lavendersparkle

I went to the Newnham Feminist Shebang yesterday. I arrived a bit late, partly due to having to call Alec on my mobile so that he could give me directions to the room from Facebook. When I walked in the discussion was about women only spaces and the problem of men frequently dominating discussion in mixed company. I couldn't help but smirk to myself that the socialist feminist man who was speaking when I walked into the room managed to exhibit several of the behaviours which make women want to exclude men from some discussions. He spoke more than most of the people there, including repeating points he'd already made. However, the big thing he did which made me smirk was that he tried to bring discussion in any direction back to how socialism was the answer. On the plus side he did get whacked down a few times such as when his claim that unionisation of the workers was the answer to gender employment discrimination was met with examples of when unions had colluded with employers to pay female members less than male members, when he claimed that women and men with the same economic power don't face differences in power due to gender, and when I told him that his preference for statist solutions was androcentric and he displayed no understanding of the complexity caused by intersectionality between different forms of oppression.

I often find that self-consciously 'feminist' men are rather annoying, I think because they have a lot of the personality flaws of Leftist men in general and I have very low tolerance of tosserish men. I had considered going to his Socialist Feminist reading group but I fear I would find it too annoying. I don't think having PMS helped.

As I am now occupying an official position as an evil anti-choicer in the university establishment I decided to take a look at the NUS position on this issue.

According to it's website, "this year we'll be focusing on NUS' pro-choice stance as well as helping student parents" (don't you just love the way that in the mind of the NUS' women's officer improving the position of student parents is separate from being pro-choice).

We look further, apparently, 'pro-choice' has been a priority of the Women's campaign for the past three years. They mention 'reproductive rights' but all of these phrases actually mean abortion. Remember, the situation of parenting students (they don't mention pregnant students) is separate in their mind from 'reproductive rights' or 'pro-choice'. When you click on Women's Campaigns you get through to a page about how NUS Women's campaign is campaigning on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. As far as I can tell, that's the only NUS Women's Campaign at the moment, and judging from the pictures it seems that the entire of NUS Women's Campaign have simply become foot soldiers for the organisation Abortion Rights.

There's also a wonderfully misleading line: "Anti-abortion MPs are set to restrict women’s abortion rights when the Bill is voted on at its decisive Report Stage, despite eighty-three per cent of people supporting a woman’s right to choose." Firstly, it's not very accurate to describe all of the MPs who supported amendments to restrict abortion as 'anti-abortion'. Many MPs supported some measures but not others, many MPs who supported the reduction to 22 or 20 weeks would not describe themselves as anti-abortion. Fr example, David Steel supported a reduction to 22 weeks and amendments to reduce the limit to 20 weeks had much more support than the ones reducing the limit to 12 weeks. The more misleading aspect of the sentence is the statistic "eighty-three per cent of people support a woman's right to choose". Both anti-abortion and pro-abortion-choice campaigners can have a lot of fun with public opinion polls because most people think that abortion should be legal in some circumstances and illegal in others. This means that the same people appear to be anti-abortion or pro-abortion-choice, depending on what you ask them. There was even a poll in the US which found that it made a significant difference whether people were asked whether abortion should be a choice between "a woman and her doctor' or between "a woman, her doctor and her G@d". Anyway, I would think that when using statistics to support your position on a specific law change it's more honest to quote statistics for support to that law change. NUS Women's Campaign don't site where they got their 83% from so I can't dissect that particular poll, but a YouGov poll found that only 35% of people supported the current limit, 48% supported reducing the limit to 20 weeks and 8% supported a total ban. Assuming the total ban supporters would be willing to pragmatically support a limit reduction, that would result in a majority in favour of the legal change ~~Abortion Rights~~ NUS Women's Campaign oppose.

Oh, I nearly forgot, the Women's Campaign did something about student parents, didn't they. They say "The second part of the year will be spent focussing on student parents. NUS’ Women’s Campaign, along with our colleagues in the Welfare Campaign, is researching the subject to provide evidence and case studies on how student parents are treated and whether post-16 education is parent-friendly." So, after three and a half years on abortion they're going to spend a bit of time finding out "whether post-16 education is parent-friendly". They don't say that they're going to actually do anything about it. *headdesk*

It's a common enough story. A student representation organisation appropriated by an organisation which doesn't represent the views of the majority of its members. It's just a shame that all the resources which could be used to improve the live of female students is being used on this.

I've realised some big problems which get in the way of trying to explain an anti-abortion stance in a mainstream feminist space.

