Category Archives: Comment

Navigating tragedy: some thoughts

It’s been a weekend full of horror and tragedy. First reports from Norway of almost 100 dead, mostly young people, in two politically motivated terrorist attacks. Then one of my favourite soul singers and arguably one of the best women to influence popular music in a long time, Amy Winehouse, was found dead in her London flat. Not to mention the on going child famine in Somalia, the awful lack of funding and aid, and dozens dead in China after a train collision.

All are horrifying, all sickening, and I don’t agree that they should exist in a scale of tragedy. However, this blog post isn’t about my condolences (though they certainly exist) but more about how we as citizens received this news, and how we reacted to it.

The first thing that struck me (a point magnified after the phone hacking scandal) was to what extent the media really does dictate to us, the public, what is considered important at any one time. During the phone hacking scandal, not even children dying in Somalia could bump the crumbling of Murdoch’s empire off the top spot. The ultimate irony of the situation came to a head on Radio 4’s Today programme, with the news outlet reporting that spokespeople in Somalia & the UK were incredibly concerned that the news was eclipsing the crisis. Nevertheless, hacking was still leading the programme in every news bulletin, with Somalia’s desperate pleas for aid and funding coming second or third. Disturbing.

Yes, the decimation of power structures in the UK is really fascinating. Many of us who hated Murdoch before it was cool suspected these power collusions all along. Phone hacking is the news story that keeps on giving, but the fact that child famine was side lined as a consequence was very worrying. I’m convinced (based on no evidence other than my own opinion) that news dictates what we think and talk to each other about, current affairs-wise. The news tells us what to consider important.

Amy Winehouse’s death provoked a very scary divide between social media commentators (read= any Janine and Joe Bloggs within typing distance of a laptop or phone with internet access). This divide cut through those who understand that addiction is an illness and that Amy didn’t deserve to die because of it, and those who deemed her drug and drink use as a condemning factor in her short life.

The idea of a tragedy scale also seemed to emerge, with some social media types suggesting that we could only be sad about one thing at a time, or that one was more important than the other. I don’t subscribe to that view, but did find the fact that many on my facebook newsfeed expressed grief for Amy, but hadn’t uttered a peep about the acts of terrorism in Norway very very disturbing. The argument that both tragedies are equally awful doesn’t really work if only one is acknowledged.

In the early reports of the Norwegian tragedy, some media outlets linked the terrorism to Al Qaeda without any evidence. That’s dangerous. When the man was exposed as fan of the far right, there appeared to be an element of surprise in reporting. And why wouldn’t there be? The rise of far right activism across Europe has been largely ignored in the broadcast media of late. Some of us had stopped being concerned about it. The news tells us what to consider important.

There was the media’s reluctance to call a spade a spade and brand this man a terrorist. He was called crazy, and a madman, and an extremist. BBC news 24’s rolling coverage defined the man as a right wing Christian fundamentalist. It seems if a white bloke does it, he must be a crazed extremist, but if a Muslim man does it, it’s because he’s Muslim. In fact, as two acts of terrorism had happened on the same day, media outlets were bending over backwards to find any sort of relation to brown people. Queue interviewers asking Norwegian officials questions about multiculturalism, immigration, and (surprise surprise) Islam. It was like an epic exercise in victim blaming- a depressing attempt to incriminate multiculturalism for the horrific attacks, rather than one disgusting man and his gun.

But really, who is ‘the news’, and why does he/she/they hold the monopoly one what leads as story, and what doesn’t? More often than not, this ghostly figure is just a select number of editors across the country. Leading stories depend on their discretion which is why it’s no coincidence that Rupert Murdoch and certain party leaders were lunching away together.

Don’t passively consume this stuff. Cast a critical eye, and question everything.

