Quick hit: that’s enough politeness – women need to rise up in anger

As usual. Laurie Penny is pretty on the money:

Women, like everyone else, have been duped. We have been persuaded over the past 50 years to settle for a bland, neoliberal vision of what liberation should mean. Life may have become a little easier in that time for white women who can afford to hire a nanny, but the rest of us have settled for a cheap, knock-off version of gender revolution. Instead of equality at work and in the home, we settled for “choice”, “flexibility” and an exciting array of badly paid part-time work to fit around childcare and chores. Instead of sexual liberation and reproductive freedom, we settled for mitigated rights to abortion and contraception that are constantly under attack, and a deeply misogynist culture that shames us if we’re not sexually attractive, dismisses us if we are, and blames us if we are raped or assaulted, as one in five of us will be in our lifetime.

[...]

Like the suffragettes and socialists who called the first International Women’s Day over a century ago, women who believe in a better world are going to have to start thinking in deeds, not words. With women under attack financially, socially and sexually across the developed and developing world, with assaults on jobs, welfare, childcare, contraception and the right to choose, the time for polite conversation is over. It’s time for anger. It’s time for daring, direct action, big demands, big dreams. The men who still run the world from boardrooms and government offices have become too used to not being afraid of what women will do if we are attacked, used and exploited. We must make them afraid.

[independent]

Quick hit: can’t take a joke? Too right

Laddish “banter” is nothing new, but due to the leakiness of information online, women can now see the way that some men talk about us behind our backs. It’s as we’ve always suspected. Before they were chased from the internet by fire-breathing, feminist hell wraiths, the boys at Unilad apologised for “going too far” and for causing offence. This is an Olympian feat of point-missage: the problem is not the offence caused but that some men still think this is an acceptable way to talk about women in or out of our earshot.

[new statesman]

Abolish maternity leave in the UK?

Hat tip to redlightpolitics for this piece.

From the article at The Telegraph:

Mr Hilton, the Prime Minister’s strategy director, reportedly suggested the radical ideas during discussions on scrapping red tape and bureaucracy to boost economic growth.

Mr Hilton also suggested to Mr Cameron that he simply ignore European labour regulations on temporary workers, to the alarm of the most senior civil servant in Downing Street.

“Steve asked why the PM had to obey the law,” said one Whitehall insider. “Jeremy [Heywood, Mr Cameron’s permanent secretary] had to explain that if David Cameron breaks the law he could be put in prison”.[…]

According to a report in the Financial Times, Mr Hilton also recommended sacking hundreds of Government press offices and replacing them with a blog for each Whitehall department.

The newspaper quoted a source close to Mr Hilton suggesting that he thought that maternity leave rights were “the biggest obstacle to woman finding work”.

redlightpolitics’ comment: We already have retro fashion, retro design, retro music trends, etc. I don’t see why retro politics wouldn’t eventually make a come back. Next up: do women really need to vote? And other pressing matters.

Yeah really! But in all seriousness, what?! I can’t understand the coalition government’s perspective on women in the workforce at all. On the one hand, it seems to be keen on relegating women to the reserve taskforce again so that the main workforce can comprise of men (because they need to work more than women, don’t you know). It also seems to want to get as many women back into the home as possible so that (1) again, men can have the jobs and (2) society can re-establish a normative family structure – men at work, women at home with the children – and address what Cameron et al see as the degeneracy of youth (the fault of feminism, natch).

Now, however, it seems that the Tories may be suggesting that we abolish or lessen maternity leave so that women can stay in the workplace. So what gives? My first thoughts? The economy is not growing (in fact, it at best remained stagnant and at worst decreased in the last quarter) and when it comes to the economy all other bets are off. If we need women in the workplace to boost the economy and to contribute to fiscal growth, then it’s probably OK. If we need to lower maternity allowance to make that happen, then that’s OK too. If we can frame that in a “we’re doing it for the women and their careers, really” fashion, then that’s probably the best way to make it palatable and may even disguise that we’re actually just using women when it suits us. And if we keep the other plans quiet for now, then all the better. We can get them back into the home when we’re solvent again.

Or maybe I just really am too cynical…

Get Satoshi Kanazawa out of LSE and off Psychology Today

I’ve written about this genius before (here or elsewhere or somewhere). He’s an evolutionary psychologist from the London School of Economics (LSE) – one of the top universities in the UK – and he writes, a lot, for Psychology Today. Now, Psychology Today is not, by any stretch of any imagination, a reliable academic source but it does have readership. It’s probably the best feeder of pop-psychology around at the moment.

