often seen in the street without a hat

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12204525

Great - encouraging more fathers to take a primary carer role. It could be a really good move by the government to help change the way that childcare happens.


But:

1) "fathers will be able to share maternity leave with their wives" - Is it really only open to married couples? If so, that's appalling, and if not, the BBC should damn well know better than to write it.

2) "when she asked me I was more than happy to do it" - it's still presenting the responsibility for looking after babies as for women, who can choose to delegate it to (male) partner if they wish, rather than as a joint decision and responsbility. (Also that when his wife went back to work she wrote him loads of lists, so he didn't have the task of working out what to do - that's more of a handover thing, perhaps, but in context it grates.)

3) It's all about male/female probably married couples - can same-sex partners share? (I've also just realised that I don't know what happens for leave when the parents are men now, and whether this is something that could be improved.)

( A link and a thought about men. )

And I like this poem: pick-up lines for feminists, which I saw linked in Bitch's feminist joke contest. (Sadly they have not yet got many good comments - I think the joke about waves is particularly poor, but I do like the masturbating one.) Anyone who says this:

your feet must be tired.
because you have been
running through my
mind and struggling
against the repressive
gender roles
that we have been
socialized into
all day.

to me is pretty much guaranteed a patriarchy-subverting consensual sexual encounter of a mutually satisfying nature to be determined through a fair and transparent system of democratic decision-making.

( I went to the theatre in Manchester. )

"My husband has a badge that he picked up from the Fawcett Society, an organisation that promotes equality between men and women. It says 'real men are feminists'. I love him for having it - maybe that's why he got it in the first place - but I'd probably be embarrassed if he wore it in public."

I hated this book.

Some of you may have seen Ellie Levenson's post on the f-word, where she says that in-fighting harms feminism, and we should all just get along. (She also says that she's deliberately baited other feminists with whom she disagrees in order to get publicity for her book, but apparently we shouldn't let that bother us.) Someone in the comments (the comments are great, you should read them if you haven't yet) pointed out that her entire post reads like an attempt to pre-emptively stall any criticism of her book. If I'd written this book I'd be frantically trying to raise the shields too - if I had to sum it up in one word, it would be "facile". But I don't have to sum it up in one word, so I've written five thousand. (Don't judge me - I've had a lot of work to not do this week.)

The Noughtie Girl's Guide to Feminism is written to try and make all women call themselves feminists. However, I don't know why Levenson wants women to call themselves feminists - in order to make feminism palatable to her imagined audience, she strips it of all meaning. Feminism is "what you want it to be", and any choice is a feminist choice as long as you think it's okay. She does have some understanding of material inequalities, talking about the pay gap and a few other things, but she doesn't really talk about how these come to be, so there's no analysis of what might be the causes. It's a bit like the cargo cult*1 thing - she sees the problems, but misses out large stages, so she thinks it will be solved if everyone calls themselves feminist. She is at great pains to say that you don't have to think anything in particular to be a feminist, you don't, in fact, have to think at all *2.

( Long. Ranty. Some swearing. )

I should point out that the very last chapter of the book is "Forward Feminism", where activism is actually suggested. These are mostly, again, very individualistic options (and, in some cases, contradict what she's been saying in the rest of the book). But, in fairness, she does try to suggest somewhere to go with feminism once she's redefined it almost out of existence. And that's what most frustrates me with this book. It's the first UK based popular feminist book of its kind since 1999 (when Natasha Walter's The New Feminism was published), and it covers important topics, and could have been used to help young women work out what they want from life, and how and if feminism was something that could be a useful tool. But it doesn't. And I feel, somewhat irrationally, perhaps, betrayed.

The standard response to any criticism is "well, why don't you do better". For a start, I don't think that I could write a particularly good book about feminism for young women, and in any case, I procrastinate enough already. But more than that, I think that this is the only sort of book about feminism that would get published and marketed widely (it seems to be in a promotion in Waterstones). I do not think that there is a huge secret conspiracy against feminism (I think it's out in the open), but, as I understand it, people publish books that will make them money. It is easier to sell a book that is utterly unchallenging, that dismisses a political position that the media already finds distasteful, that promotes rather than dismantles stereotypes, and that may as well be a generic women's magazine. I won't quite go as far as saying that I would rather give a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid, but I do think that this book is not helping anyone.

*1 I was concerned about using this as a reference, because I think it gets brought into discussions in ways that are distinctly dodgy, but then I realised that as if I, as a feminist, decide that the choice I want is to use it, then it is ergo a feminist choice!!!
*2 I think that there is a great deal of pressure on young women to work on themselves, to act in certain ways and to achieve (there's lots about this in girlhood studies - Anita Harris's work is excellent), and that feminism can be a contributing factor to these pressures. But there is ALSO pressure not to criticise things, especially as a feminist, and Levenson pays no attention to this.

