Noughtie Girls

I haven't read Ellie Levenson's The Noughtie Girl's Guide To Feminism, the recently-published tome which has caused so much debate across the blogosphere and the press. To be honest, reading about it before it was published put me off and having read through subsequent posts and discussions I don't feel any more inclined to. So what I'm about to say is informed entirely by reviews, interviews and articles. It's ok though, I've been following it all with great interest and am not going to make anything up. It's not so long since I posted about infighting in the feminist blogsphere and got quite cross about the fact that 'people are still arguing over what a 'feminist wedding' looks like or whether a woman who considers herself a feminist should wear makeup' when feminism should be focused on real change and helping women. I've seen so much written this year about the dilemma of being a feminist who wants to get married that I don't think I can take it any more (conclusion: it's ok to get married if you're a feminist, just make sure you make a point of telling everyone just how feminist your wedding was and just how feminist your marriage now is, using detailed examples. No really, I think some sort of points system for feminist weddings could be devised - this could be a whole new blog post). Anyway, it's a point I've seen echoed by others in their response to the book - over in the comments at Levenson's CiF piece, 'Barbie can be a feminist too':

'What's that you say? Women in Northern Ireland can't get abortions? Well I don't care honey, all I want is the right to buy Chanel suits and still call myself a feminist!'

And again at the Subtext blog:

'This obsession with the appearance of feminists - that is so endlessly touted by the mainstream media in their re-imagining of a feminist now deviating from their original construct of the hairy pitted, man-hater, to their fresh “noughties” construct of girls gone wild, fragrant and fashion friendly - is a distraction from the movement, and a distraction from the real point of being a feminist.

It disables feminist activists by reducing them once again to eye candy, to hot or not, for their worth to be counted on their looks in relation to their willingness to conform to social norms of beauty.

This in particular highlights the way certain values still manage to creep back into opinions on feminism - that if a woman is not considered conventionally attractive, her worth is automatically diminished. By trotting out all the old stereotypes about feminists being 'man haters' and 'bra burners', making feminism more about 'choice' than anything else and repeatedly bringing feminism back to discussions about high heels and shopping, it seems that the book is promoting 'feminism' to just a small percentage of women, those who have the privilege of being able to make their lives all about 'choice' because they have degrees and jobs and plenty of disposable income and far less oppression to face than the majority. And that's before you get to the outrageous statements on rape. It's ok girls, you can believe in women's rights AND conform to 21st century Western beauty standards at the same time! Who knew, right?!

Debate about the book has taken the form of some really interesting articles and reviews (in addition to those linked above):

Time for a good scrap about what our feminism really is
One of two reviews up at The F Word
The second F Word review

If anyone reading this has seen any other interesting discussions about this happening I would appreciate links! I know a lot of people who, while agreeing wholeheartedly with many of my opinions on women's issues, would never call themseleves feminist and when asked why, come up with reasons involving stereotypes about bra-burning and hairy legs. I wonder if the book would have any impact or be of interest, what impression it would make on someone who's new to feminism...

This brings me back to an (old but good) post over at I Blame The Patriarchy which has a lot to say about 'The New Feminism' we've heard so much about from the 'Lifestyle' sections of the papers in recent months. Read and enjoy.

High Days and Holidays

After a particularly bad week weather-wise we decided to make the most of the sunshine forecast for Saturday and head off to the coast. This was probably a bit of a gamble considering the rain we'd had all week and the fact that at the prospect of just a couple of hours of sun, half of East Anglia gets the same idea and clogs the A47 from Hunstanton to Peterborough with overstuffed cars and of course, the dreaded caravans. We'd decided to visit beautiful Burnham Market then motor on to Brancaster to spend the afternoon on the beach and incredibly there wasn't too much traffic so we arrived in good time.

