Shopping

I just did the weekly grocery shopping. It was quiet exciting. 

I have decided it is time to make public my new years resolution, which is to move our household to more sustainable patterns of living. I think I need to say it out loud and have it eternally recorded for the world to see because: 

1.) I am starting to struggle to separate online and offline worlds and have overwhelming urges to tweet every thought that passes through my head.

2.) It is a way of keeping myself accountable and motivated.

3.) Politicising housework might make me feel less demotivated about the whole thing.

So the first big project is grocery shopping. Today I went shopping and went only briefly into 1 supermarket (co-op) which didn't anyway have the mustard powder I was after. The whole process did take longer than had I popped to the local supermarket however I came home without a headache and a well exercised and now sleeping toddler. There where many other pleasing aspects too for example:

• When queuing to pay for my shopping at no point was I presented with an array of chocolates and sweets carefully positioned at children's eye view. In fact the only thing my daughter asked for was bread and a banana, both of which I was happy to supply.
• At the butcher (not quiet ready to tackle meet consumption yet) I witnessed one of the staff tacking the time to have a nice long chat with an older man who was sat having a cup of tea, I guess during his weekly shop. 
• I discovered at the green grocers that truffles are currently selling at around £4000 a kilo. I've got to find me some of them I thought. (I am aware that they are probably not growing in my garden but who knows!)
• The veg was considerably cheaper and better quality than it would have been in a supermarket, and not packaged.
• The fair trade rice and porridge I bought in the whole food shop was also cheaper than supermarket equivalent even though it was organic - mostly because I bought it lose. 
• I had a very nice chat about the relative ethics of two cleaning products. 
• No one asked me repeatedly if I wanted to use the self service check-out and then look at me baffled when I asked them if they realised it was taking their jobs.
• Everyone looked happy with life.
• I can be sure that the majority of what I spent will stay within the local economy.

So I appreciate these are very humble beginnings and we have a long long way to go, but it's a start and it's about habit changing and that takes practice. I'm aiming for a place where sustainable living is second nature. I'll keep you posted and would welcome guest posts on the subject. 

It's not a shortage of knives in the kitchen!

I believe in good men. I am married to one. I read a great blog today from a good man. It moved me deeply. It is profoundly feminist to believe in good men. We wouldn't do what we do if we didn't deeply believe in the whole complete humanity of men. 

I also believe in human men. Men who stay silent or laugh awkwardly at rape jokes. Men who feel nervous about the inevitable loss of power equality will bring. Men who have a serpision that they have privilege but aren't sure how to find out how it functions or what they should do about it.  Men who believe in the equality of women but still regularly speak over them.

Just as I don't understand what it means to be white, don't always take every opportunity to empty myself of that privilege because I'm human, fallible, selfish and negligent. But the call on my life is to move forward to grow, to change, to learn.

The challenge and offer of the women's movement  for men is full humanity because while some of us aren't free none of us are free. 

Bellow is an extract from a speech Andrea Dworkin gave to a group of male politicians. This international women's day I thought it was a great appeal that powerfully explains the relevance of the women's movement to men.

'The things the men's movement has wanted are things worth having. Intimacy is worth having. Tenderness is worth having. Cooperation is worth having. A real emotional life is worth having. But you can't have them in a world with rape....

You can't have equality or tenderness or intimacy as long as there is rape, because rape means terror. It means that part of the population lives in a state of terror and pretends--to please and pacify you--that it doesn't. So there is no honesty. How can there be? Can you imagine what it is like to live as a woman day in and day out with the threat of rape? Or what it is like to live with the reality? I want to see you use those legendary bodies and that legendary strength and that legendary courage and the tenderness that you say you have in behalf of women; and that means against the rapists, against the pimps, and against the pornographers. It means something more than a personal renunciation. It means a systematic, political, active, public attack. And there has been very little of that.

I came here today because I don't believe that rape is inevitable or natural. If I did, I would have no reason to be here. If I did, my political practice would be different than it is. Have you ever wondered why we are not just in armed combat against you? It's not because there's a shortage of kitchen knives in this country. It is because we believe in your humanity, against all the evidence.'