Theresa May? Come on!

Does anybody know what on earth was going through the heads of the Fawcett Society when they decided to recruit Conservative MP Theresa May to speak at their Inspiring Women event? I can't think of anything less inspiring or less feminist than listening to the women responsible for the Tory's highly offensive 'Shoes, Shopping and Politics event'. And paying for the privilege to have my inteligence insulted! The event also clashes with Abortion Right's Pro-choice National Lobby, which I would suggest everyone should attend instead. Perhaps I'll write to the Fawcett Society and tell them what I think. Do other people find this a little beyond the pale?

Women=objects=family values

This is an election advertisment for the US Republican party developed for the recent election which they thankfully lost. Fair to say this churns my stomach. Clearly, the assault of this woman and ‘family values’ are discursively tied together. Yet another example of woman’s bodies representing honour, family, virtue etc rather than having meaning themselves. The message is that women assaulted by men are no longer ‘virtuous’ and therfore they are ‘destroyed’ objects. This is incredibly offensive and tiresome. The comments on Alas, a blog (which I know nobody reads after the whole porn fiasco) look like they need a bit of a feminist shake up. Add yours here

I'm going to start posting more of this garbage because I need to get away from my pay-gap Fawcett style feminism and into more feminist cultural representation/image deconstruction.

Global Conference on Abortion 2007

This just came through on the email, and I'm so excited! Even though it's a year away, lol. Hope I'll still be in the UK to get behind it.

November 2006

Marie Stopes International

Global Conference on Abortion

23-24 October 2007

Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre Westminster

It's to mark the 40th Anniversary of the 1967 Abortion Act in the UK (itself a paternalistc piece of legislation which we need to lobby to change). The conference will not address the clinical issues around abortion, but will instead call on governments, funders, and decision makers from the UK, Europe and in the developing world to do something concrete to reduce the appalling loss of life due to unsafe abortion.

At least 70,000 women die every year due to unsafe abortion.

Despite all the rhetoric, promises and international commitments to reduce maternal mortality and provide women everywhere with access to quality sexual and reproductive health services, this death toll has remained unchanged for decades. This will be a great opportunity to lobby governments, hold them accountable and put abortion at the top of the national and international agenda!

For more information, please contact Tony Kerridge on+44 (0)20 7574 7353 or Diana Thomas on +44 (0)20 7574 7416 or email press@mariestopes.org.uk

If you are interested in attending this event, please contact LauraBrownlee on0207 324 4372 or email laura.brownlee@neilstewartassociates.co.uk

Gumtree nightmares

I'm once again going through the trauma that is flat-hunting in London, which means revisting the awful yellow and green website that I think everybody dreads. I've become quite taken with my lovely London Bridge place, but will probably end up heading north once again. Although, it is definitely cooler on the 'bad' side of the river. One thing is for sure, I must resist all antipodean flat shares!

Positively Women!

Positively Women is an organisation I have recently come across in regards to AIDS research and services. It's World Aids Day on the 1st of December, and I am looking at helping out in some capacity. I'd never heard of them before, but it looks like they do great work helping women who are living with HIV/AIDS in London. Plus they are the only national charity giving specific support services to women and families with HIV/AIDS!

So if you're thinking of distributing ribbons and the like on the day, it might be a very cool feminist thing to go through them and maybe donate some cash at the same time.

email amailey@positivelywomen.org.uk

website http://www.positivelywomen.org.uk/index.html

Uncovered meat and short skirts

Decent article in the latest edition of the New Statesman about rape and the disgraceful comments from an Australian Muslim cleric that sexual assault is the fault of the victim. So incredibly tiresome that people stil have to come out and argue against views such as this. Though misogynistic views operate universally, it certain doesn't encourage me to return to the motherland any time soon!

http://www.newstatesman.com/200611060025

IKWRO Annual Conference on "honour killings"

There are at least twelve murders in the name of 'honour' every year in Britain!

