they would, and so we have the two different responses one from Professor Assiter and one from Professor Jeffreys which says we should look at this and we should do it this way and another look at these problems in UK society instead of Iran and [inaudible] and respond in this way and I think they... I find them to be both valid responses and the problem seems to come from the fact that Professor Jeffreys’ response could possibly be abused by fundamentalists and so that seems to be why you’re arguing against it rather than the fact that the arguments within it are valid and [inaudible].

So, my question is, just wondering, really, I think that what you said was the fundamental problem was where we should put our energy, how… I think we ought to have the audie…I think we should have energy put in to trying to cope with both the issues… the problems in UK society, the fact that we’re still continuing [inaudible] and how are we going to find a way for those two things to be done and the energy which is put into them instead of fighting against each other. To work constructively we need to support each other. I don’t think there’s a really strong disagreement with anyone.

[Applause]

Chair: Feel free to respond to either question.

A.A.: I think you have to make your own choice. It’s you. You choose where you want to go. Nobody’s going to tell you. That’s all I would say.

Chair: And there was…

S.J.: Can I say about the third wave? Yes, I hope that it will come. I know lots of marvellous young women, and they are getting more numerous, who are interested in this, who are actually collecting a history of the early movement, getting interested in those ideas, doing their PhD’s on that stuff, interestingly enough. So something’s going on. There is a revival of interest, you know, the BBC and Channel Four are making programmes about the stuff. I mean, extraordinary. So I think there is hope but it’s very, very difficult for young women. They don’t have any of the things we took for granted – they don’t have women’s bookstores or women’s spaces or women’s centres. All that is gone and they’re on their own and it’s really, really, really, really hard. But, yes, I have hopefulness and I think if that revolution comes again it’s going be about what they have to do sexually, what they have to do to their bodies – it’s going to come from the personal again and from the agony of what they’re now being expected to do, sexually.

Can I just say something about fundamentalism. It is important that, in Iran – and this is a connection I have with Alison here, because we’re making connections today – in Iran transgenderism is totally approved, it’s enforced by the state. Huge numbers of men are having transgender surgery and they’re getting it on the state because homosexuals are executed. So, what I think is very fascinating is that there’s a connection between the very jolly Blair government and their Gender Recognition Act and Iran. They love transgenderism because it does help to get rid of this serious problem of homosexuality and it enforces gender. Right? So we do need to be fighting, I think, transgenderism as a state ‘project’ in terms of gender.

Chair: Do you have a question over here?

Questioner: Yes. I mean I suppose it’s more of a statement to start off…. I mean for the first session. I think it’s brilliant that we’re having a day to commemorate Andrea Dworkin, the work of Andrea Dworkin and the impact that Andrea had on women and men both in the academic world but also [inaudible] as well out there. I think it’s fantastic that we’ve got the speakers that we have but especially to hear Sheila speaking and to use the same clear, powerful language and to equip us with those words to challenge what they do and what they think and what they say where we do have that, you know, is it feminists who support this gender realignment and what’s going on and I think we need the kind of writings to help us formulate our arguments about what it is that…is anti feminist and anti women about, about where we’re going. I think it’s useful to have these arguments which use gender and sex and sexuals and to keep that... because like you’re saying…we don’t have women’s studies we have gender studies so everybody can come along and everybody, you know…

S.J.: And you don’t need to have women in them!

Questioner: No you don’t! And women’s voices that were in the Academy are now getting pushed out again – we can’t have feminists, we can have gender studies. So I think it’s really important that we have that, you know, that we have the language and we have the knowledge. And also…I mean [inaudible] sorry, just to say that we need a structural analysis. It’s not enough to just say one woman made it [inaudible] being a lap dancer. Structurally we know – and we know [inaudible] all forms of violence against women are there – it’s about the abuse of children, it’s about the abuse of women, it’s about pornography, it’s about [inaudible] physical and sexual violence against plenty of women and children and that’s why we need a gender structural analysis – an analysis that Andrea and Sheila and others help us to understand what it’s about.

Chair: Do we have a question right here?

Questioner (Catharine MacKinnon): Yeah, it’s more a statement too. In connection with what Alison Assiter said, I’d like to straighten out one distortion, one factual misrepresentation and one de-contextualisation.

The distortion: ‘the connection between pornography and rape is not proven’. That is a vast distortion of a huge body of social science research that has been going on for a period of years. Reasonably well put together [inaudible] data which was published in Catherine Itzin’s book and shows, it documents without any question, the connection between exposure to pornography and it’s effect on people who use it in terms of, among other things, their pro-rape attitude which informs their behaviour but also [inaudible] and other effects.

As to the actual misrepresentation: Andrea Dworkin was never allied with the far right and, indeed, the Christian right never supported the MacKinnon Dworkin Ordinance – not any time and not anywhere – and in both the connections of these two things, these are two items that were reports that were created by a PR firm which was hired and funded by the pornographers to flood the press with these two lies so that you would all think these two things. The reason that the Christian right didn’t support the MacKinnon/Dworkin Ordinance is because it’s a sex equality law and that is why the fundamentalists – the Islamic fundamentalists – don’t support it either.

