Someone tweeted this and although it is a few year's old now, it certainly still needs to be read and re-read.
http://m.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/01/gender.women?cat=world&type=article
Wednesday, 28 September 2011
Tuesday, 27 September 2011
Mock the Week Mock the Women
A few weeks ago, a disgruntled BBC viewer tweeted that popular comedy panel show, Mock the Week, once again featured only white, male guests. Since then, the Mock the Week twitter feed has been embroiled in a debate about how male dominated its line-up is, with one statistically driven tweeter (@princesstoffee) discovering that in the last series, only 13% of the comedy guests on the show were women.
Throughout the social media row, the Mock the Week twitter feed has insisted that it features proportionally more women than there are in the comedy world, and that they don’t select guest based on gender because that would be ‘sexist’. They have argued that women watch the show, and that – in spite of the BBC’s diversity duty – they have no responsibility to put on a show that reflects their audience. Mock the Week have pointed out that in their history, 18 out of their 63 guests have been women, arguing that this made their representation ‘higher’ than the number of women working the comedy circuit, (although I am not sure what stats they were using to back up this assertion, beyond the 20% number about Edinburgh comedy award in Guardian articel i pointed them to http://m.guardian.co.uk/culture/theatreblog/2010/aug/12/edinburghfestival-comedy?cat=culture&type=article). However when you consider the number of appearances over the six years the show has been on, the percentage drops to 8.3% women. Whichever way you cut it, that’s pretty poor.
When one tweeter suggested that seeing as Mock the Week are happy to have all-male line ups (over and over and over again) they could have an all-female line up, they reacted with predictable horror. But that’s not representative of the comedy world! they spluttered. The fact that the comedy world is not all white and all male seemed to pass them by.
Excited by something I read about the women in comedy competition, I sent them a link to a news article about women comedians, quipping that they clearly had plenty to choose from. Their response was as follows:
“thanks, but we'll keep booking female comedians relative to how many there actually are, or else it'd be positive discrimination”
This rather spectacularly misunderstands how sexism, the silencing of women’s voices and the invisibility of women on our cultural stage actually works…
It was perhaps unfair to single out Mock the Week when criticising the lack of women’s voices on TV, particularly on comedy panel shows. As examples of what Bidisha calls ‘cultural femicide’, comedy panel shows are leading the way. Never will you turn on Mock the Week, QI or Have I Got News For You to see more women than men behind the desk. @princesstoffee continued her diversity audit to find that an overall chance of seeing a woman on the latest series of comedy panel shows was 27.25%, with Mock the Week being the least likely show to feature women. She found that Never Mind the Buzzcocks featured women 18/64 (28%) of the time; Shooting Stars 8/24 (33%); Just a Minute 6/28 (21%); 8 out of 10 Cats (S11) 14/27 (34%), Would I Lie to You 10/22 (31%); QI 10/48 (21%); Have I Got News For You 7/28 (25%) and The News Quiz 12/36 (33%).
The issue isn’t just about representation. It’s also about the acceptability of misogyny and sexism in the Mock the Week show (and other comedy). I stopped watching the programme after one of the male regulars informed a woman guest (the only woman on the show) that he would be picturing her when masturbated back home. Another incident (from a woman comedian) involved saying women would make bad world leaders because they would spend the whole time talking about shoes. Incidences of rape jokes, and mocking of women’s bodies and physical appearance also had me reaching for the off button. I don’t want to be seeking out sexism to entertain me on a Thursday night after all.
Two and a quarter years ago, Jo Brand wrote in the Guardian about why women don’t appear on panel shows:
‘Women don't want to go on panel shows for six reasons. 1) They won't get a word in edgeways. 2) They may be edited to look stupid. 3) They may get the piss taken out of them. 4) They may not be funny. 5) They don't like competing for airtime. 6) They may be patronised, marginalised or dismissed.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/jun/10/television-panel-shows-jo-brand
Three years on, this still stands. Particularly point one, and point six, as the Mock the Week masturbating comment shows.
Mock the Week’s twitterfeed has now stated:
‘We're done w/ this topic now. We've listened, we've stated our position, we've responded fairly, and we've bored the hell out of most of you’
But us feminists – we’re not done. Because contrary to Mock the Week’s dismissal, this issue matters. It touches on big issues of cultural silencing of women’s voices, sexism and misogynistic assumptions about women and men.
When Bristol Feminist Network and Bristol Fawcett ran the Where are the Women project (www.rowitm.org), we found a shocking absence of women’s voices in our popular culture. TV, radio, music, books, film, comedy – all these industries proved to be incredibly male dominated. And the continued male domination of these areas further entrench sexist assumptions and misogynistic ideas about whose funny, whose talent matters, who creates ‘art’. Earlier this year, novelist V.S Naipaul claimed that he was better at writing than every woman writer who has ever put pen to paper, because women aren’t as good at writing as men (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/02/vs-naipaul-jane-austen-women-writers). He’s a Nobel Laureate. People listen to him. And he, like Mock the Week, perpetuates the idea that women are somehow culturally ‘lesser’, that our voices, are stories, are less valid of being heard, and that we can’t compete with the male norm.
It is a tired and old stereotype that women aren’t as funny as men. We know that this isn’t true. Find any group of women friends and you’ll find laughter and giggles and more laughter. Victoria Wood is consistently found to be one of the nation’s favourite comics. But the perception is continually there that women simply aren’t as funny as men – or that when women do make jokes it’s about ‘womany’ things like periods and boyfriends (never mind the fact that male comedians regularly jokes about dicks and tits). And it is this sexist perception that prevents women from having equal representation on comedy line-ups, comedy panel shows and at the Edinburgh Festival. It isn’t that women can’t do stand-up or won’t do stand-up – although this argument is often put forward just as the argument that ‘women simply don’t want well paid high status jobs’ is commonly presented when discussing the glass ceiling. The reason women are not represented is that so long as the belief exists that women aren’t as funny as men, comedy clubs won’t ‘take a risk’ on booking a woman. And this leads to less women higher up the food chain, meaning they don’t have the same opportunity to be picked to appear on panel shows.
What has been so frustrating about the Mock the Week twitter debate is the acceptance that a lack of women’s voices in comedy is somehow inevitable and that nothing will change. They repeatedly defended the sexism in comedy with the assertion that they already have women on there, and that there are no more women to pick from. There was no recognition that they could play a role in changing this.
Only by challenging sexism in the industry, by recognising that women’s voices and jokes and performances are as good as men’s, and by giving women performers equal chances to be heard and perform as men, can we tackle the sexism in comedy. This is how women’s representation improves. If we continue to accept sexist assumptions about where women ‘belong’ on our cultural landscape, then things simply won’t change. But I really believe that they can.
Anyway – here’s the amazing Stewart Lee talking Mock the Week to make us all chuckle…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft2TXXuQrTo
Update = princesstoffee has written a great post on the f word about her stats: http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2011/09/mock_the_tweet
Throughout the social media row, the Mock the Week twitter feed has insisted that it features proportionally more women than there are in the comedy world, and that they don’t select guest based on gender because that would be ‘sexist’. They have argued that women watch the show, and that – in spite of the BBC’s diversity duty – they have no responsibility to put on a show that reflects their audience. Mock the Week have pointed out that in their history, 18 out of their 63 guests have been women, arguing that this made their representation ‘higher’ than the number of women working the comedy circuit, (although I am not sure what stats they were using to back up this assertion, beyond the 20% number about Edinburgh comedy award in Guardian articel i pointed them to http://m.guardian.co.uk/culture/theatreblog/2010/aug/12/edinburghfestival-comedy?cat=culture&type=article). However when you consider the number of appearances over the six years the show has been on, the percentage drops to 8.3% women. Whichever way you cut it, that’s pretty poor.
When one tweeter suggested that seeing as Mock the Week are happy to have all-male line ups (over and over and over again) they could have an all-female line up, they reacted with predictable horror. But that’s not representative of the comedy world! they spluttered. The fact that the comedy world is not all white and all male seemed to pass them by.
Excited by something I read about the women in comedy competition, I sent them a link to a news article about women comedians, quipping that they clearly had plenty to choose from. Their response was as follows:
“thanks, but we'll keep booking female comedians relative to how many there actually are, or else it'd be positive discrimination”
This rather spectacularly misunderstands how sexism, the silencing of women’s voices and the invisibility of women on our cultural stage actually works…
It was perhaps unfair to single out Mock the Week when criticising the lack of women’s voices on TV, particularly on comedy panel shows. As examples of what Bidisha calls ‘cultural femicide’, comedy panel shows are leading the way. Never will you turn on Mock the Week, QI or Have I Got News For You to see more women than men behind the desk. @princesstoffee continued her diversity audit to find that an overall chance of seeing a woman on the latest series of comedy panel shows was 27.25%, with Mock the Week being the least likely show to feature women. She found that Never Mind the Buzzcocks featured women 18/64 (28%) of the time; Shooting Stars 8/24 (33%); Just a Minute 6/28 (21%); 8 out of 10 Cats (S11) 14/27 (34%), Would I Lie to You 10/22 (31%); QI 10/48 (21%); Have I Got News For You 7/28 (25%) and The News Quiz 12/36 (33%).
