What I’ve been reading – Willets, “virginity tests”, acid violence, and slut-shaming

If only I could spend all day online reading blogs, I would. I can’t, so I can only give you what I see. Recently:

• David Willets: feminism has held back working class men (thetelegraph). This is from weeks ago, of course, but never let it be said I’m in fashion. Willets (our Universities Minister for our sins) declared recently that feminism has led to the ruination of working class men. (For those of you who don’t know what feminism is, it’s all about them women who want to wear trousers, answer their own front doors, and belch in public.) On what planet Willets resides, I do not know but let’s mention the one very glaring incongruity. Women and working class men are not, and have never been, on the opposite ends of any sociological or economic spectrum so the reason for his putting them there was lost on just about everyone.  So his argument was flawed from the start. If Willets had his way, women would be relegated to the reserve workforce again and only called upon in times of extreme need. If I ever see him, I’ll run up to him and tell him what I think of him. I’ll be able to run as I’ll be wearing trousers, you see.

• “Virginity Tests” Forced On Egyptian Women Protesters (msmagazine). Another relatively old piece but important nonetheless. One wonders where to start with all of this. How could one’s virginity or otherwise be relevant to anything? Well it’s not, of course, and it was never intended to be. The only purpose of these “tests” has been to inflict humiliation. The women protesting in Egypt were subjected to verbal, physical and sexual abuse on many occasions and we can’t, of course,  forget about the CBS reporter who was raped during the protests.

Amnesty International is now condemning the treatment of at least 18 women who were held in military detention after being arrested during a protest on March 9 (a month after Mubarak stepped down).  The women told Amnesty International that they were beaten, given electric shocks, and subjected to strip searches while being photographed.  They were then forced to submit to “virginity tests” and told that if they were “found not to be virgins,” they could be charged with prostitution.

• The Effort to End Acid Violence (msmagazine). This is another one that is not for the faint-hearted. If women in Bangladesh, India and Cambodia don’t do as their told, and deviate from their “expected behaviours”, they risk being attacked with acid. (Though don’t be fooled that it can’t happen elsewhere too.) The physical and health ramifications of these attacks are boundless. These women often lose their jobs, their homes (because they lose the “support” of their spouses), and fade into exclusion and poverty. While these crimes might not, apparently, be as entrenched as honour killings or public stonings, they’re still as problematic.

“This is a form of gender terrorism,” says Sital Kalantry, director of Cornell Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic. “If we [women] deviate from what’s expected of us, this is the punishment that we receive.” …The report found that women were most often attacked for refusing marriage proposals or sexual advances. The attackers believe that if they can’t “have” the victim, then no one should. Thus, they seek to “destroy what society considers to be one of the most valuable traits of a woman–her beauty.” Acid is also thrown at women for transgressing the boundaries of expected behavior, or for exercising seemingly any modicum of independence. Women have been attacked for initiating divorce proceedings or attempting to keep wages they’ve earned at a job.

• Conservatives are encouraging parents to divert their kids from thoughts of college (friendlyatheist). Apparently it might give them “ideas” (you know what I mean: critical thought, mind of their own, that sort of thing). I’ll say no more.

• Slut Shame: Attacking Women for Their Sex Lives (alternet). We’re still calling women sluts and we still don’t like it when they choose to have sex with whomever they please. Why? There’s a variety of reasons. One is that women’s bodies should be reserved for procreation and having sex for any other reason is some sort of crime against nature. Another is that a woman doesn’t have any right to make her own sexual choices (or any choices about what she does with her body), and that being sexual in any way is not natural or expected behaviour for women anyway. Ultimately, the piece hits the nail on the head when it says that the term “slut” is meant to put women back in their place (with their legs firmly closed), and make them ashamed of their own desires and pleasures. We wouldn’t want them enjoying themselves now, would we? All hell might break loose.

• On a related note, abstinence-only sex education results? 150 pregnancies since august (edenfantasys). Well, if ever you needed some evidence that abstinence-only education (wherein you’re told just that you shouldn’t be at it) does. not. work. you can look to this Texas school board which, despite its commitment to such education, has had to report 150 student pregnancies since the start of the school year. Ooops! One word: contraception. Or at least make a flipping stab at it.

• On another related note, contraception use is the norm among religious women (feministe). See, God can’t hate the non-procreation sex that much, can he? Or are they all damned to the burning fires of hell too?

More later.

