An Open Letter by a Feminist

The Universities Today

2011-11-05T21:50:00.000-07:00

Historiann has tagged me to engage in a discussion about how our universities work and the problems we see in them. I am currently in the unusual position having just moved across the world from one university system to another, so I am going to try to speak to both with the enormous caveat that I know the UK system a lot better than the one downunder. For a bit of perspective, I have only ever worked in the equivalent of R1 institutions in research contracts; I do minimal teaching (and most of that is just to keep my hand in and is mostly voluntary and low pain); and minimal admin. I am relatively well-paid and well-resourced. Reflecting the value placed on research money, I tend to have big offices, good access to inter-library loans, and books, and money for research. I do have to publish a lot, but hey that’s my job, so can’t complain. Most of my day is spent researching and writing in various forms. In short, I am among the most privileged of the privileged. The only meaningful complaint I can make is that the short term nature of the contracts has meant having to live separately from my spouse and also living under a lot of pressure to ‘get the next job’, which means working long hours, publishing like crazy and barely having a personal life.

I am going to begin by engaging with Dr Crazy’s response to this meme. In her post she argues that while universities have problems, discussing the ‘failure’ of the university system is unhelpful and probably inaccurate. And, from my perspective, this is true. In the UK, in the last twenty years, the number of universities has exploded and with it the number of people with degrees. Now, like in many places where this has happened, such expansion has led to a concern over the ‘value’ of a degree (if everyone has one, what’s it worth?) and whether we have enough skilled jobs for such a huge number of skilled workers. Are people just wasting time in higher education, when if they are going to work in the service industry anyway, they might as well just get straight on the career ladder? Now, these are all interesting questions, but as someone who came from a family that held no degrees before the late 1990s, and now has numerous spread out among various family members, and as importantly, different generations of family members, I think this has been a crucial advancement in democracy and equality. Perhaps, there is now more competition amongst graduates, but at least most of us now get to compete. For me, to move back from this position is a retrograde step in social equality – especially because the school system is not equitable. Children at state schools do not get an equal education to those privately educated. And, while it is true that children from disadvantaged areas tend to filter into lower-ranking institutions, we are at least starting to work towards a fairer system for social opportunities and advancement.

From both a research and teaching perspective, universities are now big business like never before, and with that their social and economic influence is unprecedented. Now, we might argue that universities that have always produced the political elite have always been influential, and that ‘ties with industry’ and other community engagement initiatives (an increasing pressure for all research projects) are just reflecting that ‘who is powerful’ is now much more broadly based than in the past, which required universities to adapt if they want to stay powerful. This may well be true, but a) an optimistic reading might see this as a win for democracy and b) a more cynical reading acknowledges that the universities have sold out to the megacorpocracy of capitalism, but also that they have remained major players in this game. Moreover, they now get to exercise power as institutions in ways that were not possible in the past, where political power was held by individuals and not large corporations. They might whinge that they now need to play harder and faster, but are they ‘failing’? This seems unlikely at the moment (at least at a group level; at an individual institutional level, this is more complex, especially for those who have difficulty accessing research money and servicing disadvantaged social groups).

Now, what about the problems? It seems to me, like for many other workers, the main issue here has been the increasing need for universities to compete in the global capitalist economy. Now, while I reckon they are doing alright here, like many industries, the way they have tried to remain competitive is by fucking over their staff and their students, and measuring everybody’s worth in monetary terms. This means that increasingly your value to an institution (and this is true in Oz and the UK), your value is literally measured by how much money you bring in to the institution. Projects with big money get to command big resources and make significant demands on the institution that those who do not bring in the money cannot. This can disadvantage different subject areas, as it literally costs less to do a literary analysis than to cure cancer. In an R1 context, this is to the detriment to teaching. While all the institutions I have worked in have emphasised the importance of teaching, offering prizes to the best teachers and placing an emphasis on student satisfaction scores, people who are good teachers get no extra benefits. You cannot use your teaching success to argue for a bigger office or an assistant. You cannot even use the fact that you are picking up the teaching, but especially the admin, slack of the bigwigs on research leave to argue for a pay raise or really any sort of benefit (perhaps apart from lower expectations on your research output, which tends to work against you as you then limit your ability to win those big research funds). This creates a cycle in many institutions where the same people win the research money and the same people concentrate on ensuring students get taught.

In the UK, this situation is also operating under a government that has no regard for the Humanities as a subject area. It will only fund teaching and research in areas where there is an obvious and applied outcome (preferably economic). This is despite the fact that much research needs to happen at an abstract level, before its applications can be worked out and that our most useful advances have often come from some very esoteric research. As a result, it has removed the teaching budget for students in the Humanities and other theoretical areas, requiring the introduction of tuition fees. It has also cut the funding for humanities research and, moreover, requires researchers to prove ‘the social and economic impact’ of the research, before granting the money. Now, as someone with huge faith in the Humanities, I tend to think that even the most seemingly blue skies thinking can be seen as valuable if sold in the correct way, but the need for such spin is reflective of the devaluing of the Humanities as a social asset. In the short term, this policy has also created some particular problems.

The main one is Humanities subjects are strapped for cash. This means absolutely no permanent jobs in the UK and it is unlikely there will be before tuition fees start to kick in, in 2012 (In Scotland where fees will not kick in, when this will end??? Who knows?). It also means that whereas when previously permanent staff took time off for research leave or maternity, they were covered by temporary staff hired on full time contracts with full benefits, now, their courses are increasingly covered either by people hired on part-time contracts, or by adjuncts, covering particular courses at an hourly rate. This has screwed with the nature of the university advancement system in the UK. In the last few decades, most PhDs worked in full time but temporary contracts for a number of years until they achieved the golden goose of the fulltime job. While temporary, these contracts allowed PhDs to be paid to work on their research and to gain experience of teaching and admin. Now, not only will many PhDs experience long periods of unemployment, when they work they will be poorly remunerated and in part-time positions. They will have no support for research (even in the form of a wage), despite the fact that they will not be employed on the next contract if they don’t have a research profile. Despite this, their research will be used by the said government in making policy and to the benefit of society, and by the universities in proving research outputs.

The alternative to this is the lucky few, like myself, who end up on research contracts, which are at least full time and well paid. There are different ways these contracts can work. Some invite you on to a project as a full partner, where you will get to write and be acknowledged on all publications. Others use you as a well paid research assistant, contractually limiting how much you can publish from the said research, and not giving you credit on other publications. The latter suck not only because of the lack of credit, but because you don’t get to count the research towards your own profile and so have to do your own research in your ‘spare time’. I have done both of these types of contracts. Very occasionally you can apply with your own project, which will form part of a bigger project, or as part of a career development postdoc (these however are the Holy Grail). I have also had this type of contract.

In Oz, much of the broader context is similar to the UK, with a few differences. One, the government supports the humanities, and boy does this make a difference. When you can be employed to work on not only a Humanities project, but an early modern one, that still got 8-digit funding, then you know you have a supportive government. This is not because there is less focus on money in Oz, but rather because they believe that Humanities has something to offer of value – at a very minimum this makes Oz a happier place to work. From the jobs I have seen advertised and the posts I know about, they also see research contractors as people who need to get some publications out of the projects they work in, and are structured around that, which is also a lot less stressful. At the same time, many of the other pressures, including a shortage of permanent jobs are much the same. There is also a sense that the pinch is coming, with increasing discussion of how to make our PhD graduates more marketable and what we need to do to make that happen.

This has been a very faculty-orientated, R1 perspective, but my sense is that universities are having to adapt to an new, harsher global economy. More depressingly, they are giving very little pushback to this process. Instead of taking the lead on what the relationship between research and the economy/ society should be, they are buying into the narrative that ‘growth’, ‘money’ and ‘the economy’ should be our social drivers. But, what is the point of the universities, if not to question these things? And what good the power of our institutions if we aren’t willing to, if not frame, then at least debate the terms in which we operate in the world? Perhaps if the Humanities hadn’t been so sidelined, there might be more of us able to ask and answer these questions?

Scotland's City Councils are Clearly in a Competition for 'Feminist Fail'.

2011-05-31T03:39:00.000-07:00

Last week, it was Edinburgh; this week Glasgow's city council is behaving as if they had never met a feminist, let alone employed one! In a letter to the parents of children at a local secondary school, GCC stated that children's shouldn't wear short skirts or tight trousers as it might attract paedophiles. Yes, you read that correctly - it's children's clothing that makes the vulnerable to paedophiles. Does this sound familiar?

Well, fortunately, the Chief Exec at the Scottish Parent Teacher Council had the sense to point out that this was very unhelpful advice as it blamed children for the activities of paedophiles. And, even more interestingly, directly compared this to discussions of adult women's dress and their 'responsibility' for rape.

Time for the local councils to send their peeps on some rape awareness/ gender sensitivity training, me thinks.

WTF?

2011-05-19T11:16:00.000-07:00

Edinburgh's Reclaim the Night Walk has been rescheduled by the council - get this - because it might be dangerous for the marchers!! The march, which is designed to reclaim the streets as safe spaces for women, will walk through an area full of pubs, during the Champions League football final, and the council is worried that the marchers will be in danger from drunken fans.

Instead of making the streets safe for the marchers, the council has asked the march to move their route and time. The organisers have rescheduled an hour earlier, but are refusing to change the route.

What would I have given to have been at that meeting! 'Er, we need you to defeat your own political aims and move the march, because, well, the streets aren't safe for women.' It would be be funny, if it wasn't so terrifyingly sad!

Jobs for Labour? Some Random Election Thoughts

2011-05-08T12:18:00.000-07:00

So, if you have been watching, Scotland had an election at the end of last week, which saw dramatic changes to Scotland's political map. Traditionally, a Labour heartland, many long-held seats were lost to the SNP, raising questions about what happened and why? We might wonder whether Labour policies over the last decade, which promoted higher education, employment, house-purchasing, and other middle-class ideals in their own electoral areas, may have back-fired as a new (and in the current recession, now rather tenuous) middle-class's horizons changed. Can we say that the legacy of the death of the coal and steel industry (the heartbreak over which, no doubt, helped sustain Labour votes over the last few decades) is now finished in Scotland? Are Labour's traditional voters feeling the pinch of jobs losses, cuts in university places and in the public services, that will see them slide once more down the social mobility ladder, and buying into the blame placed on them by the Tories and LibDems? The questions are numerous?

Perhaps, less surprisingly, is the massive losses sustained by the LibDems- losses that even their own party recognises came from a coalition with a party that their supporters hated? I hate to say, I told you so- but I did, in a letter to them after they made this decision. The complete lack of regard, or awareness, of their party's new-won supporters values is quite breathtaking. Do we think we'll get through four more years at Westminster? Do we want to?

The new Scottish parliament has a historic majority for the SNP, but more disappointingly, the number of women sitting in it is still only 34%. Up 0.8% from 2007, but down from the all time high of 39.5% in 2003. Even more concerningly, the losses of several Labour seats held by women saw a reduction in female seats at the constituency level; we only got to 34% because Labour has gender balanced lists and they made it up at the regional level.

As the SNP stood together after their wins in Glasgow, Nicola Sturgeon, the only woman among them, commented that the SNP is more gender balanced than this- I am a wee bit sceptical (the list of 2011 MSPs' names are not yet compiled in one place, or I'd have counted!!), given that only 1/3 of their constituency candidates were women and their lists were not gender balanced (in fact heavily male)- but the very fact she noticed is why Nicola should be First Minister!!

Women's History in the Public Arena.

2011-05-01T10:05:00.000-07:00

This is a response to a post by Female Science Professor on the way female academics are presented in public.

Recently, I was interviewed for radio on the topic of my research, as were a number of other academics. The focus of the radio was on my topic of expertise - let's call it the history of women in chocolate-making in fab country in x period. The other people interviewed weren't really experts in the field, but did have some overlapping interests. So, one female academic was interested in women in fab country in another context, while another male academic was interested in fab country in x period, but knew nowt about women (and if fact is slightly notorious for this). The reason for interviewing a range of academics appears mainly to be because listening to one person talk for 30 mins is a dry approach for public radio, and of course, when you dilute history for the general public, a good general knowledge of the field is all that is really needed - so I am not criticising this decision by the radio crew.

However, when the show was broadcast, the various interviews were edited together, so that different voices spoke at different points, interspersed with some readings of historical sources. And it went it bit like this Male Academic gave the legal context in speech form (ie no interviewer) (something, btw, which I am a leading expert on and which he is not); I give nice anecdotes about women in chocolate-making in conversation with female interviewer- lots of pleasant conversation and jokes; Male Academic gave more legal context in speech form; female academic gives nice anecdotes about women in fab country more broadly in conversation with female interviewer; Male Academic summarises the implications of this for women, etc etc. And, the overwhelming impression was that the ladies do the fun stuff with the pretty anecdotes, but the men do the serious business of history- providing the FACTS to back up the fun stories. The effect was really striking, as this was the only male voice on the entire show, and it was used in such a different way from the women's voices.

The interesting thing is that the production team was entirely female and, moreover, the underlying drive of the show was broadly 'feminist'- in that it was women's history created by women who held a belief in the importance of both broadcasting women's history and reflecting on the significance of women's past experiences for the present.

In Solidarity

2011-03-22T09:10:00.001-07:00

Over the last few days, university staff across the United Kingdom have been striking over cuts to our pensions, with a national strike to be held this Thursday. For more information, see here: http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=5395

In addition, Glasgow Uni finally decided to evict it's long-standing student sit-in today. This has led to a mass protest and the occupation of the main building and the demand for the principal to resign (something that many of the staff would gladly get behind at this stage!).

If you want to follow this check out: http://twitter.com/#!/glasgowoccupied and http://twitter.com/#!/glasgowguardian

I especially enjoyed this tweet from the glasgowguardian: 'Head of campus security requests that occupiers keep to only two rooms to help continued running of Uni. Occupiers decline following vote'

HA!

I also appreciated reading that Martha Wardop (Green councillor and women's rights campaigner) phoned up GU's principal to tell him off! Got to love it!

In solidarity with everyone. NO TO CUTS! NO TO TUITION FEES! NO TO HIGH RATES OF UNEMPLOYMENT! NO TO A SOCIETY FOR THE RICH! NO TO THE TORIES SCREWING THE POOR!

STRIKE!

Dear Government, Please get a reality check.

2010-12-08T06:19:00.000-08:00

Is anybody else sick fed up hearing about how if the poor don't play along they will 'lose their benefits'? Today, it is drug addicts who don't get help. Last week, it was the 'work-shy' i.e. those who refuse 'reasonable job opportunities' whatever that means. And before that it was those who don't want to participate in 'work-fare' type programmes. It's the government's new stick- do what we say or lose your benefits.

Well, today I'd like to ask the government- have you ever met a drug addict? Not a middle-class pothead that smokes a bit of weed at the weekend, but a heroin addict from a socially deprived community? Because I have. And, do you want to know when? When they were robbing me. Oh, I don't mean in some scary mugging in a dark alley- although that does happen to lots of people (indeed on the street that I used to live, there was once ten muggings in a week- but let's not go there). No, when I worked in my local co-op and eventually made it up the ladder to supervisor, I regularly had to kick the local drug addicts- or their young children- out of the shop I ran. I knew them by name- we used to chat as we did it. It was ritualistic, an almost everyday occurrence. Because everyday they came in to steal either food, or goods to sell. If we caught them, we called the police- who often never responded- but you have to see them put the goods in their bag or pocket to get that far. On one occasion after we caught someone red-handed, we waited three hours before my shoplifter exerted her legal right not to be restrained by me and left- the police showed up sometime later. But, after being continually being barred from the store, it was more usual for our local drug addicts to idle up an aisle and hope we didn't notice them, and for us to kick them out with a catch-up on the daily gossip, when we did. On one occasion, I even offered to call an ambulance for my most regular shop-lifter after he came in heavily-bleeding to steal bandages.

If you get anything from this story- I want it to be the extent to which this was something that happened EVERYDAY in my store- and it was something that was distressing (there was more than one occasion where we considered looking the other way when small children stole food to eat!), that could be dangerous (like the time a drug addict attacked me), and was just soul destroying for everybody- do you really think I want to throw poor people out of my store when they are just hungry (even if they are spending their benefits on drugs)? And, if you take away benefits not just from drug-addicts- but lots of other poor people as well-, this will just get worse. Because people have to eat- and to be quite frank, I'd rather you paid people their benefits than make the lives of hundreds of shopworkers miserable in having to face the consequences of social deprivation at work, every fucking day.

(And dudes, while we are at it- have you ever been to Dublin? And seen all the homeless people who sleep rough on the streets- do you really want that to be Britain?)

‘Mon the Students! In Solidarity.

2010-11-24T06:58:00.000-08:00

Today, in London and other parts of the UK, students are holding protestant against the proposed tripling of tuition fees in our universities; the cuts to government funding of universities that effectively mean that university teaching will only be paid for by student fees, and the cuts to bursaries to school children to encourage them to stay in education past the age of 16. First, as an academic, as somebody who spent more time than most as a student, and a member of staff at a UK university, I applaud and celebrate the willingness and enthusiasm of students to stand up for their rights, for the rights of a future generation of students, and for the principle of education for all.

Nick Clegg, as he tries desperately to scramble out of a cowardly volte-face, has said that before we protest, we should listen to his proposal, which “make[s] higher education open to everyone". Even if this is true- and I don’t think it is- it certainly won’t make Britain a fairer or more equal society. The removal of EMA- payments to young people from socio-economically deprived areas aged 16-18- to encourage them to stay in school are paid because historically these young people had to contribute to household incomes as soon as they were old enough to work. In a time of recession, with increasing rates of unemployment, the need for young people to start contributing to households will once more become a pressing issue (not to mention that for some young people this pressure has never went away). Without qualifications, these young people will be directed into low-paid, low-opportunity jobs, reifying existing class inequalities and destroying the potential for upward mobility. They certainly won’t be going to university- because they won’t have the qualifications to do so.

The proposal for tuition fees is that every student will pay fees of £9000pa, but that they will be given loans to do so- so the fact they don’t need cash up front should not act as a discouragement to people from any background. What’s more, it is argued that these fees will also be used to help provide bursaries for those from low-income backgrounds to ensure that these young people don’t get left behind. But, if he thinks that the potential of leaving university with around £50,000 in debt (by the time we add loans to live on) won’t put people off going to university, then he must be living on another planet. That is just a breath-taking amount of debt to be saddled with.

Even if he is right- and students from all backgrounds are willing to take the hit, the long-term social consequences are not being considered. As somebody with only a measly £13,000 in student debt, I only started earning enough to make repayments THIS YEAR- 7 years after my u/grad degree finished. I now get £100 a month deducted from my wage- the best part of which goes towards interest payments- with no signs of when that will stop (ok I could do the math, but it ain't any time soon). It is effectively a graduate tax that I will pay for the best part of my working-life, or until academia becomes significantly better-paid (ROFL). This will be the same for all future generations of students- only the amount of debt they will be trying to pay back will be significantly higher.

So, big deal you say. It’ll just be like paying income tax, or national insurance. Except, that income tax and national insurance are paid for by everyone. Student tax will only paid for by a few- and by that I don’t just mean students- but by a small proportion of students. Students with rich parents will have their fees paid by mum and dad, ensuring that they will not be saddled with debt for the rest of their lives. This means that they will have more money to buy bigger houses, fancier cars, and then of course, a bit more cash if they want to send their kids to private schools. They will also have extra money each month to save towards paying their children’s university fees- ensuring that they too will start life debt free. This will reinforce social boundaries, because better resourced children tend to do better in life- money breeds money.

It will also cause a retraction in the number and types of people going on to graduate degrees. Because without state funding, the fees for Masters and PhDs will have to go up too- and these aren’t covered by student loans- or really any type of loan. So, like now, people will have to find the money to pay for these degrees themselves- but whereas finding £3000 for a Masters (especially part-time) is achievable for many middle-class people, fees of £9000 or £10,000 will price most people out of the market. As a result, only the very richest will continue in education, ensuring that the top and best paid jobs will only go to the rich, and academia will once more be the playground of the social elite (with all the implications for equality and democracy in research models and findings).

What this decision does is entrench class divisions. It removes the social mobility inherent in the idea of education for all- in the claims of this government that they wish to promote ‘equality of opportunity’. Even if- and it’s a big if- paying for university will open up more places at universities (really, has anybody done the maths on this?), it will not make British society fairer or more equal.

Who knew that one government could cause such blog fodder? (This is a rhetorical question).

2010-11-18T06:48:00.000-08:00

So, along with just generally making it structurally impossible for the poor to succeed, the Con-Dems have now enshrined it in law (or, more accurately they have taken away the law where it was enshrined). Because, apparently, 'some people' don't think equality is fair- in fact 'equality' alienates 'some people'.

Don't really know where to start with that one really... oh, no wait I do. The only people who think equality is unfair are people who have power, and who feel that their power- their right to exploit and benefit at the expense of others-shouldn't be eroded. Well, this is a fucking democracy- get over it.

To make this even more problematic, Theresa May, the home-secretary, claims that the problem with the idea of equality is that "it has been seen to mean equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity". Er, well, yes, because one is not possible without the other- or at least not as long as we live in a system where people continue to give birth and raise children in nuclear households. You see, your 'opportunities' are determined by your parent's 'outcomes'.

If your parents are poor, then you will not have a fancy private education- taught in a class of 6 or 8, with the opportunity of tutors to support you, practically guaranteeing the grades you need for university; you may have had a poor diet and a lack of access to books, resources, the internet, that prepare wealthier children to succeed in later life. You might have went to schools where resources were over-stretched, teachers were tired and over-worked, and there was no expectation- let alone training or socialisation in- the idea of pursuing a career in further or higher education that would allow you to get one of those fancy middle-class jobs. You probably don't have parents that understand the university system and realise that universities are in fact ranked- and it does make a difference where you go (and I'll be up front in admitting it was pure serendipity that I picked a top uni, cause nobody sure as hell told me there was a difference, perhaps beyond 'avoid the ex-polytech'). When you go to univeristy, you don't have the allowance from the generous parents that stops you from having to work every hour God sends just to get by- and all that means for time available to spend studying. Then when you are an adult, you don't have parents who know or understand those fancy middle-class jobs and can give you career advice, or introduce you to their contacts- making it much harder to know when to take risks, when you are being exploited, what you should be paid. You might not even know a 'professional' (defined as lawyer, clergy, civil servant) to write you a 'personal reference' for your job application (and don't laugh at the ridiculousness of this, cause that happened to my sister- because despite her first class Masters degree, her family background did not provide those contacts). You probably won't know the right language- play the right sports, read the right books, listen to the right music- to mix with those people socially and in places where the networks vital to success are really made. You might not have realised that you should probably change you accent if you're 'from up north' (or even west)-and don't say this doesn't happen, just watch the BBC with their beautifully refined 'regional accents'- let alone talk to Oxbridge grads with their strangely uniform accents regardless of regional upbringing (and their ability to switch back when at home with their families). Don't tell me it makes no difference to your opportunities when you inherit the family business, rather than start it from scratch with no help- and now with no loans from our increasingly tight banks. It certainly can't be easier to take entrepreneurial risks knowing that you have rich family members to bail you out if it all goes wrong, to lend you money at low interest rates and not having to worry about losing your home or feeding your children if you fail.

Do not sit here and tell me that you can have equality of opportunity without equality of outcome- and certainly don't tell me I can have 'fairness' without equality- cause it just doesn't seem very fair to me that some people can buy £43million vases and others have to worry about finding an extra £6 a month to heat their homes.

This time I think the word I am looking for is ‘immoral’.

2010-11-16T06:51:00.000-08:00

In what is becoming a series of acts that might be better labelled ‘how to fuck the poor 101’, the Con-Dems have now announced cuts of £350 million to the legal aid budget in England and Wales, which effectively means that legal aid will only be available to protect life and liberty- i.e.it will provide criminal aid, but only limited aid for particular types of civil suits. It is thought that this will mean that there will be 500,000 less civil suits every year. Now, the government claim that this won’t hurt anybody because ‘we’ are all too litigious anyway, and ‘we’ will be forced to find other ways to resolve disputes.

Except ‘we’ doesn’t mean everybody, does it? No, it means those who would have to use legal aid to get justice- aka the poor, or even just ‘the not enormously wealthy’. The rich on the other hand are still free to sue each other- and also the poor- with impunity. This is nothing more than the removal of justice from those without money; it is a fundamental infringement on any claim that we are a democratic, equal society. And, in that vein, I don’t think it is too dramatic to call this both disgusting and even immoral. In a week where we are supposed to be celebrating Armistice Day and where – as I heard on the radio- one veteran noted that we are supposed to stop and remember our freedom and liberties, we see our own government taking away those same freedoms and liberties. Because justice is the centrepiece of any claim to being a democratic nation.

Now, I now know that there will be common complaints that we are too litigious and we are wasting money on nonsense suits- but the reality is that England has always been litigious. In 1640, two Westminister Courts alone dealt with 28,000 cases in one year (and remember there are more courts both in London and across the rest of the country), when the population of England was only about 4 million. Forms of legal aid- whether from the Church, the State or from employers and patrons- were available across this period. The ability- and the also the choice to- participate in the legal system was a marker of the public’s recognition of the centrality of the exercise of justice to good governance and increasingly democratic society. Indeed, a lot might be said about the way in which the increased impartiality, independence and legal sophistication of the court system progressed simultaneously to the growth of parliamentary power and civil society. Access to justice through the courts is as central to democracy as access to the vote.