The issue isn’t just about representation. It’s also about the acceptability of misogyny and sexism in the Mock the Week show (and other comedy). I stopped watching the programme after one of the male regulars informed a woman guest (the only woman on the show) that he would be picturing her when masturbated back home. Another incident (from a woman comedian) involved saying women would make bad world leaders because they would spend the whole time talking about shoes. Incidences of rape jokes, and mocking of women’s bodies and physical appearance also had me reaching for the off button. I don’t want to be seeking out sexism to entertain me on a Thursday night after all.
Two and a quarter years ago, Jo Brand wrote in the Guardian about why women don’t appear on panel shows:
‘Women don't want to go on panel shows for six reasons. 1) They won't get a word in edgeways. 2) They may be edited to look stupid. 3) They may get the piss taken out of them. 4) They may not be funny. 5) They don't like competing for airtime. 6) They may be patronised, marginalised or dismissed.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/jun/10/television-panel-shows-jo-brand
Three years on, this still stands. Particularly point one, and point six, as the Mock the Week masturbating comment shows.
Mock the Week’s twitterfeed has now stated:
‘We're done w/ this topic now. We've listened, we've stated our position, we've responded fairly, and we've bored the hell out of most of you’
But us feminists – we’re not done. Because contrary to Mock the Week’s dismissal, this issue matters. It touches on big issues of cultural silencing of women’s voices, sexism and misogynistic assumptions about women and men.
When Bristol Feminist Network and Bristol Fawcett ran the Where are the Women project (www.rowitm.org), we found a shocking absence of women’s voices in our popular culture. TV, radio, music, books, film, comedy – all these industries proved to be incredibly male dominated. And the continued male domination of these areas further entrench sexist assumptions and misogynistic ideas about whose funny, whose talent matters, who creates ‘art’. Earlier this year, novelist V.S Naipaul claimed that he was better at writing than every woman writer who has ever put pen to paper, because women aren’t as good at writing as men (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/02/vs-naipaul-jane-austen-women-writers). He’s a Nobel Laureate. People listen to him. And he, like Mock the Week, perpetuates the idea that women are somehow culturally ‘lesser’, that our voices, are stories, are less valid of being heard, and that we can’t compete with the male norm.
It is a tired and old stereotype that women aren’t as funny as men. We know that this isn’t true. Find any group of women friends and you’ll find laughter and giggles and more laughter. Victoria Wood is consistently found to be one of the nation’s favourite comics. But the perception is continually there that women simply aren’t as funny as men – or that when women do make jokes it’s about ‘womany’ things like periods and boyfriends (never mind the fact that male comedians regularly jokes about dicks and tits). And it is this sexist perception that prevents women from having equal representation on comedy line-ups, comedy panel shows and at the Edinburgh Festival. It isn’t that women can’t do stand-up or won’t do stand-up – although this argument is often put forward just as the argument that ‘women simply don’t want well paid high status jobs’ is commonly presented when discussing the glass ceiling. The reason women are not represented is that so long as the belief exists that women aren’t as funny as men, comedy clubs won’t ‘take a risk’ on booking a woman. And this leads to less women higher up the food chain, meaning they don’t have the same opportunity to be picked to appear on panel shows.
What has been so frustrating about the Mock the Week twitter debate is the acceptance that a lack of women’s voices in comedy is somehow inevitable and that nothing will change. They repeatedly defended the sexism in comedy with the assertion that they already have women on there, and that there are no more women to pick from. There was no recognition that they could play a role in changing this.
Only by challenging sexism in the industry, by recognising that women’s voices and jokes and performances are as good as men’s, and by giving women performers equal chances to be heard and perform as men, can we tackle the sexism in comedy. This is how women’s representation improves. If we continue to accept sexist assumptions about where women ‘belong’ on our cultural landscape, then things simply won’t change. But I really believe that they can.
Anyway – here’s the amazing Stewart Lee talking Mock the Week to make us all chuckle…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft2TXXuQrTo
Update = princesstoffee has written a great post on the f word about her stats: http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2011/09/mock_the_tweet
Friday, 9 September 2011
Gender studies, sexism, male bias and privilege
This week the London Evening Standard reported that ex gender studies student Tom Martin is suing the London School of Economics because he believed his course to have an anti men bias and was expected to read books that positioned women as always victims and men as always perpetrators, and never dealt with men’s issues. LSE have responded:
‘The university's legal team has asked for the case to be struck out, claiming the core texts were not compulsory, merely recommended readings, and that the texts were equally available for both men and women to read, so therefore did not directly discriminate against men. The team also argues that "any discriminatory effect [against men] was plainly justifiable".’
(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23983895-former-student-sues-lse-over-its-gender-bias-against-men.do)
I personally believe that Mr Martin took the course with the express intent of calling out what he saw as an anti-male bias, because for the life of me I can’t understand why someone studying gender studies would object to exploring how layers of patriarchal privilege overlap to create inequality between women and men. Gender studies, as far as I can tell, is about looking at intersectionality and how women’s ‘issues’ (and other groups) or lives or stories or history or social status had traditionally taken a back seat to the overwhelming white male narrative that forms the canon and backbone of academia.
This piece on CIF is very good on why gender studies isn’t about women good men bad: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/07/gender-studies-anti-discrimination-case
In this piece, Jonathan Dean makes this very pertinent point:
‘In my own discipline – politics – the key undergraduate texts are overwhelmingly by and about men. And yet this is seen by most as unproblematic, as natural or inevitable. Gender studies is an attempt to critique this entrenched male bias.’
As I say, to take a gender studies course and then accuse it of critiquing academic and social male bias makes me pretty suspicious about why he took the course in the first place. Fame? Notoriety? Apparently this guy runs an anti sexism website. I wonder if it includes information about rape culture and the impact of conflict and war on women, as an example…(or would that be SEXIST? Talking about WOMEN!)
But anyway, I digress…
What this story has got me thinking about is that entrenched male bias and how this impacted on my own university career (which ended, with a First Class Honours in English Literature, in 2006). I went to UCL in Bloomsbury, right next to Virginia Woolf’s old house. And what I learnt there was that (with some exceptions, i.e. the aforementioned Woolf) male authors were named, and women authors were ‘women in literary period or movement’.
The male bias on my course was overwhelming. In my second and third year we would have four set texts per module, and on every single module 3 of the texts would be by men and one by women. I had lectures on Wordsworth, Manley Hopkins, Dickens and ‘women in Victorians’ (George Eliot was the exception). Lectures on Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald with no mention of Gertrude Stein. Over and over again on my courses the message was sent out that whilst men were individuals, greats; who formed movements and spoke out from the canon, women were a group, an interest, a sub-section.
Of course, a lot of my feminist lecturers recognised this and goodness knows things were better than when, as one lecture informed me, the Norton Anthology of Poetry had something like 30 women in it (for non lit grads, this is the bible of the English literature under-grad). But whereas the very idea of a lecture titled ‘Men in Modernism’ would be ridiculous, talking ‘Women in Modernism’ was perfectly acceptable, even though if we look at those women modernist writers, the difference and range between them and their books is as different and diverse as those men writers. Djuna Barnes and Dorothy Richardson? Hardly the same are they?
In my second and third years I had feminist tutors who let me run wild with my gender angle on literature (writing on Woolf, Mansfield, Rhys, Plath, Brontes, Djuna Barnes - women everywhere!) which unfortunately left me floundering a bit when it actually came to studying the set texts. But their supportive and feminist ideas helped me become the activist and writer I am today. Not so good was my first year, where my tutor asked me not to write any more gender essays after doing one on Paradise Lost (come to think of it, I don’t think there were any women writers on that ‘key text’ course).
I also attended all the gender seminars. Male and female sexuality in modernist literature, gender in Shakespeare – courses almost always run by women with all women classes. The idea that gender was a subject for men too didn’t register where men were canon and women were specialist.
Of course, women weren’t the least represented group on my course. BME writers and colonialist theory did get a brief look in (Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureishi as examples) but despite a disappointingly un-robust post-colonialism course; just as the syllabus was mainly men, it was also mainly white.
In fact, the one ‘minority group’ that was well represented on my course was gay and queer literature – thanks in part to the famous ‘History and literary representation of homosexuality’ module. And of course, a lot of canonical authors were likely to be, or definitely were, gay or bi. After all, even Shakespeare had Mr. W.H ;-)
What I am trying to show here is that even on a course that I loved every minute of (except Chaucer. And Old English) there was an exceptionally male bias. Embarrassingly so. So there is a good reason that a course that seeks to challenge the unquestioned male bias, like gender studies, is allowed to do exactly that.
