Why are we teaching children to be fascist?

I had a conversation with my three year old recently that went something like this:

Her: Let's build a castle.

Me: OK

Her: you build it and I do this

She starts to pretend to preen herself in an imaginary mirror. I pile up six pillows 

Her: Do I look pretty mummy?

Me: I think you are pretty intelligent, pretty creative, pretty amazing. You going to climb up?

She eagerly clambers atop the pile

Her: You need to climb my hair cause I can't get down 

Me: Why can't you climb down? 

Her: You need to climb up my hair though.

Me: But that would hurt you, don't you think. I reckon you are clever enough to climb down on your own. 

She climbs down looking pleased with herself

Me: Well done. See you can do it.

Her: Now you be stuck in the tower and I climb up your hair.

Me: But that would hurt if you climbed up my hair.

Her (Stroking my hair) : But it's ok now it's yellow.

Me: Come on let's both climb up

Silliness ensued.

I moved on from the yellow comment because it threw me so much. I would love to know where my daughter picked up in so much detail the story of Rapunzel. I was very glad to have the opportunity to present an alternative reading of the story and as she get's older I'll continue to offer a critique.

But it saddened my soul that we are clearly teaching fascism to three year olds. My three year old thinks it is preferable to have blond hair. Just reflect upon that. Can we please stop telling children these horrific tales of violence and prejudice.

Dear World

Dear World,

I am writing to you because you are a very dear friend and I am under the impression you are not 100% at ease and really quiet worried about us. We are very grateful for your concern but feel it is quiet misplaced. 

When I was going on maternity leave with my first child with no job to return too due to lack of funding, I didn't get the overwhelming impression that you were concerned about 'what I would do'. It seemed it was a for-gone conclusion. I was now a 'mother' that was work enough.

My best friend was concerned, but we quickly learned not to discus it around you world, lest we be chastised for not considering devoting yourself to your children as important. (Something we never said or thought)

Now that same best friend is going on paternity leave which I am gathering world is making you extremely anxious. It would seem that you are deeply concerned about him 'not working' and taking time to devote to his children possibly a 'waste' of his talents and skills.

Do you see the contradiction?

It would seem to us dear world that you are defining us in a way we do not wish to be defined. You are defining me by my relational status and aforementioned best friend by what he does. Neither of us wish to be defined by either of these things. It will be messier and less simple but we think you will be richly rewarded if you get to know us as we are with all our contradictions and frailties. 

And instead of becoming anxious by the choices we are making why not use them to catalyse your own imagination of what might be possible.

In deepest love

Me :)

British bank notes - Gender and class politics played out

Pride, Not Prejudice, we did it! 35K signed on @UKChange & @bankofengland will put a woman on banknotes http://ow.ly/i/2GVq6 

Is filling me twitter feed. Is it only me who feels a little deflated by this. Yes we have kept a woman on a bank note and the swap will happen at the same time as losing Elizabeth Fry from the £5. But lets be careful not to confuse a woman on a bank note with women on bank notes. There are 4 notes are there not and will still only be one woman (aside from the Queen). 

I did sign the campaign and am incredibly relieved that women have not been lost altogether and grateful to those women who tirelessly led the campaign at great cost to themselves, but at most this represents a stalling if not a slight regression and certainly not progress. Elizabeth Fry was an activist and reformer who called out abuse and exposed oppression. Jane Austin wrote love stories, which however subversive or radical they might have been at the time probably represent a message to women today to conform to a worldview that regards achieving matrimonial bliss and securing Mr Darcy and his large house as women's primary goal in life.

I am more interested in the outcomes of a review of selection policy which has also been announced and how that policy is implemented.  Currently the criteria requires that candidates be uncontroversial but Churchill made it through. How can anyone do anything significant and not be controversial? Churchill wasn't just the PM during the second world war he also fiercely opposed Indian independence and was no friend to women's suffrage, hardly. It is his memory which is supposedly uncontroversial not him himself.

Is it only me who in this age of cuts and shameless right wing propaganda feels uneasy that as a replacement for the social reformer Elizabeth Fry we have Winston Churchill. It just feels like a bit more hiding of a certain British history. Just like we saw at the jubilee and Thatchers funeral the right speak a narrative of our shared history many of us don't feel we share.

So sorry for not joining the party but while Jane Austin may have some feminist elements I can't see it as a massive achievement. Especially when she's got on at the expense of Elizabeth Fry - we should not have to have an either/or. Patriarchy pitting woman against each other on our bank notes. 