What’s more, it is a bit problematic to claim that either legal aid- or for that matter the court system itself- supports any and all legal claims. Complaints have to meet a threshold of competency to progress- usually a good lawyer will throw you out her or his office before it gets to that stage, or it will get thrown out by a judge before trial. Indeed, most legal aid lawyers are careful about what cases to proceed with- because they know money is limited and that the decisions of what cases they proceed with are open to a high degree of public scrutiny (from Legal Aid administrators, politicians and the public). In other words, there is already a check on what cases proceed through the court system. What this decision by the Con-Dems does is to say that they as politicians now decide what cases are valid and who should receive justice- and in what form it should be received. This is a fundamental infringement on the independence of the justice system and so a direct attack on our liberty.

Why the Tories should read a history book (and then perhaps take a course in ethics).

2010-11-13T04:07:00.000-08:00

This week the Con-Dem’s have announced that the long-term unemployed will be forced to work by putting them on 30 hour a week placements. The work under discussion is labelled ‘manual work’ and includes ‘gardening’ and ‘litter-clearing’. Those who do not show up will have their benefits cut.

This decision is, of course, hugely controversial for lots of reasons- but it is a fascinating decision from a party who claims to want small government and limited public services. The Con-Dems are certainly not the first people to come up with this idea- the Americans did during the Depression of the 1930s; the Germans tried it around the same time and again more recently; the French did it after WW2. It still continues in many ‘Third World’ countries today. And, in every single case, the cost of running the programmes so outweighed any benefit to society, or to the unemployed themselves, that they became unsustainable. For good or bad, it is cheaper to let the unemployed sit in their houses on benefit than to make them work for those benefits- that is the historical reality.

And, so the question then arises, why does a government who is trying to massively cut costs- who is making people unemployed left, right and centre- want to plough huge amounts of money into such a programme? Do they seriously think that no one has thought about this before? One might presume it is because they have never read a history book. (Perhaps if they hadn’t so dramatically cut spending to universities, they could have asked an expert for their advice. As it is, we are waiting for our invitation to cut grass for free).

Given the types of work that the unemployed will be directed into that is being spouted by the government, it also raises huge issues about the ethics of such a programme. Why is it ok to make our grass-cutters (paid at minimum wage) unemployed, and then ask them to come back and do the same job for less than minimum wage now that they are on benefits? This is the very definition of exploitation. Today, modern volunteering good practice recommends that volunteers should not do the work of a paid employee for this very reason. Volunteering roles can support those in paid position; they can run projects that would not be feasible without volunteers- but they should not be used as unpaid labour or as a way to save money. This is believed to be exploitative and unethical.

Now it is very unlikely given historical precedent that a scheme that forces the unemployed to work will save anybody money- but, the question should still be asked- how is it morally justifiable to replace paid workers with the forced labour of those working- if not ‘for free’- at least, not on the same terms as paid labour? How can they justify taking away people’s jobs- claiming that they were not necessary or a drain on the economy- if our poorest and most vulnerable are going to be forced to do those same jobs? How will you feel when your job is taken away and then given to somebody else- or worse back to you, for less money and more stigma? And, we might even ask, how is it ethical to ask our unemployed to work in any form for less than minimum wage? The reason benefit is set so low is because we are not asking our unemployed to work. If they are out doing a job that a person in other circumstances would be paid at least minimum wage to do, why are they not entitled to that same reward?

And, if we are going to start paying them an ethical wage for their labour, why are we cutting public service jobs in the first place?

It turns out most days, I am a man...

2010-11-13T02:59:00.000-08:00

It news that isn't really news, an English local authority has reverted to calling a Christmas-related food product 'gingerbread men', rather than 'gingerbread person'.

Local Preston MP Mark Hendrick said he was pleased the council had "reverted to common sense". "I thought daft political correctness had gone out of the window but obviously it's still out there," the Labour MP added. "They were clearly men - they were not wearing skirts."

Ah, yes. No skirts; clearly a man then?

Vive la revolution.

2010-11-03T08:33:00.000-07:00

So, you may have seen that the Con-Dems have proposed tuition fees of up to £9,000 a year to pay for university education. So obviously I think this is a travesty for social justice and class equality- but this statement by Michael Gove really made me laugh:

'Someone who is working as a postman should not subsidise those who go on to become millionaires.'

So, postmen's taxes shouldn't subsidise students paying for university education- but it's perfectly ok for their physical labour - paid at not much above minimum wage- to subsidise the capitalist system that allows people to become millionaires in the first-place?

Do you want to know another way of making society fairer- higher rates of income tax for top earners and higher rates of corporation tax- because the real question is what entitles a rich few to be millionaires when such wealth is paid for by the labour and the purchasing power of a poor majority?

Scots men save more than women

2010-10-07T05:41:00.000-07:00

A new study has shown that Scots men are more likely to have savings than Scots women- 36% compared to 33%. And that when asked why they did not save, 85% of non-saving women said they could not afford it compared with 73% of non-saving men.

What is not mentioned, of course, is that women are more likely to earn less, live in poverty and be the sole support of dependants than men.

Dear Small Government,

2010-09-21T10:04:00.000-07:00

I do not care that 170 civil servants get paid more than the prime minister, because I believe that the work of public servants is valuable and its remuneration should reflect that. I believe that if we want to live in a capitalist system and if we want good people to manage public services (which presumably we do if you want to keep the costs down) then you need to pay a price comparable with that in the private sector for such work. I think that the work of public sector employees helps make Britain a safer, fairer, healthier, and better managed country and to talk about their wages as something that should be ‘held down’ or to ask the public to get angry at paying YOUR employees a fair wage is deeply disturbing. It tells your employees that their work does not matter- or perhaps it does, but it should be done out of the goodness of their hearts? Presumably putting up with all the bullshit (and trust me, there is a lot) that comes with working in the public service industry and rarely earning anything comparable to what your skills would make on the open market is worth it for the knowledge that you make Britain a better place?

The manner in which public service employees are being discussed- as if asking for a fair wage is greedy or unreasonable- as if complaining about their increased workloads as their colleagues lose their jobs around them makes them selfish- as if questioning cuts that are unthoughtful, expensive to implement, and potentially hugely damaging to the economy makes them disloyal- effectively creates a hostile work environment. You have and are showing no respect for those people who have worked hard for this country, implying that they should be fortunate to have jobs in the first place and should just shut up and take it.

This is even more hypocritical when the very anger that you hope to rile in the public is based on their low wages that comes from the exploitation of big business, which pays its fat cats huge wages. It is hypocritical to complain about high wages in the public sector when they are driven by high wages in the private sector, which you not only do not restrict, but actively promote. (I mean if you seriously believe that PM is the most important job in the country, surely NOBODY should earn more?) You talk about this as if this is driven by necessity- but this is nothing more than political spin as you pursue a strategy of small state, big business that does everything for a small number of rich elites and nothing for the population whose labour makes that wealth. What is worse you then have the cheek to criticise that labourforce when they complain about the untenable burden that you place upon them to keep a few rich people happy. To quote the TUC general secretary, ‘These are not temporary cuts, but a permanent rollback of public services and the welfare state. Not so much an economic necessity as a political project driven by an ideological clamour for a minimal state [...] Cut services, put jobs in peril and increase inequality, that's the way to make Britain a darker, brutish, more frightening place’.

This is not a country that I want to live in.

Sirs, I am angry.
Feminist Avatar.

Feminist Veggie to the DEATH Wars

2010-08-11T13:24:00.000-07:00

Growing your own veg; the new feminist activism. Because if Twisty can do it, so can I.

Okay, it's only a baby- but I went away on a research trip and came back to this- so proud!

Broccolli too- when do I get to harvest them?

Growing tomatoes outside in Scotland- they might never go red, but they ain't dead!

This is almost as satisfying as blaming the patriarchy, but is good for your stress levels.

The value of motherhood

2010-07-13T09:26:00.000-07:00

Flicking through my free Tesco magazine, I came across an article that calculated how much it would cost to pay professionals to do the work of a mother. They did this by using a survey of average time spent on various childcare tasks by mothers and then taking the average pay of a professional in that particular occupation and multiplying the two. Childcare tasks included driving children places, nursing, preparing food, cleaning (only for children not the household), cooking, helping with homework, laundry, counselling, PR, party planning and more. And, they calculated that to pay professionals to take on these roles would cost £1,425,105 per child.

This is fascinating for many reasons- first, because economists claim that it is impossible to make this calculation as it would be impossible to value such work in any meaningful way (but clearly what is difficult for economists is straightforward for journalists! ;) ). Second, it is valuing the work at quite a high rate, because if we divide this number by 18 years (and the survey took account of the fact that not all childcare tasks would be required throughout a child's life in its calculation) a mother's work is valued at almost £80,000 a year. If we were then to calculate the value of mother's work to the national economy, it would be a fairly significant chunk. Yet, we don't do this, because well it's only women's work...

Thinking about Body and Mind in the 21st Century

2010-06-19T06:42:00.000-07:00

In the seventeenth century, John Locke suggested that a child’s mind was ‘tabula rasa’- a blank slate, and that children needed to be socialised and educated into their social role. This replaced the early modern model where social position was determined by God, the self was marked by original sin, and that child-rearing was a process of disciplining body and soul to restrain that sin and make a person useful to society. The ‘blank slate’ model of the mind transformed how we thought about self, leading to an emphasis on education as the basis for social order and in the creation of identity. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau commented ‘if the timidity, chasteness and modesty which are proper to [women] are social inventions, it is in society’s interest that women acquire these qualities; they must be cultivated in women.’

So, what determined social position if the mind was an open potential, able to be shaped to be anything at all? Increasingly in the eighteenth century, the body became the determining factor in social position. Sexual difference, race, and physical features became the outward markers that determined the appropriate education that should be given to the mind that the body housed. If it was important that women played a particular social role and so received a particular education, then we could decide who ‘women’ were based on their genitals. In this sense, the mind was shaped to the body- and the mind who didn’t realise it was female just needed more discipline or education.

This theory developed in two, not necessarily compatible ways, in the nineteenth century. First, there was the rise of psychology where people’s whose minds did not behave appropriately to their allocated social role could be studied, and ideally re-educated to match their biological characteristics and social expectation. Therefore, for example, someone who felt that their allocated gender did not match their sense of identity, or who was attracted to someone of the same sex, could be labelled ‘mentally ill’, and retrained. And, if the mind was a blank slate- an open potential, then why not? (This model continues into the present, although increasingly we put limits on when the mind stops being adaptable (age, 2, 3 ,7, 26 never).)

Second, the emphasis on the body as determining factor in shaping identity meant that physical characteristics became increasingly seen to determine a person’s potential. This led to the rise in pseudo-sciences like phrenology, where the shape of a person’s head could be used to determine their personality- or physical profiling, where criminality and deviance could be determined by measuring the body or the distance between the eyes. Far from opening up potential then, the move to the biological began to root social characteristics in the body, limiting the potential of the mind to be educated in particular ways. Women's bodies then could be endangered by too much education, with university education leading to an inability to conceive children.

And, in many ways, the legacy between these two competing ways of thinking about self remain with us today. As feminists, we (mostly) reject biological determinism and argue that gender is about education and the social construction of identity. Yet, this leads to the niggling problem of sexuality- how did you end up gay if you weren’t socialised into it? Was it just bad parenting?! Similarly, those who suffer body dysmorphic disorder- which is currently mainly associated with transgendered people, but includes a variety of people, from those who suffer from anorexia to people who feel a need to correct their body with cosmetic surgery- rightly resist the implication that this is simply a case of poor mental health.

In a 21st century context, the static nature of the mind starts to loom larger in the nurture/ nature debate, and increasingly, instead of ‘fixing’ the mind when we experience problems with our bodily appearance or identity, we shape the body. If we sense that our genitals look wrong, our breasts are too small, our stomach too lumpy, many of us no longer sit through hours of therapy trying to come to accept our bodies, but instead go the gym, on a diet or under the knife. We encourage this approach in our increasing obsession with obesity, body sculpting, and fitness, and also how we think about food. Whereas dieting used to be about training your mind, we now think about hormones, sugar levels, foods that release energy all day and keep you feeling full. We think about ways to satiate the body while remaining healthy. It is no longer the recalcitrant mind, but the recalcitrant body that must be re-educated and kept well. We make significantly more links between mind and body, so that poor mental health, like depression, is about hormones, not (just) emotions.

In a sense then, rather than the mind being a tabula rasa, it is the body (at least as much as the mind) which is the empty canvass in the modern world, waiting to be educated or trained into shape. Yet at the same time, we retain a sense of 'biological determinism', but one that focuses on the centrality of the mind, rather than body, to self. And, what are the implications of these new ways of thinking for modern feminism? What happens to the traditional critique of cosmetic surgery- where ‘big boobs’ were viewed as conformity to patriarchal standards- when cosmetic surgery is also what gives people a sense of unity between mind and body? When we become less sure about adapting the mind (where we would have traditionally suggested retraining women to love their small breasts), and give more emphasis to ‘fixing’ the body to meet mental expectations of self. Where is the line between acceptable and unacceptable bodily adaptations, between poor mental health and the recalcitrant body? Where is the place of disability and race politics in this discussion- where bodily perfection has a dangerous tendency to lean towards conformity to particular forms of beauty and body shape, towards sameness and not diversity? And, what does it mean that technology can allow some people to adapt their bodies, but not others?

Blogging against Disablism.

2010-05-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

Having run out of time to blog against disablism- I recommend this post, which rocks.

brief interviews with hideous men- some thoughts

2010-04-08T11:38:00.000-07:00

So the other night my other half brought me in the 2009 film 'brief interviews with hideous men', told me it was my kind of thing, got bored after 20 minutes and left me to watch the rest. In what is probably going to humiliatingly reveal my complete cultural ignorance, before he brought it home, I had been completely unaware of this film and the book it is based on. [potential spoilers ahead- although I reckon you could watch this film knowing what is going to happen without it being a major issue]

So, the film begins with various men sitting behind a desk, giving narratives about their personal- and frequently sex- lives (have fun identifying the men out of all your favourite US tv shows! Is that Jim from the US Office; Stabler from SVU; dude from Leverage!- what do you mean I watch too much tv?). There is a tape recorder on the desk, but you do not see the interviewer or know the question. As the sequence of interviews continues, the interviewer (the new woman out of law and order: criminal intent) is seen and eventually the interviews are interspersed with sequences of conversations between her and other men in her life. She is a grad-student interviewing men for her studies. You never hear the questions she asks her interviewees and her conversation with other men in her life (ex-boyfriend, other grad-students, her u/grad students, professor) is very much dominated by their speaking; she is limited to brief responses and questions. The very few other women in this film have almost no dialogue- perhaps one sentence throughout.

Yet, this film is all about women. All these men, except perhaps one, are discussing their relationships with women. The women in these narratives are not human; they are objects for sexual gratification; they are wives discussed for their looks, not their minds; they are absent as much as they are present (like the interviewer). The men's narratives are relentlessly shallow, frequently misogynistic- they are truly hideous men. Yet sometimes complex questions are suggested in these narratives- one man describing his past concern that his wife may get ugly as she aged (she didn't) comments on how shallow it sounds, but asks if it could sound otherwise? One (physically beautiful) man in repeated sections that build on each other (and act as a rhetorical attack on the interviewer in their increased aggression) suggests that rape is not the worst thing that could happen to a woman- they can move on, become better because of it- but then ends his narrative by suggesting he was talking about his own rape. In one of the last narratives, the ex-boyfriend who cheated relates how his cheating began with an intention to use a women that he knew he could manipulate easily into bed and leave with no regret (he had no intent to end his primary relationship); but the woman he cheats with relates a narrative of her life and she becomes so fully human to him that he cannot leave her (and so dumps the girlfriend). Yet, in this act (and the narrative structure sets it up this way), he dehumanises the girlfriend he left behind- for one woman to become human another must be dehumanised. And then it is the end with no resolution, just hideous, shallow men and the woman who wants interview them.

Yet, the (this) viewer can't help but question all of these narratives. Yes, they fulfil every stereotype of masculinity presented in the media- they are the 'bad guys' that are popularly represented to haunt feminist narratives. These are how feminists are seen to conceive of men. Yet, the viewer knows that they are not men; they are empty shells as unhuman as they woman they describe. The question that these hideous men raise is not where are the 'good' men- but where are the 'real' men- the 3-dimensional men; those who are good and bad and ugly at the same time. In this sense, this is not a feminist narrative- it undermines the feminist (the interviewer) by suggesting that this is not masculinity- and if it is not masculinity, then what are feminists fighting against? Because if real men are not hideous, then what is feminism all about? In essence, the film both creates a false masculinity and a false construction of what feminism is in order to undermine feminism.

What is perhaps the more complex question, is what is the film's ultimate intent? Is it to undermine feminism- or are you meant to recognise that this is the intent of the narrative, because if you do, it then raises the question, if this is not feminism- what is?

The Privacy of the Home.

2010-04-04T04:13:00.000-07:00

There is a myth that the home is a ‘private’ space that should be free from state intervention or the intrusions of the ‘public’. The importance of this belief has been brought to light most recently in debates over whether B&B owners should be allowed to refuse service to gay people (or any other people) due to their belief system. Is the home a private space where people should feel free to discriminate or is it a public space open to state control? I want to suggest that this division of public and private is a myth- that the home has never been a wholly private space- and that to frame this debate in a discussion of private homeowner rights acts to remove the rights of gay people and other ‘undesirable’ groups.

Far from being a private space, for the last 500 years in Britain, the home has been intrinsically linked to social control. The early modern household (1500-1750) was conceptualised as the state writ small. The ideal early modern home was headed by its married patriarch who exercised control over his wife, children and servants-both ensuring that they behaved in an orderly way and having to personally answer to higher authorities if his household behaved badly. In a time before an extensive state apparatus and police existed to manage social behaviour, this function fell to the head of household. The household was conceptualised as a miniature state and in fact, the relationship between a monarch and his or her kingdom was understood to mirror that of the household. The home provided a model for the operation of the state.

From an alternative perspective, it is also worth considering that the Royal Court- from which the monarch governed the state- was actually part of the private household of the monarch. Separate buildings for ‘public’ or ‘state’ functions were only beginning to be thought of in this period- and most were related to the operation of trade (like Guildhalls). In practice, elite households in particular could double as ‘public’ buildings with their large halls or courtyards being used to hold markets, public meetings and demonstrations.

Furthermore, the home was not conceptualised as a private space. Indeed, openness to the scrutiny of others was essential to social credit and social reputation. The household that had something to hide was clearly up to no good and should be treated with caution. In a world where cash was limited and access to goods depended on reputation, the transparency of the household was vital to its survival. The awareness of prying eyes was meant to enforce good order- both making sure the head of household kept control of his family and ensuring that he did not abuse his authority. It offered a system of checks and balances to the head of household’s power.

At the same time, the household was a fluid entity with a constant stream of changing servants, visitors, lodgers, travellers needing a bed for the night, belying any sense of a contained family unit. Even lower down the social scale where households were smaller, neighbourliness and patronage systems meant that homes were equally open to public scrutiny and to inspection by social superiors. Poor households could be even more socially diverse with lodgers and travellers common means of income and multiple families could live in the same household to save money. Most households also had an economic function meaning that they were not just homes but places of business with all the public functions that entailed.

In the eighteenth century, the concept of ‘privacy’ (which had started to filter through since the 16th century) became increasingly culturally important seen in the separation of servant and family quarters in wealthy homes; the invention of ‘public’ and ‘private’ rooms in family homes; and the eventual removal of the economic functions of the household off into separate buildings. Yet, it should be noted this was a long process that happened to different households at different rates and the importance of home-working today suggests it was never completed. Even in the Victorian period, where it might be argued that the ‘private’ home was in its heyday, it was recognised that the home had both private and public functions- not surprising in an era where visiting relatives for weeks at a time was fashionable.

For eighteenth-century philosophers on this subject, the key distinction between a public and private space was still not whether it was located in or out of the home- but its function. Therefore, public space was economic space- the workplace, rather than places outside the home. Even the world of politics was not initially thought of as ‘public’, although this idea was to arrive quickly when the concept of public became increasingly associated with power. Public space was where people exercised power; private space was without power.

Despite this complexity of meaning, the changing functions of the household did lead to its increased association with the ‘private’ in the early nineteenth century. Yet, this phenomenon did not happen in a vacuum- it was mirrored by the rise of the ‘state’. As the household became more private and the separation of home and work made it more difficult to monitor the behaviour of individuals through household hierarchy, the state was created to ensure social order. The state expanded with an increasingly large and elaborate civil service, a police force, a more formal court system and, by the twentieth century, state controlled welfare systems. This state apparatus was always interested in the workings of the home and the prying eye of the guid neighbour was replaced by the beady eye of the officious state worker.

And from a feminist perspective, it was vital that the state existed. While the functions of the household and social order had changed, the belief in the right for a patriarch to manage and discipline his household had not. Yet, without the prying eyes of the guid neighbour, who was to act as a check and balance of that power? Many of the initial debates and court cases that defined the rights of the state to interfere in home life were brought by women trying to protect themselves and their children from violent or controlling patriarchs. In a sense then, not only was the rise of the state a response to the changing functions and increased privacy of the household, but the invitation to the state to interfere in the operations of the household was both a demand of feminists and required for good social order.

The home then has never been a private space, exempt from the rules of social behaviour or the requirements of society. It is not and has never been the last stronghold against state interference. On the contrary, its ‘private’ nature is predicated on the existence of the state and the right for the state to interfere in its operation. The two cannot exist separately. In this sense, the privacy of the home is an illusion- if one held dear to us. This is particularly the case when you use your home in public ways- such as when you run a business from your home. Because at that stage (whether you realise it or not), any sense of your home as private is removed and its public functions (always present) are once more made explicit.

To argue then that your private rights to discriminate are founded on the privacy of the household is to misunderstand the place and role of the household and the state in society. The question then becomes whether your right to discriminate is greater than the right of other people not to be discriminated against. While discrimination actively hurts people- and so damages society- you being asked to curtail your discrimination does not hurt you. Given that the protection of its members is the first duty of the state, that the law finds in favour of the right not to be discriminated against is lawful, logical and good for everybody.

Interesting Fact of the Day.

2010-03-13T06:33:00.000-08:00

As you may have noticed, I like facts- especially facts that undermine arguments that promote bigotry and discrimination. And, usually I like to save said facts until a topical news story comes up, and then show how people, usually politicians, are talking nonsense. But, I found this one and I thought it was too good not to share (plus it is something that I and probably most of you have long suspected).

There are more British living abroad than foreigners living in the UK.

In fact, 1 in 10 Brits live all or part of the year abroad.

So, next time somebody complains about immigrants taking our jobs, why not ask whether they'd prefer that all the British come home (which surely is only fair?) And for that matter, next time the BNP suggest that all coloured people should be 'repatriated' -do you remember when they used to make those demands- ask them whether we really want our diaspora (you know the Australians, the Americans, New Zealanders, Canadians, South Africans etc etc) to be repatriated too?

Happy International Women's Day!

2010-03-08T06:41:00.001-08:00

Happy International Women's Day to everyone.

It seems that everybody is a bit down right now- everyone I know has a story of redundancy and restructing woe and if politicians are taking note, we need a morale boost! Yet, rather than seeing economic downturn as an opportunity to reform a clearly broken system, it is repeatedly being used as an excuse to curtail women's rights and social equality. It seems, whatever party you support, recession is an excuse to be conservative- to claw back money from our poor, to reinforce the structures of the wealthy, to ignore principles of fairness and equality because it seems easier than structural change. Every day is another story of lay-offs and doors closing in the media (and often closer to home!) and yet at the same time, we hear politicians moaning about getting people off unemployment benefit as if the poor just weren't taking the opportunities being offered. Even those people who are using redundancy as an opportunity to retrain are finding doors closed, as the government reduces spending in universites, which has led to a drop in numbers of places, despite unprecedented demand.

To blind us to this situation, the parties seem to have unanimously agreed to make this election about 'family' not economy- clearly because they don't have any economic policies- yet, the family they are selling to us is antiquated model with no relevance to the modern world, and only reflects a very small minority of people's lives. It's as if politicians are trying to pretend the recession didn't happen and if we just ignore the reality of the best part of the population's lives, we can try and sell a story of a non-existent golden age and hope that people are tired enough to buy it.

Well, I am tired- so tired that I find it difficult to celebrate this International Women's Day- but I am not so tired that I am going to buy this bullshit that is being fed to us during the least inspired political campaign in history (and I AM HISTORIAN SO I SHOULD KNOW DAMMIT). So political parties, it's time to get your ass in gear and gives us some real policies. Policies that:

- have social equality for all at their heart

- that see social equality and a sharing of wealth as the key to a nation's stability and prosperity

- that understands and celebrates social difference and does not try to push us into a white, middle-class mould of imagined family life

- that understands that real choice for all is at the heart of modern democracy and understands that choice does not mean conforming to a middle-class vision of normality

- that recognises that we have historically sold women, children, ethnic minorities, the disabled, the gay community, the working-class, and every one who not a white, middle-class man down the river, and we need to change

-that recognises that our wealth is based on the exploitation of the poor in our own country and on the material and labour resources of the rest of the world

-that recognises that we believe in the sharing of wealth, in recycling and looking after our planet, and that we do not want our comfort to be based on the poverty and exploitation of ourselves or other people, the destruction of our natural environment, or short-changing of other cultures

-that see that WE WANT CHANGE, RADICAL CHANGE AND WE WANT IT NOW

Women's History Month

2010-03-03T05:06:00.000-08:00

March is women's history month. That is, a month dedicated to the study of women's history and with making people aware that women do have a history, that is is an important history and that women, alongside men, made the world what it is today (something that was remarkably forgotten in traditional histories). I have been involved in a project to celebrate women's history month and we have created a blog with posts every day this month (and hopefully beyond) on a topic of women's history. Please go check it out.

