So, today when I was mansplained…

… I alternated between frustrated, angry, and amused every couple of seconds. Eventually I settled on ignoring him until he gave up.

“Mansplaining“ is an Internet slang term used to describe condescending and inaccurate explanations that are given under the assumption that the audience is entirely ignorant on the subject matter or topic. The name stems from an online behavior commonly exhibited by male newbies on female-oriented discussion forums.

The thing about mansplaining is that you can see it coming from 20 paces. In person, he generally interrupts a member of his female audience, lowers his voice so that it is gentle enough for lady ears, makes eye contact with all members of the group so that he is sure that everyone is listening to him, and then starts.Today was no different.

I was at a feminist meet and enjoying some idea-sharing and good-humoured chat. Then he started. He’s been reading a few feminist news feeds apparently, he’s been assessing the state of feminism in the US, he’s been concluding that there is very little feminism happening in the UK, and he’s been closely following the impact of the female vote in the recent US election. He explained that, what happened was (“you see”) that Romney (“you see”) was making moves to illegalise abortion and that’s what mobilised the female vote for Obama (“you see”).

It was at that point that I interrupted him. To see his genuine shock and discontent that he was lecturing someone who was clearly more informed than him, yet had no apparent need to demonstrate her knowledge as he had only moments earlier, made me chuckle and roll my eyes (inwardly, natch, I’m not a savage). That didn’t stop him, though. He went on to discuss the various waves of feminism (wrongly), state that he would not enter in a conversation about said waves when he was challenged about his inaccuracies, and tell us that one thing he thinks he should do is talk to our wider group about the feminist labour movement. By this stage, we were all ignoring him and getting on with our thing. When he was questioned on his political “involvement”, he became tight-lipped and refused to reveal anything. His confusion about the turn of events was palpable. This was not what he expected, and in his own head, not what he deserved. He stared at the women he was trying to educate and he could not believe their ingratitude. He didn’t know how to start again.

At this stage the rest of us were discussing how we would put together some flyers and other materials for our group. He was overruled on his colour choice. That was clearly the last straw. He was largely silent for the rest of the meeting. He wasn’t missed.

Quick hit: NHS privatisation: compilation of financial and vested interests

Read this. List of politicians who will directly benefit from the NHS bill (http://socialinvestigations.blogspot.co.uk).

This list represents the dire state of our democracy. The financial and vested interests of our MPs and Lords in private healthcare. Why are these people allowed to be in charge of our NHS, to vote on a bill that they clearly have something to gain from. Who cares that they have put it in the register of interests. This doesn’t excuse their interests, it merely highlights clearly why they should have no part in voting for the privatisation of the NHS. It is privatisation, despite the media’s continued use of the word ‘reforms’. The question must be asked. Are they public servants or corporate servants?

The list is long, and could surely be longer, I make no apology for that, tragically that is the reality of our politics today; and although the majority of vested interest lies with the Conservatives, as you might expect, it is however a cross party issue. It is compiled from accessible and trusted sources throughout the Internet. If one of these listed is your MP, then contact them and let them know you will not be voting for them again if this bill goes through. If the Lord is under your area, email them and let them know what you think. If there are others to be added, then please let me know with link to source – as this is by no means a complete list. Equally if you think someone should not be on here, then please say with reason and then they may come off if justified as the list should be as strong as possible.In short – they won’t be stopped unless they are stopped. They do not listen and nor do they care. The time has surely come to protest in large numbers and for the union members to ask their leaders to call for a strike. You can help apply pressure by spreading this out on twitter. It is already gone quite viral, but can go wider still.

Read on.

In brief: Ex-Blur bassist Alex James on food

There’s a lot of talk these days about how Alex James (formerly of Blur) has become something of a bellend. If you needed some evidence, check out the bit below (from here). No one should be buying chickens for £2, don’t you know? He prefers his organic sort at £20 a pop, and he thinks that everyone else should do. More tips on the link for the poor folks. If you can stomach it (pun intended).

Alex James there, with no idea or care how privileged he is.

As a rule, though, he thinks that good food is worth the hefty expenditure, and cites an organic free-range chicken from Daylesford that cost him £19. ‘Britain is only just overcoming that wartime mentality of making food cheap,’ he says. ‘I actually think anyone can afford to eat well. On the whole, the less money you have, the more time you have, so you can grow your own food. And the people who need to buy a chicken for two quid are overweight anyway. In this part of the world, you can tell how affluent people are by how thin they are.’

