Remember the Tinman

Links, in lieu of a rant.

2011-05-25T21:27:00.003+01:00

Oh, I am angry. And I could write for days and days about why, but that is likely only spark comments which made me more angry. So yeah, activist and awareness links are what you shall get.

Trigger warning for rape and abuse on everything.

NUS Women's Campaign's call to sack Ken Clarke - article on Student Broad Left, and more details on Facebook.

Non-survivor privilege by Jennifer Kesler on What Privilege?.

Hathor How-To's: Supporting a Friend Who's Been Sexually Assaulted by Maria at The Hathor Legacy.

How You Guys Can Prevent Rape by Heather Corinna at Scarleteen.

Stop talking about rape and start listening by Kate Harris at Be Young and Shut Up.

Lastly, Edinburgh Reclaim the Night is this weekend, please shout at anyone who says it's been banned or cancelled. I shall be there shouting at people in a hi-vis jacket. And will hopefully be drowning my anger in a sea of feminist solidarity, or at least letting it out by marching and shouting and singing and dancing.

A not so surprising twist.

2010-08-06T13:00:00.003+01:00

(Spoiler warning for the first episode of the new BBC series of Sherlock Holmes.)

It's taken me a while to work out what bothered me about this episode, other than the fact that I seemed to get things about 5 minutes before Holmes did, and then get bored while they were slowly hinted at. What really bothered me was the 'no-one suspects the taxi driver!' aspect. Really? As a woman who has lived for years in London, I suspect the taxi-driver. Not without reason - John Worboys* is the worst known example, but there are others. The whole thing came across as written by someone who had never done the mental calculation of whether it was safer to walk home alone, or get into a car with a stranger. And then realised that there is no safe choice.

I think this is one of aspect of the original stories that doesn't translate well in to the modern world.

*He is also just one of the reasons that TfL's Cabwise posters make so very angry. But that's a separate rant.

I expected better.

2010-07-25T12:35:00.002+01:00

This post will make no sense to anyone who hasn't recently read the article I'm talking about. But I needed to rant.

'Incorporation . . . rapes women of the legitimacy to historicise women'
Purvis and Weatherhill, 'Playing the gender history game: A reply to Penelope Cornfield' in The Feminist History Reader (ed. Morgan), 2006

I understand that the argument that the shift from women's history to gender history has decentred women's experiences, and is a 'malestream incorporation strategy'. I may not agree with this view, but I do feel it is important to question the value of gender history, and the story of a neat, progressive transformation from women's history to gender history.

But what's not OK is using rape as a metaphor to describe that transition. An intellectual trend which marginalises women is not the same as sexual violence. It's fine to make the point that they are connected as part of the same system of oppression, but to conflate the two seems not just an exaggeration but deeply offensive. Also, I'm not sure it makes grammatical sense to say someone was 'raped of' something.

And another thing - what the HELL is the whole playing gender history as 'tootsie' versus as a 'woman' thing about? I don't understand it well enough to know if it's transphobic, but my instinct is yes.

Actually, I had a happy childhood.

2010-07-23T13:29:00.004+01:00

This was sparked off in my head by this brilliant post by the wonderful Arwyn at Raising my Boychick, and the comments other people have left there. It got a bit more personal than I intended.

My mother died when I was 2 years old. If you ascribe to theories of maternal deprivation, from that point on I was doooomed. Unless I was already doomed because my mother went back to work when I was 6 weeks old. Or doomed even earlier than that, because she had been uncertain about having children some years before I was born. (Yes, some-one has suggested that this was likely to be the cause of my depression.) I've had at least 3 medical professionals who basically went 'Aha! That's why you're fucked up!' when I mentioned my mother's death. They've leapt on it as the Ultimate Cause of my mental illness.

All of which seems unfair on my poor old mum. I'm not going to deny that her illness and death probably had a serious effect on my emotional development, my character and my long-term mental health. But the exact same thing is true of the death of my grandmother when I was 7, and the bullying I experienced when I was 11. To pinpoint the cause of all my mental health problems to one event, almost 20 years ago, seems absurd.