IKWRO are holding a conference on "honour" killings on the 1st December 2006 at the Amnesty International Human Rights Action Centre. The conference will be a place for learning from different experiences, with case studies, discussion and networking. It's only £10 to attend, just email them to book.

The underlying purpose of “honour crimes” is to maintain men’s power in families and communities by denying women basic—and internationally recognized—rights to make autonomous decisions about issues such as marriage, divorce, and whether and with whom to have sex, in order to control female sexuality and reproductive function.

Download a location map, as well as flyers and posters to advertise the event as much as possible!

Stop the anti-choice offensive!

Please see the following press release from Abortion Rights regarding the very important pro-choice national lobby coming up later this month:

Public meeting 22nd November, 7pm — 9pm Room 10, House of Commons, Westminster

All pro-choice supporters welcome!

Speakers include:

• Polly Toynbee Guardian Columnist
• Dr Kate Paterson MRCOG, NFFP Consultant in Community Gynecology and Reproductive Health
• Laura Moffatt MP Labour Party
• Not-yet-announced Liberal Democrat MP
• Jacqui Lait MP Conservative Party
• Lorene Fabian AMICUS
• Rebecca Gill TUC Women's Officer
• Kat Stark NUS Women’s Officer

Following two years of relentless and misleading media campaigning, the anti-choice lobby has now turned to drive its dangerous agenda through parliament. Notwithstanding the defeat of a cynical anti-choice backbench bill at the end of October, the anti-choice lobby has pledged to continue with a Private Members’ Bill, an Adjournment debate and a Westminster Hall debate. The strategy is designed to ratchet up pressure for incremental restrictions in women’s crucial abortion rights – starting with later abortion.

This public meeting in Parliament, on the eve of the ballot for a Private Members’ Bill, is an opportunity to send a strong message to MPs that any attempts set back women's rights will be met with widespread and determined opposition. We look forward to seeing you there. Please email info@abortionrights.org.uk to register your place and for further details.

Organised by Abortion Rights. Abortion Rights is supported by: T&G, FBU, CWU, AMICUS, BECTU, UNISON, ASLEF, RMT, UCU, TSSA, NAPO, NUS Women’s Campaign and many others. Abortion Rights and NUS Women's Campaign are also organising an opportunity for you to lobby your MP and take part in a media photo event during the day.

Anti-choice Tory Bill voted down!

Conservative MP Nadine Dorries' Ten Minute Rule Bill to have the abortion time limit reduced was overwhelming defeated in the House of Commons this week! Yay!

Labour MP Chris McCafferty argued against the Bill, and she correctly stressed that the best way to reduce abortions was through improving access to contraception and providing better education for both men and women about sexual health. Despite the Bill's defeat, many MPs did vote in favour of further restricting women's reproductive rights, 108 in fact, which is quite depressing. This makes the upcoming Abortion Rights pro-choice lobby even more important!

I watched the verdict live online at work and it was a truly wonderful result. You can read the two speeches here and even re-watch the live footage here. Note the sneaky use of pro-choice pro-feminist rhetoric used in Dorries' speech, frightening.

If you want a good cackle read Nadine Dorries blog were she comes across as a complete flake. In it she makes the claim that many extremist pro-choice groups have been harassing her. Considering there is only one pro-choice national lobby organisation, Abortion Rights, and they only have two staff members, I find this quite hard to believe. Especially considering harassment techniques are routinely deployed by the anti-choice lobby, not us.

Bring on Abortion on Demand!

Sex trafficking in Iraq

Came across this disturbing article whilst wasting time at work on Alternet. Why people are surprised at this I don't know. As if war was ever beneficial for women! Did people seriously beleive that Iraq would be different?

http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/mcewan/43434

European Women's Lobby petition

EWL CARE CAMPAIGN AND PETITION: “Advancing equality between women and men through the better provision of care services in European Union” – The EWL electronic petition calls for action at national and European level to advance equality between women and men through the provision of affordable, accessible and high quality care services in the European Union.

The Petition is available for signing until International Women's Day (8th March) 2007.

