Is it ever ok to wear fur?

Apparently yes, if it’s on a thin white woman’s ass. I am referring to today’s cover of Obseverver Woman magazine. Now I would think wearing fur as underpants is probably one of the worst reasons for wearing fur (unless you had some sort of disease which meant your bits had to be kept at a high temperature, but I’ve never heard of anything like that, not even on House)

A better illustration would have been people in a a blizzard far away from civilization with big fur coats on, or perhaps Harrison Ford and Mark Hamil on the ice planet Hoth.. that would have made the point better.

It seems like the best way to illustrate any point is with some objectification of women. Good one Observer. More FAIL from Guardian Media PLC..

My blog is quickly turning into examples of gendering in The Guardian… today’s example, use of picture of women to illustrate office gossiping…

Come on Guardian you can do better than this…

Am writing this blog post in response to an irritating article in today’s Guardian, which is basically saying nothing more than ‘ woman says you can be pretty and still a feminist, you can like clothes and still a feminist’

The first annoying thing about this article, is on the home page of the Guardian they call Jill Berry a leading academic, she’s not, she’s a head-teacher. That is a bit of a difference, intended to give her opinions more weight than they actually deserve. 

Second annoying thing is – who cares what the head of a bunch of independent girls schools think anyway? And what does she know about anything? If you have an unlimited or very large income (like, ooh say, girls who go to independent schools) it is actually quite easy to look good, have nice clothes and be clever and academic. I know, I go to university with these people. These girls, lucky for them,  don’t have to make a choice between buying make up, and buying books -they can do both because they have money. 

If you don’t have money you have to chose between getting an education and making yourself look good.Fashion might be a large part of your disposable income gone and then you might have less to spend on books/films whatever. If you have to work to earn the money to buy the clothes you might not have so much time for study. Taking things to an even less privaleged place, the clothes that we can so easily wear and discard at the whims of fashion industry tend to be sewn by women and children earning a pittence. We pay them nearly nothing so we can look good. Yes Jill, you can be a feminist and look nice – but you might also want to think about it a bit too. 

Anyway, thankyou Jill for reminding us that women need to be attractive and intelligent, thankyou the Guardian for giving this paper-space.

Blether Report Feminist Special!

On Tuesday this week I recorded Episode 2 of The Blether Report, which is a Feminist special! Seen as feminism is awesome, important and applicable to everything there will no doubt be more feminist blethers. This one covered Reclaim The Night, The Edinburgh Feminist Network and Ladyfest, and featured Hilary Cornish and Rachel Manners.We also discussed some recent women related news stories and added a few giggles, a token man and a couple of loose women type moments. 

You can listen by subscribing to ‘The Blether Report’ on itunes, by going to The Blether Report’s website

Save the Sea Kittens !

Like many feminists I don’t like PETA*, they are pretty infamous for uber sexist campaigns (for examples see here and here). However they cheered me up this morning with their Sea Kittens website. It’s clearly a means of manipulating children into feeling guilty about eating fish, which is ethically dubious (but obviously not unique to PETA). Still, children are manipulated all the time, the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, gendered toys…None of these are as wonderfully imaginative as the ’sea kitten’.

It’s based on the logic that we should call fish sea-kittens and then people wouldn’t want to eat them! They have a game where you can get a cute fish, and dress it up in a moustache and cat ears, they also have a book of bed-time stories about the lives of the sea kittens. One of them involves a sea kitten called Tony Trout who did neuroscience at university and then gets eaten by a boy who then falls to the bottom of the class (because of mercury in the fish).

Now I don’t know about you, but if a fish (or ’sea-kitten’) got a degree in neuroscience I wouldn’t eat it. To be honest if you could dress fish up in funny little costumes I might think twice about it.

They don’t do they though, study neuroscience, most kids probably know this….?

This is my Sea Kitten

Annie Cho Vhee was a middle class Sea Kitten with a bright future, but she got frustrated at school because she was cleverer than everyone else. She ended up taking a ton of drugs, which was largely due to the fact that she was questioning her gender identity and sexuality, nobody in her conservative coral even tried to understand. One night Annie was on a bad trip in an old sunken pirate ship where she met  a mermaid called Ariel, who had an enchanting voice. They formed a Riot Grrl band called Urusla’s Devil Bitches, and eventually a loving committed relationship. Annie gave up the drugs and dedicated her life to music and to Ariel, they lived happily ever after. **

*(I’m actually pro-veggie (though a meat eater, yeah about that…)

** just one example of the sort of story I will be telling my children..

Halloween

I really think Halloween is turning into my least favourite stupid holiday. Reason being the hyper-sexualisation of female costumes, stood side by side with the total non sexualisation of male ones feels like having the patriarchy rubbed in my face.

Last night whilst walking home from Haymarket I saw a girl in sky high heels dressed up as barbie, with a fake box around her. Also in her group was a young male dressed as Hilter. I like to think that they were dressed up as ’sexism’ and ‘racism’, but that’s far too much benefit of the doubt. In any case, even if they were dressed up as the racist patriarchy, they would have to have a sign saying ‘we are dressed up as the racist patriarchy, one of the most terrifying things we could think of’ otherwise they just end up looking like massive dicks.

Sociological images, fast turning into one of my favourite websites has this excellent break down of halloween costumes, with some pretty horrid sexist and racist examples.

They also have this excellent cartoon from Andy Marlette’s website.

A Rant.

