There are few rewards in being an Angry Woman.  The endless crusade against sex, humour and fun can be a hard slog, and until the day all men are crushed beneath my sensibly flat heels I expect little recognition for my endeavours.  So it was a pleasant surprise when I was informed that the Angry Women of Liverpool were invited by the women of CAMRA to an evening at the Liverpool Beer Festival.

This opportunity came at a fortuitous time, since there’s some topical tension around feminism and ale-drinking culture in the news.  With parliamentary drinkers aghast that a shadow Equalities Minister should be concerned about issues of equality, and have the gall to mention that such issues pertain to beers named “Top Totty” with labels that feature women in their underwear, it seemed there may even be a tentative reason to call this outing necessary activism.  We take our research very seriously.

CAMRA, of course, are aiming to challenge the notion that beer isn’t for women, by publishing polls that show the rise in women ale-drinkers, featuring ordinary ale-drinking women widely in their publicity and, of course, holding a women’s night at the Liverpool Beer Festival.  There’s no arguing with that strategy.

A brief look at the festival programme, however, shows that local brewers are not so progressive.  Blue Ball breweries in Runcorn have a naked woman as their logo, and invite female visitors to their website to apply for the position of real life “Blue Ball Girl” at promotional events (they don’t say whether nudity is expected), while Cains have gone for the subtler sexism in naming their new ale “Blonde Bird” (a “cheeky play on words” according the Cains website) [0].

Women: You can't drink beer, but you can sell it.

Complaints like this would no doubt have me branded by UKIP’s Mike Nattrass as a “humourless sort” and a “dour-faced, insult-searching misery”[1]  – and nice as it is to know you’re pissing off the right people, I’d like to take a closer look at his assertion that: “This sort of knee-jerk Puritanism does more to damage the cause of equality than a thousand beer labels.”

There’s an assumption here that this is about causes and their reputations – an abstract, ideological debate with no significant material consequences.  While Top Totty has been removed from the parliamentary strangers’ bar, the apologies have been about “causing offence” – the decision is purely to protect Parliament’s reputation and its guests’ sensibilities.  Do these beer labels have an impact beyond causing offence to shadow equalities ministers and internet feminists?  Or is this issue really just a storm in a pint glass?  Far be it from me to take issue with the idea that the only inequalities worth challenging are those immediately obvious to a right-wing, business-owning, middle-aged, able-bodied, white man, but I think this analysis needs to take into account some experiences that many ale-drinking women will find familiar, and that the likes of Nattrass probably haven’t considered. 

Imagine being out for a drink with your friends in a pretty ordinary city centre pub.  You go to get a round in and notice that there are some guest ales available.  In order to read the labels on the pumps, you have to shoulder your way through the cluster of seasoned ale-drinkers at the bar – all male, all older – and make your selection while they scrutinise you in much the same manner that you’re regarding the witty names and ABVs on the pumps.  Their obvious attention is unsettling, but there’s nothing you can say about that without seeming like some kind of – what was the phrase? – oh yes, “dour-faced, insult-searching misery”.  You make your order, and hope that none of them are going to use your selection as an excuse to make a comment about you.  You avoid the titles with obvious innuendos, but they’ll always find something.  Perhaps it’ll just be “And what’re you having, love?” or “Your boyfriend too cheap to buy you a glass of wine, is he?”  You smile over gritted teeth – you wouldn’t want to be a “humourless sort”.  They gather round with assurances that they’re “only joking” and you try to carry three pint glasses steadily through the leering, groping press who tell each other “she’s done this a few times” and suggest tripping you up or tickling you – “only joking, love”.  Some stare hard as you squeeze past them, some touch your waist in case you needed steadying, or perhaps their hand – “sorry love, accident” – brushes your bum.  There’s nothing you can do without dropping a pint and causing a scene.  You get back to your table feeling shaken, and hear raucous laughter behind you.  You feel like you’ve had a narrow escape – you won’t go back to the bar tonight, you’ll ask one of your male friends, and if you want to try another ale he’ll have to choose for you.  Your experience at the bar wasn’t friendly or even inappropriately flirtatious – it was intimidating.  They were putting you back in your place, this woman who thinks she has any right to be drinking pints.

What does any of this have to do with beer labels?  Are these men behaving this way because there’s a picture of a semi-naked woman on one of the pumps?  Would they behave differently if there weren’t?  No, probably not.  But it gives them ammunition.  More than that, it gives them a sense of vindication.  Women are identified with the product, not the consumer.  This reinforces their attitudes and seems to justify their behaviour.  She deserves everything she gets, doesn’t she?  She entered the ale-drinking arena, and that label makes the place of women in this arena abundantly clear.

This isn’t about being offended, it’s about being excluded.  If CAMRA wants to encourage women to drink Real Ale, it has to be prepared to challenge brewers about sexist language and imagery, and to think of this as a vital campaign rather than a useful marketing strategy.  Third pint measures and notes of fruitiness are all very well[2], but as long as breweries consider humorous labels more important than a drinking environment that isn’t actively hostile to women, most women won’t venture near the guest ale pumps at their local.

An evening of drinking real ales and ciders without having to worry about running the gauntlet at every bar stop was pure gold.  We’d like to thank the women of CAMRA for our invitation to the festival, and assure them we enjoyed it to the full.  We laughed, we tasted, we rated, we ranted and we drank a lot of good ales.  I’d especially recommend the Peerless Storr, which was hoppy yet rich and full-bodied, and refreshingly free of innuendo.

[0] It has a Liver Bird on the label, you see.  For the record, anybody giggling into his pint because he said “I fancy a Blonde Bird” to the bartender has no business accusing feminists of an underdeveloped sense of humour.

[1] To demonstrate how humourless us feminists are, I’ve written this entire article without once making a pun on the word “bitter”.  That shouldn’t even be possible, but I’m just about dour enough to pull it off.

[2] Though, while I’m on the subject, pink labels with flowers on them to indicate special light, weak, sweet woman-friendly ales are downright insulting.

“Mansplaining: when dudes explain to women subjects that the women in question know more about, but assume that they know better by virtue of being the man in the conversation. Bonus points if the man is explaining to you, little lady, how something you think is sexist is not really sexist.”

Here comes the science bit; concentrate!

The presentation entitled ‘The Science of Porn’ seemed to contain little science (or indeed porn). The title did not reflect the narrow focus which was based on studies proving porn does not turn people into violent sex offenders; which is a teeny tiny little peep into the issue and not at all what the majority of feminist anti porn campaigners highlight as the dangers of porn, despite the obligatory scary feminist out of context quotes from Dworkin used to reinforce the stereo type of ‘crazy feminists overreacting’. It  seemed geared towards easing the consciences of a room containing a sizeable proportion of self confessed porn users (including a counsellor for Wallassey who was happily making jokes about porn and violence against women in public, lovely). Bafflingly the discussion of what exactly constitutes ‘porn’ was avoided for being ‘boring’, leaving the problem of how on earth one can convincingly argue in either direction without being sure of exactly what it is you’re supposed to be arguing about.

Bra Burners and Moralists

One particular sore spot was the way Gail Dines’s research on such subjects was brushed aside as ‘moral’ and ‘un-academic’. One of my companions has read Dines, a lot of Dines, in fact pretty much everything she has ever written and was wincing pretty soon after her work was mentioned. Stuart had only read  ’Pornland’ (Dine’s non-academic polemic on the subject) and a few Guardian articles. Crucially, he had not read her academic work and failed to acknowledge this fact in his presentation and only admitted it rather sheepishly afterwards when challenged. To my mind this greatly undermines the credibility of his interpretation. To accuse Dines of being ‘un-academic’ based on a small selection of her work for a non academic audience reveals there may be a slight bias which is not acknowledged and at the very least it’s bad research, which can’t quite be adequately countered with “but she didn’t reference all her other work in the book!” (which is as verbatim as my memory allows).