YOU CAN JOIN THE CAMPAIGN AND SIGN THE PETITION ON EWL WEBSITE: http://ewl.horus.be/site/form_3.asp

Sticking it to the man

Inspired by Adhesively Unchallenged, Stick it! .. to the patriarchy, and Charliegrrl I have decided to enter the world of feminist stickering. Though they have a strong anti-lad mags focus (which I applaud) I've decided to branch out and make my own stickers to match my own feminist politics. I'm trying to hunt down some classic feminist slogans (beyond 'the personal is political') to mix in with those more in tune with what's going on politically at the moment. The Spivak quote below, for instance, is for me to stick on the those awful articles in the free London papers about Muslim women and the veil. Hopefully this will make my journey to work in the morning feel like some sort of stealth mission, rather than the aching boredom that it usually is. And just maybe, someone will read it when I get off the train.

Hopefully I can get my camera working again by the end of the week so I can post pics. Otherwise, here are the ideas for slogans I have so far:

General
Women deserve better
Herstory: The greatest story never told
I'll Be A Post-Feminist In The Post-Patriarchy
Listen to women for a change
Did you know? Random feminist fact

Anti-Porn
Porn tells lies about women

Female sexuality does NOT look like this

Pro-choice
Abortion on Demand
Pro-choice is Pro-life

Body Issues
Riots not diets
Women: don't be afraid to take up space

Feminist Quotes
White men saving brown women from brown men (Spivak) Where are women's voices?

For those who want to join the feminist stickering group, you can pick up some special sticker paper at Rymans, though it's quite expensive at around seven pounds. I might try Stationary Box instead. Microsoft Word has lots of templates to fit American Avery stickers, but just match them up against the English versions on the Adhesively Unchallenged website.

Happy stickering!

P.S I was think of maybe including this blog address in small print on the stickers to generate publicity, but I'm thinking now that it might be too much. Might have to build up to it.

Over and out feministas xx

Feminist Fightback 2006

OK so today I went to the Feminist Fightback conference at SOAS. Very interesting. I didn't get there until half three because I had popped along to the Tate Modern. Had lots of fun pushing past huge slide queues on my way to the Guerilla Girls exhibition in the permanent collection. Got distracted buying the pink (I never wear pink) t-shirt about women artists which you can see above. Outrageous at 20 pounds, but I really wanted it.

So anyway back to the conference, to say that this was my first real experience of socialist feminists should give you some indication of how I felt. I really am a liberal white over-educated middle-class feminist, this conference forced me to admit it. The closest I have come to socialism was reading a couple of biographies about Lenin and Trotsky. I am admittedly too ignorant about this strand of feminism. My biggest revelation is probably that I have a huge tendency towards lobbying for legislative and policy change in government, which obviously isn't part of their main agenda.

The session on female sexuality was bloody tense to put it mildly. Rape, prostitution, bondage, censorship it was all there. There was some kind of rigid question taking system which no one adhered to because the debates were quite heated and often profoundly personal. Lots of talk of 'sisters' and 'comrades' which I am not at all used to. Abby Lee, author of the blog/book Girl with a One-track Mind was there giving her first public appearance since the Sunday Times 'outed her'. For someone who wasn't an academic I probably enjoyed her speech the most. Probably because everyone else seemed to have rape fantasies; which, though I tried to keep an open mind, creeped me out.

I only stuck around for the abortion rights session because it was raining outside, but I'm glad that I did because it was a much more cohesive exercise. Everyone was obviously pro-choice, but it annoyed me how they kept referring to a 'pro-life movement'. My position is that I'm both pro-choice and pro-life. I don't want everyone to have abortions, I want there to be adequate sex education and sexual health services so that they aren't needed. Above all I don't want to be infantalised and I want complete control over my reproductive decisions and my own body. I was going to propose that we dispense with using 'their' language and call them what they are - anti-choice, but we ran out of time. It's a little discursive shift but it emphasizes that the issue is about choice rather than life/death.