Vampires and feminism

A slight deviation from current politics…

So, my dissertation paper has been accepted to an academic conference at the University of London’s Institute of Germanic and Romance studies. If you’re interested in literary analysis, vampires, Twilight or feminism, you should try and come! Abstract is as follows:

‘Love to her becomes a religion’: The Twilight saga, feminism and regression 

Traditionally, vampiric stories challenge patriarchal proscription. This paper explores Stephanie Meyer’s deft use of patriarchal gender roles to buck vampiric philosophy’s tendency to challenge the status quo, resulting in putting the modern women firmly back in her subordinate place. Vampires are equipped with the power of penetration, and the dissertation explores this notion to female vampires in the series, and the significant factor of Bella Swan’s eventual vampiric superpower being self- restraint.

As vampire philosophy often renders human beings weak and female, whilst vampires are strong and male, the paper will also be examining power and control between humans and vampirism in particular, Meyer’s fetishation of female victimhood, and romantic notions of female self-sacrifice using Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 feminist theory The Second Sex to analyse Meyer’s regressive writings.

Edward Cullen is presented as the monster with a heart, and the epitome of perfection.  Working with the theory of a vampire bite as a metaphor for the loss of female virginity, this paper applies Carol J. Adams’ feminist vegan critical theory The Sexual Politics of Meat directly to the texts in order to expose the close and dangerous relationship between the notions of love, lust, bloodlust, abuse, control, sex and violence- all used repeatedly in the Twilight saga to promote a false idea of romantic love.

The conference is on the 2nd to the 4th November 2011. Provisional information can be found here- I’ll post up more details (prices, programme ) as and when I get it.

Leave them kids alone: On sexualisation

A shorter version of this post is available on Liberal Conspiracy

My four year old sister has a pink pair of plastic high heeled shoes. They are not the type of too-big heels that little girls tottered about in years gone by. They fit her little feet perfectly, and she clops about the house in them. She also has a red scooter that she rides along the street, picking up and collecting the elastic bands that postmen drop on their rounds. I ask her why she does these things (wears the heels, collects the bands). Her answer was the same for both. It’s fun. When my sister wears her pink high heels she isn’t vying for the attention of men or boys. She isn’t sexualising herself. Yet when I first saw her teetering about the house in these heels I panicked.  In my grown up mind, a high heel is a shoe designed to make the leg look elongated and sexually appealing. My instinctive protectiveness towards my sister made me want to snatch away the shoes, to dispose of them, to have her running around in trainers again. I didn’t want anyone looking at my sister like a sex object. But upon more thought, I came to the conclusion that the only person sexualising her was me. By assuming she thinks the same about high heels as my adult brain does, I was thinking of her as a being with a comprehensive understanding of sexual consciousness. She isn’t.

At a recent friend’s family get-together, music was playing, and one six year old got into the spirit by imitating the dance moves she had no doubt seen on TV. She was quickly reprimanded by a fellow party goer who told her not to dance like that, ‘because little girls who dance that way grow up to be whores’. She didn’t understand why she was being told off, and started to cry.

And yesterday on Question Time, Germaine Greer saw fit to brand little girls in sequined Jordan-pink jeans ‘tarts’.

Over the past week, lots of concerned adults have seen fit to speak on behalf of children, caught up in the grasping fear that they are all being sexualised beyond anyone’s control. Amidst all of the arm flailing, hand wringing concerns over the sexualisation of children, there has been some blind confusion about exactly who or what is sexualising them.  Reg Bailey, author of the Department for Education’s review into the issue entitled ‘Letting Children be Children‘, is baffled. In his analysis of this increasingly sexualised society, he finds it hard to pin down any cause, admitting ‘it is far from clear how we arrived at this point’.

Predictably, his much anticipated report was ultimately meaningless, based on emotional unease instead of quantifiable evidence, without even a distinct definition of sexualisation in the first place.  It’s almost depressingly comical to watch commentators and journalists alike repeatedly stumble over and miss the root of this dilemma.

The perspective of this sexualisation is almost philosophical. Many news reports cite worried parents lamenting the loss of their children’s innocence, but I think it’s worth asking- lost innocence in who’s eyes?

