Silent Sunday Round-Up: Inspiring and Rage Inducing Blogs Written by Women

What do I blame myself for by Barbara Carregonnen

Language Check: Gaslighting by PseudoDeviant

How to be the perfect victim: A How-To Guide for Good Girls at Week Woman

Campaign4consent at Jelly and Lilipop

The Myth of Shared Girlhood by Not a Zero Sum Game

Feminism with Fizz at Trouble and Strife

Picking Sides at One Woman's Thoughts

My Breasts and Page 3 at One Woman's Thoughts

White domination, challenge and the feminist movement: #solidarityisforwhitewomen and what it meant for me by Chitra Nagarajan

On race, feminism and activism: my speech for UK Feminista Summer School 2013 by Renie D Lodge

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Silent Sunday : Inspiring Blogs written by women

Three Concerns about Cameron's Porn Plans at We Mixed our Drinks

Porn is only damaging when its not Murdoch Porn at Week Woman

Dishing about PIV at Women Warriors

Labelling a state of being at One Woman's Thoughts

Why I support criminalising rape porn at Close the Loophole

Here's what's wrong with hijab tourism and your cutesy modesty experiments at MsMuslamic
Conversations about beauty and beauty privilege need to be intersectional at Gradient Lair

The glorification of white crime at Holy Matriarch

On Banknotes and the etiquette of sharing at Glosswitch

Rising above our differences to celebrate the little things at The not so quiet feminist.

My boyfriend blames me for my sexual assault at Everyday Victim Blaming

Lest we forget at Liberation Collective

Radical Feminist you say at Witchwind

J.K Rowing and the case of the sexist nom de plume by Victoria Brownworth

I'd rather risk rape than quit partying: Rape Culture and the Good Men Project at Belle Jar Blog

On Shouting the Fuck Back at GoddessDeeva

Online Abuse and reporting the man who threatened me at We Mixed our Drinks

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Silent sunday: Inspiring Blogs by Amazing Women

Celebrity and its Discontents at Trouble and Stife

On Sexism and Victim Blaming inherent in Personal Training at GoddessDeeva

When Something is Wrong with my baby, something is wrong with me at From a Whisper to a Roar

Women are not like men at Revolutionary Combustion

Hooray! Another miracle IVF advance by Karen Ingala Smith

Can Black women exist within a feminist movement dominated by white women at Black Women of Brazil

Sex with Vegetables: For the Animals at Vegan Feminist Network

The moron Owen Lloyd and what depoliticisation actually means at Femonade

Imitation, Infiltration and Invasion at RadFem Rise Up at Smash the Patriarchy

I became a mother and died to live at Renegade Mothering

On Liz Jones, Suzanne Moore and Misrepresentation of Anorexia by Glosswitch

One being heard again at One Woman's Thoughts

Bikini versus Burkha: Clothing, Women and Freedom at Gradient Lair

RadFem Rise Up 2013 at Then They Said Burn Her

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Girls Can't Have their own magazines because it's "sexist"

I've been spamming every Facebook group I'm in with links to JumpMag which is an utterly brilliant advertising-free magazine aimed at young girls from 7-13 and has no make-up tips or free lip gloss or OMG look at Justin Bieber's hair!!!! articles.

I love JumpMag as both a mother and a radical feminist. It combats harmful gender stereotypes and cultural femicide which are two issues which greatly concern me. JumpMag publishes lots of articles, poems, and reviews by girls themselves. The silencing of women's voices begins in childhood so having an online space where girls can share their lives, their stories, their art and their dreams without being told to be quiet or make space for boys is so very, very important to destroying the patriarchy. 

I've been awed by the support of women for JumpMag. Today, I shared it again and the support was amazing.

Yet, that one niggly question rose up again: isn't JumpMag sexist because it excludes boys?

I mean, seriously? Does every single fucking thing have to include boys? Can't girls have one little thing just for them in a culture which is dominated by men's voices? 

Where are the men whining about Ben 10 and Young Justice excluding girls? Or, Harry Potter having to be written about a boy and by an author with a non-woman name so that boys would read it? Where are the men whining about girls being excluded from footballl? Or, the music industry?