Quick hit: Why Patriarchal Men Are Utterly Petrified of Birth Control (via alternet)

This is an excellent article from alternet.org and explains, from an interesting sociological perspective, what the War on Contraception is all about. Excerpt:

With that one essential choice came the possibility, for the first time, to make a vast range of other choices for ourselves that were simply never within reach before. We could choose to delay childbearing and limit the number of children we raise; and that, in turn, freed up time and energy to explore the world beyond the home. We could refuse to marry or have babies at all, and pursue our other passions instead. Contraception was the single necessary key that opened the door to the whole new universe of activities that had always been zealously monopolized by the men — education, the trades, the arts, government, travel, spiritual and cultural leadership, and even (eventually) war making.

Full article.

Bigger. Fatter. Horribler

I was really shocked the other night when I watched two minutes of “Bigger, Fatter, Gypsier” on Channel 4. I was flicking around stations and was stopped by the horror of this show. Channel 4 is known for making programmes which degrade, belittle, horrify and ridicule, but it’s outdone itself with this one. Viewers are encouraged to laugh at “gypsies”, their culture, their beliefs, their lifestyles, and their customs. In short, Channel 4 appeals to the collective elitism in us all and asks to to join them in making fun of the “savages”. It’s horrible.

What I found almost more upsetting, however, was the numerous posts on my twitter and facebook feeds which were joining in the game. She’s wearing a pineapple!! OMG!, and such like. Not big. And not clever.

There have been several criticisms of the programme this week (from segmentpolitics, liberalconspiracy, and the guardian, to name but a few), but none more poignant than this open letter to Channel 4. It was written by a 17-year-old Romany male. Here is the link to his blog post. Below is the copy and paste for your convenience.

Dear Channel 4,

I am writing to you with the hope that you will stop ruining my life. While you’re obsession with my ethnicity is flattering, it has become somewhat apparent to me that you might have gotten the wrong end of the stick. This is sort of awkward for me, because I don’t want to be the one to break it to you, but your documentary, ‘Big Fat Gypsy Weddings’, is unfortunately a work of fiction. There is no need to be embarrassed, it can happen to the best of us, and thus I hope my letter will help you establish the facts, after all I’m sure you are passionate about fighting discrimination against ethnic minorities. Don’t be modest now, we know you are…right?

It surprised me to discover that 99% of Britain’s Gypsy and Traveller population are Irish. Correct me if I’m wrong, as I am sure you have done lots and lots of research on this topic, but just 10% of the Gypsy and Traveller population are actually Irish Travellers. The majority, like myself, are in fact Romany, yet your ‘documentary’ seems to ignore our existence. While I have nothing but respect for the Irish Traveller community, you seem to be unaware that we are two distinct ethnic groups and thus there are many differences between our cultures. While Irish Travellers originate from Ireland, we can trace our routes back to India, so it was hardly surprising that I was somewhat confused when you use the word Gypsy in the title of your ‘documentary’ about Irish Travellers. I was even more confused when your ‘documentary’ about Irish Travellers seemed to feature an alien culture that even most Irish Traveller’s didn’t recognise.

You correctly identified that many Gypsy and Traveller children leave school at a young age, however you failed to mention that this is not because we are all born to terrible parents, but because our communities suffer from great social exclusion. State education fails to adapt to anything but mainstream culture, thus we have to contend with a curriculum that is totally irrelevant to our way of life. Moreover, both teachers and students seem ignorant of our cultures, thus we are labelled as troublemakers and bullied for being different. The myths that you have been spreading have not helped matters. Indeed, I was subjected to physical attacks during your last series of your ‘documentary’ which ultimately led to my expulsion from school (long story), whilst my 12 year old cousin was beat up on her way home from school by a gang of girls who were calling her a prostitute.

As you can see, there are many reasons as to why Gypsy and Traveller children are failing to attend school, but you seem to have forgotten to feature those of us that do stay in education. Take myself, for example, I’m currently at college studying a range of subjects such as, History and Sociology. Moreover, my sister trained to be a hairdresser, my aunty went to university and is now a social worker and some of my cousins completed apprenticeships, thus clearly dropping out of education is not a prerequisite of living in a trailer.

uniLad, rape culture, and overdoses in Ireland

If you haven’t read this piece already, you should now: Gang-rape woman arrested during trial, following overdose.

