grandma was a suffragette

Closed for business

2010-06-26T12:12:00.001+01:00

I've moved to Posterous until my new website is up & running.

when you march, stand up straight/when you fill the world with hate

2009-08-28T18:09:00.003+01:00

First up: Apologies about the major hiatus this blog has taken (again). Family bereavement, relocating from London to Liverpool and a sudden upsurge in my freelance work have all combined to distract me from my duty to you, dear readers. Like Boxer in Animal Farm, I will work harder. Mini-rants can now be found on Twitter, and I have a guest-blog post up at The F Word, about the film (500) Days of Summer.

And now onto our feature presentation: The National Front are boycotting this autumn's Reading Pride. In preparation for the parade, taking place on the 5th September, police have banned offensive placards and no more than 20 people are allowed to congregate . The NF, who have already marched against the annual parade, are protesting at the 'flamboyance' of the gay community. A recent blog post by Swindon National Front argues that "the very nature and ideology behind White Nationalism condemns homosexuality and its promotion"

In a country that grows ever more tolerant of sexual identity, where even our Prime Minister makes grand statements like "you can't legislate love", is there really a need for annual celebrations of sexual identity?

Surely the fact that we can have these celebrations proves that we no longer need them - as Stonewall's advertising campaign reminds us, some people are gay, it's time to get over it. No big deal. In fact, it's so OK to be gay that the word has now been reclaimed to mean 'rubbish' - but that's not homophobic, it's just a sign that people are more tolerant these days. Right?

Not exactly.

Yes, we're lucky that it's safer to be queer in the UK than it is to be in, say, Russia or Croatia, whose gay pride parades were beset with homophobic violence. But the fact that homophobic hate crimes in Manchester, whose own Gay Pride festivities come to a glittering climax with this weekend's parade, rose by 63% in 2008 paints a less rosy picture. Remember, this is a city known for embracing the gay community, the city that spawned the original Queer as Folk.

The protestors at Reading won't be complaining about civil partnerships or the increasing number of gay bars, their problem isn't that the government encourages discussion of homosexuality in schools. Their problem - and the problem with all homophobes, no matter how much they may dissemble - is with gay people, period. They say 'flamboyance', when they mean 'existence.'

Gay Pride parades don't promote homosexuality. But if, as the National Front claim, homosexuality really is such a threat to their master race utopia, maybe we should start.

And if you're going to get riled up, it's always a good idea to do it with a soundtrack:

Save Lambeth Women's Project!

2009-04-09T13:12:00.004+01:00

I just received this from Naz Jamal from Lambeth Women's Aid:

We need your help.

Lambeth Council have effectively said they are giving our women's project building on Stockwell Road over to the neighbouring school. The suggestion is that we may rent part of the building back off them but this would of course mean the end of LWP as it stands - in spite of 30 years of functioning as a women's service for local women.

As we have been focussing on recovering from the floods of the winter we are not in a strong position to prove what has been happening in the building as it has not be useable for many months. My plan at the moment is to make it clear what our plans are for each of the spaces in the building and this is where you come in.

The following groups currently can be said to run out of LWP - Girls Rock! UK, the Remembering Olive Morris Project, High Tea and part of the Feminist Library, plus women's self defense classes. Regular meetings used to happen with local groups but the damp has stopped these - we will contact them to see what support they can lend and if they will return. Other organisations were going to be invited once the building was up and running again but I would like to do that now. So, if you have a class you would like to run at LWP, an archive that needs storing and public access (Cinenova?? Zines?) or a group that needs somewhere to meet (FAF? Kiss?) please CALL me today and we can start putting together a plan and a point of contact. If the school get hold of the building this women's space will be gone forever. We need to give the council as may points of contact as possible to show that a diverse group of women actually do want and need to use the building.

Please use me as your main point of contact. Ego is swamped in paperwork because of this news and I am around to co-ordinate plans. My number is 07973718431.

Please pass this on to anyone you think might be able to help. We will call a meeting at LWP as soon as we have figured out the legality of the situation - and if anyone can help with that or surveying the building please please ring me.

Solidarity,

PLEASE re-post, tweet, forward on and generally do anything you can to stop this terrific resource from closing down!

I'm a one girl revolution

2009-03-23T11:43:00.002Z

I do have an actual post brewing, but a friend linked to to this today, and it makes me SO effing happy, that I just had to share:

One Girl Revolution (multi-fandom) -

2009-03-06T17:07:00.004Z

Happy almost IWD, everyone! A proper blog post (with pictures from tomorrow's Million Women Rise march in London if I can find my camera cable to charge it) will appear on Sunday. For now, words of wisdom from the ever-lovely Lilit at Save the Assistants:

While a survey of managers indicated that they think women slack off more, the study found that men and women slack the same. In related news, your manager is probably sexist.

2009-03-02T21:57:00.002Z

I have a piece up at the always fabulous Lesbilicious about being LGBT in the banking world. Thanks to everyone who contributed!

All this, and brains too

2009-02-23T12:23:00.004Z

I am in the deeply uncomfortable position of agreeing with the Daily Mail. Yes, I've tried having a lie down, a cup of tea and a brisk whack over the head with a heavy object (my cat, Franklin, who could do with losing a few pounds so we don't have to build a new catflap). It didn't help. No matter what angle I read it from - and I've tried a few, as the blood rushing to my head will evidence - I can't help finding this article...well...rather pleasant. No mention of binge-drinking, of gold-digging, of sex or single-motherhood - they should have just headlined it Daily Mail In 'Not All Women Are Brainless Sluts' Shocker!

I don't know if there's an American equivalent of University Challenge, but for the tragically uninitiated, the programme does what it says on the tin. Two teams from different universities compete in a general knowledge quiz show for....the glory, I think. And to meet Jeremy Paxman, who is really quite ace when he's not writing to Marks & Spencers to complain about their Y-fronts. The current series finale is set to air soon, pitting Manchester University against Corpus Christ College, Oxford - a team helmed by Gail Trimble, described by one fellow contestant as an "intellectual blitzkrieg".

So a general knowledge quiz show finalist from Oxford is prodigiously intelligent. What's the big deal? Here's the thing - she may have A* and A's littering her school career, she may have gone to Oxford and then on to a doctorate in Latin literature but she's still...well...a girl. So obviously the majority of comments online have focussed on her looks: "I must admit, I found her sexy" one commenter confesses. "Very sexy, gorgeous smile," another sniggers. And, more bizarrely, "well brushable hair."

Unfortunately, girls with glasses and Jane Seymour-length hair don't appeal to everyone, so the rest of the internet has jumped on the 'let's beat up the smart kid' bandwagon. One commenter on the Guardian article derides her as having "a patronising, spoilt, only-child demeanour; one for whom affirmation can only be realized by the constantly raised arm in the classroom. What I wonder did her parents do to to make her like that." I'm not sure, but at least they taught her how to punctuate.

As usual, we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. If we dare exhibit our intelligence in public, we're smug and self-satisfied. If we don't we're bimbos. It's acceptable for a man to be brilliant, it's permissable to have a steel trap mind when you also have a penis to go along with it. And yet when a woman shows signs of intelligence, it's shocking - and even more shocking when she's considered attractive.

It's not often I find myself rooting for - or even watching - TV quiz shows, but in this case, I am firmly on Team Trimble. TV Scoop blogger 'Mofgimmers' might not want to go to the pub with you, Gail - but if you're ever in North London, the first round's on me.

Desperate Housewives

2009-02-02T00:12:00.000Z

"Isn't she good-looking?" her husband asked as he spun her around the dancefloor. And so it begins, the gradual erosion of Michelle Obama's identity as anything other than the wife of the most powerful man in the world, Presidential arm candy if you will.

No matter what the politics of their marriage itself may be, in the eyes of the world her personality has been completely subsumed into that of her husband, she has gone from equal partner to merely an accessory for his glittering political career. During the Democratic primaries, Michelle Obama pared back her professional schedule by 80% in order to support her husband throughout his campaign. He may be the leader of the free world but she, at least temporarily, has had to take a sabbatical from her role as Vice President for Community and External Affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals. Whilst it is understandable that she should want her career to take a back seat at such a tumultuous moment in life – one spouse gets a promotion, the family have to move house – do we really need to see another woman feted for giving up her career? That's not change I can believe in.

The First Lady of the United States (usually abbreviated to FLOTUS) is a Fifties throwback, a woman with nothing to do but hold dinner parties for her husband's colleagues. In a way, she reflects exactly what society still believes a wife should be – an attractive silent helpmeet. Her duties are described as unofficial, and yet she is the acknowledged hostess of the White House. Her role falls under the Executive Office of the President – if this were a salaried job, she would essentially be employed by her husband, a glorified version of hiring the wife as secretary.

Susan Maushart, author of Wifework: What Marriage Really Means for Women, describes marriage itself as "unpaid labour", and in the case of the First Lady, this is especially true. Whilst there are no rules prohibiting her from continuing paid employment, her staff include the White House Social Secretary and the Chief Floral Designer – a not-so-subtle indication of where her priorities are expected to lie. In an article for the Washington Post, Lauren Stiller Rikleen argues that the role of First Lady should be a paid role with a clear job description. But that ignores the reality of Mrs Obama's new position, where a job description is deemed unnecessary because it is still assumed that women will do these things for their husbands as a matter of course – moreover, they want to do these things, and so monetary reimbursement is missing the point.

True, it is an unelected role. But then, neither President Obama's cabinet nor his Chief of Staff are elected. And Michelle Obama, as with all potential First Ladies, has probably received more scrutiny during the course of the Presidential campaign than any of these put together. She was slammed for being anti-American, she was the subject of a controversial cartoon in the New York Times. She's campaigned, gone on TV, been compared with then Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, and had every aspect of her life scrutinised. And for all the perks the position brings, she still has to work for them. It is an unspoken assumption that, as well as acting as an unofficial ambassador, the First Lady also devote herself and her considerable resource to humanitarian causes. Michelle Obama has already stated her desire to "work daily on the issues closest to [her] heart: helping working women and families". Whilst this is laudable, it is unclear how exactly this will be accomplished. Although we can assume that she has her husband's ear, any obvious influence on policy risks her being tarred with the same brush as her husband's rival-turned-colleague, the Wicked Witch of the West Wing, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Rodham Clinton had already worked on Arkansas education reform to considerable success when she was appointed head of the Task Face on National Health Care Reform, but saw her approval ratings plummet when it was viewed as nepotism rather than hiring an able strategist, regardless of her marital status. The message was clear – know your place. When Clinton tried to step outside her role as wife and mother and run for political office herself, she was accused of riding on her husband's coattails, never mind that she too had been to Yale Law School, had been a scholar, activist and lawyer. Later on, her critics railed against having another Clinton in the White House when only the outdated attitudes of Arkansas voters caused her to change her name in the first place, a patriarchal re-naming process that threatened to make a dynasty out of the marriage of two intelligent adults.

Following the November election, Slate magazine ran an open letter to the new First Lady in which they begged her "don't dress like Jackie Kennedy." When they warned her that "black with red is too jarring a colour combination for a first lady", the barely-concealed subtext was 'OK sweetie, you've already broken the mould. Just don't push it too far.' Reinforcing the image of the angry black woman that dogged her for a large art of her husband's campaign, she was deemed "too firey when we want you to soothe." Had Hillary won both the Democratic nomination and the Presidency, the press would be awash with speculation about her husband's role – there would, perhaps, have been the occasional article on Bill's choice of attire, but mostly the question of what expertise he could bring to the role would dominate. The message is clear – whilst America may be ready for a President who challenges the old order, the First Lady is still expected to be the calming figurehead, there only to stand still and look pretty whilst her husband is out saving the world.

Men guide, women nurture. The most we can expect is to be the power behind the scenes, the woman behind every great man. But as Michelle Obama steps into her role as First Lady, with a secretary who earns more than she does (in other words, something), we can only hope that she will be different - her Secret Service codename is, after all, "Renaissance".

"It is both humorous and for your own good. Your bits are important and vulnerable no matter who you do."

2009-01-24T13:33:00.005Z

The very fabulous Zoe Trope posted on her LiveJournal about her trip to the gynecologist for the following reason:

I think it's important to write about these visits because there may be some 14-year-old bi-curious lesbi-dyke reading this who thinks to herself, "Ovaries? Well I'll be okay. I'll just lick other ladies' genitals and I will not have to worry about my insides. No weiner, no problem."

Remember - regular sexual health check-ups are IMPORTANT. Oh, and if you're a lesbian and the nurse performing your smear test makes the assumption that lady-loving-ladies do not have penetrative sex, disabuse them of this notion. It doesn't matter if you yourself do or not, but dispelling myths is always a good thing.

What Not to Wear

2009-01-23T16:15:00.003Z

Are you a working woman reading this? Then congratulations - there's a considerable chance that you might be a brazen hussy, dedicated to using your physical charms and womanly wiles to claw your way with those Rouge Noir-adorned talons right to the top - clambering all over those poor men who really deserve it in your stiletto Jimmy Choos! Or something.