I first is that most mainstream feminists have completely dehumanised foetuses* to the extent that many of them actually cannot comprehend the idea that anyone could not dehumanise foetuses. Sometimes this isn't immediately apparent because they'll say that their argument doesn't hinge on the 'personhood'** of the foetus because no-one should be forced to use their physical resources to support someone else. However, when you try to discuss the dehumanising of foetuses with reference of other groups of humans who are dehumanised you get called racist/sexist/ablist because the only way a severely disabled person could have the same inherent worth as a foetus would be by the severely disabled person being subhuman. It's a pity, because I think that feminist environments might be really good places to discuss the intersectionality which not only means that black/female/disabled foetuses are more likely to be aborted, but that the legal protection of those foetuses depends upon their disabilities.

This also comes up if you try to explain why "Don't like abortion, don't have one" is a stupid argument. If one excepts a sort of liberal 'live and let live' attitude, then the only excuse for trying to change other people's behaviour is to stop them harming third parties. If you can't comprehend foetuses being third persons then people's objections to abortion are reduced to 'squeamishness' and dismissed. And again, if you try to explain with reference to other situations in which people advocate for dehumanised groups you're accused of being sexist/racist/ablist because the only way you could possibly see those struggles as in any way equivalent would be to minimise the importance of those struggles.

When I say "X is unethical" there are usually caveats. As I see it there are three main caveats. The first is that X is the lesser of two evils in some circumstances. If we're talking about murder of born humans, I think it's justifiable in self defence and in the defence of others. Similarly, there are some circumstances in which I don't think that X is the lesser of two evils, but I also think you can't really blame someone for deciding to do X in the circumstances. People in abusive relationships who kill their abuser in his sleep because they genuinely think it's the only way to escape. Mothers who kill their babies due to post-natal oppression. In these cases the perpetrator seems to be more of a victim and it is our job to work out how we let it happen and how we can stop it happening again. The third caveat is that we are all capable of doing horrific terrible things and that does not make us bad, worthless people. I get the impression that religious people are a bit better at this, probably because recite liturgy with sentiments to the effect of "I know that there is no excuse for what we have done, we are all evil sinners, we all deserve to be smooshed and it is only by your ridiculous mercy that we are not smooshed." Once you see yourself as a horrible sinner you gain a bit more compassion for the people society singles out as horrible sinners.

So when I say that I think abortion is unethical, no, that doesn't include ectopic pregnancies, no, that doesn't mean I blame women who have abortions under threat of poverty and violence, no, it doesn't mean I feel morally superior to women who have abortions in circumstances I think don't justify them. It means that I think we should work to reduce the number of abortions and whilst, just as with anti-rape campaigns, not doing the Bad Thing yourself should be a central part of that, it also requires challenging the circumstances and attitudes which lead to abortions.

*I'm just going to foetus as shorthand for humans between conception and birth. I'm too lazy to write foetus/embryo/zygote and I will not become magically enlightened into the pro-abortion-choice fold if you patronisingly point out to me the proper medical words.

**That term is such a fucking vacuous quasi-scientific excuse for discrimination.

There's a quotation which pro-abortion choice types like repeating. It's "If men could get pregnant abortion would be a sacrament." It's such a horrible statement when you actually look at what it means. Within Christian theology a sacrament is a religious outward sign of G@d's grace. In Protestant churches it's baptism and the eucharist. In the Roman Catholic Church it also includes confirmation, penance, anointing the sick, ordination and marriage. None of those things seem that comparable to killing your baby.

The other thing which annoys me about it is that if men could get pregnant, there'd be fewer abortions. There'd be easily available contraception that worked with no side effects. There'd be emphasis placed on forms of sex which didn't risk pregnancy. Pregnant men wouldn't get sacked or excluded from education. Men who were pregnant in difficult circumstances would be praised as heroes rather than vilified. Gestating fetuses would be valued as a serious contribution to society and paternity leave and pay would reflect this. In short, all of the patriarchal forces which push women into finding they have no choice better than abortion wouldn't be pushing men in that direction.

( Well I suppose I should post something about the human fertility and embryology bill vote. )

As I navigate the feminist/egalitarian minefield that is marriage I am amused that two hot button issues have been decided for the shallowest of reasons.

Firstly, surnames. I was pretty sure how this one was going to be decided before I had even met Alec. I have been looking forward to a good excuse to ditch my current surname for as long as I can remember. There's no big deep reason why, I just don't think that my surname sounds very nice and conjectured that whomever I married, would on the balance of probabilities have a prettier surname than me. Alec's surname is a lot nicer than mine so that is the name I shall be adopting upon marriage.