What I’ve been reading – French ads, men against rape, condoms in Uganda, and Nigerian traffickers

Where to start. It’s been a busy week in the blogoshere. There’s been a lot to talk about.

In no particular order:

• The iconography of French advertising (theillusionists). This is a discussion of the very obvious objectification of women on Parisian billboards and the effect that that may have on the pervasive sexism on Paris’ streets (and, presumably, behind its doors). It may, the author admits, be a simple correlation but it’s a noteworthy one nonetheless. These ads “confirm”  the sexual availability of women for our happy sexists (with one going so far as to claim that “Everything is allowed”) in a culture which is all too ready to take that on board.

• Men speak out about the sexist coverage of rape (msmagazine). And this is a call to action where men (for a refreshing change) ask that coverage of rape moves away from its frequent demonisation of victims to focus on the men who perpetrate these rapes and the culture which not only produces them but insists on apologising for them and condoning their actions afterwards.

For too many young men, communal rituals of sexism perpetuate negative notions of manhood. Most of us are rightly horrified when we read about gang rape. But group sexual assault is best understood as being at the extreme end of a continuum of behaviors that normalize men’s sexist treatment of women. What about college guys hiring strippers for private parties and openly calling those women “bitches and hoes”? And let’s not forget–an entire genre in pornography is devoted to simulated scenes of gang rape, which in many quarters is considered socially acceptable entertainment for men, who sometimes watch it in groups.

• The sisterhood of “the pole” (jezebel). We may not like it (and I, for one, object to jezebel’s title) but the sex trade exists though God knows I wish it didn’t. This piece looks at a side of the sex trade we don’t hear about very often and discusses the strong bonds that are often developed between sex workers in their daily lives. It might not mean much to you but it might help to remind you that these women are, indeed, human beings after all.

• 83% of women in rural Uganda have never used a condom (newvision). The piece is entitled 83% rural women shun condom use which is a somewhat misleading title. Further reading indicates that this issue is not about “shunning” condom use but is rather more about these women not being able to insist on condom use because to do so is (1) not “normal behaviour for women”, and (2) not possible given the lesser place and power of women in Ugandan society which makes it difficult for them to enforce condom use with men. The figures on HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases speak for themselves.

• Finally, for now, Nigerian traffickers use black magic to trap 1000s of women to send to Italy for sex trade (theindependent). This one is not for the faint-hearted. Nigerian traffickers are reportedly terrifying the living hell out of trafficked women by using a West African religion (“juju” ) to ensure that these women are fiercely loyal to their traffickers. Let the following excerpts tell you what you need to know:

Nigeria’s human traffickers are using black magic to trap thousands of women like Rita into a life of sex slavery in Europe. Eastern European gangs use violence to coerce the women they transport, but the “madams” at the top of the Nigerian trafficking chain don’t need muscle – they have juju on their side. It is a form of ritualised extortion that allows Nigerian women to be both perpetrators and victims of the exploitation.

… Rita says she has no choice but to carry on working. Before she left Nigeria, she swore an oath of loyalty to her traffickers in a traditional religious ritual, a practice I was investigating for Channel 4′s Unreported World programme. She promised to pay back the cost of her transportation to Europe and offered up her soul as collateral for the debt. When she arrived in Italy, she was told she owed her traffickers €50,000 (£44,000), as well as extortionate living costs, including €300 a month in “rent” for the right to solicit from her particular patch. “I can’t escape this unless I pay,” she says. “Africans have very strong charms that can destroy someone in the twinkle of an eye.”

… The condom-strewn lay-by near Bergamo where Rita picks up clients is a far cry from the Europe she imagined five years ago when traffickers approached her in Edo. “I was happy that I was going to Europe to feed my family,” explains Rita, 27. “I didn’t know it would turn out to be like this.” She now sleeps with about 10 men a day, seven days a week, for €20 (£17.50) a time. She will work even if she feels ill, even if she has her period, even though she has been badly beaten in the past.

Keep your eyes peeled people. There’s a lot going on in the world.

Women are happy to let feminists get bashed (Guardian)

Well ain’t that the truth?

Yes, it is.

For it is a lamentable idiosyncrasy of feminism that, unlike other rights movements – the campaigns against prejudice based on race, class, or sexuality – its beneficiaries take their emancipation and run. Many women will not even countenance the F-word, being prepared to concede only: “I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist, but…” But what? That I like being paid an equal wage, having the right not to get raped in marriage?