According to a study either reported by or carried out by Grazia magazine, at least one third of women have dressed "provocatively" in order to get ahead at work. The definition of provocative isn't given, but I assume they're talking about short skirts and low necklines, the usual arbitrary wardrobe signifiers of sexually inappropriate behaviour.

In response to the Grazia study, Amy Odell of New York magazine writes:

Yes, men should be more decorous, but since they're incapable, chicks may as well cover up and avoid being the hot topic in the break room for the next six weeks. It wouldn't kill them.

They're incapable? Well, that's one word for it. Forgive me for being old-fashioned, but if you can't keep your eyes (and hands) to yourself, perhaps you shouldn't be allowed to leave the house without an escort. The article itself, by the way, is titled More Women Than We Thought Think Dressing Slutty Will Advance Their Careers. Silly women! Don't they know you can only get fairly promoted with a penis?

In a similar article, the Wall Street Journal cites a case where the female head of a law firm was invited for a threesome by a male client and his wife - all because she was wearing a revealing dress, supposedly. That's not 'misinterpreting the signals' that's sexual harassment. But the WSJ clearly doesn't see it that way:

"Once a CEO is startled by seeing your cleavage, an image is set in his mind that is not going to disappear," says Ms. Royalty, who recently retired as an
executive at the company. "I never wore that type of dress again."

I don't understand how the fact that *gasp* most women have breasts (i.e, unless they're pre-op transwomen, had a double mastectomy, etc) has shocked a guy who has made it to Chief Executive. Someone fell asleep in sex-ed class. And biology. And, um, life.

So - are YOU dressing sluttily to the office? I, for example, am currently wearing jeans, slightly scuffed black motorcycle boots and a black top with a scoop neck, no make-up. I suppose the top is technically clingy, but the only thing that doesn't cling to certain parts of my uppermost anatomy would be a tent. On the Slut-O-Meter, I think I'm probably a 1, 2 if I put apply the lipgloss I'm currently using as a paperweight. But then I'd really be asking for it.

a week in feminism

2009-01-23T13:16:00.003Z

Weekly round-up of kick-ass posts, noteworthy events and the GWaS Woman of the Week.

Poetry is what you find in the dirt in the corner - Elizabeth Alexander, 'Emancipation'

A terribly nice pro-feminism man called Barack Obama started his new job this week. This made lots of people very happy. The Guardian's Viv Groskop profiles some of the key women in the Obama administration.

Diva editor Jane Czyzselska wrote a very awesome piece for the Guardian about why Harvey Milk would be happy about civil partnerships and how it isn't a crime to conform if you're queer.

The Fawcett Society's director (and GWaS' personal heroine), Dr Katherine Rake has been shortlisted for the Women in Public Life awards. I want to be her when I grow up.

Londonist reported on the 'mega-brothels' that will allegedly spring up when we host the Olympics. Louise Livesey has a very well thought-out post at The F Word blog here.

Feminist Fightback wrote a response to Cath Elliot's accusations of their colluding with pimps and traffickers. In the interests of full disclosure, I have campaigned with FF a number of times and once stood next to Cath Elliot at a pro-choice protest. I'm still working on exactly where I stand on this one, so expect debate, ramblings and questions to be popping up on here sometime soon.

A nurse in New Mexico who has accidentally-on-purpose been removing women's IUDs without their permission is finally being sued. She claims that "they accidentally come out when I tug." Um...so stop tugging?

The Daily Mail's Jan Moir claims that "There's never been a worse time to be a girl." Because FGM is still practised in many countries? Because the media and the judiciary still have a problem believing that 'no means no'? Apparently it's the fault of "computers or crop tops or clubbing on a Friday night." Better stick to partying on school nights, then...

Apparently there is a "man shortage" if you're forty-plus. In a rather convoluted way, this is apparently the fault of the economy.

Woman of the Week: Elizabeth Alexander, poet, who read at the Presidential inauguration this week. She was a recent discovery for me, and I'm glad I made it.

vaguely related to the previous post...

2009-01-18T18:26:00.003Z

Reblogged from Kjerstin Johnson at Bitch Blogs:

Against donuts? Don't have one!

2009-01-18T16:42:00.005Z

I keep trying to make a coherent post about this story, but I think that American Life League's press statement says it all. Needless to say, the sarcastic comments in purple are my own.

KRISPY KREME CELEBRATES OBAMA WITH PRO-ABORTION DOUGHNUTS Washington, DC (15 January 2009) -

The following is a statement from American Life League president Judie Brown:

"The next time you stare down a conveyor belt of slow-moving, hot, sugary glazed donuts at your local Krispy Kreme (OK, now I just crave donuts. BRB - I'm off to the nearest baby-killing pastry outlet), you just might be supporting President-elect Barack Obama's radical support for abortion on demand - including his sweeping promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act as soon as he steps in the Oval Office, Jan. 20.

"The doughnut giant (mmm, donut giants...) released the following statement yesterday:

'Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) is honoring American's sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day, Jan. 20. By doing so, participating Krispy Kreme stores nationwide are making an oath to tasty goodies -- just another reminder of how oh-so-sweet "free" can be.' (sweet glazed freedom. freedom with sprinkles!)

"Just an unfortunate choice of words? For the sake of our Wednesday morning doughnut runs, we hope so. The unfortunate reality of a post Roe v. Wade America is that 'choice' is synonymous with abortion access, and celebration of 'freedom of choice' is a tacit endorsement of abortion rights on demand. (Evidently not - you can, for example, 'choose' to send out a press release letting the entire world know how completely cuckoo your organisation is)

"President-elect Barack Obama promises to be the most virulently pro-abortion president in history. Millions more children will be endangered by his radical abortion agenda.

"Celebrating his inauguration with 'Freedom of Choice' doughnuts - only two days before the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision to decriminalize abortion - is not only extremely tacky, it's disrespectful and insensitive and makes a mockery of a national tragedy. (but it's a really, really delicious mockery!)

"A misconstrued concept of 'choice' has killed over 50 million preborn (Um. This is not an actual medical term, people) children since Jan. 22, 1973. Does Krispy Kreme really want their free doughnuts to celebrate this 'freedom.'

"As of Thursday morning, communications director Brian Little could not be reached for comment. (because he was hiding under his desk from the crazies?) We challenge Krispy Kreme doughnuts to reaffirm their commitment to true freedom (as opposed to the fake kind of freedom, which really sucks) - to the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (and donuts!) - and to separate themselves and their doughnuts from our great American shame.

Won't someone please think of the donuts?

A week in feminism

2009-01-16T14:18:00.005Z

Weekly round-up of kick-ass posts, noteworthy events and GWaS' Woman of the Week.

Out & About: The Muffia, "trying to inspire people to question society's relentless portrayal of a female which is mostly white, thin and hairless."

Zoe Williams, with whom I and every other Guardian reader I know have a love-hate relationship, criticises media coverage of Baroness Shriti Vadera, who has been denounced as a ball-breaker for daring to state an unpopular opinion this week.

I profiled Rachel Maddow for Lesbilicious (look, they give bonuses for page views and I'm skint, OK?!)

...and when blogger Lisa-Marie Ferla tried to read the website on her phone, she discovered that the 3 network regarded the site as pornographic - DESPITE the fact that its own homepage links to 'adult' websites after 9pm.

Ann of Feministing.com discusses the women who have been appointed to Obama's category, referencing GWaS' homegirl Hillary in particular.

Screaming Into the Void posts about "hearing men attempt to justify all the bullshit of patriarchy through faux-academic faux-scientific comparisons or humans to the “natural”, animal world."

A bill is currently going through Parliament to re-define the 'provocation' defence in murder cases - crucially, at the moment it only applies to immediate circumstances rather than ongoing situations such as abuse. F Word blogger Kit Roskelly says:

"This law is the relic of an earlier age. Light sentencing for men who kill
their wives reinforces and permits the assumption that men are by nature
sexually possessive and prone to uncontrollable violence which it is unjust to
punish them for. It also upholds the notion that women have no right to attempt
to leave abusive situations, or to defend themselves from violence."

Hear, hear, Kit!

Women of the Week: The Muffia, a Guerilla Girls-esque troupe of London- and Manchester-based feminists "who create performance, comedy and political interventions in reaction to the culture we live in." Where do I sign up?!

Is this what a feminist looks like?

2009-01-15T19:54:00.004Z

In response to the cover of Ms Magazine's January issue, Lisa Factora-Borchers has some interesting things to say about Obama's supposed feminist credentials:

"The question as to whether Obama is a feminist really doesn’t resonate with me. What matters more is what he is going TO DO once his position is secured on the 20th and how he will work to better the situation for women, not only in the United States, but also in the world. The United States presidency is a position to greatly impact legislation for reproductive health, education, and social services."

I'm as excited about the Obama presidency as the next girl (providing the next girl is Factora-Borchers), but I want more than rhetoric before I laud the man my girlfriend refers to as 'Hopey' as the new liberal messiah.

Where no two men have gone before: forty years after Star Trek began, the franchise now tackles its final frontier

2009-01-15T10:40:00.004Z

Shortly before Christmas, viewers of online Star Trek spin-off Phase II encountered two lifeforms never before seen in the history of the franchise. Rumours of their existence have been speculated upon, but never before have Captains Kirk, Picard, Janeway, Sisko or Archer come face to face with them onscreen. In the new webisode 'Blood and Fire', audiences can meet Peter Kirk and Alex Freeman, the show's first openly gay couple. Kirk is the nephew of the Enterprise's infamous Captain, who follows his boyfriend when medical technician Freeman is posted to the ship.

Although Phase II is not an official Star Trek spin-off – it is fan-made, although both writers and actors and even sets from the 'real' show have been involved – CBS and Paramount, who own the rights to the series, allow fan-made projects provided the participants do not make money from them. This allows fans not only to continue the adventures of James T Kirk et al, it also give them the opportunity to rewrite some of the show's more problematic areas. There has been no comment from either company regarding the upcoming storyline, nor has there ever been an official explanation for the lack of LGBT characters in any of the spin-offs. However, had writer David Gerrold had his way, things would have been remarkably different. Openly gay, he first pitched the idea for the episode when he was working on Star Trek: The Next Generation, the show that launched previously unknown Shakespearian actor Patrick Stewart into the limelight. The original script had the couple portrayed essentially as friends until one character – presumably resident psychic, Counselor Troi – asked how long they'd been together. The online version not only brings the characters' sexuality to the fore, it has also been re-written in the light of contemporary issues, including gay marriage. The original episode was scrapped when Paramount decided that they "didn't want to risk the franchise".

In fact, none of the five Star Trek shows – the original series, The Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space Nine or the prequel Enterprise – or ten films have featured an openly gay character. Show creator Gene Roddenberry had planned to introduce a gay crewmember in TNG's fifth season, put passed away before this could ever be put into practice. His successor Rick Berman, whom both fans and, allegedly, co-workers have described as homophobic, later described the idea of including gay characters as "wishful thinking" on behalf of the fans."They should have been the first science fiction series to do this," says James Cawley who doubles as Captain Kirk and Phase II's executive producer, "but they weren't." Instead, shows such as Babylon 5 explored gay relationships whilst Trek's exclusively heterosexual future began to look more and more like an anachronism. Far from risking the franchise, it may be that this is the only way to revive it.

The episode is available to download from the official Phase II website. Former TNG alumnus Denise Crosby, who appeared in cult '80s lesbian classic Desert Hearts, also stars.

2009-01-12T13:27:00.004Z

I have an article on the always lovely Rachel Maddow here. Apparently an SNL skit parodied her and focussed on her sexuality in a very and-'90s-sitcom-'OMG-some-people-are-GAY-LOLZ' manner at the weekend but I have not seen it and cannot comment.

An actual post is forthcoming. At some point. When I have the time, and am no longer snowed under by unfinished articles.

the Doctor is in

2009-01-03T18:31:00.006Z

"I'm a doctor, not a lady."

- Michaela Quinn, Dr Quinn: Medicine Woman

So it's confirmed, and the rumours of the first female Doctor have been proven to be just that. Members of a certain Facebook group (of which I confess I am a member) will doubtless be crushed. The new Doctor Who will be played by 26-year-old Matt Smith, of Party Animals and That Face fame. But I'm not surprised. The UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology might have put in an open bid to have a Time Lady in the TARDIS following David Tennant's departure at the end of this year, but most of us knew that it wasn't going to happen. Sure, we had the Rani (evil) and both regenerations of Romnadveratrelundar (the only sidekick to be smarter than the Doctor, with her triple-Alpha degree making his 51% at the second attempt to pass his Time Lord exams look pretty darn miserly), but girls from Gallifrey are sadly underrespresented on the show.

Lucy Mangan posted a deliciously tongue in cheek explanation of why we could never have a female Doctor waaay back in 2006:

1 Girls can't do maths or read maps - surely insurmountable problems when applied to the calculations in 17 dimensions that a Time Lord must habitually make. Also, cannot afford to spend entire pre-credits sequence waiting for her to park the Tardis.

2 Not keen on whole episodes set in Ikea watching her pick out perfect window treatments for her interplanetary home. Or fretting about ageing effects of time travel. Retinol A must remain name of satellite Gallifreyan moon, not anti-wrinkle cream.

