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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So that Steve Biddulph MN webchat: WTF?

Because, honestly, it was a gigantic pile of nincompoopery. It is safe to say that I am not a very big fan of Steve Biddulph to begin with. His normalisation of gendered stereotypes in order to sell books just pisses me off. There is very little scientific evidence to support the nonsense that boys and girls are somehow inherently different; just lots of people claiming they "observed" gendered behaviour.  This ignores the very real evidence of the cultural and historical construction and contextualisation of gender. It also conflates biological sex with gender, as if there were somehow a hormone which decides what type of child likes playing with dinosaurs. It leads to Hannah Evans claiming, in the Guardian no less, that sticks are essential to the raising of boys. It's possible Evans has never actually met a girl child, because I've got two and they most definitely play with sticks. In fact, I don't think I've met a girl who didn't understand the importance of sticks. It's called imaginative play; something that Steve Biddulph should know about considering his work with Collective Shout.

I have a number of problems with Biddulph. The first is his apparent amazement that, after spending 25 years specialising in the raising of boys, he's discovered, rather miraculously, that "its GIRLS who are in trouble". Yep, as a man whose spent 25 years arguing that  boys are "different", he's now discovered that girls are "different" too and in TROUBLE! This would be more convincing if I thought Biddulph had spent the last 25 years living in a cave because I genuinely can't imagine how any intelligent, well-educated adult could have missed the fact that the Capitalist-Patriarchy is toxic for ALL children; unless, of course, they were planning on financially benefitting from stating the bleeding obvious. After all, it's not like there's ever been a single book published about the toxicity of childhood on young girls, raising girls, campaigns on the sexualisation and sexploitation of young girls, or the fact that feminsts have been saying this for years. We know that our culture is deeply destructive for girls and girls mental health is suffering because of it.  We don't need another "expert" jumping up to tell us. We've already figured it out.

The first odd thing about the MN webchat is that Biddulph tried to claim he was not an "expert". Please credit us with a modicum of intelligence, he was clearly invited as an "expert". His disavowal of that role in an attempts to "debate" rather than answer any of the real questions he was asked was, well, rather pathetic. After all, this was the introduction to the webchat:

We're delighted that Steve is returning to talk to us about his latest book, Raising Girls. This was written as a response to the 'sudden and universal deterioration in girls' mental health, starting in primary school and devastating the teen years'. The book is both a call-to-arms for parents and a detailed guide through the five key stages of girlhood to help build strength and connectedness into your daughter from infancy onwards. Join the discussion and you will be entered into a draw to win one of five copies of Steve Biddulph's Raising Girls.

There was NO reason for him to come on to a MN webchat if he wasn't setting himself up as "expert". The whole point of the Mumsnet chat boards is the sharing of information. Why would they have a paying guest on if the guest weren't trying to flog something to us? In Biddulph's case, this is both a new book called Raising Girls and the one day seminar he is running as part of the Mumsnet Academy. Mumsnet is a business. They have never pretended to be any different so why Biddulph is waffling about the issue is just perplexing.

Secondly, Biddulph didn't seem to answer any of the questions. Several of the answers read as though they were written in advance without Biddulph reading any of the pre-chat questions. Also there is the pesky issue of one particular cheerleading poster on the thread who was rather upset at the criticism of Biddulph and who has only posted on that name on that thread. If I were to think charitably, I would suggest he fundamentally misunderstood how a MN webchat runs, which would be quite odd since he's done previous webchats (and brought his wife along). His answers were vague, patronising, pretentious and, well, twaddle. He deliberately refused to answer one question which was asked repeatedly, first by MmeLindor:

In your book, 'Raising Boys' you state 'At the age of four, for reasons nobody quite understands, boys receive a sudden surge of testosterone, doubling their previous levels. At this age, little Jamie may become much more interested in action, heroics, adventures and vigorous play... At five years of age, the testosterone level drops by half, and young Jamie calms down again, just in time for school' 
I have often seen this used - both on Mumsnet and on other parenting websites and blogs - to explain why boys are aggressive at age 4 to 5 years.  

Despite extensive searching I have yet to find a scientific research paper that supports this theory. Could you please link to the evidence of this.  ...  