And as to the de-contextualisation: the quote by Robin Morgan about censorship legislation being used against women was a statement about obscenity law. It is not, as was implied here, suggested here, in relation to the work that Andrea Dworkin did against pornography including the legislation that she [inaudible]

[Applause]

A.A.: [sigh] I don’t know whether it’s worth it really. I mean I would like to say, I suppose, on the comment that the …as far as the vast body of experiments, literature on the purported causal connection between pornography and rape, that literature is heavily contested and there are many people on both sides who say it is not clear what the evidence actually shows. It’s contested. Basically it’s contested. It is contested research. I suppose that’s all I would say.

And on the point about the factual inaccuracy, I’m sure you’re in a better position than I am, obviously, to know what the actual position was there but I’m only quoting what has been reported many, many, many times in articles, in press reports and so on about the Christian right actually supporting the Ordinance. This is what has been reported many, many, many times. Now, I know, I know that what is reported is often a distortion of the truth. I know that and I’m not going to claim that I have more access to the truth than somebody who was there and part of it - how could I claim that? But all I would say is that this has been reported many, many times and I’m simply reporting what I’ve read from many, many sources.

Chair: Ok well I think we’re going to have to end it there in terms of questions because we’ve run out of time.

From the audience- aradfem: I just want to say, actually, that if you’ve been told that it’s not right will you continue to say it?

Chair: We’re going to just…you don’t have to respond to that because we’re done with it but if you want to continue the conversation over lunch, that’s great. And could we all thank our speakers…[Applause]

2006-05-07T03:13:00.000+01:00

Heads up to Uma...

...at Indianwriting for this:

Sati - the act of throwing oneself upon one's husband's funeral pyre - has now been acknowledged as an act commited under duress.

Let's accept it, sati is never voluntary. There is always an element of coercion — physical, psychological or social. More often than not, it is engineered by the widow's family to grab her deceased husband's property.

And, up to now, if a widow doesn't kill herself she's subjected to a life of hassles, humilliation and no way out.

So now, the proposed law states that both passive observers and actual abettors are culpable for acts of attempted sati and the punishment for that is either death or life imprisonment. The law places the onus for prevention of sati on the family and the village - the main protagonists.

The law will state that family and community are responsible for the continuing lives of widowed women.

It's kind of saying that women's lives matter more than property and I think that's pretty radical.

2006-05-05T23:01:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was fun...

...we had our annual team building day at work. We're a small team - there are only six of us delivering safe accommodation and recovery services for women and their children fleeing domestic violence and abuse. The work is emotionally taxing and pretty stressful. Not only because of the daily horrors of witnessing the damage that some men do to those they supposedly care for but also because the agency itself is constantly under threat of reduced funding and support from statutory agencies. We're a Not For Profit organisation and, as such, life is tough.

So the annual team building event is our way of looking after ourselves, reminding ourselves that we value one another and care about each other as colleagues and friends - that we're a bit special. Every year (at the same time as our team building event, funnily enough) a huge craft fair is held locally - the biggest in Europe, so I've heard - and every year we go, as a team, to wander round together for hours in marquees that are brim-full of the results of staggeringly impressive human creativity. It's great.

My co-worker's son is getting married in July and she's having huge problems finding the right outfit to wear to this family occasion that has all the usual sub-plots and family politics going on behind its happy premise. She wants something with the 'wow' factor - she has statements to make - but it's difficult because she's short and very, very round. Clothing manufacturers seem to think that women of her shape and size just ought to be happy to find anything that fits them if they're not prepared to hide themselves away behind closed doors. On top of this J, my co-worker, has a woman friend who believes she knows best about everything and has been bamboozling her into buying stuff that doesn't fit properly, doesn't suit her and that she knows she really won't wear to her son's wedding and doesn't even want. All this is begining to seriously worry her.

So, back to the craft fair. The first marquee we went in....all kinds of wonderful stuff happening - lace making, tapestry, quilting, wood carving - even spinning. That made me think about traditional women's crafts that we're in danger of losing and it would be a shame if we did. The woman at the spinning wheel seemed so attuned to what she was doing - the result of which is the basis for almost everything we wear.

There was also a milliner. Such amazing hats I have never seen before. Each one an original and each one totally spectacular in its own way. I kinda like hats... Anyway, I saw one particular hat and my first thought was "That's J...that hat just says 'J' all over it". I put it down and half covered it up - it was in a wicker chest with lots of others - and called her over. She looked in the chest and immediately pulled out the hat I'd been looking at. She put it on and, I was right, it was the most wonderful hat for her - bearing in mind her size and stature and the fact that hats, generally, do nothing for her. It was perfect. Though subtle and understated, it was the kind of hat that stops you in your tracks. I won't try to describe it because it's impossible - suffice to say it transformed J's vision of herself and she could at last see herself with the 'wow' factor. It wasn't that expensive either but J is a cautious woman and never makes hasty decisions (unless she's being bamboozled) so she asked the milliner if she'd keep the hat to one side for an hour or so while a decision was made.