And you know what, it's also sexist. It assumes that my mother was the most important person in my life at that point, which isn't true - my father was my primary carer. The response from many people seems to be based on the idea that there are particular kinds of love and care which can only be provided by a mother. That places a really large burden on women with children, and sets expectations which are incredibly hard to fulfil. It's not fair in fathers, other family members and the other adults in children's lives. Growing up, I had many people around me who I knew loved me and cared about me. I was never emotionally deprived or neglected. The assumption that the death of my mother inevitably led to a miserable childhood, and in turn to my adolescent and adult depression seems to discount those experiences.

I suppose it's the inevitability of that explanation that bothers me too. If childhood bereavement automatically leads to adult mental health problems, where does that leave me? I can't go back in time and save my mother from cancer. And considering that the cancer was probably present in her body before she got pregnant, that would most likely result in me not being born. Talking about her death upsets me in the short term, and I'm really not convinced it will do any good in the long term. To some extent, I feel I've said everything I have to say on the subject. Her death seems very disconnected from the reality of my life now.

The reactions from most people when they find out about my upbringing range from pity to curiousity. I'm not quite as tragic a figure as an orphan, but it's clearly too much to expect for me to be normal. My guess is that in a society where a range of family structures were common, motherlessness would not be seen as such a freakish and pathetic state. But I don't know if I'm going to far there - criticising people who are simply empathising, extrapolating from their own relationships with their mothers and their grief at their imagined (or real) death.

This has been a tricky post for me to write, as it's at the intersection of the politics I'm very passionate about, and my painful personal experiences. I feel almost like I'm being too defensive, too sensitive. My instinctive response to the idea that children need their mothers around them all the time is to shout 'My mother died and I'm fine!'. Except for much of my life I haven't been 'fine', by most definitions. It's a balance I'm still struggling to strike - acknowledging the impact of my mother's death, without downgrading the love and care and support I received from other people throughout my childhood.

Things which have resonated with me recently.

2010-07-06T20:13:00.002+01:00

I'm depressed, but otherwise fine by Dorian. Although at the moment I'm more likely to be feeling the opposite of 'not depressed, but unhappy'. There's a defensiveness there - not wanting myself or others to worry every time I'm in a bad mood that my mental health is slipping.

A choice made every day by s. e. smith. Most of the past year I've been tee-total, and the conversations about why got very dull very quickly.

The case of the disappearing spoons by Arwyn. Which is a better explanation than I could have written of some of my reactions after things got messy when I started writing about feminism on my old blog.

Therapy, and therapists.

2010-06-20T20:53:00.000+01:00

ETA: This was mostly written a long time ago. I think it was a reaction to something specific, but I'm not entirely sure what. I've come back to it several times, and only been able to finish it now because the experiences I've drawn on are more distant and less raw. I hope it's obvious, but I don't think counsellors and psychologists are bad people, and not all of my experiences with them have been negative.

There seems to be a perception out there that talking therapy is the 'good' treatment for mental health issues. Better then drugs. Not addictive, not side-effects. Not just a bandage or a crutch, but a real! solution! that will make you better forever. Yeah. Well. It works for some people. And for some people it's necessary. But when I see the instruction 'Just go get some therapy' it rubs me up the wrong way. It is not that simple.

Let's start with the basics - getting access to therapy in the first place. Obviously, this depends hugely on where you live and your financial circumstances. Luckily for me, therapy can be free on the NHS. Woot and yay. However, in most cases this does involve getting your GP to refer you. If your GP believes you, and takes mental health stuff seriously, then off you go. But that's not always the case. And it may involve a very long wait. Which is not a good thing if the mental health stuff is immediate. Not everyone's circumstances allow for them to stay in one place for long enough.

And that's just in a place where we have socialised healthcare. In places like the USA they are whole issues to do with convincing your insurance company to cover it, and if you're uninsured... Obviously I'm not an expert on this but I get the impression getting even obviously necessary healthcare can be difficult, and too often mental illness is dismissed as 'not real' or 'not urgent'.
The other issue here is that people in need of mental health treatment are often not in the best position to advocate for themselves, in terms of practical resources like time and money as well as the emotional resources needed, meaning that an additional hurdle, however small, can be a serious block to getting therapy.