What the hell is that about?! Women who deny the importance of feminism, who openly abhor it as a movement, are happy to (nay, demand to) benefit from equal pay, the right to own property, the right to justice for domestic violence and rape, access to birth control and abortion, and the right to wear what they want and speak to whom they please. But feminism!? No. Feminists are just a bunch of hairy-arsed lesbians who are too angry to hold down a day job or a proper boy-girl relationship. Feminism is, it seems, irrelevant to so many.

Grow up, women! Feminism brought you all of the above, and continues to fight to maintain it and to bring you more. If you want to live in a world without feminism, go back 200 years where you were owned by your husband, chained to the sink (and the bed), disallowed a say in any Important Matters, and allowed to speak only when spoken to. If you really think that feminism is irrelevant to your life, live a week in 1790 and see how you get on. Alternatively, lift your prejudice, open your eyes, and applaud feminism for what it has given you instead of slapping it in the face.

When ineffective satire = woman-hating

There are about 100,000 ways in which this video is absolutely filled with misogyny. Here’s a step-by-step guide for making your own.

• Start with the phony accent and inflection that will remind everyone just how stupid, vacuous and irritating women truly are.
• Then introduce an ‘ironic’ quest for beauty that will really drive that vacuousness home, and emphasise just how self-absorbed women can be.
• Then insert a series of jokes about filthy women and how they need to be scrubbed clean. (That’s literal and metaphorical, you see!)
• Finally, finish with a good healthy dose of slut-shaming, and be sure to throw in a whole host of tired jokes about women who work in the sex trade and how dirty, whoreish, ugly, laughable and reprehensible they are.
• Oh, and don’t forget to give yourself a massive pat on the back when you’re done, and remind yourself that because you’re so clever and important, you get to make an ‘ironic’ video about how above it all you are.

Because what’s really important in the world you live in is making assumptions about a life you clearly know nothing about and posting 2.5 minutes of rubbish on youtube at others’ expense. Good work. Sleep well tonight in your obliviousness.

Still victim blaming

I actually had an argument about this issue elsewhere on the web some weeks ago. It was all over the blogsosphere that the Church of Scientology (yeah, that’s not a terrifying crowd at all!) is forcing women to have abortions, sometimes late on in pregnancy. Now, my first thought about this was that Scientologists are anti-abortion. As it happens, they are. On the surface. And let’s face it, them Scientologists aren’t all about you digging deeper now are they? But someone did.

Jezebel, a mainly feminist online magazine, reports that members of the Church of Scientology, or more precisely members of the religious order Sea Organization (the management wing of the church, it seems), are claiming they were coerced and pressured into having unwanted abortions.

More than a dozen women have come out against Sea Org, reports the St. Petersburg Times. They say the organization began pressuring them (or women they knew) to have abortions from the moment they got wind of the pregnancy. Many of the members were young, relatively vulnerable women, who had known no life outside the church. Instead of being presented with their options, these teens were made to feel as though they didn’t have a choice. Pregnant women were shunned by other members, called “degraded beings,” and criticized for their unethical and selfish decision. Claire Headley, a former member who had been in the church since age four and a member of Sea Org since 16, says she had two abortions while working within the organization, both of which she regrets. Headley, now 31, has filed a federal lawsuit against the church. She will go to court in January.

(Now, before anyone accuses me of hypocrisy and contradiction for being one minute pro-abortion and the next minute condemning it, I note here again that it’s all about the choice. HER choice.) Apparently, in the 1980s and 1990s, members of the church were allowed to have children but since then the church has changed its rules. The new policy did not specifically talk about abortions, but noted that any church members wishing to start a family should be immediately expelled from the program. Yeah, really! Children, you see, were forbidden within the organisation. The only children permitted were the ones recruited, who were, notably, often encouraged (coerced? bullied?) to sign their billion-year contract at ages as young as 12.

Does all of this strike anyone as just completely f-ed up? Good!

But anyway, the point: in the discussion I got into elsewhere, I was informed that these women were lying, that it never happened, that the church would never do that, that these accusations were fabricated because of someone else’s agenda. When I asked who else’s agenda that might be, the response was vague at best. The implication of the doubter’s argument? These whores are just making it up to get their hands on some cash.