Another issue that really got my nanny-goat was the absence of women from the studies (which is not Ritchie’s fault, although the selection of what studies to include is another issue). All the studies he referenced focused on male users of porn; hardly anything was mentioned about female users of porn (except how they were omitted from one study) or how women feel about porn in general and certainly no studies on how women and porn were quoted. They do exist; a quick search of google scholar tells me that there is at least one qualitative research study on women and pornography (Ciclitira, 2004).

Some sexism is bigger than others

Ritchie then admitted research had shown ‘benevolent sexism’ increased after viewing porn but this was effectively brushed of and not seen as problematic. In fact the answer to my question as to why he brushed it off was “I didn’t think I brushed it off” and nothing more was said on the issue. Ritchie states “There was, however, an association with positive (or ‘benevolent’) sexism (e.g. ‘women need to be protected’) and porn use. This type of sexism can, of course, be very damaging (imagine failing to get a job because the interviewer thinks you aren’t up to it as you’re a woman), but it’s not the same kind of hatred that activists like Dines predict porn would engender.”

This seems to me like a classic belittling of the every day sexism faced by women that feminists come across ad nauseum; the typical quotes along the lines of “yeh but women in the UK don’t have it as bad as in other countries so what are you complaining about?”, which only serve to derail and diminish genuine concerns as not ‘worthy’ enough for discussion, and this ‘worthiness’ for discussion is usually seen through a primarily male prism. One could summise that porn may increase sexist behaviour but  as it’s not the apocalyptic violence Dines (allegedly) says will result form porn it’s OK.  I was going to say how this might be that because porn and sexually objectifying imagery encourages men to view women ‘possessively’ and objectifies women that so called ‘benevolent sexism’ arises as a result of men feeling some sort of ownership or need to ‘protect’ women which has little, or no, bearing on what women themselves want. These issues expose a lack of knowledge on both feminism in general and academic feminist discourse; particularly on how benevolent sexism and what he terms ‘negative sexism’ (i.e. violence against women and other ‘obviosuly’ harmful behaviour) come from the same root. They both presume women to be ‘other’ and less than human, that we need the ‘protection’ (which often spills into ‘ownership’ and/or ‘control’) of a man and cannot function adequately as an independent human beings in our own right. As a feminist I would suggest a man who displays such ‘benevolent’ sexism shows as little respect for women as a man who displays ‘negative sexism’. Yes the end result may be subtle and not outwardly violent; but it is still sexism and it is still harmful to women and a failure to see this as important set all my feminist bells ablaze.  Not to mention that this attitude of male ‘protection’  and ownership can be found in the ideologies behind such wonderful feminist ideas such as requiring women to have a male escort to go outside the home and, if we are being brutally honest here, such extreme acts of misogyny as honour killings, FGM and rape. It is exactly those sorts of attitudes; that a woman ‘owes it’ to her spouse or partner for ‘protecting’ her or ‘providing’ for her that lead to attitudes that men are ‘entitled’ to sex or that ‘he knows best’ what is good for her. Holding a door open for a woman or paying for her on dates purely because she is a woman may not be ‘the same’ as sexual violence but they all stem from the same attitudes and ideas. In fact the whole ‘positive’ vs. ‘negative’ sexism debate reminds me of the whole ‘well it’s not RAPE rape’ bullshit. At the end of the day, it’s all sexism.

It is stated that ‘moral’ objections to porn (including presumably the lived experience of being a female in a ‘pornified’ culture ) cannot possibly be considered in a debate such as this as ” there will always be those who are too disgusted (and it’s very clear from recent psychology experiments that disgust influences morals) by the whole idea of pornography to have a science-based argument about it.” No mention that there are people who like using porn and so are less receptive, and possibly even hostile, to any suggestion that it may be harmful and the likely bias this viewpoint may have on thier opinions and research on the subject.

 Additionally referring to people such as Dines as ‘activists’ could be seen as a deliberate attempt to single out and highlight the anti porn brigade as ‘reactionary’ and politically motivated; whereas the other academics whose research is quoted are never given such a label and the motivations behind their research are not examined.

This has proved to me that to talk about porn and it’s effects on society (or male users as they seem to be the only ones who are worth talking about or studying) falls down when feminist analysis is not included or is brushed aside. It is an issue that affects women in their every day lives whether they use porn or not and to analyse a medium based so much on gender stereotypes without reference to feminism or gender studies can only ever address a small section of the problem. To address this purely though the supposedly unbiased lens of science and to discount other avenues of exploration is, to my mind, short-sighted, especially when the science is , as Ritchie imself admits, under-researched and the presentation has biases of it’s own. The assumption that science (still a predominantly male field it should be noted) should be privileged as ‘neutral’ whereas women’s experiences and feelings on the issue as well as academic feminist discourse on the subject in areas such as sociology and gender studies,  are apparenlty inherently biased or ‘soft’ comapred to ‘hard’ subjects such as ‘science’.

An ignorance of your own bias on the subject and how that may affect your interpretation, which is what this study is. It is NOT hard, unbiased, objective fact; it is interpretation of other’s research with all the bias that can entail. Discrediting the work of others whose research you have not actually read for being ‘moral’ , politically motivated and not scientifically rigourous enough is not good science.

Quotes are taken from Ritchie’s blog post on the presentation.

Back in 1976, the Italian feminist groups Lotta Feminista and Rivolta Feminile began organising the mass marches of women that became ‘Reclaim the Night’, for much the same reason that the Slutwalks began in Toronto.  Police were advising women that, if they didn’t want to be raped, they’d best not go out alone after dark.  So they went out alone in their thousands, unchaperoned and unpoliced, marching past Fascist Party headquarters dressed as witches and chanting slogans about destroying the family.  Now that’s the subversion of a stereotype originally created for patriarchal control, right there.  These days if you asked for witches to march on a party HQ they’d come chanting aura-cleansing spells and waving healing crystals.  You go to the trouble to reclaim an identity used against you, make it a badge of pride, and what happens?  Within a couple of years you find it marketed back to you with its teeth pulled.

I wouldn’t mind, but we’ve done this with the S-word before.  Riot Grrl era punk bands scrawled “slut” across their bodies in an effort to take its power to themselves.  Now?  At your local Grin store you can buy pre-ripped punk skinny Ts with “slut” neatly emblazoned in pink sequins, size extra small.  We’ve reclaimed the means of our oppression so many times it’s starting to taste like an astronaut’s water supply.

I can entirely understand the need for something new, to shake up the old routine.  All organised marches, not just the women-only ones, have become foot- and mind-numbing affairs, A to B chanting of the same slogans with one or two words changed, with a police escort and a speech by a bureaucrat at the end.  Even the breakouts and radical blocs take you through a proscribed process of kettling and carefully limited damage.  As for feminist marches, it’s rare they happen even late enough to Reclaim the Teatime, let alone break our unspoken curfew, and routes are decided in advance and OK’d with every city’s finest so as not to inconvenience any innocent bystanders with having to actually see us.

It’s true it was time for something more popular, more original, more subversive.  But is this it?  Male voices on the megaphones and a glorified Hen Night making its way through the streets?  The SlutWalks may have garnered more attention and participation than the traditional feminist marches, but what are they actually saying?  Is it just Reclaim the Night in fishnets?  We chant: “Whatever we wear, wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no”, while men leer unchallenged as we pass, and women cheer and flash their breasts from bar windows, and the men leer at them, too.  Yes means yes and no means no, but we’ll refrain from actually saying “No” if it might spoil the party atmosphere, if it means we might have to challenge the notion that women’s sexuality only exists when it’s on display for men.