Nothing is gender-neutral in our culture. JumpMag is trying to eradicate this by showing girls that there is so much more to life than what the media dictates is acceptable for girls. 

This is JumpMag's official statement on inclusivity:

From time to time, we are asked, 'Isn't a magazine aimed only at girls sexist?' 

Jump! Mag was founded to offer girls something that boys already have. Magazines aimed at their gender, which neither patronise, demean nor make them feel inadequate about their body, their minds or their feelings.

We did consider a gender-free magazine, but there are other magazines on the market already, which cover this sector for preteens, such as the excellent Anorak Magazine. 

Jump! Mag aims to inspire girls to be more than they ever thought they could be. To aim high, and to never stop believing in themselves. If we inspire some boys along the way, then that is a bonus.

See, JumpMag doesn't exclude boys. It just focusses on girls. How fucked up is our culture that the first comment about a magazine aimed at girls is that it's "sexist" considering the sheer amount of television, books, films and video games aimed at boys?

Frankly, if you are worried about boys feeling excluded by one measly online magazine for girls you've got some seriously fucked up values and internalised misogyny. 

I'd suggest you start working on that instead of belittling a magazine aimed at teaching girls that they have the right to be whoever they want to be.

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Thank you Gradient Lair. I will miss you.

I wrote this piece on Thursday to publish today as part of my Silent Sunday round-up of inspiring blogs written by women. Gradient Lair's hiatus is over but I'm still going to publish this post because, well, I want to. Gradient Lair is one of the best blogs I have ever written and I was genuinely sad that I would not get to read something by this amazing blogger for a while. Women's voices need to be celebrated:


The Gradient Lair blog is now on haitus. It has only been going for a year but has been an incredible source of inspiration to me. I will miss it tremendously.

These are some of my favourite pieces from Gradient Lair:

The Truth about Media, Police and Prison

Corporate America Hates Me and I Hate It

Demanding Flattery is an Oppressors Tool

Womanism/ Black Feminism and Race in Feminist Discourse

Examining White Supremacy and Heroism: When Both White and Black People Value White Lives More

I hate Night Clubs (They feel like street harassment to music)

Why Whites Call People of Colour Racist

White Men Who Write about White Privilege

The Beauty Binary, Street Harassment and Rape Culture

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Taking the Fight to the Bank: Join us on Friday!

[Reblogged from WeekWoman]

What a couple of weeks it’s been!

We not only reached, but have actually passed our fundraising target of £13,000, which means we are now in a position to take the Bank of England to court if they continue to refuse to take equality into account when deciding who features on our banknotes. Following on from the letter signed by 46 Labour MPs and peers, we’ve had both Maria Miller and Ed Miliband come out in support of our campaign – we even had Mervyn King backed so far into a corner on the issue that he was forced to name the ‘contingency candidate’ he previously refused to reveal, citing what we must now consider to be spurious security concerns.

And now Mark Carney has used his first public statement as Governor of the Bank of England to address the #banknotes issue. This is fantastic; but it is by no means the end. We still have no firm guarantee that women will remain on banknotes. We also have no firm guarantee about the Bank’s future public decisions being made under the auspices of the Equality Act. Until we have these, the fight continues. (My full statement can be found here)

And our first step is to START THINKING about an outfit! At 11am on Friday, we will be gathering outside the Bank of England to hand in the petition signed by over 30,000 people, dressed as our favourite women from history. It should be a great day and a wonderful opportunity to highlight the wealth of choice the Bank has when it comes to choosing women for our banknotes. Fancy dress is optional, but any nods you can make to your favoured candidate would be great! I will be there at 11 sharp, along with my puppy adorned with a suffrage sash – I look forward to seeing as many of you there as possible! Feel free to bring friends etc along – it would be brilliant to have a really strong showing there to demonstrate to the Bank the strength of feeling on this issue. I realise that since many of you don’t live in London you won’t be able to make it, but I have plans for this too! If you can’t make the protest, please take a picture of yourself dressed as your favourite female historical character and tweet it @bankofengland under the hashtag #WomenonBanknotes – make sure they have us coming at them from all angles! But if you possibly can find a way to make the demonstration, even if only very briefly at the beginning, it would be hugely appreciated.