All that's after someone has made up their mind to get therapy in the first place. Which is not necessarily an easy decision. Fear of it not helping, fear of having to talk about painful things, fear of being treated badly by a therapist, fear of the stigma associated with mental illness. None of these are irrational. None.

Therapy can work wonders. But it does put the patient in an incredibly vulnerable position. Psychodynamic and psychoanalytic type therapies ( the classic 'tell me about your father' kind) involve, by their very nature, revealing one's deepest secrets and insecurities. Of course, discussing those things openly can be incredibly helpful. But it means that if a therapist screws up they have the potential to do a heck of a lot of harm to an already vulnerable person. Therapists are human, and they will make mistakes sometimes. And it can be a rational, self-protective decision to not take that risk.

As well as being human, therapists have the same ingrained social prejudices as the rest of us. Which can be very worrying for those made most vulnerable under the kyriarchy, not incidentally those who are prone to mental health issues. It also means that they have expectations about how families and relationships and life in general are supposed to be.

Therapists are in a position of power over their patients - whether or not they are aware of it, whether or not they wish to be. To some extent, this is true of all medical professionals; there is a subtext of 'Do what I tell you or you will not get well'.

I have put with some complete nonsense because I genuinely believed, I had been led to believe, that if I did not go along with it I would never be happy again. At that point I had lived months at a time without happiness, and I had decided that I could not live years like that. The growing worry that the person to whom I had entrusted my mental health, and by implication my life, was incompetent was one of the most frightening feelings I have ever experienced.

So, yes, lots of people would probably benefit from therapy of some kind. But it is most certainly not without its risks or its drawbacks. It is not the superior option compared to medication, although of course also have problematic issues. The idea that therapy is an infallible cure for all mental illness that helps everyone is a myth, and a harmful one. It implies that mentally ill people have the choice of being well and are just refusing it, ignoring the very real boundaries to accessing counselling in the first place, and the risks involved.

New blog!

2010-04-12T18:44:00.003+01:00

Hello! Not dead, I promise. And I have been blogging, just not here. At Teaspoon of Sugar, a 'happy feminism' blog.

On the inner girl.

2010-02-03T22:30:00.003Z

On rape culture.

2009-10-11T15:41:00.001+01:00

Go read this by the always wonderful Melissa McEwan.

No wonder I'm burnt out from thinking about this stuff. It's inescapable.

Boris Keep Your Promise

2009-09-03T12:18:00.002+01:00

There's a petition here about Boris Johnson, who has completely back tracked on his promises for the funding of rape crisis centres.

(Via the North London Fawcett Group)

Revived Carnival of Feminists!

2009-08-18T14:13:00.001+01:00

The Carnival of Feminists is back at Female Impersonator! Yay!

Spot the difference.

2009-08-11T11:28:00.002+01:00

Headline for a study carried out exclusively on men. Headline for study carried out exclusively on women.

Because everyone knows 'men' is synonymous with 'people'.

Carnival!

2009-07-14T21:40:00.003+01:00

The Second Carnival of feminist parenting is up now. Go read things.

Also, poetry.

2009-07-14T19:46:00.001+01:00

Sometimes what matters is not what happens, but what gets remembered.

2009-07-14T18:38:00.003+01:00

I spent most of today in the British Library reading about female Victorian historians, like Agnes Strickland and Mary Anne Everett Green. So I had a good day.

One thing which kept coming up was that these historians have been neglected from the historiography. They do not quite fit with the conception of Victorian 'Whig' history, and their role as the pioneers of social and cultural history has too often neglected. Elizabeth Stone wrote a social history of England 30 years before her any of her male colleagues.

Since the early 1990s more attention is being paid to them - historians like Joan Thirsk and Bonnie G. Smith, and Rosemary Mitchell have all done some really interesting analysis, fitting Victorian female historians in not just with Victorian historiography but feminist theory.