Secondly, wedding rings. On Friday Alec and I went shopping for my engagement ring, which raised the topic of whether Alec was going to wear a wedding ring. Alec wasn't sure because he never wears jewellery and his lack of experience of jewellery left him worried that a wedding ring would fall off and he'd lose it. We decided that in principle it would be nice for him to wear a wedding ring and when we were buying my engagement ring he tried some rings on to see. This sealed the decision. Alec decided against wearing a wedding ring for the very profound reason that he thought it made his fingers look podgey.

Current Mood: amused

So, it began as a little story on the Today program about how a group of local newspapers had decided to stop printing adverts for 'massage parlours' and 'escorts'. "Well" I think, "at best it will result in sex workers just advertising elsewhere at worst it will lead to some sex workers working the streets and being in more danger, but fair enough, it's their newspaper, they can refuse adverts they don't like."

But then, it is revealed that the newspapers were persuaded to drop the adverts after talks with some part of the government connected to Harriet Harman. That's right folks, of all the things the equality minister could find to spend her time on, making life more difficult for vulnerable women is one she picked.

And then, the bombshell. Slipped into this bizarre story of government interference in classified ads, Harman declares that they are considering making prostitution illegal. I would have thought such a major change in criminal law, criminalising a great swathe of the population might have deserved it's own announcement rather than being slipped past sleepy Radio 4 listeners as a tangential point. The way in which the minister for equality framed the issue is rather telling about her attitude about the role of the state:

"Do we think it's right in the 21st Century that women should be in a sex trade or do we think it's exploitation and should be banned?"

Those are the two options. There are no other possible positions on the topic. Either you think that women should be in the sex trade or you think it should be illegal. You can't think that women shouldn't be in the sex trade but that making prostitution illegal will cause more problems than it solves or that prostitution is immoral but that it isn't the states business to interfere with consensual transactions between consenting adults. No. If it's wrong it should be illegal according to the world view of Harman. She wouldn't understand liberalism if it came and bit her.

Even better is the justification for why prostitution should be illegal: to stop human trafficking. It's a bit like trying to stop smuggling by making drinking alcohol illegal. It's over the top and won't work because what you really need to stop human trafficking is to make prostitution more secretive and underground and criminalise absolutely everyone who might come into contact with trafficked women. That's going to make it easier to find and help trafficked women.

"But surely" you ask "they must be planning some kind of consultation with effected groups on this?" Indeed Harman did say that they were going to consult "groups such as the Women's Institute, community organisations, Church and other faith groups." Now, I'm a card carrying G@d botherer but I would have thought that if you were planning to change laws relating to prostitution under the pretense of helping women exploited in prostitution you might, perhaps, put sex worker organisations higher up on you consultation list than churches, or at least on the list at all. This was a feature of the Today program feature as well. They had Harriet Harman to speak for the government and an expert on local newspapers but no one to give a prostitute's perspective. For all their feigning of concern for their welfare, they would prefer for prostitutes to remain silenced.

On the plus side, good old David Howarth is repaying our effort in electing him by saying that a ban could put women in more danger.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7153358.stm

Current Mood: rightous anger

Someone on

prolife posted a link to this very cool lecture by Serrin Forster, the president of Feminists for Life.

Her approach to abortion chimes a lot with the way I view it. Whilst in many ways the situation in the UK is better than in the US, we have maternity leave, universal health care and a better benefit safety net, the issues she raised are still pertinent. Thus it has inspired me to actually get proactive and do something. I wish there were feminist or left wing pro-life organisations in the UK.

At CU pro-life society's freshers meet one of the things that was raised was the idea of producing a leaflet telling students what resources there are in Cambridge for pregnant and parenting students and what to do if they want to carry a crisis pregnancy to term whilst studying here. I think that this is the single most effective thing pro-life soc can do. Women aged 18-21 have the highest rate of abortions as a proportion of population. It's not as if pro-life soc is going to be able to bring about great law reforms but we can provide information that pregnant students need to be able to exercise choices other than abortion. In addition, doing anything that helps students to view a crisis pregnancy as something that doesn't have to destroy your education may help some people get over the cognitive dissonance that prevents them from being open to accepting an anti-abortion ethic.