There was also a suggestion that we ask for 'abortion on request' rather than 'abortion on demand' because the latter sounds too forceful. But I was thinking on the walk home that if we consider autonomy over our own bodies to be a right, then 'demand' is the correct term. I certainly don't 'request' any other basic human rights (which I consider abortion on demand to be). Anyway, there was an excellent suggestion that we stop being reactionary to anti-choice legislative challenges and propose our own Early Day Motion for abortion on demand. This really fired me up and I'll keep blogging about what happens with this in the future.

I hate Ruth Kelly...

....so this made me laugh.

Backlash: Why Women?

Backlash: The Hidden War on Women in the UK sounds like it's going to be a really inspirational event. And if you work for a women's organisation it's absolutely vital in lobbying the government to recognise the importance of the UK women's sector. It's on Wednesday 1st November at Amnesty Interntaional UK's Human Rights Action Centre 17-25 New Inn Yard, London EC2A 3EA. It's completely free but you do have to book first, just email info@wrc.org.uk.

If you'd like to distribute the poster you can find it here

Cancelled feminist events

I was really looking forward to attending a couple of feminist events this month that have been cancelled (through no fault of the organisers). Firstly, I have been writing a brief about objectification of women in the media, so the Object demo outside Parliament on the 20th of October was already in my diary. Now it has been cancelled because Claire Curtis-Thomas' Sexually Explicit Materials bill has been denied a second reading, despite cross-party support, due to 'lack of time'. This is so incredibly frustrating. Despite my qualms about the specific nature of the bill (ie. that lad mag images are bad for children rather than bad in and of themselves) it was still a great opportunity to get this issue back on the national agenda. Despite Object's efforts, it does sort of feel like the bill has died. Which basically means I went out and bought Zoo and Nuts for no reason.

The second event was the 'Prostitution: what should be done?' talk at the Women's Library which will thankfully be re-scheduled for the New Year. I might just pop along in the next couple of weeks to the Prostitution exhibition, because I should really know more about Josephine Butler (and sex trafficking) than I currently do.

Feminists Fighting Fees

If you're a UK student then you should definitely be attending the National Union of Students National Demonstration on Sunday 29th October. The march begins at Malet Street near ULU and continues all the way to Trafalgar Square. Mostly the demo will be about campaigning against top-up fees, but you can find more information on the Admission: Impossible website.

For budding student feministas out there, I would encourage you all to come along and carry one of the NUS Women's Campaign's placards which read 'Feminists Fighting Fees!'. Basically, the persistent gender wage gap (currently at 17% full-time) means that student debt disproportionately affects female students more than male. Hence the need to campaign against more fees. As someone in debt $15,000 to the Australian government, I can confirm that higher education fees are not fun. I shall, however, be staying in the UK to avoid having to pay them :-)

Postsecret

I am thoroughly addicted to Postsecret a great website which is pretty self-explanatory - you create an artistic postcard which tells your biggest secret, send it to a guy in America, and he puts it up on the web.

The great part though, is that it's a big community project where people write supportive messages or share similar stories. It might sound kind of naff, but when you have really serious secrets like this one on the left, it really forces you to have a reaction. It makes me think that human beings aren't all complete bastards when people start posting domestic violence helpline numbers and telling people they aren't alone.

There are new postcards online every Sunday, which is my weekly therapy. You can also buy the books online, there's a new one out in a couple of weeks which contains postcards which haven't been on the site.

(I also love that capitalist impulse to make some quick $$$)

Amnesty International - Protect the Human

From the 14th to the 2oth of October is Amnesty International's Protect the Human week. It seems to be mostly a conscious-raising campaign where you wear a badge and send off a lot of postcards. I got my badge today from the gumball machine in reception at work and I'll be wearing it on my coat all week. You can buy one or get a 'virtual' free badge here

Profile Picture

OK, so not quite sure why I've chosen Lucy Van Pelt, I'm not even that much of a Peanuts fan. The image just made me laugh. It was a toss up between this and a daschund wearing a hotdog outfit.