A Good School - Richard Yates
Sit-down Comedy: Stand-ups Swap the Stage for the Page - Malcolm Hardee and John Fleming
Rearview Mirror - Caroline B Cooney
Sand Trap - Caroline B Cooney
Size Fourteen is Not Fat Either - Meg Cabot

( February books, spoilers for most of them. Anger for one. )

I found this site linked through Hoyden About Town.

Two further things I hated are:

1. "Our bras are designed to position the breasts halfway between the shoulder and the elbow, which is what clothing designers intended."

Yes. Definitely the solution to this problem of clothes not fitting is for bodies to fit the whims of the designers, not to encourage designers to recognise that there is no one body size and shape and maybe there could be a broader range of fits and styles.

2. "You cannot slouch in our bras."

I DO NOT WANT CLOTHES IN WHICH I CANNOT SLOUCH. I like slouching. I know it's not "attractive", (and probably makes clothing designers really mad) but that doesn't say "comfort" to me, it says "constricting".


Our windows are in. But I don't have a curtain rail anymore, something to do with the supports being too brittle. Which is fine, we can get a new one. But I don't know how to put it up and I'm worried I'll do it wrong and it will all break.

The film festival is on! I didn't manage to book everything I wanted, but I'm hopeful that some of the things I missed might be in the best of the fest on Sunday and I might be able to get tickets then instead. I have a block of tickets for things that mostly I don't recall the synopses for. I can only hope that I made good choices, and have a pleasant surprise waiting for me when I get to the cinemas.

First of all I went to see ( Milky Way Liberation Front. )

The next day I saw ( The Wackness. )

After a short break I went to see ( Pageant. )

Today (Sunday), I went to see ( Jules et Jim. )

After that, I went to see ( Alone in Four Walls. )

Now I have a break in films until later in the week, when I am seeing Dummy, Love and Other Crimes, A Film With Me In It, Transsiberian and Princess of Nebraska. I am feeling that I would like to see more documentaries though, so I'll probably see what else is on and what I can fit in. [Bah! For two of the films I missed out on (Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and Stone of Destiny are part of best of the fest, but they clash, and I will have to Decide.]

It's just as well that the film festival's on at the moment, because there is NOTHING on television. It's appalling. I can't believe how much of a difference freeview makes. And, I suppose, going to bed at a reasonable hour. Although earlier I caught the middle bit of some property show or other, and the voiceover said "so, we need an office for [the man] and a big kitchen for [the woman]", and I grumped quietly to myself, but then decided that this was unreasonable, as sure, they'd chosen a traditional gender roles couple, but if that's what they wanted then fine, BUT THEN, not five minutes later, the presenter man said "so, who does the cooking?" and IT WAS THE MAN. Perhaps they decided that it sounded unbalanced to have two rooms for him, but more likely it was hideous gender fascism at work yet again. Women like kitchens! Men do not like kitchens! I bet he doesn't want an office at all, they just forced it upon him in case he had any dangerously modern ideas about actually spending time with his eventual children. Anyway, it turned out that what she really yearned for was an upstairs bathroom, so they could have had that in there instead. Or are bathrooms too unisex?

Also I have a new icon. It is my tattoo underwater, and humanfemale took the picture.

From the pen of Dr Alexander Gunn, author of The Privileged Adolescent: An outline of the physical and mental problems of the student society, published by the Medical and Technical Publishing Co, in 1970.

I have so far only read the chapter on "Sex on the campus", because that is naturally what interested me in the first place. Here, we learn that, on university campuses:

"promiscuity (OED = 'indiscriminate mixture') as by definition girls who cohabit with more than one partner in, say, any one year, is agin less than 1 per cent. Indeed, promiscuity in the sense of the girl who 'sleeps around' is seen by university physicians as a sign and symptom of psychological disturbance - the girl is invariably, quite severely emotionally disturbed and her sexual behaviour is but one aspect of her illness." (35)

Then there is "a detailed survey carried out by the author" in which "an attempt was made to definte the social and psychological attitudes of those female students who were...regular users of the 'pill'." (35-36) I bet he carried that survey out. I bet it was very detailed indeed. Perhaps a phone survey, with most of the questions replaced by heavy breathing.

"With regard to domicile, it does not seem to make any significant difference as to whether the girl lives in lodgings, hostel or flat as to whether she uses an oral contraceptive or not." (37)

My god! They'll do it anywhere!

And, finally, I regret to inform you that "[there] is no satisfaction to be had from promiscuity beyond the spinal reflexes" (41) NONE WHATSOEVER. (Yes, I know what he means by spinal reflexes. But it amuses me to suppose that he doesn't. Also he says that these spinal reflexes are "rare" in young women.)


I wish this counted as work.

I finished reading Sally Mitchell's The New Girl today, and thought I would post two of the illustrations from the book.

The first is an illustration from a 1910 story in Girls' Home, called "Handsome Harry, the Girl-Man", in which "Harriet Nash is fired for resisting the manager's sexual harassment and is unable to find another job. Discouraged, hungry, looking for something to pawn, she pulls out the box that her brother left behind when he went to sea. Nothing but clothes...Oh! With her brother's wardrobe and her hair chopped off, she discovers that life is much more pleasant. She enjoys freedom of movement, the absence of insults from men, a very good job as a trollyey driver, and some healthy competition with her workmates in an athletic club."