3 Doctor must be eccentric. Can women be eccentric without being covered in cat hair and/or smelling of wee? Research how.

4 Cannot afford necessary pre-launch campaign explaining to Whovians what a woman is.

5 Hierarchical problems. Doctor needs mentally and physically inferior sidekick to be afraid of Cybermen / stretchy-faced Penelope Wilton / glowy-headed fat people. If Who is female, will need to cast six-year-old boy (or rather 800 of them, because they can't work for more than 10 minutes at a time without some bleeding-heart waving child labour legislation at us - talk to Stephen Daldry if you don't believe me) or tin of Spam. Check whether there is Spam rights group. If so, investigate availability of Jimmy Krankie. Could be years before they sort out what we can and can't do with him. Her. God, this messes with your head.

6 Metaphysical problems. Doctor is same person, regeneration provides new body only. Reincarnating as female suggests feminine aspect has existed all along. Might mark series as camp?

7 Aesthetic problems. Doctor historically not been in any danger of being mistaken for Michaelangelo's David. Tom Baker nice chap but face like a bag of pork chops and Sylvester McCoy frankly disturbing. As ugly women now shot on sight at television auditions, how to cast? Go with Claire Goose and throw acid in her face? (Call her agent.)

8 Insurmountable problem - Time Lady just sounds wrong.

9 On the other hand, we've got to find something to do with Davina McCall.

It seems that, as far as Doctor Who is concerned, us girls are destined to be always the sidekick, never the main event. Oh well - there's always progressive kids' spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures, with it's middle-aged, avowedly feminist heroine, her super-computer, and her blatantly closeted son. And if you really can't do without your extra X chromosome to accompany that second heart, you might want to take refuge in that old standby, fanfiction.

2008 Retrospective: Bitches Get Stuff Done

2009-01-02T14:05:00.006Z

So they said it was the year of the woman
I believe it was the year of sex

- Ani diFranco, 'Sistersong'

I haven't touched this blog in over a year, and even that was to type 'ooops, haven't been updating much, have I?' I got distracted by numerous things - work, day to day life, my burgeoning freelance writing career - but partly the radio silence at GWaS occurred because it was too damn painful to report everything that was going on.

I was pretty strongly invested in Hillary's campaign, and some of the reporting around it sickened me. Like a lot of you, I spent the bulk of last year addicted to the press coverage of the election that would - and not before time - finally kick Dubya out of the office that he never rightfully attained. And even before it was over, by the time HRC bowed out (not entirely gracefully) and the media were all united in their chant of 'Ding dong, the bitch is dead', I'd had enough. Enough of hearing an outspoken woman called a bitch, of watching media outlets (Slate, I'm looking at you) that I'd previously admired show up their sexist bias.

But instead of blogging about it, I stewed not-so-silently at my parents, my coworkers, and nearly choked to death on my own impotent rage. I don't know if the panic attacks or the depression were related to that - if I was channelling frustration at my own situation into obsessively following an election I'm not even eligable to vote in, or if it was just breathing the constant barrage of toxic sexism that was making me sick. Either way, there was little of a productive nature done during those crucial months of the Democratic primaries, and if I have any resolutions for 2009 it's that the next time I get angry, I'm going to do something about it, even if it's just venting my rage here.

So here's a brief round-up of some of the things I should have been blogging about this year but didn't:

(or for a very brief overview, you can catch my Women We Loved piece over at the rather splendiforous Mookychick, or check out The F Word's Top Ten Feminist Moments of 2008 (UK-specific) and Bitch Magazine's Best Feminist Picks of '08)

It was the year that Grey's Anatomy debuted a lesbian romance between a plus size bisexual woman of colour and a middle-aged, unconventionally attractive, newly out dyke. It was also the year they abruptly dropped it by the order of ABC. In fact, it was the same week. Way to go, ABC!
The Poppy Project published their report on the UK's sex industry, Big Brothel and in October the government pledged to "clamp down" on the sex industry.
On 20 October at 8.30am, feminists chained themselves to the Department of Health and obstructed access to the building to add to the public pressure for access to abortion to be extended to Northern Ireland. Around 40 activists came to offer support, to demonstrate and to leaflet the public. Your fearless blogger is the one laughing like a hyena above the 'i' in ''fighting".
Barack Obama got elected. Liberals were happy until he then arranged for a homophobic self-help guru to be present at his inauguration.
Prop 8 passed. Liberals were sad, but some of them wrote a musical about it.
Everyone's favourite Dresden Doll Amanda Palmer was told by her then-record label RoadRunner that they wouldn't promote her latest album. The reason? She wouldn't edit out shots of her stomach in her video for the song 'Leeds United'. Fans of all genders, shapes & sizes start a Rebellyon.
Twilight was released and many teenage girls squeed about Robert Pattinson's hair. Some people pointed out that the books are a bit sexist and that actually Edward Cullen is a creepy, emotionally manipulative stalker. Then the film's director, Catherine Hardwicke (who also directed the kick-ass Thirteen, discovered that she wouldn't be filming the rest of the franchise. Apparently she was "too difficult". Hmm, where have we heard that one before?
The 2008 Queen's Speech announced that licensing laws around lap-dancing clubs will be tightened up and that all parents with children aged 16 and under will have the right to request flexible working from April 2009. Sadly, the Queen wasn't played by Helen Mirren.
2008 also heralded the rise and rise of Rachel Maddow, MSNBC's newest talking head. Both openly queer and proudly butch, she's also funny as hell and holds a PhD to boot.

This is just a sample of the groundbreaking year that was '08, the year that saw 18 million cracks spread across the glass ceiling, that saw a black man appointed as President Elect and featured the most disturbing birth scene ever to appear in literature. Stephanie Meyer, Mary Shelley has nothing on you.

FEY: Maybe what bothers me the most is that people say that Hillary is a bitch. Let me say something about that: Yeah, she is. And so am I and so is this one. (pointing to Amy Poehler)
POEHLER: Yeah, deal with it.
FEY: Know what? Bitches get stuff done.

Start the new year the way you mean to carry on - be bloody, bold and resolute, be righteous and wise, let 2009 be the year we get stuff done. And if anyone tries to call you a bitch for making a stand, for going after what you want or rejecting what you don't, just tell them that it's what Hillary would do

A few things coming up in London over the next few weeks include:

Feminists in Cafes are meeting @ 7 pm in Foyles Cafe, Charing Cross Road on 6th January.

The London Institute of Contemporary Art is showing a series ofLGBTQ-themed films entitled Destroy Every Closet Door. The mini-festival includes the UK premiere of Milk and a showing of queer classic The Celluloid Closet.

The Fabian Society's New Year conference Fairness Doesn't Just Happen will include speakers from The F Word, and The Fawcett Society as well as GWaS's homegrrl, Harriet Harman.

Between the Covers: Women's Magazines and their Readers @ the Women's Library

2007-12-18T23:46:00.000Z

I am fully (and shamefully) aware that I haven't updated since June. However, in the New Year all this will change. GWaS may even get - well, not a facelift under the circumstances, but certainly a revamp.

Watch this space.

2007-06-08T11:06:00.002+01:00

"We need to show our commitment to equality with policies on women and the family that reflect modern life. By promoting women’s genuine equality and putting the family at the heart of Government thinking, we will move the locus of political debate on to the things that really matter; tackling the gap between rich and poor and working towards genuine equality of opportunity, helping families live the lives they want."

- Harriet Harman

Hustings for the next Deputy Leader of the Labour Party are well underway. Today's Guardian has a good feature on the candidates, and in the website's 'Comment is Free' section, Polly Toynbee makes a persuasive argument to Vote Harriet.

Harriet Harman is committed to women's rights and family welfare. She's tenacious - her political career has suffered setbacks, but she's carried on trucking as a backbencher - she's bright and articulate - she put the other candidates to shame on Newsnight - and she's topping two seperate YouGov polls as both the most trusted candidate and the voter's choice win the deputy leadership contest. She's earned countless nominations from CLP's around the country - could she be the thinking woman's choice for Britain's next Deputy PM?

Hell, yeah.

To quote from her campaign material:

Throughout her career Harriet has campaigned for equality and social justice. During this campaign she has focused on the issues that matter to party members; affordable homes – tackling the housing divide, youth services in every neighbourhood, improving older people’s care, cheap, clean, public transport, equal treatment for agency and directly-employed workers and inequality – tackling the rich/poor divide.

So if you're a Labour Party member and you've just received a ballot through the post, give her your vote. She won't waste it.

(for reference, I made a more indepth post about women in politics back in January)

Harman for Deputy!

2007-06-08T10:57:00.001+01:00

- Harriet Harman

Hustings for the next Deputy Leader of the Labour Party are well underway. Today's Guardian has a good feature on the candidates, and Polly Toynbee makes a persuasive argument to Vote Harriet.

Hell, yeah.

To quote from her campaign material:

So if you're a Labour Party member and you've just received a ballot through the post, give her your vote. She won't waste it.

(for reference, I made a more indepth post about women in politics back in January)

The Evidence of Things Not Seen (or, Why We Are All Teapot Atheists)

2007-06-07T12:23:00.001+01:00

This isn't my usual feminist slant, but I felt it was a weighty enough rant that it warranted inclusion here.

After reading Theo Hobson's supremely irritating atheist-bashing piece in the Guardian yesterday, I curled up with the cats and watched Richard Dawkins' two-part documentary The Root of All Evil last night.

It's a really badly made documentary. I mean, it's awful. It's Dawkins trying to distill every single one of his books into 98 minutes, and the programme-makers trying to be 'arty'. And it suffers from the Michael Moore problem of using the same tools of debate as the people you're criticising - Dawkins says he's right, everyone else is wrong, but he doesn't say why he's right. It's not a flaw I've seen in his books - I've only read Climbing Mount Improbable, The God Delusion and bits of The Blind Watchmaker - and he does set out his arguments clearly, concisely and persuasively. The God Delusion hemmered the final nail into the coffin regarding any latent Paganism I had left, and I feel a lot happier for it.

He suffers from the problem that you can't prove that something doesn't exist, but he handles it wittily - he uses Russell's argument that one could believe in a teapot orbiting the sun with about as much proof as there is of existence of God, but that no-one does - we are all 'teapot atheists', and I really need to get that on a badge.

I've heard the argument that, because there are passages in the Koran (which I haven't read, although I might look up Lola's copy) inciting people to violence, that it's a pretty shoddy text to base a religion on. I have the exact same problem with Christianity - note I'm saying Christianity, not Christians - because the Bible has some horrific parts, and not just in the Old Testament. Out of curiosity, how do those of you who identify as both Christian and liberal reconcile that? Dawkins uses the argument that if you're religious you're betraying common sense, and if you're religious and progressive you're betraying common sense and religion, but I think that's overly simplistic.

I'm not arguing that religion should disappear from society - although I wouldn't shed a tear were that to happen - but I don't want it interfering with public policy, certainly not to the degree it does today. I'm deeply uncomfortable with the Government subsidising religious activities, and I'm firmly against faith schools. I was educated at a convent school and whilst I didn't have any terrible experiences, the Catholic aspect just got in the way of everything else. I think faith schools should be banned, I don't think any rational society has a place for them, not because I hate religion but because I find them indoctrinating and divisive at a time where we positively cannot afford to become entrenched in our sociocultural differences.

In yesterday's article, Hobson argued that "atheism is muddled because it cannot decide on what grounds it ultimately objects to religion. Does it oppose it on the grounds of its alleged falsity? Or does it oppose it on the grounds of its alleged harmfulness?" He misses the fact, just as there are various factions of believers, people have different degrees of and reasons for their atheism. He also argues that the general view is atheists = good, religious people = bad. Even Dawkins doesn't go that far.

And it's not militant atheism, it's just atheism. 'Secular fundamentalism' is a cute little buzzword that defends religion to liberals - everyone hates fundamentalists, right? But Dawkins et al are no more vocal about the lack of a god than any religious person is about the existence of one. And As Dawkins says, without the ability do disprove the existence of a supernatural entity, we are atheists in theory but agnostics in practice. It certainly isn't a religion. Hebrews 11.1 (and The West Wing) tell us that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, and I don't think that can be applied to atheism which at least points out the irrationality of religious belief with examples.

Disliking religion does not mean I dislike religious people, and I think that's where Dawkins runs into problems. He's stated in interviews that he has religious friends, some of whom are Anglican priests. If you write something that takes a point of view and argue that it is implausible or wrong, people who hold that worldview will get offended. It's par for the course, it doesn't mean he or any other atheist believes that religious people are somehow stupid or inferior, they're just wrong.

After all, any ideology is based in the belief that this ideology is right and others are wrong. But in order to sustain that argument, surely one requires readily available evidence to support it? Religion lacks that, so it co-opts the better parts of humanity and claims them for its own. A world without religion would not be more materialistic, more 'immoral', crueller. For one thing, there are biological imperatives that drive us to act in an altruistic manner; for another, there have been enough terrible things done by religious people as there have been good, and enough decent things done by non-believers, to convince me that religion does not have a monopoly on ethics, morality, or caring.