As I was reading about this, I kept thinking about the Hottest 100, and the same pattern played out in twentieth century rock music. Grudging contemporary respect, and then neglect. And then a group of women going "Hang on, these women existed and they were awesome and why the fuck are they ignored?" (In the case of the historians, without the swearing. It's kind of frowned upon in academic articles.)

I can't help but wonder what other women have existed out there doing wonderful things that we just never hear about. Role models matter. That this reclamation of heroines is happening is brilliant, but it shouldn't have to happen.

Quote of the day.

2009-06-05T17:23:00.003+01:00

'I've got a kick like a mule. It's the hair, you see?'

'What hair?'

'The hair on my legs. We've all got hairy legs, me and my sisters. Hair gives you strength; it says so in the Bible. Samson and all that.'

Eva Ibbotson, Monster Mission, p. 18

Links, again.

2009-06-03T10:55:00.003+01:00

First, a call to activism from Lauredhel about new Australian regulations on disabled parking - details, letter to send, and why feminists should be concerned.

Heather Corrina, on the phrase 'preventing teen pregnancy.'

From Cripchick, a post on gender and disability. With some really interesting stuff in the comments.

Terrorism.

2009-05-31T20:58:00.003+01:00

Dr. George Tiller, an abortion doctor in America, has been murdered.

I just don't have the words.

What is it you haven't got?

2009-05-31T15:52:00.002+01:00

-Equal pay

-Gender parity at the higher levels of business

-An end to sex discrimination in the work place

-Affordable, high-quality childcare for everyone

-Good workplace facilities for breast-feeding women to express and store milk

Just off the top of my head, restricted to things immediately relating to employment. Oh, and I'd like it if people stopped calling adult women 'girls'.

Ultimate lazy activism.

2009-05-22T21:41:00.001+01:00

Get some-one else to write angry e-mails for you.

Linky links.

2009-05-19T20:53:00.005+01:00

- Hexy on Mental illness, medication, and the spiralling cost of being well

- An extract from Marilyn French's 'The Women's Room'

- Julia Serano on 'cis'

Unexpectedly upsetting.

2009-05-11T20:54:00.003+01:00

I am not allowed to do jury service. I found out about this here.

I want to list my achievements, prove my stability and my rationality and moral discernment - whatever it is that I am considered to be lacking. But that's not really the point. I'm a citizen, I should be treated like one.

Judy Blume targetted by extremists.

2009-05-07T13:15:00.003+01:00

Judy Blume wrote a letter in support of Planned Parenthood as part of their fund-raising campaign. And now she's being sent hate-mail and getting abusive phone-calls. I'm not going to link the kind of stuff that's being said about her - you all know how to google. And if you've ever seen the kind of comments pro-choice bloggers get, you can probably guess fairly accurately what they're like.

If her books formed part of your sex education, or helped you understand yourself better, or were a comfort in bad times, now is the time to let her know and thank her. We can't stop the abuse, but we can try to drown it out with positive messages.

For those is the US, Planned Parenthood has a letter to send.

And for every-one else, her contact page is here.

Mental illness BADD round up.

2009-05-05T16:20:00.000+01:00

From Cara at The Curvature - On Depression (Also interesting stuff in comments.)

Two at Diary of a Nobody- Invisible Disabilities and Anti-depressants

From One Sick Mother - Invisible Disabilities: Depression

From Melissa at Shakesville - Out of My Closet

From Morrigan Reborn - Blogging Against Disablism Day

At Your Subtext is Showing - Awkward Silence

From BipolarGirl at Feministe - Disability and Class

On being a good nutter (for BADD)

2009-05-01T13:32:00.000+01:00

I'm a good nutter, I am. Honest.

I don't drink.

I don't do drugs.

I don't sleep around.

I don't self harm.

I get up every morning and I shower every day and I get my essays in on time, mostly. I take my medication when I'm supposed to, mostly.

All that stuff I don't do? I hold back from because I know it would be bad for me. That doesn't mean it's not right for other people. It doesn't mean that my coping mechanisms are in anyway superior - they are just what works best for me. And it doesn't mean that people who do those things aren't serious about getting better or any less deserving of respect or treatment.

