often seen in the street without a hat

I read the f-word, which is a UK based feminist blog. I've always found it interesting, and even when I don't agree with their views, they're usually thought provoking, and well-argued. Today I found this on it. It's a blog post by Abby O'Reilly, who has taken issue with Zoe Williams' writing about her pregnancy. It's a pretty nasty piece of writing, I think - seeming to place "breeder" (delightful!) and "thinker" as opposite positions, and asserting that no-one except Williams and possibly other pregnant women could possibly be interested in what she has to say. So I wrote this as a response.

( Abby O'Reilly's blog post on Zoe Williams )

August
These Old Shades - Georgette Heyer
1979 - Rhona Cameron
Evelyn Waugh - Selina Hastings
Miss Bugle Saw God in the Cabbages - Sara Yeomans
The English - Jeremy Paxman
Special Topics in Calamity Physics - Marisha Pessl
Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
All About Women - Taslima Nasreen
Bath Tangle - Georgette Heyer
Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady - Florence King
The British Museum is Falling Down - David Lodge
Why Shoot a Butler? - Georgette Heyer
Love is a Many-Trousered Thing - Louise Rennison
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Notes and Queries - Guardian
Tea and Tranquillisers: The Diary of a Happy Housewife - Diane Harpwood
Brighton Rock - Graham Greene
Franny and Zooey - JD Salinger
On the House - Simon Hoggart
This Real Night - Rebecca West
Night Race to Kawau - Tessa Duder

( Bits. )

Previously on slemslempike, I made a post about tampons with skirts.

I initially locked it because of paranoia about Tampax hunting me down for breaking the rather loose security thing I ticked and leaving me in a pool of (blue) blood). Now they are advertising it, according to notmarcie, so I needn't have, but since there are comments I will leave it locked, in case people didn't want to share.

Anyway, further to that post, in which I signed up for a trial, I have received my box of clothed tampons. I am to use them as I normally would, not allow my friends and family to use them, and send back any unused ones. They came with a sheaf of informative leaflets, the first of which told me brightly that these tampons were definitely not harmful! At all! The rest of the leaflets were mostly warning me about the dangers of Toxic Shock Syndrome.

Anyway, my lady time is not yet upon me, and so until I can report properly on the actual experience of using a tampon with a skirt, I bring you the experiments of slemslempike and the frilly tampon.

( Cut for lots of pictures. And the SHAME OF MENSTRUATION, obv. )

On Friday morning I walked along the South bank to the Tate Modern. I accidentally pushed into the ticket queue. I had been waiting at the front, and didn't realise that if you wanted to get tickets for the Carsten Höller slides then you were supposed to join a massive queue round the side. All I saw when I got down the stairs was a rush of people going to queue, so I joined in, and got a few glares I didn't understand until about ten minutes later. By that time, having weathered the distaste radiating around me, I poked around my conscience a bit and decided that I didn't feel guilty enough to leave and go to the back. As a kind of penance I only got one ticket though, which seemed a compromise that I could just about live with.

My ticket was for a few hours later, and I took advantage of lsugaralmond's kind loan of a Tate card to have breakfast in the members' cafe. It was lovely sitting on the terrace overlooking the Thames. The view was mostly of the tops of buildings and a lot of cranes, but a View nonetheless, and one that made me feel a bit special. I also went and looked round the Cubism exhibit, which had a room of Guerilla Girls posters. I like the Guerilla Girls' work, so I was pleased, but then wondered what the Tate's record was on exhibiting women and black artists. Galleries should only be allowed to show GG stuff if they put up a sign of their own displaying the statistics for the past year, and explaining exactly what their commitment to equality entails. Or are we now so stupidly post-feminist that we can stand around smugly saying "ooh wasn't it terrible" right next to a poster saying "things are even worse in Europe" without questioning if they've got any better?

Eventually I got to go on the slide. You have to wedge your feet into a sort of sack thing, and I had trouble getting into that while clinging to the side so that I wouldn't set off too soon and land on a poor child at the bottom. There was a lot of shrieking, and while there were hats and elbow pads that you could use, no-one else around me was and I didn't feel brave enough to ask for them. As it turned out I didn't need them. I whooshed down giggling the entire way, and felt that I managed the potentially clumsy ending rather gracefully. I wished that I hadn't made a stupid moral bargain, and had tickets for the other slides as well. I had seen a few of the "but is it art" whining in various papers, and I have to say that it never occured to me to think about it at the time. My only thought was "wheeee!" and that's pretty much what it is now I come to reflect more maturely.

I just had time to investigate the giftshop for stocking presents before heading to Euston. I couldn't find any, but bought myself some Guerilla Girls rubbers that say "erase discrimination" as I am not so unhypocritical not to like a nicely commercialised bit of feminist tat to pretend like I'm doing something that matters. I have paired it with my "women rulers in history" ruler, and now I have to find something to rule for my work. A small country will do. The rubber will come in useful when I get books out of the library that are covered in pencil underlinings, which makes me furious. Mostly because it impedes my own reading, but also I can get sanctimonious because it causes difficulty in the machines that convert the text for visually impaired people.