2007-05-07T10:32:00.000+01:00

Fears that the forthcoming draft Human Tissue and Embryos Bill will be hijacked by the pro-life brigade have been reported in the press today, with concerns that it will be used to call a vote on bringing the time limit for abortion in the UK down from the current 24 weeks to 21 or 20. More on this if Widdecombe et al make good on their threats.

words, words, words

2007-04-22T22:26:00.002+01:00

I believe small talk is for small people

- Alix Olsen, 'I Believe'

This is just a quick rant about language. More specifically, about two terms - 'social abortion' and 'date rape'.

I've used the latter, although I find 'acquaintance rape' to be more accurate, and I understand that there was a time when it was necessary to push home the point that you can be raped by someone who knows you, even someone that you've been in or have been considering a sexual relationship with. But its continued usage bothers me - it's as though we're watering down the concept of something that can be truly traumatic. Rape is rape - we know that it can be the boy next door, or the guy you're seeing, just as easily as it can be the man lurking in the corner. 'Date rape' is a misnomer, and it can be read as implying a certain amount of consent. And I honestly think that the point where sexual assualt occurs can safely be considered the point where the date is officially over.

'Social abortion' is a new term, at least to me. Again, it's one of those rather hazy phrases that can mean whatever you want them to. The jist of it seems to refer to any woman who seeks a termination just because she doesn't want the baby. It allows the media to talk about the selfishness of modern women - they would kill babies for the sake of their careers, those ambitious sluts! - and ignore the guys that didn't insist on using a condom, or offering to go with her to get the morning-after pill.

I remember doing Theology A Level at school and being presented with a case study of a woman who wanted an abortion because the pregnancy clashed with a ski trip she was planning. This is what 'social abortion' is generally seen to be. It never really challenged my opinion, because seriously - baby vs ski trip? Hm, let me think about that one for a moment.

I don't believe that life begins at conception, and I don't believe that abortion is murder. I don't want qualifiers put on that. If I go to a doctor with the desire to be referred for an abortion, I want them to be making the decision on a purely medical basis, not because they're judging the circumstances in which I got knocked up. If you're willing to perform or condone abortion because the woman's life is in danger or pregnancy occurred in highly traumatic circumstances, why not in all cases? If you don't consider it to be murder, or if that consideration is secondary to the woman's needs, then why not extend that to all women faced with an unwanted pregnancy?

Why I Believe in Affirmative Action

2007-04-19T11:21:00.000+01:00

1. My odds of being hired for a job, when competing against female applicants, are probably skewed in my favor. The more prestigious the job, the larger the odds are skewed.
2. I can be confident that my co-workers won’t think I got my job because of my sex - even though that might be true. (More).
3. If I am never promoted, it’s not because of my sex.
4. If I fail in my job or career, I can feel sure this won’t be seen as a black mark against my entire sex’s capabilities.
5. I am far less likely to face sexual harassment at work than my female co-workers are. (More).
6. If I do the same task as a woman, and if the measurement is at all subjective, chances are people will think I did a better job.

- The Male Privilege Checklist, Alas, a Blog

The Male Privilege Checklist, that I have quoted from above (and link to in the links section to the side of this blog) is a piece inspired by Peggy McIntosh's White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack produced by Alas, a Blog.

I mention this today because, according to the BBC, "[t]he Association of Chief Police Officers are to discuss plans to give ethnic minority and female candidates for the police preference over white, male recruits." The outcry is predictably depressing. Interestingly, I can't find a single liberal/left-wing newspaper who is covering this today. The Daily Mail has, though.

It seems rare that anyone is speaking up in favour of positive discrimination today. It's too easy to ignore it, to avoid the issue and thus avoid being seen as 'PC'. For the record, I have no problem with political correctness. I'm proud to be PC. In the olden says, we used to call it 'sensitivity'.

The assumption that anyone who has benefitted from affirmative action is inferior to the white heterosexual male who 'should' have gotten the job is offensive, and ignores the fact that race, gender and sexuality do play a part in the lives of these men. The fact that an acknowledged need for a diverse police force is being described as 'racist' by certain (moronic) sections of the population is an indication of how far we have to go. The fact is that women and people from an LGBT or BME background are not getting as far as they could because discrimination is still practised in British society.

I recognise the difficulties here - how do you measure whether someone has benefitted from the current system of privileging a certain race, a certain gender, a certain sexuality or religion? Well, acknowledging that it occurs would be a good start.

I've both benefitted and been discriminated against because of who I am. I may be female and queer, but I'm still white, middle-class and well-educated. In fact, given that I work in the public sector, defining as a lesbian may have helped - my sexuality is literally written all over my CV, given that I've done a lot of volunteer work within LGBT activism. But there will also have been times when I've missed out on opportunities because of that - a recruitment agency recently agreed that I probably wouldn't get taken on by a charity with a religious background, even if I wanted to. And I've benefitted from my whiteness and my class status immeasurably - to the extent that I take it for granted. And it isn't fair. The only way I can change that is by lobbying for other people - all other people - to get the same chances I have had. And that means quotas, that means affirmative action, it means acknowledging that the people the media are defining as 'the norm' in the police force/teaching professions/government have gotten where they are because of their own brand of positive discrimination. It doesn't mean fighting twice as hard to be taken half as seriously.

Speaking at Otelia Cromwell Day in 2002, a day devoted to race awareness at Smith College in the US, Paula Giddings said that "In a community … we're not all going to think alike," she said. "We don't have to construct diversity; we just have to deconstruct its barriers". I don't want to get a job and spend my time worrying whether or not I got it because I'm white. I want to know that I'm the best candidate - or that there were candidates from backgrounds different than mine who not only were better than me, but who got the chance to show it.

not the church, not the state - doctors, apparently, have the right to choose our fate

2007-04-17T12:00:00.000+01:00

[Following yesterday's post, Polly Toynbee has an excellent piece on single parent families here]

The Royal College of Obsetricians and Gynocologists has warned that Britain is facing a shortage of doctors willing to perform abortions. Note that the looming abortion crisis isn't because of changes in the law, or because of increased campaigning from the pseudo-morality peddlers who hang around outside clinics with their photoshopped foetuses and dubious scientific facts. It's because some doctors feel that their personal opinions should stop them doing their job. The buzzword being bandied about the press this week is "the dinner party test" - would you talk about being an abortion provider in a social context? Yes, that's right - people with power over our bodies are dictating what operations we can or cannot undergo based on what the neighbours might think. Forgive me if I'm not overwhelmed with confidence in the principles of the British medical profession. Libby Purves, in what is otherwise a pretty offensive piece, points out that "[i]f there is to be a shortage of abortionists there will be ever longer waiting lists, thus ever more late abortions". This is a can of worms we do not need to open.

In The Independent, one doctor is quoted as saying "I had made my mind up on abortion before entering the medical profession. I am a Roman Catholic and my religious beliefs do form my moral point of view." Well maybe - just maybe, Dr Gerrard - you should have chosen another damn job. Being a doctor doesn't always mean making the comfortable decisions, or the decisions that you'd make for yourself. It doesn't mean imposing your beliefs on other people. He then goes on to say "I think people understand it is a personal choice and respect that." What a pity he can't offer the same courtesy. Bear in mind, he's a GP - he isn't going to be performing the procedure himself, merely referring the woman in question to a hospital where the decision will be taken out of his hands. He does say that he would ask her to speak to another doctor - but out of the six GPs working at his practice, only three of them are pro-choice. I'm guessing he won't be telling her which ones.

The issue here is a tricky one, because the inevitable cry of 'it's discriminating against Christians' will be heard. Honestly? I don't care. I'm not asking my doctors (or my nurses, teachers, politicians) to check their personality at the door, but I don't want their personal superstitions interfering with my life. Because of cuts in junior doctor's hours, their training is no longer comprehensive and increasingly few are choosing to experience a the thankless and unpopular world. I don't want my doctor judging me, but it seems that this is exactly what a lot of them are doing - there is a sense that they are tidying up the mess made by selfish, irresponsible, promiscuous women. Newsflash - contraception doesn't always work.

Personally speaking, if someone I met told me they were involved in the practical side of abortion rights, I'd buy them a drink.

Abortion Rights UK are calling for abortion to be included on the medical student core curriculum. Find out more here.

Papa don't preach

2007-04-16T14:53:00.000+01:00

Silly fears about lesbian dads are an irrelevance today, and may never amount to more than science fiction.

- Mark Henderson, The Times

In an article in the Times, a columnist reassures his readership that “the End of Men” is merely mass hysteria with no foundation in scientific fact, and that “the dawn of an Amazonian dystopia” is not, in fact, nigh. What it amounts to, of course, is a backlash to the very hazy potential of two women biologically creating a child by terrified heterosexual men – “[t]he indignant railing against Nature usurped, of course, conveniently forgets that most women are not lesbians and will always find it more fun to breed the old-fashioned way.” God forbid that any woman should enjoy making love (or, for that matter, babies) without the presence of a man. It is a castration complex with parenting as the [supposedly envied] phallus.

By “silly fears about lesbian dads”, Henderson really means that the very idea of a woman taking on a traditionally male role – in this case, co-parent of a child – is at best ridiculous, and at worst unnatural. If my partner and I choose to have kids, there won’t be a father involved, regardless of the genetic make-up of the child. It may have my DNA, it may have hers, it may have neither. It may, due to some wonderful scientific advance, have both. But that child will have two mothers and, in all probability, no father. The use of gendered language to describe the non-foetus-carrying partner is deceptive – and designed to highlight the supposedly unnatural nature of same-sex parenting. It also rams home the idea of a binary gender system, one in which there is only biological male and biological female, with no room for the grey areas between the sexes, for someone to define as one gender but inhabit the body commonly attributed to the other.

It is equally an argument about that old bugbear of the Daily Mail, single mothers. Whilst a positive male role model in child’s life is something to be encouraged – I’d be the first to state that I benefitted enormously by one – it doesn’t have to be the father. Families can exist without the presence of a father, and that existance can be a happy one when the father figure would otherwise be a poor influence or have a detrimental effect on the family. Obviously the gender roles here can be reversed – women are no more natural parents than men are – and whilst no-one would argue that being a single parent is easy, it is often the lesser of two evils. Better to be in a stable and loving environment, no matter how many parents of either sex one has, than to be brought up in an attitude of either violence or indifference.

girls in tight dresses, who drag with mustaches

2007-04-13T10:11:00.000+01:00

When we look into each other's eyes with
That look
That two lesbians passing in the street
I know exactly what I'm looking at look

- That Look, Rachel Jury

I change styles like I change my mind,
I tried to change a tyre but I'm not that way inclined.

- I Won't Change You, Sophie Ellis Bextor

The New York Times has an interesting article on cars and gay stereotypes, that's gotten me thinking about the steretypes I fulfil as a lesbian. Here's a confession - my partner and I had our first date at an Ani diFranco gig. Whenever I tell people that, they roll their eyes and say "Of course you did." However, if she said that - and she probably wouldn't, for fear of looking like a dyke cliche - she wouldn't get the same response.

When I was fourteen, shortly before I came out to my parents, I cut my shoulder length hair into a crew cut. I told my mother I wanted to look "elfin, like Audrey Hepburn." Really, I just wanted my appearance to reflect what I was feeling. I wanted my hair to raise the questions about my sexuality that I was afraid to raise myself. Ten years later I've let it grow out, but I'm not feeling any less of a cliche. My music taste leans towards the 'angsty chicks with guitars who don't shave their armpits' genre. I have two cats who I unashamedly refer to as my children. I watch The L Word and mourn the loss of Buffy, Xena and Star Trek Voyager from our screens - Sarah Jane Smith, the leather jacketed women's libber, is my favourite Doctor Who companion. I eat quorn and read feminist literature and I have three pairs of Doc Martens and more than one rainbow badge. I'm pretty damn gay.

However, that description sums up a lot of straight women I know, and it doesn't come within a country mile of describing my girlfriend (except the cats part. But they love me more). She doesn't define herself as a feminist, but she does define herself as a Conservative. She likes Ani but wishes someone would introduce her to a razor. She's non-scene, and uses the word 'gay' as an affectionate but mocking epithet - but she likes women. If Eddie Izzard is a male lesbian, then she's a gay heterosexual. There's a scene in But I'm a Cheerleader - see, I said I was a cliche - where Clea Duvall's character introduces herself by saying "I like girls. A lot. Oh, and I'm a homosexual." Although this scene is set up to parody your average AA meeting, it says a lot about how queerness is defined. It's about the clothes you wear, the activities you engage in - Megan, the lead character, gives the film its title when she insists that she can't be a lesbian because she's a cheerleader, as if those things were mutually exclusive. Why do some lesbians refute these signifiers, and why are some drawn to them?

In the NY Times article, queer theorist and drag king Judith Halberstam argues that "not all gays want to be normative." We're allowed to relish our Otherness, to have the thing that marks us out be celebrated rather than concealed. Whilst I can pass for straight, I don't want to. The keyring that says 'I can't even think straight', the badge with two intertwined venus symbols, they're all precautions against misinterpretations. The image people may form of me without them isn't offensive to me, it's just inaccurate. I've blogged in the past about how the clothes women wear signify certain things to different people, and that the message one person gets isn't the message that is intended. I'm happy to use my body as a billboard to advertise who I am, because it means that I'm controlling the perceptions people make of me. A gay journalist and former engineer in the article is quoted as saying that “traditionally we are used to being defined by others. Driving a stylish car can be a way of taking control back and saying 'this is who I am'.”