Life Courses

2010-02-17T04:24:00.000-08:00

In wake of the ‘OMG’ teenagers have children; oh wait, they’re having less, no, they’re not, yes they are debate, I thought it might be a good point to think about life-courses (or life-cycles as they were known before historians decided a cyclical model was too simplistic). A life-course is the experiences that a person goes through in the course of her or his life. For historians and social scientists generally, life-courses are interesting for studying group behaviour, so we like to compare what age people get married at, or what age they have kids, whether they leave school at 15 or 18 and whether they retire at 60 or not at all. As people in the same society often experience changes in the life-course at a similar age to their contemporaries, we can chart a ‘typical’ life-course experience for particular societies or sub-groups within those societies.

Now, that sounds all very academic, but what’s the point? The argument is that people who behave in the most ‘typical’ fashion are generally the most socially stable, or at least, are unlikely to receive criticism for their behaviour. People who do things at the wrong time or in the wrong order- such as having a child as a teenager, when this is socially unacceptable, or having a child before marriage in a society where this is unusual- are likely to face social consequences that limit their life choices. This is because society is set up to respond to people who follow a particular life-course. If you fail to do this, the support mechanisms offered to other people aren’t there for you. This in turn can affect the ‘non-typical’ ever becoming ‘socially stable’ or achieving the normal goals of their contemporaries, leading to life-long poverty, social ostracism, poor education and/or unemployment. Conversely, sometimes doing something in the wrong order can have unexpected benefits, perhaps bringing new opportunities or forcing people to make unexpected decisions with good pay-offs (perhaps emigration in the past or setting up a successful home business to fit around child-care arrangements). The interesting issue at stake here is not that there is an ideal life-course for everyone in all times and places, but that each society has its own ‘typical’ life-course which it uses as a standard to judge the behaviour of others.

Historically in Britain, people’s experience of the life-course was a lot more diverse than today. The advent of national education, where children start school at five and leave at 16 or 18, then perhaps go to university or some sort of apprenticeship system, before starting work, where they are often forced or at least encouraged to retire at a set age, has made the life-course significantly more regimented that in the past. Previously, parents may have sent their children to school (if at all) anywhere between the ages of 3 and 8, the number of years spent in schooling reflected a combination of social class, the need for childcare and the availability of work for children (the average for the poor was about 2 years in the late 18th century). Only a very few went to university and depending on the century, they may have went at any time between the ages of 14 and 20. If you weren’t very rich, you may have only done a year at university, which would have made you applicable for a number of professional and clerical jobs without breaking the bank. Others went into apprenticeship (usually for five or seven years) or service (ie working as servants in households and farms) until you earned enough to set up on your own.

Depending on the region, the availability of housing and land, and alternative employment opportunities, this meant most people didn’t get married and start having families until their mid to late twenties (a phenomenon that changes dramatically after WW2). But, perhaps more interestingly, is the diversity of ages that people married at. In the 1970s, not only would 95% of women in Britain marry, 80% of them would marry between the ages of 17 and 25, a distribution of only seven years. In contrast, in 1851, the age of marriage was much more widely distributed with a range of 20 years for the central 80% of women. Furthermore, up to a third of women and men wouldn’t marry at all. The typical life-course in the past then was much more varied than today.

So what is the relevance of this for teen pregnancy? The problem with teen parents is not really that teenagers have children, but that having children as a teenager is increasingly socially unacceptable (whereas previously the focus was on marital status, rather than age). In fact, the number of women having children under 20 in Scotland has halved since the 1960s and 70s and similar numbers of babies are born to teen mums today as in the 1940s, without accounting for population increase. So, this is definitely a problem of perception as much as numbers. If we want to deal with the ‘problems’ of teen pregnancy, we also need to deal with the fact that it is our perspective that made it a problem in the first place. It is because these girls and women are failing to be ‘typical’ that is the social problem. And, perhaps a healthier and more inclusive response to this ‘problem’ is not to condemn girls and women who have children at a young age or worry about the pregnancies, but worry about our responses. If girls and young women end up socially ostracised and living in poverty due to having children, then that’s because our society isn’t set up to deal with them- perhaps we should be. Because the real question is why does being ‘typical’ mean that you are right or your choices are more valid?

And the Victorians are back...

2010-01-17T05:03:00.000-08:00

So it turns out family values and 'shoring up the family' are the hot topics for the election, with lots of spouting about how supporting the family and encouraging marriage are good for the economy, good for society and particularly promote 'stability'. At no point, has anybody in these debates shown how marriage is good for the economy. Whether it is good for society is presumably a question of what you think society should look like (although it seems to be used to mean stopping crime and drugs), and while we're at it what on earth does 'stability' mean? As part of this discussion, the Tories have announced tax breaks for married couples- part of their policy to promote marriage- because we all know all those evil cohabitees and singles just live like that because they want to break up with their partners willy-nilly and really are a bit unstable (and clearly tying such people into marriages is the healthy and safe option). It is also not clear whether 'married' couples include civil partners- presumably the existence of gay people is just indicative of the breakdown of society.*

David Cameron has said that this policy says 'if you take responsibility, you will be rewarded- if you don't you won't'. Because, again, people who cohabit or live by themselves are not taking responsibility... how exactly? Does taking responsibility mean being tied into a institution which holds no meaning to you? I thought we called that hypocrisy? Ah perhaps, taking responsibility means if you do choose to split up you are forced to pay for a divorce- well, that may contribute to the economy!

To make matters worse, the response from the other parties has been, err, enlightening. Lib Dem's Nick Clegg's criticism was: "It is immensely unfair. What does is mean for the poor woman who has been left by some philandering husband who goes on to another marriage and gets the tax break and she doesn't?" Yes, because we still live in the nineteenth century, where the 'poor woman' suckered by the 'evil man' should be the terms in which we see family life. This was the exact argument used to bring in divorce legislation in 19th Century Britain as well as to expand the penalties for domestic violence- and while it had a time and (very important) place, do we still want family policy to be determined by protectionism towards women? Protectionism, by definition, implied that women were not equal to men and so needed someone to look after them- and in default of their husbands, it was the state. Now I am sure men leave their wives and remarry, but women also leave their husbands! And, while it may only be a slip of the tongue, I do not want the terms that family life is negotiated to implicitly or explicitly see women as less than equal. Because while society continues to discriminate against women- in the family as in other walks of life- government policy that builds on this presumption continues to reinforce it.**

So what do the facts tell us anyway? Is marriage the solution to society's ill? Well, surprisingly, not really or at least the effect is extremely complex. Some studies suggest that getting married is better for you than cohabiting. Getting married or cohabiting reduces casual drug use and being married/ cohabiting gives a higher rate of success for recovering addicts; the effect is more pronounced if you are married, rather than cohabit, IF YOU ARE A MAN (for women the quality of the relationship is more important). Some studies suggest that you are more likely to see your income rise when you marry, IF YOU ARE A RICH MAN. And, that seems to be the net benefit of marriage over cohabitation. People who cohabit are more likely to earn less and come from poorer socio-economic backgrounds and neighbourhoods, than those that marry- but this seems to be an explanation for why people don't marry, rather than the other way round. So, of course, if married people seem 'more stable' (ie more middle class), it is because they are more likely to be middle class.

Now, what is not being said here is that what really makes society unstable is divorce. For children, if you're parents get divorced, it might fuck you up in a myriad of ways (emotional problems, depression, early sexual experiences, suicide, teen drunkenness, more likely to be overweight), but you may be no more likely to take drugs (depending on the study). On the plus side, if you manage to stabilise (read: not become a junkie or emotional wreck) by the time you're in your mid-late twenties, you'll generally be ok, but you have a higher chance of being an alcoholic. If you become a junkie, chances are you'll also be a life-long criminal (but remember your parents getting divorced may not have influenced that!). To make matters more complicated, other studies have shown that parental divorce decreases your chances of childhood delinquency, while being in a single parent household makes no difference to delinquency. The most consistent predictors of crime are, no surprises for guessing, living in poor neighbourhoods, childhood poverty, and poor education. These are ALSO the predictors of divorce, but so are male unemployment, having a first-born female child (if you are a woman), living together before marriage, and being white (ethnically).***

So, if divorce is the problem, why do we care about whether people MARRY, and the reason is that people who cohabit are more likely to split up than people who marry. But, what is not being said is that today most people live together before they get married, and cohabiting people who see themselves marrying their partner have the same probability of splitting up as married people. In essence, because most people cohabit before they marry, those relationships which weren't going to work were weeded out before marriage. So, the only way that promoting marriage through tax breaks will stop divorce is by making miserable people stay together for financial reasons. And guess what- miserable parents create miserable criminal, junkie children- don't you love statistics.

So what should the government do to help make happy relationships (if we don't want to go down the radical line of getting rid of families altogether)? Well, it turns out that couples who earn similar amounts to each other- so have resource equality- and share resources in the household, who have shared interests and contribute equally to household chores have the highest levels of marital satisfaction and the most stable marriages (which is why feminists have lower divorce rates). Furthermore, the higher a level of a woman's education, the better for the stability of marriage. So pay equality between men and women in the workplace is good for marriage. Education is good for marriage. Gender equality is good for marriage. The other big predictor is poverty and coming from poor neighbourhoods, so how about promoting stability through wealth distribution, rather than cutting welfare further and criminalising the poor?

Why not- instead of falling back on Victorian conservatism- we look to creating policies which will actually make a difference?

* I would assume that it would have to or it would fall short of equality legislation (but if we're so happy to call civil partners 'married' as shorthand, what is the fuss about having two different 'marriage' registration systems? Another question for another day.)

** When protective legislation is put in place, it must be done with clear and explicit recognition of what it is and be designed to combat a particular social wrong, with the aim of creating equality.

*** So, from this perspective, immigration can only be a good thing! Should I tell Mr Cameron?

If I tweeted...

2010-01-12T04:24:00.000-08:00

it would look like this.

28th Dec: think this is a good time to deal with that large pile of paperwork on your desk; spread it liberally around your living room floor; start to sneeze.

New Year: I have the flu, it's cold and I haven't been able to do any laundry since before Christmas as the pipes to my washing machine in an outhouse have frozen; paperwork has been moved into piles but still spread liberally around living room (but Happy New Year).

2nd Jan: I still have the flu and am snowed in (unable to do laundry; paperwork gallore).

3rd Jan: I still have the flu and am snowed in (unable to do laundry; paperwork seems to be growing).

4th Jan: I still have the flu, am snowed in and back and work (unable to do laundry; paperwork definitely growing, feelings of guilt about not taking down the Christmas tree).

5th Jan: The advantage of having the flu during a 'big freeze' is being able to complain about the heat. (Take down Christmas tree, but don't bother hoovering up the green stuff that now trails between your living room and shed).

8th Jan: have the flu, back at work, snowed in and my laptop has kerplunkted on me (here's to extended warranties). Drag out work laptop (provided by employer but significantly inferior to my own laptop), starting process of winding it up, updating anti-virus etc. (laundry does not do itself- who knew? Paperwork is now an art installation, sprinkled with fake green pine needles).

9th Jan: I still have the flu, am snowed in, back at work despite broken laptop, and the bottom of my sofa has collapsed so am sitting on the floor, surrounded by paper and green sprinkles (still unable to do laundry).

10th Jan: Am recovering from flu, and can't replace sofa due to being snowed in; it is also from Ikea, so if I want a replacement, I need to find a van and drive for an hour and a half (presuming I can get through the snow). (Still unable to do laundry, have started nesting in paperwork for warmth).

11th Jan: Generally feeling much perkier, roads now travellable with care, still no inclination to travel for over an hour to replace sofa (still unable to do laundry, no longer notice paperwork, it's a feature).

12th Jan: Feeling much better, but wake up to no water. The water main has burst outside. Still sitting on very broken sofa. Still unable to do laundry (with a very large and growing pile in my bedroom), but now also unable to do dishes and generally clean my house or myself. Perhaps paperwork could be used as coffeetable? Certainly the green sprinkles are an improvement on the original carpet.

12th Jan, pm: My landlord writes to ask a suitable date to 'inspect' my house.

Politics, Family and Expenses.

2009-12-16T04:23:00.000-08:00

Blink and you might have missed it, but this week the Scottish Parliament says they are to ban MSPs from employing relatives, in the wake of the Westminister expenses scandal. This may seem a rather innocuous decision in light of the egregious abuses of this system that have recently been revealed, but like every story, it has two sides.

Traditionally, parliamentary politics was the arena of the wealthy elite, voted for by a few other rich men. Sitting in Parliament was a privilege that brought significant financial, social and political advantage to the MP and his family, and so no wage was paid. Over the nineteenth century, the franchise was extended and with it the men eligible to sit in Parliament. However, it was still unpaid (although various experimental attempts to pay MPs were suggested and implemented at various points for short periods) and the benefits of the working the system were difficult without good connections, which meant that men from ordinary backgrounds found it hard to afford to sit in Parliament. By 1911, the implications of this for democracy were becoming realised and MPs were given wages. At the same time, it was suggested that perhaps some expenses should be covered, such as postage and travel, but it wasn't until the 1960s that this was really formalised or utilised in a significant way. It wasn't until 1969 that a budget was officially created for secretarial staff.

So who, you might ask, did all the work needed to support an MP, to manage constituents, and to create the publicity campaigns required to get MP's elected? Well, no prizes for guessing here, it was the wives and families of the (mostly male) MPs. Family, but especially wives, were responsible for a considerable amount of free labour required to support the democratic system. And, furthermore, the system operated on this understanding. Traditional notions of the family wage still permeated the public imagination, so that an MP's wage was not his own, but a family wage. Therefore, if the family had to help earn it, then this was perfectly socially acceptable. [And, yes, this did put female MPs at a significant disadvantage as if they were married they were frequently married to working men, who could not offer the same support to their roles.]

By the 1960s, with the resurgence of middle-class women back into the workforce, increasing numbers of female MPs, and a questioning of the concept of the 'family' wage, it became recognised that this 'free labour' from MP's families might actually border on exploitation. Furthermore, this free labour was quickly drying up as the middle-class women who were married to (still mostly) middle-class MPs looked for paid work, or, as the case often was, many women suddenly found themselves with the double-burden of their own careers and the many responsibilities of the political wife. Secretarial expenses, paid to family members, paid women for work they were frequently doing anyway for free, discouraging them from working in other areas. And, it was a system that parliament continued to benefit from, as unlike a non-related paid employee, your wife didn't go home at 5pm if the work wasn't done.

Now, it could be argued in the 21st century where most Scottish women work, and so few work for their MP husbands, and where there is less expectation that 'political wives' work for free, that getting rid of paid expenses for family members prevents corruption and does little harm. Yet, a comment by the MSP Sandra White, who employs her son, perhaps shows that the system hasn't changed that much:

"We are being punished for what's happened in Westminster by some greedy MPs who did rip off the system. If you ask anyone who employs members of their own family, you'll find the trust and the availability of them being able to work extra hours is something that we actually treasure." [My bold]

The exploitation of family members for free (even for those who are paid a wage) continues to be a significant part of the democratic system. And, the concern that banning family members from political work raises, is that rather than seeing the family removed from politics, we go back to a system where the family is exploited for no reward. Furthermore, there are a number of MPs who met their spouses on the job, marrying their aids or other members of staff; are we now suggesting that staff (and who's to bet it would be female staff!) step down from their jobs on marriage? Are we heading back to the 1920s?

Now, I am as concerned with the exploitation of the expenses system as the next person and I even concede that it may be time for the 'political wife' to finally get a divorce. But, a ban on employing family members, that doesn't at the same time recognise that the exploitation of family members is part of the system and try to rectify it, seems problematic. Furthermore, in a system where MP's staff are employed by individual MPs, rather than by the state, there is little room for staff to be moved around if they marry an MP, or even for family members for whom politics is THEIR career. They are instead dismissed from their jobs, as if they had no value, and have to hope they get employment elsewhere. It seems to me that this legislation is a step backwards, rather than a step towards fixing a problem.

Not a real post.

2009-12-15T05:37:00.001-08:00

Well, congratulations to me, because the BOOK is now finished and with the publisher, so it will probably come out in the next decade- seriously publishing is SLOOOWWW- unless you're JK Rowling.

But, perhaps, I can now get back to some regularly scheduled posting- but not today. I have no inspiration at all right now and there isn't even anything controversial happening on the news (well yes I could go and read the Daily Mail, but that's just shooting fish in a barrel).

One question for y'all in the know- what 'days' should a good feminist historian blogger remember to celebrate? I recall there is a women in science day, but when is it? I know that March is Women's History month and the 8th International Women's Day, that April is Sexual Violence Awareness month, and that in November/December is 16 days against violence against women- which includes both elimination of violence against women day and Human Rights Day. But, other than that, I am having a blank. I suddenly thought it would be good to commemorate these days with posts, but I never seem to know about them until they happen. Thoughts would be gratefully received.

Announce-y-thingys

2009-11-24T12:49:00.000-08:00

As part of 16 Days of Action for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Tomorrow Night is RECLAIM THE NIGHT GLASGOW 2009.

This year the route for the Reclaim the Night march in Glasgow will be from Botanic Gardens at 6.30 pm, down Byres Road - University Avenue - Gibson Street - Eldon Street and will end with a rally in the STUC, 333 Woodlands Road, Glasgow G3. As always, it will be led off by SheBoom and there will be hot drinks, food, stalls and music at the end of the march. If you need more information you can contact the Rape Crisis Centre at info@rapecrisiscentre-glasgow.co.uk.

This years theme for 16 Days of Action for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (25th November to 10th December) is ‘Commit – Act – Demand: we CAN end violence against women’. So it is perhaps both saddening and timely that the Daily Record reported that reported domestic violence rose by 8% this year to 53,861 incidents (in a country with a population of 5 million!) If you want to see what's happening internationally to combat violence against women over the next 16 days, please click here.

Now, I have to go finish writing the last chapter in my book, which just happens to be about domestic violence.

A Life of the Over-Worked

2009-11-22T03:46:00.000-08:00

Since the 12th October, I have spent one week in large English city (where my university is at) for work, 1 week in major European city for work, 2 days in medium sized European city for 'team meeting', 2 days in large English city for work, and 3 days in Northern English city for getaway weekend with one's spouse. I have also written 3 funding applications for a conference I am organising, one funding application for a post-doc for me, applied for 3 jobs, done all the other admin and research parts on my job and desperately tried to get my book finished. Tomorrow, I go back to major European city for a week of research, but by the end of the month I must also finish my book (yeah!), and one article which I promised would be done (and have been promising for some time), write a book review for a book that I read about two months ago, complete another job application, and ideally find the time to spend several hours on a database that my university is trialling to get the sources I need before it expires on the 30th. By Christmas, I need to put together another post-doc funding application (on a different topic from the 1st), apply for 2 other jobs, and write a half-hour workshop paper (for just after Xmas but who wants to work at Christmas right?). I also have three other books to read and review in the next couple of months, plus turning my workshop paper into a high-quality article and writing a third article which is due for a journal special edition in May. I am also organising a conference in May (which if I get funding will also have a spin-off publication- a book which I will be editor for), and am part of an organising team for a second conference in September, for which I need to write three funding applications all due in Feb/Mar.

The tension with all this being, that I am only employed to do research, so that has to happen every week regardless of whether I have funding/writing/job deadlines. On the otherhand, if I only do research, I will not get a job when this contract expires, because it's all that other crap that gets you jobs. Rather depressingly, since the job market opened at the start of September, there have been in total 6 jobs advertised for which I could apply- and this is really because there is NO jobs, and many of the post-doc people have cut their requirements so you have to be 1 year past PhD, rather than 6!!! Which is fine, if we imagine there is lots of nice jobs waiting for people who have PhD and (by next year) 3 years employed post-doc experience (I know I've been lucky) but there just isn't. It might pick up after Christmas. Here's hoping.

And to top it all off, it's raining and it hasn't stopped for days. And, I have major flooding all around me, which, as I live on a mountain, I am relatively safe from, but when you drive down the mountain to the rest of humanity, you find all the roads cut off. It's actually one of the most visually amazing sights I've seen, but also devastating. On Friday, heading for the train, I was driving along parallel with the river and became conscious that the fields next to the river were entirely flooded and as the road turned to where I would eventually cross the river, in front of me was no road, no sign of a bridge, but a broad river running, very quickly across the countryside over what used to be fields and the road. This river is usually so low down in the bank that you can't see it from the road, unless you stopped and looked over the bridge, and suddenly it's as wide as two football fields and fast-moving. It was quite breath-taking (and I didn't have my camera). But, also stopped me getting my train. And for the villagers in that village two of the main roads into town were blocked by that flood, and you could enter and exit from the other side, but that involved a thirty mile detour. I then headed to an alternative train station, where I got a rail replacement bus, and got treated to similar sights across the countryside. Every river we drove past had burst its banks. The water was literally at the top of bridges, with no space between. It was quite awesome (in its biblical sense), but I think it means I have to start building an ark and I am not sure whether I'll fit it in before Christmas.

Because I am too tired to write.

2009-11-10T16:43:00.000-08:00

(Physcially tired, too many deadlines, too much work...) You can appreciate one of my holiday photos and imagine yourself in a feminist paradise.

Charivari, Halloween and the Slutty Witch/Nurse/Bee/...

2009-11-02T03:05:00.000-08:00

Festivals and dressing-up of various sorts have a long history in Western Europe. Not just Halloween, but Saints Days (of which there were many before the Reformation), local holidays, and regional traditions offered communities the opportunity to get together, dress up, feast and drink, enjoy each other’s company and air grievances against others in the community. The spirit of costume and the festival could also be recreated in the moment when a social injustice needed recognised or community discipline needed dishing out. So, every now and again, when a wife was being unfaithful, the community dressed up (disguised themselves), and in the UK beat pots and pans or drums, went to the house of the husband, placed horns on his head (a symbol of his humiliation) and rode him backwards on a donkey through the town- a message to the man to get his house in order and a warning to others. A woman who had breached community discipline might be taken by the crowd in a similar manner and ducked in a pond or river to remind her to behave. This style of community discipline is now known by historians as the ‘charivari’, its Italian name. In Northern Ireland, a favourite form of charivari was for the disguised crowd to go to the house of the wrong-doer (from the community’s perspective) and to make a bonfire, dancing round, singing and hitting pots and pans (or whatever else was handy).

The opportunity to think and protest about power structures within the community was often a central part of festivals. Children, the most powerless in the community, dressed up as kings and queens, the most powerful people in the land (still seen in local gala days in the UK); men dressed up as women and women as men, reflecting a questioning of the ‘natural’ order. Festivals were an opportunity to question the status quo in an environment where it would hopefully go unpunished (there were boundaries!), and costume allowed individuals to make political points ‘in disguise’ (although this often was in part an unspoken agreement to not recognise individuals). A central concept within festival tradition was ‘the world turned upside down’, the opportunity for people to become what they were not in everyday life- to don costumes and become for a night what they could only imagine the rest of the year.

In contemporary society, Halloween is one of the only opportunities people have left to engage in this tradition. So, what do their costumes tell us about our society? Some of this is obvious- people dressed up as superheroes are always popular, reflecting a desire to be larger than life, to matter and make a difference, in a world where the individual is seen to be more important than the community and working together. The superhero is the realisation of the individual at its best. Doctors, nurses and surgeons covered in blood is a rather obvious comment on the medical world as people who save lives and yet are never far from death. Like witches or zombies in the past, they increasingly represent the boundary between life and death, the real world and the supernatural. This year we also saw the wider cultural obsession with vampires in numerous costumes on this topic, highlighting our interest in immortality in a world where death seems increasingly distant and scary due to decreased mortality for the young- and living forever seems increasingly realistic.

And finally, we have the ‘slutty witch/nurse/bee’ (seriously, I saw four slutty bees this Halloween) or whatever costume you like but with a lot of body parts showing. If the theory of festival and charivari holds true, women dress as ‘slutty X’ as it is both conventional and denied to them. That is, disguise should be understood by its audience and should be commenting on current social expectations- no thinking outside the box or you become culturally irrelevant (as every historian who chooses to dress as an obscure historical figure to a party amongst non-historians knows)-so it is conventional. It should also be something that cannot be worn everyday- you must become more than yourself, but not so out there that you become meaningless.

So what does the ‘slutty X’ costume tell us about our society? It suggests that the ideal of women as sexual objects is held out to women as an ideal form of femininity, but also one that is unachievable in the everyday, and perhaps even inappropriate (like the child as Queen). Its ubiquity also suggests that it is the central cultural norm that women have to use as a standard for their behaviour. It is notable how few women today now dress up as men for Halloween-a phenomenon that was extremely popular in past generations. Women today no longer see men or manliness as something to be achieved or as shaping the female self- perhaps unlike men’s position towards women (you still get men cross-dressing at Halloween, although again this is becoming rare in the straight community). Instead, the all pervasive sexy, slutty woman becomes the central standard that women are expected to strive for or idolise, when thinking about self. The princess in all of us, that women in the past were thought to desire to be treated as, is gone. Instead, being sexy or ‘slutty’ is the new model for femininity. It may be unachievable, but it is always there, shaping hopes and desires and sense of self. It is also worth noting, like in so many other spheres of life, that men have considerably more options at Halloween than women, who are increasingly homogenised.

Perhaps next year (and look I am giving you ages to think about this), we need to think about costumes that both challenge the status quo and are unconventional; costumes that challenge expectations of femininity and provide an alternative commentary on what it means to be female.

Can't have it both ways.

2009-11-01T04:19:00.000-08:00

A politics meets academia post. The Chief Advisor on drugs policy - a scientist Prof. Nutt- has been sacked after he openly spoke out about his opinion on drug classification- a statement that contradicted the government's official policy. Alan Johnson, the MP who sacked him said, 'What you cannot have is a chief adviser at the same time stepping into the political field and campaigning against government decisions. You can do one or the other. You can't do both.' And that all sounds fair, doesn't it? The people who work for the government should agree with the government.