We looked around a couple more marquees before J acknowledged that she had a nagging worry that someone else might have expressed an interest in the hat and the milliner had sold it. She obviously wanted it. So a decision was made and she went back and bought the hat. We discussed the various approaches to putting together a wedding outfit and concluded that, although building an outfit around your hat might be an unconventional approach, it isn't impossible.

Right at the very end of the day, with tired feet after lots of marquees filled with all kinds of fascinating things, we arrived at one that included handmade women's clothes. The woman stall-holder had come from San Francisco to exhibit and sell her creations. They were completely wonderful - so original and completely un-catwalk it was refreshing. And she did 'out-size' sizes. (That's an extremely offensive term, I think. Out-size. Out of what? The norm? Who says what the 'norm' is?) J looked and liked. The woman and her assistant paid attention to J, listened to what she needed for the wedding and spent a lot of time with her - so much time, in fact, that we were still there 45 minutes after the craft fair had closed and everyone had gone! They kept bringing different things for her to look at and choose from. They saw the hat and were duly wowed. They helped J (and the rest of us) build her wedding outfit around the hat.

J came away having spent a lot of money but with an outfit (including hat) that gave balance to her figure, that was comfortable for her to wear and, most importantly for her, has the hugest wow factor. She'll have the confidence to deal with all those sub-plots and family politics at her son's wedding and she'll definitely be remembered as the incredibly stylish mother of the groom.

I saw her briefly this morning. She'd been too tired to try on the ensemble last night but had spent an hour twirling in front of the mirror earlier on and, d'you know what, she liked what she saw.

I know there are a hundred and one feminist issues to be explored and examined here but, for today, I'm just happy that J is happy and feeling so much better about all the personal issues she'll be facing on her son's big day.

2006-05-03T12:11:00.000+01:00

Wow!...

Your humble blogger got a mench on philobiblion!

"Welcome to the first Femmes Fatales on the new site: you know the drill - 10 great posts from 10 new (to me) women bloggers."

How fab is that! Lelyons from femvist is there, as is Kaka Mak and Laura from Sheffield Fems among other women bloggers of note.

I just feel like showing off...

2006-05-01T23:09:00.000+01:00

Friday May 5th is.....

Yay! brownfemipower at woman of color has had the brilliant idea that we could all do with some fun.

As she says:

"...this blog for radical fun day will be a day for all us radical/progressive bloggers to let our hair down, do some heavy dancing, and remember why we like each other and why we like to blog."

So get over there and sign up if you'd like to make some smiles.

2006-04-25T23:17:00.000+01:00

To what shall I compare thee...

This post is inspired by Manxome who posted this analogy which popped into her head while she was reading at the Den:

"Rape is not sex, just as hammering a nail into someone's head is not construction"

I think that's brilliant! As Manxome said, she could go on for hours thinking up other analogies and I thought "what a good game!" So I'm inviting you all to indulge yourselves for five or ten minutes, to let your imaginations fly and your creative muses loose... Give it your best shot.

Mine?

Pornography isn't harmful, just as Big Mac's are a slimming aid.

Have fun!

2006-04-19T01:09:00.000+01:00

I'd just like to thank...

...leyons at Femvist for hosting the Blog to Raise Awareness of Sexual Violence.

So many posts, so much pain....but so much strength and courage too.

The message is clear - we need to keep shouting about this until it stops.

And lelyons, take some time out, just for you, huh?
(hug)

2006-04-18T09:15:00.000+01:00

Blog to Raise Awareness of Sexual Violence

Twenty six years ago my cousin was eighteen and a lovely young woman - bright, funny, full of life. The youngest of four children, she was part of a close knit family of devout Catholics. She'd finished her bacalaureat and she and her older brother decided to go back-packing around North Africa. Lots of French kids did this....well, lots of kids from everywhere did this - Morocco held a fascination for us at that time.

They'd been there just over a week when it happened. They were camping on a beach for the night - just the two of them - and their camp was invaded by four local men. They took her brother off somewhere and came back for her.

They subjected her to a lengthy ordeal of horrific sexual violence that put her in hospital for five weeks. She was gang raped and sexually assaulted in every way possible. It was completely brutal.

Her brother had been knocked unconscious and tied up out of sight but still within earshot. When he came round he heard it all.

It was reported but never investigated.

She'd had plans, my cousin. She had dreams. In a few weeks she was going to university to study. She wanted to become a children's social worker. Those four men destroyed all that.

She went to university, as planned. She did give it a go. She lived alone in a rented room off campus. She didn't go home much and, though her family kept in regular contact with her, she didn't say much. She was changed. They thought she was recovering, albeit slowly. She had a therapist and was on medication for depression and anxiety. They thought she was busy with her studies. They tried to support her. They found out later that she rarely ventured out of her room. It was there that they found her some months later. She had hanged herself.

Reading through her papers her family discovered the emotional torture she'd tried to live with since that night in Morocco. She'd drawn endless, savage pictures of what had happened. She'd written pages and pages, trying to explain her tangled feelings. Her guilt. The shame she felt. The note she left was very simple.