I’m not a fan of evolutionary psychology. I don’t like its reductivist approach in making everything about sex. Because that’s what it does, when you strip off the big words. The boys have sperm, the girls have eggs, the boys want the girls but the girls need the boys and then a whole host of things happen that bring us where we are today. One of my very favourite colleagues does a bit of evolutionary psychology, and he argues it well, but I just don’t agree with the premise or the implications. No more than I agree with any of the offensive, sexist, racist, ill-informed claptrap that  Satoshi Kanazawa is known for on Psychology Today. (Not that I am equating my lovely colleague with Kanazawa, of course).  His latest stint involved a piece which was entitled “Why are Black women less physically attractive than other women?” Yeah. Seriously.

The piece was met with uproar, naturally, and was removed from the site almost immediately. (It doesn’t even deserve a critique but if you’re interesting in reading one anyway, you can find an interesting post here on Sociological Images.) Since then, change.org, a petition site, started a petition demanding that Psychology Today stops publishing sexist and racist articles and explains why  Kanazawa’s piece was published initially. (If you were cynical of mind and suspected that it was published because it’s good for site traffic, you may not be wrong.) The peititon also called for the removal of Kanazawa as a contributor to the site. And not before time. Indeed, since then, the student body of  LSE have called for Kanazawa to be sacked. He is not doing that institution, or the academy, any favours at all.

Two weeks after the offending article, Psychology Today issued an “apology”. It’s very sorry indeed if anyone was offended by the article. (Read: we’re not saying the article was offensive but if you were offended then I suppose we’re sorry. But you should probably be less sensitive.) It’s not good enough. Kanazawa is still listed as a contributer and Psychology Today did not address any of the on-going issues with his pieces, choosing instead to pretend that this piece was an isolated incident. Please sign the petition to keep the pressure on Psychology Today to address this problem properly. Its claim that it doesn’t support the publication of racist or sexist pieces is disingenuous when it had to remove a piece for exactly those problems. We have to put up with, “I’m not racist/ sexist but…” in too many places on the Internet and we shouldn’t have to put up with it on a “academic” site too.

Psychology Today is probably hoping that this will turn out to be a storm in the teacup (and, sadly, it probably will for there’s a lot of -isms around and eventually we’ll have to move on to the next one) but it really, really shouldn’t be allowed to wait it out and get that moron Kanazawa back on the front page again next week.

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)

Calm down, dear. Fuck off, toerag.

Yes, I know Osama Bin Laden was killed today or yesterday or overnight but I have a feeling that’s been done to death (pun intended) at this stage. Frankly, I’m trying to avoid seeing any more menacing crowds full of people who seem to be delighting in the bloodlust. It’s stomach-churning.

And I want to write about something else anyway.

Many of my betters have commented on calmdowndeargate before me (and have done so better than I could hope to) so I won’t labour over it again in much detail. For those of you who have been in hiding, or who have genuinely not read about or watched anything but the royal nonsense for a week, you may not know that our delightful PM, David (“Call me Dave”) Cameron, last week instructed a member of the opposition in the Commons to, “calm down, dear” during Prime Minister’s Questions. It will not come as any surprise to you that said member is a woman.

Cath Elliott wrote a wonderful piece in Comment in Free which lambasted Dave for his sexist remark. In the piece, she discusses Cameron’s categorical denial that he’s a sexist pig by rightly arguing that if he were not, such a remark would not have just rolled off his tongue. Sexism (just like racism, ableism, ageism, homophobia, etc. etc.) does not just “slip out” if you’ve never considered it before. Dave has all the trappings of a would-be-sexist, of course: old Etonian and member of the Bullingdon Club in Oxford (I went to Oxford; I’ve had some of the misogyny from those charmers first-hand), so the evidence is already stacked against him. Add into the mix his brutal budget cuts, most of which impinge on women most severely, and his virtually all-male cabinet, and there’s little point in him denying his sexism further. That, Dave, is a cert.

But why the vehemence of the reaction, you ask. Well, it’s because we’re fucking sick of it. Women have been told to “calm down” since time began, normally when they’re trying to make a point, argue a perspective, or offer an opinion. To do so, and to do so passionately, is hysteria, you see. Women shouldn’t have discussions because they get too damn emotional and invariably need to, yes, calm down. From Cath Elliott again:

Whatever his excuse turns out to be though, any woman who watched [Wednesday’s] exchange will be able to attest that “Calm down, dear” is neither humorous nor edgy; it is instead a classic sexist put-down, designed to shut women up and put them back “in their place”. “Calm down, dear” is what women hear when we’re allegedly being “hysterical” or “overemotional”. It’s that tired old gender stereotyping, the sort that implies that if we can’t even keep our emotions in check, then we obviously aren’t cut out for the more serious male world of politics and debate.