Except that the problem is that this means the government can consult you as a scientist, completely ignore your advice, and still put your name as backing to their political policies. And, how do you think that makes you as a scientist look to other scientists? What scientist wants to be associated with whackadoo, ill-informed government policy? What scientist wants his authority as a scientist used to promote something that is unscientific?

I know the acceptable stance in this case, is to have the government consult you, ignore you and then resign in a big huffy fit, but the problem is that most scientists want government policy to be well-informed; they want the work they do to matter and actually help people, and when your resign you lose that opportunity.

The government can't have it both ways. You can use independent, scientific advice that is well-informed to support your policy or your don't, but you can't make a big show of having a chief advisor who is a scientist to give your policy authority, and then ignore him, and expect him to keep his mouth shut.

Train Tales, Part 2.

2009-10-21T05:06:00.000-07:00

So, same journey as last post, but on a different train. Two men, aged 23 an 25, were sitting behind me. They were strangers to each other, but making small talk about their lives and why they were on the train. The 23 yr old had left school at 16 with no qualifications and tried various jobs, before becoming a carpet-fitter to a man who was close to retirement and would let him take over the business in the near future. The 25 yr old was a university educated, newly qualified music teacher, who until recently had been a 'freelance musician'. He was going to visit his girlfriend who worked in a very specialist occupation that requires you to live in certain places in the UK [in the interests of anonymity I won't say what it is, because it actually is that specialist- there are 24 sites in the UK where such a person could work]. They had been dating since high school and had frequently lived separately- for example during university and now. They discussed how this was hard, but 25 yr old, commented that if you made it work, it could work. At which point, 23 yr old asked why doesn't SHE get get a job near you. 25 yr old got a bit flustered and explained that well, she had trained for years at university to do this job. 23 yr old interrupted and said, yeah, but she could work at X [Similar site slightly further south- which was actually laughable as like in academia, I wouldn't imagine these jobs are that common or easily got]; 25 yr old even more flustered tried to explain it was a newish job and maybe in the future... He then changed the subject. At no point, did either man suggest or discuss the fact that as ex-freelance musician was a teacher, HE might find it easier to move near HER.

I thought this conversation was interesting for a number of reasons. First, because I think 25 yr old genuinely respected his girlfriend's career choices and had no expectation that her life would resolve around him, but that he also was unable to articulate that to another man. In fact, he became flustered, slightly defensive, and eventually changed the subject. There was no assertion that the choice they made as a couple was valid. There was also no discussion whatsoever that a man might move for a woman, despite the fact his occupation might point to this as a more obvious choice. 23 yr old to my mind was slightly immature and I don't think he was being intentionally sexist, rather I think he just couldn't envision the alternative options available to this couple. He afterwards commented that he was meeting his 18 yr old sister that night and she was bringing her friends, which was said in such a way as if to suggest she was bringing him a large box of chocolates. And, 25 yr old did the uncomfortable, aren't you lucky laugh, which showed he didn't really agree, but didn't want to offend his conversant- but which subleties the 23 yr old totally missed- as demonstrated by his elaboration of this topic. In some ways, I think this was about two different types of masculinity meeting and not really knowing how to connect- both assuming that the other shared their worldview, and then getting confused when the other wasn't interpreting the conversation in the correct way. But, it also demonstrated the different ways that female autonomy is dealt with by different men. Make of that what you will.

Dear Finnish Female Flatmate

2009-10-17T04:30:00.000-07:00

Dear Finnish Female Flatmate,

Yesterday, I was on a train when a group of loud, male Londoners, discussed you. Your male flatmate confessed he had the hots for you, but didn't think you were interested. His louder and more agressive friend assured him that any girl who moves to London to live with three men was just 'looking for a good pole-ing' and he should 'go for it'. Said friend reiterated that Scandanavian girls (brief interlude while they discussed whether Finland was indeed Scandanavia, agreed it was, and continued) were all hot and up for it (unlike English girls), had less sexual hang-ups than 'stereotypically' [I think they were using this term wrongly] English girls, and that all you were looking for was a 'good pole-ing' [he did have a fondness for this term]. Your flatmate plaintively noted that you were here to study, but he was shot down by his mates, as your ethnicity and choice to live with a group of men apparently indicated your real desire was -yes again- to have a 'good pole-ing'.

Just thought you should be warned in case any poles come in your direction.

Best wishes,

Feminist Avatar.

Gude Cause

2009-10-11T03:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday saw the Gude Cause March 2009, a re-enactment of a march for woman's suffrage held in Edinburgh in 1909. It's aim was to commemorate the women who fought for our right to vote, to celebrate woman's achievements over the last century, and to 'draw attention to what still needs to be done'. In fact, there was a brilliant turnout from a wide range of woman's groups, including a huge showing from the various regional branches of Scottish Women's Aid, the STUC with their 50/50 banners- calling for equal representation women at all political levels-, engender with their call to recognise poverty as a woman's issue, Women's History Scotland with their banner reminding us that women's historical contribution is still under-researched and under-represented, and numerous other women's organisation who are fighting to make a change to women's position TODAY. And, it was a fabulous day and great event.

But, it is being reported as a historical re-enactment and nothing more. The BBC reports:

Suffragette march marks centenary

The parade re-enacted the march in Edinburgh 100 years ago. About 2,500 people have taken part in a parade in Edinburgh marking a key suffragette demonstration which took place 100 years ago. Participants carried banners and dressed in historic costumes in Saturday's re-enactment of the original march in the capital in 1909. The movement was a fight for women's rights which lasted almost 60 years. At the time hundreds of people took banners and flags to join a rally along Princes Street on 10 October 1909. Women were finally awarded the vote in 1928, but on Saturday their fight was remembered as people took part in a re-enactment of that day. It is the culmination of a summer of activities that has seen traditional protest banners and quilts being made, and a major exhibition about the movement at Edinburgh museum. Tram works mean the procession could not follow the original route along Princes Street but it started at Brunsfield Links and finished at the top of Calton Hill. The suffrage movement spanned almost six decades. Education Secretary Fiona Hyslop, who joined the procession, said: "Without the suffragists and suffragettes we would still be stuck in an age when women couldn't own property, they couldn't hold public positions and they couldn't vote. "The suffrage movement made a lasting contribution to Scottish democracy and society. They led the way for women to have their voice heard and towards an end to discrimination and prejudice." Ms Hyslop said some of the biggest suffragette demonstrations were in Edinburgh. "The city saw the first suffragette to be force-fed in a Scottish prison, Ethel Moorhead, imprisoned in Calton Jail," she added. "I think she would have found it hard believe that one day the offices of the Scottish government would stand on that very spot, a government not only elected by women voters, but including women ministers." Anne McGuire, Labour MP for Stirling, said: "I wouldn't be allowed to be a politician today without the struggle of the suffragettes. "These women changed political life forever in the UK, allowing women to enter what was at one stage a male-only arena."

There is no mention that this was a call for future change. The march itself was divided into three sections- past, present and future, with people in the past section dressed as suffragettes, and the rest of the crowd dressed in other costumes or the suffrage colours of white, green and violet. The present was the largest section of the crowd by far and there were several children's organisations (and children!) in the future section, which was fantastic. But the only photographs being shown on the BBC are of women dressed as Edwardian suffragettes. The speeches by the female politicians reported here all included calls for concrete changes that needed to happen to make society more equal, but, there is no mention of this. Their words are restricted to their comments celebrating their forebearers. The radical edge of this movement is quashed and an invigorating and exciting demand for social change is turned into a historical anachronism.

There is a flickr site for people to upload their photos to- I forgot my camera, but I'll try and steal some good one's when they posted.

ETA: Actually, STV is slightly better, it includes this statement: The organisers say the aim of the event is to remember the 1909 march, whilst also drawing attention to the problems women still face around the world, such as domestic violence, forced marriage and human trafficking.

Rehabilitating Maggie T.*

2009-10-09T03:48:00.000-07:00

Margaret Thatcher was the first, and only to date, female prime minister of Great Britain between 1979-1990. Her economic policies transformed the British economy, causing great heartache, detroying Socialist Britain, and leaving a political legacy where the only acceptable 'left-wing' political party was New Labour (who brought pseudo-socialism for people who uncomfortable with the harshness of unrestricted capitalism). Her destruction of any true socialist movement in Britain, as well as her economic legacy amongst the lower-classes (mass unemployment, blame Maggie), has meant that the left has done its utmost to denegrate and belittle her. And, I am not unsympathetic towards this approach, but I think that perhaps this needs some feminist analysis.

Maggie T effectively created the current political agenda as well as the terms in which our economy functions. Despite a lot of anti-Tory rhetoric, no major political party has demanded a return to the nationalisation of industry, has given more rights to the Trade Union movement, or questioned whether a strategy of mass unemployment is a natural by-product of the capitalist system. Most major political parties, however, HAVE jumped on Maggie's bandwagon of describing those dependant on benefits as scroungers, scum, chavs and generally not worthy of consideration. They have all actively pursued reduced benefits and distanced themselves from taxation. No major political party represents the working-class anymore. 'Labour' now means middle-class; if you are not middle-class or striving towards it then you aren't worth representation. Now, for the left, this is not a legacy to be proud of, but in the last 30 years, no person has done more to transform the terms in which we do politics. Furthermore, it is the legacy of our only female PM.

What about our relationship with America? Yes, this has a long-history, but it was Maggie who actively distanced Britain's relationship with Europe and situated us alongside America. Where are our pro-European parties now? Oh, sorry don't exist. Blame a woman.

Yet, this legacy is not discussed or critiqued, which is hugely problematic. Our refusal to attribute our current political context to Maggie for the left is about denying a much-derided woman her political legacy, which is one of the only ways we can punish her for creating this situation (so it is understandable). But, because that political legacy is not attributed, it leads to a situation where we think the way the economy operates is natural, normal, inevitable. We think that politics has to take place under the terms Maggie set up, because we don't understand their history. And, the irony is, this makes her victory all the more complete.

So, how do we deal with Maggie? Maggie Thatcher, milk-snatcher; The Iron Lady; 'more balls than Brown'; 'more balls than the whole Nulab cabinet'; 'She is, on the contrary, a patriarch'; 'Mrs Thatcher disguised herself as a man'.

Whether she is being appraised from the left or right, Maggie Thatcher's legacy is that she was more than manly enough to have been prime minister. She had more balls than men of her generation or that following. She took milk away from small children (how unwomanly was that?). She presented herself in manly ways and convinced the nation she was more than a woman. And perhaps, it is true that Maggie did not conform to stereotypically feminine behaviour.

But, what does that legacy say to our daughters? I was a child when Maggie ruled Britain and I remember being told in school what an achievement it was to have a female PM, and I remember thinking that one day I too could be PM if I chose. Yet, by turning Maggie into a man, we remove the political legacy that Britain did have a female Prime Minister, and we can have one again. We create a culture where we say that politics is a man's game and woman have no place, and we remove the legacy of women on the way our society currently operates- so once more the responsibility for making our country what it is, is seen to have come from men. The significant role that a woman played in making Britain what it is today is being erased from popular memory. And that is bad for feminism, bad for women and bad for society.

*Before I begin, I am not politically conservative and do not support Margaret Thatcher's political ideology or the manner in which she transformed the British Economy and the political agenda up to the present day.

** Image H/Tip to Historiann, from this shop.

Patriarchy 101

2009-10-02T05:40:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me when reading feminist blogs and comments to blog posts, that there is a lack of understanding about what patriarchy is and means. This is especially obvious in discussions of men's role in feminism, in society and in a feminist society. Many feminists start out with the caveat that they 'like men' or 'don't think all men are oppressors', but few feminist theorists would bother making that point, as 'men are all evil' is not actually what is meant when they refer to patriarchy.

Patriarchy is a social system which includes men and women (as well as people who don't easily define as either). The philosopher Bourdieu argues that power can be direct- such as when you force someone to do something through coercion, or physical violence- or indirect, exercised through culture, social values and institutions, and language. The exercise of power becomes a social system when power moves from being direct to indirect. Patriarchy is not exercised directly by men over women, but indirectly through our involvement in social structures- the way we talk to each other, what we mean when we think 'woman' or 'man' in our heads, our legal system and governance, social customs, traditions and formal institutions like education and religion. Patriarchy is a social system which is built on the concept of gender difference and that gender difference should determine how we think about each other, what our role is in society, and what people get to exercise power. While feminists are usually concerned with patriarchy's impact on gender relationships, it also incorporates other power structures seen in race, class, disability and sexuality politics (and more)- as these power structures all combine and inform each other.

Both men and women live within this system and it is the act of living in it that both creates patriarchy and reinforces it. Men gain from patriarchy, but not exclusively. Some men gain more than others; some women also gain. Furthermore, by the time power is a social system, everybody who is operating within it is participating in its continuation- even if you don't want to be. In this way, women are as responsible for the perpetuation of patriarchy as men. And, while men gain more from patriarchy, and so may be more reluctant to give it up, they are just as much 'victims' of patriarchy as women. They can no more choose to remove themselves from a patriarchal world than women.

When power is direct, it is easier (but not necessarily easy!) to address- you can fight back, you can remove yourself from the realm the individual exercises power in, you can resist. When power is a system, fighting back is a lot more overwhelming. First you have to decide what your goals are, but this means changing the way you understand the world. If you have been brought up your entire life to believe that women are lesser human beings than men, taking the conceptual leap to equality is actually a major breakthrough. Yet, we made that leap and we made tangible goals to make change- increased education, votes for women, access to the professions, equal pay, reproductive rights, rights to exercise our sexuality; rights to our own body. Some of those goals have been met; some we are working towards.

However, we are not complete in our dismantling of patriarchy, because we have not yet been able to conceptualise what a world looks like where gender means something different. We talk about getting rid of gender, but we do not know what to replace it with. We talk about rehabilitating gender (different but equal), but we can't get away from the fact that 'different' is used to deny people rights and opportunities. This problem is because patriarchy is not just about individual action- it is a state of mind. It is a state of mind that we all share and as such we are not encountering new ideas or ways of thinking that might allow us to change our state of mind. We don't even have the terms to start this conversation, as our basic descriptors are 'he' and 'she'. The exercise of power is written into the very structures of our language-the language that we use to think with.

This should not make people despair- the fact is we have made huge conceptual leaps in the past which have allowed us to shake the foundations of patriarchy. But, we have not yet dismantled it. And, this is why language, and how we use it, is important- because it shapes our world. It is also why feminism is not about women hating men; it is about challenging the very way we view the world and asking women and men to join us in that.

******

Illustrated by example: Last week, I pointed out the rather large discrepancy in sentencing between men and women who killed their children. So, how does this happen? Did the judge (male or female) just hate women and want to punish them? This is unlikely. In fact, s/he probably thought s/he was responding to the crime appropriately. But subconsicously, when confronted with a woman who killed her child s/he probably had a thought that went: women = mother> mothers protect, nurture children> this woman killed children =heinous. The judge sentencing the men thought: men + violence = normal masculinity > men killed children = within the boundaries of normal masculinity= standard sentencing. The gender of the criminal had a differential impact on how the same crime was viewed, resulting in different sentencing.

Thus, gender matters, patriarchy exists, women suffer, men suffer= time for change.

More tokenism.

2009-10-01T01:41:00.000-07:00

Women have been practising law in Britain since the 1870s and called to the Bar since the 1920s, but despite several generation of women lawyers in Britain, we could only find one qualified enough to sit on the brand-spanking new Supreme Court. SIGH.

But, actually, the content of this post is a complaint about the website. In the UK, there are three equal and distinct legal systems, operating in England and Wales, in Scotland and in Northern Ireland. The Supreme Court is to be the final court of appeals for all three systems, so the judges are meant to reflect all three systems. There are eight lawyers representing the English system, two for Scotland and two for Northern Ireland, which given population differentials is not hugely unfair. However, if we read the website, two of the judges practised law in Scotland, two in Northern Ireland, and eight just practised 'law' or were called to regional bars, with no mention that they represent the English and Welsh system.

The effect of this is to imply that the English/Welsh system is the default/the norm, and Scotland and Northern Ireland are exeptional. This denies the equality of the three legal systems and as such devalues the Scottish and Irish systems, making their representation tokenism. Let's hope the practice of law in the Supreme Court does not reflect this.

Spot the Difference.

2009-09-23T02:55:00.000-07:00

In Sept 2009, a mother has been given a minimum sentence of 33 years for the murder of her two daughters: 'Rekha Kumari-Baker, 41, stabbed 16-year-old Davina 37 times and 13-year-old Jasmine 29 times at their home in Stretham, Cambridgeshire'.

In January 2009, a father was given a minimum sentence of 21 years for the murder of his two sons: 'Ashok Kalyanjee, 46, who stabbed his two young sons- 6 years old Paul Ross and 2 years old Jay Ross to death, was sentenced to at least 21 years in jail.'

In Oct 2008, a father was given a minimum of 17 years for the murder of his two children: 'Robert Thomson, 50, stabbed his 25-year old daughter Michelle, and seven-year old Ryan, 26 times at their former family home in May.'

In Oct 2008, a father, James Howson, was given 22 years for murdering his 16 month old daughter by snapping her spine.

In 2001, a father, Darren Jenkinson, was given a minimum of 15 years for murdering his two infant sons, by smothering them.

Humanities are Big Business.

2009-09-21T01:57:00.000-07:00

The CBI are arguing that students pay more to go to University, because we all know that they have deep pockets and are just holding out on us. And, we all know how making university an impossible option during a recession won’t at all push students out of universities and onto unemployment lists (where they will be entitled to benefits that they don’t receive as students). But more than this, they also want ‘universities [to] focus more on economically valuable subjects such as science, technology, engineering, maths and languages’. Because we all know how humanities are a waste of time, right?

Now, I think humanities are important as they bring social benefits, creating a broader, well-rounded society with an able to think latterly, all of which has an impact of the economy. But in fact, humanities also provide graduates to some of our biggest industries. The book, journal and electronic publishing industry contributes over £5 billion a year to the domestic economy and this is increasing. The value of UK book exports is higher than any other creative industry and we export more books that any other publishing industry in the world. The export value of books to the UK economy in 2008 was £1.1 billion. And, where do you think the people- the writers, editors, reviewers and publishers- who work in this industry come from? Do they just spring, un-nurtured from the ground; is creative writing now a central aspect of the biology degree? No, they come from the humanities.

Our biggest manufacturers include Ben Sherman, Burberry, French Connection, Reebok and Umbro, all clothing companies. And who do you think sits around designing your latest togs, deciding what’s hip and what’s not? Physicists? What about when you need a website designed, a logo made, a brand created, an advertising campaign made- do you think these companies are run exclusively by scientists? What about tourism? Tourism brings £86 billion to the UK economy and a considerable part of that industry is driven by our heritage industry- that is people coming to see our history, our art and performing art, our family history records, our museums, and galleries. And who do you think makes this possible? Biologists and chemists? No, the numerous graduates who come from history, arts and other humanities and who paint pictures, put on shows, and go into museum planning, archives and preservation.

Plus 70% of graduate jobs are open to people from ANY discipline, so why are we pushing the sciences?

Off on Me Holidays...

2009-07-06T06:30:00.001-07:00

I am away on holiday and will not be posting until I get back...

Bad People doing Bad Things.

2009-07-05T16:30:00.000-07:00

The recent death of Michael Jackson has raised a lot of discussion about how feminists should approach ‘bad’, by which I mean anti-feminist, violent, abusive, sexist, racist, disablist etc, etc, people. If Michael Jackson was a paedophile, does that mean we should never listen to his music (or, for example, Gary Glitter’s)? Does the fact that men, or women, in our lives sometimes abuse or hurt us mean that we should cut them out of our lives? Is there ever a place to forgive? And why is it that certain crimes are less forgivable than others? Why is it that a man who rapes becomes a rapist, but we are unlikely to think of someone who speeds while driving as a ‘speeder’?

In the medieval periods and really into the eighteenth-century in Western Europe, every person was considered capable of sin (or for that matter had the potential for sainthood) - in certain theologies, we were all born sinners. People at that time believed that some people were more likely to commit certain sins or behave certain ways than others due to social circumstance, and, indeed, there was a strong belief that our social place was set by God, but it was not innate. We were not ‘naturally’ evil or good, or even, for that matter, gay or straight, male or female (well, gender was a complex mix of biology and behaviour, but that’s straying from the point). It was our behaviour that ultimately came to define us, but, equally, if we changed our behaviour we became something else. So men that had sex with other men were understood to commit sodomy- they may even be referred to as sodomites- but they could stop behaving in that way and would no longer hold the label. Homosexual sex was an act that could be performed by anybody; it was not the innate identity of a particular group.

Then came the eighteenth century, ‘the rise of the individual’ and the sense that the self was an innate, unique being that, depending on your philosophy, was with you from birth, or was formed in childhood (so not entirely natural) and difficult to alter once fully formed. Freud followed a century or so after this, and he took this philosophy applied it to sex, and, hey presto, sexual urges are part of your psychological make-up and a reflection of your development in childhood (where ‘deviant’ sexual urges reflect an ‘immature’ mind). This of course had huge implications for homosexuality, which while still considered ‘deviant’, at least was no longer a choice. But, it was not just homosexuals that were created by Freud and his predecessors, but rapists and paedophiles. All forms of sexual activity fell under the same umbrella; whether you got your kicks shagging kids, or jumping out of bushes; or looking at a variety of inanimate objects, or respectfully and consensually engaging in sexual activity with a willing partner, your sexual choices were a result of your psychology and as such were part of what made you – you. And you couldn’t (or at least not without years of professional help) ever get away from that- if you were a rapist that is who you were.

Now a lot of these ideas are now disputed, not least due to feminist analyses of sex and violence, as well as the work of the gay liberation movement, but these ideas continue to have a profound impact on how we view sex crimes. Now, other crimes can be assigned a psychological motive (and thus are seen as the problem of the individual), but we also recognise that the same crimes can be committed by healthy individuals. Some murderers kill due to an innate need to do so; some are normal people in the wrong place at the wrong time, or who make a choice to kill – perhaps for a cause, like a soldier. But, in general, we do not see the soldier who returns from war as innately murderous. Similarly, while some thieves may steal due to psychological issues, most are driven by economic need or desire.

It is much easier to forgive someone who has committed an individual crime, but is not a ‘bad person’, than it is to forgive someone who is innately evil or dangerous. But, the problem is that nobody is entirely without a redeeming feature. Some paedophiles produce outstanding music; some wife beaters are great humanitarians; none of us our perfect. Sometimes the people who hurt us are our families who offer love and pain with the same hand; who perhaps cause us pain not because they are malicious or evil but because they are imperfect individuals in an imperfect world.

And sometimes, it is easy to figure out the right path. Don’t buy music with homophobic lyrics or endorse behaviour which is discriminatory. Don’t buy products that support people whose behaviour is despicable. But, it isn’t so easy to cut off your families and friends. And what happens to the family of the rapist, who have to live with the horror of his crime, without necessarily being the victim. How do they respond to him- do they forgive or cut him out of their lives? And at what point, if ever, does a person earn forgiveness? When he or she says sorry; when they stop behaving in a ‘sinful’ way? And, for how long are they held in purgatory? How long after the rapist commits the crime does he become cleansed of his sin and allowed back into society- when does his music move off the ‘banned’ list? Especially, because the victim of a crime doesn’t just magically ‘get over it’- they often suffer years, if not a lifetime, of trauma; they may have to seek counselling; they may have physical scars; or a crime may affect their life opportunities. The re-integration of the sinner into society makes the sinner visible with the potential to remind the victim of their trauma- which is even more pressing when they are a public figure.

And, yet, is redemption never possible? Are we always the sum of our mistakes? Because none of us are crime free. Most of us hope to be continually learning and growing. How do we move towards a better, fairer society, unless we are allowed to move past our sins?

Query?

2009-07-02T04:02:00.001-07:00

When did prenups become uneforceable in England? These were well-recognised documents in the nineteenth century?

'Professional' Blogging.

2009-06-16T11:16:00.000-07:00

Some copper in Lancashire has received an 'official warning' from his employer- the police- because he kept an anonymous blog, in which he criticised both the government, government ministers and the beaurocracy of the police force. Apparently, this is 'unprofessional'. I have never read his blog, so am not sure what he said that was controversial.

But, it seems to me that as a police officer you have an obligation not to talk about ongoing police investigations or operations, which you are involved in or have 'inside' information on, and not to reveal personal information about fellow officers or about the public who you encounter within your job. This is because it might endanger convictions, people's safety and it breaches privacy legislation. But, why does being a police officer exclude you from having a say on the political process and on government. Yes, police officers are civil servants, who are not allowed to join political parties as they are expected not to be unduly influenced by party politics, but this is not the same as not having an opinion. Do we really think that police officers are mindless organisms who just do their job and have no interest in public affairs? And, do we even want police officers who do not understand the bigger political issues surrounding their job? Or, are they expected to be mindless, until they get to the senior ranks and suddenly have a broad political awareness and be able to make politically aware decisions? Let's not kid ourselves that policing isn't a political process.

Furthermore, what is the point in pretending politically motivated and knowledgeable police personnel are neither of those things? It doesn't stop them having those opinions. It doesn't stop them letting those opinions influence their jobs. Keeping your politics out of your job is a choice. Being able to separate the opinions stated on your private blog from how you do your job is a choice.

Finally and especially in light of the recent controversy over MP's expenses and our general dissatisfaction with our national leader's honesty, we, the public, should treat all attempts by the government to avoid transparency and public accountability as a challenge to our democratic process. If members of the police force are dissatisfied with the police force, a public body paid for by the public, then those concerns should be voiced to the public- their employers. What have they got to hide?I know the concern is that critisicms of the police undermine public confidence in the police- but the response to this should not be to shy away criticism, but to assure the public that there is no cause for concern. We have a right to be informed and worried when there is a problem, because the police should be accountable to us.