The reason, the purpose behind Slutwalk is a good one.  “I’m a slut, I enjoy sex, I’m not ashamed of it.  Don’t think that means you can rape me”.  It’s a good message.  But I miss the old message, the one that went more along the lines of “Don’t define me by my sexual activity, don’t use it to categorise me, and don’t then use that category as an excuse for raping me.  Whether I enjoy sex or not, whether I have lots of it or not, whether I’ve overcome the shame and embarrassment I’m conditioned to feel about it or not – is irrelevant and none of your goddamn business.  Don’t rape me – that’s all.”  OK, it’s not as snappy – but it makes more sense.

Maybe we can Reclaim the Slut (again), but to what end?  It galls me to be buying into the fantasy of different kinds of women, and the stereotype of different kinds of feminist, the ones who wear heels and find pole-dancing empowering and the ones who wear Birkenstocks and burn pornography.  Yes, I know, we’re only buying into the sexual category of Slut in order to subvert it, to remove its power to hurt us, and so reclaim it – it’s a very seductive logic, because it’s so much easier than challenging the existence of all those categories (slut, virgin, whore, prude, cougar, princess, gold digger) and having to start again, reject the ready-made options and rebuild your sexual self-image from scratch based on nothing but who you really are.  It’s easier to make it fun to be a slut, to revel in it, to try and reform it into something with more power, than to find out what it means to be a human and risk losing even the little power you were lent as a slut.

Walking the streets in our underwear might feel a little bit subversive, but if that’s what we want isn’t it more subversive to point out that all the comforting stereotypes on which we’ve founded our identities in order to oppress each other are lies?  It’s not as fun, it doesn’t make for a carnival atmosphere, it’s not as easy to get into the papers and gather public support for; but it strikes at the heart of our internalised patriarchal identities instead of just fighting one head of that hydra.  That used to be the message of Feminism, but Feminism’s a dirtier word than slut now and nobody seems that interested in reclaiming it. There’s no fun costume or sense of subversive naughtiness attached to finding your independent humanity.  It’s all introspective and difficult and serious.  It’s uncertain and intimidating and scary, not least because if you don’t spend enough time reassuring everyone of how much you love sex you might be one of those Sex Negative feminists who team up with Vicars’ wives to burn old issues of Playboy and don’t let men on your marches because you hate them.

So we find that this is the choice we’re offered, transphobic 2^nd Wavers permanently stuck in the 80s or “Sluts”.  Why should we be either?  Both are illusions, inventions of the patriarchy used to shame and control us, to make us apologise before we speak and spend so much time placating and reassuring everyone about what we’re not that we never actually get around to saying what we are.

A Human Walk, that’s what we need.  A march of people who’ve been subject to sexual exploitation, assault, harassment and stereotyping, walking together wearing whateverthehell they feel most comfortable walking in, to say there’s no excuse for objectifying us and making us into your fantasies, to say we don’t need gimmicks to get your attention because we’re here demanding it, that if the police try to make us change our route, we’ll ignore them, if they try to arrest us, we’ll resist them, that they’re not invited on our marches and they’re not welcome, that we can take care of ourselves and each other, that if you leer at us or try to attack us or shame us as we walk down the street, we will make you sorry.  That would be reclaiming something: our anger, our solidarity, our humanity.  I don’t care what you call it or what you wear, let’s just get out there and march.  Never mind the Night or the Slut, let’s start by taking back the will to actually oppose our oppression.

Topic: REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS UNDER THREAT

With right-wing MPs trying to set more limits on access to abortion, and the government actively supporting anti-choice organisations, and promoting abstinence-based sex-education, reproductive rights and choice in the UK are under serious threat. How do we counter anti-choice groups’ arguments and misleading information? What’s the reality about abortion?

LINKS TO RELATED READING

Here’s some links to get you thinking on the subject – entirely optional to read them. I hope it will serve as a general primer on the issues as well as advance reading for the discussion. As per usual, I’m afraid there are a lot, but please don’t be put off by that, pick & choose what interests you.

I’ve grouped the links as follows

• Abortion facts
• Latest threats to reproductive rights & choice
• Reproductive rights, health & the importance of choice
• Anti-choice campaigns & tactics
• Reproductive & sexual coercion

 ABORTION FACTS

Abortion – facts http://www.abortionrights.org.uk/content/section/4/107/

Education for Choice – supporting young people’s right to informed choice on abortion

• http://www.efc.org.uk/
• Short videos about facts about abortion: http://www.youtube.com/user/EducationForChoice

England and Wales: Abortion statistics 2010

“This year’s national abortion statistics show that there were 189,574 abortions in England and Wales in 2010, a very small rise of 0.3% from 2009; and that the age-standardised abortion rate was 17.5 per 1,000 women, the same as last year. These figures are in line with those of recent years and indicate that abortion continues to be a fact of life in the UK: one in three women will have an abortion over her lifetime, and access to abortion continues to be crucial to women’s ability to plan the timing and size of their families and to play a full role in society. … The 2010 abortion statistics show a welcome continuation of the trend towards abortions taking place earlier in pregnancy. Over three-quarters (76%) of NHS-funded abortions now take place at under 10 weeks’ gestation, compared to 74% in 2009 and half (51%) in 2002. … In 2010, approximately 9% of abortions took place in the second trimester of pregnancy – a similar proportion to previous years. … A recent piece of research by Kelly et al (2010) found that women undergoing second trimester abortions found surgical methods less painful and more acceptable than medical, with more than half of those undergoing medical reporting the experience to be worse than expected. The authors also noted that there was ‘urgent need to introduce novel training strategies’ if women were to be offered the method most suited to them. … less than 0.1% of all abortions take place after 24 weeks’ gestation – 147 abortions in total in 2010.”http://www.abortionreview.org/index.php/site/article/960/

Abortion Support Network (ASN) – a volunteer-run organisation that provides financial assistance, accommodation in volunteer homes, and confidential, non-judgmental information to women in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland who are travelling to England to access a safe and legal abortion. http://www.abortionsupport.org.uk/

24/5/11 – Thousands of Irish Women Traveling to Britain for Legal Abortions

“everyday 12 women travel from Ireland, where abortion is not legal, to Great Britain to obtain abortion services. In 2010, 4,402 Irish residents sought abortions in England or Wales. Niall Behan, Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) chief executive, clarified, ‘These figures serve to highlight yet again the hypocrisy of Ireland’s restrictive abortion law and clearly demonstrate the necessity for domestic-based abortion services in Ireland. Clients attending IFPA services for pregnancy counseling express frustration and anger that they have to leave this country to access health services they feel should be available to them at home. Women don’t want sympathy, they simply want access to the health services they need.’” http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp%3Fid%3D13024

Abortion is not a mental health problem (Research by Royal College of Psychiatrists, published April 2011)

“The key point highlighted by the RCPsych’s review is that mental health outcomes from induced abortion or childbirth are associated with a woman’s mental health before abortion. In other words, if depression follows abortion it is because the woman has a pre-existing mental health condition, not because the abortion itself causes her to be depressed. ” http://www.abortionreview.org/index.php/site/article/951/

Misoprostol and the transformation of the ‘abortion pill’ (info about early medical abortion procedure and some obstacles women face in accessing it)  http://www.abortionreview.org/index.php/site/article/908/

LATEST THREATS TO REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS & CHOICE