I have a colleague – a classic misogynist who thinks he’s a feminist because he “likes” women and supports them in their little endeavours – who tells his female colleagues to calm down all the time. He doesn’t realise (or doesn’t care) how utterly offensive and silencing those two little words are. I’ve told him, but it doesn’t need to matter to him. He and Dave are never told to calm down because they’re educated, privileged, white men who are allowed to have opinions and to express them in whatever way they please. Their faults, whatever they are, could never be called “uncalm”.

Women, on the other hand, have to checked, reprimanded, and reminded of their place all the time. That’s the first rule of the patriarchy. Let’s face it, they’d be better off not speaking in the first place if they can’t avoid being hysterical, amirite? ‘Course I am. And wouldn’t that be a happy day for you, Dave?

What I’ve been reading – bad mothers, and more NYT victim-blaming

Just two pieces today for I feel rather sick about both of them.

• Sweet mother of all that is good and holy, the Daily Fail may just have surpassed itself with this one. Think your man doesn’t pull his weight at home? Maybe it’s YOUR fault. Yes, you can do a double-take. The wimmin are too precious about the babies, apparently, and the poor menz don’t get a look in. And they’re all hurt and stuff. Never mind that, by default, most mothers simply have to be solely responsible for feeding and, until recently, were not able to share early months leave from work with their partners; they still only have themselves to blame for having it all to do. Their fault! Trying to balance childcare with any sort of work, study, social life has always been a minefield for women. (A close friend of mine has just had her second child. Her doctorate is, once again, on the back burner. Her husband, on the other hand, has just got a brand spanking new job. I don’t resent him for him – and neither does she – but he’s done that because he can.) The Daily Fail will find any excuse to deride women. The fact that they get frustrated about their lot in this world sometimes is always the kind of thing they can really get into.

• And, once again, the NYT blames someone for her own rape (msmagazine). Only a month ago, the NYT’s report the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl in Texas contained several inferences that the victim was culpable  for what happened to her. For example:

Residents in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.

Because if she hadn’t worn make-up and hung out with boys, she wouldn’t have been raped, amirite? That’s certainly what the NYT and the folks in the neighbourhood thought. The paper has since [sort of] apologised for that piece but it seems that it has a short memory. This week in its coverage of a rape trial, it’s blaming the victim again. Its opening line is about how drunk the victim was on the night of the rape:

There were certain things that she remembered from that night, and some things that she did not.

This was followed this up with a in-depth description of just what a state she was in.

She recalled dancing and drinking at a bar in Park Slope, Brooklyn, celebrating a job promotion with friends, but even that was a bit hazy. Her next recollection, she testified in the rape trial of two New York City police officers, was waking up in the back of a taxicab outside her apartment building in the East Village, lying on her side and vomiting.Then she remembered tugging herself up the red handrail of her apartment building’s staircase, escorted by two men in navy blue suits with radios crackling.

What happened to this woman – rape – isn’t even mentioned until the fifth paragraph. By that time, the scene is well and truly set. She was wasted, she was hammered, she couldn’t even walk, she was puking gawdammit!! What do you expect!? Immediately, the reader is drawn into questioning the victim’s credibility. Many things will be running through his or her mind. Is she lying? Is she misremembering? If she was that drunk, unconscious, did she actually refuse or struggle? And if not, it probably wasn’t really rape, right. Yes, all of the above. These are the very questions that she is going to be asked in court by the prosecution, and it’s unbelievable that they’re being asked by the media too. Trial by media indeed. I used to really respect the NYT but these recent pieces have made me sick.

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.

In brief: HA! 95% of US adults have sex before marriage

This is music to my ears. See, ever since George Bush and Sarah Palin would not shut their vile mouths about abstinence-only education, I wanted ALL the world to have sex ALL the time with everyone. Or, at least, I wanted everyone in America at it! And it seems I’ve had my wish.

According to a Gallup poll, 38% of people in the U.S. think that pre-marital sex is morally wrong but 95% of people in the U.S. have sex before getting married anyway (if they ever get married, that is). NINETY. FIVE. PERCENT. That’s huge. That is, indeed, just about everyone. They’re all at it! Nice one!

And listen to this: even among people who chose to abstain until at least 20, 81% of them still did the deed by the time they were 44. Surprising? In 2010, probably not. But apparently, these trends have been prevalent since the 1950s. Excellent!

I had a latte with an extra shot the day I read about these polls by way of celebration (well it was 10am). That’s how damned happy I was. Abstinence-only my behind!