Burnham Market was heaving (at weekends you can't move for people Up From London and yummy mummies) so we just stayed long enough to have a quick look in the shops. Last year we stayed there over Easter weekend - my attempt at a romantic mini-break which was all but ruined by the fact the heavens opened on the way down and the rain, sleet and gales didn't stop for three days. Obviously we tried to make the best of it but as our planned activities include walking, more walking and a boat trip we didn't get much done - and surprisingly there is a limit to how long you can sit in a pub before it gets tedious. In the sunshine, however, Burnham Market is glorious and bustling - if a bit touristy these days and full of people trying to spot Stephen Fry (and Naomi Watts, whose mum runs Miv Watts Design from the village). My parents stayed there at the Hoste Arms last summer and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

We drove to Brancaster (about 5km away) and spent the afternoon enjoying the sun, having the obligatory paddle (not swimming as many people were, even with the sun the water seemed pretty chilly), eating ice cream and going for walks. Predictably the beach was busy but it has such a relaxed vibe and people-watching is a favourite past-time of mine so I didn't mind at all. We pitched up next to a family with a spectacularly hyperactive dachshund puppy which had to be constantly restrained. Occasionally it broke free and charged off up the beach - four children running after it, arms outstretched. North Norfolk is such a beautiful part of the country and so peaceful; we're planning to return fairly soon to go camping at Deepdale Farm. For a lot of people the go-to place on a day out is Hunstanton but it's well worth driving a bit further along the coast to explore some of the tiny villages and pristine beaches there.

And as a great end to a lovely day, we even managed to avoid traffic jams on the way home!

Crete

In June we went to Crete for a couple of weeks away from the daily grind. I can't believe how much more relaxed, positive and happy I felt after just a fortnight away from it all - sightseeing, swimming, snorkeling, reading and eating loads of delicious Greek food. To be honest that 'relaxed' feeling has all but gone after a couple of weeks back at work but it was nice while it lasted.






I would definitely recommend Crete for a holiday. In my opinion it needs a two week visit. We hired a car which we definitely didn't regret as it gave us the freedom to visit towns all over the island and explore the countryside too, including the mountains nearest to our resort which were stunning and well worth braving the hairpin bends and sheer drops for. Without the car I don't think we would have bothered going right across the island to Chania and Rethymnon, which were two of the most beautiful places we visited. Having never gone snorkeling before I was proud that on the last day of the holiday, I went out for around an hour to a depth of about 12 metres (and saw loads of amazing creatures).

I also managed to read four books while relaxing on the beach and by the pool which was awesome as I always feel like I have very little time to read these days. I was so glad I picked up The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing on a whim a couple of days before we went because it's one of the most absorbing and inspiring books I've ever read. On holiday I was really inspired to be more proactive about blogging so hopefully this place will see a lot more in the way of posts pretty soon. I plan to update my list of links and sort out the design of the blog this week.

On Being Inactive

I haven't been posting much recently. I seem to have been incredibly busy and whenever I have ideas for a post in mind, I always feel like I don't have the time to sit down and devote time to writing it. This has started to get me down because I'm always thinking about stuff yet doing very little about it.

One thing I've really been mulling over for a couple of weeks now is the recent drama and infighting detailed in Cate's brilliant post over at BitchBuzz and also in this post at Vagina Dentata. Feminists receive bad enough press to begin with. Every other ignorant comment on a news story dealing with 'women's issues' accuses us of being nothing more than silly women. Newspapers print features about feminism today yet misquote those they interview in attempts to create more drama. And at the end of it all, people are still arguing over what a 'feminist wedding' should be like or whether a woman who considers herself a feminist should wear makeup.

I don't know why so much effort is put into being divisive, shaming women and telling them their choices aren't feminist enough. Why discussing how good a feminist you are for having had a certain sort of wedding (or no wedding at all) seems to be of so much importance when, as Naomi says in the post at Vagina Dentata:

...while we’re all having this little inter-feminist war the rest of the world is not listening. Girls are still acid attacked in Afghanistan for going to school. Women and girls are still being raped in shocking numbers in South Africa. As uncovered in the New Scientist, female foetuses are being sex-selectively aborted in Vietnam. Now is not the time to push feminists out of our ever-decreasing circle.