What Tom Martin has a problem with, in my mind, is his privilege. He has never experienced that othering that comes from your status in society as a woman. He has not experienced that exclusion, that sense that you are not part of the ‘greats’, that feeling that you are not half the population, but a minority, a specialism. He has lived with male privilege all his life (I don’t know what other privileges he may or may not have as an FYI, so sticking with male) and when that’s challenged, when that is not the priority in his academic world, he panics and lashes out and calls sexism.
Last night I had a conversation on Twitter with Mock the Week about their lack of female representation. They informed me that in their six-year history, ‘18 out of 63 of our regulars & guests have been female, which is... 28.6%, so we're doing alright? :-)’.
No, that is not doing ‘alright’. It is not alright that women are so marginalised in our culture, that women’s voices are silenced and not heard, that women’s stories are seen as ‘other’ or homogeneous.
And it is certainly not right that when this is challenged, that there are accusations of sexism or female bias.
Throughout academia, throughout pretty much every damn point of life, male privilege is entrenched. Gender studies is a place where that inherent, unchallenged privilege is questioned and where an alternative view and criticism of power structures is offered. Where different voices and stories are given weight and attention. Where women are considered.
That’s not too much to ask. To be considered. To be recognised. To be seen and heard.
Check your privilege. You never know, you might learn something.
http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/03/11/faq-what-is-male-privilege/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Knapsack
‘The university's legal team has asked for the case to be struck out, claiming the core texts were not compulsory, merely recommended readings, and that the texts were equally available for both men and women to read, so therefore did not directly discriminate against men. The team also argues that "any discriminatory effect [against men] was plainly justifiable".’
(http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23983895-former-student-sues-lse-over-its-gender-bias-against-men.do)
I personally believe that Mr Martin took the course with the express intent of calling out what he saw as an anti-male bias, because for the life of me I can’t understand why someone studying gender studies would object to exploring how layers of patriarchal privilege overlap to create inequality between women and men. Gender studies, as far as I can tell, is about looking at intersectionality and how women’s ‘issues’ (and other groups) or lives or stories or history or social status had traditionally taken a back seat to the overwhelming white male narrative that forms the canon and backbone of academia.
This piece on CIF is very good on why gender studies isn’t about women good men bad: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/07/gender-studies-anti-discrimination-case
In this piece, Jonathan Dean makes this very pertinent point:
‘In my own discipline – politics – the key undergraduate texts are overwhelmingly by and about men. And yet this is seen by most as unproblematic, as natural or inevitable. Gender studies is an attempt to critique this entrenched male bias.’
As I say, to take a gender studies course and then accuse it of critiquing academic and social male bias makes me pretty suspicious about why he took the course in the first place. Fame? Notoriety? Apparently this guy runs an anti sexism website. I wonder if it includes information about rape culture and the impact of conflict and war on women, as an example…(or would that be SEXIST? Talking about WOMEN!)
But anyway, I digress…
What this story has got me thinking about is that entrenched male bias and how this impacted on my own university career (which ended, with a First Class Honours in English Literature, in 2006). I went to UCL in Bloomsbury, right next to Virginia Woolf’s old house. And what I learnt there was that (with some exceptions, i.e. the aforementioned Woolf) male authors were named, and women authors were ‘women in literary period or movement’.
The male bias on my course was overwhelming. In my second and third year we would have four set texts per module, and on every single module 3 of the texts would be by men and one by women. I had lectures on Wordsworth, Manley Hopkins, Dickens and ‘women in Victorians’ (George Eliot was the exception). Lectures on Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald with no mention of Gertrude Stein. Over and over again on my courses the message was sent out that whilst men were individuals, greats; who formed movements and spoke out from the canon, women were a group, an interest, a sub-section.
Of course, a lot of my feminist lecturers recognised this and goodness knows things were better than when, as one lecture informed me, the Norton Anthology of Poetry had something like 30 women in it (for non lit grads, this is the bible of the English literature under-grad). But whereas the very idea of a lecture titled ‘Men in Modernism’ would be ridiculous, talking ‘Women in Modernism’ was perfectly acceptable, even though if we look at those women modernist writers, the difference and range between them and their books is as different and diverse as those men writers. Djuna Barnes and Dorothy Richardson? Hardly the same are they?
In my second and third years I had feminist tutors who let me run wild with my gender angle on literature (writing on Woolf, Mansfield, Rhys, Plath, Brontes, Djuna Barnes - women everywhere!) which unfortunately left me floundering a bit when it actually came to studying the set texts. But their supportive and feminist ideas helped me become the activist and writer I am today. Not so good was my first year, where my tutor asked me not to write any more gender essays after doing one on Paradise Lost (come to think of it, I don’t think there were any women writers on that ‘key text’ course).
I also attended all the gender seminars. Male and female sexuality in modernist literature, gender in Shakespeare – courses almost always run by women with all women classes. The idea that gender was a subject for men too didn’t register where men were canon and women were specialist.
Of course, women weren’t the least represented group on my course. BME writers and colonialist theory did get a brief look in (Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureishi as examples) but despite a disappointingly un-robust post-colonialism course; just as the syllabus was mainly men, it was also mainly white.
In fact, the one ‘minority group’ that was well represented on my course was gay and queer literature – thanks in part to the famous ‘History and literary representation of homosexuality’ module. And of course, a lot of canonical authors were likely to be, or definitely were, gay or bi. After all, even Shakespeare had Mr. W.H ;-)
What I am trying to show here is that even on a course that I loved every minute of (except Chaucer. And Old English) there was an exceptionally male bias. Embarrassingly so. So there is a good reason that a course that seeks to challenge the unquestioned male bias, like gender studies, is allowed to do exactly that.
What Tom Martin has a problem with, in my mind, is his privilege. He has never experienced that othering that comes from your status in society as a woman. He has not experienced that exclusion, that sense that you are not part of the ‘greats’, that feeling that you are not half the population, but a minority, a specialism. He has lived with male privilege all his life (I don’t know what other privileges he may or may not have as an FYI, so sticking with male) and when that’s challenged, when that is not the priority in his academic world, he panics and lashes out and calls sexism.
Last night I had a conversation on Twitter with Mock the Week about their lack of female representation. They informed me that in their six-year history, ‘18 out of 63 of our regulars & guests have been female, which is... 28.6%, so we're doing alright? :-)’.
No, that is not doing ‘alright’. It is not alright that women are so marginalised in our culture, that women’s voices are silenced and not heard, that women’s stories are seen as ‘other’ or homogeneous.
And it is certainly not right that when this is challenged, that there are accusations of sexism or female bias.
Throughout academia, throughout pretty much every damn point of life, male privilege is entrenched. Gender studies is a place where that inherent, unchallenged privilege is questioned and where an alternative view and criticism of power structures is offered. Where different voices and stories are given weight and attention. Where women are considered.
That’s not too much to ask. To be considered. To be recognised. To be seen and heard.
Check your privilege. You never know, you might learn something.
http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/03/11/faq-what-is-male-privilege/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Knapsack
Tuesday, 6 September 2011
Women's Rights in Afghanistan
As we approach the 10th anniversary of 9/11, it is perhaps pertinent to reflect on the Afghan women’s rights movement, and the position of women in the country since the invasion on 7th October, 2001.
As part of the justification for a war against a country that was believed to be sheltering a Saudi man who (as we now know) was eventually found sheltering across the border, the language of feminism was co-opted by the American right. This war was about ‘liberating women’ from the Taliban, ‘empowering’ women who were oppressed. But ten years later, as peace talks loom on the horizon and mutterings about negotiating with the Taliban abound, what is the position of women living in Afghanistan, the women whom the invasion was supposed to ‘save’?
A recent report found that Afghanistan is the worst place to be born if you are a woman. This was put down to lack of maternal healthcare, resulting in a between 1-8 to 1-11 women dying in childbirth; widespread violence against women and girls including forced marriage and trafficking; poverty, conflict violence and lack of access to healthcare. 87% of women in Afghanistan have experienced some form of violence and between 70-80% of marriages are forced. Girls are also often used to settle community disputes via ‘baad’ (this practice is not unique to Afghanistan).
It is important to recognise that some improvements to women’s lives in Afghanistan have been made since 2001. 27% of MPs are now women (more than in the UK), and more girls now have access to schools and education, although 1.2 million girls are still not in school. There is also a vibrant women’s rights movement who are currently campaigning to have women’s voices heard at the negotiating table when it comes to bringing peace to Afghanistan.