Anyway, I walked along to the bookstall under hungerford bridge, nothing there, probably just as well as Lizzie had given me some from her slush pile. There were signs for a Gorillaz pop-up shop along the bridge to Embankment, but I didn't go. On the train home I was working on some discourse reading at a table. I was joined by another student who matched my book, and then pulled out another, so that she looked more dilligent than me! Also, she was a medical student, which is rather good. Then I noticed that not only had she not yet got to grown-up medicine and was only on paediatrics, but it was concise paediatrics at that. Hah! Then there was another woman but she did business studies and I like to think we both turned up our noses at that. Actually med student was asleep until Preston, where she said "does this train go to Preston" and I said "this is Preston" and then she did a very television style thing of shrieking and grabbing things and diving off the train.

There's a short article about Persphone Books here. It's nice, although I have no idea why Lamb's Conduit Street qualifies as "mysterious". But I just wish that pople would stop engaging with feminism in a way that trots out the trite little sayings of "what is loosely called the bra-burning feminist" (well, yes, anti-feminists quite often say that, but really, that doesn't mean that you have to call it that)and "we're the kind of feminism that likes men". Oh, the good kind of feminism. I see. Well, I quite like some men. But to be honest, my kind of feminism doesn't really care whether or not men feel liked, and doesn't feel the need to pander. I adore the books that Persephone publish - I love the writing, the feel, the look and the ethos, and I do like that their books value the dailiness of women's lives - and I really admire Nicola Beauman, ever since I read A Very Great Profession, but reading these comments just make me feel sad.

"Do you ever have nightmares in which babies are being sold on auction blocks? If you do not have such visions, you should begin."

I took some old feminist journals from the 1960s/170s out of the library, and this is the first line of the first issue. It's not a particularly encouraging start. The journal's called "No More Fun and Games", and they're not kidding. The articles are, uh, interesting. Apparently homosexuality is unnatural, and only exists because of rigid male/female roles. And girls wearing "diaphanous" minidresses deliberately incite the cat-calls they hate. I dislike these positions, and they do stick to the with us or against us very rigid approach, but I admire their anger and drive. It's easier to do things when you're certain of your right, and to tell people exactly what needs to be done, rather than invite discussion and change discourse and mainstream things. When I worked with Rape Prevention Education the leader used to say "where's the anger", because that was what drove people to create resources and fight against rape, but it seemed to have dropped away. I don't know. I do quite like this poem (although I hate the insult "cock-sucker")

as i was walking along
the gentleman to my left
addressed me as a fat-assed pig
feeling this comment to be neither accurate nor appropriate
i reciprocated by calling him a lecherous old whore-monger
taking no pleasure in his most recently acquired appellation
he proclaimed me a
bitch in heat
i said in reply
that my condition was far more
desirable
than his condition which was that of a mangy cock-sucker
he retorted with fuck you
whereupon i gasped admirably
and waddled on

Jayne West

I am incensed with news coverage about rape. Three primary aged girls were attacked in a park and the police are questioning a fourteen year old boy. The news reports insist on saying "suspected rape" and "alleged attack". It disgusts me. When I look at the headline of newspaper, if there's ever a story about rape, it always has liberal use of quote marks. Girl, 15 "raped" by gang. "Police hunt for suspect in "sex attack". This isn't about presuming innocence of suspect before they are proven guilty (or more accurately, let go without charge, or in the unlikely event of a court case, get found 'innocent'), it's about making sure that everyone understands that women lie, that most so-called 'rapes' are stupid sluts changing their mind, or just making it up all together.

I have never seen a report saying "family angry after 'burglary'", or "man in hospital after 'mugging'". The victims of those crimes aren't automatically disbelieved, even though there's no proof that mugging victims didn't hide their money, stab themselves and throw themselves downstairs to get some bruises. Or that people don't say "please take my stuff" and then decide they didn't mean it and they want the police involved. It's just rape, and it's purely about casting women as liars. It's revolting.

75 points on one go! 'Hilly' and 'vary' converging at the Y, placed on a triple word score. Mmm-hmmm.

Book sale very disappointing, and didn't buy anything. I nearly bought a book on Prostitution in the 1990s, but then I flipped through the section about feminism and, to paraphrase,

- there are some definitions of feminism that are reasonable, but these are far too broad, so I'm only going to concentrate on the BATSHIT CRAZY FEMINIAZIS WHO ARE OUT TO TAKE MY JOB, MY WOMEN AND MY BALLS. They can't even agree on a definition amongst themselves, so they're clearly worthless.

I also saw something called The Bitch Book but it turned out to be something to do with breeding. Huh.

I've just listened to the New Comedy Awards on BBC7 (Monday at 23.00). I actually attended the recording of this, and of the next week's semi-final, both in Manchester. It was really weird listening to the comedians, who come over completely differently on the radio. Also, the judges' remarks are inserted between the acts, so you get to hear what they think. They were pretty dismissive of the women taking part. I was annoyed because the singing woman's best song (I don't want to take it up the arse tonight) was cut, adn then they made a comment about how women shouldn't just talk about sex because they're representing all women comedians. Oh. Women shouldn't talk about sex? Why not? She was hilarious, even after they cut out her best stuff.