I know I'm spoiling the party. Sorry.

Not a Princess

My daughter (2&1/2) announced yesterday that she was a princess. This was inevitable, but I had not thought it would come so soon. I informed her that she was not and reminded her of her name. She then started singing the wheels on the bus, life moves on fast at 2. But it did make me think I need to pre think some strategies for tackling this one as it continually raises its head over the next few years. 

The timing of this comment was interesting since there is also another child born recently who will not be a princess but will most probably, though finally getting a republic is always a possibility, become a prince. I have to say that along with Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett I also feel a slight sense of relief that the royal baby is male and will not have to suffer being a princess.

Anyway in search of advice I went to twitter, and while I received some excellent suggestions much was about how to re-define or reshape what a princess is. I'm not sure I want to. I think I'd rather make being a princess an unattractive option. Also I don't want to lie to my daughter. I am not royal so she will never be a princess. I could say that princess can run around, climb trees, wear trousers, but they can't. Kate cannot wear what she wants, say what she wants, eat what she wants, yesterdays revolting issue of OK proves that. 

Also there is the danger of simply replacing one stereotype with another. I don't know if my daughter will enjoy climbing trees yet and I don't want her confronted with the options of pink princess or 'tom boy' princess. I'd rather she could just be her in any combination of interests and abilities she enjoys. 

It is not just the gender stereotyping of princess that I find so difficult but also the inherent hierarchy we cannot all be princess. As much as I love Brave and watch it with my little one repeatedly I'd much rather it ended with the king abdicating and setting up a democratic co-operative community. 

There is too much, competition, I'm the best, look at me, in children's media and for girls princess seems to be the ultimate expression of that. Princess also teaches our daughters to place the highest value in their appearance to the exclusion of other attributes. And not their appearance for their own enjoyment creativity or self expression, their appearance as measured by how sexually attractive they are to adult men. Which is why I would rather expose princess for what they really are (slowly and in an age appropriate way) than redefine princess as something a little more diverse. 

It's going to be hard work.

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.'

Two Books on Women

 

I recently read 'How to be a Woman' by Caitlin Moran followed fairly immediately by 'A year of Biblical Womanhood' by Rachel Held Evans. I'm glad I read them this way round! It struck me that there were some interesting differences and notable contrasts that I wanted to share with the world.

I think I might start backwards. Both authors conclude that there is not and shouldn't be a prescribed way to be a woman. For Evans book this felt like the natural conclusion to her discussion. I felt the narrative learnt from the experience of other women from a diversity of cultural experiences and approached such learning with a humble heart. Yet it stayed authentically itself and gave me as the reader permission to do so as well.

Moran's book however irritated me most of the way through. It was essentially an autobiography but despite it's beginning and conclusion about the diversity of female experience I couldn't help but feel I was being told that this was or should have been my experience as well. Especially the stuff around adolescents. 

Both books reference other women who have fought similar battles before and have begun to forge a way and in who's path we follow as well as contemporaries. Evan's does so with great respect and gratitude to those 'Women of Valour' both past and present. One of her final resolutions is to identify and praise women of valor. 

Moran by contrasts dismisses most of her contemporaries, including Object and even Greer as having become irrelevant.  The only woman who comes of relatively well is Lady Gaga.  While Evans writing humbly acknowledge's the work of those who have gone before. Moran writes 'When Simone de Beauvoir wrote one is note born a woman one becomes a woman - she didn't know the half of it.' Hmm.

Moran repeatedly says that woman have done very little (even nothing) over the last 100,000 years, while men she claims have made great achievements in science, art politics and repeatedly in her long lists she includes empire. I find it very problematic to list empire in with a list of great advancements without any deconstruction or critique of the very idea of empire. Evan's by contrast retells the stories of many great women's achievement both biblical and extra biblical. She also on occasion broadens her critique not just to hierarchy between genders but the idea of hierarchy at all in any context.

Both repeatedly use the word 'Lady'. I have written about my dislike of the word here. Evans however only ever used it in contexts where, had she been talking about men she may well have said gentlemen. Generally when she was talking about people and only once directed to the readers. Moran however got right up my noise by continually giving instructions to her readers preceded by calling them to attention with 'Ladies!'. 

Both authors while not writing a book about violence against women and the global situation do reference it. Evans to put her own struggles and difficulties in perspective. Moran to explain that the problem with modern feminism is that it is focused on these things while ignoring things like glossy magazines and pants being too small.