The linked piece concerns a woman who was gang-raped by three men and who had to stand in front of them in court and identify them. She was later arrested for not turning up to court again. Unsurprisingly, she self-harmed because she couldn’t cope with what was happening to her. The three accused men have since been acquitted. After the victim’s arrest, Mr Justice Carney said: ‘If she has to spend a long time in prison herself waiting for a re-trial that’s her fault.’ Yes, really. A spokesperson for the Rape Crises Centre (Ellen O’Malley) criticised the trial process, ‘As making the complainants “feel they are the ones on trial and not the accused”.’ O’Malley went on to say, ‘This system in our opinion is very imbalanced and needs radical reform. As a result Ireland has one of the highest attrition rates for rape and sexual assault cases in Europe.’

But it’s not on its own. The clear up rates for rape and sexual assault cases in England and Wales are equally low. The attrition to which O’Malley refers starts right after the attack takes place when women are too frightened to report it, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone. If they do report it, it may not be recorded and pursued by the police as a offence that can be tried. And that’s before anything even. reaches a courthouse where the horrific tales of victim-blaming, brutal cross-examination, and even threats from the crowd and blatant intimidation, are numerous. O’Malley is right when she says that rape victims too often feel that they are the people on trial. Clear-up rates for rape cases in England and Wales hover around the 5% mark. That means that there is only a 5% chance of a rapist being convicted for his crime.

Anyone who has been on the feminist blogosphere this week has heard about uniLad. This is a site that is run by male students (“affectionately” known as “LADs”) and seems to be something of a “tip” site for getting laid. Except it’s not. Observe this little beauty:

‘If the girl you’ve taken for a drink… won’t “spread for your head”, think about this mathematical statistic: 85% of rape cases go unreported. That seems to be fairly good odds.’

It doesn’t take a brainiac to figure out that that very sentence alone trivialises, normalises, and even condones rape. If the comments from the LADs are anything to go by, they’re on board with getting a bit of rape in when the opportunity is presented. When uniLad was challenged about its attitudes, it huffed for a while, then it got defensive, then it issued a sorry excuse for an apology (“We’re sorry that you were offended, but if you weren’t so sensitive” etc.), and then it started threatening women. One particular LAD threatened to murder and rape a woman for questioning uniLad’s content. It didn’t get much better from there.  They’re still telling us that we’re being too sensitive, that we’re all stupid hairy-legged lesbian feminists, that we need a good dicking, that it’s just a joke, that we shouldn’t be in the kitchen if we can’t stand the heat (though, ironically, that’s exactly where we should be), and that it’s just boys being boys. You’ve heard it all before.

But what’s the big deal, I hear you ask. It’s just a JOKE!

A woman taking an overdose and running away so that she didn’t have to face a trial of her attackers is the big deal. We, and by that, I mean women, walk around in fear of being raped (even though I live in a “safe area”, I will not leave my house before sunrise in the mornings, just in case), we see images of sexual objectification around us all the time, we’re encouraged to measure our entire worth on how fuckable we are, we’re expected to believe, and are frequently told, that our bodies are open property for men (and that being whistled at in the street, for example, is a compliment), we have police officers telling us that we wouldn’t get raped if we didn’t dress like sluts, and we have sites like uniLad telling the chaps go get out there and take what they want whether women like it or not. That’s rape culture. In rape culture, women are not even considered to be human beings; we’re not even afforded that simple right to exist in safety and without fear of attack. Rape is not even considered an attack; it comes with the territory of being a woman, it is par for the course, and it is very likely to be our fault anyway.

Don’t tell me that rape culture doesn’t exist. If it didn’t, there wouldn’t be a woman in Ireland today scared out of her wits, washing down handfuls of pills with vodka, and dreading the day that she runs into the three men who raped her, and there wouldn’t be a website which maintains that it’s all just a great big laugh.

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Some links to uniLad commentary from the week, but there are lots more out there: stavvers; thefword; ontoberlin; petitefeministe; and sianandcrookedrib.

Damned no blogging

I need to blog more. I say this 100 times a year, I know. I have a lot to say but very little time to say it. Not blogging is on my top ten list of stresses (#firstworldproblems). But, now, I need to work. (And therein lies the problem.)