Before the Taliban took over in 1996, women – particularly in the cities – enjoyed relative equality. After all, Afghanistan gave women the vote in 1919, before UK women, and long before Swiss women who couldn’t vote until 1971. Women had access to education, were doctors, teachers, civil servants. They enjoyed freedom of movement and were not required to wear the burkha. It is important to note this, as all too often when we talk about women’s rights in Afghanistan, the conversation treats women’s inequality as inevitable, as ‘cultural’, with the implication that the fight for women’s rights is hopeless and therefore not worth fighting for. The fact that the widespread oppression of women is relatively new in Afghanistan proves the opposite; that women’s equality can be achieved.
Both men and women are affected by conflict. However No Women No Peace believe that in many ways it is more dangerous to be a woman in war than it is to be a soldier (whilst recognising of course that women are soldiers too). The impact of war is different on women than men. They are threatened with abduction, abduction of their children, rape and sexual violence, widowhood, increased maternal mortality, starvation and an increased risk of the spread of HIV/Aids. The different impact of conflict on women is just one reason why it is essential that women have a voice at the peace negotiations that will decide their futures.
Take the issue of widowhood. In many parts of Afghan society – as a result of women’s oppression under the Taliban – women are not allowed to leave the house without a male relative. If a woman’s husband is killed, how can she then leave the house to earn a living? To seek medical care? To take her children to school?
Women’s rights activists in Afghanistan live and work under the threat of violence, and a number of prominent women activists have been assassinated. The bravery and determination of these women cannot be underestimated. But all too often, these women’s voices are not heard. Their bravery and their work is not counted. In 2010, a peace conference in Kabul attended by a range of world leaders invited only one Afghan woman to speak. Considering the men around the table are deciding the futures of these women, this simply isn’t good enough.
With the peace conference in Bonn scheduled for 5th December, and the increasing concern that peace negotiators are going to start talking to the Taliban (a move that will be disastrous for women and women’s rights), women activists in Afghanistan have a simple demand. They want 25% of the seats at the negotiating table to be for women. They want to be counted, to be included and to be listened to. They want to be part of the decision process that will shape and define their futures.
This isn’t too much to ask. With so much at stake for gender equality, women should have a voice when it comes to finding peace in Afghanistan. Women’s views and stories must be represented.
This autumn, No Women No Peace and GAPS are asking women across the UK to stand in solidarity with the women of Afghanistan. They are asking for us to write to MPs to ensure that women’s voices are represented. They are hoping for a series of solidarity events across the country to show that in the UK, we take women’s rights in Afghanistan seriously and will not put up with our leaders silencing women’s voices. In Bristol we will be organising letter writing and a big public event. Watch this space for more details.
Stats and resources: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/15/worst-place-women-afghanistan-india
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/afghan-women-human-rights-defenders-tell-intimidation-and-attacks-2010-03-08
Many of the stats in this article come from a workshop ran by GAPS and NWNP and are taken from the Powerpoint they presented. You can learn more about them here:
http://www.gaps-uk.org/Countries_Afghanistan.php
http://www.nowomennopeace.org/
As part of the justification for a war against a country that was believed to be sheltering a Saudi man who (as we now know) was eventually found sheltering across the border, the language of feminism was co-opted by the American right. This war was about ‘liberating women’ from the Taliban, ‘empowering’ women who were oppressed. But ten years later, as peace talks loom on the horizon and mutterings about negotiating with the Taliban abound, what is the position of women living in Afghanistan, the women whom the invasion was supposed to ‘save’?
A recent report found that Afghanistan is the worst place to be born if you are a woman. This was put down to lack of maternal healthcare, resulting in a between 1-8 to 1-11 women dying in childbirth; widespread violence against women and girls including forced marriage and trafficking; poverty, conflict violence and lack of access to healthcare. 87% of women in Afghanistan have experienced some form of violence and between 70-80% of marriages are forced. Girls are also often used to settle community disputes via ‘baad’ (this practice is not unique to Afghanistan).
It is important to recognise that some improvements to women’s lives in Afghanistan have been made since 2001. 27% of MPs are now women (more than in the UK), and more girls now have access to schools and education, although 1.2 million girls are still not in school. There is also a vibrant women’s rights movement who are currently campaigning to have women’s voices heard at the negotiating table when it comes to bringing peace to Afghanistan.
Before the Taliban took over in 1996, women – particularly in the cities – enjoyed relative equality. After all, Afghanistan gave women the vote in 1919, before UK women, and long before Swiss women who couldn’t vote until 1971. Women had access to education, were doctors, teachers, civil servants. They enjoyed freedom of movement and were not required to wear the burkha. It is important to note this, as all too often when we talk about women’s rights in Afghanistan, the conversation treats women’s inequality as inevitable, as ‘cultural’, with the implication that the fight for women’s rights is hopeless and therefore not worth fighting for. The fact that the widespread oppression of women is relatively new in Afghanistan proves the opposite; that women’s equality can be achieved.
Both men and women are affected by conflict. However No Women No Peace believe that in many ways it is more dangerous to be a woman in war than it is to be a soldier (whilst recognising of course that women are soldiers too). The impact of war is different on women than men. They are threatened with abduction, abduction of their children, rape and sexual violence, widowhood, increased maternal mortality, starvation and an increased risk of the spread of HIV/Aids. The different impact of conflict on women is just one reason why it is essential that women have a voice at the peace negotiations that will decide their futures.
Take the issue of widowhood. In many parts of Afghan society – as a result of women’s oppression under the Taliban – women are not allowed to leave the house without a male relative. If a woman’s husband is killed, how can she then leave the house to earn a living? To seek medical care? To take her children to school?
Women’s rights activists in Afghanistan live and work under the threat of violence, and a number of prominent women activists have been assassinated. The bravery and determination of these women cannot be underestimated. But all too often, these women’s voices are not heard. Their bravery and their work is not counted. In 2010, a peace conference in Kabul attended by a range of world leaders invited only one Afghan woman to speak. Considering the men around the table are deciding the futures of these women, this simply isn’t good enough.
With the peace conference in Bonn scheduled for 5th December, and the increasing concern that peace negotiators are going to start talking to the Taliban (a move that will be disastrous for women and women’s rights), women activists in Afghanistan have a simple demand. They want 25% of the seats at the negotiating table to be for women. They want to be counted, to be included and to be listened to. They want to be part of the decision process that will shape and define their futures.
This isn’t too much to ask. With so much at stake for gender equality, women should have a voice when it comes to finding peace in Afghanistan. Women’s views and stories must be represented.
This autumn, No Women No Peace and GAPS are asking women across the UK to stand in solidarity with the women of Afghanistan. They are asking for us to write to MPs to ensure that women’s voices are represented. They are hoping for a series of solidarity events across the country to show that in the UK, we take women’s rights in Afghanistan seriously and will not put up with our leaders silencing women’s voices. In Bristol we will be organising letter writing and a big public event. Watch this space for more details.
Stats and resources: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/15/worst-place-women-afghanistan-india
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/afghan-women-human-rights-defenders-tell-intimidation-and-attacks-2010-03-08
Many of the stats in this article come from a workshop ran by GAPS and NWNP and are taken from the Powerpoint they presented. You can learn more about them here:
http://www.gaps-uk.org/Countries_Afghanistan.php
http://www.nowomennopeace.org/
Tuesday, 30 August 2011
Some musings on 'fun feminism'
There’s been a lot of debate lately about so-called ‘fun feminism’. From Julie Bindel’s post on the New Statesman (FTR, i agreed with some but not all of her points in that article) to conversations in comments sections on blogs and on Twitter, fun feminism seems to be everywhere this summer, lauded and derided in equal measure.
And, judging from the comments and the conversations, I don’t think I’m the only one who is confused about what ‘fun feminism’ actually is. Is it having fun whilst being a feminist? Is it cupcake feminism? Is it Slutwalk? Can it be found in glossy magazines? Is it good or is it bad? Is it powerful or is it frivolous? What on earth is it?
So, I am writing this blogpost as a plea to my feminist fellows across the world. Lets stop talking about fun feminism. It is a meaningless term that just seems to be used to disagree with one another. Instead, I would ask that we use the term ‘Feminism TM’ as trademarked (aha! A pun!) by Nina Power in her fantastic book, One Dimensional Woman.
Feminism TM, in brief, is about feminism that has been co-opted by patriarchal capitalism. It’s about treating feminism as something designed to make the individual ‘feel good’, that puts individual happiness or fulfilment above a collective goal. With Feminism TM, buying a pair of designer shoes or a Primark handbag is as ‘empowering’ as marching for your right to choose or volunteering at a rape crisis centre. Feminism TM means that Sarah Palin can call herself a feminist because she is a powerful woman, a ‘grizzly mama’, even though her anti-woman policies are an anathema to feminist ideals. Power writes that, with Feminism TM:
‘the political and historical dimensions of feminism are subsumed under the imperative to feel better about oneself, to become a more robust individual. As a response to the ‘I’m not a feminist but…’ pose it’s very successful. Almost everything turns out to be feminist - shopping, pole dancing, even chocolate.’