Performance poet Rachel Jury explores this in her poetry collection, Laughing Lesbians. She acknowledges the complexity of the issue - in one poem, the title of which shamefully escapes me, the narrator takes a 'How Gay Are You?' quiz only to discover, much to her surprise, that despite identifying as a lesbian she's actually quite straight. But another poem, That Look (which can be found here, at the wonderful Word Power website) uses the same theme of queer signifiers to give a sense of hidden community and attraction.

Of course there are different types of signifiers for different dykes. I may fulfil some stereotypes, but I fail completely in others. I know all the words to Little Plastic Castles, but I don't understand the offside rule and I can't change a tyre. My girlfriend understand both, and has been referred to as "the son-in-law I thought I'd never have" by my father (although not within my straight sister's earshot). I've frequently heard femme women complain about not being taken seriously by 'real' lesbians, or being assumed to be bisexual - or worse, bicurious.

I applaud the spirit behind the NY Times article, because it challenges the heteronormativity of the mainstream press. Part of me thinks it would be nice to get past all that, to just be people instead of gay, straight, whatever. But part of me enjoys the sense of community I get from being this particular minority - when Tina said in a recent L Word episode that she missed "being part of something secret and special" when she became involved with a man, I understood what she meant. I was also sick a little bit in my mouth, because there really are less nauseating ways of expressing that.

This Woman's Work

2007-03-22T12:14:00.001Z

"A baby is born. A child develops a high fever. The boiler breaks down. A parent suffers a stroke. These are the everyday events that throw a working woman's delicate balance between work and family into chaos."

- Cherie Booth, QC

Stop the presses! Despite more and more women working a 45 hour week, it seems that women are still picking up the slack at home. Although the relatively recent introduction of two weeks statutory paternity leave has both allowed and encouraged men to become more involved in the life of their offspring, it seems that this does not extend to staying at home with a sick child, or sharing the 15 hours of housework a week that piles up when two people move in together.

I believe passionately that the patriarchal attitudes still dominating society hurt men as well as women, although I've always been uncomfortable with the heavy emphasis on that which is so often used to 'justify' women's lib, as if equal rights weren't enough by themselves. Two centuries ago, Mary Wollstonecraft argued that when a woman takes on the sole care of running a house, it infantilises men who bounce from mother to wife with no real change in responsibility.

God knows, I don't like housework. But I see the value in it, in the ability to fend for oneself. My father told me once, in what I now suspect was an effort to get me to tidy my room on occasion, that after his first marriage he was determined to go it alone. He wanted to know that he could do domestic all by himself, that he could iron and cook and clean and decorate. And he did. When I was growing up, my mother was in and out of hospital with end-stage renal failure and its attending complications. It wasn't unusual for Dad to do the lion's share of housework in favour of Mum having a rest, or rearranging his working life to get the place in order, or look after two worried and confused little girls. It also wasn't unusual for my mother's friends to arrive unannounced with a lasagne or offers of help with the hoovering. It bothered me even then, because my father is a wonderful cook and this assumption that somehow he needed a surrogate housekeeper seemed to me to devalue everything he was doing for us. Housework as women’s work is an attitude that patronises everyone.

I wonder if the men involved in Fathers4Justice would be willing to sacrifice their careers, or at least their chances of promotion, and accept the ensuing lower income and longer hours that go hand in hand with those ‘equal parenting rights’ they claim to want. I wonder how many of them would have taken even the two weeks they are now legally allowed to spend with their newborn children.

We need to stop phrasing this argument as being about women – we should focus on the husbands, partners and fathers who are failing to uphold their end of the bargain.

I think this line's mostly filler...

2007-03-15T15:35:00.000Z

Keep your eyes peeled for the June edition of Red magazine, as yours truly will be quoted alongside Robert Winston and Anne Widdecombe in an article about IVF...

How do you solve a problem like McEwan?

2007-02-08T09:04:00.000Z

There was a lot of interest in the feminist blogosphere when Amanda Marcotte from Pandagon and Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister (I mean, of course, the blog rather than the early 90s band) were hired by John Edwards to blog for his campaign. Not any more.

They been accused of having an anti-Catholic bias for criticising the Vatican's stance on contraception and abortion, and at the time of going to press, it appears that the campaign manager has given in and fired them - for the time being, at least. Now, two things bother me about this. The first is that these views were not expressed in the context of the Edwards campaign, they were expressed on their blogs. The second is that these women are working for a Democratic candidate, so their pro-choice views shouldn't exactly come as a surprise. The Washington Post cites Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights ~~But Only if They Look and Act Just Like Us~~ as taking issue with the fact that "they criticized the pope and the church for its opposition to homosexuality, abortion and contraception, sometimes using profanity." They're left-wing feminist bloggers. Donohue doesn't really have a problem with the language, he doesn't really have a problem with the fact that these women are expressing their views in their own personal blogs, he has a problem with the fact that politicians take them - take us - seriously. And that scares the hell out of him.

Captain's Quarters suggests that this is a blow for all bloggers who want to be taken seriously in the public domain, whilst simultaneously taking the opportunity to bash Edwards - "The episode reveals the lack of vetting done by the Edwards campaign before hiring the two bloggers, and sets back the ability of bloggers to mainstream themselves into traditional political roles." I have numerous problems with this, not least that both Marcotte and McEwan have never made any bones about their pro-choice views or the fact that they use strong language to get their point across. Even the most casual vetting job would have revealed this, and whilst I have reservations about the management of Edwards' campaign so far, I don't think his staffers are stupid. The very fact that he hired M&M shows his committment to grassroots Democrats, to women's rights, and to what the GOP would sneerigly call 'the gay agenda'. That's the problem here, not the alleged blasphemy from his bloggers. Abortion and contraception are being put on the agenda, and they're being taken seriously. And if the Christian Right are prepared to fight dirty - and when have they ever done anything else, with their placard-waving protests outside abortion clinics? - well, so are their opposition.

And we are their opposition. I'm saying that, not as a Democrat or an Edwards supporter or as someone eligable to vote in the US, since I'm none of those things. I'm saying it as one of the voices that Donohoe and his cronies are trying to suppress. Despite what the blogger at Captain's Quarters might think, Marcotte & McEwan have mainstreamed themselves into traditional political roles, partly because the views they expressed may have been tough-talkin', but they weren't all that radical. Contentious, yes, but radical? The Democrats are a party of choice far more than the Republicans will ever be, and feminists have been demanding safe, legal abortion and accessible contraception for an entire century, if not longer.

This isn't an outcry over the bloggers Edwards hired, it's about the views he represents. And whilst I think that taking such an unequivocal stance will actually hurt him politically, I applaud the fact that he's done it. I sincerely hope that both bloggers - two good, principled writers - are reinstated, and that an apology is made to them for screwing them around. Because mainstream politics needs women like Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, and whatever their future on the Edwards campaign may be, they're sure as hell not going away.

'Was she asking for it? Was she asking nice?' (Hole)

2007-02-01T09:42:00.000Z

“While the rise in the number of rape complaints does not necessarily prove that the situation is worsening, the decline in the rate of convictions has been unequivocal and worrying.”

- The Rape Action Plan, The Home Office, 2002

The latest statistics in the UK suggest that, whilst more women are reporting rape than ever before, convictions are at a relative all-time low. In four years, convictions have dropped from 6.57% to 5.31%. A report suggests that at least a third of cases dropped should have been pursued, and that 25% were dropped because the woman “withdrew her complaint”. This was the overall result – police response varied dramatically (and unacceptably) depending on the area. Dropping the allegations doesn’t mean that a crime didn’t take place, it means that the victim was disheartened by a procedure that meant reliving her attack, or that she was coerced into doing so by police officers who believed that she was either lying or didn’t have enough of a case.

Incidents where the victim was intoxicated are, with depressing inevitability, among those that never get prosecuted because police do not believe that unconsensual sex took place. These are marked down as ‘no crime committed’, a clear breach of Home Office guidelines that states that this should only be the case if there is “verifiable information that no crime was committed” rather than an officer’s personal view. Second opinions, which should be automatic, are not sought, and first response officers are frequently badly trained. The medical aspect of rape investigations was also considered to be unacceptable – poor examinations and lost data created another stumbling block in seeking prosecution.

The Guardian cites the report as suggesting that “The failures not only inflated police perceptions of the scale of false allegations, but led to a loss of information about perpetrators and risked undermining the victim's credibility if she made a later report of rape”.

There may be hope on the way, though. By the end of 2008, Joan Ryan of the Home Office (a self-described feminist who has some fabulous things to say about politics and sexism in Women in Parliament: The New Suffragettes) has pledged to increase the number of sexual assault referral centres from the current 15 to 40, with an extra £1 million in funding.

If only governments were so supportive worldwide. In the US, South Dakota’s reintroduced ban on abortion has been modified oh-so-generously to exclude rape victims and victims incest (rape and incest are, according to South Dakota, not the same thing), as well as for the health of the woman. Jen’s post about this is far more coherent than I could hope to be right now, given the fact that I’m choking with anger, so you should go and read that, but the gist of the rape exceptions are that you must have reported your rape within 50 days, it must be have been confirmed by a doctor, and you must agree for blood to be taken from the foetus and used as DNA evidence by the police.

The anti-woman backlash has been predictably depressing. I’m sick to death of hearing that a woman being raped whilst drunk or dressing “provocatively” is the same as someone being mugged whilst walking down the street holding a wad of cash in his hand (and it’s always his, since women apparently don’t have independent finances to be reckless with). There is no such thing as an invitation to rape. How is having a few too many somehow a flashing sign saying ‘you can do what you want to me’? And not all women dress for male attention – even when they do, they want the attention on their terms, not those of some sleazy perv who can’t take no for an answer.

But hey – if the Japanese Health Minister is to be believed, we’re all just baby-making factories anyway.

Petition

2007-01-31T11:32:00.000Z

Mind the Gap has a link to a petition protesting the possibility for religious organisations to be exempted from the new laws governing homophobic discrimination. Although it appears that the exemptions probably won't go through, it's best to be on the safe side and pledge your support for no-one being allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, no matter their religious or cultural beliefs. There's no excuse for homophobia.

You have to be a British citizen to sign the petition, and although it says that the cut-off date is 17th Jan, it's apparently been changed.

So go and sign it, and lodge your support for gay couples to be able to adopt children from any adoption agency, not just ones that 'let' them.

Shameless pimping for charity

2007-01-31T11:21:00.000Z

Knit a Part of a Cancer Research Giant Scarf for a London Icon!

Stitch and Bitch London (a friendly London knitting group who want save the world one knitter at a time) are attempting to knit a gigantic scarf or scarves for the rather chilly-looking Trafalgar Square lions. The scarves will be raffled off for Cancer Research after being presented to the lions mid-March, and the lucky winners will get a 43.5 foot scarf to wrap around their armchair/tree/house/partner (or we can turn the pieces into a blanket for them).

The scarves will be presented to the lion in March so you have plenty of time to knit your bit.

Follow the Lion Scarf Story and put yourself on one of our maps on our website at www.stitchandbitchlondon.co.uk

We would like as many people as possible to knit a piece. You can knit the smallest, teeny tiny part or a huge chunk, in whichever yarn you fancy using.

Knit in support of someone you know fighting cancer, in memory of someone, or just for the joy of knitting for a giant lion!

If you wish to begin knitting your part of the giant scarf at home here are the dimensions:

The scarf will be an enormous: 10 inches (25.5cm) by 43.5 feet (13.25 metres)

Yarn: Whatever you want to use.

Stitch: Any design you like. Go wild!

There are four lions in Trafalgar Square so don't be afraid to knit a big chunk. They can all have one if we get enough! :)

JOIN US FROM ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD!

FOR AN ADDRESS TO SEND YOUR PART TO SEE OUR WEBSITE AT www.stitchandbitchlondon.co.uk

Any questions? Email us
at: stitchandb.london@googlemail.com

Knit your bit! Those lions aren’t going to sit there waiting for their scarves for ever you know. Well, okay, maybe they are. But that isn't the point!

Woman is a political animal, not just a desperate housewife

2007-01-28T18:19:00.000Z

Last week, Harriet Harman visited the Welsh Labour Women's Forum. "What a tonic it was," she says, "to spend the day with them. They are the champions of women in Wales and have transformed the political agenda so that it looks to and understands the lives of women in Wales, as well as men." She goes on to list the accomplishments of the Welsh Assembly, saying that Labour women have pushed forward the agenda on pledging more nursery places, tackling the gender pay gap, and caring for the elderly. Don't get me wrong, I'm delighted that these things are being prioritised, and I'm proud that we've elected strong, competent women to see them through. But it isn't a woman's job to do it, it's a politician's, and the more that gender is brought into the equation, the easier it is for a male politician to pass the buck. Women don't benefit politics simply because they're women. There is no magical component to estrogen that makes us more susceptible to the plight of the underdog - our first female PM was Maggie Thatcher, for heaven's sake, and she wasn't exactly known for her cuddly, gentle side.