And this is what women and girls of any age have to endure whenever they try to bring to light that their boyfriend hit them, their boss groped them, their step-father raped them: she’s a whore who’s just making it up because she wants attention, money, revenge, or is promoting someone else’s agenda. Or, at best, if it did happen, she brought it on herself. In any case, it’s more than likely not true. This is our first call and there is seldom an acceptance that what she is saying is true and that she is saying it because what happened to her is wrong and unacceptable and she needs people to know about it for whatever reason. Even people who think they know better still victim-blame, and we attribute what happens to women to their own behaviours and not the behaviours of those who do it to them (she shouldn’t have been drunk, she shouldn’t have been walking alone, she shouldn’t have talked to him for so long at the bar). And every single one of those reactions makes it that little bit harder for a woman to come out and tell someone what happened to them because they fear the ridicule and the blaming. Call me naive, but I just cannot believe that we still live in a world where it’s more acceptable to victim-blame women, and question their motivations, than it is to try to help them.

The patriarchy has never been so alive and well.

She has ‘low maternal interest’

Does anyone want to join me at rolling my eyes, shaking my head, and possibly spluttering my coffee, at this?

Pediatric endocrinologist Maria New, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Florida International University, and her long-time collaborator, psychologist Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg, of Columbia University, have been tracing evidence for the influence of prenatal androgens in sexual orientation…. They specifically point to reasons to believe that it is prenatal androgens that have an impact on the development of sexual orientation.

So far, so not terribly disturbing. Hey, we all like science (don’t we?) and I have no problems with them looking for the ‘gay gene’. It’s overwhelmingly likely that the results of such research will always be inconclusive so if it keeps certain sectors of the population satisfied to keep looking, let ‘em at it.

But here’s the kicker. It seems that Dr. New is not carrying out this research for the sake of medical science…

In the same article, Meyer-Bahlburg suggests that treatments with prenatal dexamethasone might cause these girls’ behavior to be closer to the expectation of heterosexual norms: “Long term follow-up studies of the behavioral outcome will show whether dexamethasone treatment also prevents the effects of prenatal androgens on brain and behavior.”

In a paper published just this year in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, New and her colleague, pediatric endocrinologist Saroj Nimkarn of Weill Cornell Medical College, go further, constructing low interest in babies and men – and even interest in what they consider to be men’s occupations and games – as “abnormal,” and potentially preventable with prenatal dex.

No, she wants to stop Teh Gay in its tracks. And not only that, she wants to experiment with treating pregnant women in order to lower the chances of their female children being gay or ‘unwomanlike’. (Low interest in babies and men is unwomanlike, by the way, for all you tarts out there who didn’t know that.) Will it work? Who the hell knows? All that science is gobbleygook to me. But that’s not the point. The point is that we actually have people who believe in trying to ‘gender normalise’ children. And we have financial investment in research by people who, obviously, subscribe to that agenda. And what are these gender norms, you ask? Well, according to Dr. New:

“The challenge here is… to see what could be done to restore this baby to the normal female appearance which would be compatible with her parents presenting her as a girl, with her eventually becoming somebody’s wife, and having normal sexual development, and becoming a mother. And she has all the machinery for motherhood, and therefore nothing should stop that, if we can repair her surgically and help her psychologically to continue to grow and develop as a girl.”

Sweet Jesus. Someone needs to tell Dr. New and her colleagues that most enlightened people threw those ideas out the window circa 1972. And now for the irony. New is a woman. New is a woman in a heavily male-dominated industry. New is, in fact, one of the first women pediatric endocrinologists in the US. New is not, according to her own definition, gender normative. Yet she thinks it is viable and acceptable, and presumably desirable, to attempt to force gender norms on the unborn. I just don’t get it.

The Chokers

I love The Tudors. I love the costumes, the pretty people, the scenery, and the over-wrought and oft-ridiculous performances. It’s silly and engaging telly, and I wouldn’t be without it. Plus, I want to sleep with most of the cast.

But what in the name of all that is holy is Jonathan Rhys Meyers doing in this last series? Now, he’s an insufferable little prick to watch at the best of times but he’s really pulling out all the stops for series four. In series one to three, his general modus operandi was to SHOUT every single emotion, regardless of what it was, or at whom it was directed. When he wasn’t shouting, he favoured pausing after every two words in a sentence to make his point. He made his point, you could argue, but it wasn’t worth listening to after the second or third round of tedious delivery. He’s a very limited actor, there’s no doubt.