Both authors once mention the Vietnam war, both use it for illustrative purposes. In the case of both books I have forgotten what was being described! Evan's I remember said that some group of people discussed something - "Like veterans talk about 'Nam" I can't remember feeling it was inappropriate or offensive. I cannot remember the details of what Moran was talking about either save that it was about running away "faster than a Vietnamese boy covered in Nepalm". I wasn't expecting that sentence it kind of sprang at me from no where and made me feel positively sick.

Both authors discussed having children. Evan's wrote an honest and reflective account of her worries and fears about having children. She also explored issues around women's relationship with parenting and the difficulty of living in a world which defines women in relation to children and explored the duff theology in parenting as a woman's highest calling. Moran on the other hand wrote 'Childbirth gives women a gigantic set of balls'. To be fair on Moran this is not all she said and she did also point out that there are a variety of life experiences that can change and shape us. But it's almost that that makes these bizar one lines so problematic there is an inconsistency in her writing.

Both authors mention their vagina's. Evans in a discussion about teenage experience of church teaching on sex.  Famously there was big discussions about how that would affect christian bookshops and whether they were willing to stock the book or not. As far as I am aware there where no such discussions as to the inclusion of the c word which I can't even bring myself to write, but that's apparently what Moran calls her vagina.

Both books made me laugh out loud. Moran's book also made me shout and swear. Evan's book also made me cry. Moran's book left me with an overwhelming sense of frustration. Evan's book left me peaceful and wiser. 

A need for feminist research into neurodiversity

I have been brewing on this blog for a while. To be honest I just want to cry about it all. It all started a few months ago when life just became very very difficult. Not for any massive reason other than a dawning realisation that there are some parts of parenting I am not and probably never will be any good at and then a realisation that my partner was not going to be able to compensate as he too was not particularly good at, what from our point of view are miss-named, 'basic life skills'. 

Things like knowing what day it is, what your meant to be doing, where the nappies are kept, remembering appointments, spare clothes other parents names. I think one of my lowest points was 10 minutes after leaving the house realising I'd forgotten to put trousers on my child. 

The difficulties I've been confronted with in becoming a parent (which I've blogged about here) made me look again at the realities of being dyslexic (and having a very poor short term memory) and lead me to discover the concept of neurodiversity. Viewing my dyslexia/dyspraxia/ADHD as a diversity issue rather than a pathology fits my politics very very well. I started to read up (or more accurately listen up) and became more and more interested in the idea and the potential consequences to policy and practice within education if we adopted a neurodiversity model. I found this film particularly helpful if you have a spare 4 hours!

I tell you all this just as background to another common theme I unearthed. On many many websites I read that dyslexia/dyspraxia/ADHD where more common in boys than girls. I was always going to read such things with caution - and it appears rightly so because while many authoritative individuals and organisations report these claims I also unearthed evidence to the contrary. 

Dyslexia
The dyslexia association website says:
Recent research indicates that boys and girls are equally affected but our data suggests that three times as many boys as girls receive additional teaching because of their dyslexia.

I know my mother had to fight to get my primary schools to take my learning differences seriously. I was incredibly blessed my my secondary school taking it seriously. I've been speaking to other parents of girls who are likewise facing an uphill struggle in their advocacy. Mostly because their daughters are 'well behaved'.

ADHD
Again all over the place it states that boys are more likely to have ADHD than girls. But if you listen to the frustrations of people with ADHD about the policing of their behaviour, the telling off for moving, the admonistrations for not listening (When it's not that your not listening its just your not making eye contact), it is very obvious very quickly that girls with ADHD will have their behaviour doubly policed. 

Then there is this website. Which says it all really - girls internalising and boys externalising. All very depressing.

Dyspraxia 
I found no similar hidden research about dyspraxia, though it may well be out there. However on the list of signs and indicators dislike of team games and sport in general seem most prominent. Doesn't take a lot to hypothesis that it would be quiet probable that this contributes to the great diagnosis in boys. Girls who don't like sport are hardly going to be seen as having specific difficulties.

Autistic Spectrum Disorders 
Now here I really am in the realm of my own theorising. It interests me that their are some quarters that refer to the autistic brain as the extream male brain. Given the above; are we here too either not noticing signs and indicators in girls and women or is the way we raise boys (their is lots of evidence to say we talk to baby boys less, assess their emotions worse, leave them to cry for longer) putting them at greater risk of developing certain difficulties. 