24/5/11 – Anti-abortion group drafted in as sexual health adviser to government

“A group which is opposed to abortion in all circumstances and favours an abstinence-based approach to sex education has been appointed to advise the government on sexual health. The Life organisation has been invited to join a new sexual health forum set up to replace the Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV…. Life also became a founding member last week of a new Sex and Relationships Council, which was launched in parliament with the endorsement of the education secretary, Michael Gove. The council, which includes the Christian-run pro-abstinence group the Silver Ring Thing, says it aims to bring the voice of what it describes as “value-based, parent centred” sex and relationship education (SRE) providers to policy discussions on the future of SRE in schools…. Life, which provides its own pregnancy counselling services and describes itself as non-denominational, reacted to the [2010 abortion] figures by suggesting that a “cooling off” period before abortions could play a role in reducing the number being performed. Some secular organisations have been growing increasingly worried that Tory ministers are opening up government to the agendas of faith-based and pro-life groups. Some of the same groups have already been preparing to capitalise on the government’s big society agenda, which would potentially allow them to replace secular groups in terms of providing services. In Richmond, south-west London, the Catholic Children’s Society has taken over the £89,000 contract to provide advice to schoolchildren on matters including contraception and pregnancies. Another Christian-run charity, Care Confidential, is involved in providing crisis pregnancy advice under the auspices of Newham PCT in east London. Care’s education arm, Evaluate, was one of the founding members, alongside Life, of the Sex and Relationships Coucil.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/may/24/abortion-sexual-health-coalition

11/04/11 – Abortion: buckle up for a fight – The F-Word

“Nadine Dorries and Frank Field have tabled a series of amendments to the Health and Social Care bill. These amendments seek to chip away at abortion access. A leaked power point posted by Unity at Liberal Conspiracy demonstrates what we already knew: this is part of a long-game. The ultimate aim? Making all abortion illegal in this country. …back in 2008…Dorries and Field were once again the leading the attempts to roll back abortion rights. At that time, only 27 Tory MPs voted to support abortion access, and of course the makeup of Parliament has shifted since then. … many of these tactics are imported directly from the US, where abortion access and rights have been under much greater attack than in this country. The content of the amendments is also familiar for those who have followed developments in the US: for example, Dorries and Field want to force women to undergo mandatory ‘counselling’ before being able to have an abortion.” http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2011/04/abortion_buckle

19/4/11 – Abstain from abstinence please Dorries [This was passed by the House of Commons! But will need to go through further votes to become law so campaigning against it is urgent]

“MP Nadine Dorries has proposed a ten minute rule motion: ‘Ten minute Rule Motion SEX EDUCATION (REQUIRED CONTENT) That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require schools to provide certain additional sex education to girls aged between 13 and 16; to provide that such education must include information and advice on the benefits of abstinence from sexual activity; and for connected purposes’…. Firstly, it seems bizarre to call for more sex education for girls specifically. For all those women (quite a large majority) who sometimes, often or always have sex with men, it would be quite useful if the men knew a thing or two too about positively choosing whether or not to have sex, what real consent looks like and how sex fits into a relationship. If we are (which I’m not) trying to promote abstinence, we really do have to talk to the boys too. After all it really takes two to abstain just as it takes two to tangle. Secondly, as with so many of Dorries’ bills, amendments and random proclamations – just scratch the surface and there is a dodgy premise in there. The dodgy premise is that SRE currently does not get young people to think about positively choosing not to have sex. In my experience sex educators are always talking about: a) the fact that not having sex is the best way to guarantee you won’t get pregnant b)the importance of feeling ready for sex, c) how unacceptable it is to pressure someone into sex d) how eminently sensible and reasonable it can be to choose not to have sex…etc” http://educationforchoice.blogspot.com/2011/04/abstain-from-abstinence-please-dorries.html

5/5/11 Up The Junction - (Very informative analysis of Dorries’ campaign for abstinence sex education for girls, and backing that Nadine Dorries has from Christian anti-choice organisations in the USA):  http://toomuchtosayformyself.com/2011/05/05/up-the-junction/

6/4/11 The hidden agenda behind Dorries’ “Right to Know” campaign: http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/2011/04/06/the-hidden-agenda-behind-dorries-right-to-know-campaign/

Finally, Nadine Dorries had the nerve to argue that abstinence education would reduce sexual abuse – yes, she really did!

“Society is so over-sexualised that I don’t think people realise that if we did empower this [abstinence] message into girls, imbued this message in schools, we’d probably have less sex abuse.” http://toomuchtosayformyself.com/2011/05/16/girls-its-all-their-fault/

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS, HEALTH, & THE IMPORTANCE OF CHOICE

First up, some great articles arguing why reproductive choice is fundamental and tackling some common anti-abortion arguments:

• Feminism 101: My Body is Mine http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2010/09/feminism-101-my-body-is-mine.html
• On the argument that men should have a say on whether a woman has an abortion or not http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2010/12/men-vs-roe-again.html
• Respect our lives (taking on the “sanctity of life” anti-choice argument) http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2011/02/respect-our-lives.html
• On abortion exceptions (critiquing the arguments around abortion being ok in some circumstances and not in others) http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2010/04/on-abortion-exceptions-rape-incest.html
• Breaking the Silence: On Living Pro-Lifers’ Choice for Women (on why adoption is not an easy alternative to abortion) http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/03/breaking-silence-on-living-pro-lifers.html

“I’m doing this to demystify abortion” – woman who blogged & tweeted about her abortion http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2010/02/im-doing-this-to-demystify-abortion.html

Basic Female Reproductive Biology http://amananta.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/basic-female-reproductive-biology/

Effects of Pregnancy Good resource for challenging idea that pregnancy is a simple option

“a partial [but very loooong!] list of the physical effects and risks of pregnancy. This list does not include the many non-physical effects and risks a woman faces in reproducing, such as the economic investment of work interruptions from pregnancy and breastfeeding, or time lost from career and other opportunity costs involved in pregnancy and later child rearing (mothers comprise 90+% of primary parents), or the emotional trauma of problem pregnancies, or the numerous economic and lifestyle repercussions that pregnancy and motherhood will have on the remainder of a mother’s life. http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/004.htm

19/4/07 – BBC:  Late abortions reasons revealed 

“Southampton and Kent University experts asked 883 women why they had abortions in the second trimester – between 13 and 24 weeks into the pregnancy. Around 11% of abortions take place after the 12th week of pregnancy. Just over 1% of those occur after a woman is 20 weeks pregnant…. This study, which allowed women to give more than one reason for opting to have a late abortion, found women had not realised they were pregnant for two main reasons. Just under 40% of women had not realised they were pregnant because they had irregular periods. Another 31% had been using contraception… 41% said they had taken time to come to a decision about whether or not to have an abortion…. 30% had simply not done anything once they suspected they were pregnant, with many waiting weeks to do a pregnancy test. … 42 per cent said they had waited more than 2 weeks between requesting and having an abortion, and 23% waited more than 3 weeks” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6560827.stm

Pill does not cure gender inequality (about maternal mortality) – nb “pill” here refers to medical care, not specficially contraception

“… despite sustained global campaigning efforts there has been little progress on the Millennium Development Goal to reduce maternal deaths by 75% by 2015. … one thing that was not mentioned, and only alluded to by reference to a ‘continuum of care’, is the impact of the status of women, views on female sexuality and reproductive autonomy which arguably are greater indicators of maternal death than skilled birth attendants (although in fact these things are inextricably linked)…. To reduce maternal deaths, women need to get married and have kids later, have less children therefore use family planning, be well nourished and free from disease, have access to primary healthcare as well as emergency obstetric care (which is culturally appropriate and in their language), have access to safe and legal abortion, and be educated in their rights, their right to healthcare, their right to information and – very simply – have the right and ability to say no or yes to sex and insist on condom/contraceptive use. Drug treatment of post-partum haemorrhage or sepsis may fit nicely into our drug delivery programmes, work well with our partnerships with pharmaceutical companies, and definitely help save lives. But it is a drop in the ocean without women themselves having bodily integrity.” http://www.vaginadentatablog.net/archives/100