I have heard all the advice about getting enough sunlight and enough sleep and enough exercise and eating well. I know all that by now, trust me.

And I know by now that following the rules won't get me a free pass to sanity. I am learning, slowly, when it is best to break those rules. When to disrupt my sleeping pattern with a nap because I just need a break from the day. When to cancel a doctor's appointment because I just can't face it, and when to force myself to go in.

One of the reasons I don't like talking about this stuff is because I cannot cope with people passing judgement on my coping mechanisms. I have enough guilt and frustration about what I'm not doing on my own. There is a fine line between blaming myself for my depression, and feeling that there is nothing I can do to stop it. And even the most well intentioned comment can tip that balance.

The fact that I feel I have to defend my actions, justify the logic of my self-care, is fucked up. I am an adult, and my health is my concern. And I am in the best position to make those kinds of decisions. But I feel like I am accountable to everyone who knows that I have depression - like it's only acceptable for me to show it if I can prove that I am trying really hard to get better.

I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, or what point I want to make. Having not written about this before, there's a lot I want to say. But I'm also feeling my way through what I'm comfortable sharing.

So cool.

2009-04-29T19:04:00.000+01:00

Feminist cookies!

May 1st is Blog Against Disablism Day

2009-04-17T16:56:00.002+01:00

Details at Diary of a Gold Fish. Go sign up.

Garr.

2009-04-15T11:04:00.002+01:00

'Third of men live with parents' is a vaguely interesting trend which no-one can really do anything about.

'In England, 31% of families are living in housing without adequate heating or facilities' is worrying and important, and some-thing we should probably be shouting at the government to fix.

So why is the former the headline and the latter a toss away sentence at the end?

(For more about housing and homelessness in the UK, see Shelter.)

On normalcy fetishism.

2009-04-07T22:33:00.002+01:00

Great guest post by Meowser at Shakesville.

Don't touch me, I have spikes.

2009-04-07T14:03:00.006+01:00

So, I read this post at Shapely Prose on this advert for Wilkinson Sword. While I agree with everything Sweet Machine says about beauty culture and the standards for women being about how 'all women should be available to groping by men at all times', that's not what bothers me most about the ad.

The video shows a man touching the legs of a woman, presumably his girlfriend, not just without her consent but against her will. She moves his hand. She says 'stop it'. And it's presented as completely normal and acceptable for him to continue.

The implication is that she doesn't want him to touch her legs because she hasn't shaved them. And the solution presented to this is that she buys a shiny new razor and presumably uses it when there's any chance of the boyfriend being anywhere near her. Not for him respect her boundaries or back off when she's uncomfortable.

Yes, this is one small thing. But it's one small thing contributing to a general culture where consent is considered unimportant, and rape and sexual assault are frighteningly common. And those small things have to be tackled to change that culture.

Feedback form here - http://www.wilkinsonsword.co.uk/women/contact_us
(Thanks to Bev in the comments at SP.)

Linking.

2009-04-06T11:40:00.002+01:00

There have been many, many thing I've read recently that I've seen and thought 'Wow. That's good. I should link that.' And then entirely lost the link to and forgotten about. So new leaf today.

Firstly this piece by niemaodpowiedzi on survival. Quote -

'I prioritize this shit, because I know even though the only reason anybody is raped is the presence of a rapist, society will find a way to blame me for my own death if it gets a fucking chance to do so.'

Also Derailing for Dummies. For the lolz.

Misplaced outrage.

2009-03-26T18:26:00.005Z

From this article on the BBC on teen pregnancy -

"Young girls too often feel pressurised to have sex without protection.

"To change this we need better education in schools and better social mobility.

"Too many young people do not feel they have real opportunities in life that would encourage them to make sure they do not get pregnant."

Or maybe we need to teach boys and men not to pressure girls into sex without protection.

To be fair, this may well be something the person quoted supports and is including is 'education', but just didn't make explicit. Or maybe she did and the journalist chose not to include it in the article. But girls are the ones that get pregnant, and therefore the ones that the rest of her quote seems to apply to. The implication is that girls need to understand better what pregnancy would mean for them in order to better resist the pressure to risk it. The responsibility over contraceptive choices is entirely placed on girls' shoulders.