And, ultimately, this is what this late political crisis in government has been about- the relationship between the public and the government. We are finishing a process started during the English Civil War (as we style it, despite it being a UK-wide phenomenon). The Civil War was fought to dispute the right of the monarchy to rule and when Charles II was finally brought back to the throne, it was a rule based on the consent of parliament. Similarly, parliament governed through the consent of the people (a people who expanded over the next centuries with the broadening of the electorate), and when we finally introduced the police in the nineteenth century, they policed by consent. Consent has been at the heart of UK governance (over the UK, let's not mention the colonies) which is why transparency and accountability has always been of significantly more concern in the UK, than in other parts of the world, even in other European countries.

The latest expenses scandal highlighted the extent to which the accountability of parliament to the people had effectively been a myth, and it made us angry. This was not just a question of the misuse of our money, but was a challenge to the accountability of government that lies at the heart of our version of democracy. Parliament has lost our trust- our consent to govern- and they have to earn it back. This will happen through a willingness to be criticised, both internally and externally, to listen and adapt to criticism, to be transparant and to be accountable. Until they earn that trust, they have no right to discipline those that are willing to speak out against their misgovernment.

Thinking About Class…

2009-06-15T04:47:00.000-07:00

Polly recently started a discussion about how and why people identify with the class of their childhood, rather than their current social position, and points out that social mobility doesn’t always remove the markers of your working-class roots. Now, I am middle class- I have three degrees, I work in academia and I’m married to a teacher. But, I was raised in the west of Scotland. My family have been on the cusp of upper working class/ lower middle class for several generations. In my history I have bakers, furniture makers/fireman during the war, factory workers, miners, clerks, missionaries, female teachers and nurses, midwives, district nurses and more nurses. I came from a social group that were working very hard to make themselves middle-class, but didn’t approve of certain middle-class behaviours, such as university education [waste of time]. This led to an interesting situation where the women in my family, who all worked, were often more ‘qualified’ than the men, although the only appropriate career paths for women were teaching and nursing. I was not the first person in my family to get a degree, but only because my mother started university the year before I did. Since then, an uncle and an aunt and my sister have degrees (and my mother, uncle and sister also have Masters degrees), while my brother and two of my cousins are at university. At the same time, my other brother is a builder, like my dad; one of my cousins is joiner. Several cousins are at college doing vocational courses. In a very real sense, my family’s attitude to university has been transformed over a period of about a decade and it has impacted on several generations at one time.

Growing up in this background in the west of Scotland in the 1980s meant we were poor. I lived in an unemployment blackzone (ex-mining community), where people of my family’s social status were the highest social group. During my childhood, I experienced my father being seriously under-employed and finally losing his business (but a business owner!); I remember having literally no money in the house. I remember a friend who was not much better off than me being embarrassed to go to the local shop with me as I had to count out pennies to buy bread- and I remembered being confused at her reaction. Despite this, my family didn’t believe in welfare. The marker of our middle-class background was that we didn’t sign on and that we owned our own home [well, it was mortgaged but…]. My mother once bitterly remarked that the difference between us and our working-class neighbours was that they knew how to get a free washing-maching off the social. I never received pocket money and got my first job at 11, and have never stopped working. When I went to university, I lent my student loan to my parents to bail them out. I had two jobs between the ages of 16 and 18, and two again when I was 20. Things got better for my family in my late teens as my father’s second business began to do well and my mother got a degree and a ‘middle-class’ job. The experience of my younger siblings in somewhat different to mine, but I left home at 18 and didn’t feel the impact of this in the same way.

I went to the local primary school in a very poor, rural, working-class area and as a result have a west of Scotland, working-class accent. I went to private school for my high-school education because I got a grant, which Labour has since abolished. My accent was notably rougher than my schoolmates, but because I am obstinate, and because my friends continued to be working-class, I never adapted, and in a strange way it gave me a certain kudos. While my family were resolute in their belief in their middle-class standing, I was a different type of middle-class. My parents weren’t professionals; we didn’t have the available income of many schoolmates, and to my mind, we weren’t as uptight as these people. I noticed this even more when I went to university, where I was shocked that people couldn’t understand the working-class accents of the people behind the till- and thought that this was the worker’s problem, not theirs- and they had an entirely different sense of humour, so I sometimes felt that I was holding my breath, until I got back to ‘my people’. Yet, in another sense, I also wasn’t working-class.

When I first encountered my husband’s family (who were working-class proper), I was shocked at their crude, to my mind, jokes; I was amazed that they all smoked, and they had an entirely different attitude to work- I came from a family where you went to work if you were dying; they took days off for hangovers. Almost everybody in his family had experienced long-term unemployment at some point, and they all knew how to work, and exploit, the welfare system. Every male cousin of my husband’s that is older than him has a criminal record, while in a mark of social change happening to this family, amongst his younger cousins the effect is more mixed. Many have done significant gaol time. He was the first person in his family to get a degree and he left school with no qualifications, doing the HNC, HND, degree route. I definitely wasn’t part of this community, but to be honest in many ways I felt at home there.

My working-class accent came with me into academia and I know it makes a difference. The west of Scotland accent is particularly rough, even for Scotland, and I was told at my private school that it was ugly and we should try to refine it. It is a guttural, aggressive accent, spoken very quickly, and is associated with a violent, unruly social group [check out the West’s history of industrial unrest]. To the untrained ear, middle-class west of Scotland Scots still sound rough; the working-class accent more so- unlike perhaps the more sing-song accent of the borders or the incomprehensible vocabulary of the north-east. People assume that I am working-class, which is exasperated by the fact that I went to a university with a large working-class body (and which I picked for that reason). Some people [actually I think I mean men here, as most of the women I know in academia have similar backgrounds to me] assume that this means I am very clever, having overcome disadvantage to achieve; others are extremely patronising towards me. When I walk into to a classroom of middle-class 18 and 19 year olds and open my mouth, they are scared into submission by my voice.

I have no doubt that I am middle-class; I just need to look at my job title, but the markers of my past follow me, and that label seems inadequate, and in many ways inaccurate.

Silly.

2009-06-11T14:03:00.000-07:00

So I'm doing the lonely, drunken blogging in a hotel room thing and come across a personality test which tells me after I answer only 20 questions that I am a peacemaker.

And also that:

'Peacemakers are the most likely group to say they dislike reading history books, according to a UK survey.'

Hahahahaha.

Grumpy Feminist Warning!

2009-06-11T12:47:00.001-07:00

So, after a hard days work, I am strolling down a major shopping precinct in a major European city, appreciating the fabulous weather and the late night shopping, when I see this slogan 'WHEN YOU LOOK THIS GOOD, NOBODY CARES IF YOU'RE PLASTIC', emblazoned on a shop window, behind which life-size mannequins are rotating on pedestals, with some quite out-there fashion. Huh, I thought, how very post-modern to address the relationship between the fashion we as humans are meant to be wearing and the non-living icons that model the clothes that they want us to wear- to make explicit the unsaid- yada, yada, yada. And then I got a bit closer.

And, it turns out, it is not post-modern at all. No, Barbie is back and this time she is for grown- ups. Paul's Boutique, London [the brand, not the city] has co-opted every little girl's fantasy, plastered it onto a range of extremely expensive, and certainly not for little girl's, handbags and hopes that grown women want to be seen wearing Barbie slogans. Infantalising much?

Really? What woman wants to be associated with a children's toy? Perhaps, the buyer of this, also from Paul's Boutique.

Now, I get the studenty, reclaim our childhood memories type memorabilia is popular at the moment, as people wear their favourite children's tv show on a t-shirt or carry around their Bagpuss bags. But, to spend hundreds of pounds on accessories so that you can look like a childhood toy, and a toy that symbolises the impossible standards of bodily perfection placed on women from a young age, is just disturbing.

And what about that slogan? The relationship between a desire to look like Barbie and plastic surgery is more than a little explicit in our culture, and to tie that into a message about the acceptability of being 'plastic' reinforces that if you don't conform to cultural beauty norms, it is a failure of your purchasing power. In essence, buy this bag [or your face, or this dress, or this pair of boobs, or these shoes] or you are not beautiful.

The link between capitalism and patriarchy at its most explicit. Thanks Paul.

Men- you can be raped too! Congratulations.

2009-06-10T14:46:00.000-07:00

The Scottish parliament finally passed the new rape legislation that has been on the cards for a while. Previously, we had a very narrow definition of rape, which meant penis in vagina without the women's consent- but consent was never defined, and it has usually been taken to mean- did she say 'no'. The law has broadened so that rape can include penis into vaginas, anuses and mouths (so men can now be legally raped), while consent is now defined as free agreement where the party is not drunk, unconscious, asleep, threatened or coerced (and various other things). Consent can also be withdrawn at any point during the sex act. People need to show that they took steps to ensure consent to sex and describe what those steps were (in defence, if accused of rape). In effect, the idea should be to shift the burden, so the victim should not longer have to prove s/he said no, but rather that rapist needs to show that s/he said yes. It should no longer be a defence that s/he never said no or stop.

These are some great steps forward, although the initial discussions around the legislation wanted it to go further and it probably still should- for example, the definition of rape is still very narrow- only 'penises' get to penetrate. Rape with implements other than a penis still come under sexual assault. And the 'steps to ensure consent' is incredibly vague. What 'steps' are counted as valid? I kicked her and she grunted, I thought that meant yes? She wore a short skirt and flirted over a glass of wine. I thought that meant yes. She accepted a 'cup of coffee', I thought that meant yes. She was kissing me, I thought that meant yes. I guess the problem is that they have went to the effort to define what is not consent, or rather who cannot give consent, but do not define what consent should look or sound like.

It will be interesting to see the impact on convictions.

Summer has come to my garden.

2009-06-08T15:18:00.000-07:00

A rather wordy history of childbirth.

2009-06-07T06:46:00.000-07:00

This post is dedicated to Patricia Crawford (1941-2009), feminist, historian of women, and author of 'Attitudes to Menstruation in Seventeenth-Century England', Past and Present.

*******

Recently at the F-Word, there has been a discussion of childbirth practice, which at times has become rather heated as questions of hospital v. homebirth, vaginal birth v. caesarean, pain relief v. none, have been debated. The issue of pregnancy and childbirth is clearly important to woman, but this alone does not explain why so many women are so defensive of their personal choices. And I think that at times, a lot of us are not sure WHY we are protective of our personal choices in childbirth- we understand that this is a controversial and political issue without understanding what created that context. So, it seems to me that some historical context is necessary.

First of all, childbirth choices are part of wider discussion on the control of woman’s bodies. A woman’s right to own and make decisions over her own body is a long and on-going fight for feminists, perhaps mostly clearly seen in the debate over abortion, but certainly not limited to this. Every day women’s bodies are splashed over the media as magazines argue over whether celebrities are too fat or too thin, whether their breasts are the right size, whether they have cellulite, and whether their dress conforms to whatever arbitrary standard is ‘in’ that week. This discussion is not new. Fashion columns, discussions of women’s clothes and who is wearing them well have been part of newspapers since the 18th Century, while the link between clothing and modesty- a central part of woman’s identity for centuries- dates to earlier than the medieval period.

Until very recently, it was not just society that acted to constrain and control women’s bodies. Women were understood as property. When a woman was ‘seduced’, it was her father or husband who demanded compensation from her lover- both seduction and criminal conversation (where a husband sued his wife’s lover) cases operated on the basis that a woman’s body belonged to a man who must be compensated for its use by another. Seduction legislation was still in force in 20th Century England (and I am not sure it has ever been abolished); while criminal conversation was still available to husbands in Canada in the 1980s. The control of women’s bodies has long been a contested issue. The politics of childbirth therefore was created in a context that was about women’s bodily autonomy and the rights to their own body, and therefore was never understood as just about individual choice.

Childbirth, of course, has always been a part of human history, but in Western Europe from the 17th century, a process, often referred to as the ‘medicalisation of childbirth’ occurred. From the 17th century, and closely linked to other medical developments, pregnancy and the gestation of the child became of medical interest. Scientists began charting the steps of pregnancy, performing autopsies on dead women at various stages of pregnancy to see how foetuses developed, and exploring how pregnancy ‘worked’. Yet, these studies were still very detached from the experience of childbirth, where birthing remained a woman’s problem and where the birthing room was a place for women. Midwives and knowledgeable women both held the skills and the knowledge of how to help women birth, how to relieve pain, and what to do when things went wrong. A skilled midwife could cost a considerable sum of money and women understood the importance of having them at the birth. Indeed, some cruelty suits, where women sued their husbands for separation for cruelty, list a husband’s unwillingness to fetch a midwife as a form of cruelty and even as evidence of his desire to kill her.

Over the 17th and 18th centuries, as male doctors become an increasingly important part of medical care more generally, they also start to play a role in childbirth. Initially, childbirth was still a woman’s job, but doctors would be called in to deal with post-natal illness and infection, or to aid sick babies. Then as the eighteenth century progressed, and as medical care became regulated, with male doctors having to be trained and qualified through universities (rather than the traditional apprenticeship system), the unregulated and ‘untrained’ [aka not university educated] midwives became a medical problem. Doctors demanded that midwives be removed entirely from the birthing room, and childbirth became the forum of male doctors. Yet, initially male doctors, with their general medical educations, were not particularly knowledgeable about childbirth, so their success rates were often worse and certainly no better than the women they replaced. Over time, male doctors specialised in gynaecological care and so made headways in understanding what’s going on in pregnancy and how to aid childbirth, and so the success rates increased. But, it should be noted, it was not until nutrition improved and anti-biotics are invented to deal with post-birth infection (what is thought to be the biggest killer of women after childbirth) that we see meaningful improvement in childbirth mortality for mother and child.

This first step in the ‘medicalisation’ of childbirth did not come without a fight from midwives, who in some places demanded to be recognised and given qualifications to allow them to do their jobs (and are more or less successful depending on the region). And, this whole debate went on with almost no input from mothers. Male doctors demanded that female midwives be pushed out of medical care and male politicians and leaders said yes. There were no women voters or mothers with a political voice to speak for what was best for women. And, in many ways, the problem was that there still was no ‘best’ for the mother, whether you had a male doctor or a female midwife, your survival chances were usually down to a woman’s general standard of health and whether any complications arose during or shortly after delivery.

As should be a surprise to no one, male doctors won in the fight for women’s bodies in the 18th century and their control over women’s bodies was to increase with Enlightenment science. Enlightenment ideology, created in a highly religious world, strongly equated science with truth and incorporated a strong belief that there was ONE answer to every problem. Medical doctors as the holders of this TRUTH, became like gods whose opinion and advice could not be questioned (although there is some great work being done just now which highlights that many people did question standard medical advice in this period and often in idiosyncratic ways). People did what their doctor told them as he held the ANSWER. And women were particularly vulnerable under this system as their opinions, experiences and voices were worthless in a male-dominated world.

One of the effects of the domination of medical science by men was the adoption of the male body as normal and of the female body as aberrant and less perfect. The female body was always contrasted with the perfect male body and the things that women’s bodies did differently were understood as being not ‘normal’ or not ‘right’. As a result, everything that women did differently was understood as illness. The female body became pathologically unwell (and there is some really interesting work on the way that Victorian women use illness as a means opting out of social normativity- like the being too constitutionally ill to ever marry and so justifying their life of singleness). Pregnancy in particular was understood as an illness and if you read Victorian newspapers, court cases or even literature you frequently come across references to women’s illness, like she was in bed unwell, or she was by the fire ill, and what they mean is she was pregnant, or occasionally in the period shortly after childbirth. As an illness, pregnancy became the domain of doctors (much like woman’s bodies more generally) and woman’s experiences or desires became less relevant as they were not the experts on illness. In this sense, women became completely detached from their pregnancy, which was no longer seen as a natural part of life for many women, but an aberration.

In the Victorian period, unless you were very poor, you gave birth at home. This was because hospitals were where people went to die and where infection was rife, making it a place where only the poor and desperate went. However, with greater knowledge of infection and germs, and the importance of cleanliness, as well as general improvements in medical treatments, hospitals became much safer places. As a result and in line with a very medical mindset that doctors should be in control of every aspect of health and recovery, in the 1930s, childbirth moved from home to hospital. Again, a lot of the motivation for this move was still motivated by the belief that childbirth was an illness and the appropriate place for ill people was a hospital. However, it also brought benefits such a broader range of pain relief and for many women (who also understood pregnancy as illness) it made them feel safer and more in control. However, despite the fact by the 1930s nurses were a central part of nursing and midwives were once more a central part of childbirth practice, birthing mothers had very little control or say over what happened to them while they were in hospital.

The mantra of ‘doctor knows best’ informed women’s experience of childbirth and increasingly childbirth became more and more of a medical procedure, with women receiving increasingly identical and regimented ‘treatment’ for pregnancy, and having little control over what happened. By the 1950s, women going into hospital to give birth could find themselves having their personal belongings removed and put into hospital gowns, having their pubic hair shaved off in preparation for birth, keeping fathers and family members out of the maternity room, and having their children removed immediately after birth. Pain medications were heavily used and many women couldn’t remember the birth, and they were encouraged to bottle feed for ‘hygiene’ reasons. Women’s bodies during childbirth were considered to be an open access area. They were not offered options on procedures and consent was not asked when doctors decided things were not going to their liking and chose to intervene. The mother’s opinion was of little relevance, because after all this was a medical procedure, and what did she know about medicine. And there is some work that suggests that women’s inability to connect with the experience of childbirth had repercussions in the form of postnatal depression and an inability to bond with children [although neither of these phenomenon were new or unique to women at this historical moment].

From the late 50s onwards, the role of doctors in society came under increased scrutiny (not least when in the 1960s it was discovered that British doctors were performing experiments on patients without their consent that were more than a little similar to Nazi experiments in WW2, under a rubric of ‘doctor knows best’). The National Childcare Trust as well as many (other) feminist organisations began to challenge the necessity of the increased intervention of doctors in childbirth. They began to promote ‘natural’ childbirth- that is an understanding of childbirth that saw it as a natural part of the female experience and one that did not need to be co-opted by men or treated as an illness. These campaigns were founded on a need to give women control over their own bodies. Over time, hospitals responded to these demands and now (at least in theory) woman should be treated as individuals with individual pregnancies. They should be given information on what options they have (ie home birth or not, pain meds or not) and what is best for their peculiar needs and desires. Yet, as you can imagination, the fight for these rights was not easy or painless. Men had no desire to give up their control over women’s bodies and it was a long, hard-fought campaign.

Today, when we discuss our childbirth options, we discuss it in the context of what was a long-fight for the control over women’s bodies. That is why it is such a heated issue. The choice to have an elective caesarean brings back memories of a time when such medical intervention wasn’t a woman’s choice; while for other women, the right to have a vaginal birth at home is founded on a battle to give women that right. More recently, there is a debate over whether choosing not to have pain medication is a form of 'martyrdom' that is patriarchal in its own way- which at least in part comes from uncertainty over what the relationship between women's bodies and the medical profession should be. It becomes very easy to see one action as ‘feminist’ and another as ‘betrayal’ and yet, this is not what our foremothers fought for. They fought for our right to choose and our right to be in control of our own bodies. It was never meant to be that one way of birthing was more ‘right’ than another, but rather that these are our bodies, ourselves.

And while I further procrastinate writing the article that was due on Friday...

2009-05-31T08:54:00.001-07:00

Did anybody notice this headline: Rescued boys' mother 'shopping', in which lifeguards at Wirral beach blame an absent mother when they find two young children in deep water at the beach. This, perhaps, would not be problematic criticism except that the children were at the beach as a part of a larger family group and the boys had wandered off. Their grandmother and other family members were searching for them further up the beach.

It seems to me that if a mother leaves her children with people she trusts while she goes shopping, she is only very indirectly responsible when they wander off. Why is she been targeted? Where is the father [I'm going to assume there is one]? Is he just not there that day- well, shouldn't he share some of the blame? I mean, he clearly left his children with their mother, a woman who was irresponsible enough to leave them with a family member who let them wander off.

The lifeguard also told off the grandmother for not keeping a close enough eye on them, so it seems that who is to blame is not entirely clear, but it's definitely a woman.

What do we want?

2009-05-31T02:27:00.000-07:00

Marks and Spencer's Chairman, the boy Sir Stuart Rose, in a rant about how 'you've [women] got more equality than you ever can deal with,' while simultaenously pointing out that 'there are many girls in here who've got two kids who come to work', asks the question: 'What is it you haven't got?'

Well, we don't seem to have men in top positions not patronising us for starters. 'Girls' anyone?

Is it just me or is becoming more and difficult to buy an ethical bra?

Who was she anyway?

2009-05-30T03:04:00.000-07:00

This article from the BBC, which I have quoted in full, annoyed me. It discussed the murder of Kinga Legg by her boyfriend, but throughout the article, her boyfriend is discussed as a businessman, while she is his girlfriend. We learn about his businesses, his houses, where he lives, and his bankruptcy in 2006. In the last sentence, it is noted that she too is a successful businesswoman, and owns a tomato growing company with sites in the UK and Poland. But while he is the focus of the article, she is reduced to the bloody body in the bed. The effect is to make her ancillary to her murderer throughout, reducing her to his partner and a victim, rather than a human being.

Porsche recovered in murder hunt

Police in Cheshire have found a sports car thought to belong to a businessman whose girlfriend was found beaten to death in a Paris hotel room. Ian Griffin, 39, is at the centre of an international manhunt after Kinga Legg's body was found at the l'Hotel Bristol on Tuesday. Cheshire Police recovered a Porsche 911 they were looking for during searches of properties connected to Mr Griffin. Surrey Police have also been searching a property as part of the inquiry. Ms Legg, 36, from Poland, checked into the £1,000-a-night hotel on Monday. Mr Griffin arrived later.

Company owner

Her body was found by a hotel cleaner the following day. French police said she had died from "internal bleeding caused by multiple blows". Mr Griffin, originally from Warrington, previously lived in Knutsford and had several businesses listed in Cheshire. In 2006 he was declared bankrupt at Warrington County Court. Two plain-clothes officers from Cheshire Police had been standing outside his parents' home in Delph Lane, Winwick, on Friday. Ms Legg owned international company Vegex, which supplied Tesco and other supermarkets with tomatoes. The company has a site in Oxshott, Surrey and Opatówek, Poland.

The alternative, in case you were wondering, could be something like this:

Police in Cheshire have found a sports car in the murder investigation of businesswoman Kinga Legg, found beaten to death in a Paris hotel room. Legg's partner, Ian Griffin, 39, is at the centre of an international manhunt after her body was found at the l'Hotel Bristol on Tuesday. Cheshire Police recovered a Porsche 911 they were looking for during searches of properties connected to Mr Griffin. Surrey Police have also been searching a property as part of the inquiry. Ms Legg, 36, from Poland, checked into the £1,000-a-night hotel on Monday. Mr Griffin arrived later. Ms Legg's body was found by a hotel cleaner the following day. French police said she had died from "internal bleeding caused by multiple blows".

Kinga Legg owned international company Vegex, which supplied Tesco and other supermarkets with tomatoes. The company has a site in Oxshott, Surrey and Opatówek, Poland. Mr Griffin, originally from Warrington, previously lived in Knutsford and had several businesses listed in Cheshire. In 2006 he was declared bankrupt at Warrington County Court. Two plain-clothes officers from Cheshire Police had been standing outside his parents' home in Delph Lane, Winwick, on Friday.

It's not just the reordering of Ms Legg's person via that of her partner, but the use of her name throughout the article, instead of 'she', that makes her a central part of the text; a central part of the story- which after all is about her. To be honest, it would also be nice to get the words domestic violence in there and the 'found beaten to death' does disembody the crime from the murderer. But, equally, at this stage in the investigation it may be problematic to accuse a particular suspect of the crime.

An open letter to the SNP

2009-05-25T04:28:00.001-07:00

Dear SNP,

I have just read your manifesto in the run- up to the European elections. Unfortunately, your European manifesto is just a nine-point statement, which strikes me as a bit lazy- I want details, not random and unclarified promises. Furthermore, of the 9 statements, 5 are about the economy, 1 the environment (and indirectly the economy), 1 is about education (and indirectly the economy); and 2 are statement's about Scotland's place in Europe. Is there not more to your politics than the economy? As a result, I went to your 2007 Scottish Parliament manifesto and found that you have no gender equality statement. You do have a broader equality statement, although rather worryingly it is this:

Prior to independence the SNP will not promote or support legislation or policies which discriminate on the grounds of race, disability, age, gender, faith or religion, social background or sexual orientation.

And after independence?

You then highlight your commitment to the Disability Equality Duty and the Race Equality Duty, which is good- but what about gender? Where is your support for the equal pay act, which study after study is showing to not be implemented? What is your stance on the low level of rape convictions? On the fact, that women are more likely to be jailed for lesser and non-violent crimes? What's your stance, and for that matter, what are you doing about increasing the representation of women in politics at all levels? Why is only one out of six of your candidates on the European election list a woman? And don't get me started on why Nicola Sturgeon isn't First Minister. Why are you ignoring 52% of your population?

What's worse is that I know that the SNP have made an effort to address certain gender equality issues- so why aren't you highlighting them?

This voter is feeling a bit disillusioned.

Best,

Feminist Avatar.

Dear BBC

2009-05-19T15:44:00.000-07:00

England is not the UK. [and yes it is England that is getting the heatwave, not Scotland- are you shocked?]

That is all.

[ETA: Ha! They changed the title- who says random blogging doesn't work.]

Why do a Humanities PhD in this Economy?

