Get your hands off my flab!

New Year – new diet advice. The magazines are full of pictures of tiny women, ‘weight-loss wonder’ diets and ‘super foods’.  It is our national obsession with weight – you can’t escape it wherever you go. Now even the political sphere is entering the conversation, as Jo Swinson, Minister for Equality, criticises ‘fad diets and fitness myths’, even as a group of doctors call for a ‘Minister for Fatness’ and a think tank proposes that overweight benefits claimants should have their benefits cut unless they start exercising.

Everyone has an opinion on my body, what I do with it, and what I put into it. Mostly I should eat less, and especially less cream and cheese (Grazia would have a fit…)

Feminism is full of a backlash against this, preaching an incredibly positive message of loving your body and eating what you want, highlighting the ridiculousness of adverts that suggest we feel guilty for eating a yoghurt. On the other hand, there is the vitally important post by Squeamish Bikini (www.squeamishbikini.com - Weighting for Change), expressing her worries that this message too can be triggering for sufferers of eating disorders. Differing messages of weight, diet, and exercise bombard us everywhere we look.

This blog is not so much an impassioned piece of political commentary as a confused stream of personal thinking – I really don’t know how to feel about weight and exercise. And it isn’t just my confusion. A series of tweets by the lovely @popbadger appeared on my news feed yesterday and really resonated with me:  ‘Weird being back at the gym (in the changing room anyway). I was so nervous to come back that I sat in my car outside for 15 minutes.” She went on to question her motives for using the gym: “I think that I feel I’m letting down the feminist cause by wanting to change my body.”

I share this fear. I worry about tweeting about exercise and diets – I worry that I may inadvertently be triggering sufferers of eating disorders, I worry that people will read these tweets and look down on me for not being a “proper feminist”. I want to justify myself constantly with the fact that it is for health or sport reasons. “It’s not about being thinner!” I want to cry. But, in the interests of honesty, I must quietly whisper “but it is maybe a little bit about being thinner.” I am ashamed to admit that I like being slim (and I much prefer that word to ‘thin’) – and that I would like to remain so whilst eating all the cheese, roast potatoes, and creamy food my taste buds can take.

We live in a patriarchal society where we are constantly bombarded with images of women with unattainable bodies – whether unattainable through Photoshop or through the sheer amount of training that our wonderful Olympic athletes do. We also live in a patriarchal society where women are constantly being told what to do, what to eat, what to wear, what time we should be safely at home by (before dark, unless accompanied by a big, strong man).

I really want my feminism not to be any part of this. I want everyone to get their hands off my flab and STOP TALKING ABOUT IT!! (This blog post excepted, of course….!) I don’t want anyone to feel that they have to lose weight, or that they are not beautiful unless they are a size 8 with abs like Jessica Ennis. If you want to eat a three-course meal followed by cheese and finish off a bottle of wine on the sofa, I want to say, “Enjoy! Can I join you?” Equally, if you want to lose weight, then I would like to say “Good luck! Have fun! Running in the rain is horrible!”

You can still be a feminist. You can hate beauty magazines and the government telling you what size to be and what to eat – you can make those choices yourself, to exercise or not to exercise, to diet or not to diet. No matter what choice you make, in my opinion, you are no more or less a feminist.

And now I’m going for a run. J

It's a New Year in Gilead

Happy New Year everybody! I had a brilliant night last night involving roast lamb, three episodes of Homeland, and then going with my boyfriend up to Trafalgar Square to watch the fireworks. We were entertained at the fireworks by a man with a loudspeaker and an “alternative New Year’s message”, telling us to “keep your eyes on the bright lights and loud noises, don’t stop to think about what you are really doing here and who you really are.” His firework commentary was not exactly the official commentary: “there goes your child benefits, there’s another hospital closed…”

It got me thinking though. 2012 was an incredible year for me, especially as it involved buying a flat, moving in with my boyfriend, and adopting our lovely little kitten, Oscar. But let’s be honest, it’s been a rubbish year for people, especially women, across the globe – ending on the horrific story of the Indian woman who was brutally raped and murdered (but let’s remember that this is not just an “Indian problem” – perhaps there will be a blog post on that later!)