Like Cate, I'm bored with feminist infighting. I do believe that a lot of serious issues and discussion points end up being talked about when drama blows up in the blogosphere. But for every important issue and argument which makes everyone sit back and think a lot, there's a whole lot of criticizing of women's choices and beliefs and telling them how to live their lives. All it ends up with is women being shut out, made to feel resentful and like they have no right to call themselves a feminist - whether it's a class issue or a race issue or an issue of sexuality. Imagine putting all that energy and time into being more united, trying to change things and helping each other, not fighting over who the 'real feminists' are.

Image: Life Magazine photo archive (Google)

Why we need comprehensive sex education

I'm currently reading The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession With Virginity is Hurting Young Women by Jessica Valenti. As a Christian feminist this is a subject which really interests me. I've known about abstinence-only sex education (where teens are taught that sex is only acceptable within marriage and are not taught about contraception or sexual health) for a long time now and had read some pretty shocking stories about the extent to which this 'education' involves lying to young people. In The Purity Myth, Valenti devotes a chapter to these 'education programs', which have received more than $1.3billion in federal funding since 1996. I could barely contain my rage this morning as I read through the chapter and discovered what passes for 'sex education' in many schools in the US - despite the fact that, according to a study in Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 82 per cent of Americans support sex ed which teaches about contraception and half of all Americans completely oppose abstinence-only sex ed.

'Facts' teenagers are told

- Birth control can kill you - and abortion is likely to result in suicide

- 'Girls give in to sex not because they want sex - it's like a hug. If they can get that from their fathers, they won't need it from a boyfriend' (Abstinence educator Janice Turner on her 'Power of Purity' classes)

- Pre-marital sex is against the law and young people who engage in it could face a prison sentence

- Condoms have a failure rate of 14 per cent and cannot protect against STIs

- Even touching another person's genitals could cause pregnancy and HIV can be transmitted by skin to skin contact

- Having sex will have dire consequences for society

- 'Major Needs of Women: Financial Support; Major Needs of Men: Domestic Support'

- '(Virginity) the bride price is...an honour to the bride...she is valuable to the groom' (nothing like a good women-as-property analogy)

- 'A young man's natural desire for sex is already strong...Females are becoming culturally conditioned to fantasise about sex as well' (because we never thought about sex before that and if we did, something must be wrong)

- If a young woman says she doesn't want to have sex but is wearing tight clothing, her actions are not matching her words (Sounds suspiciously like the excuses used by rape apologists)

- 'Sexual activity...is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects' (program guidelines for teachers)

The Purity Myth talks of teens being sent out of class for asking questions about condoms and STIs, of abstinence-only promoters using sticky tape or half-eaten sweets to illustrate how someone who has sex can easily become 'damaged' or 'dirty'. This is particularly disturbing when you think how many young people are victims of sexual abuse and rape and are now being told that a part of them is missing, that they're used or dirty - and that they will never be able to give the 'special gift of sexuality' to their future husband or wife.

It's evident that abstinence-only sex education is not helpful to young people and that it's part of a social movement rather than borne out of any real desire to help teenagers be responsible and well-informed. You might think after reading this post that I'm anti-abstinence and this is not the case - it's quite obvious to me that young people need to learn about contraception, sexual health and what they can do if they find themselves in various difficult situations. A small percentage of young people do choose to remain abstinent until marriage but the majority do not - and when they've been forbidden even from learning about using condoms, they face huge problems.

A 2004 report from Representative Henry Waxman found that over 80 per cent of federally funded abstinence programs contain false or misleading information about sex and reproductive health ('The Content of Federally Funded Abstinence-Only Education Programs', United States House of Representatives Committe on Government Reform, Special Investigations Div. 2004). And teenagers who have received abstinence-only sex ed are just as likely to have sex as those who have not. Even when they take a 'virginity pledge'. When they do, they're less likely to use condoms and more likely to engage in oral and anal sex (After The Promise: The STD Consequences of Adolescent Virginity Pledges, Journal of Adolescent Health 36, no 4 2005).