The language men use to talk about political women is telling, but more interesting is the language these women use about themselves. Nancy 'two heartbeats away from the Presidency' Pelosi, the first leader of the House of Representatives, recently spoke out about the political corruption in Washington and suggested that she was the right person for the job because "It takes a woman to clean house." Thatcher, who once so famously claimed that "I owe nothing to women's lib", frequently cast herself in the role of the housewife in charge of the pursestrings. Except she wasn't a housewife, she was the prima inter pares, 'the first among equals', the Prime bloody Minister of the United Kingdom. And no matter what I think of her premiership, I think it deserved more than shoddy gender stereotypes and playing down her considerable strengths. I'm not playing down the experiences of housewives - as anyone who saw my reluctance to scrub the kitchen floor today will tell you, it involves some serious hard graft. But Pelosi and Thatcher have some major political nous and when I see their achievements being put into traditionally female terms, it demeans everything they have achieved as politicians, not just as women. Anyway, his wife might have been the Britain's most famous housewife during the 80s, but I bet Denis Thatcher wielded a mean scrubbing brush in his time.

I'm not disputing the idea that women can bring a different political agenda to the table, I just don't believe that they automatically do. For every Harriet Harman, dedicated to making men and women as equal in the eyes of public policy as they are in reality, there's a Margaret Thatcher double-glazing over the hole she made in the glass ceiling. To assume that all women are going to protect the feminist agenda is not only narrow-minded and hopelessly optimistic, it gives men a carte blanche to ignore it. I want more women in the Houses of Parliament, in Congress, in the Senate, and in the White House. But I also want the men and women we vote for to shoulder their social responsibilities equally, because for the foreseeable future women will always have to operate within a political structure that benefits men most of all, and it can only be changed when everyone takes a stand and not just those who it adversely affects.

It's true - or at least I believe it to be true, and since this is my blog we shall assume that I am right - that many female politicans are more sensitive to issues that primarily affect women, and that their being in power means that women's issues can play a larger part in how our countries are run. That's one of the reasons we campaigned for the vote, it's one of the reasons I'm gunning for Harriet as Deputy PM and Hillary for POTUS. But that doesn't make abortion, unequal pay, nursery places, low rape convictions, and maternity/paternity leave issues that only women should deal with. These women have set a great example, it's time that men stepped up to the plate and supported them, whether as fellow party members, partners, brothers or sons.

Because it doesn't take a woman to clean house, and it sure as hell doesn't take a man to rule the country.

2007-01-26T20:33:00.000Z

The Guardian's 'Comment is Free' section has an interesting op ed piece on forced marriages here.

A proper update will follow this weekend...

Apparently equal rights ARE special rights.

2007-01-24T09:53:00.000Z

Recently passed gay rights legislation in the UK is being threatened by Catholic adoption agencies' refusal to comply with the new laws. They claim that the legislation will 'force' their agencies to close, although the reality is slightly different. What they're actually saying is that if the law does not include a special loophole just for them, they will close their adoption agencies - who place around 3 or 4% of children a year, and say that they deal with some of the most hard-to-place children with no clear evidence to support this - rather than run the risk of placing a child with same-sex parents.

Today's Guardian says that "Mr Blair and Ms Kelly are trying to broker a deal that could include a transition period for Catholic agencies, or the merger of Catholic and non-Catholic agencies. The Department for Education and Skills believes it can fill the gap if the Catholic agencies disband." This would be the most positive outcome for me, and I've got my fingers crossed for it, but the lack of reaction to homophobic outcry demeans the much-needed legislation that the same PM has just passed. Some MPs have been more vocal, including gay Labour MP (and former Anglican vicar - godess, I love my party) Chris Bryant, who argues that the majority of Catholics wouldn't support the closing of adoption agencies due to rampant homophobia. This even seems to be borne out by that political litmus test, the BBC's Have Your Say website, a current affairs forum that generaly appears to be populated by conspiracy theorists and Daily Mail readers, and is thus the bane of my existence.

Personally, I don't want religious organisations involved in adoption any more than I want them involved in education, and I certainly don't want them involved in politics to the level they are now. And putting a child with gay parents isn't going to make them gay themselves - most if not all of the gay people I know were raised by straight couples (my mother's adolescent crush on her hockey teacher not withstanding). Linked to that is the tired old heteronormative assumption that the default setting for the human race is gay - by the law of averages, some of the children placed with gay couples will be gay and will benefit from such a positive and state-sanctioned environment, or some of their friends might be and will have positive queer role models in a functioning family relationship.

Families are important. I don't care how you define them, the important thing is that they form a solid basis of love and support for their child's life, and beyond that it doesn't matter what combination of sex or gender is involved. If that sounds like a cliche, it's because it is - we shouldn't even need to have this debate, and if one of the most important things that Blair will have done in his last few months in office is watered down by his insistence on bending to the will of the religious right, I am going to be seriously disgusted.

Early Money Is Like Yeast - it helps raise the dough!

2007-01-23T10:45:00.000Z

In honour of Blogging For Choice Day, here is some more left-wing feminist propaganda dedicated to a truly pro-choice candidate for the Decmocratic nomination. Sign up to Hillary's website to join the HillRaisers and support Hillary in her bid to become the first female POTUS, or if you're in the UK, go and join The Fawcett Society or sign up to support Harriet Harman's campaign to become the first female Deputy Prime Minister.

Taken from Emily’s List.

EMILY is every woman who has ever sat at a business meeting while someone else took credit for her good work.
EMILY is every young professional who’s been told to wait her turn and every seasoned one who’s been told she still has to pay her dues.
EMILY is every working mom who’s managed to balance a checkbook, who’s managed a clean house, a corporate budget and a 12-year-old’s basketball tournament in one day.
EMILY is every stay-at-home mom who has ever been asked, “No, I mean, what do you do? What do you really do?”

She is every woman who’s ever had to defend her right to be pro-choice. She’s every woman who’s ever had to explain her choice not to have a child.

She’s every woman who has ever demanded a raise because she’s been doing the same work as the man in the next cubicle for the same number of years, and she’s still not getting the same pay. She’s every woman who has ever wondered why the company won’t cover her contraceptives, but will cover that same guy’s Viagra.
EMILY is every working mom who has ever fought for quality day care or family leave time. She is every woman who has given up a single day of vacation to care for a sick child or a sick parent.
EMILY is every girl in every classroom whose hand was still in the air after the boys got their questions answered.
She’s every athlete who’s ever been told, “She throws like a girl.” She’s every candidate who’s ever been asked how she can run for office and have a family at the same time. She is every African-American woman who has had to work three times as hard to be considered as good as her white male colleague. She is every Jewish woman who has ever been called a princess. She is every Hispanic woman who has been asked how long her family has been in this country.

She is every woman who has been called too soft or too strong or too aggressive or too nice or too ambitious to get the job done. She is every woman who has ever been measured against a glossy picture in a magazine.
EMILY is the seamstress who has sewn the graduation gowns for years but has never worn one. EMILY is every woman who helped set up this room today and who will clean up after we leave … and that same woman who only wants her daughters to dream big dreams, because EMILY knows that young girls cannot be what they cannot see.
She is you. She may be your next governor … she may be your next vice-president … she may be your next president. And EMILY doesn’t get mad — she gets elected!

A woman's place is in the White House

2007-01-20T21:18:00.000Z

So Hillary's putting together an exploratory committee about running for the Democratic nomination for POTUS in the 08 election. Well, that's a surprise. In the happy fantasy world in my head, we'll have a female president in the White House, with a black VP (come on, a Clinton/Obama ticket doesn't make anyone else drool?) a female French president (Royale, baby!), and Harriet Harman will be Brown's Deputy PM. Harman's probably the most visible female MP we have, probably one of the most visible Labour politicians full stop, and her feminist credentials are pretty damn great.

In 2007, my resolution is to post here more often....

aliens, bisexuals and stereotypes, oh my!

2006-11-27T12:52:00.000Z

I have a whole list of topics to blog about, including the Reclaim the Night march I went on this weekend. Instead, I’m going to rant about a TV show. Torchwood is a spin-off of the British sci-fi show, Doctor Who. It was promoted as the ‘grown-up’ version of what is essentially a family show, and a lot was made of the fact that Jack Harkness, the lead character is ‘omnisexual’ (in contrast to the Doctor, who is generally considered asexual). Both shows come from Russell T Davies, the man behind the (original) UK version of Queer as Folk, and the two newest series of Who have been criticised for their gay-heavy content. So far, so diverse? I wish.

Anything from here on in can be considered a spoiler to the latest episode of Torchwood, Greeks Bearing Gifts (written by Toby Whithouse). You have been warned. Episode seven aired yesterday and, if you count a rather homoerotic instance of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, all the main characters have had same-sex experiences. The show is made up of three men and two women, and the way their potential bisexuality is portrayed differs radically.

• In the first episode, laddish medic Owen is shown hitting on a woman in a bar who isn’t remotely interested. But not a problem! For Owen has brought his very own ~~date rape drug~~ bag of tricks, in the form of a pheromone spray. One squirt of his magic love juice (sorry, couldn’t resist) and she’s all over him. Her boyfriend has a problem with this, as one would, and starts to kick off on Owen. So he simply sprays some pheromones at boyfriend, and they wander off into the sunset for a non-consensual threesome.

• In the next episode, a woman is possessed by an alien who feeds off the human orgasm. Just typing this is making me realise how much crack this show is on, but bear with me. At some point, Gwen Cooper, the new recruit to the Torchwood team, gets locked in the cell with her. Now Gwen used to be a policeman in Cardiff, which is the capital city of Wales. Most capital cities have their fair share of bad guys, and one would imagine that a basic part of police training isDon’t Get Locked Into A Cell With The Villain (Especially If The Villain Is An Alien And It’s Your First Day On The Job Working For A Covert Government Organisation). However, Gwen was obviously off the day they covered that in cop school, and ends up in a lesbian liplock with Sex Alien Girl. The rest of the team watch this on CCTV, drooling, until someone points out that Sex Alien Girl reduces her lovers not so much to jelly as to a pile of ash on the floor. They reluctantly tear themselves away from Policewomen Gone Wild and go to her rescue. But it’s OK, Sex Alien Girl can’t get real satisfaction from women so Gwen can live to mess up another day.

The next few episodes are irritating, but not as objectionable as the ones I’m focussing on. The receptionist has been keeping his half-robot ex in the basement until he can find a cure for being a robot, and polygamous, commitment-phobic time-traveller Jack meets up with his old (as in, grandmother-old) war-time girlfriend to fight fairies – the winged kind, that is – and angsts about the life they could have had if he hadn’t gone to run around the universe flirting with everyone he meets. Oh, and Gwen the SuperCop gets shoved into a tree by Drug Rape Owen, who grinds against her and makes her admit that she wants him, wants him bad.

• Which leads me to last night’s episode. See, Toshiko Sato is the resident geek girl who has never gotten over kissing Owen a year ago. In fact, she hasn’t kissed anyone since (pay attention, this is A Theme in Toby Whithouse’s writing). Honestly, with his sexual powers, it’s a wonder he even needs to use pheromone date rape aerosols . Tosh was as intrigued as anyone by Gwen the SuperCop’s girl-on-girl action, but is feeling a little bit betrayed by her New Best Friend shagging her crush when said NBF KNOWS she really likes Owen. So she goes to a bar, gets picked up by a cute blonde lesbian and starts spilling the secrets of Torchwood. Cute Blonde lesbian kisses her and gives her a pretty necklace that allows Tosh to hear everyone’s thoughts. Then they do sex, and Tosh freaks out – either because she slept with a woman or because now someone other than Owen has kissed her. To cut a long story short, Gwen the SuperCop thinks Tosh can’t dress for shit, Drug Rape Owen thinks she’s annoying, and Cute Blonde Lesbian is actually an evil alien who was using Tosh to get to Torchwood. Jack sends her back to her home planet with some alien technology he fixed, and consoles Tosh by patting her suggestively on her thigh.

Not forgetting, of course, Jack’s line about not trusting people when they started acting distracted and unlike themselves – one time his friend Vincent did that, vanished for six months, and when he came back had ‘started calling himself Vanessa’. Be careful, kids! If your friends are acting quiet and moody, they might have a sex change!

I expected better from a show that markets itself as gay-friendly. Not gratuitous lesbianism, not cheap shots at transpeople, and not the kind of sloppy, retrogressive characterisation that is only a problem if you have breasts.

In Doctor Who, the female sidekicks have a reputation of screaming lots and falling over. I’d argue that this is mostly unearned, but any effort to have a sassy 21st century companion is to be applauded. And in the first series, it works. Rose Tyler is from a crappy estate, with a crappy job and a rubbish boyfriend who will eventually prove himself to be a hero and make me cry, dammit. Since her mother has never warned her about getting into time machines with strange men, she becomes the latest assistant to the Doctor, a rather angsty chap who has just ended a war on his home planet by killing everyone, and now bitches about being lonely. Rose kicks ass. She functions as the audience in a way - gaping at the cool special effects and asking the kind of stupid questions we’d ask if we were whisked into time and space by Christopher Eccleston. She even saves the day once or twice. But by the second season, she’s clingy, co-dependent and talking about mortgages. And when they run into Sarah Jane Smith*, one of the Doctor’s previous sidekicks, boy do her hackles rise.