She told her family that she loved them all and that she was so sorry. So sorry because she was no longer a virgin and, therefore, wasn't a good Catholic. That God would now turn his back on her as a sinner. That the only way to stop the anguish she felt was to end her life; even knowing that that would preclude her from Heaven but that didn't matter because she wouldn't be going there anyway. She'd failed everyone and she was ashamed.

They killed her, those four men. They destroyed everything she believed in. They stole her life.

One Moroccan police officer, by way of an attempt at an explanation for the incident, had told her parents that "blonde girls are much prized" so, in his view, it was her fault.

As you've read this far, could you quietly tell her that it wasn't her fault; that men who rape are responsible for what they do; that no shame lies with her. She may hear you.

Her name is Catherine.

2006-04-11T23:02:00.000+01:00

Biting Beaver...

...over at the Den is writing a week long series about the tiers of pornography and the harm it causes.

Please read this series.

Even if you already know about the harms of pornography.

Even if you've already read these words.

Please read this. And do something about it.

2006-04-09T02:50:00.000+01:00

Ok, Conference report...

On Friday April 7, in Oxford, the Centre for the Study of Social Justice hosted the Andrea Dworkin Commemorative Conference.

It kind of warms my heart to see 'social justice' and 'Andrea Dworkin' linked like that...

I had a fab time. Spent the day mostly with my friend,whom I
love dearly, and I met other women friends, like V who I've known in an internetty way for donkeys. I also got to meet other women who I've only known by their user names for a while. All of them are totally fab feminists. The day passed all too quickly.

Laurelin took notes. I didn't. I'd had to park my car in a field and take a park and ride to get to the venue. I wasn't able to carry much. So I'll leave it up to her to do the analytical stuff. She's better at it than I am anyway. But I will say that while a certain speaker was dissing Andrea Dworkin's total worldview by repeating media lies about her I was so pleased that Catharine MacKinnon, who was actually there when the incidents that that speaker was talking about took place, was actually there. I mean there, with us, and able to set the record straight.

Sheila Jeffrey's is lovely. She made me laugh a lot and her perception of the way women are encouraged to think about themselves completely resonates with me. Knives? Blood? To 'look "right"'? She seemed totally sane to me.... And she has a wicked sense of humour (for a feminist ;))

Julie Bindel....ah...well... I love Julie Bindel already. It was she who said that wonderful thing about it being the fact that men can buy and sell women's bodies that keeps us all unfree... Julie actually knew Andrea as a friend. They talked and laughed together. They called and wrote to one another. I wish I'd had that kind of relationship with Andrea Dworkin....I got the feeling that Julie Bindel knows she's lucky to have had it.

John Stoltenberg - Andrea's husband - brought tears to my eyes. That man still obviously loves her so much. Not only does he love her but he loves what she loved. Made me think a bit really.... He's gay. Andrea was a lesbian. What the pair of them love(d) is humanity. Humanity is reduced to nothing by pornography. John Stoltenberg is now the custodian of Andrea Dworkin's passion. She changed his life and he's vowed to be custodian of her work. If Andrea Dworkin could trust that man for 30 or more years then I'm sure I can trust him too.

Dr Catharine A MacKinnon... I'm sorry....totally gone here. She sat in the next seat but one to me! Can you imagine that? And, if it hadn't been for the 'certain speaker who dissed Andrea' who came and lodged herself between us, I might even have spoken to her. Nevertheless, she did notice me....and I hope to be going to hear her speak again quite soon. She is very accademic, there are no two ways about it. But her love for Andrea Dworkin shines through. We have that in common...

It was an excellent day and I loved it.

2006-04-09T02:01:00.000+01:00

April 9th 2005...

...was the day Andrea Dworkin died.

April 9th is also Hugh Heffner's birthday. He's eighty years old today. The 'Playboy King'. He's still condoning, advocating, and promoting the sexual hatred of women and he's still making millions out of misogyny. He's still living in luxury through his pimping of women young enough to be his great-grandaughters; selling them naked, vulnerable, available and sexually abused so that men everywhere can pay to masturbate to the images of their degradation and feel like......what do they feel like? Men? Or the sad fucks that they are?

Hugh Heffner is still alive and Andrea Dworkin has been dead for a year. I so wish it was the other way round.

They both changed my life.

Hugh Heffner started his money making women hating empire just before I was born. He made naked female flesh available to the male masses and was instrumental in creating the pornographic lie that men (and even some women, apparently) now believe actually is female sexuality. He was instrumental in normalising the pornographic expression of misogyny; making it mainstream, accessible, 'hip' and 'ok'.

I was born a girl. As a result, I have had to live my entire life with the effects of Hugh Heffner's twisted ideas about my body, my sexuality, my bodily integrity, my self. Hugh Heffner's lies about the sexual accessibility of women have oppressed me. They have put me in danger and they have hurt me. In many personal aspects Hugh Heffner has stultified my life.

Hugh Heffner changed my life by making my body - the part of me that I walk about in - at best, a spectator sport; at worst, a fuck hole. His notions about my sexuality have made it impossible for me to honestly be who I am. He and his ilk have negated me and removed my humanity. He has put me in danger. I guess that's what pornography does.