Young people deserve better.

Million Women Rise 2009

Million Women Rise was a great experience. The weather was fine (if a bit chilly in the afternoon)! There was no 'trouble' at the rally! As with last year's march, it was so amazing to see women of all ages, races, nationalities, from all walks of life united, singing, smiling and cheering. Pregnant women, women with their kids, teenagers, right through to plenty of pensioners. I arrived very early (I left plenty of time to get there to allow for any transport issues but everything ran smoothly). It was obvious from the start that there would not be as many participants as last year which was kind of disappointing. I don't know if people were put off by the fact that this wasn't the first time it happened, or that the rally wasn't at Trafalgar Square. Maybe some people felt that they'd done it once, so didn't fancy going again. Despite this there was a huge crowd and I've read reports which estimate the number of women there at almost 5,000, so who knows?

I thought the new route for this year was a good idea - out of the square, on to Oxford Street and then down Regent Street and through Piccadilly Circus. It really impacted all the people out doing their shopping and there were loads of appreciative/interested passers-by. I was pleased to note that i didn't see anyone being abusive although there were plenty of people smirking, which you can always expect, sad as that is. We certainly made a lot of noise with our whistles, chants, singing, drumming and shouting and the atmosphere as we arrived at the rally was fantastic.

Despite the cold I stayed to listen to some really inspiring speakers. Some of the stories they told were horrifying but this just emphasised what we marched for, what we were shouting about. At a time when shocking research about peoples' attitudes towards violence against women has been all over the news, the speeches gave everyone a lot to think about. Women from all over the world spoke, gave support and sent their messages for others to read out. The organisers and stewards did a brilliant job and deserve a lot of credit.

There are some great photos (much better than mine!) up at The F Word Flickr pool. Other write-ups of the day can be found here:

Well, I'll Go To The Foot Of My Stairs
Uplift Magazine
Laura Kidd

Intellect

Here's an interesting post by Michelle at Lonergrrrl, inspired by this piece by India Knight and all the recent coverage of Gail Trimble and her appearances on University Challenge. Both do a good job of summing up what I've been feeling about the whole situation ever since we started hearing about Gail and her intellect.

I have to say I'm not sure about India's comment that being 'brainy' was valued when she was at school and that derision of 'swots' is a frecent phenomenon; I'm sure kids have been teased for being clever for decades. I was definitely picked on mercilessly for getting A grades and being very serious during my days at secondary school and remember well how myself and others were teased and ostracised. I particularly remember one girl telling me I'd never get a boyfriend - 'it's not like anyone will ever fancy you!'. Intelligence and bookishness apparently can't go hand in hand with 'attracive' femininity.

As Michelle says:

'...a patriarchal capitalist society requires its women to be feminine and heterosexual in order to keep functioning, hence the push by mainstream media (and even some alternative media for that matter- alternative politics and music are also unsettled by the woman with the scrubbed face who questions too much) to feminise and heterosexualise clever women.

They try and placate a woman’s intelligence, get her back in that feminine box, by giving her a makeover, sexing her up, highlighting the fact that she still likes to indulge in feminine pursuits such as shopping, and most importantly of all, ‘has time for boys.’

If they can do this - get her in low-cut top & lippy, get her to admit that the pursuit of knowledge isn’t everything to her – then they’ll let her off for having the temerity to use her brain. As long as she’s heterosexualised and feminised we can just about stomach a woman’s bookishness.'

It comes back to something I find myself saying a lot, that all too often it's apparent that the only way for a woman to be accepted, to be praised, is if she conforms to conventional beauty standards and femininity and is therefore somehow of worth to heterosexual men. Without this, she's just a target for abuse, mockery and deemed unacceptable. I think it's so important for women to stop measuring their self-worth by how acceptable they are to men. I know this was a major turning point in my own self-esteem. As Michelle says, we need to determine our own standards to live by, ones which suit women.

I'm off to Million Women Rise tomorrow. Post to follow!