Look forward to meeting loads of amazing women from history very soon!

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Feminist Art Club: Help a Sister Out

M.K. Hajdin, who blogs as Exiled Stardust, has started a Feminist Art Club. Basically, those who can afford to help purchase art supplies then get a piece of feminist art in exchange or you can donate to help another feminist acquire a piece of Hajdin's art. I love this idea as a form of feminist activism; subverting capitalism by helping other feminists: 

Join my art club 

Like art?  Think you’ll never be able to afford any because it’s too expensive? 

Why not join my Twitter Feminist Art Club? 

It’s simple.  Follow me on Twitter and either donate things I need to make art or money to buy them with, get artwork in return or you can contribute to help another feminist acquire a piece of art.
It’s basically artistic socialism. 

I live on a very low income and everything helps, so if you like my site and want to support the cause  and/or help keep my cats fed. 

You can donate here. 

In the interests of full disclosure, this is the beginnings of my painting: 

I am very, very excited. 

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Silent Sunday: Inspiring Blogs!

It's not slut-shaming. It's woman-hating at Feminist Current

System Fail at From A Whisper To A Roar

The Truth about Media, Police and Prison at Gradient Lair

The WHO Stats Tell Us the Extent of VAW at Sianandcrookedrib

Your Vagina is Still Not a Car at From A Whisper to a Roar

Male Violence. Not Gender Based Violence at Sisterhood is Powerful

Everyday Victim Blaming: Am I Victim Enough for you? at Portia Smart

Malespeak with Radical Feminist Translation at Medusa's Gaze

Authoritah at Femonade

The Coalition government and broadening the fight to end violence against women and girls beyond the Criminal Justice System by Karen Ingala Smith

Corporate America Hates Me and I Hate It at Gradient Lair

And just for Caroline, even though The Women's Room UK already reached their target of £13 000 to mount a legal challenge to the Bank of England's decision to remove the only woman on English money who go there by personal achievement instead of an accident of birth: We're Running out of Time. Help Spread the Word and See Justice Done.

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TWR & The Feminists can campaign about more than One Thing at a time Shocker

I am so bored of the concerted attacks on The Women's Room UK and the obsession of supposed 'feminists' with denigrating one form of feminist activism as not important enough. 

The women behind The Women's Room UK aren't fucking stupid. They know their campaign to increase women's visibility in the media by destroying cultural femicide isn't the only form of feminist activism.

They know that there are literally millions of other feminist campaigns which have nothing to do with cultural femicide.

They know that having women on banknotes for their accomplishments rather than an accident of birth is a small step towards patriarchal destruction.

They also know that small steps are as important as the big steps.

How about we stop wasting time having tantrums on twitter about one campaign and actually start focussing on destroying the patriarchy?


The campaign to keep women on English banknotes for their accomplishments rather than an accident of birth is here.

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Silent Sunday

Mental Health and Me at The Not So Quiet Feminist

Respect at Gradient Lair

Pregnant Women Not Yet Anxious and Guilt Ridden Enough Say Experts by Glosswitch

Lucky by Portia Smart

Childhood, Selfhood and the American Girl at Adios Barbie

Nick Ross: It's not child porn. It's child rape and it shouldn't be appealing to your curiosity at Frothy Dragon and the Patriarchal Stone

Mental Health, Violence and Me at Carregonnen

OMG, I agree with a Tory and Other Traumas at SaltandCaramel

#Periodgate at JellyandLillipop

A Preemptive Strike at One Woman's Thoughts

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Reading the Comments as Feminist Activism?

I never read the comments under articles. They are almost entirely hate-filled bile spewed by MREs with serious personality disorders. The Guardian is one of the worst offenders for refusing to delete violent and misogynistic abuse. Frankly, it frightens me. So when I came across this piece by Week Woman, I was genuinely flabbergasted. It's a well known feminist truism that you never ever read the comments, yet Week Woman is not only arguing that we read the comments but that we start reclaiming them as a space for feminist activism. The male trolls on Mumsnet annoy me enough as it is, I can't imagine wanting to spend any time on the Guardian website posting comments that will inevitably result in a bunch of arsenuggets making violent, offensive and threatening responses. 