Children are not sexualising themselves. Adults are sexualising them by projecting adult morality on to them. More often than not, that adult sexual morality is entrenched in sexist ideals. The sexist ideals floated to the surface when that six year old girl was warned she would grow up into a whore if she continued to dance provocatively. Sexist ideals dictate to us that the way a woman or girl dances must reflect how much sex she has had, or wants. Sexism tells us that women don’t just dance for dancing’s sake- like every other female action and endeavour; it’s orchestrated for the benefit of men. Because after all, isn’t that why we function?

What happens when you project your patriarchal adult moral ideals on to pre-pubescent bodies? The judging starts.  Suddenly little girls are called whores, tarts, sluts.

This sexualisation doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and is indicative of the wider problem of objectification of women’s bodies.  Is it any wonder that these toxic gender roles are filtering down to kids?

They imitate their idols and we shame and punish them for it. The female idols in question are often regarded with disgust for balancing on the knife edge between daring to announce publicly that they have sexual feelings, and exploiting their sexual imagery. Morality crusaders are quick to let us know that sex is all around us, and that sex sells. But that’s a lie. It’s not sex all around us, but the objectification and consequent marginalisation of women’s bodies, commodified into accessory status. But for some strange reason, nobody wants to talk about that. It’s too much of a stretch of the imagination to challenge patriarchy. It’s easier to wail about this sexualisation of our children, all the while colluding in the myth that all of these sexualising factors are immediately permissible once the girl in question turns eighteen.

Regulation and legislation will not fix this. Equality will. Free women from these narrow, suffocating gender-fascist ideals of appearance and behaviour, and the girls will follow.

Student movement or stagnant movement? My problems with the NUS Black Student’s campaign

Politics aside, I was really looking forward to getting involved in the black student’s campaign this year.  However, after attending the campaign’s annual summer conference, I have some serious reservations.

My suspicions began when I looked at the conference’s final motions and amendments document. I thought the steering committee were supposed to be impartial, but any motions submitted that criticised the structure of the campaign had been scrapped altogether or had been warped beyond recognition. I can only imagine this happened at compositing- a meeting at NUS HQ that motion proposers had to attend to put forward the case for keeping their proposals. The problem was, not everyone could go, thanks to money or travel issues.

One motion in particular that stood out was entitled ‘winter conference is too cold’. The motion resolved to do away with the campaigns annual winter conference and replace it with regional activist training days. In the final motions and amendments this had been merged into a motion named ‘winter conference is amazing’. Training days were only mentioned in the final resolution, cleverly phrased so that no delegate could take parts and attempt to scrap winter conference at all.

Clearly, there are political elements to the black students campaign’s steering committee. Members of the committee were clearly politically affiliated to candidates running in the election. I later discovered that Pav Ahktar, chair of steering, was black student’s officer from 2004 to 2006, and had graduated a very long time ago.

Pav’s political affiliations were confirmed in the election for next year’s steering committee, in which he recommded that delegates should also vote for Bellavia Riberio-Addy, who incidentally, is also a former black students officer . Personally, I object to two former black students’ officers running to be elected on to the steering committee as I don’t believe they can be impartial after being involved in the campaign for such a long time .

I believe the student movement is transient by nature, and for that reason, should always be kept regenerated, fresh and new. I didn’t see that in this campaign. I saw students and graduates who had been involved for 5 to 10 years moving from post to post. I think this suspicious, and indicative of a select few who  obviously do not want to let go.  It is a phenomenon that strangling progress and putting off new delegates.

My dissatisfaction came to a head when I decided to run for women’s representative on the black student’s committe. Standing orders (the same standing orders I had read on NUS Connect and in my delegate pack) dictated that there were two open places available. This is why I ran.

When we entered the room we had to wait 45 minutes because one candidate (who has been on the black student’s committee for 7 years) insisted that one place should be reserved for further education candidates only.

Upon consulting steering, the room was informed that a place should be reserved for further education, that this had been forgotten on the standing orders, and that we had the opportunity to take it to a vote.