Andrea Dworkin changed my life when I read what she said. She knew what I meant. Andrea Dworkin knew how the Hugh Heffner's of this world had changed my life. She knew how misogyny worked. She knew how the sexualisation of misogyny made it impossible for any woman to be deemed human. Andrea Dworkin knew that the fundamental oppression of women was sexual and that that underpins all the other, myriad oppressions of the patriarchy. She cared about all of that and the effect it had on people and on human relationships.

Hugh Heffner only cares about the money he makes from sad fucks.

Andrea Dworkin cared about people.

Oh, but....that's so unfashionable.

Fuck 'fashionable'.

It would've been so much better if Hugh Heffner had died and not Andrea. At least she had something constructive to say......and she said it so well. Hugh Heffner destroys lives; both men's and women's. Andrea Dworkin saves lives; both men's and women's.

And the choice, here, is...?

I wish you a gruellingly painful unhappy birthday, Mr Heffner and I really hope you die soon.

2006-04-02T05:57:00.000+01:00

Femvist...

...is hosting a blog to raise awareness about sexual violence on April 18th.

We all have our own story...or that of our friend/sister/lover/mother/cousin/aunt/other. I don't think I know a woman who hasn't been subjected to sexual violence of one kind or another.

Go here to do more.

2006-03-23T18:02:00.000Z

Keanu Reeves set to create new fashion phenomenon amongst faux-feminists...

...with his assertion that "some of the ladies don't mind it" (being beaten). Yeah...like some women actively enjoy being hit, punched, kicked, slapped, bitten, pinched, burned, stabbed, etc., etc., - it's huge fun. Even more fun is nursing the bruises and broken bones and being in pain for days or weeks afterwards. And it feels so great to be able to show off your injuries in A&E when you need to go in for emergency treatment.

In fact, some women find the whole experience so 'empowering' it wouldn't surprise me in the least if some nutjob faux-feminist coined the phrase "domestic violence positive" and a whole new level of woman abuse was sanctioned by patriarchy pleasers with shit for brains.

Gah.

2006-03-22T23:53:00.000Z

This is a general moan...

...about how services for women recovering from experiences of violence are so desperately underfunded in the UK. ( It may, of course, be different where you are. /sarcasm )

I know about this because it's what I do - both for a living and as a volunteer - in two separate organisations each with its own distinct remit around recovery services for women who have experienced violence. Domestic violence and sexual violence. Both are often one and the same and both (usually) involve male perpetrators.

Ok. I work with women who have (mainly) been abused by men.

I would guess that most people who read this blog will have an understanding of the extreme and debilitating effects of male violence on women. How it shrinks a woman. How it crushes a woman. How it negatively impacts upon her relationships with her children, her siblings, her parents, her friends and relatives, her self. How it all but destroys her confidence, her self esteem. Her self. I often think about that Frederick Douglas quote, “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress" because women endure horrific tyranny at the hands of men - usually in order to protect everyone, including him. (I know Frederick Douglas said that other, awful victim blaming thing too and I do hold that against him.)

But I don’t suppose I need to expand on the reasons why services for women recovering from experiences of violence are so vital and valued by women for my regular readers but, for those who aren’t aware… Services organised by women, for women are different. For a start, they’re usually crisis based in that we need to be ‘there’ when women need us. They’re usually ‘client led’ – which means that we, as women, trust that our clients, other women, know what they need and that, as women, they can tell us. We recognise the need for an holistic service because, due to her abuse, that is usually what a woman needs.

I’ve just read that back and there’s an awful lot of ‘need’ in there…and that ‘need’ is real. Women need specialist services to enable them to recover from their experiences of violence, to move on and make lives for themselves and their children as whole people. It seems to me that, if society valued women at all, services specifically aimed at providing them/us with the means to recover from their/our experiences of violence and enable them/us to participate as full members of the community would be welcome and whole-heartedly supported.

But they're not.

There seems to be an expectation from statutory agencies that providers of services for women manage to provide their services for nothing - like we're somehow exempt from paying the bills, the utilities are free for us. That other professionals don't charge us for their time and expertise. That we, the workers, don't actually have living expenses (oh, I forgot, we're all upper-middle class housewives, well supported by our high-earning husbands, just doing our bit for the poor and needy...). That our client group - abused women - are somehow trying to pull one over on the system - that they're somehow lying about what's been done to them - that their recovery is not worthy of public funds.

And there's the unspoken but highly audible notion that we, the workers, are colluding with our clients in some kind of deception because it keeps us in work.

This really pisses me off. It demonstrates a total negation of the real life experience of so many women. Makes it nothing. Makes it not matter. Unless a woman turns up for her interview with a statutory agency with visible bruises or has had the foresight, strength and 'cunning' to have her abuser removed from the A&E cubicle so that she was able to tell the medical practitioner how she really got her injuries and then relied on that person's professionalism to document it properly - unless a woman can prove that she's a victim of violence then she's somehow fraudulent. Yeah. We all do that. We all lie about male violence.