19/4/11 – Shakesville: Number of the Day 

“99%: The percentage of US women, who have ever been sexually active, who ‘have ever used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning.’ ‘Contraceptive use by Catholics and Evangelicals—including those who attend religious services most frequently—is the norm, according to a new Guttmacher report (pdf). This finding confirms that policies making contraceptives more affordable and easier to use reflect the needs and desires of the vast majority of U.S. women and their partners, regardless of their religious beliefs.’ ” http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2011/04/number-of-day_19.html

Linked report: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/Religion-and-Contraceptive-Use.pdf

ANTI-CHOICE CAMPAIGNS & TACTICS

Info about “crisis” pregancy advice centres that have anti-choice agendas: http://www.efc.org.uk/Forprofessionals/BEWAREofbadpractice

Here’s an example of a crisis pregnancy centre in the UK – it’s quite difficult to spot at first glance that its aim is to steer women away from choosing abortion: http://www.alternativesnewham.org.uk/home

Babies & Bibles – (Undercover report on “crisis pregnancy centres” in the USA – anti-abortion fronts providing free pregnancy tests, false medical information, and preach to women who come in)

“This is a licensed medical clinic. It’s usually safe to assume that medical clinics provide medical care. But if you have the capacity to bear children, those rules apparently don’t apply. If a cancer clinic were run as a Christian Scientist front there would be anger. There would be disgust. It would be shut down. But the distraught woman in dire circumstances — “a killer who in this case is the girl” — being routinely defrauded because she “has no right to information” has gone unnoticed by the general public.” http://pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/babies_bibles/7127/

Shock tactics: Anti-abortion campaigners are being allowed into schools to present their arguments to teenagers, and are making converts. But what about the facts? (Long, but highly recommended, lots of myth-busting about abortion and about tactics used by anti-choice organisations who talk to young people in schools – a must read. Plus, did you know? there is only one organisation providing pro-choice education outreach in schools, and that only in London – Education for Choice, linked above). http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/nov/25/anti-abortion-schools

‘a lie is not the other side of an argument, it’s just a lie’. Arguing for young people not to be misled by anti-choice education:

“If a student leaves my classroom believing that abortion is wrong, that is completely fine. There is no objective criteria by which I can say to that student abortion is right or abortion is wrong, it’s clearly a matter of personal opinion and values. However, if a student of mine leaves the classroom believing that abortion will make her infertile, that is misinformation and I have failed as an educator. ” http://educationforchoice.blogspot.com/2010/11/lie-is-not-other-side-of-argument-it-is.html

Mis-Illustrating Abortion

“Most news stories about abortion… illustrate their article with an image of a woman with an unambiguously pregnant belly. The disconnect between the reality (90% of abortions occur in the 1st trimester) and the imagery (of women who are in their 3rd) implies that many abortions are occurring much later than they are.” http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/04/20/mis-illustrating-abortion/

Abortion-related Stock Photos for Media Use [include images of pregnancy tests, women looking at pregnancy tests]

“How many times have you seen an article about abortion that is accompanied by a stock photo of a pregnant woman obviously in the third trimester? Such photos are inaccurate and inappropriate. Portraying a heavily pregnant woman in the context of abortion simply feeds the anti-abortion myth that women routinely have abortions right up to the 9th month of pregnancy. Pairing such a picture with an article on abortion may even directly contradict the facts and arguments in the piece.” http://arcc-cdac.ca/backrounders/media-photos.html

BBC 20/4/11 – Department of Health has lost a court battle to keep secret some details on abortion statistics. [note: "confidential" or "private" would be a more accurate word than "secret"]

“The court case follows an application by an anti-abortion group, the ProLife Alliance, for the publication of all data on abortion in England and Wales…. The case dates back nearly a decade, to the release of statistics on late abortions carried out in 2001. … Up until 2003 the Department of Health published statistics on these late abortions, even when only one or two cases were involved. But the publication of the figures in 2002 sparked an outcry when it became clear that one termination was carried out on a baby with a cleft lip and palate. … By 2004, using information now in the public domain, journalists discovered the identity of one of the doctors involved in the abortion. That led to fears that the identity of the patient could also be revealed. … Reflecting that concern, the Department of Health had already decided in 2003 it would no longer reveal detailed information on late abortions where the number of terminations involving certain medical conditions was less than 10. ” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13145488

Response by ARC (Antenatal Results and Choices – the only national charity which provides non-directive support and information to expectant and bereaved parents throughout and after the antenatal screening and testing process) to that ruling

  “Women are ending their pregnancy at a stage when they have often prepared practically and emotionally for the birth of their baby. They enter this decision knowing it is life-changing and need to feel entirely confident that their privacy and confidentiality is protected. In our experience clinicians take their legal responsibility very seriously in what are challenging circumstances for them too. They need to be able to provide sensitive care to parents without fear of retribution on a personal level from anti-abortionists..” http://educationforchoice.blogspot.com/2011/04/arc-regrets-dh-loss-of-appeal-over.html

USA – Laws Affecting Reproductive Health and Rights: Trends in the First Quarter of 2011 

“To date, legislators have introduced 916 measures related to reproductive health and rights in the 49 legislatures that have convened their regular sessions. (Louisiana’s legislature will not convene until late April.) By the end of March, seven states had enacted 15 new laws on these issues, including provisions that:

• * expand the pre-abortion waiting period requirement in South Dakota to make it more onerous than that in any other state, by extending the time from 24 hours to 72 hours and requiring women to obtain counseling from a crisis pregnancy center in the interim;
• * expand the abortion counseling requirement in South Dakota to mandate that counseling be provided in-person by the physician who will perform the abortion and that counseling include information published after 1972 on all the risk factors related to abortion complications, even if the data are scientifically flawed;
• * require the health departments in Utah and Virginia to develop new regulations governing abortion clinics;
• * revise the Utah abortion refusal clause to allow any hospital employee to refuse to “participate in any way” in an abortion;
• * limit abortion coverage in all private health plans in Utah, including plans that will be offered in the state’s health exchange; and
• * revise the Mississippi sex education law to require all school districts to provide abstinence-only sex education while permitting discussion of contraception only with prior approval from the state.” http://www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/updates/2011/statetrends12011.html

On the extreme tactics of anti-abortion activists in the USA

“on the frontlines of the abortion fight, things look very different. When Angie Jackson live-blogged her abortion last year to demystify the process, the response was not universally civil, to put it politely. Clinics get bomb threats, which aren’t exactly civil. Women seeking abortions at those clinics frequently need escorts to navigate screaming picketers, who aren’t inclined toward civility. I am hardly a full-time reproductive justice advocate, yet my inbox—and, I imagine, the inboxes of most writers and activists who dedicate any time at all to reproductive issues—receives missives that I will also charitably describe as less than civil, not that I don’t appreciate pictures of bloody fetuses as much as the next steampunk abortion robot. The murder of Dr. George Tiller was not civil; it was an act of terrorism committed by a terrorist as part of one of the most brazen, unapologetic terrorist campaigns in America, its co-ordination and orchestration frequently done right out in the open—at meetings, on websites, in email alerts.” http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2011/01/and-never-twain-shall-meet.html

More about anti-choice tactics in the USA (and about the Democrats failing to defend reproductive rights)

“The people who use violent rhetoric, and violence, bank on that response. They provoke until Something Bad Happens, and they count on their opponents’ decency, which they exploit for maximum gain. In the void of noise where our volatile national abortion debate used to be, there is the slow but certain erosion of women’s bodily autonomy.” http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2011/01/and-never-twain-shall-meet-part-ii.html