Now, I have no idea what the procedures for pregnant students currently are. I've already had a poke about the CUSU website and can't really find much info. I figure the most obvious first ports of call would be CUSU's Welfare and Women's sabs and my college nurse. I have this terrible feeling that CUSU might become unhelpful if they know what I want this info for. There's no logical reason why they should be. They should be in favour of providing women with more information about their choices. If I'm just being pessimistic and they are cooperative we could even do something like make this information available on CUSU's website and publications. I'm not bothered if it's alongside information on how to access abortion because I think information on how to carry a pregnancy to term is more useful. It's relatively obvious how to get an abortion: go to doctor and make appointment or check whether you have a few hundred pounds in the bank and call BPAS. On the other hand keeping the baby is more complex: talk to tutor about how pregnancy will affect work, try to move into student parent accommodation, find out about university funds and state benefits for student parents etc.

Now they mentioned producing a leaflet like this last year and sweet FA happened so I may well have to badger people and do a lot of the leg work myself. Five Catholics sitting in a pub telling to each other about how abortion is bad isn't going to save any lives.

Hello

Well, I thought I should update as I haven't in ages. First of all, a huge thank you to

james_r for being a star and helping me move after my plea for help.

Last week was mainly taken up with moving and other getting settled faff. I also got a PhD supervisor who is very nice and has given me some reading to do to help me narrow down what my PhD is actually going to be on.

This week:
On Monday I went to a meeting for new Economics PhD students to find out what I'm supposed to do this year to not get kicked out.

On Tuesday I went to the first ontology group seminar of term. This group is the baby of my supervisor and we were mainly discussing what money is and the work of John Searle.

I spent an awful lot of Tuesday and Wednesday mooching around the societies fair. Mark was manning the Lib Dem stall all Tuesday so I worked the last two hours on Tuesday with him and then we went to dinner with Alec. As Mark went to 'batties @ Life' on Tuesday night and was supposed (supposed being the appropriate word as opposed to actually did) to be going to Southampton Wednesday morning, I took the cashbox to the societies' fair on Wednesday morning and pootled about the societies fair for an hour or so. Most people tend to be rather frantic when going around the societies fair but being an old hand and not having much else to do I wondered around looking at each stall and seeing who I bumped into. I happily chatted to stall holders of societies I wasn't interested in joining. I found it fun to wonder up to the stalls of societies that a knew a member of seeing whether the people manning the stall knew them. I found out from the council stall where to recycle my old socks and happily wandered about with both a "A woman's place is in her union" and a "Pro-woman. Pro-child. Pro-life." sticker.

On that subject I chatted to the people manning the pro-life soc stall (in fact I even sort of chatted to a punter on their behalf about UK abortion law). To be honest they seemed a bit lack luster. When I asked them what they were up to this term they said they might have a speaker near the end of term. At one point I saw them just playing hangman on their stall. I'm still trying to resist the urge to just take over the society and turn it around. I think that doing this would be a bad idea because:
I am a grown up grad student and should be working rather than pissing about with societies.
I am not 'pro-life' enough for them because I think that abortion and euthanasia should be legal in some situations.
I may want to move into feminist economics and don't want potential collaborators to see me as an even anti-choice pariah.
I'm not very like the the rest of the membership because I am a big feminist leftie and they seem to be mainly conservative nice Catholic girls.

One thing that I think is that their approach is all wrong. They concentrate on campaigning about legislation whereas I think the most effective thing they could do would be to work on convincing students not to have abortions by providing information on alternatives and discussion of the ethics of abortion. On that topic I bumped into one of my med student friends whilst I was at the pro-life stall and he said something about thinking he shouldn't be at the stall because he's doing the ob gyn stuff this year. I suggest maybe he could just not do the baby killing and only do the saving baby stuff instead but he said that he was going to study the baby killing. I now have the urge to lend him a book I have exploring the moral philosophy of abortion. It's not a propaganda book. It goes through the main moral philosophy arguments made about abortion and their strengths and weaknesses. I think the author comes down on the side of 'It's OK sometimes'.

I'm surprised that more people aren't anti-abortion or that people think it's so odd that I am against abortion. Then again I saw a few approving looks at my pro-life sticker so maybe we're just all in the closet.

Last weekend was Purim and a shabbaton in Cambridge for RSY Netzer sixth formers to learn what Jewish student life is like. I had one sleeping on my floor and whilst I questioned the sense of becoming loco parentis to a bunch of 16 and 17 year olds during Purim they were very well behaved and I got far drunker than any of them. On Purim evening I went to the megillah reading and party at J-soc dressed as a witch (Harry Potter/fantasy theme) and then went on to Joe/the Chabad party. On Purim day I went to the Chabad megillah reading and party which was in a marquee in Granchester dressed as a niqabi (things from 2006 theme). It was a bit wet and cold for it and a dozen or so brave souls were punting to the party from Cambridge. Alas the wind and strong current was against them and it took about twice as long as expected for them to arrive.