There is no recognition of abuse that can't or hasn't been documented. Sexual, emotional, psychological, financial, familial... some things just cannot be documented.

Fear can. As a professional person, working with women recovering from experiences of violence, I'm an expert. I can document evidence of fear. I don't document what I don't see. I'm a professional and I value my reputation. They use my expertise in trials of men accused of child sexual abuse or violence against women but they doubt my word when it comes to asking for funding for projects for women and children overcoming experiences of violence. How does that work, then?

I know this scenario is repeated in almost every Local Authority in England - possibly thoroughout the UK. Us ordinary women who run recovery services for women overcoming experiences of violence are held up as beacons of PC... as 'Best Value in action'... as boxes ticked by the LA who have Central Government targets to meet. We're doing our job and we're doing it well. But when it comes to funding.....

There is little or no recognition of how recovery services can reduce the cost to the national economy. According to this report domestic violence costs the state £3.1billion a year and employers £1.3billion. I contend that services provided for women by women are a damn sight less expensive than that - and not just in monetary terms, though monetary terms seem to be the most popular indicator of 'worth'.

I want women to be believed. I want women who experience violence to be believed and I want those women who run organisations dedicated to their recovery to be believed. And I can't stand fucking tokenism.

2006-03-20T00:18:00.000Z

It's been a difficult few weeks...

First there was South Dakota. Then the Sentencing Guidelines Council recommending a reduction in the length of sentences for rape just days before the Home Office released it's 'consent awareness' campaign material that effectively removes women and girls as people from the entire issue....and then the expectation that they'll recommend men who abuse their partners should escape prison altogether if they can convince the court that they want to change their attitude to women....and Telewest showing Deep Throat and not paying the slightest bit of attention to the complaints they've received....and the news that pimps will be trafficking 40,000 women and girls into Germany for use by football fans during the World Cup - they're even putting up purpose built fuck-huts close to some stadiums...

And on and on and on and on......

It all contributes to that feeling of, if you're female, you Really. Don't. Matter.

It could actually get really depressing...if, as a woman, one felt alone with it all - and I'm sure there are many women out there who are keeping their heads even further down, feeling powerless to change things, feeling alone. But I'm not.

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed a veritable explosion of feminist thought on the internet? It's global! Women everywhere are saying what they think about the shitty deal we get from the patriarchy - and there are a lot of angry women out there. Over here, that anger is being harnessed. Laura at i'm not a feminist, but.. started an action network six days ago and already there are 36 members and 82 posts - in six days!

So I don't feel powerless. I feel like I'm part of a growing movement and this post is really just to say a huge 'thank you' to all those radfem bloggers around the world who keep my spirits up with their wit and wisdom, their rage and indignation, their humour and strength, their creativity and passion.

Oh, and it's for Kaka, too....

2006-03-08T02:05:00.000Z

Ok...a day late, but...

Have you seen this? A blog-a-thon against street harrassment.

Me? I was offered a tenner for a shag by a determined car load of men when I was a 13 year old child walking alone on the street one afternoon. They meant it. They scared me. That's my worst example of street harrassment but I'm pretty elderly and have many, many more minor examples.

My best one though... I used to have a dog - a G.S./Lab cross - she was a magnificent beast. Huge and hairy with a definite sense of herself. Little children would ride horsey on her for hours and, when she'd had enough, she wouldn't snap at them or anything unfriendly like that - she'd just get up and move away. Go somewhere else. More human than some humans I've known, that dog.

Anyway, one time when I was walking with my dog in the street at dusk we passed a couple of men who made 'comments' about me - you know the sort...assessing my regard and what they'd like to do to my physicality... My dog, Sadie, I'm sure couldn't understand what they were saying but she sure as hell knew what was on their minds. And that dog barred her teeth for me, she growled and snarled at those men to the point that they were scared.

Totally put them in their place. I loved that dog.

I have been sexually assaulted on the street though. Does that count?

2006-03-08T00:00:00.000Z

International Women's Day...

...and I'm blogging against sexism.

I've been thinking about what to post for this momentous day since I signed up on vegankid's blog - let's face it, there's so much to choose from it's kind of hard to decide. And it's all nasty and oppressive and limiting and dangerous and abusive and insulting and infuriating...and others will tackle the topic with much more aplomb than me. I just lose my cool in the face of injustice.

So I was at a bit of a loss, wondering exactly what kind of contribution I could make, when I stumbled across the item pictured above. This, my friends, is some nutjob fashion designer's idea of haute couture on display during Paris fashion week that came to my inbox in a Google news alert on feminism. Apparently two designers had covered the faces and heads of the women wearing their designs.

