‘Mon the Students! In Solidarity.

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.

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

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.

More tokenism.

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.

Grumpy Feminist Warning!

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.

A rather wordy history of childbirth.

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.

Who was she anyway?

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.

We Hate Children.

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.

Maternity Leave.

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.

A Thought Experiment, or Empowerfulising Pink.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Housework.

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.

Power: What Is It? Or No Answers Today, Folks.

Poor and working-class women did not become the role models for bourgeois white women because they were not seen by them as exercising forms of power valued in this society. In other words, their exercise of strength was not synonymous with economic power. Their power is in no way linked to domination or control over others, and this is the form of power that many bourgeois women are intrigued by and fascinated with.

(bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centre, (South End Press, 1984),
p.89.

(I realise that this post may sound like I am challenging the utility of removing patriarchy/ capitalism. That is not its intent. Rather I am trying to conceptualise how theories of power actually relate to the complex operation of life, in order to move forward past an unequal society. Suggestions welcome.)

Women can and do exercise power. In Scotland, working-class women were often in control of the household income, giving their husband’s pocket money. They often lived in communities where being independent, strong and exercising power over their families was expected and normal. Yet, for much of history, they couldn’t vote, their ‘choice’ (to work or not, in what occupation, where to live, what to buy, etc) was incredibly limited, the power they exercised was not socially legitimate or recognised, they were understood by society to be less than their husbands and had all the constraints that the law and society put on women because of their gender.

What is power? Is it power to have control over others, even if they are lower down the social ladder? Is it power to be able to exercise choice, even if that choice is constrained? Is it power if its exercise is limited to a particular sphere, such as the household? I think we would answer ‘yes’ to all of these questions, even if we recognised that power was constrained in many cases.

But what if we rank power? Do you have more power if you exercise power in the household, like a working-class women, or if you have the vote, like a working-class man (at certain points in history)? Is it more power to have more earning power due to your sex, like a working class man, or to be given your husband’s entire wage at the end of the week, like a working-class women? Is it more power to be recognised by society as a superior form of life (like working-class men vis-à-vis working-class women), or to have access to economic resources that give you a wider range of choice (like say a working-class women in charge of the household budget)? Are symbolic forms of power, such as maleness, more or less real than more physical forms of power, such as economic power? How do we conceptualise, and dismantle, patriarchy if we don't understand how it operates- or perhaps, how do we justify that men hold power over women in a systematic way, if women sometimes hold power oven men? When does power become patriarchal and not just the interactions of individuals competing for power?

The intention of this discussion is not to start a fight about who is more oppressed, or what criteria of identity is more important as a marker of subjugation (gender, race, sexuality, etc, etc.). But to ask, what is power? What do we mean by that term and when is it useful? Perhaps, drawing on Marx, we often see money as a marker of power. The more money a person has, the more power they can exercise. But if that person spends 100+ hours a week earning that money, so that s/he has wealth but not time, is that more empowering than being poor, but with leisure time? Is it a balance- the middle-class person who earns enough to be comfortable and have choice, but also the time to use that choice? Or, is about the potential- the potential to buy, to bribe, to pay one’s way out of the system, that makes it power? Are you powerful if you are massively wealthy, but never do anything at all but sit in your house and watch TV?

Is power measured by how many people are influenced or affected by your actions? Are MPs powerful because they make decisions that affect the lives of whole nations of people? Are they more or less powerful than the man who can bribe MPs to, say, give him a Visa (a decision without broader repercussions on society than having an extra person in the country)? Let’s contrast this with power within the family. Does the man who exercises complete control over his household have less power than an MP, whose decisions affect many, or, more power, because the exercise of power is more direct, perhaps takes up more time, and gives him more immediate benefits? If power is judged by what you get out of exercising it- the benefits of holding authority- is it more powerful to be the Prime Minister or to be the abusive husband?

bell hooks suggests that working-class women, through their independence, capability and strength, hold power (or as I would term this form of power-agency). She argues that we need to get out of a mindset that sees power as about controlling other people, or equates power with economic resources. And, I think this is something that most feminists would agree on. Yet, what is less clear, is what it means to be an agent or to hold power outside of these traditional structures, especially because it is unclear how those traditional structures give you power in the first place. What does it mean to hold the vote in a world where your most immediate concern is feeding your household? Does a Prime Minister feel more power when his policy successfully passes into law, or when he beats his wife? Are you more powerful if everyone in the world is equal (same resources; same social conception and value), or less- and if we no longer have capitalism-how do we measure this? Do we need to?