In the four hour video I mentioned earlier it claims that in the states the Neurodiverse are the most over-represented minority group in both the prison population and the unemployed population. If this is true then it needs to be a feminist issue, it is certainly an issue of intersectionality. And if we take a social model of learning disabilities, then we should expect the manifestations of learning differences to appear differently in young men and young women since they very clearly exist in such different environments.

I can't tell you how troubled I am about this, but the intersection of learning differences and gender need to be researched by feminists or we will continue to horribly fail a certain group of girls and young women in the education system. 

I was incredibly lucky. My school invested in me so that the 11 year old with a reading age of 8 and writing age of 7 got to Cambridge I dread to think what would have happened had I not had that. 

Please please somebody do some research and let me know about it.

The Dyslexic Parent

I always used to pause when filling in job applications at that bit that asks if you have any disabilitys that affect daily life.

Do I? I'd wander - some days, but others not. Is it really suvear enough, what if I'm just making it up. Will they look at my cv see I went to uni and think I'm therefore exaggerating or making it up. Will they think it just means I can't spell?

I'm never going to hesitate again. Not since becoming a parent.

I didn't read many parenting books but of the bits I did read none of them mentioned any particular difficulties you might experience as a dyslexic parent and there's not a lot of stuff out there on dyslexia websites either, though when I posted a question in a forum it seems I am far from alone in my particular struggles.

Through life I have managed to develop coping mechanisms, these are utterly inadequate for organising 2 lives. I forget stuff and people say 'don't worry its just baby brain' I think 'you have no idea'. Before my daughter was born getting out the house having remembered my phone, keys, wallet, diary and bus pass without leaving windows open and the door unlocked was a major achievement as was getting through a week without forgetting something in the oven. 

Organising 2 lives is nigh impossible. I'm not sure I've once left the house without forgetting something. I'm finding it incredibly stressful. But we get through somehow and are very good at learning to improvise when we forget clean nappies, spare clothes, a drink etc. She hardly notices now (though I try to hide it from other parents cause I feel so incompetent) but I'm getting nervous about getting to school in a few years time without something significant.

Then people say have you thought about schools? And I think in my head - yes I have little panic attacks about it every time anyone mentions it. Then I have to remind myself that she's not me, she might love primary school, she might be able to spell. Then I feel a bit sad cause secretly I kind of hope she is because on good day's I'm chuffed to bits I'm dyslexic. Then I think actually I really don't want her to go through what I did. Then I worry cause she's 21 months and still can't walk and only just to crawl. 

So at the moment I am deffinately dyslexic and it deffinately affects my day to day life - and my daughters. Which lead me to do a bit of reading up and I have become absolutely appalled at reading that girls are just as likely to be dyslexic but 3 times less likely to receive support. 

I experientially know why this is. My mum was constantly told not to worry cause I was behaving well. The way we gender our children is clearly going to mean girls who are struggling at school won't have the same assertiveness and are likely to be overlooked because they are being 'well behaved' while boys who've had 'naughty' and 'trouble' written across them since they where born and who have been trained to have no weaknesses are going to kick up and 'behave badly' and are more likely to get help. 

I imagine also that girls will have extra incentive to keep quiet and head down because they will get extra told off about messy writing and not being tidy. 

 I cannot explain how angry I am about this.  

   

The essence of F***

‘I had to fake it till I made it’ is Rhianna’s explanation for how she became ‘so comfortable in her sexuality’, a sexuality which Esquire magazine described as ‘the very essence of F***’.  I think I found these statements some of the most disturbing of the whole interview.  Essentially it was a discussion not about the individual life choices and experiences of one 24 year old but a moment, for those who could see it, of real honesty about the pornification of the music industry and indeed the universe.

There have been a lot of responses that have raised concern about Rhianna’s comments about her relationship with Chris Brown, jumping to reiterate that abuse is never acceptable and berating Rihanna for not giving a more nuanced  response, especially since she was a ‘role model’. But even if she had given a model response would we want to be promoting her and by implication the industry she is involved in, as a role model.  

It makes no sense to say that Rhianna is comfortable in her own sexuality if she had to fake it until she made it. If she had to fake it, it is not her sexuality it is someone else’s, and is not about her pleasure, desire or sexual expression it is about someone else’s. But what choice did she have? As Gail Dines puts it the choice for many young women ‘is to be f***able or invisible’.