However, Week woman's blog reminded me of a story feminist writer Bidisha told at a UK Feminista Summer School several years ago. Basically, Bidisha claimed that trolls in the comment section respond more to the gender of the poster than what is in the post. It was then suggested by another journalist, whose name escapes me, that some of the women writers at the Guardian have fake comment accounts and that they take turns positing positive comments under articles written by women but using a male name. The theory being that the first comment posted sets the tone for the subsequent commentators and that using a male name to make a positive comment is more effective than using a woman's name. 

Week Woman is right that the cliche to never read the comments or write one yourself is a silencing tactic used against women. After all, no one wants to be subjected to that level of abuse. The question is can we reclaim that space? Do we want to?

I'm not sure.

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Apparently, the Queen is on our bank notes! I genuinely did not know that ...

and I would personally like to thank everyman, from Mervyn King, down for pointing that out to me. After all, my vagina makes it impossible for me to turn over the bank note to see the other side.

For those owners of vaginas out there who were totally smart enough to have worked out that the Queen is a) female and b) on banknotes, there is a petition here demanding that the Bank of England keep a woman on English banknotes. 

Do check out Caroline Criado-Perez's response to Mervyn King's pansplainin'. It made me snigger, as did Caroline's storify of every nincompoop who tweeted her to make the same stupid statement. Nothing makes me weep for the fate of humanity than a bunch of men pointing out the blatantly obvious and then getting all confused when we don't give them cookies and blowjobs for not being stupid.

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#ReadingOnlyBooksWrittenByWomen: Radical Feminist Theory

My reading theme for May is radical feminist theory. I haven't actually read many classic texts of radical feminism; a lot of my radical feminist theory has been learned reading blogs and discussing it with other women on FB and at conferences. Since I am attending my first formal RadFem conference this June, I thought it might be worth covering more texts than Andrea Dworkin's Intercourse and Kate Millett's Sexual Politics [both of which are must-reads].

These are the texts I've lined up for this month:

Valerie Solanas' Scum Manifesto
Marilyn French's The War Against Women
Gerda Lerner's The Creation of Patriarchy
Robin Morgan's Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Womens Liberation Movement
Lynne Harne & Elaine Miller's All the Rage: Reasserting Radical Lesbian Feminism
Janice Raymond's A Passion for Friends
Diane Bell & Renate Klein's Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed

Three of the texts, Robin Morgan's Sisterhood is Powerful, Lynne Harne & Elaine Miller's All the Rage and Diane Bell & Renate Klein's Radically Speaking, are anthologies. They are also huge. I'm not sure I'll make it through them all but I wanted to get as big a variety of radical feminist voices as possible.

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Silent Sunday XIII: Brilliant Blog Round-Up

Eating Disorders, Me and Feminism at ZedCat

Dormant at Rebecca Mott

Broken Doll at Rebecca Mott

Links on Privilege, Intersectionality and Twitter at Feimineach

Interracial Relationships for a post-race my future, my ass at Life and Lima Beans

The Most Deranged Sorority Girl Email You Will Ever Read at Femimineach

A Human being Human in Public Gets Hated For It at Exiled Stardust

Building Bridges by Anne Lawrence

On Sex as Affection and Validation by GoddessDeeva

A Note to Some Feminist Black Men - Though bell hooks is Exquisite, There's 

More to Black Feminism Than bell hooks at Gradient Lair

The Dangerous Tales of the MREs and Their Allies at Sisterhood is Powerful

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Andrea Dworkin's Pornography: Men Possessing Women

Everyone's got an opinion on Andrea Dworkin and it's frequently one based in myth. I love Dworkin's writing. I don't always agree with her (and she's sometime historically inaccurate) but she was an utterly brilliant polemicist. Her gift was amazing. She was a truly brilliant woman.

I've collated some quotes from the text here and here but the full text is available on the online Andrea Dworkin library.