On Wednesday I went to a lecture by Prof Judith Butler entitled 'Transgender and the 'Spirit of Revolt': Reflections on Melancholic Rage' it was interesting and I felt quite proud of how much of it I could follow.

On Thursday I went to Period: The End of Menstruation?, which was showing in the Arts Picturehouse followed by a discussion with the director for International Women's Day. The film was thought provoking and whilst it was interesting for questioning why so many women feel the need to suppress their menstrual cycle and the lack of medical knowledge about the long term side effects of doing this, I felt it lacked an acknowledgment of the fact that many of the form of contraception that suppress menstruation are also the most effective.

I had dinner with Lianna, whom I saw the film with, and then went with her to a panel discussion on social exclusion (which turns out to be a euphemism for poverty) with a professor from the Geography faculty, the head of Shelter and Ian Duncan Smith. I felt a bit sorry for Ian Duncan Smith as both the other panellists brought up lots of statistics on poverty and why his policies wouldn't solve it which his anecdotes about the people he met in Glasgow couldn't really stand up against.

On Friday I went to a talk followed by questions by David Howarth about the way the current government abuses power.

Last night I went out to dinner with my brother David and his girlfriend. His girlfriend is a bit ditzy and I learned that night has almost no knowledge of beans and lentils or religion.

I was supposed to do this yesterday, for International Women's Day, but I was too busy so I will post it now.

Who is the most discriminated against group in Britain in terms of employment? Well, the Equalities Review published earlier this week would indicate that it is mothers. The report found that, taking other factors into account, female lone parents with children under 11 were 49% less likely to be in paid employment than partnered men. Partnered mother with children under 11 were 45% less likely. Next came Bangladeshi women who were 30% less likely to be employed than white men or women and equal fourth comes partnered mothers with children over 11 and people with disabilities at 29% less likely to be in paid employment.* The report states "Our research has revealed that there is one factor that above all leads to women's inequality in the labour market - becoming mothers."** "In contrast, men's employment rates are not affected by fatherhood."***

The current government has passed some policies to try to deal with this but I think it stems from a more fundamental problem. Women are trying to fit into institutions designed almost exclusively for men and it isn't working. The institutions of paid employment that we have today, particularly those of professional jobs, evolved at a time when those jobs were almost exclusively held by men. Furthermore, even if the men occupying the jobs were either single or had wives who took on all of the responsibility for child rearing. Hence, institutions of employment evolved that were almost completely incompatible with active parenthood because the employed were almost exclusively completely free of child rearing responsibilities. Gradually women increasingly entered the paid labour force again.**** However, the institutions of employment were still designed for people who didn't give birth.

How could women fit into this? One answer was to avoid parenthood altogether. The fertility rate in the UK has fallen over the last 40 years to a total fertility rate in 2005 of 1.79 children per woman. The mean age at first birth has risen to 27.3 years. In 2005 nearly one in five women in their mid forties did not have children, compared to one in ten of the cohort born 15 years earlier. Why on Earth would women want to procreate if it means exclusion from the most economic institutions and near complete economic dependence upon a male partner.

So, either we continue to fit into a world designed for men, suppress our fertility, and eventually die out because no one can afford to have children anymore or we start working out how to design ways of working for all of the labour force including those who own functioning uteruses.

*Figure 3.6 p 63
**p66
***p67
****Historically the majority of women have always been in the labour force by economic necessity but the 19th and 20th centuries saw a withdrawal of women from the labour force during the period when the current institutions of employment evolved. In addition many of the occupations of women during the early 20th century, such as domestic service, have almost disappeared.

Current Location: Cambridge, England

I'm irritated by the way this story is being treated in the media.

For a start the comparison with Rosa Parks is ridiculous. Israel has serious women's rights issues, mainly domestic violence associated with having a population which has spent a lot of its time in warfare and issues to do with divorce due to a nasty mix up of synagogue and state. However, in Israel women have equal political rights. Israel has female knesset members and female supreme court justices. Israel has had a female prime minister. To compare the Charedim deciding that buses going through their districts should be segregated to the civil rights struggles of African Americans is just insulting to African Americans.

I suppose this is part of my general habit of flinching whenever Israel is mentioned in the media. Even though I'm not an expert on Israel I know enough to see find myself frustrated that the news isn't putting a story into context. I suppose that's always the case when one here's a news story that one actually knows something about. It's very disconcerting because for a second you realise just how warped and simplified even high brow news is and that if they did this with this story they probably do it with all the other stories, it's just you don't know enough about them to notice. I remember a similar feeling when I heard John Humphries claim that the IMF and the World Bank were originally established to 'share the world's wealth a little more fairly' which is completely untrue.