Rhianna was described as the very essence of ‘F***’ not ‘sex’, not ‘beauty’ not ‘love’ but ‘F***’ There is something in the word F*** that is inherently aggressive and violating.  The way we use the word reflects this. Have you ever heard anyone say ‘My love shall we have a F***’? It is rarely something mutual but normally describes one person doing something to another without consent and to the detriment of that person. I wonder if the pictures of Rhianna after Chris Brown assaulted her contributed to her ‘F*** essence’?

Rhianna stated that she was not sure that that was what she had been aiming for. I am fairly convinced it was exactly what many in the industry where aiming at for her and I’m not sure she really ever had a choice about how people would see her. But here we are, in a situation where the highest accolade for a woman is that she is the essence of ‘F***’.

Of course the other option available for women (though it is a little more niche and American) apart from invisible or ‘F***able’ is to be virginal, so virginal in-fact that you can’t even get raped and certainly can’t conceive from rape.

Is this why 50 Shades of Gray is so popular? I have to be honest I have not read it and do not intend to, but I have read substantial amounts about it. From what I gather the book is all about Ana becoming F***able and F***ed by a powerful, rich and controlling man. Women who have been so surrounded by pornified images and narratives, but for the most part still not able to overcome the social mores and watch porn, are perfectly able to read something penned by the hand of a woman (but really written years ago in the offices of Hustler et al.) that dresses itself up as a romance novel, and dream about gaining some value through becoming ‘F***able’.

And is this why so many people seem so confused about what rape is? ‘Cause clearly if a powerful man like Assange “inserts” (thanks George!) while you are asleep you have been ‘F***ed’ and should therefore be flattered. When ‘the essence of F***’ becomes the dictated ambition of women rape becomes a compliment.

It looks like the ‘essence of F***’ is here to stay impregnating every part of our lives, it looks like it is determined to be the dominant definition of what it is to be a woman, forcing all others into obscurity. But I for one refuse to be invisible and they can think of a million names to dismiss me with, but I will not become invisible.

I will not become invisible because I have unearthed other archetypes and role models, some in legend, some in story but my most favourite in scripture. A diversity of strong courageous diverse women who lived life on their terms creatively challenging the patriarchy around them and a Jesus who meet them on their own terms and offered them not 50 shades of ‘F****ed up’ but a celebratory rainbow of humanity. 

The pornification of childhood

My small daughter’s life is extremely edited.  She is likely to grow up thinking the only program on TV is Abney and Teal. She will have a surprise when she gets to school and discovers that the bedtime stories she’s come to love actually don’t have an equal representation of men and women and that the world is not a fair and egalitarian place.  And she will at some point encounter that horrifying narrative of the princess.

What has any of this got to do with porn? Well what I would like to argue is that:

1.) We use story and narrative to understand and explain the world and this is especially important to children.

2.) There is a particular narrative that Porn tells

3.) This narrative has been present in childhood for a very long time, but is now becoming more insidious and endemic and it primes children to accept and expect a porn narrative.

So what is the porn narrative? Essentially it is that women exist for the sexual pleasure of men and their worth is connected to how sexually attractive they are to men. Masculinity is defined by sexual violence and predatory conquest within the porn narrative. 

Recently I re-watched Disney’s Snow White. In an early scene Snow White is singing about wishing for the one she loves to find her, she is clearly not talking about someone she knows, she looks like a teenager. Suddenly an adult man appears beside her she is clearly frightened and runs away but then listens at the window flattered by the attention. We all know what happens at the end of the story, that while unconscious, having been drugged, this same man sexually assaults her and then they live happily ever after. (While we are at it Sleeping Beauty is the story of a women out cold, a strange man climbs through her window and sexually assaults her. This is not OK.) But that initial scene struck me as I had just finished Gail Dines’ chapter on the use of pseudo-child images and the narratives were very similar ‘At first she was nervous, but she wanted it really’.

So these storys we tell young girls and boys that normalise sexual violence and male ownership are far from new, but while they used to function to groom young girls into being submissive compliant wives who on getting wed discovered Cinderella had no better time of it in the happily ever, now we are seeing a narrative creep into childhood that has a slightly different angle. Building on the princess, girls are now taught that they must exude sexiness in order to please the men.