If we equate agency with having choice then no one can ever hold true power, because our choice is always constrained by the rights of others- is that the key? How do we work out the line between constraining your rights for the greater good, and oppression?

Women Continuing to Die.

Scottish women are more likely to die in childbirth than anywhere else in Western Europe. We are twice as likely to die as the European and UK average. This reflects our dreadful health record more generally and our high levels of poverty.

Apparently, we can be grateful that they have a worse record in the Third World. Don’t know what else to say really, except that we need to do better.

Bugged.

A few days ago, I saw a flyer (which I unfortunately lost) for a local kitchen supplier. It featured a black and white cartoon of a muscled, square-jawed man in an apron, holding a frying pan over a stove in a kitchen. Above the cartoon the flyer asked ‘Do you want to be this modern man?’ Beneath it read, ‘[company name] presents new curvy kitchens’ and had a colour picture of a (quite fabulous) kitchen, followed by the words ‘Show you softer side’. And something bugged me.

Perhaps, it’s the idea that only ‘modern men’ would wear an apron and cook. Perhaps, it was the idea that only ‘modern men’ would have an interest in choosing their kitchens. Perhaps, it was the idea that only ‘modern men’ would want a ‘curvy’ kitchen, or want to show their ‘softer side’ (or that the decor in your kitchen would actually reflect your personality). Perhaps, it was the ‘modern’ in modern man.

Is our conception of masculinity so narrow that we can only conceive of a man who cooks as an aberrance or ‘type’? Do men, who are happy to show their softer sides, have to be categorised separately? I understand that ‘modern man’ is a complex category, being embraced by some men and rejected by others, but what does it mean to say that only ‘modern men’ like curves in their kitchens? From the other perspective, do cooking, kitchen choice and a softer side make the modern man?

Why did the question not read ‘do you want to be this man?’

A Sadly Unsurprising Tale.

The Daily Record this week is airing the dirty laundry of Rev. Mike McCurry at Mosspark Baptist Church. Now, the story itself is hardly the stuff of legend. Older married minister of a church and respected member of the community has an affair with a 21-year-old female parishioner, Victoria. When caught, he denies the affair existed, claiming the girl stalked him and made up false allegations. She, on the other hand, has numerous witnesses and ‘text-ual’ evidence to support her claims, showing McCurry to be a liar. Now, the rights and wrongs of their affair hold little interest for me. But, what struck me when reading this tale was the anti-women attitude taken by the Church in this case.

The Church leadership, not McCurry, told Victoria that McCurry no longer wanted to see her. When she showed up at church to confront him, having never been told by McCurry that he wanted the relationship finished, the Church leadership would not let her talk to him, essentially treating her as the wrong-doer. The scandal caused her so much heartbreak that she left her job and family to move to England. She only returned to testify at the Church hearing after McCurry claimed that she was a stalker and her mother, a member of the Church, challenged his lies. McCurry has subsequently been allowed to continue in his post as minister, but he and Victoria are not allowed any further contact. Now this seems to me, the equivalent of ejecting Victoria from her church and ‘community’. How can a church member have communion within a church where she is not allowed to interact with the minister?

I would not like to paint Victoria as victim with no agency. At 21, she made a choice. But, it isn’t too hard to see that McCurry is significantly more culpable in this affair. He was the leader in the Church, holding a position of authority over Victoria, who was half his age. He was the person betraying his wife and congregation (and presumably God) through rejecting his vows of fidelity to his wife and faithfulness to the tenets of his religion. So why is it that Victoria is effectively removed from the congregation and forced to leave her community, and he remains?

I don’t necessarily think McCurry should lose his job- this is a decision for the Church. But, I do think that the Church has to consider that they have a responsibility to more than McCurry; that they should have taken action to protect Victoria, to listen to her side of the story, and to ensure that she remained welcome in her community. It seems to me that if the Church wants to continue to have a place in modern society then it needs to treat women with considerably more respect. It also seems to me that if I were a member of such a Church, I wouldn’t want to be led by a man who happily lies to save his own back at the expense of another.