2009-04-10T12:24:00.000-07:00

Recently on a number of websites, there has been a lot of discussion on whether academics should encourage the young to do PhDs. There has been a lack of real [aka non-temporary, well-paid] jobs for the recently qualified PhD-er in academia and as studying for a PhD is not well-paid, if paid at all, and it takes years, many people question the wisdom of pursuing this career path. Now, if you are doing a PhD because you want to be rich, or because you see academia as a easy career choice, then you probably shouldn't be doing a PhD in this market [if any]. And if you are doing a PhD and you are not enjoying your research [ok, the academic politics can suck, but I mean your own actual research- and I don't mean that you can't have bad days], then you shouldn't be there- because our love of the subject is why we do this. But, as someone who was paid to do her PhD, I really enjoyed the experience and I earned about as much as a full-time job in a supermarket. It was a lot of work, but I made my own hours, and I did something that made me happy. The loss in theoretical income that I would have earned in a graduate job was more than worth the experience.

Now, I was fortunate to get a job after the PhD, although it is contract work, so I am not suffering some of the angst of yet another year's miserable pay, multiple jobs, and scraping by, in the hope of hanging in there. And I understand that if you really want to be in academia, then having to hang-on in there isn't really a choice, but on the other hand, you wouldn't even have a shot at academia if you hadn't done the PhD. And, PhDs do not just qualify you to work in academia. There are a number of organisations that like researchers with PhDs, even those in the humanities, including the government- at local and national levels, and in the civil service; there are private organisations that do social research for the government and for private companies; the NHS employs researchers for health studies; there are also plenty of companies that just like to employ over-educated peoples. And, I know people who have got these jobs, so they're not imaginary. So your PhD is not worthless just because you don't work in academia, and indeed in the non-humanities, many people do PhDs with no intention of ever working in academia. The trick, and the angsty-bit, is knowing when to change paths.

Now, I know that there is the line of thought that if you need to go into a non-academic career than you have wasted time that could have been spent working up a career ladder. But, in this day and age [and annoying historical note, this seems to be true for a lot of history], few people remain in the same career for their entire lives and wider experience (such as a PhD) can translate into real financial benefits or advancement, just like other forms of life experience. People with PhDs have transferrable skills!!

So I guess my point is, if you want to do a PhD and you go in with eyes open knowing that there is no cushy guarantee of an academic post at the end, then do it. Life is more than money and, well, who wants a real job anyway?

Advertising Sexual Health.

2009-04-09T18:10:00.000-07:00

In what is a rather confusing article on the BBC, apparently the Archbishop of Westminister has responded to a public consultation on allowing advertisements promoting safe sex and sexual health services on TV and radio, by asking for all adverts from organisations that refer women for abortions to be banned. “Archbishop Nichols urged Catholics in England and Wales to respond to the consultation, saying that the country would not expect abortion to be advertised "alongside a packet of crisps".” Somebody else, or perhaps him as well (bad writing journalists!!), ask for organisations that refer women for abortions to clearly state that in their ads. The need for such advertisements on TV and radio is due to the dramatic increase in STDs amongst under 16s and a desire to tackle these issues.

It seems to be that there are number of problems with this issue. First, seeing as in the UK, the vast majority of (but not all) sexual health services and sexual health advertisements are provided by the NHS, who also provide abortions, this would mean that the NHS could not advertise, so no stop smoking ads, no stop drinking ads, no phone the NHS hotline, not your Dr, ads etc, etc. Alternatively, they may just have to state that they provide abortions services in their ads, so look out for: ‘Stop Smoking Phone 0800 *****, ps you can also get an abortion with your nicotine patch’.

Second, the fact is that equating the advertising of sexual health services with advertising abortion is really just a bunch of scare-mongering to turn a rather banal issue into a hot topic. These adverts are to stop STDs, not ‘encourage’ abortion. By providing info on contraception it might even help prevent the need for abortion. But, if we must imagine that advertisers are lining up to sell abortion: How exactly does one advertise abortion anyway?

‘Hey, you’re pregnant and you thought having a child was the thing for you-Stop, have an abortion, it’s an experience of a lifetime’.

Or perhaps,

‘it’s a Saturday night and you’re bored- you were going to have a packet of crisps, but instead, have an abortion?’

Perhaps the adverts are to make sure people are aware that organisations that provide abortion exist and to ensure they can make an informed choice, but it seems unlikely, and frankly demeans women, to suggest that they will or will not choose to have an abortion based on a TV advert. Abortions are not life-style accessories (perhaps unlike children?). They are a necessary service that prevent women’s deaths, help protect their fertility, and give women control over their own bodies. The only way that an advert will improve the likelihood of a woman having an abortion is by offering her information to get one that she previously lacked. And, do you really want to argue that you think enforced pregnancy is a better option that a 30-second advert, next to the one about a packet of crisps?

Perhaps, I don’t want to know the answer to that.

Blaming 1920s Style

2009-03-31T04:28:00.000-07:00

These are my summary of an article, with quotes in apostrophes, printed in the 1920s in Ireland on women's rights within marriage, suggesting that perhaps our blaming has not moved as far forward as we imagine. Sorry for not copying it word for word, but that's time-consuming, and I'm lazy. Now, you also get to see what I get to do all day...

The Great Unpaid: State Endowment of Motherhood,

from the Irish Times 28/11/1922

This article is replying to something written by Evelyn Grogan (a man) who attacks the idea that wife and mother's have economic status. He says 'Most people consider a home and a husband of one's one worth something.' The article replies : 'Agreed. But unfortunately in its actual working the marriage contract means that a woman must consider these appendages worth everything- worth her leisure, her economic independence, her interests; all in fact that goes to the composition of the individual and differentiates it in some degree from the herd.' Before marriage, woman (who do not live in poverty), had friends, interests, ideals and leisure- a personality that made her desirable in marriage to at least one man. After marriage any quality not necessary to the maintenance '(not economic maintenance- the other more arduous kind)' of a home is crowded out and atrophied, excepting of course patience, endurance, self-sacrifice, which neither attracted your husband in the first place, nor will keep him.

'"Few husbands" (we are told) "deny something spent on amusement or special desires." (Oh, beyond praise these beneficent ones and blest their handmaidens who have found favour in their sight!.) Imagine the sensations of a man confronted with the privilege of "something to spend on special desires and amusements!" Imagine the temerity of her who would suggest that men could exist without clubs, hobbies, drinks or tobacco! 'No the money and leisure to spend on special desires are not a man's privileges- they are his inalienable rights; and by all the standards of an outworn convention the more "special desires" a man has and the more he cultivates their gratification, the more manly he is.' It is curious and instructive to realise that it is by the diametrically opposed process we get the conventional 'womanly woman' - 'one who has no interest apart from the care of her husband, her home and her children.'

The writer [Grogan] also comments that it costs a pretty to keep a wife, when what he means is a home, and this is true, but it costs more to keep a housekeeper.

There are exceptions- women who are not unduly handicapped by marriage- they are the well to do women, the women without children, endowed with a talent, that like murder, will out '(and incidentally command an economic market).' But nothing can redeem the majority of woman who depend on another's bounty, which marriage inevitably means. The contributor's suggestion that a financial agreement should be arrived at before marriage is fair but does not go far enough- it is not possible for those in straitened households. The only solution is the state endowment of motherhood- not 'a miserable dole like maternity benefit', but something that would prove of substantial assistance, not only to parents but the child- that "most valuable asset to the state", about whom so much is talked and so criminally little is done. KM. [Note: we have received several other articles on this subject and they will be published in due course.]

Otters

2009-03-20T17:00:00.000-07:00

This otter has been stolen from the internetz, but tonight driving home a real live otter ran out in front of my car (and didn't die). It wasn't a baby, but it wasn't quite fully grown. I am so excited... a real live otter....

That is all.

Fat Acceptance

2009-03-17T06:55:00.000-07:00

Over at Bitch PhD, Ding discusses her decision to actively diet and lose weight, choosing to place her health above 'fat acceptance'. In her post, she talks about her struggle with choosing to diet, due to its implications for her feminism and her desire to accept her body the way it is. The fat acceptance movement is about helping women to love their bodies despite living a patriarchal culture that places a premium on being unachieveably thin. It is supposed to liberate women from obsessing over their body's seeming imperfections and to give them solidarity in that choice. It is meant to put women back in control of their own bodies; to wrest it from the grip of a patriarchal culture. Yet, increasingly, fat acceptance has come to mean never doing anything about your weight or body shape; never being allowed to change it. It is as if we are expected to imagine that our bodies just exist beyond or outside our control and we must just accept them, and never be actively seen to be adjusting them. If we do, we must dress up this choice as 'healthy' or about 'fitness'.

This is problematic as it once more removes a woman's body from her control. She is denied choice over what her body should look like or what size it should be. And, while our bodies can be frustratingly resistant sometimes to change (and certainly we are limited by our physiology), we do have some choices over what we do with our bodies, how we want them to look and behave. If we want to diet, we shouldn't have to say 'it's for health reasons', we should be able to say 'I am dieting because it's my damned body and I'll do what I like with it'. What this does not mean is that our bodies should be dictated to or that, because we can, we should change our bodies. It certainly doesn't mean condemning woman who have different bodies from us. It's about recognising that feminism is about putting us in control of our lives and our bodies and that we shouldn't have to apologise for what we do to our bodies.

Happy International Women's Day!

2009-03-08T06:39:00.000-07:00

2009 is the year of ending violence against women, so I thought a message from a victim of domestic violence may be appropriate.

Mrs Maud Coleman, Dundrum, to her husband, James Bryne Coleman, during their separation proceedings for his cruelty in 1906.

"If in the event of my death, you should marry again, take my advice and do not go to lawyers and friends to ask how to behave to your wife, but remember that she is a human being."

Droll.

2009-02-19T07:25:00.000-08:00

Blatant copyright infringement: I found this here.

My First Meme.

2009-02-17T13:55:00.000-08:00

Via Anastasia

BBC Book List

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

Instructions:

1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.

2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.

3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X+

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien Tried, but failed to finish.

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X +++

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X

6 The Bible - X

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X+++

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X+ (plus the rest of the series)

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X (at school so hated on principle)

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare* Read some, should read more, and will as I like.

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks (I think I read this at school, but not counting as fuzzy)

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger X+

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot X

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - X

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy X

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Started but never finished.)

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (Started but never finished.)

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X +

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X

34 Emma - Jane Austen X

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen X

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (Bought for my gran, so flicked through, not read).

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X +++ adore

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins X

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - X

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy X

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert - X++

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon X

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov* (Own, but not read).

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt * (Almost bought the other day, prob will).

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X (Hated).

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (Started, but never finished).

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy X

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie* (Bought this last month, so should read)

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce* (Started but never finished, will probably try again one day).

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath X

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome X++

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray*

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton X

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (Started, but never finished due to remnants of childhood rebellion)

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks X (not his best by miles!)

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute X

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - X

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - X

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I think I counted 52 read, and another five started and abandoned, but I may have miscounted. Evidence of a mispent youth. Six I hope to read, and one day I plan to get through the rest of Dickens and Shakespeare, but I may need to retire first!

SNOW!

2008-12-04T01:42:00.001-08:00

Everybody gets a snow day, but not me. I work from home.

We Hate Children.

2008-11-17T06:52:00.000-08:00

This is a topic that I have posted on before, but it has been highlighted today by a report showing how much we hate our children. Apparently more than half the UK population think that children behave like animals; more than a third believe that the streets were ‘infested’ with children and 43% thought that adults needed to be protected from children. The report coincided with an advert to raise awareness of our attitudes to children, using phrases from websites that describe children as ‘vermin’, ‘animals’, as walking in ‘packs’. And, as if to illustrate the point, a visit to the comments on the article highlighting this news on the BBC’s website, includes an invective of hate towards children. A couple of examples include:

‘Curfew for school aged kids NOW.’

‘Do some children behave like animals? No - animals tend to behave better. I have never seenan animal that would smash your car for no reason, make false accusations backed up by lies and manipulation. Yes children are more 'dangerous' than before because (a) their behaviour is worse (b) they are protected by an absurd system of 'human rights'. The Barnados video was accurate except for one fact - the hoodlums roaming the streets were about 20 years too old.

Even those comments which try to take a more moderate perspective comment that it is not ‘all’ children that behave like this, or that if we could just discipline our children more, then ‘bad’ children would not exist.

Our hatred of children is enacted everyday, not only in comments to websites, but in our attitudes to children. I mean, what is the problem with children playing on the streets or even hanging round street corners. As a society, we have become so intolerant to children that if we seem them in groups we condemn them, regardless of what they are doing. Of course, we should condemn vandalism, bullying and anti-social behaviour, but being visible is not a crime. Even in the [probably mythical] Victorian period, children should be seen and not heard. Yet, even to be seen is now a crime. We complain if our children spend too much time in front of the TV or computer, but chase them outside and we condemn them as lazy, useless, and a nuisance. Time and again, we hear complaints of children ‘hanging around’, of ‘being on buses’ [so what?], of blocking doorways- only very occasionally do such complaints actually involve actual anti-social behaviour [and are young people not part of society- do they not get a say in what is anti-social?]. We remove spaces for children to play and hang around; we cut funding for initiatives to provide young people with place to go; we even are increasingly intolerant of children in productive roles, prohibiting them from working, and allowing their exploitation through the refusal of a minimum wage for under 18s and a lower minimum wage for under 21s.

We criminalise behaviour that in past years would have just been perceived as ‘childish’. Despite a belief that children go unpunished in the twenty-first century, studies suggest that children are more likely to receive a criminal record now than ever before and that a much broader range of behaviours are now dealt with by youth panels and the court than ever before. This is not because children have got worse, but because we are more inclined to use the state as a form of discipline for the young.

We also increasingly expect all parents, including single parents and both partners in a couple, to work, a policy actively pursued by the Labour government through tax benefits and restrictive benefit allowances, but provide nothing for children. We saw no corresponding increase in child-care facilities to provide for the children left unsupervised by such a policy. We saw no extension in school hours, or even after-school activities to compensate for absent parents. The state chose to turn a blind-eye to the needs of the next generation. This, of course, made parents lives more difficult, but how much more did it reflect the complete disregard we have for children that they didn’t even feature in our thinking on an issue that so directly impacted on their lives.

The fact is that concern over the behaviour of children is not new. Read any newspaper for the last three hundred years and you will find an article bemoaning the youths hanging around street corners, pick-pocketing and robbing stores. Concern over knife crime is not novel; the anti-duelling legislation of the eighteenth-century arose out of a belief that groups of young men were swarming the streets challenging honest citizens, left, right and centre, to duels, which inevitably ended in death or severe injury.

Young people are scary because they are a social group whose rights we are reluctant to recognize. They are human beings with personalities, attitudes, opinions and needs. Just like misogyny arises out of a fear of women exercising their human rights; hatred of children arises from our wish to subordinate children. Why we have a need to subordinate youth is less clear. Is it from a fear of the new: new ideas, new attitudes, new fashions? If so, we shouldn’t be too concerned. Most children are actually surprisingly conservative in their values; after all, they take their values from their parents [it takes a bit of life experience to open your mind to new ways of thinking- which of course some children have]. Is it from a need to repeat the hatred that was enacted on us in our childhood; a reactive belief that we are right and to produce people like us we need to behave as our parents did? If so, perhaps it’s time for change- hating children is hardly a healthy way to live.

Recognition of children’s rights is a step forward for humanity, because children are us; they are our future and they are a product of our imput into them. If we want to have our human rights recognized (and we do), then we need to recognise theirs. If they behave badly, chances are it is because we taught them to behave badly. If they reject us, it is because we rejected them. If we want them to have good values and good behaviour, then it is on us to teach them. If you have a problem with young people, then it is probably your problem.

I'm Back!

2008-08-29T06:31:00.000-07:00

Back online after a month! BT has a lot to answer for. I mean, I must have lost a stone through being forced to things other than sit online. On the other hand, it seems I find it very hard to work without the internet to tie me to my laptop. So what’s happened on this rainy, rainy month? Well, I have learned through avid watching of the Olympic Games that communism is always bad and unnatural (unlike capitalism); that television pundits agree that its racist to try to talk English in a ‘Chinese’ accent, but that to condemn a country’s entire political system and culture with a sweep of the hand is perfectly acceptable; that (because communism is bad) it is perfectly fine to report the Russia/ Georgia conflict in terms of ‘evil Russia’ and ‘innocent, weak Georgia’; and what is saddest of all is that we seem to have forgotten that economic systems are human creations not natural entities and thus can be debated and discussed.

After watching Dispatches on Channel 4 the other night, I also know that even documentary makers seem to lack any sense of how the economy works. In ‘The Bank Never Loses’, I discovered that ‘irresponsible and careless’ bank CEOs are having their mistakes shored up by our taxes, with the implication that if the banks can’t run themselves effectively, they should go bust. Making me think that the documentary makers obviously have no concept of how devastating it is to an economy if a bank goes bust, because it isn’t just one business, but the savings, mortgages, and loans of hundreds of individuals and business that lose out! Seriously, think about it (television) people.

What else? Oh, yeah (I am sure this is being said elsewhere in the blogosphere, but I ain’t been online), how offensive is Kate Perry’s ‘I kissed a girl’? On the other hand, I am quite enjoying Ida Maria’s ‘I like you so much better when your naked’.

Ok, hopefully, I will get back to some regularly scheduled posting after I have caught up on all my reading!

Busy, Busy.

2008-08-01T11:41:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posting, but the whole moving house and packing and changing utilities and getting a letting agent to rent my house and buying new furniture and a new car (because new house is rural idyll and requires driving), etc, has taken all my time.

And, it gets worse, my new house will not have internet for about a week! So probably no posting!

Hope you are all enjoying the summer!

Sexuality and Desire.

2008-07-30T02:58:00.000-07:00

During my holiday, I read Jed Rubenfield’s The Interpretation of Murder, which places the psychoanalysts Freud, Jung, Ferenczi and Brill together in a hotel in New York to solve a murder mystery. The combination of characters inevitably leads the book to feel like it’s a bad joke and you are forever waiting for the punchline, but it got me thinking about psychoanalysis.* As a postmodern, social constructionist, I tend to treat psychology with a reasonable dose of scepticism, but the nature of my subject area has required a working knowledge of the field, or at least requires me to dance around it. But, as I read Rubenfield, it reminded me (and to be fair I think this is Foucault’s argument) that it was Freud who place sexuality and sexual drive at the heart of human nature.

It certainly seems to be the case that earlier centuries did not place the same types of importance on sexuality and many past societies separated sexual acts from any innate behaviour or drives. Sexual acts were not driven by any need or natural force, but were active choices or, if driven by anything, it was by a person’s sinful nature and therefore no different than any other behaviours. Today, sexuality (in no small part due to Freud and his followers) has moved to be a central part of our identity and as such is frequently explained in terms of the body/ nature/ drives. Sexual behaviour became both naturalised (sex is normal) and yet of key importance to humankind so that it becomes the main marker of what it means to be human. It is interesting then that I have also read recently (although for the life of me can’t remember who wrote it) that freudianism and feminism evolved at the same time.

It makes me ask, who benefits from a model of humanity where sexual drive is key to being human, and sex is more than just another behaviour? Who benefits when we cannot conceive of relationships between people without being blinded by sex? Who benefits when the idea of platonic friendships (between men and women, but also increasingly between men and men, and women and women) are considered to be unachievable or even laughable concepts (a convenient dividing tool if ever there was one)? Who benefits when rape and objectification can never be fully criticised or rejected, because a sex drive is ‘natural’? Who benefits when we cannot reconfigure sex and sexuality to be something new, different and better for women, because we cannot challenge the idea that sexuality is what drives us as people?

It used to be said that humans were social animals, but increasingly ‘social’ has come to mean ‘sexual’, and again I have to ask who does this benefit? Because, maybe it’s just me, but current social conceptions of sexuality and desire seem to be screwing women over.

* The murder mystery is actually quite compelling, but the characters are very flat; the psychologists become little more than their published texts (which I believe is exasperated by the fact that they quote their own works throughout in response to questions). The author also tries to set up different characters to be the murderer in a rather heavy-handed (and unconvicing) ways, which is annoying. But otherwise I thought this was an ok read.

Visiting the Family.

2008-07-28T13:29:00.000-07:00

That's my family in the distance (the picture above silly).

I will try to get back to some regularly scheduled posting this week, but I am officially moving house next week, so will also have to pack up this one and do all the tedious change of address, new utilities, etc, stuff- so things might be a bit slow. (It seems that I have over a thousand books- how did I not notice this before?) I also need to find a tenant for my house, as I am not selling right away.

The joys of a new job, eh?

Away Again.

2008-07-19T15:52:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the quiet week, but a combination of technical problems and offline life has kept me off the internet. Let's see, this week I have looked for a new home in new location (and fingers crossed found one- the joys of a new job); looked for a new car (but not found one in budget with eco-friendly stats); celebrated with friends (between the group of us and over a few nights) three new jobs, two submission of thesises, one graduation, and a birthday; in lieu of moving house collected my numerous library books and books lent by friends and took them to work (and/ or distributed them back to owners); photocopied a pile of reading; backed up my entire hard-drive from laptop to allow it to go for repair; fretted about the lack of writing I am doing; cleaned my house; worked my non academic job; went to the gym; visited in-laws to distribute birthday presents (three in the one week!!); possibly arranged some teaching for next year; bought some new clothes that I probably can't afford (yeay for summer sales, including a pair of shorts for my holiday- optimistic much?); went food shopping; packed for next week; ignored the internets.

And for any avid readers, another quiet week to follow as I am once more off on holiday: this time to visit my siblings. I will be away for a week and probably won't get any interneting done. (That reminds me- pack camera!). See you next week.

Technical Problems.

2008-07-16T14:25:00.000-07:00

My laptop has stopped letting me access the internet, because it is evil (or broken, or both). So, I am having to send it to get repaired, hence the silence. I can use hubby's computer, but it just doesn't have the same inspiring vibe as my temperamental baby. Hopefully, I shall write something tomorrow (while at work, heehee).

Maternity Leave.

2008-07-14T09:49:00.000-07:00

Today, the head of the Equality Commission suggested that employers are discriminating against women of child-bearing age as they are now entitled to up to a year’s maternity leave. She calls for more flexible working arrangements to be more widely available with partners able to take ‘maternity’ leave, so that neither partner’s career suffers. The Federation for Small Business thinks maternity leave is a bad idea, because it’s ‘bad for business’. And so, once more, we stir up the debate that leads to people arguing that that insist that women working is a ‘choice’ (both for individuals and for society); women should ‘choose’ between children and career; that describe maternity leave as a holiday; that treat children like luxuries that mothers use as excuses to skive off work; that ignore that most children have (at least) two parents (in the making, if not the keeping); that refuse to recognise that children are part of society and need to be cared for.

First off, let’s get rid of the idea that women ‘choose’ to work. Women, even mothers, have as much right to work as men. We do not sit around discussing how father’s ‘choose’ to work despite having children, or comment on how selfish or irresponsible they are for fertilising women and then not staying home with the baby. People need to work, women included. Furthermore, the vast majority of women do not have the luxury of ‘choosing’ to work. In the UK, most households, especially those with children, need two incomes to have an acceptable standard of living. Indeed, 83% of married (or coupled) fathers work, as do 68% of married (or coupled) mothers.* And many, many households are run by single parents who need to work to survive (although are less likely to be able to work due to lack of support).

In Scotland, women outnumber men by 7%. There are not enough men for every woman to be married off and happily supported. They need to work. There are more single, adult women (and for that matter men) in the Scottish population than there are married women (or men). Women of working age are more than twice as likely as men to live alone. Not every woman is coupled up with someone to support them. They need to work. Female single parents head 6% of households, compared to 1% of male single parents. Not all mothers have partners to support them, neither do all fathers. They need to work.

Furthermore, the labour market needs women workers. 50% of Scotland’s workforce is female. 72% of the (working age) female population in Scotland works, compared to 77% of men. Roughly 44% of the working female population have dependent children. The labour market would collapse if women stopped working; it would even collapse if only mothers stopped working. They are vital to the functioning of the economy, particularly in certain areas such as Public Administration, Education and Healthcare where over 70% of the workforce is female. With an unemployment rate of only 5%, there are not enough men to even replace a fraction of the female workforce.

We cannot talk about women working as a choice, because it is no more or less a choice than for men. We cannot talk about women ‘choosing’ between a career and a family, unless your baseline is that all women should work and choosing to have children is the luxury.

Now, it is certainly true that more and more women choose to never have children. 31.2% of Scottish women born between 1960 and 1963 have never had children (45 is taken by most scientists as the oldest women will have children so this is considered a completed fertility cycle). The age group born between 1970 and 1973 is heading towards 40%, although this may change as women have children later in life. Furthermore, Scotland’s total fertility rate is 1.6, which means that most women will only take one or two maternity leaves in their lifetime (and which also means that we are not replacing our population- a decline which has only recently been halted by immigration). Both of these things, I might add, make the idea of not employing women due to their potential fertility a bit redundant. But, should this mean that we should consider having children a luxury and a women’s luxury at that?

I don’t think so. Children are an important part of society. They are the future generation. Without children to grow into the next generation, we shall not be able to survive as a society. When we are retired, we need young people to pay taxes to pay for our pensions. We need young people to have jobs, so we can buy food, use services (such as hospitals and transport) and generally survive. Without the next generation, the human race will not only not survive, neither will capitalism! And we shall all have rather uncomfortable endings. Not having children is not a choice for society; we need them. And, as yet, they do not grow on trees.

Children are born to individuals, but they do not belong to them. They are part of society, just like you and me. They are entitled to care from birth and somebody has to have that responsibility. Why are we happy for babies to go to state nurseries (paid for by our taxes), but not to be brought up by their own mothers (or fathers), at a time in their life where they need specialist one to one care? Allowing women maternity leave is not giving women a holiday; it is a vital contribution to society. In a society where more and more women choose not to have children (as is their right), and most women cannot afford not to work, maternity leave is vital to ensuring that people can and do have children (also their right). Not employing women because you don’t want to pay maternity leave is incredibly short-sighted. It fails to recognise that an investment in children is an investment in your future employees and in your future customers. It fails to see that families where women don’t or cannot work do not have the money to buy the luxuries and services our economy relies on. It is also vital to ensuring that women are not disadvantaged by the fact they play such an important role in their contribution to society.