The article says of one of them:

Viktor & Rolf exhibited their exquisite tailoring and their penchant for extravagant couture flourishes in an ode to Greta Garbo. They hid each model's face behind a catcher's mask woven from satin or strands of hair.

and, regarding the 'designer' of the ridiculous piece of crap you see here:

And at the presentation of the presciently named Undercover collection Monday evening, models stepped into the spotlight with their heads wrapped tightly, unforgivingly and, one must admit, artfully in fabric with all the translucence of a pillowcase.
Could the models in Undercover even see where they were walking? Several of them wandered just a bit off-track, bumping shoulders and even meandering into the audience seating area until redirected by a handler. Each model's entire head was bound in fabric -- black, brown or white -- with only tiny pinholes for air. The fabric was knotted in back -- or at what one assumed to be the back of the head -- in the manner of a tight chignon.

Click on the 'Bride of the Mummy' link under the picture in the article to see the man's full collection - all belts and chains and very restrictive clothing.

The article ends in a somewhat whimsical fashion with:

Given the collective weight of these disconcerting masks, camouflaging shapes and unnerving expressions of rootlessness, one can't help but think that feminist outrage or humanistic anger would be misguided. The fundamental sadness in these clothes is not their oppressiveness or anonymity, but in the way they underscore a sense of universal loneliness.

"Misguided feminist outrage"? My arse! As if women aren't invisible enough unless we're naked! Another designer, a Mr Yamamoto, underlines the obvious with his use of super-sized clothes that make the (female) body 'seem that much smaller and insignificant'. Can't you just tell he doesn't have to live in one? Unless we're naked and on display we take up far too much room in this man's world and, rather than underscoring a 'sense of universal lonliness', I posit that by completely covering a woman's face there's even less reason to acknowledge that what you're looking at is a human person. This is confirmed by the fact that the women wearing these monstrosities had 'handlers', just like animals do. Not 'minders', you'll note. Not 'guides'. 'Handlers'.

If there is any 'sense of universal lonliness' I'd argue that it stems directly from the oppression of women and our 'anonymity' to men that is fostered and fed by patriarchy. The divisions created and fostered by patriarchal ideology can only serve to isolate individuals unless they fight tooth and nail to stay true to themselves (and even then...). There's something about "show your face" and "stand up and be counted" that is being both highlighted and negated by the images of women's heads being bound. The Chinese bound women's feet and as a consequence they could barely walk. Is binding women's heads an attempt to stop us thinking? To restict our consciousness?

But just imagine if this type of designer headgear caught the sartorial imagination of the masses the way the mini skirt did in the sixties (even the Queen of England wore a mini skirt, you know). Women all over the western world would totally bind their heads, having only tiny pinholes so that they could just about breathe, for the sake of being 'with-it'.

Obviously we'd be expected to continue to contribute to men's daily life as much as we do now. We'd have to go to the supermarket to shop; though fuck knows what we'd be putting in our trollies - we wouldn't! There'd be collisions in the aisles as we 'wandered a bit off-track' until some bright (male) spark developed a supermarket trolly with a sonic warning system. Babies would get dropped left right and centre and accidental damage from nappy pins would soar. Cleaning would be very much a hit and miss affair because we wouldn't know where the dirt was but, hey, it wouldn't bother us that much - we couldn't see it! And if we were to go out with a man we'd have to be kept on a leash in case we meandered off into the road...how blissful for them. And as for sex, well...it kind of brings home one of their quaint little sayings - "I'd give her one, if you put a bag over her head".

Christ on a bike though, can you imagine that kind of shit being designed for and worn by a man on the catwalk? No? That's sexism for you. So bollocks to 'misguided outrage'. This feminist is outraged.

2006-02-26T16:52:00.000Z

An Invitation...

to Blog Against Sexism.

Date: 8 March 2006 - International Women's Day
Venue: Your blog

All welcome - even if you don't usually write about feminist issues.

Sexism isn't hard to spot once you've got your antennae up. It's everywhere: in the language, attitudes and actions of those around you, on TV, in films, adverts, newspapers and the media generally, in science, history and literature, in politics and government, in school, at work...everywhere. Activate your sexism sensors now and let us know what you find.

RSVP: Vegankid

2006-02-23T11:49:00.000Z

Most ridiculous thing I've heard this week...

Olympics. Bobsleigh. Commentator: "Welcome to the women's two man bobsleigh event...."

D'uh.

2006-02-15T21:31:00.000Z

9th Carnival of Feminists - call for submissions

Don't forget to submit and nominate posts for the 9th Carnival of Feminists to be hosted by Mind the Gap on 22nd February. The official deadline is 19th Feb, but they can probably stretch it to the 20th if you run a little late.

The entirely optional theme is Feminism and the Body.

2006-02-12T15:30:00.000Z

What's good for the goose...

Christopher Lumsden, a wealthy banking partner in an international firm of lawyers is 52 years old and has a muscle wasting disease. He apparently had a troubled relationship with his parents, had been bullied at school and had a 'volcanic and uncontrollable temper' in his youth. He and his wife, Alison, had lived together in a victorian mansion in Cheshire until one night last March when he stabbed her in the back with a 12cm kitchen knife that had somehow found itself in a bedside drawer. He then proceeded to stab her in the face and neck so many times the pathologist couldn't count the wounds.

Why? Because five days previously she had told him that she was having an affair, that she would be leaving him and that she wanted a divorce. Mrs Lumsden had obviously had enough. Mr Lumsden, it seems to me, was jealous and angry.