In the meantime, please read Patrick Stewart’s fantastic post in the Guardian: Domestic violence blighted my home. That’s why I support Refuge

I grew up in a home darkened by domestic violence – which I wrote about two years ago. My father was an angry and unhappy man who was not able to control his emotions, or his hands. I witnessed violence against my mother and felt powerless to stop it. When Refuge, the national domestic violence charity, asked me to become a patron, I accepted without hesitation. I accepted for my mother. As a child, there was little I could do to help her. But now I can give support and encouragement to women who live in the same sort of fear that she did.

…

The impact of these cuts will be devastating. The financial footing of women’s charities has been shaky for many years; now it is in real danger of slipping into the abyss. Let me be quite clear about what is at stake here. Without services such as refuges, more women and children will be trapped in violent relationships. Domestic violence rarely peters out. On the contrary, abuse tends to escalate over time. If they can’t get help – preferably at the earliest opportunity – their stories may well have the most tragic of conclusions.

…

My mother had no escape route. There were no refuges she could run to; no helplines to call; no advocates to speak out for her. No one came to help, even though everyone knew what was happening behind our closed doors. The small houses in our road were close together, and every Monday morning I walked to school with a bowed head, praying that I wouldn’t run into a neighbour who had heard the weekend’s rows. The police, when they were called, were little help. I remember hearing them say things like “She must have provoked him”, or “Well, Mrs Stewart, it takes two to make a fight”. They had no idea. My mother did nothing to provoke the violence she endured – even if she had, violence is an unacceptable way of dealing with conflict.

Full article.

Abortion Rights – Anti-choice counselling: tell your MP to say NO!

This might well be the most important thing I post all year.

PLEASE follow this link and write to your local MP.

We need you to stand up for access to safe, legal abortion and the right to impartial information.

The Department of Health is planning to introduce new counselling requirements for women seeking abortion, which could limit their access to impartial advice and delay access to services.

Based on amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill, the proposals strip abortion providers of the right to provide pre-abortion counselling, and could see anti-choice groups invited to offer pregnancy counselling in their place.

The purpose of these proposals is to limit access to impartial information and deter women from having the procedure. We believe they are damaging, unnecessary and should be rejected.

The amendments could be debated and voted on in the House of Commons as early as 6th or 7th September.

We want to make sure MPs know the facts about what these changes would mean for women and hear the views of the pro-choice majority who support the right to safe, legal abortion in this country.

In brief: cultural snow: the sins of the sons

Via the inimitable cultural snow: the sins of the sons.

Grammar aside, is this not a very good question?

Breivik’s far-right friends in America

If you give Breivik’s 1,500 manifesto a good read (though why would you, I suppose), you’ll see that his political influences (particularly with regard to his hatred of Islam) did not come from European sources but rather from the far-right in the US.

Though he referred heavily to his fellow Norwegian, the blogger Fjordman, it was Robert Spencer, the American Islamophobic pseudo-academic, who received the most references from Breivik — 55 in all. Then there was Daniel Pipes, the Muslim-bashing American neoconservative who earned 18 citations from the terrorist. Other American anti-Muslim characters appear prominently in the manifesto, including the extremist blogger Pam Geller, who operates an Islamophobic organization in partnership with Spencer.

Alternet.org describes how these hate-mongers were cited more times in Breivik’s manifesto than anyone else. If there was ever a time to address Islamophobia in the US, it’s now. We have Islamphobes in Europe too, of course, but they’ve not been given the same time, power or political voice as their counterparts in the US.  Unfortunately, the former Republican presidency condoned and encouraged Islamophobia in the US because it suited its own political ends, and it’s arguable that Obama hasn’t done as much as he should have to address the trend. Though I’m not sure how he could either.

I went to a conference paper recently which was describing research examining the ways in which we (i.e., society) in 2011 think about (and address) isms/ obias. They all still exist (sexism, ableism, ageism, homophobia, etc.),  of course, and some are more prevalent in certain pockets of society than others (e.g., the religious and homophobia) but Islamophobia is new, very widely dispersed throughout all sectors of the population, and is increasing frighteningly quickly. But to what end, I ask? What is there to be gained from a blanket hatred of an entire religion and culture? I’ve never been able to work that out. Are we in the west still such unremitting colonialists that we can’t even now understand or accept a culture that differs to our own? That’s the only plausible explanation I can think of right now. And seriously, I’m mortified for us!