Russell T Davies has been variously credited with reinventing British sci-fi and not being able to write women. It’s hard not to think that the two are connected. He’s openly gay, as quite a few of the actors, production staff and writers seem to be, and he’s not afraid of letting it show in his scripts. This is great, it’s hard not to be happy about a cult show being reinvented by someone who isn’t afraid to bring the gay, to question the heterocentric attitudes of mainstream media. But it stops there. Female sexuality is constantly portrayed as either problematic or titillating, whereas male sexuality, even when it’s threatening, is applauded. I have no problem with shades of grey, with protagonists who aren’t necessarily the good guys, but I don’t want Crazy/Evil lesbians there to boost ratings, I don't want women fighting over men, and I don’t want misogynistic characters labelled heroes.

*Ah, Sarah Jane. In the 70s, she was a time-travelling journalist and women’s libber, bringing feminism to medieval England and far-flung planets. In 2006, she’s never quite gotten over the Doctor and is not impressed to have been replaced by a bottle-blonde chav with no A-Levels.

Take Back The Night 2

2006-11-16T12:56:00.000Z

Another post, so soon? This is mostly a quick update - a few pieces of news and details of next week's Reclaim The Night march in London. Again, it's about rape. I wish I didn't have to blog about this and I wish I didn't have to get angry. Which is a round about way of saying I wish rape didn't happen, or that at least the victims were treated with some respect.

- Happy news first. Well, sort of. Pakistan's national assembly has voted to amend rape laws. As I understand it, they will no longer take place in Sharia courts - which demand four witnesses to the rape - but in civil courts, making it easier to prpsecute. Small victory, but it's a start. Statistics on the BBC website suggest that in Pakistan, a woman is raped every two hours, and gang-raped every eight hours.

- A report for the Association of Chief Police Officers suggests that drugs such as Rohypnol are far less frequently used in rape cases than is commonly supposed. The front cover of this morning's Metro claimed 'Drug rape a myth'. Thanks for that biassed reporting, then. Regardless of the Rohypnol statistics, my real problem with the report was the inevitable blame that fell on the victims when they had been drinking. No change there, then.

- Reclaim The Night rally, London, 25th November:

In Britain there are an estimated 47,000 rapes every year. And each year, an estimated 300,000 women are sexually assaulted (British Crime Survey 2001). Yet Britain's rape conviction rate is at its lowest ever, at just 5.3%.

In the workplace, one in two women are sexually harassed. Now more than ever, women must come together to say 'no' to violence against women.

Reclaim The Night
Saturday 25 November
Assemble 6pm at Trafalgar Square
8pm mixed rally at University of London Union, Malet Street

Because, strange as it may sound, I do in fact have the right to walk home from the bus after dark - and in the winter, it's always after dark - without being raped.

Take Back the Night

2006-11-14T12:44:00.000Z

"When a woman's crying like that? She isn't having any fun."

- Thelma & Louise

Lately, I've been thinking about false rape allegations. Cheery thought, yes? Partly it's been triggered by a recent episode of Veronica Mars (apologies for the spoiler, there...) and partly by the increasing accounts in my arch-nemesis, the Daily Mail, of women who, and I quote, 'cry rape'. That in itself is a problematic term - the implication is that, like the boy who cried wolf, the only real punishment is to rape her. I've heard people say that, people whose opinions I would normally trust, and it makes me spitting mad.

It's no secret that getting rape to even reach the courts is difficult, especially when the perpetrator was an acquaintance or when the victim was under the influence of drugs or alchohol. And it's no secret that even when a case is brought to the courts, the prosecution rate is disturbingly low.

I want to know on what grounds these women are seen to be 'crying rape'. Was the case dismissed because of lack of evidence, because it was her word against his? And no, I'm not discounting the idea that some women do falsify sexual abuse allegations. But the number of women who do that in no way equals the number of rape cases that go unpunished. In the most recent case - I'm not linking to the article I read, it's bad enough I even click on the damn webpage in order to get my sometimes daily free fix of what the other side are saying - the woman (who was 16 at the time) stuck to her story, although there were the occasional discrepancies.

I'm concerned that increasing prosecutions for women who are supposedly fabricating sexual assault will result in a significant drop in reported rapes. What's the point if you'll only be punished for telling the truth? For me, and perhaps this is a personal thing, one of the worst claims that can be made is that a woman had consensual sex only to change her mind afterwards. By 'afterwards', do we really mean 'during'? Or do so many women walk away from a sexual encounter feeling somehow wrong about it but reluctant to call it rape just because they decided at the last minute they didn't want to after all/didn't want to do a particular thing and got either verbally or physically coerced into it?

I know a lot of women who either wouldn't or haven't wanted to make a big deal out of it. And when the right-wing media jump on women whose claims have been unheard or whose cases have been unsuccessful, can we really blame them?

What Not to Wear

2006-10-09T11:44:00.000+01:00

People talk about my image
Like I come in two dimensions,
Like lipstick is the sign of my declining mind.
Like what I happen to be wearing
The day that someone takes my picture,
Is my new statement for all of womenkind.

- Ani diFranco, ‘Little Plastic Castles’

(The title was going to be some witty pun on ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, but I couldn't be bothered thinking of one, so count yourselves lucky)

So Jack Straw would prefer Muslim women not to wear a niquab (full veil) when they come to his surgery, because he prefers to speak to them ‘face to face’. Much as I have issues with women being forced to cover up any part of their body normally on public display, I feel that they equally shouldn’t be forced to reveal a part of themselves that they feel compromises their modesty.

Fashion is all too often used as a means with which to control women, whether it’s foot-binding or heels that mean you can only take teeny-tiny girlie footsteps, rather than being able to run like hell if someone’s following you. Given that Islam is a fundamentally patriarchal institution – come on, it’s a dominant religion, of course it is – there is an implicit lack of choice in a religious mandate that states women must cover their faces when with a member of the opposite sex. But given the overwhelming pressure on Western women to conform to a certain dress code, I think we should stop throwing stones for a while and take a look at the foundations of our glass house. Walk into any shoe shop, and take a look at the women’s section. Count how many pairs of shoes have high heels, and how many are flats. Then count how many of the flats you would actually be seen dead in. The lack of consumer choice for those of us who like sensible shoes is depressing – I’d love to add a few extra inches to my height and look devastatingly sexy in either of the two pairs of heels I have, but what really happens is that I totter about like a drunken sailor in drag for a day, and then stagger home and soak my feet, swearing never to do it again.

Last week, I started a new job and got stuck with a delayed bus and an upside down map. If I hadn’t decided to wear my Victorian black button boots with the gorgeous heel that makes me taller than my girlfriend for once, I could have legged it down the street and not been half as late as I was, not to mention wincing every time I got up to file something. I could have even grabbed a coffee beforehand from the Starbucks down the street (I said I was a feminist, not a saint). I could have met my cousin for post-work drinks as promised, and saved a fiver on the cab I got home. But fashion dictates that power-dressed career women must wear spiky heels (all the better to bust your balls with, my dear), and I wasn’t going to buck the trend on my first day.

My point – and just like Ellen DeGeneres, I do have one – is that all patriarchal cultures oppress women by dictating what they should or should not wear. We receive strict messages about what not to wear, and we all get divided into the Madonna/Whore category no matter what our religion. Hey, maybe that's why the Material Girl herself changes her religion as often as she changes her image. We can be a good girl and cover up, or we can let it all hang out. If you’ve got it, flaunt it. Alternatively, we can dress up to court male (or female) attention, or dress down to avoid it. God forbid we should actually wear something because we want to, because it makes us feels comfortable – and I’m aware that many women actually do quite like wearing heels. Personally, I don’t feel empowered by not being able to walk more than three steps at a time, before sitting on the pavement and kvetching, but if that’s your bag then carry it with pride, baby.

Our clothes send a message, but the one we want our appearance to put out and the one that gets reads into it are often very different. If I’m not going to call a woman in thigh highs and a micromini a whore, I’m not going to call one in a hijab a passive victim. Who I show certain parts of my body to is my business, and I don’t think that it’s radical to extend that right to all women, regardless of culture or reason.

And now, onto the security risks that the Sun have gleefully exposed on their red-topped front page today. I understand the desire to respect another culture’s wishes, but I also think that a certain measure of safety-consciousness is in order – a brief removal of the veil in the presence of a female security officer shouldn’t be too much to arrange. My main concern about the tabloid ‘investigation’, however, is the fact that the Sun keep going undercover to expose flaws in our nation’s security. Isn’t anyone investigating them? I keep expecting them to run an article where they rob a bank or hold the House of Commons hostage whilst in secretly in league with every international terrorist group in the phone book, and then complain that no-one tried to stop them.

Although it was nice to see a fully-dressed women on the front page, for once, even if she was being defined by what she was wearing.

2006-09-08T09:01:00.000+01:00

Apparently thirtysomething women are being advised to freeze their eggs, if they think they're going to want children in the future. Given that this only has - I think - a 10% chance of success, I'm uncomfortable about encouraging more women to do it, at a greater cost. Whilst I wouldn't say I was anti-IVF, a lot of the arguments in favour of it make me feel uncomfortable.

Being infertile for whatever reason, does not mean that you cannot have a family. I'd rather see all this money and time being invested in boosting the profile of adoption and fostering, rather than having expensive and potentially unhelpful treatments provided on an already underfunded and overworked NHS.

I also have a problemn with the media portrayal of infertility as an exclusively female problem - if science has come up with a 'cure' for male infertility, then there hasn't been anywhere near the same attention focussed on it. I'm discounting things like viagra, which I have issues with as well, and sensible research into the causes, obviously. It's the alledged fact that women who cannot have children biologically are somehow ill that bothers me - I don't regard infertility as a disease, although I accept that it is frequently caused by it.

It feels like the NHS is pandering to a specific feminist elite - I'm all for choosing when, how and if a woman gives birth, but if we're concerned with improving women's reproductive choices then I think we have bigger priorities.

If you want children and can't have them biologically then adopt, foster, or get the hell over it. Motherhood is not the be all and end all, and if it is for you then give a home and a family to an already existing child who sorely needs one.

Sex War?

2006-08-22T20:14:00.000+01:00

and then I was faced with some other lip service
putting me in my place
that vagina should not be liberator
but dictator

- Alix Olsen

Well, it's been pretty quiet here over at Grandma Was A Suffragette of late. Hopefully this will change - my schedule has been hectic, but once my dissertation is out of the way I'm taking a year out between my Masters and my PhD to earn some money and focus on my writing. I also want to get more involved with a lot of the activism going on in London right now, and for the first time I can do it without worrying about it affecting my schoolwork. So without further ado, here is my latest rant. Happy reading.

The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival has always had a strict policy of only admitting what they call 'women born women' - by their definition, this is people who were born with the genitalia we associate with womanhood. At the time of the festival, there is an accompanying, non-affiliated group called Camp Trans who protest its exclusionary policies. Yesterday, a press release was posted on their website claiming that "The Michigan Women's Music Festival began admitting openly
trans (transgender/transsexual) women last week, bringing success to a
longstanding struggle by trans activists both inside and outside the
festival." This has since been disputed, although not officially by anyone as far as I can tell.

In the article, a woman was quoted expressing her delight that this rule has been overturned. From the message boards on the official festival website though, she appears to be in the minority. I haven't felt this ashamed to be female since the last time the bar I was in got overrun by a bride-to-be and her hen party (bachelorette party to the non-Brits among you). But it isn't just the bigoted, misogynistic bile being spewed there that bothers me, it's the fact that there were women attending, spending hard-earned cash - more on that in a moment - on an event that they admitted was offensive and discriminatory. I have way more respect for bands like Bitch and Animal, who have consistantly refused to play the festival in protest.

Don't exclude someone because they once had a penis. Don't tell someone who has known their entire life exactly what gender they are that she was not "born female".
Our trans brothers and sisters put up with the same oppression we do, and more. We can learn from their strength. We should be welcoming them, not turning them away!

For all six days of the festival, a ticket can cost up to $400, however they do make a point of saying on the website that they "welcome womyn to apply for a rate reduction if they are economically unable to attend without assistance." Now, I'm not arguing that we as women don't put up with a great deal of shit in this boy's world. I just think that $400 is a lot to pay for an experience whose policy undercuts everything they're selling. I agree that sometimes you need a safe space, somewhere to heal and to talk about experiences you might not be comfortable discussing in a mixed-gender environment. But bitch, please. No-one is being violated here, and to imply that they are is to belittle the real abuse, the real oppression, the real fucking violation that goes on every day. The crap that transwomen have to deal with isn't, as a rule, because they're men. It's because they're women, and some people in this Y-chromosome-worshipping world can't understand that, given what they see is the "choice", someone would rather be female. As feminists, we demand the right to identify with our gender the way we see fit, we demand the right to wear the clothes we want to wear, act the way we choose to, sleep with whomsoever we desire. But the moment you use the term "women born women" in order to exclude someone who has the goddess-given right to be at your festival, you have stopped being a feminist. Congratulations, you just bought into the bullshit you spent several hundred bucks trying to escape from.