So enter beauty pageants (http://www.missminiprincess.co.uk/), Bratz by day Catz by night, (http://www.bratz.com/), pole dancing dolls, cute little playboy bunny’s everywhere, make up and high heels for toddlers, even Lego thinks a girls preoccupation should be beautifying herself (http://friends.lego.com/en-us/Products/Details/3187.aspx), and don’t even let me get started on Hannah Montana. While grooming our girls we equally groom our young men into a sense of privileged and a warped idea of masculinity. How many times have you seen 'naughty' 'trouble' etc written across toddlers just because they happen to be male. Boys watch the princess stories too and learn they are to be characterless thugs. Boys also play with dolls, only theirs come with weapons and biologically impossible muscles and a noticable absence of genitals.  

So the messages of porn are infecting early childhood, grooming and priming children so that as they enter adolescents their space and freedom to explore and discover their own sexuality is severely restricted. And now they are bombarded with normalising attitudes in magazines, television programs and even on occasion what purports to be objective positive information. Girls begin to experience sexual violence and intimidation in school environments and discover adults are ill equipped to respond and protect them, that victims get blamed and perpetrators get kudos. They begin to hate every part of their body because, like the all seeing eye in lord of the rings, the pornofied gaze is everywhere. The only option of validation left for a young woman is as a sexual object and the ultimate expression of masculinity for a young man is to perpetrate sexual violence.

I know some people think my anxiety about my own daughter and other childrens experience of childhood is misplaced, that it is not that dangerous or toxic environment I think it is, that body dismorphia and self loaving are not inevitable.  I agree, they are not, but in our current climate they are probable and I am not kidding myself about the kind of effort we need to make to provide an alternative storyline for young people.  Hugh Hefner himself said ‘I don’t care if a baby holds up a playboy bunny rattle’. So let’s not pretend that a powerful industry is not trying to groom the next generation of product and purchaser. 

Brilliant Brave

(Warning: contains a few spoilers)

Would you believe that I voluntarily went to see Disney's new princess film... and loved it, absolutely loved it. I cried nearly the whole way through. 

Recently I was lent a copy of 'The Women who Run with Wolves' I've hardly started but am immediately  captivated by the idea of the wild woman archetype. I think Brave provides just that. Here's a girl who run's with bears.

I loved the couple of occasions where her bear mother leap's forward to defend her. It was a fantastic picture of the Mother heart of God.

I loved that the relationship between the two women (Merida and Elanor) was the central theme of the film. That it was really real, that they both learnt from each other, that there was reconciliation and that together they managed to challenge and change a patriarchal system. 

I loved that there was no man coming to the rescue.

I loved that even the witch came off well, and the sense that she was really standing in solidarity with Merida.

I loved that the sibling rivalry/collusion between Merida and her brothers seemed normal and healthy and wasn't about gender.

I loved that there was nothing ever at any moment passive about Merida, that she 'went out and made her own fate.' 

But the bit I loved most was the moment when she stood up and claimed her right as a first born to compete (for her own hand). This is what I want for our dear daughters, not passive princess like waiting for some man to come rescue them, but a fearless reckless bravery that stands up and dares to claim its full inheritance in Christ. 

It felt like Disney was almost deliberately having a dialogue with itself. The part of the old princess archetype was played by Elanor, who clashes with the new (though the scenery and setting made it feel that she could also have been the ancient) archetype Merida. And this is not a story about one vanquishing the other, both learn from each other and new possibilities are opened up. Merida is not an archetype that requires us to be like her, but one that open's up new possibilities, new questions. One that will give permission to our daughters to be themselves.

This is a brilliant, brave and welcome statement from Disney. Thankyou. 

The Real Man

I've just been listening to a discussion on yesterdays women's hour when a man who's name I forget actually said that if his wife had consistently earned more than him over the years his penis would have fallen off. Later on he said he knew it wasn't very popular but he did believe in the concept of 'the real man'.

I would just like to echo that I absolutely believe in The Real Man.

The one and only really real human man lived 2000+ years ago and His name was Jesus. Jesus was both fully god and fully human, he was the most human human ever to live, he was also anatomically male. He wept, cared for children, cooked, washed people's feet oh and was financed by a group of women.

This is a short little rant and I think this guy was arguing from an evolutionary point of view, but it reminded me how pervasive the quest to be a 'real man' also is in Christian culture, and I just want to say, men stop trying to be real men and fix your eyes on The Real Man, join the human calling to become more like Jesus, and don't worry about your penises dropping off - they probably won't.