One of the many things that bothers me about media coverage of teenage pregnancy is the complete disappearing of the men and boys getting teenage girls pregnant. And some of those men and boys being sexually violent and abusive seems to cause nowhere near the outrage and hand-wringing that teenage pregnancy in itself does.

Girls being pressured into kinds of sex they don't want is a problem whether or not it has an impact on teenage pregnancy rates. It's a problem because it's sexual abuse.

Boys need to be taught that pressuring a girl into sex without protection is bad not because getting her pregnant might damage their life-chances, but simply because it's wrong.

Online activism.

2009-03-13T18:10:00.003Z

Two things -
1) Diane Abbott is putting forward an Early Day Motion on abortion rights in Northern Ireland, so e-mail your MP asking to support it (From Abortion Rights, Sheffield Fems and The F-Word)

2) Oxfordshire PCT has been refusing to fund surgery for trans people (and generally being rubbish over trans issues.) Petition to protest here, via Bird of Paradox.

Muddled thoughts on privilege and prejudice.

2008-10-18T22:47:00.004+01:00

So, biphobia within the gay community came up in a discussion tonight.

It's something I'm not entirely sure how to respond to. It's a prejudice, that like any other prejudice, needs to be called out and objected to. And in that sense a feel an entirely justified righteous anger. My bisexuality is not something which should be used against me.

But I'm also aware that it's a very complex issue, and that some of that prejudice comes from a history of marginalisation and discrimination against gay people. Bisexual people in some respects have been able to pass more easily, and have experienced straight privilege. And perhaps some of the prejudice from the gay community is a result of that privilege. That's not a justification. More a reason.

Right now, I'm active in my university's LGBT community. It's somewhere I've found friendship and like-minded people and a support system. However, I'm a relationship with a man, and therefore have the luxury of the straight privilege that goes with that relationship - we can hold hands in public, tell our parents, generally have our relationship recognised. I feel I'm getting the best of both worlds.

Which makes it hard to feel like I don't have to justify my place in the gay community. I find I get very self concious when I mention my boyfriend at LGBT events. I am aware that I'm in a gay safe space, and I don't want to abuse that. But in theory it's 'gay' in the sense of the whole spectrum of LGBTQ, not just 'gay' meaning homosexual*.

But my relationship with straight privilege is complicated. The kind of relationship I'm in may be seen as legitimate by mainstream society, but my sexual identity is not. So the LGBT community is still something I need.

It's just a matter of working out how and when to defend myself from the prejudice within that community.

*There's also the issue that LGB dominated spaces are not necessarily accepting or sensitive towards transgender people - Stonewall, for example. But that's possibly a rant for another post.

Ok, so it's not just the BBC.

2008-10-08T12:35:00.002+01:00

More headless pregnant women. Here and here.
*sigh*

Quote of the day.

2008-09-25T23:19:00.003+01:00

'In drawing attention to the physical characteristics of women leaders, they can be dismissed as either too pretty or too ugly. The net effect is to prevent women's identification with the issues. If the public woman is stigmatized as too "pretty", she's a threat, a rival - or simply not serious; if derided as too "ugly", one risks tarring oneself with the same brush by identifying oneself with her agenda.'

Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth, p69

(It was this video that made me think of it.)

Just a joke.

2008-09-24T16:39:00.000+01:00

There was a nasty rape joke on an episode of 'Mock the Week', and so I complained and got an e-mail back basically telling me it was a comedy show and some people found some things offensive that others found funny and you wouldn't want us to censor the comedians, would you?, and we value your views, honest. Which was a little dispiriting.

The joke was from Frankie Boyle, whose main appeal seems to be offending people. My main problem with the joke he told, and others like it in the past, is that it is not presented as a joke about rape, but as a joke about him having sex with a woman, and the punch line being the offensive surprise that it's not consensual. These kind of jokes legitimise the idea that rape in certain situations, particularly within a sexual relationship, is not really rape and therefore normal behaviour. Despite the fact that a majority of rapes are perpetrated by partners or ex-partners of their victims.