In series four, he’s upped it a notch and has taken to talking in a Very Deep Voice (whilst still shouting and pausing for every line). At first, I thought he probably had a cold on the day of filming so I could let it pass, but as it continued, I realised that he was doing it presumably because his character (Henry VIII) was getting old and he thought this would be the best way to convey his increasing years. It’s so really not. (Oi, director, you’re supposed to know things like this.) I know quite a few aged gentlemen and none of them speak like they’ve just started choking on a piece of toast, so it’s beyond me why he thinks that this is an effective strategy. Frankly, I think that members of the over-paid acting fraternity should know better if I do. I find myself looking at the screen and saying, ‘Clear your throat, man, what the hell’s wrong with you?!’ Or, at the very least, hoping when he started that carry on that someone had the good sense to slap him hard on the back a couple of times to put him out of his misery. Or, you know, his face. Whichever was closest…

Sweethearts make better mommas

I always naively think that the British Times is above your common-level misogyny, but it seems I’m wrong again. A piece today on Sandra Bullock’s legal battle to secure her husband’s custody of his daughter is misogyny-laden from start to finish. You see, Bullock is ‘America’s Sweetheart’. The mother of said daughter is a porn star. Ergo, Bullock would be a good mother, and the porn star – the whore, the slut – must be a bad mother. Dammit, the Times author didn’t even try to cover up his blatant bias. Observe:

America’s sweetheart, the actress Sandra Bullock, is being dragged into an unpleasant legal battle to prove that she is a better parent than her husband’s former wife, the star of more than 100 pornographic movies.

…

His ex-wife Janine Lindemulder, 40, star of such video titles as Mrs Behavin’, Sleeping Booty and Dyke Diner, disagrees. She has just been released from a six-month prison sentence for tax evasion.

…

The tattooed blonde remains in a halfway house in Los Angeles until the end of this year when she can seek custody of her daughter.

Now, it has to be noted that the rest of the piece does not paint Bullock’s husband in a favourable light, but none of what he has done previously (even leaving his seven-month pregnant wife) means that he could possibly be a bad parent. You see, boys will be boys! But women who enjoy sex, who have sex because it’s their choice to do so, or who are involved in the sex industry are, de facto, bad people. You didn’t hear it here first.

South African rape survey (BBC)

I don’t think there is one word I could add to this story to make its message any plainer or any more disturbing. These are the cruel realities of life in South Africa.

Some key statements:

• One in four South African men questioned in a survey said they had raped someone and nearly half admitted having attacked more than one victim.
• … practices such as gang rape were common because they were considered a form of male bonding.
• A recent trade union report said a child was being raped in South Africa every three minutes with the vast majority of those cases going unreported.

What?! How long has this been going on, and why has there been no outrage about this before? And why?!

The researcher suggested that:

“… it’s partly rooted in our incredibly disturbed past and the way that South African men over the centuries have been socialised into forms of masculinity that are predicated on the idea of being strong and tough and the use of force to assert dominance and control over women, as well as other men.

Really? Can this adequately be attributed to a patriarchal society and the on-going prevalence of negative attitudes towards women, or do these statistics require a phenomenon all of their own? I can certainly see her point, but this theory still doesn’t explain these staggering statistics when men all over the world have been socialised into those very same forms of masculinity. (And I question, by the way, what a ‘form of masculinity’ is in the first place.) No, there’s something much more sinister afoot here, and I wish I understood what it was. But more than that, and infinitely more importantly, I wish that somebody, somewhere was doing something about it. The responses in this piece indicate to me a complacency about these crimes and an acceptance that this is just how things are in South Africa. I cannot get my head around this at all. And I’m fucking disgusted.

Full piece behind the cut.

In brief: yer all savages

I’m not one to defend the general British public (see forthcoming entry on culture when it, erm, forthcomes) but I feel that I should get my spake in, albeit briefly, about this.

BBC Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman has described the British public as “barbarians” who are too busy working to find time to appreciate art.

I’m not a huge fan of Paxman’s, it has to be said, for I find him more much more offensive and condescending than I do challenging and interesting, and the above strikes me as a typical statement of his.

Here are a few simple sums for you Mr. Paxman: earnings of £XX,000 per year, X children, £XXX,000 mortgage, and £XX,000 in car loans/ student loans/ credit card and other debts don’t leave many of us with whole lot of Xs to play around with. We work all the time, just to make our ends meet. And you wonder why we plebeians spend all of our time working and little of our time perusing art galleries? We’re flipping exhausted!

I would have thought it was f-ing obvious, even to a snob like you who makes considerably more Xs than the rest of us put together, and who doesn’t have to worry at all about where his next paycheck comes from or goes to.