Unsistered

Anyone who has tried to occupy the space of being both Christian and feminist knows how uncomfortable and painful it can be. Being in spaces where you want to belong, where you should feel solidarity and instead feeling in limbo, unable to bring your full identity into those spaces. 


Hearing the word "christian" or the word "feminist" spat out with venom and almost always connected to words such as "right wing" or "radical" (quite why christians should be using the word radical as a swear word is beyond me!) is isolating. I am sure it is not only christian feminists who have these experiences. I am sure many feminists are made to feel excluded in places where they should be welcomed.


I have listened and re-listend to this a talk entitled “Theapalooza: The Rhetorical Turn in the Third Wave of Biblical Feminism” Presented by Dr. Alena Amato Ruggerio (http://www.eewc.com/audio/) because I think it contains much powerful wisdom about how we can use rhetoric to bring great understanding and freedom to ourselves and the church as a whole. In this talk she says 

"It is a feminist act to create new symbols to correspond to feminist references." 

She then explores how as christian feminists we could first identify our common experiences or references and give them symbols (that is words). She describes doing this with her students in a secular context and they developed a word which I love: "femafision" which they defined as the experience of patriarchy pitting women against each other.


So I decided that I wanted to name what I believe is a common experience for christian feminists that is the experience of being disallowed through attitudes and prejudice to exist as both christian and feminist and I want to name this as being "unsistered".


I am unsistered when my church family feel the need to dissociate themselves from the women's movement when discussing women's equality. I am unsistered when preachers use phrases such as 'unlike radical feminism...' I am unsistered when people don't ask me about work because they are nervous of my politics; I am unsistered when there is a refusal to confront patriarchy and male privilege. I am unsistered when feminist medium only ever uses the word "christian" with the phrase "right wing" or "religious fundamentalists", I am unsistered when there is language that presumes the non-existence of God, I am unsistered when people of faith are assumed to be oppressed and unenlightened. 


Please don't unsister me.

Ladies (yuk, cringe)

I can't believe I forgot this one on my post about words I don't like maybe because I get told I'm ridiculous every time I gently question its usage. I got an email today informing me that an event I was enquiring about was for ladies only. I cringed. 


So I'm really sorry if this offends anyone (actually I know it will so I want you to know that I do this because I believe it brings greater liberation to women - and transformation is painful) but I have to spell some things out because I am offended by the word Ladies and so are many other's and if the church wants to be an inclusive and welcoming place it needs to drop this language. 


I have no empirical data for this but I feel that there is sometimes an extra over-usage of this word in Christian literature/ events that are about women's equal ability to lead in church. I wonder if its one of the manifestations of our insecurities? We have to continually refer to ourselves as ladies just to make sure everyone's clear that we're still all floral and feminine as we step up into the full humanity Christ offers us. 


I'm assuming this use of the word Ladies is in ignorance of it's history and the passionate advocacy of that great Christian Feminists like Josephine Butler who fought to expose double standards in morality. 


So a brief summary of why we shouldn't use it:


1.) It's used to police women's behaviours
If your a woman can you remember being told to be ladylike when you where little? Or told not to do something because it wasn't ladylike? I think I've proved my point.


2.) It's used to remind women they are the property of men. 


3.) It is something other people assign to you and can strip from you. It is not about your own sense of personhood. This point was most powerfully driven home to me when I was at a women's group and heard a woman respond with much pain at being called a lady. She had clearly been told by others that she had not met the mark and was not a lady.


4.) I guess linked to the above but it's classist. 


5.) It is and has been used to divide women against each other


6.) Much like princess, ladies don't do anything.


7.) It holds us to a demanding moral code not the freedom of grace


8.) God never calls us lady


Someone sent me the link it's fab (http://www.vfa.us/Feminist%20Language.htm) but my two favourite quotes:


"Girls do what their mothers tell them. Ladies do what society tells them. Women make up their own minds" (Karen Kijewski, 1989).


And most importantly for the church:


"There is a difference between women and ladies. The modern parasites made ladies, but God Almighty made women" (Mother Jones, 1912)


Please do not refer to me as a lady.

Porn 2: Why men should be mad

So I wanted to call this post Feminists: a man's best friend, but someone pointed out to me that it could well be read to infer women are dog's which wouldn't be great!. But I just wanted to share with you a couple of things that were said at this amazing conference I was at that have got me thinking.