And yes, it was just a joke. But it's a joke which reflects the kind of mindset that rapists have, and which presents it as the normal male mindset. Which is fucking dangerous.

It's insulting to men how are aren't rapists, but worse than that it supports the view point of those men who are, and makes them thinks it's OK. The message it send out is that the BBC, and that big-name comedian, and those audience members who laughed along, are on his side. This was only one joke, but it's a joke that's part of a culture which allows rapists to feel morally justified in their actions. This is not an isolated incident.

The UK has a ridiculously low rate of rape convictions, and the mentality of trivialised rape, and victim-blaming promoted by this kind of humour is part of that. The same people laughing along at that joke were potentially sitting on a jury at a rape trial the next day. And yes, there will be other things informing whatever preconceptions they bring to that trial - but when the rest of society is sending screwed up messages about sexual violence, and our sex education system doesn't adequately address these issues, no wonder dangerous ideas about rape are so common.

Those ideas are also causing problems for women who are raped and do not recognise what happened to them as rape, and therefore don't get the help they need to cope with it, and blame themselves.

The final aspect to this, and the one I focused on in my complaint to the BBC, is the impact of this kind of comedy on sexual violence survivors, as Melissa McEwan discusses here. For a comedian to feel it worthwhile to risk triggering a sexual assault flash back to get a laugh, and for the BBC to defend that, are both symptoms and causes of a society which refuses to consider the needs of victims, and what can be done to make their recovery easier. This is not just about crossing the line into being offensive, it's about doing harm to people who have already suffered huge trauma.

So, I'm going to keep complaining about this kind of thing, in the hope that at some point, it will make a difference.

(On a side-note there's a tangentially related article here by always brilliant Heather Corrina about how men can prevent rape, which I meant to link to ages ago.)

(Also, at some point I shall have another rant about the fact that the panelists on shows like this are nearly always white and nearly always male.)

And she was doing so well...

2008-09-17T10:54:00.000+01:00

I found this Ted talk about school lunches by Ann Cooper, and I was really worried it would be scaremongering about the 'obesity crisis', like lots of other comment on this issue. Mostly it's not. She focuses on health rather than weight. The reforms seem to be based around teaching children what healthy food is like, rather than what their bodies need to look like . Which is something both very needed and very rare. I also like the way she links healthy eating both too environmental and social justice issues.

However, I'm uncomfortable with the way that she illustrates the idea of an 'XXL' generation with a picture of an overweight child. She so nearly demonstrated the possibility of talking about health issues without resorting to fat-shaming. But her campaign still sounds a heck of a lot better than most of the ideas out there aimed at improving the 'health' of school kids.

Baby rant.

2008-09-02T10:07:00.000+01:00

Bad BBC. No biscuit. Headless naked pregnant woman's torso is not an appropriate picture.

(Also, I dislike the phrase 'mums-to-be' in this context. Not sure why.)

Edit: Clicking through the related stories it seems that most pregnancy related stories have picture of a heavily pregnant headless woman with her hand on her belly. Oh, apart from the ones about alcohol consumption during pregnancy, in which case she's holding a drink. Arrgh.

(For other examples of like this and very interesting analysis see here and here . And also general credit to Hoyden about Town for making me think about images like this.)

Comment Policy.

2008-08-13T14:25:00.000+01:00

Short version - my blog, my rules.

Long version -
1) Make sure you've actually read what I've written before you comment.

2) Be nice.

3) If you disagree with me and I don't have enough mental energy to get into an argument with you, I will delete your comment. That may seem harsh, but it's an act of self-preservation.

And other things.

2008-08-08T20:54:00.000+01:00

Having thought about it, this blog shall also be for the more personal things which I'm just not comfortable mixing in with the trivial silly stuff on my other blog.

Things like living with a mental illness. The politics around mental health and invisible disabilities is something very important to me, and very personal. And something I've been very reluctant to talk about on my other blog, for various reasons.

First post.

2008-08-05T11:37:00.000+01:00

Hello! This blog is for the more serious political posts, which may or may not be cross-posted to my other blog.