Now, I agree with this proposal in principle, but in the context of the women’s caucus I thought it was an absolute farce. The candidate who ran for further education women’s place was Rebecca Sawbridge, who has comfortably sat on various positions on black student’s committee for seven years. Conveniently she was the only further education candidate in this election. In this election, I saw a committee member (who had already enjoyed too much time sitting at the table) reserving herself a place on the committee for another year. I was outraged.

With the same people maxing their term limits and moving from post to post to post, year after year after year, I believe that the black student’s campaign is stagnant. This is a case of the same people, with the same ideas, same politics, and ultimately, the same cliques. First time delegates who are keen to get involved are shafted by old timers using their political persuasion to fix things and create certain wins for themselves. When we are welcoming delegates to their eight year on committee, something is seriously wrong. In all honestly, I think some campaign and steering committee members think they are the black student’s campaign, as if it could not survive without them.  The democracy is warped, and the movement is going nowhere.

I also object to the way the motions are set out in the black students campaign. Delegates must vote on four main motions with a series of amendments after each one- forcing delegates to accept the a main motion whether they like its content or not.

I think committee members should accept criticism gracefully. The campaign needs progress and reform.  When new delegates are unsatisfied,  it’s not helpful to brand us ‘right wing’ just because you don’t like constructive criticism. I do believe the black students campaign is in the stranglehold of a select few individuals who are hanging on to the campaign like a comfort blanket. Ultimately, this results black activists who are being shunned, and black students who are being failed.

Nadine Dorries’ dangerous message

I’ve written for The Guardian’s comment is free about Nadine Dorries and her victim blaming on yesterday’s Vanessa Show.

Tucked away on daytime TV on Monday afternoon, Nadine Dorries was justifying her proposals for elements of abstinence-based sex education for girls. The Vanessa Show saw the Conservative MP go head to head with Julie Bentley, chief executive of the sexual health charity FPA. The women, along with presenter Vanessa Feltz and retired rugby player Lawrence Dallaglio, discussed the bill that was unveiled to the House of Commons two weeks ago.

When it was first introduced, Dorries insisted her aim was to empower teenage girls to say “no” to sex. There is really nothing empowering about teaching young women that their sexuality is not their own. Abstinence-based sex education teaches girls that sex isn’t something that they participate in – instead, it’s something they give in to. Towards the end of the debate, Dorries said:

“A lot of girls, when sex abuse takes place, don’t realise until later that that was a wrong thing to do … Society is so over-sexualised that I don’t think people realise that if we did empower this message into girls, imbued this message in schools, we’d probably have less sex abuse.”

Read the rest here!

In defence of slutwalks

“Women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised.”

These were the words uttered by a Toronto police representative in January, talking a group of students at a campus safety information session. He’s not the first. In 2009, androgynous pop singer La Roux said: ‘There’s far more ways to be sexy than to dress in a miniskirt and a tank top … I think you attract a certain kind of man by dressing like that. Women wonder why they get beaten up, or have relationships with arsehole men. Because you attracted one, you twat.”

I can’t be the only twenty one year old woman who is no stranger to these warped opinions. The stance is deeply rooted in the notion that a woman’s body is some kind of public property that must be owned (not by the woman herself, mind) and protected by those who seek to steal or defile it. It’s an almost ingrained attitude that finds itself wheedling into every crevice of our culture- for example, many women who experience street harassment find telling the pursuer that she has a boyfriend is an effective deterrent- ‘thanks for the attention, but I’m already owned by somebody else’.

Arguments that attempt to justify victim blaming often (if not always) equate women’s bodies to property, money, or food. All of these things are less than human. Women are none of those things. Victim blaming absolves those who sexually harass, assault, and rape of all responsibility, shifting the focus to the person they did it to. Additionally, it paints men as uncontrollable sex beasts who are lead entirely by their insatiable penises, devoid of morals, logic, and empathy. In short, victim blaming undermines us all.

False debate about women’s clothing is definitive of rape culture. It excuses abusers for the crimes they commit. Maybe we should stop asking women if our clothes make us more susceptible to sexual assault, and stop letting abusers off the hook.