The problems with this are clear. Feminism isn’t a lifestyle choice that we can define for ourselves. It isn’t a matter of saying ‘this is my choice as a woman and therefore it’s a feminist choice’. ‘Liberalising’ feminism ignores the impact our individual choices have on others, on other women, in favour of telling you ‘if it feels good – just do it! Go on, that’s empowerment!’. And this isn’t good enough. Feminism has to mean something, or it risks meaning nothing at all. Feminism is a social revolution dedicated to making the world a better place for women and men. It isn’t a 12-step guide to making you feel not guilty about shopping for clothes made in sweat shops, and eating chocolate bought from Nestle.
If feminism becomes something you define for yourself, then what stops feminism becoming defined as being anti-choice, pro-war, anti-sex education and gun-toting, like Sarah Palin? What stops feminism being used as a rhetorical term to justify harm to women?
Fundamentally, I think this is what a lot of people were driving at when they talked about ‘fun feminism’. And I think that there is a big problem with individualist feminism or me-me feminism as defined by Power’s Feminism TM. So, if that’s what I think fun feminism is, why do I want to change the term?
Well, first of all because I think Feminism TM says a LOT more and it says it more clearly about capitalism and patriarchy and how feminism can be co-opted by a liberatarian idea, and how this is problematic. I don’t think ‘fun feminism’ says or explains this.
But I am also really concerned that by framing Feminism TM as ‘fun feminism’, and the ‘fun’ bit as being something bad, then it supposes that feminism can’t be fun, and if you are having fun as a feminist then it’s because you’re doing it wrong. It suggests that there is ‘proper’ feminism which is hard work and difficult and not fun, and then there is ‘fun feminism’ which isn’t serious and isn’t the ‘real work’ of destroying patriarchy.
And that’s bullshit. It’s also destructive and divisive. And, finally, it plays into dull, dull stereotypes that feminists are humourless and boring. And we know that’s not true. Angry, yes. Strident, always. But humourless? No.
A lot of the work of feminism isn’t fun of course. I hate it when people accuse feminists of not having a sense of humour about women’s rights, when we are often dealing with issues such as the fallout of the horror of male violence against women. There’s nothing funny about that and I don’t recall any other movements for social change being criticised for not being funny enough. But many things we do as feminists are fun. I stand by the fact that one of the most enjoyable (and hilarious) days of my life was when Jenny, Sue, Angel, Mark and I ran through Bristol in hoodies and dark glasses, flyering lad’s mags about their effect on violence against women and girls. Leading the Reclaim the Night march last year was one of the most empowering and exciting experiences. Sharing stories of street harassment in a room full of laughter and tears with other women is both fun and painful.
There’s been a lot of debate around whether Slutwalk is ‘fun feminism’ or not. Although I have written elsewhere about my concerns about some aspects of Slutwalk (and mainly the Canadian and USA ones) I think by calling it ‘fun feminism’ there was a suggestion that it wasn’t ‘proper’ feminism, not ‘real’ activism and that the women involved weren’t ‘real feminists’. I don’t feel this is fair and it certainly isn’t true. Marching on the streets to say that violence against women and rape culture must end? This isn’t drinking a glass of Chardonnay whilst going to a lap-dancing club (it’s my choice as a woman so it’s a feminist choice and so the impact on other women is irrelevant). Of course one of the problems with Slutwalk has been the individualist element that has not addressed the impact of the word ‘slut’ on survivors of violence but I think the Bristol and London events have gone some way towards remedying this. To write off everyone who is involved in the Slutwalk movement as ‘fun feminists’ really does a huge disservice to many of the women involved who do so much feminist activism.
The issue I have with the term ‘fun feminism’ is that it tries to define what is and what isn’t feminist activism in a very negative way. It also tries to define the ‘proper’ way to discover feminism. We all approach activism in different ways. We all become feminists for different reasons. Some feminists are activist by volunteering, some by guerrilla actions, some by signing a petition, some by reading or teaching or attending consciousness raising groups. It’s important that we support one another and listen to one another and encourage one another in our actions. And, of course, we should question each other’s actions and activism when it’s needed.
Take one example. I do lots of feminist activism. I write, I organise meetings, I fundraise, I organise awareness raising events, I speak at conferences, I advocate for charities, I do guerrilla stuff, I lobby the government. I don’t however, volunteer at a rape crisis or helpline. I don’t do this because I know I wouldn’t be very good at it, that my skills are more suited to other work and because I can’t commit to the regularity of it. It doesn’t mean that I am not as ‘proper’ as the women who do amazing and vital work in this area and who I have endless respect for. It’s that I recognise my skills and my abilities as a feminist activist lie elsewhere.
Feminism TM is a clearer way of saying that a meaningless self-defined feminism is a problem. It doesn’t create a false division between what is ‘fun’ and what is ‘proper’ and instead reminds us that feminism isn’t and mustn’t be just about me, but about a collective social movement to end patriarchy.
So, that’s my muddled rallying cry to say no more using ‘fun feminism’ and lets call it by its proper name ‘feminism TM’. Feminism to me isn’t about hierarchies. It’s collective. It has meaning. And it’s changing the world.
And, judging from the comments and the conversations, I don’t think I’m the only one who is confused about what ‘fun feminism’ actually is. Is it having fun whilst being a feminist? Is it cupcake feminism? Is it Slutwalk? Can it be found in glossy magazines? Is it good or is it bad? Is it powerful or is it frivolous? What on earth is it?
So, I am writing this blogpost as a plea to my feminist fellows across the world. Lets stop talking about fun feminism. It is a meaningless term that just seems to be used to disagree with one another. Instead, I would ask that we use the term ‘Feminism TM’ as trademarked (aha! A pun!) by Nina Power in her fantastic book, One Dimensional Woman.
Feminism TM, in brief, is about feminism that has been co-opted by patriarchal capitalism. It’s about treating feminism as something designed to make the individual ‘feel good’, that puts individual happiness or fulfilment above a collective goal. With Feminism TM, buying a pair of designer shoes or a Primark handbag is as ‘empowering’ as marching for your right to choose or volunteering at a rape crisis centre. Feminism TM means that Sarah Palin can call herself a feminist because she is a powerful woman, a ‘grizzly mama’, even though her anti-woman policies are an anathema to feminist ideals. Power writes that, with Feminism TM:
‘the political and historical dimensions of feminism are subsumed under the imperative to feel better about oneself, to become a more robust individual. As a response to the ‘I’m not a feminist but…’ pose it’s very successful. Almost everything turns out to be feminist - shopping, pole dancing, even chocolate.’
The problems with this are clear. Feminism isn’t a lifestyle choice that we can define for ourselves. It isn’t a matter of saying ‘this is my choice as a woman and therefore it’s a feminist choice’. ‘Liberalising’ feminism ignores the impact our individual choices have on others, on other women, in favour of telling you ‘if it feels good – just do it! Go on, that’s empowerment!’. And this isn’t good enough. Feminism has to mean something, or it risks meaning nothing at all. Feminism is a social revolution dedicated to making the world a better place for women and men. It isn’t a 12-step guide to making you feel not guilty about shopping for clothes made in sweat shops, and eating chocolate bought from Nestle.
If feminism becomes something you define for yourself, then what stops feminism becoming defined as being anti-choice, pro-war, anti-sex education and gun-toting, like Sarah Palin? What stops feminism being used as a rhetorical term to justify harm to women?
Fundamentally, I think this is what a lot of people were driving at when they talked about ‘fun feminism’. And I think that there is a big problem with individualist feminism or me-me feminism as defined by Power’s Feminism TM. So, if that’s what I think fun feminism is, why do I want to change the term?
Well, first of all because I think Feminism TM says a LOT more and it says it more clearly about capitalism and patriarchy and how feminism can be co-opted by a liberatarian idea, and how this is problematic. I don’t think ‘fun feminism’ says or explains this.
But I am also really concerned that by framing Feminism TM as ‘fun feminism’, and the ‘fun’ bit as being something bad, then it supposes that feminism can’t be fun, and if you are having fun as a feminist then it’s because you’re doing it wrong. It suggests that there is ‘proper’ feminism which is hard work and difficult and not fun, and then there is ‘fun feminism’ which isn’t serious and isn’t the ‘real work’ of destroying patriarchy.
And that’s bullshit. It’s also destructive and divisive. And, finally, it plays into dull, dull stereotypes that feminists are humourless and boring. And we know that’s not true. Angry, yes. Strident, always. But humourless? No.
A lot of the work of feminism isn’t fun of course. I hate it when people accuse feminists of not having a sense of humour about women’s rights, when we are often dealing with issues such as the fallout of the horror of male violence against women. There’s nothing funny about that and I don’t recall any other movements for social change being criticised for not being funny enough. But many things we do as feminists are fun. I stand by the fact that one of the most enjoyable (and hilarious) days of my life was when Jenny, Sue, Angel, Mark and I ran through Bristol in hoodies and dark glasses, flyering lad’s mags about their effect on violence against women and girls. Leading the Reclaim the Night march last year was one of the most empowering and exciting experiences. Sharing stories of street harassment in a room full of laughter and tears with other women is both fun and painful.