The other issue is the conflict between being a feminist and having an allegiance to a group that feminism is being used to attack. I don't condone the attack and I don't want to belittle it but I also have a nasty suspicion that some people might use the news story to go 'See how they treat women; they're far too uncivilised to have their own state; I'm throwing my full support behind Hamas.' This sounds a little extreme but it does happen in a more subtle way, especially if people have very little background knowledge of what Israel is like. Mix in a little bit of subconscious antisemitism and suddenly people are finding it very easy to judge Israel's actions by standards that they don't hold any other country to.

Current Mood: irritated

Last night I finished reading On being a Jewish Feminist. I really liked it. It's a good read for anyone interested in feminism and Judaism even if a few of the essays are a bit barmy.

Many of the essays raised an interesting question about whether feminism should put more effort into the struggle to gain women's admittance to male dominated institutions or to exploring, developing and improving the status of specifically women's institutions. In Judaism this can be seen most clearly with women attempting to gain more of a role the three daily synagogue services on the one hand and the development of female centred ritual such as mikvah and Rosh Chodesh on the other. In mainstream feminism it can be seen in attitudes toward whether feminists should concentrate upon gaining women's admittance to traditionally masculine careers or challenging the assumption of inferiority and poor rewards of traditionally feminine occupations.

I think which one sees as more important depends upon how one views gender. If one believes that gender is completely constructed one is more likely to feel that the same institutions will be suitable for both men and women and thus the main issue is gaining women's entrance into existing male institutions. Someone who feels that men and women in general have different needs is likely to place more emphasis upon working on valued female centred institutions.

Ultimately both of these areas need to dealt with to reach women's (and men's) liberation. Institutions should be open to all and should reflect the full variety of people's experiences rather than everyone having to fit into a 'male' model activity or people being segregated into their own equally valued areas. In the mean time it is important to be aware of how actions to promote one area could undermine the other. When women actively work to enter traditionally masculine areas they must be careful that their actions do not reinforce the idea that feminine = inferior. Similarly, feminists working to develop woman centred institutions must be careful to avoid them being used as an excuse to increase female exclusion from 'male' institutions.

Whilst struggling through Christmas shopping on Friday, I bought a few books for myself to read. In the Oxfam bookshop, my usual source of feminist literature, I found Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions by Gloria Steinem and Sex, Art, and American Culture by Camille Paglia. I also bought Fun Home by Alison Bechdel for a relative for Christmas as I couldn't think what to get him and I wanted to read it.

( Fun Home )

( Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions )

I also read Nice Work by David Lodge which has enabled me to convincingly bluff about literary criticism. This led to a wonderful conversation in Clowns with

feanelwa and a friend of hers, whom I've forgotten the name of, about literary criticism and postmodernism. Their response to my explanation of the aim of finding meanings in the text that the author did not intend to put into it was the most refreshingly original I have ever heard. Rather than saying it sounded interesting or dismissing it as a load of bollocks they responded with moral indignation at the idea of twisting someone's words in ways that they did not intend.

Current Mood: thoughtful

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5411954.stm

I'm really annoyed about this. Who does he think he is to suggest that his constituents remove items of clothing when talking to him? Surely if some people have a problem with interacting with a woman just because they can't see enough of her flesh it's their problem not hers.

Current Mood: righteous anger

I just spent about two hours making curry sauce. By the time I'd finished it I couldn't be bothered to make the curry so instead I'm eating pitta bread with hot aubergine dip. Yum! Hopefully it will be enough sauce to make enough curry for half a week so the time won't have been badly spent. What with fasting, eating out and several rushed pasta dinners I've hardly eaten any of my veg box and the next one arrives tomorrow.

I've got rather a few people looking at my pro-life feminist rant. To be honest it's a bit more polemical than my actual views but I originally wrote it to reply to someone asking how one could be both pro-life and a feminist and then found that I couldn't post it on the community the discussion was on because I'm not a member. On that topic, having pissed about pro-life soc, CUSU is now openly admitting that it is affiliated with 'Abortion Rights'. I'd rather that CUSU wasn't affiliated with them as I don't agree with the aims of the organisation. I'm not sure whether trying to change this through putting forward a motion to change it would make we out as a misogynistic right wing reactionary enemy of the Women's Union. On a logical level there shouldn't be anything wrong with me going 'I'm a member of Women's Union and I don't like one of it's policies so I'll put forward a motion and see whether the majority of members of the union agree with me and if they do let's change it democratically.' However, when did logic ever come into student politics? I might go along to Pro-life socs squash. They won't like me because I wasn't pro-life enough for them four years ago and I've become less pro-life since then. Also judging by facebook, the committee seems to be made up of right wing conservative Catholics rather than left wing queer radical feminists. Alec didn't seem surprised by this and told me I really shouldn't assume that

the_alchemist and

elise are representative pro-lifers in general.