"Men, feminists are your best friends. We're the ones who don't think your born rapists, we're the ones who don't think you're born murderers. We're the ones who think your fully human."

I know a lot of men who don't feel like this, they feel that feminists hate them, are man eaters, want to castrate them and lock them up. Feminism is a broad group but from my experience this could not be further from the truth, we are talking about a group of people actively opposing violence and de-humanisation it would be a little hypocritical to want to do that to men. The problem lies I think in the fact that mostly there is little conversation between men in general and feminist discourse and what does happen is mediated by the press so that what people fear when they hear 'feminist' (and I have huge numbers of female friends who run from that label) is not feminism but a phantom created by the powers that be because actually they don't want men to realise what feminism is actually saying.

Why? because Patriarchy though it privileges all men all of the time it benefits some men some of the time and harms most men most of the time. Patriarchy is just hierarchy where only men get to be at the top, and only one type of man at that.

The second thing that was said that I wanted to share was this:

"Feminists are the ones who don't think your a life support machine for your penis"

That's what the porn industry thinks of you, it thinks you are a life support machine for your penis and your wallet, and it capitalises on that dark side of all of us that is capable and able to oppress.

It's time to get mad at how the porn industry manipulates and de-humanises you whatever your gender. This is the other thing you should know feminists don't want men to feel rubbish about being a man, we want you to feel good about it, we want you to get mad with us, mad at the dehumanising forces that squeeze us all into little boxes, so that,  in our current context, they can squeeze money out of us.

Men if your mad here's a couple of place you can go:  http://www.antipornmen.org/
http://www.whiteribboncampaign.co.uk/

Free Speech

One of the things I have been in turmoil about recently is what I think of free speech. I haven't come to an answer, but here are my rambling thoughts.


As an undergraduate a certain debating union invited Jean Marie La Pen to speak. There was outcry about this, opinions, anger and long words I didn't understand were thrown around. The repeated argument for, was that free speech was important. I couldn't help feeling that inviting someone to speak was slightly different to allowing people to say what they wanted. The other argument sited was that he would get torn apart by the audience, with overtones of 'Where else will he get so well scrutinised?'. Which I had a suspicion at the time and am now certain is just a touch arrogant.  


I couldn't quiet make up my mind what I felt, which is not something I felt I could admit (proving that speech isn't free!) as your meant to know everything when your 19 and headed off not sure whether I would go in or stand outside with the protesters. In the end I got there late so the decision was made for me, doors were closed and I was stuck with protesters, engaged in heated debate with other late students. I was repeatedly given a socialist workers party paper, asked to pay 50p, explained I had no money on me and gave paper back. This honestly happened about 3 times in a row. Was told by a woman wearing an anarchist bag that people who didn't believe in democracy shouldn't be allowed to engage in political debate and overall came away no more clear. 


It sounded from reports like it had been a bit of a farce inside with the translator clearly miss-translating and getting very angry when students replied in French. 


My thoughts about what extent we should allow free speech went on the back burner till last year and the whole ridiculous Terry Jones Koran burning thing. Watching the Americans with their hands tied unable to act because of an absolute commitment to free speech made me quiet glad to be European and have curbs on 'free speech'. 

But whether or not people are officially free to say what they like, speech is very very rarely free. The guardians 'comment is free' thing is not really true, it's a nice prophetic statement a hope of what could be but really we are very rarely free to say what we want, there are so many ways discourses are silenced. Inviting Strauss-Khan to the above mentioned institution may "provide a neutral platform for free speech" but what does it do for free speech on other platforms, what does it do for free true real narrative, how does it help people take back control of their own stories? How does it help us hear those stories that are true? 

The thing is you can talk but your speech is only free if its given permission to fly, to transform the world with all the power you gave it, much that is spoken is not free it is silenced, squashed, entrapped, belittled, mocked. And typically the powerful tend to be the ones with the power to determine which speech is freed and re-freed and repeated ad-nauseam so that no one can remember when it wasn't 'true' and it is the disempowered who's shouts become whispers by the ever squashing of the controllers of truth.  

If the Cambridge Union want to really 'provide a neutral platform for free speech' then they need to put a lot more effort into making their platform neutral and free.

I was incredibly moved by these honest and real words (link bellow, blog entry carries trigger warnings), that in no way were free they cost many people much to give but they gave them to the world, they gave them for free. Lets keep this speech free, don't let them silence and imprison this:   http://feministactioncambridge.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/i-am-still-shaking/comment-page-1/