Related Links:

http://www.michfest.com
http://camptrans.squarespace.com

2006-07-09T16:55:00.000+01:00

Well, this blog went on hiatus nearly as soon as it started. Bad Kaite! I've just moved from queer-friendly Brighton to the suburbs of North London, and I've mostly been working on my dissertation ('Not the Marrying Type': Spinsters in 19th Literature) and getting in touch with my inner domestic goddess. So far I have baked a lot, resurrected some coriander after a horrible heatwave nearly killed it, and I'm in the process of putting my study in order and remembering how the hell to cast on, so that I can knit some long stripy socks.

I've also discovered that the only nearby corner shops stock top-shelf pornography. So far, I've made a concerted effort not to shop there, although I'll need to put money on my Oystercard tomorrow and try not to look at the pictures of naked women's arses staring back at me. It makes me actively uncomfortable, and this week I decided that I'd had enough of giving money to a place that makes me feel violated. It's going to be a bloody inconvenience, but it'll be worth it.

In other news, I'm starting an admin job at a construction company tomorrow - apparently the atmosphere is very laddish...more on that this week.

Sisterly,

Kaite xx

2006-06-15T14:09:00.000+01:00

"Despite the good work undertaken by our universities, there is still much to be done before we can claim full equality of the sexes. We still need colleges dedicated to the active promotion of women's education, which can prioritise women's requirements, potential and achievement.”
- Catherine Wallace, 2003 Oxford Student Union president

Women’s colleges in the UK are rare, and getting rarer. Just recently St Hilda’s, Oxford’s last single sex college, announced it would be admitting men. This reflects an increasing international trend in turning women’s colleges coed – last autumn marked the first intake of male students at Wells College, USA, to great opposition by the student body – two students went so far as to file a lawsuit in attempt to prevent it. Similarly, there was an outcry from both alumni and current ‘Hildabeests’ as they are colloquially known, when the decision was taken by college governors. This follows a narrowly defeated attempt in 2003 to open the college to mixed applicants. It appears that, with the majority of higher education institutions now admitting both men and women, all-female colleges are no longer financially viable. Coupled with concern over charges of sexism and lack of diversity, do women’s colleges have a role in the 21st century?

Academic Noreen Hertze suggested in a recent Guardian article that “all-girl schools or colleges cannot prepare women for the realities of a world in which men still wield power.” Students at women’s colleges admit they live in a rarefied atmosphere, but argue that this benefits them in Life After Graduation. After all, isn’t most university life just a diversion from the Real Word our parents keep talking about? But does spending three or four years in a world where women dominate simply mean that you are unprepared for a world run by the unfair sex? Paige Kimble, a recent graduate of Smith College in America, begs to differ: “Back out in the 'real world', outside of the Smith bubble, I can say that going to a women's college has definitely upped my confidence levels immensely. Maybe it's just the sense of camaraderie, but there's (generally but not always) far more acceptance of deviation from the norm. Even fairly straight women I know who've taken courses off-campus have commented on how appearance-based other placesare, and how women have seemed afraid to talk--and these are not just at the local state school (UMASS-Amherst), but at high tier private colleges.”

In an article on the subject, Ms Magazine cited studies in which female students were seen to “gain myriad benefits from women’s colleges, from participating more fully in the classroom and leadership to pursuing doctorates in math, science and engineering in disproportionately large numbers. Those students are more likely to graduate and score higher on standardized tests than their peers at coeducational institutions.” A Wells student argued that prior to the admittance of men, her college was “populated by strong women who could be in leadership roles, who could be active members of their communities, who have found their voices. That's become really important to me, and I value and cherish it. And I want to keep it."

I went to a single-sex school, as did my sister – in our area there just weren’t any mixed schools, for religious reasons or otherwise. I think the decline of faith schools is a good thing for various reasons, but I also think it will result in fewer single-sex schools. Put simply, I was happy being in an all-female environment, and I missed it when I went on to university. Most of the pupils were, or at least affected to be, boy crazy, and there were frequent complaints about our single sex status. I think there is an element of truth in the convent girl stereotype – when something is forbidden, it gets a hell of a lot more exciting. At one point, our school was nicknamed ‘The Whore House on the Hill’, but I blame outdated patriarchal attitudes towards sex for that. I never felt starved of male company, although I didn’t exactly seek it out either. Students from the boy’s school that was affiliated with ours tended to congregate in our village during lunch, and half my sixth form dated the rugby team. Interestingly, the most famous alumnus of the boy’s school is Paul O’Grady, who is better known as the drag queen Lily Savage…

When I applied to Oxford, it didn’t occur to me to apply to St Hilda’s. I’d spent nearly seven years surrounded by girls – why would I want spend another four years surrounded by women? Looking back, I wonder if my disastrous interview experience would have been any different. I was the only girl and the only state school pupil applying for my particular course and I felt a great pressure to fit in. My accent isn’t exactly Home Counties, but you can’t tell I grew up a stone’s throw away from Liverpool, either. I avoided the girls and hung around with the boys, using our shared gender preference as common ground. I hated it there. I felt incredibly intimidated by the whole experience, and part of my unease stemmed from the fact that I didn’t meet one female lecturer. There was a sense of competition rather than community, and I could never escape from the fact that I stood out largely because of my gender. I didn’t get in, and I was pretty relieved.

Clearly, this isn’t only a gender issue – it’s a class issue as well. Both Oxford and all-women’s private colleges in America are pricey, and have historically taken students from specific socio-economic backgrounds, and all-girls schools in the UK tend to be private, grammar schools or, like mine, faith-based. Can there really be diversity in all-women’s colleges if sections of the population simply cannot afford to send their daughters there?

And what of trans students in single-sex environments? At the moment, many women’s colleges have a policy on only admitting women born in a female body – or, rather, they have no policy at all, denying the existence of male-to-female transsexuals. However, female-to-male trans students are an increasing presence at women’s colleges – Smith recently took the decision to remove gender-specific language that would exclude the presence of transmen on campus, and several mature students are post-operative transwomen. So is the binary gender system more fluid in supposedly single-sex environments? A former Smith student of my acquaintance transferred to a different university in part because she felt that the physical ideal at Smith tended toward a more butch type of womanhood, and outright rejected more feminine women. No, women and female dominated communities don’t get it right all the time. But it looks as though they’re learning to be inclusive in a way that more coed communities aren’t.

Supporters of the new and ‘improved’ coed St Hilda’s argue that it will now be able to attract better students and better lecturers. In other words, men.

Where The Boys Are.
Former women’s colleges who now accept men (by Admissions, if not the entire student body):

St Mary’s College, Durham, UK
St Hilda’s College, Oxford, UK
Somerville College, Oxford, UK
Lesley College, USA
Immaculata Women’s College, USA
Wells College, USA

2006-06-11T19:52:00.000+01:00

The Sussex feministas taking to the streets...

Part of the banner was painted by me. Activist Tip Of The Day: Mix PVA glue with the paint and it won't run if you get rained on.

2006-06-10T09:48:00.000+01:00

"And they royalty rate all the girls like you, and they sell it out to the girls like you, to incorporate little girls." - Hole, 'Awful', Celebrity Skin

Last night, I went on an anti-beauty pageant protest outside the venue that was hosting this year's Miss Brighton. I stood in the baking heat behind a banner that read We are not beautiful, we are not ugly, and we will not be judged, and enjoyed some sisterly solidarity with the fabulous women from Sussex University Women's Group (a big shout-out goes to Sophie who masterminded the whole thing). We chanted, we handed out leaflets to passers-by, we posed for photos, and we debated with the odd sexist asshole who honestly couldn't understand why objectifying women is a bad thing.

I think the most interesting part of the whole evening was the dialogue we had with the contestants themselves. Last year's Miss Brighton actually got involved with beauty pageants when she was writing her dissertation on them from a feminist angle, but the more she explored, the more she found something that she felt empowered her. Another woman, who was standing outside, ushering the wannabe Miss Brightons into the building - and only at a beauty pageant would she have been doing this whilst wearing a stunning blue ballgown - actively engaged in conversation with us, telling us that she supported our stance and not to be put off by our handful of critics. I overheard more than one entrant commenting that it made the whole event a bit more exciting. These women have brains as well as bodies, and I find it so frustrating that they're exerting so much time, energy and money on a contest that doesn't care.

The whole event was a cattle market. It places explicit value on women only for how they look - or how they engineer themselves to look. It was a steady stream of skinny, tanned women in a ballgown and an inch of make-up, hair straightened and any semblance of individuality erased. All the women I saw were white, and all of them conformed to a very exacting standard of beauty that I find so limiting. I didn't recognise myself in any of these women. We were told that they were role models, but none of my role models parade around in bikinis purely for the visual appreciation of others. Except possibly Wonder Women, but she does it while fighting crime, which is slightly more acceptable to my feminist sympathies.

The winner of Miss Brighton will go onto the final round to compete for the title of Miss England, who will then enter the Miss World contest. I don't want my country or my gender to be represented by lipstick and a tiara. If we're having a contest that promotes the image of women, why can't we have one for the best mathmatician between 17 and 24, or the best poet or the most committed charity worker instead? Why do we feel the need to promote competition between women, when all our mainstream media is telling us that we should be rivals anyway?

Beauty isn't about who's thinnest or blondest or bulges out of a bra in the most appealing fashion. I stood outside the Grand Hotel yesterday, red and sweating in the very un-British heat, all unshaven armpits and unwashed hair. I stood and made my voice heard with a group of women who didn't care if they fitted into a strict, patriarchal standard of beauty. And I felt gorgeous.

2006-06-08T20:35:00.000+01:00

"Rape has something to do with our sex. Rape is something awful that happens to females: it is the dark at the top of the stairs, the undefinable abyss that is just around the corner, and unless we watch our step it might become our destiny." - Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will, Men and Woman and Rape

Hello, and welcome to the first post of Modern Bluestocking. I wanted to start out with something more positive and upbeat, something empowering and certainly not something as potentially triggery as this. I was planning on just making this a filler post, but I caught sight of a Daily Mail headline (oh, the shame) when I was buying fishfingers, so I was inspired to write. Apparently the Sentencing Guidelines Council in the UK have finally cottoned on to the fact that rape can be traumatizing to women, even if they know their attackers. And this was literally headline news. Comparing the Guardian and Mail headlines reveals the usual patriarchal, heterocentric hysteria from the latter - 'Husbands who rape put on par with gang rapists'. I can see the knee-jerk reaction now. 'What do you mean, we need CONSENT? She married me/lives with me/used to smile at me every day in the office! She didn't have to say yes, of course she wanted it'. Given that marital rape was only criminalized 15 years ago, it shouldn't surprise me that it's taken his long to get a reasonably fair jail sentence, but it does.

In what stretch of the imagination have these men (and statistically it is men) committed a lesser crime than ones who assault and rape women they've never met? I made the mistake of reading the Daily Mail's reader comments on the website - this one, among others, made my blood boil: "And men, who may be acting out of character as a result of stress or excessive drink, will be criminalised and bracketed along with the sort of pond life that carry out real rapes. " I doubt many rapists imagine rape to be a part of their characters. I doubt many rapists, especially when the attack takes place in the context of a relationship, consider it rape.

Newsflash: sex is a complicated thing. Negotiating desire can be difficult, and I'm sure that sometimes pressure for sex is unintentional. But forcing someone into an act they refuse or are reluctant to perform, no matter what the status of your relationship with them, is about your power over them and not your desire for them. It's about valuing your own pleasure above the comfort and safety of your partner. If you respect them, take their 'No', in whatever manner it is phrased, for 'No'.

I’m glad that this is finally being given the attention it deserves, the latest in a series of women-friendly movements by the British legal system – the divorce settlements controversy will be the subject of a later post, possibly this weekend – but one thing that frustrates me is that more lenient sentences are proposed if it can be proved that the woman had already engaged in some form of sexual activity before ‘changing her mind’. Let’s take a remedial course in getting jiggy with it, shall we? Heavy petting does not always lead to sex. Neither does oral sex automatically mean that intercourse will follow. I’m concerned that this will lead to fewer convictions (because that’s all we need, making rape harder to prosecute). I’m glad that sexual assault towards partners is being given harsher sentences as well – although I’m fuzzy on the distinction between ‘sexual assault short of rape’ and ‘sexual touching of victim by offender’, and I bet the judges are as well. I’m pleased about the decision – I’m not sure when it’s going to be put into practice or if it will necessarily be in it’s current form, but I’ll keep you posted and if there’s anything we can do to convince the Powers That Be that consent to one form of sexual activity doesn’t equal consent to another, I shall marshal the troops.

I have a sister post to this about, quote unquote, 'date rape' and drugged/drunk consent (or lack thereof), but that's going to have to wait till another time.

Next up (probably) : St Hilda's College, Oxford, becomes one of an increasing number of all-women's colleges to go co-ed. Up for discussion are safe spaces, adademic sexism, gender segregation and sisterhood.

Peace out,

Kaite xx