I have had it, absolutely categorically fucking had it. I am completely fed up of men thinking that they deserve sex, that sex is something women own that they can just take whether they want it or not. I am fed up of counselling girlfriends through their past relationships with Mr X who did  Y and Z that was abusive. How  Y and Z affect her life now. How she doesn’t value herself because of it. How he probably doesn’t even know what he did, nor will he ever have to. How she blames herself. It’s not that I don’t want to listen, I do, I care and I will endlessly – I just would like for this shit to stop happening. Now.  I am fed up of men who think they can in casual conversation say “X” had too much bush, or “I could never go out with a woman who burps”, or “women are nuts”. Fuck you.  I am fed up of not being able to point this out, to point to men and patriarchy for fear of being called a man hating bitch. Fed up of being told that I look for sexism everywhere, that my experience is wrong or somehow biased. Fed up of rape as some kind of acceptable post modern joke.

I am angry that this rant applies to countless experiences of the women that I care about. I am angry that even in my  privilaged position as a white western woman so much time is spent shovelling away all this bullshit. That we have to expend so much effort in coping and self protection. 

That’s all. 

 

 

Equal Pay Day

It’s equal pay day today, which is the at which women might as well stop working. Women work on average 2 months without pay per year under the current gender pay gap. I don’t have very much to say about this, other than to link to this diagram from Shakeup media. 

It explores two nearby buroughs at opposite ends of the pay gap, it’s an interesting image – Wokingham with average household incomes way above the national average, has a much larger disparity in  pay than Haringy which is well below the national average. It also has a Tory council. Nuff said.

The Blether Report

Hey, so I just recorded a pilot podcast You can find links to it on the audio/video page. It’s rough around the edges, but it’s getting better all the time (as the Beatles and a Shed 7 would say…) It’s going to be about music, far left politics, comedy, local arts stuff and so on. We will do interviews, we will blether. In the pilot I am giggling a bit too much, but I think I will get that under control eventually.

Share and Enjoy!

http://www.thebletherreport.com/

Sharing Platforms (not about Griffin)

So I had another pretty good gig tonight, not as buzzing as ladyfest (but what could top that). I also had a what was perhaps my very first heckler, which put me off somewhat, though I think I dealt with it ok. The rest of the audience were pretty into my set which helped.

As seems to be the norm for mixed comedy nights, some of the other acts said totally objectionable things. Like, not just a little bit offensive, or the misguided type of sexism or anything like that – things that make me ashamed to be sharing a platform. Now I enjoy doing comedy, and I am ok at it, and I want to keep doing it, but having to perform on the same bill as violent misogyny is very difficult for me. I feel like I am condoning it by being on the same bill. The fact that my stand up is fairly feminist doesn’t feel like enough – but I don’t want to stop performing, and I cant go straight to having my own show, so what’s the answer? This is not to mention the fact that when my friends come to see me, they have to sit through potentially triggering woman hating crap.

Obviously ladyfest etc create new cultural spaces where you can chose who to give a platform to, but I would like to perform in the mainstream too. It’s not really possible to avoid it even if I wanted to (which I don’t).

I came up with one idea, which I am putting out to the blogosphere. I won’t get around to this for a while because it will take a bit of effort – but I was thinking that what I could do would be to have T-shirt printed saying something like ‘Having counselled friends through rape trauma, I don’t find rape funny’ or some kind of statistic about rape/sexism of some kind, with RAPE IS NOT FUNNY or some such in clearly legible lettering. Then, whenever I perform, if someone says anything objectionable before I’m on, I will perform with the T shirt on. I won’t make any reference to it, and if people want to start a discussion about it after obviously they can. It would thus serve as a clear rejection of the misogyny without having to devote any set time to it.

I was trying to think of what the issues are with this :-
* I could piss a lot of people off, particularly other comedians. Now to be honest, am not all that bothered about this, they started it. However I’m not a famous comedian, I’m still on the local scene, I’m not even well known locally and being so confrontational might make my performing life more difficult.
* It might make people not laugh at my set? Well, again, they probably won’t notice it, I don’t see any contradiction between having a T shirt on that says something serious, whilst performing comedy. Also to be honest, feminism matters to me much more than laughs.
* Whatever statement I put on a T-shirt will simplify the issue, a mere slogan can’t explain why this is objectionable and why I don’t wish to share a platform. Could be reductionist. Very true, but I would think carefully about what I wrote, and ultimately even just saying ‘I don’t find rape funny’ is powerful in itself. Even if it just prompts discussion or gets people to talk about why this is not ok, that is surely a start.

One of the main questions is do I have the ovaries to do it? Not sure. Realistically won’t get around to it for 6 months at least. Maybe my skin will be thicker and my reputation stronger. People probably think I’m being too big for my boots, maybe I am;but you know what they say, nice girls never made history…

Male Contraceptive Injection Trials

Couples in Scotland are being sought by Edinburgh university to test a male contraceptive Injection. Pretty good news, an invention that could help to bring about a shift in assumed responsibility for chlid-creation and contraception. In any case it will give men the exciting opportunity to sample what it’s like to have your body messed about with.

People say a lot of stupid things about male hormonal contraception. The main one is ‘but you can’t trust men to take it, they will just lie to you’.  This is both demeaning and a handy get out clause for men. If no-one expects you to take responsibility, then you probably won’t. But seriously, if you don’t trust someone enough not to lie to you about an injection, then maybe you should think about condoms. Or just ditch him.