Internetless Wonderland.

2008-07-13T17:39:00.001-07:00

Holidays!

2008-07-05T01:55:00.000-07:00

I am away me holidays people. I will be back in a week. Probably no posting afore then cause I am going to an internetless wonderland (I hope)! See you when I get back.

A Thought Experiment, or Empowerfulising Pink.

2008-07-04T15:20:00.000-07:00

I was doing some reading recently that suggested that all cultures are created by men. Now, I would agree that, as far as we know, most cultures predominantly value men and the things they do over those of women. But, historians actually spend quite a lot of time discussing ‘women’s cultures’. They may not have had broader cultural or social significance or authority, but, women, in their various denominations, often had cultures, based around work, leisure, support networks, children and much more. These networks or groups allowed women to share resources, gossip, stories and to create their own values that were distinct (if not entirely removed from) patriarchal culture. They were often a place of power for women, even if that power restricted, and could also work to support women in their interactions with men.

So today I was in Halfords and there was a HUGE range of accessories for cars in, you guessed it, pink. And not a nice tasteful pink, but that particular shade that seems to predominate when things associated with men are girlified. And I thought, who on earth buys this stuff; I could barely walk down the aisle holding it. And it got me thinking about female culture. Do women buy into ‘pink’ merchandise or other similar facets of femininity in attempt to create a shared female culture? Can we see it as an attempt to create a distinct ‘women’s space’ that is exclusive to women and from which they can draw power (through excluding men and shared sisterhood), even if this power is restricted?

Now, I am not really suggesting that pink is the new feminism. Its association with girls, and thus its infantilisation of adult women, plus the fact that it is not a women-created culture, but one placed upon women by merchandisers, make it more than a bit problematic. But, perhaps, it is time to start claiming power in women’s cultures; to stop buying into a value system that trivialises anything associated with women and femininity; to ask what it gives to women and do they gain strength from it, before we castigate it as ‘womanly’ and shun it.

If we want to move beyond gender, then we need to think about what we want a new world will look like, and, perhaps it’s just me, but I tend to be suspicious of a vision of the future that buys into a world where women and anything associated with them is automatically shunned.

Backlash! Or, Feminism is Good for Men.

2008-07-03T16:36:00.000-07:00

The Fword reports on the most recent backlash against women’s rights, leading to a discussion of whether women will ever lose the rights we have gained, perhaps especially cogent in the recent attempt to reduce abortion access. While I think that it is very possible that women’s rights may be reduced, and we should be careful to protect them, I don’t think we shall ever go back to previous age.

Why? Because feminism is good for men.

In the patriarchal societies in the past, male power was balanced with considerable responsibility. In a world where women’s economic opportunities were limited, either by domesticity or unequal wages, men were responsible for providing for wives, daughters and other unsupported women, such as orphaned sisters or widowed mothers. They were expected to keep them in ‘ the manner in which they were accustomed’. Feminism made the responsibility for provisioning households more equal.

This restriction within patriarchal societies, in part, justified stringent or non-existent divorce laws. Men, who separated or divorced their wives (and for most purposes this was the practical economic result), were expected to provide for them throughout the remainder of their lives. This alimony was considerably larger than contemporary settlements that expect women to work after divorce. Feminism brought divorce and separation legislation.

In patriarchal societies, women’s behaviour was a reflection of their husbands or fathers. In many cases, this meant that women could impact on a man’s career, reputation, and social standing. In some cases, it meant that a man was criminally responsible for his wife’s crimes (and she wasn’t). Men were meant to be able to control women and an inability to do so reflected on their masculinity and particularly their virility. A gossiping, idle wife was a reflection on her husband’s inability to control her, which was closely related to his ability to pacify her through sex. Feminism removed male responsibility for their wife’s behaviour.

Under patriarchy, a man’s children were his own property, not his wife’s. This may sound good to some men, but it meant custody always went to men. They couldn’t leave their wives and children for a new wife and family. They couldn’t walk out on their responsibility. Wives didn’t get weekend custody- men had 100% of the children 100% of the time. They were also responsible for any ‘illegitimate’ children and more than just financially. Feminism removed the burden of providing for children exclusively from men and shared it with women.

Before feminism, men had to marry a woman to have sex with her. While prostitutes were available, they cost money, frequently had VD, and could ruin a man’s social standing and reputation (chastity wasn’t just for women). You certainly couldn’t try before you buy (ok, I am generalising about social customs here, but generally marriage either preceded or closely followed sex). The sexual revolution wasn’t just for women.

Feminism came with contraception. Enough said.

Feminism reduced male responsibility, by recognising women’s humanity. And this wasn’t a bad thing. Men no longer had to shoulder the burden of power, the stress and responsibility, alone. The buck no longer stopped with them. They were no longer forced into a restricted role of husband and father, because society expected it. They had greater freedom to choose what they wanted to do with their lives (occupationally and otherwise) as they no longer (or less frequently) had to think about other people in making their choices. They could take greater risks; behave more frivolously. When they married (or didn’t!), men could choose to do so for love, knowing they could share intimacy and responsibility for the household with a partner, rather than worrying whether their choice could land them in jail or destroy their social standing. They could have conversations with an educated and informed equal. They could choose to spend more time with their children and even be house-husbands. They had the choice of divorce when things didn’t work out. They could ask for help when they needed it and it wasn’t a sign of weakness.

A backlash against feminism sucks as much for men as it does for women.

Rape Stats.

2008-07-02T07:55:00.000-07:00

There are numerous discussions over the webosphere at the moment about rape and rape statistics. In the more misogynistic areas, it is suggested that rape can never be proven and that our incredibly low conviction rape, of 5.7%, is all we can expect, as rape is always a he said-she said situation. (Let’s ignore that fact that this is true of most crimes where a victim reports a crime, and the defendant claims not to have done it). So I was quite interested to hear that rape convictions were as high as 33% in the 1970s. Being a historian, I wondered whether the 1970s were an anomaly, or whether it is our current situation that is odd. And handily I had article close by that detailed the rape cases tried at the Old Bailey between 1730 and 1830 (hardly the most enlightened age when it came to women’s rights, I might add). Now, it seems that over the hundred year period, we averaged a conviction rate of 17%, with the conviction rate reaching 38% in some years. More interesting perhaps was the attempted rape conviction rate (say that ten times fast), which averaged a 47% conviction rate across the period, with a high of 83% in the 1760s.*

Now there are good reasons why attempted rape was easier to prove than rape in this period. To prove rape, you needed evidence that a penis fully entered the vagina (and at certain points in history that ejaculation occurred). And as the death penalty was imposed for full rape, but not always for attempted rape, juries were always a bit queasier about finding guilt (seriously by the way- the death penalty was known to make juries cautious, especially for crimes they personally condoned or for situations they could imagine themselves in). But, it is interesting, once cases came down to attempted rape, which perhaps more closely followed the ‘he said, she said’ type situation (that are claimed to happen today- let’s ignore that most cases that are taken to court usually have additional evidence –both then and now), that the juries took the women’s side almost half the time!

So the question really is why we (juries) are so willing to give men the benefit of the doubt today, when we haven’t been so forgiving in the past?

*Antony Simpson, ‘Vulnerability and the age of female consent: legal innovation and its effect on prosecutions for rape in eighteenth-century London’, in G.S. Rousseau and Roy Porter, eds, Sexual Underworlds of the Enlightenment, (Manchester, Manchester U.P., 1987), pp. 181-205.

Desire.

2008-06-30T12:53:00.000-07:00

Agent of Desire recently posited an experiment (which I discussed briefly in the last post) where women should take of the trappings of femininity and go out into the world as ‘sex agents’, looking to objectify men. She suggests:

Consciously look the men on the carriage and analyse how attracted you feel to them. This will feel quite predatory, almost as though you are looking through the sight of a gun. You may well have a lot of resistance to this as you don't want to treat others in a way you don't want to be treated, but don't worry for now - this is your theraputic exercise. [...] Really indulge in your own sexually preditory nature and enjoy feeling the power of choice this gives you. This is a power men enjoy the feeling of daily, even if it is delusional. As a woman, it is not a delusion because you are female and men aren't naturally as selective as women when it comes to sex, because nature gave you the power of choice over them because you are the one with the womb.

The basis for Agent of Desire’s experiment is that women ‘in nature’ should be the objectifiers, because men are not particularly selective about who they mate with, and women carry huge risks (pregnancy) through having sex and so should be the selective mate. She argues that men have conspired to remove women’s right to objectify men and have reversed the natural order. Her experiment is meant to give power back to women.

Now, there are some obvious problems with this post. First, is the notion that all women perform a particular type of femininity (discussed in the post below), and, second, this post is very heteronormative. But, in other ways, I think that she is right that for heterosexual women to engage so actively in objectification is quite a challenging thing to do and so might be an ‘interesting’ experiment, in the way that ‘new’ experiences are.

But, the experiment actually raised some much bigger questions for me about the nature of desire. As feminists, we are usually happy to recognise that gender and sexuality are both constructions, but, when it comes to desire, we fall back on a narrative that claims desire is ‘natural’, ‘innate’, ‘biological’. After-all, the purpose of the human race is to have babies, or something like that. As a result, we never fully condemn objectification. Time and again, I have seen feminists telling men that they are allowed to objectify women, but just not overtly, or, perhaps, not without permission. (And this is despite the fact that we will all agree that not all women want babies, that not all women want to have sex with men (or for that matter vice versa), and that rape sure as hell isn’t about sex drive). But, heaven forbid, we suggest that people can’t get their jollies through looking at hawt bod (with permission and in an unexploitative context).

Ultimately, the problem is that we have is an inability to reconceptualise desire. And I think as feminists we really need to. Reclaiming objectification for women is problematic for just the reason’s Agent of Desire promotes it. Objectification is predatory; it promotes an unequal power relationship between the viewer and viewed, and it removes the humanity of the ‘object’. Do we really want to be introducing inequality into our personal lives, even if we are in the seat of power? Does a good sex life have to require the removal of one partner’s humanity?

Can we learn to appreciate the physical body without objectifying it?

On Being Born a Woman.

2008-06-28T04:03:00.000-07:00

One of the debates that accompanies the transgender wars is how one becomes a woman. Most feminists are agreed that no one is born a woman. At least in the twenty-first century West, ‘woman’ is a classification that is placed on people with particular sex organs and which is expected to be manifested in particular behaviours- behaviours which most people recognise are taught and some think are innate. Currently, we believe that there are only two genders, which are often conceived as polar opposites from each other, despite this being a very contrived binary.

The classification of ‘woman’ did not always follow sex organs as tightly as it does today. In the European past, gender was closely related to sex organs, but was not a direct consequence of them. Under a humeral model of the body, women were people who were cold and wet, men were hot and dry. It was men’s greater body heat that expelled the sex organs from the body. Some people with female sex organs, however, were otherwise very manly (they contained considerable heat); they just didn’t have enough heat to expel their sex organs. This could allow ‘hot’ women (no not like that!) to take on many of the functions and status of men. Similarly some men were colder than normal and so more effeminate. It was even possible for women, who got too hot, to transition to full men if they managed to expel their genitals (and there are recorded instances of this happening).

In other cultures, gender is assigned based on social role. In certain tribes in New Guinea, women are people who grow crops; men are people who hunt and fight. Most people born with female sex organs tend to grow crops, but some have a desire or an aptitude for hunting and fighting and are accepted into ‘male’ society as full members, and vice-versa. When members of particular gender are on the low side (perhaps because of not enough male-sexed children being born), this fluidity becomes even more common as female-sexed people make up for a shortage of men, and vice versa. Female-sexed western anthropologists who visit these areas are often assumed to be male due to their lack of knowledge about rice and crop-growing. In Albania, as a recent study shows, a shortage of male-sexed people allowed for female-sexed people to become men and take on many of the rights and responsibilities of men. In some societies, gender is not, or has not been, so closely linked to sex organs and, in some, ‘transitioning’ between different genders at least had a generally accepted conceptual framework (or cultural explanation) to make it easier. (As does our own, by equating gender with sex organs and so allowing people who change sex organs to change gender).

But back to the question at hand, if we all agree that ‘woman’ is a category (not a reality), then what is to stop anybody declaring that they are a ‘woman’. What makes someone a ‘woman’? Some people argue that it takes a life-time of socialisation to be a woman and that sex organs or desire are not enough. Yet, even those of us who were born with the female sex and have a lifetime of socialisation that taught us what it is to be ‘woman’ are often not very ‘good’ women. Agent of Desire recently proposed an experiment where feminists should:

Instead of putting on make-up, styling your hair, wearing 'feminine' shoes or clothes that emphasise your figure, leave the house with none of the paraphernalia of objectification. Instead, don't put in contact lenses if you wear them, go for glasses instead, wear a loose coat that is not tailored to the waist, wear no make up or distracting jewelery, wear straight-cut trousers, tie your hair up or put it under a hat, and don't clutch a dainty handbag - put your keys, phone and money in your pockets. If you have manicured and polished long nails, wear gloves. This may be very difficult to do, because you are constantly told by the media that being sexually desireable is the most important thing about you, and that your sexual desireability depends on this paraphernalia, which is not true.

Her overall experiment (which is about objectifying others) is quite interesting, but it fails to realise that many women match her description already. If you were to describe me most days: I don’t wear make-up; I don’t always wear particularly ‘feminine’ clothes (although I do have a female body underneath them and this is certainly harder to disguise now I am a bit ‘rounder’ than when I was a size ten); I wear glasses (not contacts); I often wear hats and tie my hair up; I frequently use my large, shapeless army jacket with pockets as a handbag- and, more often than not, I have a rucksack if I need a bag. A lifetime of socialisation and I clearly didn’t learn many of my lessons particularly well. I am also not deferential. I certainly don’t keep my opinions to myself. I am not retiring. And yet, I don’t think I have ever been mistaken for a ‘man’. Furthermore, I have female-sexed friends who are androgynous enough to be regularly mistaken for men, yet their ‘passing’ does not make them men (and they have no desire to be ‘men’).

So, what does this mean? Does this tell us that being a woman is all about sex, and nothing to do with socialisation in our society? And, yet (like it or not), much of society will not accept male-sexed people who have ‘gender reassignment surgery’ as women, even if they are much better at performing femininity than me. Is it simply our classification on birth that makes us women?

The category of woman is a fiction. As it is a fiction, there are no women. There are people who are designated women and others who desire to have that designation (and not always because they think there is such a thing as woman). People accept or reject that designation to different degrees. There are characteristics that are associated with ‘woman’ and some people (regardless of their sex organs) have or perform those characteristics better than others. In the same manner, there are no men.

At this point, it is easy to say that the experience of being designated women from birth ensures that we can never be men (no matter at what age we choose to transition?). And it may certainly be true that no one who was designated female at birth will have identical experiences to someone designated male. But, the truth is that there are very few people designated woman that have the same experiences as other people designated woman. Other designations such as race and class ensure that all women are not alike. Furthermore, there is no universally agreed, model of ‘woman’ that we are trying to achieve and which the rest of us fail to live up to (although some models may have more power than others). Women have a vast range of experiences, desires, backgrounds, upbringings, levels of power and privilege and outlooks. Similarly, men are raised with different levels of privilege and power. Some are even raised in feminist households and taught to critique their privilege and the naturalness of their gender. Some are better or worse at being men than others. In some cultures, people born with male sex organs are raised as women. We are all individuals with different experiences, even as we share others. Why, as feminists, are we holding on to ‘born with female sex organs and socialised because of them to be women’ as so central to our identity when we all agree that no one is born a woman, when we all know that being male or female is a construction and we are all socialised differently, when in our own lives we recognise that it is impossible to be an ideal woman because she doesn’t exist?

A Pretty Good Week.

2008-06-27T05:49:00.000-07:00

Well yesterday I finally graduated, 11 months after submitting the thesis. Yeay for me! So, you can now address me as Dr Feminist Avatar! (Just kidding- we don't hold with formalities here).

Don't really have much of substance to say today.

Transwars, Part 67458.

2008-06-25T16:36:00.000-07:00

[This is a post that I have been reluctant to write because I am not trans* and don’t feel that I can talk for trans*people’s experience. But, the latest round of transphobia that has manifested in the latest Carnival of Feminists has made me want to say something. So, I apologise in advance to trans*people if I get it wrong and I direct non-trans* readers to here and here to talk to people who actually know something about it.]

Once upon a time, many, many moons ago, a famous philosopher said, ‘I think, therefore I am’ (only he wrote it in Latin). Descartes’ words are often flung about, but the larger point he was making at the time was to have significant repercussions for centuries to come. Descartes posited that there was a distinction between mind and body. The body was fallible and the senses flawed, but the mind was capable of deduction and so able to transcend the limitations of the physical. His model of mind and body led people to distinguish between the inner and outer body. The mind, or soul, was the person, where the humanity lay; the body was a mere vehicle for the mind and of little real significance other than as a means of communication. This differentiation led to a medical science that deals with the body and psychiatry/ psychology that deals with the mind. All that was important and real came from within; physical acts and behaviours were either inconvenient biological necessities or forms of communication controlled by the inner being.

‘Twas not always this way. Once a long time ago, and still today in some distant lands, the body and mind were not seen as separate, but the human operated as one, her mind and body in sync. Indeed, even in times and places where a Cartesian model was in place, not all people could free themselves from their bodies. Only the rational, the superior, the male, could truly rise above their physical beings. Women, with their hormones and menses and wombs and too much water and small brains, found it very difficult to make the separation between mind and body. They were never truly rational, never completely separate from nature, never fully human.

Then one day, feminism came along and women were allowed to be rational, our minds fully separated from our bodies. We ignored our menstrual cramps and swollen breasts and embraced Cartesianism. We determined that the body was a static model on which we placed meaning. Gender was a construction of the inner, not the outer (and sometimes the outer was constructed too). And as feminists, we built theories and more theories and some theories, and a bit of activism, and some more theories, but, all the while, the easy distinction between body and mind wasn’t all that easy.

We knew that gender was a construction, but we couldn’t quite figure out why our bodies continued to bug us. They niggled and wobbled and we ran and we ran, but still they followed. And then in twenty-first century came The Transpeople™*. They said our inners don’t match our outers and we want it fixed! And, the feminists cried, but your inner is constructed, so if it doesn’t match your outer, then you change it, not your genitals! And, they said, but my outer looks wrong. And the feminists cried, but gender isn’t real, so your genitals shouldn’t matter.**

But still the genitals mattered. And the Cartesian model allowed no in-between.

So we need to rethink the link between mind and body. My body is me. It is not just a vehicle that carries me. I love my body in all its lumpy, imperfect perfection. When I look in the mirror, it is what I expect to see and I expect people to react to me in particular ways because I have this body. I know that having this body led me to be raised to behave in particular ways and that as a result of this body, people respond to me differently from how they respond to other people. But, ultimately, I would not change this body. It is me.

Now, what if, one day, I looked in the mirror and I didn’t recognise the person looking back at me? It would fundamentally change who I am, both because I would be a different person, and because the world would react to me differently. Now, imagine that for as long as I could remember the person looking back at me didn’t feel right, for whatever reason, and then wonder what I might try to do to get my body to feel right. Women do this every day. They put on make-up to cover up the blemishes and wrinkles that aren’t them. They lose weight, and more weight, and get implants and surgery to try and make their bodies match who they are. And for many, the feeling of being right never comes.

Other people’s bodies are not sexed in the way they feel they should be. And sometimes they do things to try and make their bodies more like they believe they should be, whether dressing differently, taking hormones or having surgery. Indeed, if it was not because our genitals are what are used to separate us into two different genders, having genital reassignment surgery would only be more radical than breast implants in the degree to which it is a more complex surgery.

As it is however, the powers that be have determined that certain sexual organs come with certain behaviours. So when people choose to change their genitals, we assume it is because they are buying into the belief that gender exists and so reinforcing this binary. And, perhaps, sometimes this is true. Perhaps (and this is where I am a bit uncomfortable talking about experiences that are not my own), for some people, trained from birth that certain sex organs come with certain behaviours, when you change genitals, you also need to take on the traits of that sex- the two things come together. After all, it is only natural; it’s what we’ve been taught our whole lives. Certainly, this seems to be the line the medical profession takes. Want genital reassignment surgery, then you better act like a man/women (delete as appropriate). Lisa Harney in a comment over at Questioning Transphobia describes her experience thus:

In order to be diagnosed in the first place, I had to disavow any attraction I had to women, and state that I was attracted to men. In order to be prescribed hormones, the psychiatrist wanted to see me in a dress or skirt. The therapist I was seeing for voice work (and she was an awful voice therapist) insisted that I always wear dresses and skirts to her office. Even years later when I needed to see her about something, she insisted I wear a dress for the appointment, and not show up in my preferred (at the time) jeans.
And this wasn’t just something I experienced. Psychiatrists involved in the early days of gender clinics talked about assessing whether trans women would be attractive enough as women after they transitioned, and required a specific narrative to diagnose trans women that emphasized femininity. Since trans women are just diverse as cis women, a lot of us had to misrepresent ourselves as more feminine than we would have preferred just to get the treatment that would help encourage us to not kill ourselves, or at least not live out our lives in depression.

Some trans*women were forced to become feminine to justify their desire for surgery, whether or not that was how they personally wanted to behave (and of course the reverse is true for trans*men). Because genitals were never just genitals, they were the basis on which gender construction lies. If you want the outer characteristics, you damn well better have the inner ones too. And the thing is because gender is constructed and not natural, it becomes very difficult to decide what behaviours are natural/normal, and it all becomes very confusing. How much more so for people whose bodies do not feel right? As ciswomen, we spend so much time worrying about whether our behaviour/dress/bodyshape is feminine or too feminine or, better yet, is it feminist?

The thing is all behaviour is taught. There is not hidden or innate you (or me) waiting to emerge once we get rid of gender, like a heavy blanket holding us down. If we want to get rid of gender, we need to start normalising a much wider range of behaviours and questioning why certain behaviours are tied to certain biological characteristics- we effectively need to increase choice. This will not make behaviour ‘natural’, but will hopefully allow people more freedom in their identity. As feminists, we also need to challenge why power comes with certain traits or behaviours and why others are oppressed because of their characteristics. We also need to rethink the place of the body within identity. It is more than weight around our neck, pulling us down and restricting us.

Trans*women are like other women, except their situation is more complicated. They know that they are women whose bodies don’t fit with their expectations, and they have the same problem as the rest of us, trying to figure out what the hell it means to be a women, to dress like a women, to be a feminist women. Because, just like the rest of us, they have a very limited choice in what it means to be a woman (and because sometimes that choice is further constrained by the medical profession) they endorse models of femininity that are problematic. They are just doing exactly the same thing as every other woman, every other day.

*Please note that this is hyperbole. Gender non-conformity of all sorts has a very long history.

** Please also note that I realise that people who are transgendered are not all about the genitals and that not all transgendered people can or want to have genital reassignment surgery. The genitals here is a shorthand for a much wider range of behaviours.

Calling People Who Know English.

2008-06-24T03:03:00.000-07:00

My gym has replaced the sign on the women's changing room door to 'female changing room'. This really annoys me, as my immediate thought is 'the changing room is a woman? Who knew?'. (Then, I go down a path of troubling moral ambiguity asking whether, as the changing room is female, I need her consent to use it?...) Anyway, I know that female can be used as a noun or as an adjective (although I personally HATE seeing it used as a noun). But, if we assume that in this context 'female' is used as a noun, would it not be grammatically correct to write "females' changing room"? Yet, this sounds ugly. So what is good grammar here? Does female used as an noun assume possession, like the pronouns 'her' or 'its'? And if it does, would it still need to be plural in this instance?

People who know English, help me out, please?

Uppity Students.

2008-06-23T02:20:00.000-07:00

The BBC has an article on whether students are customers or learners. It uses words like ‘dangerously blurred’ to suggest that universities are lowering the standard of their degrees to attract students, especially lucrative overseas students. Apparently academics are under pressure to mark less harshly and, in particular, students with only a very basic grasp of English can successfully gain a degree. But, woe and behold, some of the leading academics ‘refuse to admit’ that such pressures exist! Apparently ‘there is an official wall of silence’ on this issue.

Well, I am afraid to say that I never got that memo, so here is my two cents. First, as a marker at both undergraduate and Masters level, I have never been asked to mark more leniently. Indeed, during my first year as a marker (when my work was second marked for my professional development), I was asked to lower a couple of grades, not raise them. One of the major obstacles to the claim that academics are under pressure to mark more leniently is that (at least at my university) a significant majority of marking is done by postgraduates on an hourly rate. In my department, all level one and two marking (except the final exam which can be split across pgs and academics) is done by postgrads. In the faculty graduate school, all of the core courses are first marked by postgrads and second marked by the course leader for consistency. Where marks are changed by the second marker (and they very rarely are), it is usually for consistency, rather than to raise grades per se. As postgrads, we have no investment in students getting good marks. (Unlike in the US perhaps) course evaluations are only for internal use and do not follow you in your career. You can’t use them to sell yourself on the job market. If anything, as most postgrads are also getting degrees from the institutions they mark in, they have an invested interest in keeping the standard of the degree high to ensure the reputation of their own degree. There are also internal and external controls to ensure quality of marking. Most departments are reviewed every 6 or so years to ensure quality of teaching and learning by a committee that includes people across the university, a student and an external examiner. Every year samples of all coursework (including all A grades) are reviewed by an external marker from a different university who can make damning decisions about the quality of your degree if necessary. If universities are lowering the standard of degrees, it must be a huge, cross institution conspiracy (and again I never got the memo- maybe it comes with a permanent academic post).