( Handsome Harry, the Girl-Man )

The second is a Punch cartoon celebrating Agnata Frances Ramsay's 1887 achievement of being the only candidate to get first class in Cambridge's Classical tripos. I had seen it before, and it's nice to see it again. It crops up in the book as part of a discussion including Philippa Garrett Fawcett's "above the Senior Wrangler" moment in 1890. Mitchell also notes that fictional retellings often lessen her acheivement, because it's just too fantastical to repeat straight off.

( First Class Ladies )

Also, I didn't watch Dawn Goes Lesbian, but Jen did and I am vicariously disgusted. Anna Pickard at the Guardian watched it too, and had a similar response.


Last night we went out to the Meeting House restaurant, which we hadn't tried before, to celebrate Alice's being a dancer of distinction. The food was wonderful. I had cod fishcakes with chili sauce and pickled leaves to start, then pheasant-breast on mash with small squares of black pudding and a red wine sauce, and their carrots were lovely too. Mmmm food.

The F Word just linked to this Harvey Nicks ad. It is obviously vile in many ways. It plays to a very specific discourse of femininity, it makes the men into headless pieces of meat, the sole black man is second from last desirable, the shoes are UGLY...

But the part that really annoys me is that THERE IS NO LINE. We are meant to infer that it goes up to the right, but really, it could be opposite, or squiggly or zig-zag, or any such scientific term. But it is not showing us anything. And people are goig to use this to say "oh, silly women, you're getting all het up over nothing, the ad isn't saying that trainers make you undesirable or that fat men are automatically ugly, you're making it say that with your own silly stereotypes! You're the baddy here!"

I hate them.

Though it has reminded me that I wanted to post pictures of my new boots. I love them.

Most of the feminist blogs I read have picked up on this story - that there is an article published this month in Sex Roles journal that "proves" that feminists have happier, more stable heterosexual relationships than non-feminists, and that the negative stereotypes are unfounded.

This is a pretty pleasing report, and I planned to put it online for our students to read, mark, and inwardly digest. I got permission, but thought I'd better read the full article first in case there was anything else that I wanted to highlight.

HUH. The abstract talks about "negative feminist stereotypes (i.e., that feminists are single, lesbians, or unattractive)". I was a bit perplexed that they would leave that unchallenged (that any of those things are in fact negative), but figured that you are short of space in an abstract, so have to kind of rely on people knowing that these are the kind of things that get trotted out as negative by anti-feminists.

They never challenge it. Not once. Throughout the whole 13 page article, there is no suggestion whatsoever that being single, or gay, or unattractive is not a problem, that people might conceivably be content with, even proud of, these attributes. The introduction reiterates the so-called negative stereotypes without explaining why they are considered negative, either by the authors (if this is the case), or by those that seek to denigrate feminism. "Feminist stereotypes are also unflattering; feminists tend to be stigmatized as unattractive, sexually unappealing, and likely to be lesbians".

Again, no context whatsoever. It is a psychology journal, so it's mostly about statistics and correlation between the data. Admittedly, I am not particularly interested in quantitative research (which this is), but I don't think it is asking too much for it to be reflective while it is telling us about null hypotheses. I think their methodology is a little strange ("They also rated their popularity with the other gender. The items were, “It is not difficult for me to get a date,” “I am frequently hit on for sex,” “I seem to be very popular with the opposite sex,” and “I was popular (datingwise) in high school"") but kind of fits in with what they're trying to do.

The "negative stereotypes" part lies dormant throughout their first study, which is with students, and then rears its head again in the second study, with older men and women. In the concluding part: "we found no support for the accuracy of stereotypes suggesting that feminist women are likely to be lesbian, single, or sexually unattractive–in fact, they were more likely to be in a romantic relationship than nonfeminist women. Thus, we found no evidence for the accuracy of negative stereotypes that, if true, would likely impinge on women’s relationships with men." I know what they're trying to do - I understand that the research is coming from a pro-feminist place (even if it's not where I would stand), and that they're trying to do their bit to change the anti-feminist backlash. But this is an academic paper, and I don't think it's asking too much that they be more reflexive with their work, and don't propagate misogynist and homophobic attitudes, even if unwittingly.

Heaven fucking forbid that women should be neither straight, sexually attractive nor romantically involved. As a content "none of the above" I'm a bit personally outraged. However, the main thing is that feminism is not about pleasing men*. It is not a bad thing not to want to have sex with men, it is not a bad thing not to be in a relationship with a man, it is not a bad thing not to fit into the conventions of being attractive to men. And pseudo-feminist research that does not acknowledge this, that fails to take up the opportunity to refute the innate negativity of these stereotypes, even while proving them untrue, is failing feminism.



* While feminism is good for everyone (except possibly Ann Coulter and Pat Robertson), and as such is in fact beneficial for men, a large part of feminism is breaking away from the pressures of having to please (an idea of) men the whole time.