Women’s bodies are dragged out into the public sphere over and over again. Right wing extremists attempt to legislate subjective sexual morality amongst the echelons of power, from Nadine Dorries in the UK to republicans in the United States. Whilst these people make decisions about how we should conduct our bodies, we are being dissected.

Nobody ever claimed that the slutwalk movement celebrates promiscuity in women. But even if it did- so what? For hundreds of years, woman’s virtue has been inexplicably linked with chastity. We are constantly being defined by what we don’t do. The virgin/whore dichotomy is nothing new. We live in a time when Tory MPs are sitting in parliament pushing regressive abstinence agendas that teach young women that sex isn’t something you participate in, it’s something that you give up. The hand wringing hysteria over assertive female sexuality sexual autonomy is both extremely archaic and very much alive.

All of this is why I welcome the slutwalk movement with open arms.

The movement’s website states: ‘With sexual assault already a significantly under-reported crime, survivors have now been given even less of a reason to go to the Police, for fear that they could be blamed. Being assaulted isn’t about what you wear; it’s not even about sex; but using a pejorative term to rationalize inexcusable behaviour creates an environment in which it’s okay to blame the victim.’

Basic feminism 101. So why the backlash? It seems the name of the movement has caused confusion- some more methodical than others. I used to respect the anti-pornography campaigner Gail Dines, but her problem with feminist activists organising without her permission is unnerving. I admit, I must have missed the memo that confirmed she was crowned Queen of Feminism, because her approach to the debate appears to be very much her way, or the highway. Gail, along with professor of sexual violence Wendy J Murphy, have voiced strong opposition to the idea of slutwalks, asserting that women should not be fighting for the right to be called sluts. Whilst I sympathise with their  reservations about the word, but I just can’t agree with the way they have let their concerns hijack the very real issue of victim blaming. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that the misinterpretation of the cause and the consequent Guardian article condemning the march has single handedly begun the avalanche of misinformed debate that is obscuring the original cause of the march. As for Gail’s continued worry that concentrating on slutwalks will deplete precious feminist resources- I’m confused. I didn’t realise every feminist activist ran out of feminist energy at the end of every month. Should we be calling Dines for a top up?

Yes, the word slut is a contentious and derogatory term, with its conception mired in slut shaming and victim blaming. However, I can’t help wonder if Gail Dines and Wendy Murphy are wilfully missing the point. Surely the name of the march is a direct response to the policeman’s comment. Why are they choosing to ignore this? With a mainstream culture that rarely challenges victim blaming, I’m not sure if we should be trying to pick apart a genuinely well-meaning movement in its infancy.

The subsequent backlash over reclaiming the word slut doesn’t just shove the original cause to the margins, it is also incredibly indicative of a repetitive cultural hysteria over women’s sexual autonomy. What does promiscuity mean anyway? In this context it seems to be that age old outrage about women enjoying and even pursuing (!) sex- otherwise known as slut shaming. I doubt these links are a coincidence.

I’ve no inclination to reclaim the word slut, but I do believe that we should start shouting about how the word is consistently used to shame and blame women. That’s why I’ll be going on the march, and you should too.

Thanks, feminism

It’s the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day today! I’m feeling a bit emotional about it. In fact, I think I might like International Women’s Day more than I like Christmas day.

The women and girls of my generation often enjoy the achievements of feminism without really giving any credit to the women who fought for it. There are those who actively reject feminists of old, and those who tell me feminism is no longer relevant. They’re wrong.

I wrote this for IWD 2010 in the midst of my feminist awakening. Up until then I’d felt something strange was going on, sensed some injustice, but the concept of feminism was completely alien to me. The closest I’d ever come to it was girl power- false empowerment wrapped up in a capitalist bow.

It’s funny that just a year ago I was only vaguely dipping my toes into the ocean of activism that I soon discovered exists. Feminism is such a huge part of my life now that I couldn’t imagine me without it.

So, I’m going to dedicate this post to saying thanks to feminism.

Thanks, feminism- if it wasn’t for feminism, I wouldn’t be at university.