There’s been a lot of debate around whether Slutwalk is ‘fun feminism’ or not. Although I have written elsewhere about my concerns about some aspects of Slutwalk (and mainly the Canadian and USA ones) I think by calling it ‘fun feminism’ there was a suggestion that it wasn’t ‘proper’ feminism, not ‘real’ activism and that the women involved weren’t ‘real feminists’. I don’t feel this is fair and it certainly isn’t true. Marching on the streets to say that violence against women and rape culture must end? This isn’t drinking a glass of Chardonnay whilst going to a lap-dancing club (it’s my choice as a woman so it’s a feminist choice and so the impact on other women is irrelevant). Of course one of the problems with Slutwalk has been the individualist element that has not addressed the impact of the word ‘slut’ on survivors of violence but I think the Bristol and London events have gone some way towards remedying this. To write off everyone who is involved in the Slutwalk movement as ‘fun feminists’ really does a huge disservice to many of the women involved who do so much feminist activism.
The issue I have with the term ‘fun feminism’ is that it tries to define what is and what isn’t feminist activism in a very negative way. It also tries to define the ‘proper’ way to discover feminism. We all approach activism in different ways. We all become feminists for different reasons. Some feminists are activist by volunteering, some by guerrilla actions, some by signing a petition, some by reading or teaching or attending consciousness raising groups. It’s important that we support one another and listen to one another and encourage one another in our actions. And, of course, we should question each other’s actions and activism when it’s needed.
Take one example. I do lots of feminist activism. I write, I organise meetings, I fundraise, I organise awareness raising events, I speak at conferences, I advocate for charities, I do guerrilla stuff, I lobby the government. I don’t however, volunteer at a rape crisis or helpline. I don’t do this because I know I wouldn’t be very good at it, that my skills are more suited to other work and because I can’t commit to the regularity of it. It doesn’t mean that I am not as ‘proper’ as the women who do amazing and vital work in this area and who I have endless respect for. It’s that I recognise my skills and my abilities as a feminist activist lie elsewhere.
Feminism TM is a clearer way of saying that a meaningless self-defined feminism is a problem. It doesn’t create a false division between what is ‘fun’ and what is ‘proper’ and instead reminds us that feminism isn’t and mustn’t be just about me, but about a collective social movement to end patriarchy.
So, that’s my muddled rallying cry to say no more using ‘fun feminism’ and lets call it by its proper name ‘feminism TM’. Feminism to me isn’t about hierarchies. It’s collective. It has meaning. And it’s changing the world.
Monday, 29 August 2011
The government's war on women's wombs
I try to avoid writing about Nadine Dorries. I am loathe to give her the oxygen of publicity she so clearly craves, and that helps thrust her into the spotlight so that her marginal and ill-informed views are given a platform that allows them to be taken seriously.
But clearly, today, we need to be writing about what the Telegraph called on its Sunday front page the ‘biggest shake-up’ in abortion regulations for a generation.
I don’t think any of us really believed that the government would take Dorries’ and (Labour) Frank Field’s ridiculous proposal to prevent abortion and pregnancy experts offering women counselling when they’re seeking a termination seriously. But then, this is the government who thought it could be a smart move to offer Life a space on their pregnancy and sexual health advisory board, instead of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. You know, Life. The charity that thinks condoms don’t prevent the spread of STDs.
A bit of background. Ultimately, Dorries is an anti-choice campaigner who, despite couching her rhetoric in anti-sexualisation and ‘caring’ terminology, wants to eventually restrict a woman’s right to bodily autonomy when it comes to ending or continuing a pregnancy. Over the years, she has taken many different approaches. She campaigned to reduce the upper time-limit of abortion from 24 to 20 weeks, a vote that was defeated in parliament in 2008. She has put forward a motion asking for girls (and only girls) to receive abstinence education in schools. She calls this ‘empowering girls to say no’. We call it, ‘removing vital sex education that informs girls about contraception and safety’. And now she has proposed that ‘abortion providers’ such as Marie Stopes and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service be prevented from offering women counselling when seeking an abortion. Instead, ‘independent’ counselling will be offered – which of course allows anti choice charities and campaigners the chance to step in and offer biased (and often unscientific) advice.
And it is this latter policy that the government are considering adopting.
Dorries defends this idea on the basis that Marie Stopes and the BPAS offer ‘biased’ counselling, encouraging women to have an abortion because, as the abortion providers, they gain (financially) from providing as many abortions as possible. This is such a stupid and ludicrous thing to insinuate that it is mind boggling that the government are even taking it seriously (especially considering the Tory dedication to privatising health care). The idea that either group actively encourage women to have an abortion in order to get money is so offensive and so far off the mark as to feel almost libellous (I’m not a lawyer and am not actually accusing Dorries of libel – figure of speech). By that logic, all healthcare (especially private) could be accused of the same thing.
And, of course, the groups that Dorries wants to see take on the role of counselling have a vested interest in persuading the woman they speak to not to have an abortion. Their interest may not be financial but it is ideological. They want to see an end to abortion, and so it is likely that they will take a counselling angle that seeks to persuade the woman to not have a termination. If you don’t believe this, then take a look at this little number. Anti-choice campaigners believe that the proposed changes to counselling provision will reduce the number of abortions in the UK by 60,000. This change is not about offering independent, unbiased advice that will give women a choice between having a termination or continuing with her pregnancy. This is about silencing the voice that offers women that choice.
Dorries’ approach to abortion is wholly unscientific. She is a firm believer in the completely made-up condition ‘post-abortion syndrome’. This so-called syndrome is based on the idea that after an abortion, a woman is traumatised and depressed. Of course, some women are. Some women do feel pain and sorrow after an abortion and they need support and to be listened to. But what those women don’t need is people telling them that they feel depressed because they were wrong to terminate their pregnancy. What those women don’t need is unscientific rhetoric from the film ‘The Silent Scream’. It’s so illogical, and indeed harmful, to punish and demonise the women you are supposed to be helping.
Just as there are women who feel depressed after an abortion, there are women who feel relieved. And this needs to be spoken about more. I have so much respect for writers such as Caitlin Moran and Zoe Williams who have written honestly about this side of abortion. According to the way our culture talks about pregnancy and abortion, women are ‘supposed’ to feel traumatised and sorrow after a termination. And so the relief, the feeling of getting your life back on track, the feeling that you made the right decision is silenced and hidden. But this silence allows anti-choicers the space to fill the debate with nonsense about post-abortion syndrome and how women always and only regret the decision to end a pregnancy.
I have never had an abortion. I put this in because I want you to understand that I do not know how I would feel after a termination – whether I would feel relief or sadness or something completely different. But if I ever find myself pregnant and not wanting to be, I want to know that I can speak to people who will listen to me, unbiased, and give me the medical advice I need. I want to know that I won’t have to listen to a twisted morality-based rhetoric about how a woman is supposed to feel. I want to know that I will be listened to, and that my choice over my body would be respected.
Dorries and her gang are trying to take that away from women, to replace it with counselling that does not respect a woman’s right to bodily autonomy.
Despite her earlier efforts to reduce the upper time limit, Dorries’ proposals to offer counselling, and her plans to create a ‘cooling-off’ period for women making the decision actually creates a delay for women having an abortion. To me, this clearly shows that she doesn’t really care about reducing the time limit, but instead wants to stop abortion all together. It also shows that she doesn't respect or acknowledge a woman's ability to make a decision about her body. It's infantilizing and it creates more problems by pushing back the date of the termination.
Finally, it is important to remember that when anti-choicers talk about reducing the number of abortions by 60,000, that they don’t care about what happens to those 60,000 babies. Dorries isn’t campaigning for an increase in child benefits. She isn’t campaigning for more support for single parents, or for better childcare for working families. Anti-choicers aren’t demanding the re-instatement of the health in pregnancy grant, or for greater flexibility of parental leave. They aren’t calling for more maternity wards to be opened with better facilities, and despite their obsession with post-abortion syndrome, they’re not researching how to tackle post-natal depression. They don’t care about women and they don’t care about children. They care about restricting women’s freedoms and denying women one of our key human rights – the right to bodily autonomy.
What can you do?
Email your MP to ask that they don't restrict a woman's right to choose: http://www.abortionrights.org.uk/content/view/422/110/ - it takes two minutes with the template letter.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8727514/Abortion-rules-to-be-tightened-in-biggest-shake-up-for-a-generation.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/may/24/abortion-sexual-health-coalition
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/jul/05/comment.gender
http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/myths/post_abortion_syndrome.html
But clearly, today, we need to be writing about what the Telegraph called on its Sunday front page the ‘biggest shake-up’ in abortion regulations for a generation.
