No sex please; we’re British. And we’re called Dave.

Below is an excellent and interesting critique of the recent announcement by Dave (Cameron) et al that said that we need to halt the over-sexualisation of our young girls. Dave et al are backing several proposals (from a Christian organisation, it’s worth noting) that aim to protect children from sexual imagery (e.g., by selling top shelf magazines in brown sleeves). In predictable Tory fashion, Dave said that such change is about “social responsibility, not state control”. The conservatives are always keen to giveth autonomy with one hand and to very quickly taketh it away with the other. Whether it’s their plan or not, any measures introduced to combat over-sexualisation of young people will, inevitably, result in greater state control. But that’s an aside (for now).

Now, don’t get me wrong – over-sexualisation of young girls is a very serious issue and is unavoidably an aspect of our patriarchal objectification and sexualisation of women, and the impossible centrality of their physical appearance (they must be attractive but not too attractive because that’s inaccessible, they must be thin but not too thin because that’s emaciated, they must be curvy but not too curvy because that’s slutty and/ or fat, they must be lightly dressed but not too lightly dressed because that’s also slutty, etc. etc.) In short, they must be perfect but not too perfect  because then they’d never bang you. These norms are communicated to our young people everywhere they look, alongside the image of women as (available and willing) sex objects. So, should we do something about all of this? Yes, we absolutely should. Though we should be honest about it. If it’s about addressing the issue of pervasive sexual imagery and messages, that’s one thing; if it’s a cover for something else entirely, though, then we have a whole new problem. Laura Woodhouse from the f-word unpicks what is really going on with this conservative policy.

… the real problem with thongs and padded bras being marketed at young girls and pop culture being defined by women writhing around half naked is that it encourages children and teenagers to have sex.

…

For these right-wing, often conservative Christian types, the commercialised vision of sex being thrust in kids’ faces is dangerous because their view of “normal” has no place for anything other than sex between one man and one woman, bound together for life, who are willing to accept the tiny wee bundle of a consequence that may result. Sex for pleasure, sex outside relationships, sex that results in abortion – any sexual activity that deviates from their norm – is a sinful, threatening act that tears another rip in the moral fabric of a fading social order they are doing their darnedest to resurrect. This kind of sex is dark and dirty, while children are pure and innocent. By bringing the sinful world of sex into childhood, we defile our children.

So is it about saving our children’s innocence, protecting them from the horrid world of the patriarchy, and teaching them that they don’t have to subscribe to these messages? Or is it just that the right-wingers don’t want anyone (apart from a happily married man and woman) having sex? I’m inclining towards Woodhouse’s argument. Nadine Dorries, for example, is notoriously anti-abortion. By and large, if I may generalise, anti-abortionists are also anti-non-marital, non-procreative, sex-for-the-hell-of-it sex. But here’s the rub: sex is “normal”, teenage sex is “normal”, teenagers are horny little rascals, teenagers are walking frickin’ sexers. Teens have been having sex for as long as anyone’s been having sex. Teenagers living in a vacuum would still have sex.

Yes, girls need to know that they don’t have to be anything for anyone, that they don’t have to do anything for anyone, that the messages they see every day present a patriarchal view to which they do not have to subscribe, but if Dave’s new bandwagon is about preventing sex and little else, then the conservatives are once again barking up the wrong tree.

In brief: Nadine Dorries proposes abstinence-only education for GIRLS ONLY

We all  need to speak out about this. Nadine Dorries, the now notorious anti-choice, anti-women Conservative MP, is calling for the sex education bill to be amended to require that sex education in schools include content promoting abstinence to teenage girls. Only girls.

Two things:

1. We know that abstinence-only education does not prevent teenage pregnancies or the spread of STDs in that demographic (google it; this post is brief because my time is brief), so introducing it for any reason is pointless. Realistic, honest and respectful sex education is the only approach worth considering.

2. The sexism of targeting young girls for abstinence-only education is astounding, and reinforces the centuries-old convention that women and girls should not want or be allowed to have non-procreative sex (and should be prevented from doing so, if necessary), while men and boys can do as they like (they have their wild oats to sow, after all).