I am concerned that falsely interpreted statement in your book may lead to parents accepting the aggressive behaviour of their sons, to the detriment of their daughters. 

It worries me because we are teaching our girls from a young age that the right way to react to aggression is to walk away, and we are teaching our boys that aggressive behaviour is in some way acceptable, and to be expected.
Could you please clarify your statement about this hormone surge.

I would have thought that anyone making such a claim would be capable of backing it up with links to peer-reviewed research. It's ethically and scientifically unacceptable to make claims of this nature without any evidence. It's an incredibly dangerous statement to make because it does imply that boys are predisposed to violence and, therefore, not responsible for their actions. Small boys are not inherently aggressive or violent. We live in a culture that expects men to be violent. We reward them for their violence; one only needs to look at the careers of Charlie Sheen and Mike Tyson for evidence. But, boys aren't inherently violent. They aren't born violent or aggressive. That is how our culture socialises them. 

Next up on the list of things that annoyed me was this little speech: 

Girls are usually much more wired for social awareness, and even as babies they focus more on faces and reactions. This is a strength except when they are very anxious and then friendship problems can tip them over. THEY NEED HELP WITH FRIENDSHIP because its the most complex thing we do.  

It all begins in babyhood. The secure attachment of mother and baby (or dad and baby) lays the foundations for being trusting, available to love and closeness with others. If your daughter was close to you, she will know how to be close to others. 
But its from 5 - 10 that friendship is the uppermost topic for girls, because this is their primary learning goal at this age. HOW TO GET ALONG WITH OTHERS.  

There are seven core skills involved in being a friend.  

1. Enjoying the company of others - lightening up and treating company as a chance for fun.  

2. Learning to take turns and share -you have more fun if you play together, but you have to give a little to make that work.  

3. Being able to empathize - imagining how you would feel in your friend’s shoes, and being happy for them when they “win” or “star” in the game. This is a more advanced skill, it doesn’t always come easily.  

4. Being able to regulate aggression - not screaming or clobbering your friends when you disagree. Not storming off because you are losing the argument.  

5.Apologizing when you are wrong, or have hurt a friend’s feelings.  

6. Being able to read emotions. Seeing when someone is angry, sad or afraid and adjusting your behaviour accordingly. You can even teach this with drawings of smiley, frowny, teary and shakey faces, helping your daughter recognize them, and applying this to situations when her friends have been upset.  

7.Learning when to trust or believe someone, and when not to. That people can be deceptive for reasons of their own. Your daughter will be shocked and hurt when a friend lies or deceives her. You will need to comfort her and explain that some people have not learned the value of being trustworthy. Don’t lose heart, just be a little careful.  

Each of these will arise often in your daughter’s day to day life. When she comes to you hurt or bewildered, you can pinpoint which skill is called for, listen to her feelings, but then talk to her about how that skill can be done. It will take a few goes to get right, so follow up with her over a few days or weeks. Even we adults often don’t get these right, so have respect for the hugeness of what she is having to learn, and praise and affirm her for even small steps.  

I hope this helps a bit. A just seven years of age, a lot of learning is going on, it takes years, and so calmly listening to her as she talks it through.

Ignoring the unbelievably patronising comment at the end, Biddulph has clearly not read his Cordelia Fine because this idea that baby girls are "wired for social awareness" is utter twaddle. And, if girls are really are "wired for social awareness", then surely it should be boys who need help developing friendships? Or, are they so socially incompetent that they don't know they are supposed to have friends? I can't keep this crap straight. I mean, seriously, are we supposed to believe that boys don't need help learning about human emotion or who to trust? Are they not affected by these issues to? Biddulph doesn't even try to answer a question raised about "neuronal plasticity, experience and reinforcement as determinants of behaviour and observable trait" despite the fact that this research basically proves that these studies into "observable" gender differences are, at best, inconclusive and, at worst, inherently flawed making Biddulph's gendering of children wrong.