This great article by Laura Bates of the everyday sexism project (www.everydaysexism.com) outlines 2012 – the year in sexism -> http://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/lifestyle/2012/12/2012-year-sexism

Her list encompasses the dangerous obsession over female celebrities’ weight, to the joky rape culture that pervades our society. But one instance of sexism per month is nowhere near enough to fully show what women have had to put up with this year. Rape culture is not just found on the pages of the unilad website, but in our courtrooms and from the mouths of our politicians. George Galloway, discussing Julian Assange, stated that he was simply guilty of “bad sexual etiquette” for having sex with a sleeping woman. In December, a judge described a rape victim as having “let herself down badly. She consumed far too much alcohol and took drugs”. The war on women continues in the economic sphere, with the main force of austerity being felt by women – Yvette Cooper in December said that “women are being hit three times harder than men, by a Cabinet with three times more men than women”. There have been real-terms cuts to child benefit, maternity allowance, women’s services such as the Sure Start children’s centres, and to public sector pay – 70% of the public sector are women. With 2013 being the year when the true force of the austerity measures will be felt, this is not shaping up to be a great year for women.

But – is it all doom and gloom? I would argue not. Increasingly the term “feminist” is being seen as something to be proud of. There are growing backlashes against women in the public eye who do not identify as feminists. There are great campaigns afoot in the UK such as the previously mentioned everydaysexism campaign, cataloguing the relentless onslaught of sexism that British women deal with on a daily basis. There is the No More Page 3 campaign, attempting to end the practice of putting a topless woman on page 3 of a national daily newspaper. There is the Women’s Room UK – a database of women with expertise and experience so that never again will a radio presenter have to ask his all-male guests to imagine they are women in a discussion on breast cancer. And combatting the evidence that young girls are no longer interested in feminism is the Twitter Youth Feminist Army (#tyfa) – a group of young girls new to feminism ranging in age from 9 to 28 (I think). I’m very proud to be a member of the latter and am really looking forward to being more involved in the New Year. It is about raising awareness and increasing our own knowledge, about meeting others that share our thoughts, values, and worries about the world we are growing up into. Only by coming together and continuing to fight, in the smallest of ways, in the most important of ways, can we even attempt to make a difference. My hope for 2013 is that it will see the birth of more grassroots campaigns like those I have mentioned. That we will talk and shout about violence against women until it cannot be ignored anymore. That (unlike the handmaids) we will not just sit back and let it happen to us.

Happy New Year!

The Leveson Report

This year has seen something of an implosion in the British press. A huge scandal erupted in 2011 when it was discovered that News of the World had been systematically hacking individuals’ phone voicemail systems for their stories. The hacking scandal snowballed until it seemed that almost every newspaper had been involved in this illegal practice and as a result, newspapers were closed down, arrests were made, and, being British, we set up an inquiry. How could this have happened? What should we do now to stop it ever happening again? This inquiry was called the Leveson inquiry, and its report was released

            I’ll leave a more detailed analysis of Leveson for those much more qualified than I am, but I want to discuss in this blog a small part of Lord Leveson’s analysis which has been virtually neglected by the media: the six pages (out of almost 2000) he spends discussing newspaper treatment of women in the UK.

I believe that in the UK we have a culture that normalises violence against women, normalises the sexualisation of girls and young women, and normalises the silencing and shrouding of older women and disabled women, amongst others. In a twist on the Handmaid’s Tale, it can be argued that in the UK women are seen only for their sexual role. This begins from a very young age as stores market t-shirts to children with logos such as ‘porn star’. It continues until women are past the “acceptable” age of sexual interest, when they become marginalised from our public spaces, fired from TV shows, replaced with younger models.

And the media is seminal in promoting this culture. This takes into account a huge range of sources, from advertisements to the women’s mags we all love to hate. But what I want to concentrate on here is the mainstream British press, as discussed in the Leveson inquiry.