REPRODUCTIVE & SEXUAL COERCION

26/1/10 Teens Susceptible to Reproductive Coercion – Newsweek

“[Elizabeth] Miller published a study in the journal Contraception detailing “reproductive coercion,” when the male partner pressures the other, through verbal threats, physical aggression, or birth-control sabotage, to become pregnant. According to Miller’s research, about a third of women reporting partner violence experienced reproductive coercion, as did 15 percent of women who had never reported violence. Overall, rates of reproductive coercion among family-planning-clinic patients are suprisingly high: about one in five women report their partner having attempted to coerce them into pregnancy. “What we’re seeing is that, in the larger scheme of violence against women and girls, it is another way to maintain control,” says Miller, who studied 1,300 female patients culled from five family-planning clinics in Northern California. “You have guys telling their partners, ‘I can do this because I’m in control’ or ‘I want to know that I can have you forever.’ ” http://www.newsweek.com/2010/01/26/coerced-reproduction.html

7/4/10 – New Study Offers Further Evidence of Link Between Domestic Violence & Reproductive Coercion/Control – (summary of & link to pdf of Guttmacher Institute study)

“Reproductive control – when a partner imposes his reproductive intentions through intimidation, threats or actual violence – is a common problem for women who experience intimate partner violence, according to a new study released by the Guttmacher Institute on April 6. Three in four respondents (74 percent) in the new study – of 71 domestic violence victims seeking services at a family planning clinic, an abortion clinic and a domestic violence shelter – reported that their partners had threatened to get them pregnant, forced them to have unprotected sex, sabotaged or interfered with their contraception, threatened them with sexual intercourse, tried to control the outcome of their pregnancies if they became pregnant, or in other ways tried to coerce their reproductive outcomes. These abusive behaviors can lead to unplanned pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, and a host of other problems.” http://www.wunrn.com/news/2010/05_10/05_10_10/051010_domestic.htm

CWASU – A Missing Link? An Exploratory Study of the Connections Between Non-Consensual Sex and Teenage Pregnancy (2010) – link to pdf of full study

“Teenage pregnancy has been a policy priority traversing health, education and crime agendas at national and local levels for a decade. In 1999 a twin track strategy for England and Wales was introduced that aimed to halve teenage conception rates among under 18s by 2010, whilst simultaneously reducing social exclusion among teenage parents (SEU, 1999). Although the 1999 strategy identifies sexual abuse as a risk factor for teenage conception, this link is not evident in annual reports and evaluations of the strategy. Moreover, whether or not teenage pregnancies are a result of non-consensual sex has yet to be specifically addressed in the substantial UK evidence base on risk factors, conducive contexts, interventions and outcomes. That said, international research findings demonstrate connections between sexual abuse, coercion and intimate partner violence and teenage conception rates. …This report presents findings from the first contemporary UK study to focus on this association. ” http://www.cwasu.org/publication_display.asp%3Fpageid%3DPAPERS%26type%3D1%26pagekey%3D44%26year%3D2010

The session began with this introduction to the themes and context of the book:

Silvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch is essential reading for anybody with an interest in women’s history.  It not only brings to light the importance of women’s involvement in the heretical and resistance movements of Europe throughout history, but puts forward a new analysis on some of the most significant changes in the role of women.  In the context of Europe’s transition from a feudal to a capitalist economy, Federici investigates the beginnings of institutionalised prostitution, the creation of women’s role in the nuclear family and the repression of women’s traditional roles as healers and midwives, showing how Capitalism intersected with Patriarchy, and then both intersected with Colonialism, to create new modes of accumulation combining oppressions of class, race and gender.

This analysis grew in large part out of Italian feminism of the 1970s.  Groups like Lotta Feminista and Rivolta Feminile were heavily involved in the Marxist and Anarchist actions of the ‘Hot Autumn’ strikes and occupations in 1969.  These feminist groups were making new connections between class and gender analyses, most notably that the work done in the home – cleaning, cooking, childrearing, caring for the sick and elderly – constituted labour, as important to the functioning of a capitalist economy as any industry.

This became the basis of the Wages for Housework movement, which pointed out the unpaid labour of women that was invisible in the Marxist economic analysis, yet essential to it.  There could be no industrial labour force to exploit without a domestic labour force to feed, refresh and reproduce it.  This analysis is outlined in Selma James’ introduction to the 1972 pamphlet The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community:

The ability to labor resides only in a human being, whose life is consumed in the process of producing. First it must be nine months in the womb, must be fed, clothed and trained; then when it works its bed must be made, its floor is swept, its lunchbox prepared, it’s sexuality not gratified but quietened, its dinner ready when it gets home, even if this is eight in the morning from the night shift. This is how labor power is produced and reproduced when it is daily consumed in the factory or the office. To describe its basic production and reproduction is to describe women’s work.[0]

This realisation brought with it an awareness of the interacting systems present in women’s oppression, and with it an approach that combined struggles against work in the home and the factory.  Looking back on the movement, Mariarosa Dalla Costa writes:

We said that external labour neither eliminated nor substantially modified domestic labour, it rather added a second master to the first represented by the very work of the husband. Therefore, emancipation through external work was never our objective. Nor was it equality with men. To whom should we have been equal, when we were burdened by a labour that man would not do? Moreover, at a time when the discourse on refusal of work was so strong, why should we try and fight for something men were attempting to refute?[1]

This analysis took the women’s movement forward.  Instead of merely demanding equality with men in the labour market, or equal power within marriage, the very notions of work, marriage and the family were rejected as part of the same system of oppression.

The Wages for Housework movement started up unauthorised and self-managed women’s health centres, providing counselling, abortion and contraception[2], published the ‘Le Operaie Della Casa’ (The House Workers) and organised marches for abortion rights and justice for rape survivors, in which women took to the streets in their thousands.  An awareness of Federici’s themes can be seen in this account of the first Reclaim the Night march, in Rome 1976:

Many of the 10,000 women dressed as witches and carried broomsticks. Jettisoning their usual chants like “Divorce Now,” their slogans reflected a new mood of anger and determination: “No longer mothers, no longer daughters, we’re going to destroy families.”[3]

This is the background of theory and practice that Caliban and the Witch emerged from – a feminism that was joining up and analysing systems of oppression, and looking not just to reform these systems but overthrow them. From this, it makes sense that Federici relates the beginnings of ruling class appropriation of land and capital to the beginnings of patriarchal appropriation of women’s bodies and sexuality, and how these combine in the appropriation of both land and people in the process of Europe’s colonisation of the New World.

Just as the common land of the peasant farmers had to be enclosed and expropriated by the gentry to create a waged labour force for capital, the means of re-production was expropriated by the patriarchal state in the form of harsh laws, with harsher penalties, governing women’s sexuality and the process of childbearing.  The most devastating of these was the criminalisation and persecution of practitioners of traditional women’s medicine, who provided contraception, abortion and midwifery – the means by which women could control their own reproduction. These women became the primary targets of the witch hunts.

The comparison that runs throughout Caliban and the Witch is that of expropriation – of land and resources (the means of production) to create waged labour, of women’s bodies (the means of reproduction) to create unwaged labour, and of land and the bodies of colonised peoples (means of both production and reproduction) to create slave labour.  Federici also draws connections between the processes of demonization necessary to these expropriations, which created support for the witch-hunts, inquisitions and invasions needed to expand capitalism.  She investigates the similarities between the propaganda that worked against the vagabond, the heretic, the witch and the savage, rebels against the institutions of waged labour, church, marriage and colonial power, respectively.