And, honestly, I howled with laughter when I read this bit: 

In babyhood - to feel loved and secureIn toddlerhood and pre-school age - to be exploring and curious and have an adventurous approach to the world - especially important in girls, to not be restricted (by attitudes, or fussy clothes) and for adults to show and teach enthusiasm about the world.In school - aged five to ten - to learn about friendship and getting along with others. In the early teens - 10-14 - to find your SOUL, your true self.In the late teens 14-18 - to practice for being an adult woman. And finally to step into adulthood, take responsibility for your life.

These are the stages of "girl". Now, maybe it's because I don't have a son, but I'm pretty sure these stages correlate to the development of boys. I like to call this process "growing up"; as I mentioned in a comment Mumsnet deleted (which seems a tad OTT considering I said worse on the Naomi Wolf webchat).

All this webchat made me want to do is reread Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender as she brilliantly debunks all this twaddle whilst being incredibly funny and missing the whole patronising, mansplainin' thing. Delusions of Gender is worth the price just for the Daddy Rat story. Honestly. 

Do also read this piece by Glosswitch in the New Statesman and this post by SaltandCaramel.

But, don't bother with Biddulph. If you feel you need support, ask the parents around you. After all, that line about it taking a village to raise a child is true. We just need to stop paying experts to spout shite and start taking advantage of our communities. 

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So, George Lucas is Marrying a "Gold-Digger"

At least, that's what the Huffington Post seems to be implying with this headline: "Let the Prenup Be With You". The fact that George Lucas is engaged to Mellody Hobson, an investment firm president who also serves as chairperson of Dreamworks Animation is irrelevant. 

Or, the very obvious fact that there is no such thing as a "gold-digger". That's just patriarchal bullshit designed to punish women for trying to survive in a Capitalist-Patriarchy.

This piece is precisely why I found this article by Vagenda so problematic. Yes, they are calling Hugh Hefner a creepy pervert for marrying a woman so much younger than him and there simply aren’t enough people lining up to call Hefner on his creepiness because he really is the quintessence of creepiness.* The problem with Vagenda's article is that they are operating under the assumption that their audience is smarter than it actually is; that their audience knows there is no such thing as a "gold-digger". 

At least, I hope Vagenda are assuming their audience of neo-liberal Guardian readers are smarter than they are because otherwise they seem to be buying into the myth of gold-diggers:  

Crystal Harris has played a blinder as far as the transaction with Heff is concerned. She barely even needs to follow through, the wily minx, giving a whole new resonance to the phrase "happy ending". She graduates maxima cum laude from the International School of Gold Digging, an accolade to which those of us languishing in hotel bars wearing bandage dresses, or occupying the recesses of websites such as SugarDaddy.com in the hope of catching the eye of a sickly impotent billionaire, can only aspire.

Of course, there is the slim chance that Harris is pulling a Gloria Steinemand going fully undercover – but it's unlikely, considering that the scope of her ambitions echo those of billions of women the world over.

Whilst I'm not personally acquainted with Gloria Steinem, I do think she would object to having her name used as a stick with which to beat other women. Whatever the personal motives Crystal Harris has for marrying Hugh Hefner, he  remains the problem. Not Harris. He is the man responsible for the mainstreaming of pornography to the point that all women are now considered fucktoys with no redeemable features. If we were considered human, the Huffington Post wouldn't have posted such an offensive article about a woman marrying a man. Can you imagine what they would have printed if Hobson weren't a white, middle class, highly educated women with a very powerful job?

* Actually, I would rather not have read the article since I live in hope that Hefner will somehow accidentally fall off the planet taking the entire “Playboy Empire” with him, but he hasn’t. Instead, Hefner has once again married a woman young enough to be his granddaughter. Because he's a deeply creepy old man. With a serious ick-factor. And, a history of VAW.

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The John Lewis Window Display: Anyone Notice the Problem?

Can you tell which side is the boys toys? And, which side is for the girls? Because, personally, I really struggled with this since I did not know that only boys were allowed to play musical instruments. I already knew that girls weren't allowed to like science experiments or lego and that we were only allowed to play with dolls and prams so we didn't get confused as to the exact purpose of the uterus but I totally thought we were allowed to play the piano. After all, Jane Austen was forever droning on about young girls being taught the piano in order to be "accomplished". Have we lost the right to do this too? Was there a memo I missed? Should I donate our piano to the nearest boy in case in makes my girls grow a penis?

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