The inquiry was really important for women as the current regulatory system only allows individuals to bring complaints. Thus it had not been possible for a group such as Object to bring a complaint to the PCC about the way that women in general were treated in the media. The Leveson inquiry allowed these worries and complaints to be heard. Leveson makes the point that the inquiry is not there to investigate and to judge issues of taste and decency; as he puts it, a free press is entitled to be tasteless and indecent.

However, the Editors’ Code of Practice states clearly that discrimination in newspapers is not allowed, and also that “details of an individual’s race, colour, religion, sexual orientation, physical or mental illness or disability must be avoided unless genuinely relevant to the story”.  I believe the extent to which this occurs in the British press was not discussed sufficiently in the Leveson report.

Leveson does mention numerous newspapers such as the Daily Star, the Sport, and the Sun, that regularly portray women in demeaning ways, such as printing an article who’s sole focus is as an excuse to publish a photo of a topless or nearly-nude woman. He agrees that some of this material should be “top shelf material”, stored with pornographic magazines rather than daily news. He accepts that these images “may reflect a wider cultural failure to treat women with dignity and respect.”

Well, this is true. It does reflect a wider cultural failure.  But more than that, it manifestly contravenes the Editors’ Code of Practice. When Bradley Wiggins was involved in a minor car accident, virtually all newspapers presented this as an accident with a “woman driver” – in what way was this relevant to the story? As Natasha Walter argued eloquently in her book Living Dolls, studies that show marked differences between the genders, especially if they show women to like pink and be more suited to staying at home, shopping, and cooking, receive a lot more attention in the media. A recent FHM article (okay, a magazine, not national press but…) placed women into three categories, “girlfriend / mother / victim”. Seriously. Every morning, if you turn to page 3 of a national newspaper, a large pair of breasts will stare you in the face. While there’s nothing wrong with breasts, it is not exactly news! Women are routinely portrayed as if their sole interesting factor is the way they look or the way they dress, or the size of their belly or bum or boobs. It’s not good enough.  The fact that a woman is the focus of the story is ALWAYS mentioned even when it is of absolutely no relevance to the story is in contravention to the Editors’ Code of Practice. The sheer sexualisation and objectification of women, of a manner and extent that DOES NOT occur to men, is in contravention of the Editors’ Code of Practice against discrimination.

This is not good enough. The media is extremely important in reflecting AND promoting our culture. And right now, they are helping to promote a rape culture in which women are nothing more than their bodies, reduced to a sum of their sexual parts. In a UK where more than a quarter of men believe it is partly a woman’s fault if she is raped when wearing a short skirt, or when drunk (in fact, 36%), a media that does not take rape seriously and constantly sexualises women is not good enough. We deserve better. We need better. We need to be seen not as sex objects, mothers or victims, but as people. People who do incredible things, people who make mistakes, people who do bad things, without reference to gender. We deserve to not be sexualised and infantilised.

The Leveson inquiry was a great opportunity for women’s groups to have their voices heard. It is sad that only six pages were devoted to the issue, and that much of the beginning concentrated on the fact that a free press is entitled to be “indecent”. But what is worse is that only one newspaper appears to have commented on the issue. (Not surprising that it was our left wing newspaper, the Guardian). The fact that no other newspapers have seen fit to comment on it strongly suggests that nothing will change. All that we can hope is that a new regulatory system will allow groups and areas of interest to bring complaints. Then we can regularly challenge our sexist media until we have a media we deserve.

Stop calling her ‘Pregnant Kate’

Ever since Kate Middleton and Prince William got married in 2011, there has been incessant talk of the royal heir and rabid speculation about when they’d start a family. And now that she’s officially announced her pregnancy, the media feeding frenzy has gone into full effect.

But what’s absolutely driving me nuts is the insistence on calling her “Pregnant Kate.”