Things to do tomorrow:
Return library book out on reserve loan from the Marshall. (It's due back at 10:30am and I think they fine 50p oer half hour late.)
Two hours lectures.
Go and see if my bicycle is fixed.
Pop into Societies fair.
Buy things to finish off tea set.
I might look in the Sally Army shop to see if they have any furniture I might like. (I'd quite like a coffee table and another cupboard for my room.)
Bake cake and flapjacks.
At some point I should do some work.

The majority of abortions in the US and UK are caused by patriarchy.

Patriarchy causes unplanned pregnancies by preventing women from having the knowledge and power to make the sexual choices that are right for them. It emphasises penis in vagina sex as the only kind of 'real' sex even though it is riskier for women than many other equally or more enjoyable sexual acts. It puts women in a situations when they have unwanted sex due to the unequal power dynamic between men and women. It infantilises women rather than encouraging them to take responsibility for their reproduction. Men are absolved of the responsibility to control their fertility because pregnancy is seen as a woman's problem and hers alone.

Even if you thought that abortion were completely morally neutral surely millions of women paying hundreds of dollars each to have a not particularly pleasant medical procedure should tell you that there's something seriously wrong with the position of women in the US.

Now, I acknowledge that even if all women were empowered to control their reproductive abilities there would still be unplanned pregnancies but there would be less. Patriarchy also means that women who do get pregnant when they didn't mean to are more likely to feel that the consequences of not having an abortion are not bearable. Our major institutions are designed for men rather than women. Despite the advances that feminism has made we are still at the stage where women are adapting themselves to fit into male institutions rather than adapting the institutions to fit them. As one of the defining differences between men and women is that men can't get pregnant, our institutions are designed for people who don't get pregnant. So women are frequently forced to drop out of education and employment because these institution will not adapt to the fact that some people get pregnant. What kind of a 'choice' is it if the alternative to abortion is exclusion from all of the institutions of political, economic and social power?

Then there is the way society expects women to be sexually available and then demonises them if that sexual activity results in pregnancy and the way that we are so intolerant of people not fitting into our ideas of perfection that the majority of fetuses that are found to have Downs Syndrome are killed before they are born. Let's not even get into the way that it is very easy for men to simply not contribute anything to the financial support of the children they father and it is very difficult for the mothers of their children to take action to force them to pay their share.

Abortion doesn't solve any of these problems; it simply makes them less visible. It pushes the burden of 'dealing' with them onto women who are then expected to be thankful that had the 'choice' to have an abortion rather than be forced into destitution by a system that only accommodates women if they don't dare to stop being doormats or pretending to be men.

That's why I get so annoyed when I see pro choice feminist schmucks kidding themselves that they've achieved some kind of feminist utopia by being allowed to use their money, their bodies and their offspring to cover up the huge injustices of our society.

Some of my friends may recall that for ages I have joked about opening up a vegan sex/fetish shop that would sell such essential items as vegan safe sex items and clothing for vegan rubber fetishists that doesn't require that they compromise between their ethics and their sex life. Someone appears to have beaten me to it. https://vegsexshop.com

I found it when boredly following links through which I found this website http://www.vegporn.com/ According to the blurb the site was set up by a woman who wanted to work in pornography but didn't like the repetitive stereotypes used in the mainstream industry so she set up on her own. All of the models are vegetarian or vegan. They have a range of body types and sexes and genders. The site give a percentage of it's takings to good causes.

My minds been on pornography rather a bit over the last few days. First of all I was looking at Annie Sprinkle's website http://www.anniesprinkle.org and decided that I wanted to buy a copy of her film Annie Sprinkle's Herstory* of Porn. I saw a clip from it in the lecture on pornography I went to in the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and became interested in her work. This should be a good introduction as it looks back over her work of the last three decades. It's quite reasonably priced given how weak the dollar is. However, this would involve effectively importing hardcore pornography so I've emailed HMRC to see whether I'm allowed to do this.

( For your amusement here is what I wrote )
They haven't got back to me yet.