Canadian Club: Men Only.

Racialicious has a project up critiquing a sexist set of American Canadian Club adverts. In response, she created her own version of the ads and asked readers to send in their versions. Some of the responses are really great. I especially like 'your dad was a real man', portraying an alternative version of masculinity to that portrayed in the adverts.

I also really love the idea of this project, reacting in a creative fashion to the advertising by producing effective alternatives. The adverts created are all really well done and professional looking, highlighting that feminist advertising is effective advertising. I agree with the commentator at Racialicious that if they want to punish Canadian Club, creating new adverts for them doesn't really work. But, I think as a project that shows that there are alternatives to the mysogonistic BS that is frequently created, then it's fab, and as a project that allows feminists to define what it means to be a man or a woman, then it is a really interesting historical project.

All Feminist; All of the Time.

There has been a discussion at a number of websites recently about what feminist TV looks like. What do we want from our female characters? What do we want from the world in which our feminist characters live? In many respects, this comes under the much bigger question of what do we want from the world as feminists? What changes do we want to happen, and what does a post-patriarchal future look like? So, in many respects, this is a horribly difficult question, and one that I don’t have an answer for. Today however, I would like to address one part of this question, which is the tension between real women’s experience and the behaviour of feminist characters on TV.

One of the frustrations that many women have with the TV characters they watch, especially those characters who are feminist or proto-feminist women, is that they don’t behave in feminist ways all of the time. Saranga at Paiwing, for example, expresses frustration that despite Buffy the Vampire Slayer retaliating against the man who tried to sexually assault her, she does not challenge him or disagree when later told her clothing provoked the attack. Buffy’s response suggests that she buys into this mythology. Now, how is the viewer meant to read this scene: should we be annoyed that Buffy failed to follow through on her feminist credentials? Or, do we say, well that’s how a real woman, perhaps caught off guard, may respond in this situation?

What about a less clear cut story plot such as in Lipstick Jungle? Top female exec (beautiful, mega successful women in a man’s world), who loves her husband, but isn’t getting any sex, has an affair with the young hawt male. At first I think this is a bit ‘ew’, but why hold her to a different standard from men. Then, she wants it to be only about sex; then she thinks she is falling for him, guilt about husband etc. Cop out or just one of those things? What is the feminist action in this story plot: to remain faithful to her husband and never have an affair??

The problem with demanding feminist TV is that some of the time the feminist decision, in a patriarchal world, doesn’t exist. Instead, you have female characters making a myriad of decisions, some right, some wrong, in circumstances that they can’t control. (In many respects, exactly like the real world). And, the thing is, this doesn’t mean that such television isn’t ‘feminist’. One of the longest-running aims of the feminist movement has been to get women’s experience recognised; to destroy a world where the white, middle class male’s experience is considered normal and proper. Television that shows women’s experience in all its ugly and imperfect detail legitimises the experience of women, by bringing it into the public sphere. It allows other women to recognise that their experiences are not unique; that they are not alone in the inequalities and problems they face.

So, perhaps, when looking for feminist TV, we should not ask ‘did she do the feminist thing’, but instead, ‘did she behave like a real woman would’? Does her character have depth and complexity and does her behaviour feel real, remembering that different women have different experiences? Does she have a central role within the show, or is she a sounding board or prop for the male characters? Is she human?

Ova Captures Sperm.

I know I am years late with this news, but I thought it was a rather cool fact when I came across it. The ova is actually the aggressor in the conception process, not the sperm. Indeed, the sperm tries to escape, but the ova sends out chemicals to draw them into her orbit. The analogy of the assertive sperm, winning the race, and fertilising the egg is not the real story. Now, I wonder why such a myth exists? [sarcasm]

Another faulty metaphor oft used in the medical sphere is that of menstruation as a form of death, where the womb and egg is destroyed and passed out, but, on the other hand, when sperm is ejaculated it is talked about as fertilising and spreading of seed, thus life. In fact, the endometrium constantly renews itself, so could be talked about as constantly living, whereas the vast, vast majority of sperm find only death.

Just a turn of phrase, perhaps, but the significance for how we conceive of the operation of the body are massive.