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.