Through this, Federici is able to analyse the history of the exploited – of workers, women, people of colour and especially those in any and all of those categories who have resisted their oppression – as not merely a general background to the events that shaped the world and its economic systems, but as a direct influence on, necessity for and consequence of capitalism.  Perhaps most importantly, she debunks the Marxist analysis that capitalism is an incremental improvement and necessary step in the path between feudalism and Communism (or whatever other name we want to give to our imagined post-capitalist utopia).  Far from giving the serf greater freedom with the right (though not the means) to own private property, Capitalism has removed the use of common land and the community cohesion that supported the peasant revolts and revolutions of the last millennium, split us into alienated family units, crammed us into seemingly inescapable social roles by gender, race, age and ability and left us demoralised and divided.  Only by recognising the connections between our oppressions, and the commonality of their sources, can we begin to join up our struggles and direct them effectively.  The insight Federici gives on the history of accumulation (capitalist, patriarchal and colonial) provides insight into a future in which we can reclaim control of land and body, production and re-production, as part of the same struggle.

Special K: For girls who want more. Actual food: For women who want breakfast.

Special K – the cereal that brought you the “drop a jeans size in two weeks” campaign, in which you were encouraged to eat their product instead of food until none of your clothes fit you anymore, then swan around in front of white backgrounds wearing a red swimsuit, which would cease to fit you some two weeks after returning to a healthy diet – has a new ad campaign.

This latest venture shows the usual red-clad curvature, an image of the cereal box and a slogan that reads, in a fussy font:

For Girls

who want more

On face value, it’s a pretty stupid slogan for a diet food.  It declares Special K Clusters to be a cereal for those who want more, but will settle for a bowl of unsatisfying clumps of wheat with the occasional crumb of freeze-dried strawberry. Anybody’d want more if they were eating Special K for breakfast.

This vague, unattainable “more” extends to just about every product that’s advertised.  We’re supposed to expect more, get more or demand more from our bank accounts, insurance policies, kitchen cleaners, power tools, cosmetics, toothbrushes, sanitary towels and razors.  That much isn’t gender-specific – we must all be persuaded that our dissatisfaction is rooted in the goods we consume, so that we can be persuaded to consume more.  But when it comes to food that’s marketed at women[0], we enter a world of Orwellian newspeak in which less is more and more is less, and what we’re persuaded to consume is ourselves.

Gendered protein shakes at Holland and Barrett

To see the difference in the way food and body-related products are marketed to men and women, you’ve only got to look at the protein supplements shelf in Holland and Barrett.  This is the exact same product, but for men it’s a “rapid way to build muscle, strength and power”, while for women it’s a “weight loss system” that “helps keep you feeling fuller for longer”.  Men gain size and strength, women lose weight – while drinking the same protein-shakes.  The product and its effectiveness at whatever it was originally intended for are lost – all that remains is an idea of what the target market is supposed to want, and what society is supposed to expect of them.

What Special K is offering “girls”, in this context, is not more but less.  Less flavour, less nutritional content, less calories[1], and after whatever dietary course they’re flogging this time, less them.  Even the moniker of “girls” instead of “women” is a diminution, exhorting us to be smaller, younger, lesser.  So this mysterious and elusive “more” that Special K offers is actually “less” re-packaged.  Exploitation is marketed as empowerment; compliance to standards of beauty based on physical weakness and vulnerability is sold as the pursuit of a challenging and worthy goal – but that goal is left ambiguous.  Why exactly are we supposed to want to be smaller?  Because that’s what “girls who want more” want to be, what men who want “girls who want more” want, and “girls who want more” want men who want “girls who want more” to want them, don’t they?  Yes, it is confusing – that’s the point, it’s the maze of self-denigrating, obsessive image consciousness that we’re meant to get lost in.  The idea of a healthy and satisfying breakfast becomes irrelevant, and all that remains is the red swimsuit and a vague yearning for an indefinite “more”.

This is what happens when patriarchy meets with capitalism to divide the population up into target consumer markets.  Products are no longer sold to perform a function, but to embody an idea; instead of the product fitting the needs of people, people’s desires are moulded to create markets for the product, and our needs remain unfulfilled, all the better to preserve the sense of emptiness that keeps us over-consuming.

Special K, in itself, is no more or less damaging than any other cereal, but its marketing does do real damage.  Special K and other diet-peddlers are selling the concept of wanting more through a dangerous bodily dissatisfaction.  It’s not just a case of patronising ads causing annoyance to feminist bloggers, it’s a dissatisfaction that causes eating disorders, depression and serious self-image and confidence issues in countless women.  Neither is it just a case of advertising companies needing to use models larger than a size 10.  Body acceptance has to come through means that don’t just objectify a wider range of women in order to sell more products.  In a mode of production in which the needs of people came before profit, we could focus on the product and its usefulness instead of the target market and their inadequacies.

We’ll know we’re a little closer to sanity when we see adverts for cereals declaring themselves to be:

For People

who want breakfast

[0] The only example I can think of, off-hand, of a diet food that’s marketed at men is Pepsi Max, which is deliberately and specifically a separate product to Diet Pepsi, purely because products with “diet” in the name are for women.

[1] Alright, grammar pedants: fewer calories.

The premise that we can’t possibly know what happened relies on dismissing the detailed testimonies of two women, and the rather vaguer one of Assange himself.  I’ll talk later about the reasons why this isn’t as neutral a position as it might initially seem, but the most immediate problem with it (in terms of Adam’s article) is that the claims of Assange’s lawyer, who’s already been shown to have outright lied to the press, are still cited in good faith as reason to suppose the rape allegations part of an international conspiracy.  So a lawyer who has told demonstrable falsehoods about Swedish rape law, making Sweden out to be some kind of matriarchal dystopia where men are routinely consigned to jail for consensual sex without a condom, is considered, by implication, a more reliable source than two women who give entirely credible testimonies of being raped.  Even when taking a “can’t know, don’t speculate” approach to the question of Assange’s guilt, it would be evasive not to note that he and his legal team have obfuscated, belittled and misrepresented the content of the allegations against him, and that this is, in itself, reprehensible.  Rather than just protest his innocence, Assange has chosen to paint the allegations themselves (not the sudden Interpol interest in them) as a conspiracy against him, while his lawyers have lied to the press in order to make the allegations seem trivial and the women hysterical.  This is despicable behaviour, whether he’s guilty or not.

There seems to be a fear that even talking about Assange’s attitude to these allegations is mud-slinging.  Assange says in his interview with John Humphries that some 30 million web pages come up in an internet search for his name and the word “rape”, and he calls this evidence of a “successful smear”.  Adam finds a different number and notes that it’s around a quarter of the sites that come up in a search just for “rape”, citing this as evidence that “mud has undoubtedly stuck”.  All that this means is there are a large number of websites[2] that contain the words “rape” and “Assange”, not necessarily even in the same article.  What I can tell you for nothing is that nearly a quarter of all references to rape on the internet are not saying unequivocally that Assange is guilty of it, because I’ve been looking for ones that do, and they’re not easy to find.  What I’ve seen is a very small proportion of the articles on Assange pointing out that the allegations against him are, legitimately, allegations of rape (not broken condoms or refusing to take a test for STDs), and almost all of these making it clear that this doesn’t mean he should be considered guilty without trial.

The only place I see mud-slinging, in the form of blatant dismissal, insult and unfounded accusations of lying, is at the women who made the allegations – most notably on a blog that I won’t link to, though its claims have been repeated and referenced in numerous other places (including a previous post of Adam’s), which names the two women concerned and paints them as part of some Swedish Feminist conspiracy with the CIA via Cuban anti-Castro protestors.  It’s an insane blog by an anti-semitic, misogynist conspiracy nut, and I’ve frankly no idea why somebody as usually careful and incisive as Adam would cite it at all.