Thank you, first wave feminists, for fighting for my right to vote.

Thank you, second wave feminists, for freeing my generation from that restrictive, singular career choice of wife and mother. Thanks to feminism I am not consigned to a life of domesticity. And If I chose to be, that would be ok, because it would be my informed choice, not one thrust upon me.

If I choose to get married and my husband views my body as his instead of mine, I can report him to the police. Thanks for that, feminism.

Thank you feminism for fighting for me and every other little girl of my generation to have options past fulfilling and supporting men. Thanks for letting me know that it’s ok to be my own person and have my own dreams, that I don’t have to consign my life to the male gaze, and that marriage isn’t my only destiny. Thanks for assuring me that I can have and own sexual feelings without having to feel dirty or wrong.

Thank you feminism, for handing me control over my own uterus.

Thanks feminism, and your consequential activism, for introducing me to some rather awesome people this year.

Thanks to feminism I’m a lucky, lucky girl. When I speak to older feminists I hear horrific stories of blatant and overt discrimination, 20, 30, 40 years ago, based entirely on their gender, and for black feminists, also their race. It makes me sad. It makes me angry. But just because that misogyny isn’t as overt today (sweeping generalisation, it often is, and is disguised as ‘banter’ or justified with blind and dogged misogyny) doesn’t mean it’s disappeared. Misogyny is clever, it’s sophisticated and manipulative. Misogyny is in those images of impossible ideals marketed to young women that eventually makes impressionable minds ill. It’s in that anti-wrinkle cream that promises eternal youth and advocates that warped message that older women are no longer sexually attractive and therefore invisible. It lingers upon page three of The Sun and in those lads mags that make you feel uncomfortable when you pop into your local newsagents. It’s rife in porn, which seems to be serving increasingly as sex education and somehow dictating just how far women’s bodies can be brutalised, and just how much men can do to them.

So I’m eternally grateful to the feminists and womanists and women-who-didn’t-define-as-feminists-but-still-fought-for-equality of the past. I’m a 21 year old woman enjoying the achievements of their efforts, but despite this I still understand that there’s work to be done. Because as long as women’s bodies are still seen as public space, still used as insults, still used as a synonym for weak and pathetic, as long as women are beaten by their husbands; and as long as women and girls across the globe are denied access to education,  equal pay or just any work at all, as long as governments see fit to control women’s bodies, and as long as women are bought and sold in the name of objectification, as long as women’s genitals are sliced and stitched and mutilated for fake notions of chastity; as long as women have to suffer sexual shame, as long as single mothers are blamed for the ills of society, as long as a woman’s work is never done, and as long as women and girls are blamed for sexual assault and rape, as long as women internationally are confined to lives of domesticity and servitude, as long as women’s bodies are oiled up and dissected in music videos, as long as the female form is used to sell things, and as long as women are seen as subordinate to men;

That’s how long I’ll keep fighting the feminist cause. Solidarity.

The Joy of Teen Sex?

I’ve written another piece for The Guardian’s Comment is Free, this time on Channel 4′s Joy of Teen Sex.

‘Society has always been reluctant to address teenage sex and its consequences, and the ongoing battle in parliament for compulsory sex and relationship education (SRE) in schools reflects this – Chris Bryant’s compulsory SRE bill is going through its second reading in the House of Commons. In any case, young people’s sex lives need to be debated further…’

Read the rest here!

What’s after graduation? Panic!

I’ve written for The Guardian’s comment is free on the rising levels of youth unemployment.

‘I’ll let you in on a little secret – I’m terrified of graduating. The growing youth unemployment rates have loomed in the back of my mind for a while now and I’ve sat snugly in the student bubble for almost three years. Very soon, I’ll have to take those tentative steps out into the real world.

It’s not the early mornings or the daily grind I’m worried about. Instead, I wonder if I’ll get the opportunity to face those in the first place. After my graduation, I had planned to apply for a master’s degree, but postgraduate funding, which was already thin on the ground, has just received another blow with the coalition hinting at slashing funding for postgraduate courses….’

Read the rest here!