Another major flaw in this argument is that student’s fees make up such a huge amount of university funding. Maybe this is different for universities with top-up fees in England and for non-research universities, but at my university, student fees made up 16.6% of our funding, while research grants made up 67% of university funding. You can guess where the pressure lies for academics (and it’s not with the students). Indeed, when applying for jobs or promotions at universities in the UK (whether research or teaching orientated), you are always expected to give a list of your publications, rarely are you asked for a teaching profile or course outline. The pressure on academics within research institutes, or on the job market, is publish, publish, publish, followed very closely by research grant, research grant, research grant. The amount of time, effort or interest you show your students has almost no dividends other than your own personal satisfaction. We have no real interest in students as customers, because ultimately that isn’t where our bread is buttered.

The head of department has some interest in attracting overseas students as he has a university imposed quota to fill, and this may explain why some universities lie about their image, but ultimately, I would argue, this should ensure quality control over degrees. Nobody, especially people paying lots of money, wants to get a degree from a university that has a reputation for worthless degrees.

One concern that may be valid is whether students can graduate without perfect English. I actually think this may be possible. Now, if a student cannot communicate their ideas in English, they will never pass. But, it is perfectly possible to scrape by without perfect grammar or syntax. This element usually only makes up about 20-25% of a person’s grade, even in writing intensive courses like history, although, as it tends to influence the communication of ideas, it can often result in a much bigger grade deduction. Such a student would be unlikely to get a good mark, but they might pass. This might be more of a problem with ‘foreign’ students, but can exist in the work of ‘home’ students too. It raises an ongoing debate in subjects like history over whether we should be teaching ‘English’. As teachers of history, we usually try to drum in the structural element of essay writing skills (intro, middle, conclusion, etc) and how to reference properly, but, when it comes to grammar, we say ‘buy eats, shoots and leaves’. If it’s not our job to teach English (and honestly where would we cram it into an already full schedule), whose is it and is it really a necessary requisite of passing a degree?

One thing that I think has been an important change with the advent of the consumerist model, or the fetishization of education, is what the idea of the student has done to power relationships in the institution. The BBC article notes that students are ‘less deferential’ than in the past and complain more. To be honest, I think this is a good thing. While I think students should treat me with respect, as I do them, it is because we are all entitled to respect as human beings, not because I hold power over them (though I acknowledge that I do). In the past (even when I began university), there was frequently an attitude that students should pretty much put up with whatever they were dealt and this could result in massive abuses of power. Students were often short-changed on their education, because they weren’t a priority (they still aren’t but we have to disguise it better). They could wait months to receive feedback on coursework; their lecturers could miss class without giving them warning. They way they were talked to was dismissive and often rude. There was little sympathy towards students whose lives interfered in their work (as can happen to everyone) and no support for students who struggled- even if this was through bad teaching. This even manifested into silly things like students not being allowed to use lifts or only having one set of student toilets in a whole building. The consumerist model has tended towards a flattening of power hierarchies in the university and, while the staff/student relationship is far from equal, it is much improved. The article argues that a university has to be bigger than provider/ customer, but a learning community. Through forcing staff to recognise students as people, we are creating a new and better type of community.

Housework, part 2.

2008-06-22T06:44:00.000-07:00

I received a number of great comments to my post on housework and some raised a number of issues I thought would be better addressed at length, rather than in the confines of a comments box.

The first major issue raised was that house-cleaning is not just seen as demeaning because it is associated with women, but because it is also associated with women of colour and poor women. In Scotland, cleaners are not usually women of colour (because we are a VERY white country- though that’s slowly changing), but they are almost always poor and frequently poorly educated. In a more global context, cleaners are frequently women of colour. This association arises from housework’s poor social status. As it is seen as having little social value, it falls to the people ranked lowest in the social order to do it (women/ poor women/ women of colour). As it has little social value, the people who clean homes are open to abuse of all natures. As it has little social value, the people who clean homes are seen as suspicious, dishonest, impure.

Yet, housework is absolutely vital to the survival of the human race. It is not just a frivolous, social desire to have a well-functioning house. Historically, until very recently, if no one performed the functions of the household, the people that lived within it would have starved and/or died from disease. Today, as we have outsourced considerable parts of the household economy (such as food preparation) and because we have technological conveniences (such as central heating, washing machines and cleaning fluids), the role of the housewife/ cleaner appears considerably less significant. But, this disguises how vital it is to our health, mental well-being and economic productivity that we live in clean, safe environments. It only takes a quick glance over to the average life expectancy of the poor in nineteenth century tenements to get a sense of the importance of decent living conditions to our health. (I distinguish between clean and tidy houses- it is unsafe to live amongst mould and rotting food, rubbish or bodily matter- dust isn’t likely to kill you).

Even economists recognise that housework is vital part of the economy. One study in Canada estimated unpaid housework and childcare to be worth $275 billion to the Canadian economy. Non-employed single mothers put in an average of 50 hours a week, worth $24,000 a year to the Canadian economy ‘at current market rates’. If anything, these numbers are low, due to the low value placed on these occupations. If housework had a higher social value, it would be worth more to the economy and the women, who worked in housework and childcare industries, would have higher social status, more money and more power. One of my commenters suggested that housework does not have the power to affect many lives. This is not true. Through allowing people to live healthy lives and have roles in society and economy, cleaners affect the lives of everybody. Furthermore, as a feminist, I would be worried about promoting a system that saw value as associated with how much power a person could exercise over others.

One response to this is that ‘anyone can do housework’, so that it will never be seen as valuable, or that it’s ‘grunt work’. But housework is a learned skill, like any job; it’s just one that most people are taught from childhood. And there are plenty of jobs that are well- paid or respectable that ‘most people’ could do with some training. Farming, rearing animals, dairy-work, food preparation, and cooking are all reasonably well-paid jobs that have been historically performed by women of various social classes, with little formal training (but, like housework, lots of informal training). Jobs in construction and plumbing, which are very well-paid, require only short apprenticeships and can be learned by people with a variety of educational levels and social backgrounds. But, even if housecleaning is easy or can be performed by ‘anybody’, it doesn’t mean it should be of lesser value than any other occupation. Let’s face it, the average prime minister could not function if his basic needs were not being met. Jobs, which are ‘low-skill’, are not less important; they just have less social value. Furthermore, there is an implication in this discussion that certain types of people are worth less than others and that is hugely problematic. People have different skills and some find certain tasks easier than others (and this is without reflecting on how poverty and social class impact on education, etc), but this should NOT reflect on their social value. Their value lies in their humanity.

Finally, the question of privilege inevitably enters into any discussion of housework. Only the privileged can afford to pay someone else to clean their house (although in the past almost every household at all social levels had servants). And this raises some really complicated issues. As raised by one commenter, being able to hire people to clean your home and look after your children, allows many women to enter the world of work, which would not be possible otherwise. For some women, working is necessary to survive and the extra income they earn can pay someone else to reduce their burden. This is more complicated than a simple exercise of privilege. This is about coping and surviving. Yet, there is also the question of who cleans the house of the cleaner, another working woman?

What about rich women with leisure time who would like to pay someone to clean their house, not to free them for work, but for pleasure? Is this an exercise of privilege too far? Is there something fundamentally different about employing someone to clean your house when it is acceptable to buy prepared food and ready-made clothes? In fact, could you argue that because you pay your cleaner directly (not through the middlemen of factory owners, product buyers and the shop), they get a fairer, less exploitative wage than many people under the capitalist system?

At some point, we have to accept that as a society we rely on each other for survival. Households in the past needed servants because two adults could not do everything that needed to be done to survive. This is true today, but, instead of work being done by servants within our homes, we purchase ready-made food and clothes and rely on new technologies to allow us to cope. Because so much of that labour is invisible, we forget that humanity is a giant organism. Increasingly, we are trying to make housework invisible too. We give it little or no social value; we refuse to recognise its vital function to survival; we resist paying people to do it as it highlights its existence- it highlights that our survival depends on others. When we do pay people to clean, we demean them and trivialise their role.

Under the current capitalist/ patriarchal system, employing people to clean your home is an exercise of privilege. So is being able to buy your meat, pre-slaughtered and butchered, your vegetables grown, cleaned and even diced! We would like to forget that. We like to imagine that our successes and failures came through our own merit and hardwork. This is not true. We got here together. Now, we need to recognise that and give credit where credit is due. Perhaps, when we do, the social/ class/ gender/race distinctions that permeate our society will be harder to sustain.

Congratulations to Me!!

2008-06-20T10:13:00.000-07:00

So, I have been a bit silent earlier in the week because I had a job interview coming up and I was hectically trying to prepare, in addition to everything else I had to do, then I had a wee trip down south for the interview. But I found out today that I was successful. Woohoo! It's not a permanent job, but a two-year postdoctoral research contract on a subject very, very close to my own. So close, that it is actually a natural progression, rather than a detour, as research projects can sometimes be. So that is all great. To all those other recently completed Drs out-there swimming in the sea of unknown employment, I finally hit land, so have hope!

Now I just need to get the book finished before I start. And, the countdown (ten weeks) begins...

(I need to find out how to get one of those wee 'words written' counters on the side bar!!)

Housework.

2008-06-19T12:47:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, mainly on American blogs, I come across comments of disgust that people pay other people to do their housework. The argument usually goes that people who pay other people to do their housework are exploiting them, regardless of how much they are paid. Apparently, there is no financial remuneration that could compensate somebody for the loss of status brought by cleaning a house. Implicit in this discussion is the sense that doing housework is so demeaning, so awful, that nobody should ask another person to do it for them. Now, why is housework viewed in this way?

First, I think at least part of this argument is driven by a sense of insecurity about placing a numeric value on women’s contribution to the economy. If we can decide on a going rate for house-cleaning, we can calculate how much a woman’s work in the home is worth; as worth decides your social status in a capitalist system, there is a risk that you devalue the social role of housewives. As housewives traditionally took their social status from their husband, there is a risk that women married to high-earning men would be worth less than them and thus risk losing power within their marriage. Implicit in all of this, of course, is the sense that housework isn’t worth very much, and even if it’s not at the bottom of the pile of poorly-paid jobs, it won’t be at the top. This is exasperated by the fact that housework is not seen to be driven by economic factors, so therefore the value of wages would not be driven by economic forces, but by an arbitrary social valuation.

Second, housework is seen as demeaning as it is women’s work. This, of course, is never explicitly said, but why else would such disgust arise at the idea of doing housework. Housework is not that difficult; it’s not that disgusting. I have cleaned houses for money and would much, much prefer that to, say, to having to bathe and dress elderly people, which is considered to a be a respectable (women’s) occupation. It is far less disgusting than working in an abattoir or cleaning out stables. For the queasy stomached like myself, it is far less disgusting that stitching up gushing head wounds or cutting out people’s hearts. The work is not that physically hard and it is only as demeaning as you are treated. I personally had much more patronising and sleazy employers in retail than in house cleaning. Furthermore, while it is not often recognised, housework is an essential part of the economy. If houses weren’t cleaned and laundry left undone, workers would not be able to go to work in clean clothes, or make themselves food; they would eventually be made ill by bacteria, germs and mould; eventually (ok this would take a while but...) houses would decay and fall down, leaving worker’s homeless. Housework is only considered demeaning because it is something that women do.

Third, housework is demeaning because it is associated with the private sphere. The inviolable private home is meant to be a haven from the economic forces of the ‘real world’; a sanctuary from the harsh competition and strife of the capitalist system. Yet, because we value things with an economic value, the private home is seen as worth less than the public sphere. It was meant to be an equal, but different, environment, but inevitably, as capitalism shaped how we viewed the world, it came to hold less social import. To be placed in that environment is to be worth less, whether you are there as a wife or as a worker. Furthermore, the acknowledgement that the private home is also an economic environment undermines the private/public divide. That people could be paid for what goes on inside the home problematises the public/ private distinction that is at the heart of middle class, patriarchal values.

For these reasons, housework is seen as demeaning and paying someone to do your housework is seen as demeaning someone (which is unacceptable for feminists). Paying someone to do your housework is also problematic as it makes very visible the social hierarchies that exist in society and which, especially the privileged, like to pretend we don’t play a part in. Yet, those social distinctions continue to operate in every sphere of life; they are just more obvious when we do it the home and are directly responsible for the payment of wages. Housework is not demeaning, in and of itself. It is seen that way, because we do not value it. This is something we need to respond to as feminists, both because housework is associated with women and tends to overwhelmingly fall to women, and because a critical rethinking of the economic value of housework destabilises the capitalist, patriarchal system.

Tired Today; So Something to Inspire.

2008-06-18T12:12:00.000-07:00

Via the Fword.

A Letter Sent.

2008-06-17T04:36:00.000-07:00

This my response to the Scottish government's consultation on raising the age of alcoholic purchases for 18-21 year olds (Yes, I pinched quite a bit from an old blog post of mine).

Dear Madam or Sir,

I wish to strongly object to removing the legal right of 18-21 year-olds to purchase alcohol in supermarkets and off-licenses, as I believe that such legislation is discriminatory and unjustified. Legislation of this nature is a restriction on the legal rights of adults, and as such, could fall foul of age discrimination legislation. I believe that it is unjustified as, despite claims to the contrary, there is little statistical justification to single out 18-21 year-olds.

The justification for this legislation appears to be a ‘significant public concern’ that young people drink too much and that alcohol misuse is higher in this age group than other age groups, as suggested by attendances at Accident and Emergency, levels of drink-driving and assaults. While ‘significant public concern’ surrounds the issue of young people drinking, this alone cannot be used as the basis of legislation. Public concern is a notoriously problematic judge of social problems and often has no basis in fact. The public has continously been concerned with the behaviour of young people for the past three-hundred years and yet most of that concern is hyperbole and reflects poorly on ‘reality’.

There is also no real statistical evidence that the 18-21 age group are the major cause of alcohol related problems. As far as I know, there are no studies that exclusively look at the behaviour of this age group and show a different pattern of behaviour from those of people aged under 30. The statistics used for the government’s consultation back this up. The report says that drink-driving accidents are highest among young people, yet the 2005 police road casualties report shows that 25% of drivers and passengers, aged 16-19, killed while driving were drunk, compared to 33% of those aged 20-29 and 33% of those aged 30-39. Why pick out the 18-21 age group for particular punishment, when if anything they are better behaved? Similarly, while 65% of drunken assaults were amongst those aged under thirty, the average age of an assailant was 25 for men and 26 for women. Singling out 18-21 year olds seems rather arbitrary. The vast majority of 18-21 year olds do not binge drink (43% of men aged 16-24 binge drink and 24% of women) and, again, there are no studies that look particularly at the drinking behaviour of 18-21 year olds. If this change in legislation is about health benefits, then, younger people tend to drink more than older people, but, again, I am not aware of any studies that say alcohol consumption peaks between the ages of 18 and 21. Furthermore, as alcohol consumption is related to earnings, it is more likely that alcohol consumption would be higher amongst the 21-24 age group, who have a higher earning capacity. Legislating against the 18-21 age groups seems arbitrary and restricts the rights of adults based on their age. As such, it appears to fall foul of age discrimination legislation. It is a fact that men of all ages drink more than women aged 16-24, yet legislation that restricted the right to drink by gender would be discriminatory. Why would the same not apply to age?

Underage drinking is already a fact of life in Scotland. Raising the age limit, even if just in particular circumstances, criminalises the behaviour of another group of people with no real reduction in behaviour. More problematically, however, is what criminalising the behaviour of a group of adults based on their age says about our society. At a certain point, we grant people in society the rights of adulthood, which include the ability to make choices about their lives, whether or not they are good ones. What age do we want to set adulthood at? There is already considerable social discussion about the ever-increasing boundaries of youth as people put off marriage and family until their early-thirties, allowing them the freedoms of adolescence for longer and longer. Do we want to institutionalise youth into the twenties? The fact is society has a responsibility to protect its young people due to the fact that we restrict their behaviour. It is the pay off we make for not allowing them full human agency. If we raise the age limit for adulthood, we remove full human agency for a larger group of people and thus we change their role in society. We infantilise them and we cannot expect people who are not allowed to be adults in one area of their life to behave like adults in another. Are we willing to take on that responsibility? Furthermore, should we?

If we can agree that, in Scotland, people over fourteen can make legally binding contracts, that people over sixteen can have sex, marry without parental consent, leave school, live in their own homes, be held criminally responsible and tried as an adult, work and pay tax, that people over seventeen can drive, that people over eighteen can smoke and have mortgages, credit card debt and all the other rights and responsibilities of adulthood, then why should there be a separate rule for drinking? Much of the government’s alcohol use reduction strategy is based on education and teaching people to make good choices. Yet, at the same time, the government is removing the ability to exercise that choice. What does that say about the government’s faith in its own strategies and in its young people?

While similar legislation exists in other countries, notably the US, different countries have different legal standards for adulthood. Scotland has set the legal age of adulthood peculiarly young (effectively at 16) and, as such, it has created a culture of responsibility and adulthood from around that age, and certainly by 18. In the US, full adulthood is not granted until 21. In Scandinavia, the picture is similar to Scotland, but generally the age of legal responsibility is higher as is age at marriage. Legislative practice cannot be easily removed from one environment to another, especially when it would grievously infringe upon the rights of a social group that, until that moment, had been full adults.

Drink is a problem amongst all social groups and all age-groups. It is at the heart of our culture. Drink is brought out at all social occasions, whether organised by families, institutions or the state, often with no alternative given. It is given out as a reward or bonuses in the workplace based on an assumption that everybody drinks alcohol. Not drinking alcohol can exclude you from a large part of Scottish social life, and, if drink is calculated at cost, refusing alcohol can be refusing a (sometimes significant) part of your wage. Raising the drinking age pretends that alcohol related problems are about the irresponsibility of youth, while simultaneously reclassifying a group of adults as young people to solve a fictional problem. Our love affair with alcohol is a widespread social problem, institutionalised into our culture, and effecting people at all social levels and in all age-groups. If we want to reduce the harms caused by drinking, we need to change the significance of drinking to Scottish society, not redefine what it means to be an adult. Legislative practice often has much wider social implications than the single issue that it addresses. This sort of legislation is of this nature.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Yours Sincerely,

Feminist Avatar.

Dear BBC,

2008-06-12T16:18:00.000-07:00

I’m a bit behind, but yesterday the BBC was critiqued for its poor coverage of Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish news.* A study shows that people outside of England feel that their country is poorly represented in the BBC’s national news and that there needs to be more coverage to promote fuller and clearer democracy. There are various comments by leading figures saying that we need more ‘local’ news on the link. But the thing that is not really being said is that it is not just about ‘more’ news. It is about how UK news is reported and made relevant to viewers outside England.

First of all, the UK is not synonymous with England; if you are using the term, you are including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. There is no such thing as UK law, a UK education system or, for many purposes, even a UK NHS. There is definitely not UK weather (please note snow in England does not mean the whole of the UK has snow). Studies of England are not studies of the UK. Please get the terminology right. It is just bad reporting to have headlines that talk about the UK, when you mean England. Don’t believe they do it, check out these statistics for the ‘UK’, the scroll to the bottom to find out where they got them- yup England.

Second, just because something is important in England does not mean it matters to the rest of the UK. House prices aren’t yet falling in Scotland and there is no reason why they should as we did not have similar rates of price inflation to England. Yet, reportage suggests that the plummeting house prices in England also apply to Scotland, making Scottish buyers nervous. You are reporting us into an unnecessary downturn. Similarly, while English economic growth rates are in decline; this is not true of Scotland. Our growth rates are stable. Stop including us in your proclamations of doom.

Third, major events do not affect all nations of the UK equally. This is really important to remember as it is key to democratic processes. The rise in immigration that has England upset and frightened has been great for Scotland. It has brought in young people into our aging population, filled undesirable jobs (which I am sure is problematic at other levels, bu,t...), and increased our declining birth rate. A BBC that perpetuates the myth that immigration is harmful to all of the UK, because certain areas experience over-crowding in England and, through doing so creates hostile attitudes to immigrants amongst the Scottish population, doubly harms Scotland, both through encouraging racism and through damaging our economy.

The problem is that there is a general assumption that England is the norm and that the rest of the UK is peripheral and our experiences interesting curiosities. The ‘United’ in UK is meant to suggest that all four nations are equal, that our experiences are similarly valid, if different. Treating three of the four nations as if their experiences are not relevant or assuming that one nation’s experience is relevant to the rest of the UK, but that the rest of the UK has nothing to offer in return, is undemocratic and removes any sense of true partnership.

So, BBC, it’s good that you recognise that you have a problem with news reportage, but, when you fix it, please don’t ignore the actual problem in favour of ‘more’.

*To any readers not convinced by Scottish Nationalism, go read the comment thread that goes with this article.

Criticising Women.

2008-06-11T15:44:00.000-07:00

Beyond Feminism has started a flurry of blog posts on whether it is right for feminists to criticise other women, both for and against. Debs at Burning Times argues that criticising other women, who regardless of their wealth or status in society, share our oppression is pointless and divides women. Poly Styrene argues that we need to be able to criticise women, or, otherwise, we would never challenge women who further women’s oppression. So, despite being days behind, I thought I’d throw my hat in to the ring.

First, I think feminists can legitimately challenge and criticise other people’s ideas and behaviours. But, I think that we have to be careful how and for what reason we do so. There are certain ideas that most, if not all, feminists agree on. We agree that women are human beings who should be extended all the rights and privileges of men. We, generally, agree that women should be represented in the public sphere and in politics. We, generally, agree that women should have the same rights to education and the same legal privileges, such as with regard to divorce law, as men. We, generally, agree that women have the right to be paid equally to men for the same job, to have the same opportunity of employment and promotion to men, and, for many, to challenge traditional working practices that limit women’s ability to achieve in the workplace. Many feminists agree that we should challenge social norms that locate women in the private sphere and in an exclusively child-rearing, forced domestic role. Most agree that women should be equal to their husbands within in marriage. Most feminists support the right of women to have intimate, and/or sexual, relationships with women and still hold all the privileges of straight women and men. Most feminists support women’s right to control their own bodies, including the right to access abortion and contraceptives. Most feminists recognise that men hold socially recognised and legitimate power over women that frequently, but not exclusively, manifests itself in domestic violence, rape and sexual assault, and that this is wrong. Many feminists believe that male power over women is systematic, and we describe that system as patriarchy. This is nowhere near an exhaustive list of the things most feminists would agree on, and this is without even broaching on how sexism intersects with other forms of oppression, including racism, dis-ablism and homophobia.

If someone, male or female, says, writes, sings or otherwise conveys that these ideas are wrong, then as feminists we have the right, and perhaps even the duty, to challenge this. We have the right to say why we think these ideas are wrong and to critique them.

So, what about new territory? Surely, if the feminist movement is to continue to grow and evolve, feminists have to be able to challenge new ideas that oppress women. This, too, I think is acceptable and important. If an idea, behaviour or a product comes along that needs to be given a feminist critique, then that is valuable.

However, I think this is different from blaming women who conform to patriarchal standards for that conformity. First of all, all women to some extent conform to patriarchal standards. This is because how we understand femininity, masculinity and gender is shaped by patriarchal discourses. To use but one example, how we dress is always determined by patriarchal standards. Currently, dressing sexily is frequently critiqued as conforming to patriarchal standards, but the problem is that dressing in any other way is given meaning by how it relates to the norm. So, we can reject sexy, but then we are just frumpy, unsexy, undesirable. Being undesirable may seem good in a world where women’s worth is measured by desirability, but it does not overturn the system. Alternative fashions are not anti-patriarchal, because they are still given meaning or definition within the patriarchal system. And this is before we get into the fact that the patriarchal standard for fashion is constantly shifting. We cannot dress ourselves out of the patriarchal system; it will take something more revolutionary.

Criticising women for conforming to patriarchal standards is not helpful, because we all have to do it in our daily lives. Criticising women for conforming is not helpful, because in the case of much behaviour, it is not the behaviour itself that is problematic, but the meaning given to it by the culture. Wearing high heels or short skirts is not of itself problematic, it is how the wearing of such items is interpreted that is problematic. If we start limiting what women can do, because it conforms to patriarchy, we will soon be limited to a very small range of behaviours, and that cannot be good for women. We also get into the very problematic territory of what behaviour is better, or more feminist, than others, and this sort of ranking tends to discriminate against women without cultural authority (and please note that authority may be different in feminist circles than in patriarchal society).

This is not to say behaviour should be left uncritiqued. It is perfectly legitimate to question why women choose to dress in particular ways (although I think it would be difficult to create a simple good dress/ bad dress dichotomy). It is perfectly legitimate to say why certain behaviours help reinforce the patriarchal system, and ideally explain how they do. It is also legitimate to take a stand against certain behaviours. Few women would agree that domestic violence was ever acceptable, and many feminist are uncomfortable with cosmetic surgery. Feminists are allowed to have opinions on these topics. But, we also have to accept that it is very difficult to make black and white rules within patriarchal society and that women should not be attacked because of the choices they make to survive within that system. We also have to accept that there will be some disagreement over what behaviours are feminist, or not, and that is ok, in fact it makes for great blog posts. We need to separate our criticism of women from our criticism of behaviour. They are not synonymous. Few women are the sum of what they wear, or the image they present, or even the ideas they express. Furthermore, as human beings, they are entitled to hold the opinions they hold, even if we think they are despicable. That is the right we grant men and should be granted to all women. We might want women to behave better, but expecting women to always be perfect or to represent the rest of womankind is to remove them of their humanity, a humanity that is flawed. Through doing so, we defeat our own aims.

Syntax.

2008-06-08T06:04:00.000-07:00

"A 15 year old boy is charged with 11 indecent assaults which were alleged to have taken place in Glasgow".

Is it just me or does this sentence read that it is the location that is in doubt, not the crime?