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Cultural Femicide on a Sunday Morning

Sunday’s TV guide: 66 males and 18 females are named.

Reblogged from Tricialo

On Sunday after a morning lie-in I wandered downstairs, grabbed a cuppa and idly flicked through the channels on my TV. On every screen I flicked through, out of around 20 ‘favourites, there were only male faces, not one single woman or girl’s face showed up. It was all men talking to men, men talking about men, male actors acting out male dominated drama; there was Eddie, Nick, James, Jeremy, Simon, Frasier, Tony and on and on, on every channel. I went through them all again just to make sure; even the children’s channels were boy dominated. Some women showed up as I watched a little longer, but they weren’t onscreen when I’d first flicked through and in general women were either minor characters or absent. It wasn’t until around 10.30 that a woman fronted show turned up; something about food, with Lynda Bellingham.

People can come up with as many reasons as they like for explaining this, but I’d bet my life that no-one has ever yet flicked through all the channels on offer and seen only women’s faces. The words cultural femicide came into my head. Cultural Femicide is a term which was originally coined, (as far as I know), by Bidisha, to mean ‘the erasure of women in public life’.  This absence of women in mainstream culture, on our TV screens and radio, in theatres, movies, libraries and art galleries is hard to credit. It amazes me how little some people even seem to notice it, never mind care. The Women’s Room is one website set up to challenge this gendered cultural hegemony and provide a voice for women in media, yet even those few female voices we do hear tend to be the type that seeks male approval.

Back to Sunday; my five year old daughter was in the room with me and I considered the effect it might be having on her to repeatedly see men showing up as experts and authorities. I don’t let her have a lot of screen time, but as she grows older and wiser it’s increasingly difficult to monitor her intake and I’m not sure that it’s desirable to keep her in a protected bubble anyway. She asked me if she could have some screen time, but was bored by the boy dominated shows on offer. She seen the words Angelina Ballerina on the screen; a show we’d just missed, she’d recently seen an Angelina Ballerina book at a friend’s house and was curious about it so asked me to make sure that she could watch it when it was next on. We watched an episode together, on my laptop. As the theme tune began, my daughter commented, ‘It’s so pink. Why is everything always so pink?” The episode we watched concerned four mice, two ‘girl’ mice, (wearing pretty dresses), and two boy mice. It’s the only episode I’ve ever watched, (and ever hope to), and it actually centred on a ‘boy’ mouse called AJ. It was AJ’s birthday and the other mice were planning a surprise party for him. So, in what I imagined would be a show that was, if not ideal, at least girl centred, I watched as the two girls planned how to make a boy happy. As it ended I asked my daughter if she’d liked it. She answered that she would have liked it better if it had been about Angelina.

Later on I let my daughter watch a film; part of the Studio Ghibli series currently showing on Film Four. Studio Ghibli is a Japanese company, generally seen as being much more girl friendly than US studios such as Disney, and it’s played an important part in my daughter’s movie intake to date. There are some great Ghibli films, but as a canon it’s far from perfect, and yesterday, yet again, we watched as the girl in the story became a princess, a prospective bride and had to be rescued by male characters. The film was ‘The Cat Returns,’ in which a girl, Haru, rescues a cat from a near death collision with a lorry. Unfortunately the cat is a prince and Haru is now expected to become his cat princess. She is rescued by a team of male helpers; the heroic Baron, another male cat and a male raven. There is one female cat who tries to help her; Haru’s first comment upon meeting her is about how beautiful she is; a white cat with long eyelashes and a pink bow, not stereotyped at all then. The few other females in the movie are unsympathetic characters, such as the two cat maidservants who help Haru to dress and tell her how lucky she is because all the girl cats have crushes on the prince. Early on in the film, a delegation from the Land of Cats marches past Haru’s window and stops to talk with her. At this point my daughter piped up; “Are all of those cats boys?” Well spotted little one, best get used to it.

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The Women's Room UK was in Twitter jail. Again.

Last night, The Woman's Room UK was placed in twitter jail, again, for "tweeting" too much. I have yet to work out Twitter's definition of "tweeting too much" or "aggressively following people". Apparently, Twitter has a policy on these two issues but they aren't very clear as to what those actual policies are or, in fact, if they actually have one to implement.