Judging by the reports, Mr Lumsden played all the sympathy cards he could muster during his trial - his illness, his contemplation of suicide, his troubled childhood, his depression since the death of his mother, Mrs Lumsden's HRT treatment (we all know menopausal women are madder than most, don't we?), his feelings of abandonment and betrayal, his apparent willingness to do anything to save his marriage - and he 'cried frequently' in the witness box.

And it worked! He was sentenced to five years for manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The judge told him that he’d only have to serve half of that and the time he’s spent on remand will count towards it. So he’ll only be in prison for nineteen months. Nineteen months for murdering a woman because she no longer wanted to be with him.

Statistically, women are at greatest danger of being murdered when they are preparing to leave their partner or after having done so. Two men every week kill their current or former partner in the UK.

From reading the reports it seems to me that Mrs Lumsden was being blamed for her own death in the subtext of the trial. For a start she wasn’t being a ‘good wife’. She was having an affair – read: slut. She had become ‘hypercritical’ – read: nagging slut. She was having that affair with one of her husband’s friends – read: traitorous nagging slut. She’d moved out of their bedroom so denying him his conjugal rights – read: uppity traitorous nagging slut.

Nor was she being a ‘good woman’. Her husband was ill and may only have three years to live and she didn’t want to stay with him – read: heartless uppity traitorous nagging slut. She intended to leave this moneyed man and all the unsaid trappings of his wealth – read: ungrateful heartless uppity traitorous nagging slut. She just wanted to live her own life – read: selfish ungrateful heartless uppity traitorous nagging slut.

Obviously all this is deemed bad enough behaviour to push a man over the edge; diminish his responsibility so much that he can’t really be held fully responsible for his actions. The subtext implies that it was her own fault for not behaving as a 'good woman' should - for not behaving 'properly'.

Contrast this with the eight cases Justice for Women are currently fighting. Women serving years – not months – for murder, not manslaughter. Women whose lives were made a misery by the men they killed. It’s a terrifying litany of violence, rape, assault and systematic abuse over extended periods of time. Women so damaged by childhood sexual abuse and violent relationships, abused women acting in self defence who can see no other way out. Women whose experiences were either dismissed, disregarded, or ignored by the court.

Now, I'm not a legal person and I can't help but wonder why Mr Lumsden appears to have been treated differently. Ok; he'd had a 'troubled relationship' with his parents - don't we all at some point? His illness has changed his life - yes, as serious, possibly terminal, illness does for thousands of people every day. His wife was seeing someone else and intended to leave him and, having put a brave face on it for five days, he finally "broke".

If Mr Lumsden's responsibility is deemed diminished by this unhappy set of circumstances how come the same rules don't apply to the desperate and torturous circumstances of the eight women being supported by Justice for Women? Women who didn't have kitchen knives secreted within handy reach. Women who hadn't thought about killing their abusers until they found themselves in a position with no way out and, even then, only thought about their own survival not the others death. Women who had been hit and hurt and raped and abused by the men they eventually killed.

Why don't the same rules apply to them?

2006-02-10T22:35:00.000Z

Ginmar's made the Guardian?

Well, that's what I thought when I stumbled upon this page...

But, no, the world of Gruniad readers isn't yet to be treated to regular contributions from the wonderfully insightful and articulate Gin - though wouldn't that liven up the journey in to work in the mornings?

Instead, we have Jenny Colgan making some astute observations about celebrity nudity in Hollywood and Rajaa al-Sanie, a 24 year old Saudi Arabian woman who's written a book called 'The Girls of Riyadh'. This book hasn't gone down too well in the author's home country....well, it's been banned, actually...because it's about girls and sex.

In between the paragraphs of these two stories Ms Colgan takes a swipe at the late Betty Friedan and other 'celebrity feminists' who, having achieved personal notoriety through being instrumental in positive change for women, then proceed to publicly attack one another.

So, all you Hollywood show offs, all you well known feminists and you, naughty, naughty girl from Saudi Arabia - just take heed of what Rajaa al-Sanie's uncle said about it all:

"..... society neither forgives nor forgets ..."

because, as sure as eggs is eggs, the patriarchy will find a way to use whatever it is you've done against you.

2006-02-10T22:13:00.000Z

Goodness only knows....

....what you're going to find if you bother to read this blog. But, whatever it is, I hope it'll either make you laugh...make you think...make you sad....make you angry... - make you something.

If you'd like to comment on anything you read here, please be my guest. And please be mindful of that - this is my space and you're my guest. Just imagine we're chatting in my living room and be as considerate and as polite in your responses as you undoubtedly would be if you were in my house.

I've been reading a lot of blogs lately and some commenters are so arrogant and rude I'm sure their friends and families would be embarrassed to know them. What is it about the internet that makes some people think that they're just 'typing on a screen so it doesn't really matter'? Ok, so they may disagree with a viewpoint they've read, but some people seem unable to pose a counter-argument without making personal attacks. That, in my view, weakens their argument to the point of collapse and I just stop listening.

But we're not going to have any of that here, are we?