Yes, the sudden international concern over the kind of rape case that gets rejected by prosecution services across the world as a matter of course is cause for comment.  Highly suspicious, certainly.  Politically motivated – very probably.  But wrong?  No.  This is how seriously rape allegations should be taken.  Before brushing aside the process of rape prosecution as too big a topic to broach, it would seem reasonable to at least point out that the wrong here is in that process, rather than in the fact that, this once, for whatever reason, the allegations were actually (eventually) followed up.

Nobody is denying that the prospect of Assange being extradited to America on charges of spying/terrorism/pissing-off-powerful-people, if true, is entirely fucked up.  The dilemma hiding between the lines of Adam’s article, and others like it, is what should supporters of Wikileaks be calling for in relation to Assange? Keeping an “open mind” on his guilt is a non-answer to the wrong question – there are key issues here that we can express an opinion on.  Should he face trial? Should he walk away? Is keeping him out of US clutches more important than prosecuting rape allegations?  Side-stepping these questions in favour of a sort of helpless neutrality just adds weight to the societal default on rape, which always comes out in favour of the accused.  The 5% conviction rate that Adam cites doesn’t indicate that juries think rape isn’t a serious crime, it’s a symptom of that same attitude of “We can’t possibly know, we weren’t there” that he is himself displaying.  A neutral attitude ends in a passive decision – we can’t prove lack of consent beyond reasonable doubt, so the verdict’s got to be “not guilty”.  To convict somebody of any crime that they deny requires an active engagement with the case and the will to decide whether the witnesses are more credible than the defendant.  In short, a conviction requires conviction, and keeping an “open mind” about a man’s “private life” is easier than asking questions like “Why would she lie?”, “Does this man understand what is meant by ‘consent’?” and “Isn’t proving the absence of consent a logical impossibility, anyway?”

I support Wikileaks (as do both the women who have made allegations against Assange, and every feminist blog I’ve seen that criticises the reaction against those allegations), but Julian Assange is not Wikileaks, and if Wikileaks is worthy of its reputation it should be able to survive without a figurehead.  Guilty or not, Assange’s response to these allegations has already done massive damage to the women who made them, and to women everywhere, by reinforcing everything that’s wrong with the way the courts, the media and society in general perceive and discuss rape.  Of course we need to oppose extradition to the US, if it is suggested – but from an objective viewpoint, we have much more reliable evidence that Assange raped those women than we do that Swedish authorities intend to hand him over to the US.  We know that Assange’s lawyers have lied, and continue to lie, about the allegations and about Swedish law, while the only evidence we have that his accusers have lied comes from a holocaust denier, fixated on the Swedishness and Blondness of the women in question, whose primary evidence against them is that one of them is a feminist who has a beef with Castro.

Frankly, even if this does all turn out to be part of some convoluted conspiracy to discredit Assange[3], he has still shown himself to be an arsehole of the first order, and until he shows some sign of willingness to take responsibility for his actions, I don’t feel inclined to defend him in any way.

[0] Except on one minor point – the case in Sweden was re-opened by Marianne Ny, Chief Prosecutor, not by Claes Bergstrom, the minor politician who is acting as lawyer for the two women who made the allegations.

[1] This quote of Laurie Penny’s has been seized on in many places, but out of context it gets slightly warped, seeming to suggest that rape doesn’t make someone a bad person.  What it really suggests is that there is no cosmic, karmic counter-balance whereby a person’s good actions negate their bad ones.  Rapists who volunteer in soup kitchens and rescue kittens and puppies at the weekend still have to take responsibility for their actions.

[2] 30 million according to Assange, 7,900,000 according to Adam and only 3,440,000 by my reckoning.  It would seem reasonable for this to fluctuate a little over time, but still, 30 million seems like something of a stretch.

[3] Leaving aside that, if this were the case, the allegations and the women making them would surely have been much more carefully tailored to elicit public sympathy.  They wouldn’t be feminists, for a start.

Monday’s meeting was on Women and the Cuts.  We covered the ways in which women are disproportionately affected by cuts in public spending (very long list), reasons for this and what we want to do about it.   We got into a brief analysis of capitalism and why cuts aren’t the way out of economic crisis but will in fact make it worse, and we decided to create a pamphlet, splitting our list into four categories: Education, Health and Social Care, Public Sector Employment and Benefits.  I’m putting the list up here so we can each begin to work on our sections.  The pamphlet will be distributed at all anti-cuts marches and also on the International Women’s Day march and events.

The idea of this is to raise a bit of awareness of just how disproportionately women are going to be affected by these cuts, and to encourage women and women’s groups to get involved in anti-cuts activism.

We also spoke about the intersection of gender with race and disability in relation to the cuts, and discussed actions that could build solidarity with other groups fighting the cuts on these fronts.

This is the list we came up with of ways in which women are disproportionately affected by cuts.  If we all post up any links to statistics and specific examples of effects of the cuts on women in the comments, these can feed into the pamphlet:

• Cuts to admin work/public sector work – women make up the majority of workers in this sector.  There will be a pay freeze for public sector workers earning over £21,000.
• Study and post-grad study – paying off loans is harder for women, more likely to have family commitments or be in low paid work.
• Less work in education – another sector important for women’s employment.
• Single parents will be disproportionately affected by university fees for their children, and most single parents are women.
• Subjects that women are traditionally encouraged to study, the arts and humanities, are the courses that face the biggest cuts.  Existing prejudices mean it is still harder for women to get onto science and engineering courses, and there is little encouragement for women to take an interest in these subjects.
• Cuts to public services, e.g. libraries, that are predominantly used by women and employ women.
• Scrapping of legal requirement for companies and institutions to provide flexible working hours will make work more difficult for parents with childcare responsibility, predominantly women.
• Child benefit frozen for three years and child tax credit to be removed after 2013.
• Lone parents will be transferred to JSA when child is age 5, but there will be less work available, especially work that is compatible with child care responsibilities.
• This all adds up to even greater chances of women remaining unemployed, and when unemployed over a year, housing benefit entitlement will be reduced.
• More women than men will be affected by complex changes in entitlement to benefits due to adult children moving in and out of home.
• Women disproportionately suffer mental health difficulties.  Cuts to these benefits will make them even harder to claim than they already are.
• Cuts to disability benefit mean that women with disabilities will be doubly affected by the expectation that they should find work (with no suitable work existing).
• Cuts to disability benefits will also affect unpaid carers, who are predominantly women.
• Outsourcing of paid care work will also disproportionately affect women.
• Pay freeze for public sector workers
• Many of the public services most affected and facing closure include essential women’s services, such as domestic violence services, women’s refuges, anti-trafficking initiatives.
• The cutting of legal aid will leave many women unable to find representation, especially in cases that place them in opposition to a higher earning partner (e.g. divorce and custody).

The UK Women’s Budget Group report also notes these effects:

• Women’s reduced income will affect their bargaining power in household decisions.
• Gender inequality is masked when income is measured on a household basis.
• Women’s earning is still lower than men’s.
• Women are more likely to work part time.
• Women do more unpaid work than men.
• Of the £8 billion to be raised by budget changes, £5.8 billion will be paid by women.
• A larger proportion of women’s income is made up of benefits.
• More women don’t earn enough to benefit from income tax changes.
• Women are more often carers.
• 48% of BME women live in lower income households.
• Cuts in public services and NHS – women use these more intensively than men.
• Complexity of tax rules will mean more stress.

Links to other anti-cuts groups in Liverpool:

Merseyside Women Against the Cuts

MNAFC

UK Uncut – lists all campaigns by region

False Economy, lists all orgs being cut by regions.

Any ideas or contributions to the pamphlet can be posted as comments here.