However, we all know why The Women's Room UK ended up in Twitter jail and its not because they broke some sily rule about tweeting too much.

It's because The Women's Room UK is a feminist organisation.

And Twitter, as well as Facebook, hate feminism.

After all, the frequency with which feminists end up in Twitter jail compared to the length of time it takes to have child porn accounts frozen is rather telling; as is Facebook's immediate removal of breast feeding images whilst they simultaneously refuse to remove porn or pages labelling teenage girls sluts.

Twitter and Facebook hate feminists because we are using their male technology to build a Feminist army. Facebook was created to allow creepy men to perve over women's bodies. Instead, we are filling it up with feminist theory groups, support networks and as a medium for sharing real news (as opposed to that approved by the Capitalist-Patriarchy).

Feminists are reclaiming the web and the misogynists are terrified! 

They are running scared and it is awesome to watch! 


Also, if you're not registered with The Women's Room UK do so now: here. It's an organisation fighting cultural femicide. We are reclaiming the Capitalist-Patriarchal Press too!

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#ReadingonlyBooksWrittenByWomen : On Pornography and Prostitution

I've been enjoying theme reading these past few months: February was Black History Month in North America and March was, obviously, a celebration of women's history. This month I'm going to read feminist critiques of prostitution and pornography. As ever, I probably won't make it through the whole list but these are the texts I have lined up:

Melinda Tankard Reist's Big Porn Inc.: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry
Karen Boyle's Everyday Pornography
Laura Lederer's Take by The Night: Women on Pornography
Jennifer Hayashi Danns with Sandrine Leveque's Stripped: The Bare Faced Reality of Lap Dancing
Trine Rogg Korsvik & Ane Sto's The Nordic Approach: Feminists Write Candidly about the Nordic Battle to Ban the Purchase of Sex
Andrea Dworkin's Pornography: Men Possessing Women
Linda Lovelace's Ordeal 
Linda Lovelace's Out of Bondage
Kathleen Barry's The Prostitution of Sexuality: The Global Exploitation of Women 
Sheila Jeffrey's Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution
Christine Stark & Rebecca Whisnant's Not For Sale:  Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography

These are some texts I highly recommend:

Gail Dines' Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality
Robert Jensen's Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity
Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture
Julia Long's Anti-Porn The Resurgence of Anti-Pornography Feminism
Melinda Tankard Reist's Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls
Natasha Walter's Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism

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Silent Sunday IX: Inspiring and Thought-Provoking Blogs

Facebook is a Misogynist Time Sucking Piece of Shit by Ann Tagonist

8 Simple Rules for Not Being a Dick at It's Not A Zero Sum Game

We Could have Been Anything that We Wanted To Be at One Dames Thoughts

Activism to Normalise Gender Transitioning Now Comes at Children's Expense at Sex Matters

Letter to the Attorney General Regarding the Unduly Lenient Sentencing of Paul Keene for the Killing of Carmen Gabriela Miron Buchacra by Karen Ingala Smith

Counting Dead Women by Karen Ingala Smith

Desperate Art Dudes Can Only Save Themselves by Exploiting Women by Exiled Stardust

Sex Positivism: No Thanks by Portia Smart

Do You See What I See? by Portia Smart

The Peta Complex: On Post-Feminist Activism, Gender and Veganism at Feminist Current

Prostitution Chic is Now a Thing at Feminist Current

Letter to a Punter by Rebecca Mott

Separating the Art from the Artist by ScallopsRGreat

Men Who Knock Down Doors and the War Against Women: Tyrants at Home and Abroad at Common Dreams

The Fast Food Feminism of Topless Femen at International Boulevard 

A Feminist Critique of CIS Gender at Liberation Collective

Why Looking Through A Rapists' Eyes Won't Help You at That Pesky Feminist

Intersectionality has its Limitations at You Think I Just Don't Understand But I Don't Believe You

Sisterhood Doesn't Mean Unity at What Stilli Did

On Perpetual Twitter Beef at Renieddolodge

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