Continuing the theme I bought a copy of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy for the Oxfam bookshop. Since writing the book Levy has been continuously wheeled out to comment on any story involving 'raunch culture'. Through a lot of the snippets I heard I just thought 'Oh no, not another anti-pornography feminist trying to convince me that I'm oppressed because I have the wrong kind of sex'. However, I scanned an interview with her in some obscure leftist magazine in Borders and decided there was more to her argument than that. So, when I saw her book in Oxfam I bought it. It's quite an easy read and her main seems to be that the problem with 'raunch culture' is that it teaches women that they should express their sexuality in one particular (male fantasy inspired) way and therefore is no more sexually liberating for women than a 'missionary with the lights out' culture. The principle that women should be able to express the full diversity of their sexual identities and desires without feeling that they have the 'wrong' sexual persona should be something the feminists from all sides of the porn debate can agree on.

*Yes, I know that writing herstory represents a shocking lack of the knowledge of the etymology of the word history but I'll forgive Annie this.

Haven't posted for ages due to being busy preparing for and beginning my post grad study. I've moved into Owlstone and have gone through the blind panic at the enormity of doing another degree stage, through the manically getting things sorted stage and I'm now at the most things are sorted and I've just got manageable bits and pieces left to sort.

I bought Scape Goats by Andrea Dworkin from the Oxfam bookshop. This is because I want to read more classic feminist literature from feminists from a variety of perspectives. It's also because Dworkin is quite anti-liberalist and I think it's important to actually read and engage with thinkers one disagrees with rather than dismissing them on the basis of simple caricatures. The book looks and the parallels and interaction of anti-semitism/racism and women's oppression. What I've read so far has been interesting even if it has had a polemical style that I'm not used to.

It has given me an interesting insight. I'm currently quite hetrosocial and possibly find it difficult to relate to women. I also find it difficult to relate to the experience of being a woman described by writers such as Germaine Greer and Eve Ensler. I remember hearing that when the survivors of the holocaust arrived in Israel after the war many of the early Zionist settlers viewed them with a kind of disgust. How could they have passively obeyed their murderers rather than taking up arms and fighting as the first waves of Zionists had? Sometimes when I here about the experiences of other women I feel like a Zionist shaking her head in disbelief. 'Why did you take that shit? Why didn't you fight back?' I remember years ago when I was reading The Whole Woman a friend of mine suggesting that the reason I didn't 'get' the book was that I was too liberated. Maybe I'm deluding myself. Maybe I'm really a man. Who knows?

As always, many news stories have been the object of my righteous anger lately but I'll single out to that single out the way that modern society is completely fucked up about sex and morality.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/5095858.stm

How exactly would moonlighting as a prostitute make one unsuitable to be a social worker? Do they thing that if she is not struck off, the next thing you know she'll be advising the children she works with to take up prostitution as a career? Is it simply that allegedly advertising on a website that is connected to prostitution would corrupt societies morals and an example must be made that prostitutes are the pariahs of society (regardless of how nice they are or how much they contribute to the world) and so must be publicly shamed excluded from other sectors of the economy? Would she have been struck off if she had simply been fucking around for free? Would a man have been struck off for using a prostitute? I think not. These would have been seen as private matters that did not make someone 'unsuitable' for their job.

This is just another example of how our culture seems to have replaced previous religion based morality with a completely inconsistent and hypocritical set of vague feelings that some stuff is wrong. The rise of secularism did not lead to an enlightened rational approach to morality; at least most religious philosophies have the merit of internal consistency.

This was also brought to light when Alec innocently asked why a 'newspaper' that daily features soft core pornography would be so appalled by Heather Mills having appeared in pornography. I explained to him it was because women were allowed to be whores or married and respectable but not both. Women had to know they place and if they wanted to wives and mothers they had to remain chaste. Similarly paedophilia is the worst crime in the world, but the when a fourteen year old had an abortion and regretted it, the same newspapers were full of sympathy for the poor 17 year old who had committed statutory rape whilst impregnating her.

And on the topic of paedophiles, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5094186.stm
Yes, that's just what we need. A bunch of council estate illiterates lynching paediatricians again.

Current Mood: aggravated

Newnham Feminist Shebang

NUS Women's Campaigns

Oh no, not another post about abortion

Where lavendersparkle lacks a sense of humour

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Feminism verses aesthetics

Further evidence of authoritarianism and puritanism from the Labour government

Very cool lecture by the president of Feminists for Life

Update

What I have been up to

Blog against Sexism

Israel in the news

Two paths of feminism

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Would you mind stripping so that I can talk to you?

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Feminist abortion polemic

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I'm not dead

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July 2015

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