People Magazine:

Pregnant Kate Leaves Hospital

CBS News:

Pregnant Kate out of hospital after treatment for acute morning sickness

ABC News:

Pregnant Kate Middleton’s Hospital Falls for Prank Call From Australian Radio Station

Pregnant Kate Discharged from London Hospital

Pregnant Kate Middleton Feeling Better After Second Day

USA Today:

Pregnant Kate discharged from London Hospital

BBC:
Pregnant Kate leaves hospital

Chicago Tribune:

Pregnant Kate Middleton leaves hospital after morning sickness

There’s even a website: PregnantKate.com.

As if now that she’s pregnant, she has ceased to be anything more than the contents of her uterus. She is no longer Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge; she’s the royal broodmare. She’s not Kate Middleton, an autonomous person who also happens to be pregnant – she’s the pregnant royal baby-carrier.

Why does this matter? Why does it upset me? Because it’s emblematic of how our culture treats women and understands pregnancy. A man who gets a job is not called “Working Tom,” because he is not defined solely by that one characteristic of his life, so why should a woman who gets pregnant be referred to as "Pregnant Woman"? If you can ask "are men doing this?" and the answer is No, there's probably something sexist about the situation. 

The act of conception does not make the cell cluster in a woman’s body equal in all respects to the woman carrying it. Regardless of when you believe “life” begins, if you remove that cell cluster from her uterus, Jesus will not come down from the clouds and magic it into a tax-paying, bible-thumping, Republican-voting person. That fetus exists and can grow and develop BECAUSE of the woman, not in spite of her.

And the woman’s part in the process cannot be ignored.

Women are not meek and silent baby-ovens, and pregnancy does not define who a person is. It may change who she becomes as a result of the pregnancy, but it does not change her inherent worth as a person. Her humanity is not suddenly secondary to that of the fetus developing inside her.

We have to stop treating women as if their only value to society is to spawn new little humans. Not every woman can or will have children, and that’s okay. Her worth should not be defined by whether or not she has or plans to reproduce. Defining someone by one function of their body ignores or trivializes every other aspect of who they are. Especially in the case of a public figure like Kate Middleton, who has done tons of charitable work since marrying into the royal family - she is and deserves to be more than just her pregnancy.

Yes, biologically, creating the next generation is something we CAN do, but it’s not the ONLY thing we can do. And we deserve to be respected and recognized as PEOPLE at all times, regardless of whether we’re in the process of creating new life or not.

So please, for the sake of my humanity and yours, stop calling her “Pregnant Kate.”

Equal access

Despite the best efforts of the GOP, most women living in most areas of the US (Mississippi, Arkansas and Arizona are some notable exceptions) do have more freedom and better access to opportunities than women living in many other parts of the world. But one area where we seriously lack is access to birth control.

Yes, we can get it (most of the time, and if we can afford it), but most people don’t even know what equal access to gender-specific birth control (condoms are male-specific, as they are worn by the man – oral contraceptives are [currently] female-specific) would look like. 

Imagine a man wants to procure a gender-specific method of contraception. He goes to a drug store/gas station/grocery store/public restroom and purchases one for about $0.50 each, or $6-$10 for a pack.

Now imagine a woman wants to procure gender-specific, oral contraceptives.

If she has insurance, she has to set up an appointment with her OB/GYN, or possibly with her primary care provider first, to get a referral to her OB/GYN, and wait for the appointment (oftentimes for weeks!) – alternately, of course – a woman could go to a Planned Parenthood IF it hasn’t been defunded in her state. Then once she is able to take the time off work to attend her appointment, most of the time she’ll be forced to undergo a non-birth-control-specific, not medically-necessary invasive pap smear which is tied to prescribing to further discourage women from engaging in sexual activity. Then she has to take the prescription to the pharmacy, hope the pharmacist doesn’t think his or her religious beliefs supersede the woman’s private medical decision, get the prescription, and return every 4-12 weeks to pick up a new pack. And then repeat annually.

Sort of a side note, but the American Cancer Society has released new guidelines recommending that women now should only get pap smears beginning at age 21, then once every 3-5 years between the ages of 21-30, and once every 5 years after that. Yet the pap smear/pelvic exam is still a mandatory part of the birth control process for the vast majority of women. Why?