I don’t think any of us really believed that the government would take Dorries’ and (Labour) Frank Field’s ridiculous proposal to prevent abortion and pregnancy experts offering women counselling when they’re seeking a termination seriously. But then, this is the government who thought it could be a smart move to offer Life a space on their pregnancy and sexual health advisory board, instead of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. You know, Life. The charity that thinks condoms don’t prevent the spread of STDs.
A bit of background. Ultimately, Dorries is an anti-choice campaigner who, despite couching her rhetoric in anti-sexualisation and ‘caring’ terminology, wants to eventually restrict a woman’s right to bodily autonomy when it comes to ending or continuing a pregnancy. Over the years, she has taken many different approaches. She campaigned to reduce the upper time-limit of abortion from 24 to 20 weeks, a vote that was defeated in parliament in 2008. She has put forward a motion asking for girls (and only girls) to receive abstinence education in schools. She calls this ‘empowering girls to say no’. We call it, ‘removing vital sex education that informs girls about contraception and safety’. And now she has proposed that ‘abortion providers’ such as Marie Stopes and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service be prevented from offering women counselling when seeking an abortion. Instead, ‘independent’ counselling will be offered – which of course allows anti choice charities and campaigners the chance to step in and offer biased (and often unscientific) advice.
And it is this latter policy that the government are considering adopting.
Dorries defends this idea on the basis that Marie Stopes and the BPAS offer ‘biased’ counselling, encouraging women to have an abortion because, as the abortion providers, they gain (financially) from providing as many abortions as possible. This is such a stupid and ludicrous thing to insinuate that it is mind boggling that the government are even taking it seriously (especially considering the Tory dedication to privatising health care). The idea that either group actively encourage women to have an abortion in order to get money is so offensive and so far off the mark as to feel almost libellous (I’m not a lawyer and am not actually accusing Dorries of libel – figure of speech). By that logic, all healthcare (especially private) could be accused of the same thing.
And, of course, the groups that Dorries wants to see take on the role of counselling have a vested interest in persuading the woman they speak to not to have an abortion. Their interest may not be financial but it is ideological. They want to see an end to abortion, and so it is likely that they will take a counselling angle that seeks to persuade the woman to not have a termination. If you don’t believe this, then take a look at this little number. Anti-choice campaigners believe that the proposed changes to counselling provision will reduce the number of abortions in the UK by 60,000. This change is not about offering independent, unbiased advice that will give women a choice between having a termination or continuing with her pregnancy. This is about silencing the voice that offers women that choice.
Dorries’ approach to abortion is wholly unscientific. She is a firm believer in the completely made-up condition ‘post-abortion syndrome’. This so-called syndrome is based on the idea that after an abortion, a woman is traumatised and depressed. Of course, some women are. Some women do feel pain and sorrow after an abortion and they need support and to be listened to. But what those women don’t need is people telling them that they feel depressed because they were wrong to terminate their pregnancy. What those women don’t need is unscientific rhetoric from the film ‘The Silent Scream’. It’s so illogical, and indeed harmful, to punish and demonise the women you are supposed to be helping.
Just as there are women who feel depressed after an abortion, there are women who feel relieved. And this needs to be spoken about more. I have so much respect for writers such as Caitlin Moran and Zoe Williams who have written honestly about this side of abortion. According to the way our culture talks about pregnancy and abortion, women are ‘supposed’ to feel traumatised and sorrow after a termination. And so the relief, the feeling of getting your life back on track, the feeling that you made the right decision is silenced and hidden. But this silence allows anti-choicers the space to fill the debate with nonsense about post-abortion syndrome and how women always and only regret the decision to end a pregnancy.
I have never had an abortion. I put this in because I want you to understand that I do not know how I would feel after a termination – whether I would feel relief or sadness or something completely different. But if I ever find myself pregnant and not wanting to be, I want to know that I can speak to people who will listen to me, unbiased, and give me the medical advice I need. I want to know that I won’t have to listen to a twisted morality-based rhetoric about how a woman is supposed to feel. I want to know that I will be listened to, and that my choice over my body would be respected.
Dorries and her gang are trying to take that away from women, to replace it with counselling that does not respect a woman’s right to bodily autonomy.
Despite her earlier efforts to reduce the upper time limit, Dorries’ proposals to offer counselling, and her plans to create a ‘cooling-off’ period for women making the decision actually creates a delay for women having an abortion. To me, this clearly shows that she doesn’t really care about reducing the time limit, but instead wants to stop abortion all together. It also shows that she doesn't respect or acknowledge a woman's ability to make a decision about her body. It's infantilizing and it creates more problems by pushing back the date of the termination.
Finally, it is important to remember that when anti-choicers talk about reducing the number of abortions by 60,000, that they don’t care about what happens to those 60,000 babies. Dorries isn’t campaigning for an increase in child benefits. She isn’t campaigning for more support for single parents, or for better childcare for working families. Anti-choicers aren’t demanding the re-instatement of the health in pregnancy grant, or for greater flexibility of parental leave. They aren’t calling for more maternity wards to be opened with better facilities, and despite their obsession with post-abortion syndrome, they’re not researching how to tackle post-natal depression. They don’t care about women and they don’t care about children. They care about restricting women’s freedoms and denying women one of our key human rights – the right to bodily autonomy.
What can you do?
Email your MP to ask that they don't restrict a woman's right to choose: http://www.abortionrights.org.uk/content/view/422/110/ - it takes two minutes with the template letter.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8727514/Abortion-rules-to-be-tightened-in-biggest-shake-up-for-a-generation.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/may/24/abortion-sexual-health-coalition
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/jul/05/comment.gender
http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/myths/post_abortion_syndrome.html
Monday, 22 August 2011
Why it's Diallo, not Strauss-Kahn, who has been on trial
At time of writing, it looks like the sexual assault case against former head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn is about to collapse. He is set to return to French politics (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/22/dominique-strauss-kahn-return-politics) whilst his alleged victim, Nafissatou Diallo, will join the long, long line of women who have reported rape or sexual assault, and never seen their case tried in court.
Since his arrest three months ago in May, we have been treated to a series of bizarre articles about whether the French are more relaxed about 'adultery' (as opposed to sexual assault). We've heard plenty of conspiracy theories about whether Diallo was a honey trap, a plot by his political enemies to destroy him. But most of all we have seen lengthy articles that have set out to discredit and destroy Diallo's version of events.
Now the case against Strauss-Kahn is collapsing, with Diallo accused of being an unreliable witness who lacks credibility. The official reason? She lied on her asylum application to enter America. However, this is just the official version of the many, many suggestions that have been put forward by the press and DSK apologisers in an effort to discredit her. These include that she didn't inform immigration that she had gone through female genital mutilation, that she knows 'dodgy people' including some people who are in prison, and that she was trying to extort money from DSK.
Meanwhile, according to the law, DSK's history of 'sexual misconduct' cannot be discussed. Whilst Diallo's history is raked through the mud, previous accusations against DSK cannot be spoken of. I don't necessarily think that previous accusations should be brought up in court, but I think if we have that rule for the defendant, then we need that rule for the accuser too. Because the question to me now is, who is really on trial here?
The cornerstone of the justice system is innocent until proven guilty. This means that neither me, you nor the editor of the Daily Mail knows or can judge if DSK is guilty. But it also means that we cannot know or judge whether Diallo was lying about sexual assault. And it is this that has been forgotten, both in the reporting on this case, the Assange case and almost every single incident of sexual assault and rape that I have ever heard of. The emphasis is never on the alleged perpetrator. Instead, the woman is on trial. The woman is accused. The woman is assumed to be guilty, before proven innocent.
Forensic evidence tells us that sexual contact occurred on the night of the alleged assault. Diallo was reported to be distressed and upset in the aftermath of the alleged assault. She took the brave step of reporting to the police. The speculation that she had made up the assault in order to extort money from DSK was later proven untrue, when an accurate translation of the phone call was released. In the phone call she explained to her friend that DSK was rich and powerful (which he is), and later on in the conversation she assured her friend that she knew what she was doing in terms of going to the police and finding a lawyer. There was evidence enough to charge him. So surely, for real justice to be served, this case should go to trial. DSK should answer those charges in court. He should defend himself from charges of sexual assault. Diallo should not have to defend herself from accusations that she lied.
Diallo's lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, has this weekend criticised the prosecutor's office, saying:
“[this] is consistent with the unfair way the Manhattan district attorney's office has treated Ms Diallo throughout this process. It's as if she is the defendant and Strauss-Kahn is the victim."