Speak out (in whichever way you can) against this misogynistic MP and her offensive, puritanical proposals now.

facebook: Stop Dorries’ abstinence for girls sex education bill

theyworkforyou: Sex Education (Required Content)

What I’ve been reading – adoption discrimination, higher education fees, Nadine Dorries, and too much Kate

• I was shocked this morning to hear a report on Radio 4 that there is something of an “adoption apartheid” in Britain (reported by thetimes). White children in care are three times more likely to be adopted than black children, and the waiting time for initial decisions about black children is up to six months longer than it is for white children. Delays and discrimination are apparent at every stage of the adoption system, the report says. One would think that as the little brown babies are all the rage nowadays in some circles, young black children would not be discriminated against in this country, but perhaps the little brown babies are only desirable (read: fashionable) if they’re born to mothers more than 1000 miles away. The Times is subscription only these days, of course, but I’m sure there will be several other reports about this story throughout the day.

• How is this going to work? Nearly two-thirds of universities in England want to charge the highest fee available (£9,000) for all of their courses (BBC). Now, far be it from me to pass judgement (ahem!) but I can think of about four institutions in this country who would get away with charging nine grand a year, and the rest can sing for their supper. The government (in its infinite wisdom) initially stated that universities could charge £9,000 only in exceptional circumstances so I have no idea how two-thirds of England’s universities are going to argue that one. But there’s a larger and more important issue at stake here. If it wasn’t already blindingly obvious, higher education has, once again, become the preserve of the elite in England. There is lots of tokenistic chatter about continuing to widen participation and ensuring the less-well-off can still afford higher education, but at £9,000 a pop, we all know how ridiculous that is. The current social mobility rhetoric of David Willets et al is now bordering on offensive.

• Libby Brooks’ Guardian piece – beware the anti-abortionists’ tiny steps towards reform – discusses worrying progress being made by the anti-abortion movement in the UK (which has utilised some of the same movement’s tactics from the US).

The modest group of protesters standing vigil outside the office of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service may not initially appear to embody the alarming infiltration of US anti-choice tacticians into the rather less noxious abortion debate on this side of the Atlantic. But the presence of 40 Days for Life, a Texas-based, church-funded anti-abortion campaign, in London’s Bedford Square over Lent is a reminder that, with a coalition led by the traditionally choice-sceptic Conservatives, peddling a localism agenda that favours the involvement of voluntary, charitable and religious organisations, the concomitant dangers for British women may be more real than they seem.

These campaigns are being helped along, of course, by the now notorious Conservative MP Nadine Dorries who appears to be prepared to say and do anything to get abortion restricted in this country. It’s a pity (for her) that a recent report by the Royal College of Psychiatrists refutes many of Dorries’ favourite lies which claim that abortion always negatively affects mental health. It might not be enough to get her to be quiet but it might be a start.

In other “news”, while looking down my Comment is Free RSS on google reader, I must have noted at least ten pieces about Kate Middelton. Enough already! I don’t care. Who does care?! Seriously!

Why have girls done better than boys? How very dare they?!

A brief response to this tripe on the BBC website today. It asks the question: why are girls outperforming boys at GCSEs? There are many opinions proffered, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Ben from London suggests, for example, that feminism has created a slew of women who waited to have children and are now desperate to find a man who earns more than them to look after the children that they are equally desperate to have.

As a result the country is full of 30-year old childless women longing to meet a guy who earns significantly more than them so that they can settle down, but they can’t. Women are attracted to strong men who can provide security for their children, but, because men are no longer earning substantially more than them, they are having a hard time of it. This is the one failure of feminism, and both sexes are suffering as a result. Thoughts anyone?

Yes, Ben is clearly very enlightened and has nailed that debate for all of us (and has not veered off the point at all). When I meet and marry him, I just hope he’s earning more than me so that I can be looked after propa.

But now for some sense. Linda from Scotland is correct when she says:

It took women centuries to even have equal access to education, a right still denied to many in certain areas of the world yet it takes only a few years of the boys coming in second for questions to be asked. Maybe this is why girls do better – even at the age of 16 they have realised that equality does not really exist and they have to be proven to be better than their male counterparts to stand a chance of getting anywhere.

Yes! We live in a society where the very notion of women and girls achieving any sort of educational and economic success is still so abhorrent that, though boys out-performed girls for years, this new trend has everyone recoiling in horror and asking how the hell it was ever allowed to happen. Maybe girls are doing better now because they have to. With the amount of misogyny and discrimination they’re going to experience for the next 60 years more apparent than ever, they have to make sure at a young age that they have the tools to compete in the stakes. We should be congratulating these young women for their efforts and not lambasting them for trying to get above their station. Because, frankly, that’s all this debate is really about.