Because it’s another means of controlling and degrading us. It started off as a patronizing “women are too stupid to take care of themselves if we don’t require them to do it” and has continued on as an uncomfortable method of forcing women to submit to physical and sexual discomfort in order to gain access to safer sex. You want to be penetrated? How about by ice-cold tongs.

But back to my original point. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has recently recommended that oral contraceptives be available over the counter without a doctor’s prescription. They point to studies that show that easier access to oral contraceptives will lower the country’s unintended pregnancy rate, will drastically reduce costs for taxpayers, and that prove that oral contraceptives are safe. In fact, oral contraceptives are safer than Aspirin, but you won’t hear that statistic from the religious right. The only indicator that needs to be checked for oral contraceptives is blood pressure to ensure against the possible risk of stroke, and most pharmacies are already equipped with a blood pressure machine.

But with the way our country is currently heading, I don’t see their recommendation being adopted anytime soon.

Why? Because the very vocal, very wealthy religious right doesn’t believe women should have equal access to sexuality. And that’s what the fight is really about – not about some poor Catholic having his religious beliefs trampled upon by some woman he doesn’t know taking a daily pill, but about a subset of the population who believe women should be controlled by any means possible.

If women can’t access birth control, they can’t have sex as frequently, or without a considerably higher risk of pregnancy. It ensures women face greater consequences for the moral sin of enjoying sex and demanding equality. To these people, the purpose of woman is to serve as docile broodmare to her husband – if women can control reproduction, they can attain higher levels of education and wealth, and threaten the entrenched superiority of the white man. And that’s what’s at stake here – not just access to birth control, but access to the right to say ‘I am allowed the same sexual, physical and moral freedom as a man. I am owed equality. Recognize my humanity.’  

Hello from the UK!

Hi everyone. I’m the UK Maiden and I am extremely excited to have been invited onto this blog. As my US counterpart has just said, we need to keep talking, and we need to talk across borders. The US and the UK is, to my mind, a very interesting comparison. In so many ways, we have so much in common – our cultural world as defined by TV, film, popular music is extremely similar. And our debates concerning feminism are couched in the same terms – equality, bodily autonomy, discussions over rape and abortion. But I believe there are lots of differences as well and it will, hopefully, be interesting to examine and compare the different issues across the Atlantic.

            I had been thinking of writing a blog for a while, and came up with what I thought was a wonderful, original name that summed up everything I wanted my blog to stand for. Notahandmaid!!! Just so happened that another wonderful blogger had already come up with that idea, and that is how I stumbled across this blog. Very kindly, I was invited to contribute. I feel very strongly about the name of this blog as the Handmaid’s Tale is relevant to our struggle in so many ways, increasingly so since Margaret Atwood wrote the book in 1985. Firstly, as it says in the sub-heading to this blog, women are not objects. We have to fight to be fully seen in society as more than our reproductive capacities. But to my mind, the more important lesson from the Handmaid’s Tale is to not be passive. It is our duty not to just sit back and accept our situation; it is our duty to fight; it is our duty to be heard. This is the mistake made by the majority of the population in the Handmaid’s Tale – it is a mistake we must not make.

I’ll be posting about British political stories that affect UK women specifically. There are sure to be issues on which my thoughts aren’t fully formed and I am always open to debate and challenge (as long as it is framed politely and nicely!!!)

I’m really excited to have been given the opportunity to join this blog – first real post coming soon!

Changes coming :)

It's been quiet here for a little while, but never fear, I'm still finding plenty of things in this world that could benefit from a little bit of a feminist perspective.

In the meantime, I've invited another blogger from the UK to join me here and share her perspective on politics across the pond - Or am I the one who is technically 'across the pond,' since I'm in the US?

Until women have equal representation in politics, make equal money for equal work, have equal access to health care, and can safely report crimes against them without fear of being blamed, we need to keep talking, and we need to talk across borders, because women's rights are a global issue. I'm excited to have another perspective here from another woman determined not to end up a handmaid.