This is not surprising in the rape culture we live in. After all, we're used to this. We're used to reading articles that paint the alleged perpetrators of sexual assault as the victims of 'lying' women. We're used to the cry that a rape accusation can ruin lives, whilst the life-ruining impact of rape is silenced. I'm sure being falsely accused of rape is awful. But, unlike the mainstream media coverage, it is a lot rarer than rape. And lets not forget that even men found guilty of rape do not necessarily find their lives ruined. After all, Mike Tyson is a movie star. Polanski is a hero. DSK is likely to be welcomed home to French politics by Francois Hollande, his wife at his side, two pending accusations and all.
Diallo is said to have lied about rape on her asylum application. Although I don't condone lying about rape, I think perhaps we can attempt to try and understand the desperate circumstances she was in, trying to flee her home country to forge a life away from the horrors of a war that has ravaged her home. And although I don't condone this lie, we need to remember one very, very important thing. A woman who has lied in the past can still be raped. A woman who has dodgy friends can still be raped. A man can still rape a woman who has lied. A man can still rape a woman who has dodgy friends. And if a man is accused of, and charged with, sexually assaulting a woman, and there is evidence to suggest sexual contact took place, and the accusation that she was trying to extort money has been shown to be untrue, then that man should face trial and he should be found guilty or innocent in court. And that woman should not be found guilty in the 'court of popular opinion'. That woman should not be treated as a criminal by the justice system and the media. Because, just like DSK, she is innocent until proven guilty. And unless DSK takes her to court over a false accusation, I doubt very much she will be proven guilty.
When I last wrote about this issue, I was accused by a commenter on my blog of 'not understanding how the world works'. He said that I didn't understand that this was likely to be about 'greater forces' trying to destroy DSK's career and reputation.
So let me lay it on the line. This is how the world works. One in three women will experience sexual assault in their lifetimes. Most of the men who commit that crime will get away with it.
*update*
I would really really recommend reading Hadley Freeman's post on this case on Comment is Free http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/23/dsk-trial-accuser-not-accused
*update*
As a result of the lengthy discussion in the comments section, here are some sources on stats.
1.
Fact #32: Globally, at least one in three women and girls is beaten or sexually abused in her lifetime. (UN Commission on the Status of Women, 2/28/00)
From: http://www.feminist.com/antiviolence/facts.html
See also:
http://oneinthreewomen.com/
http://www.rape.co.za/index2.php?do_pdf=1&id=875&option=com_content
http://www.whiteribboncampaign.co.uk/Resources/violence_against_women
http://www.unifem.org/gender_issues/violence_against_women/facts_figures.php
2. Rape conviction and reporting rates: http://www.crimestoppers-uk.org/crime-prevention/latest-crime-statistics
False accusation stats: Fawcett Society report on 'Rape: The Facts'
Rape rate stats: Fawcett Society report on 'Rape: The Facts' and the BCS figures cited here: http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/2010/11/29/rape-statistics-what-can-we-rely-on/
More on DSK by me: http://sianandcrookedrib.blogspot.com/2011/07/media-reporting-on-rape-daily-mail-and.html
Sources for news and quotes:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/21/dominique-strauss-kahn-charges
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/01/dominique-strauss-kahn-case-close-collapse-new-york-times?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/01/timeline-strauss-kahn-case?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
Since his arrest three months ago in May, we have been treated to a series of bizarre articles about whether the French are more relaxed about 'adultery' (as opposed to sexual assault). We've heard plenty of conspiracy theories about whether Diallo was a honey trap, a plot by his political enemies to destroy him. But most of all we have seen lengthy articles that have set out to discredit and destroy Diallo's version of events.
Now the case against Strauss-Kahn is collapsing, with Diallo accused of being an unreliable witness who lacks credibility. The official reason? She lied on her asylum application to enter America. However, this is just the official version of the many, many suggestions that have been put forward by the press and DSK apologisers in an effort to discredit her. These include that she didn't inform immigration that she had gone through female genital mutilation, that she knows 'dodgy people' including some people who are in prison, and that she was trying to extort money from DSK.
Meanwhile, according to the law, DSK's history of 'sexual misconduct' cannot be discussed. Whilst Diallo's history is raked through the mud, previous accusations against DSK cannot be spoken of. I don't necessarily think that previous accusations should be brought up in court, but I think if we have that rule for the defendant, then we need that rule for the accuser too. Because the question to me now is, who is really on trial here?
The cornerstone of the justice system is innocent until proven guilty. This means that neither me, you nor the editor of the Daily Mail knows or can judge if DSK is guilty. But it also means that we cannot know or judge whether Diallo was lying about sexual assault. And it is this that has been forgotten, both in the reporting on this case, the Assange case and almost every single incident of sexual assault and rape that I have ever heard of. The emphasis is never on the alleged perpetrator. Instead, the woman is on trial. The woman is accused. The woman is assumed to be guilty, before proven innocent.
Forensic evidence tells us that sexual contact occurred on the night of the alleged assault. Diallo was reported to be distressed and upset in the aftermath of the alleged assault. She took the brave step of reporting to the police. The speculation that she had made up the assault in order to extort money from DSK was later proven untrue, when an accurate translation of the phone call was released. In the phone call she explained to her friend that DSK was rich and powerful (which he is), and later on in the conversation she assured her friend that she knew what she was doing in terms of going to the police and finding a lawyer. There was evidence enough to charge him. So surely, for real justice to be served, this case should go to trial. DSK should answer those charges in court. He should defend himself from charges of sexual assault. Diallo should not have to defend herself from accusations that she lied.
Diallo's lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, has this weekend criticised the prosecutor's office, saying:
“[this] is consistent with the unfair way the Manhattan district attorney's office has treated Ms Diallo throughout this process. It's as if she is the defendant and Strauss-Kahn is the victim."
This is not surprising in the rape culture we live in. After all, we're used to this. We're used to reading articles that paint the alleged perpetrators of sexual assault as the victims of 'lying' women. We're used to the cry that a rape accusation can ruin lives, whilst the life-ruining impact of rape is silenced. I'm sure being falsely accused of rape is awful. But, unlike the mainstream media coverage, it is a lot rarer than rape. And lets not forget that even men found guilty of rape do not necessarily find their lives ruined. After all, Mike Tyson is a movie star. Polanski is a hero. DSK is likely to be welcomed home to French politics by Francois Hollande, his wife at his side, two pending accusations and all.
Diallo is said to have lied about rape on her asylum application. Although I don't condone lying about rape, I think perhaps we can attempt to try and understand the desperate circumstances she was in, trying to flee her home country to forge a life away from the horrors of a war that has ravaged her home. And although I don't condone this lie, we need to remember one very, very important thing. A woman who has lied in the past can still be raped. A woman who has dodgy friends can still be raped. A man can still rape a woman who has lied. A man can still rape a woman who has dodgy friends. And if a man is accused of, and charged with, sexually assaulting a woman, and there is evidence to suggest sexual contact took place, and the accusation that she was trying to extort money has been shown to be untrue, then that man should face trial and he should be found guilty or innocent in court. And that woman should not be found guilty in the 'court of popular opinion'. That woman should not be treated as a criminal by the justice system and the media. Because, just like DSK, she is innocent until proven guilty. And unless DSK takes her to court over a false accusation, I doubt very much she will be proven guilty.
When I last wrote about this issue, I was accused by a commenter on my blog of 'not understanding how the world works'. He said that I didn't understand that this was likely to be about 'greater forces' trying to destroy DSK's career and reputation.
So let me lay it on the line. This is how the world works. One in three women will experience sexual assault in their lifetimes. Most of the men who commit that crime will get away with it.
*update*
I would really really recommend reading Hadley Freeman's post on this case on Comment is Free http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/23/dsk-trial-accuser-not-accused
*update*
As a result of the lengthy discussion in the comments section, here are some sources on stats.
1.
Fact #32: Globally, at least one in three women and girls is beaten or sexually abused in her lifetime. (UN Commission on the Status of Women, 2/28/00)
From: http://www.feminist.com/antiviolence/facts.html
See also:
http://oneinthreewomen.com/
http://www.rape.co.za/index2.php?do_pdf=1&id=875&option=com_content
http://www.whiteribboncampaign.co.uk/Resources/violence_against_women
http://www.unifem.org/gender_issues/violence_against_women/facts_figures.php
2. Rape conviction and reporting rates: http://www.crimestoppers-uk.org/crime-prevention/latest-crime-statistics
False accusation stats: Fawcett Society report on 'Rape: The Facts'
Rape rate stats: Fawcett Society report on 'Rape: The Facts' and the BCS figures cited here: http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/2010/11/29/rape-statistics-what-can-we-rely-on/
More on DSK by me: http://sianandcrookedrib.blogspot.com/2011/07/media-reporting-on-rape-daily-mail-and.html
Sources for news and quotes:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/21/dominique-strauss-kahn-charges
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/01/dominique-strauss-kahn-case-close-collapse-new-york-times?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/01/timeline-strauss-kahn-case?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
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