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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You Too Can be a Model or a Pop Star: Living the Barbie Dream

Remember when Barbie was President of the United States? A vet? An entrepreneur with a string of high street stores? An astronaut? A paraolympian? A jockey?


Remember when Barbie's body measurements were hateful but Barbie herself could do anything and be anything?

I do.

It's unlikely my kids will remember Barbie this way since Barbie is now either a model, pop star or actress. It's not that Barbie can't be President of the United States since a limited edition Barbie for President 2012 doll was produced or that Barbie the Vet is no more, it's simply that the most easily available versions of Barbie for sale on the high street are fairies, mermaids, princesses, models and popstars; all of which are tied into films and all of that subsequent merchandising. 

To be fair, I also had Pop Star Barbie; mine owned a record company, spoke 6 languages and had a PhD in archaeology. It's probably fair to say I was a nerd. It's not also that I think girls today lack the imaginations to make their Barbie mermaids into something; my small has made her Barbie mermaid into a superhero but Barbie used to be every girl [even with the ridiculous figure]. Now, even with the new more "realistic" bodies, Barbie is actually more 
limited in terms of careers and adventures.

The Barbie films may be predicated on the notion of girl power and female friendships, heck Barbie and the 3 Musketeers is practically Germaine Greer-approved, but they are reinforcing an even more narrow version of femininity that is inherently harmful for girls. The opening of the first life-sized Barbie Dreamhouse in Berlin is just further reinforcing the idea of Barbie-as-Object rather than Barbie-the-Adventure-Girl of my childhood. 





Barbie-of-the-Dreamhouse only allows two careers: model or pop star. Girls can pretend to bake cupcakes in her fake kitchen and rifle through her wardrobe. There is no evidence of President Barbie or Barbie The Musketeer or Barbie the Vet here. It's just the plastic pink version of femininity that Barbie has been criticised for more than 40 years. At this point, I'd love a return to Malibu Barbie and Stacey who hang out at the beach surfing. At least they were athletes. Barbie-of-the-Dreamhouse doesn't do adventures and I'm not entirely sure when she works as a model or pop star when she seems to spend all her time baking cupcakes and dressing up.

Barbie had an opportunity to change into something really quite radical with the return of President Barbie. Instead, Mattel has returned to the pink princess twaddle. 

And, don't even get me started on Barbie the TV series which is available on youtube. I can't tell if it's supposed to post-modern irony or the brainchild of someone deeply stupid but it is well past creepy.

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The Daddy Rat : Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender, The Real Science Behind Sex Differences

It's a standing joke in the Mumsnet Feminism/ Women's Rights section that we should all be receiving royalties for Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences. I must recommend it at least once a week on threads about gendering children or men being too stupid to see dirt so they, consequently, stink at housework. This, of course, is the same men who are so "visual" that they need to look at porn in order to get off. How, precisely, one can be simultaneously visual and non-visual is beyond me but that's the argument always put forward by those who believe in innate gender differences.

I'm a neuroskeptic. I don't believe in innate gender differences. I certainly don't think we can "scientifically observe" gender differences when our culture is so seeped in woman-hating that anything constructed as "female" is immediately wrong. I have no tolerance for people who claim that boys are physical and girls are emotional. Or, that boys are better at math and spatial awareness than girls because their brains are hardwired that way. All the neuroscience I see insisting on innate gender [and never sex which is what they actually mean] differences has been about supporting the status quo of women's subordination. 

Cordelia Fine deconstructs all the major "research" on innate gender differences and demonstrates what unrelenting twaddle it is. She is equally snarky, funny and downright angry at the misuse and falsification of "scientific evidence" to support fallacious constructions of gender [which fail to acknowledge the historical and cultural situations in which they were created]. I can not recommend this book enough for anyone who thinks that its totally normal for boys to be violent and girls to be nurturing. This is by far one of my most favourite feminist texts, despite not being advertised as such.


This is my favourite quote from the book: The Daddy Rat

Male rats don't experience the hormonal changes that trigger maternal behaviour in female rats. They never normally participate in infant care. Yet put a baby rat in a cage with a male adult and after a few days he will be caring for the baby almost as if he were its mother.  He'll pick it up, nestle it close to him as a nursing female would, keep the baby rat clear and comforted and even build a comfy nest for it. The parenting circuits are there in the male brain, even in a species in which paternal care doesn't normally exist. If a male rat, without even the aid of a William Sears baby-care manual, can be inspired to parent then I would suggest that the prospects for human fathers are pretty good. (88)

It makes me snigger every time I read it.


Some interesting Discussions on Mumsnet: 

Cordelia Fine Webchat

FeMNist Non-Fiction Book Club

Gender-Neutrality? 

Feminism and Natural Sex Differences

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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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Good Men Project: Their Misogyny isn't really a Surprise.

I've been quite surprised at the response to the Good Men Project's* current foray into rape apologism. I thought most people were aware that the Good Men Project was nothing more than a front for Misogynist Rights Activists with an extremely reductive construction of masculinity based on an incredibly harmful gendered binary of sexes. I didn't realise anyone still took them seriously. I've had them on my list of arseholes for years. I had always assumed that their name was just another example of patriarchal hypocrisy. 

Personally, I'm not surprised that they ran an article written by Alyssa Royse which was nothing more than a handbook on how to be a rapist or that they've actually ran an article written by a man who is proud to be a rapist. They've been waltzing about the issue of rape apologism for a while now. They certainly have form for minimising male violence against women. And, they have form for all sorts of victim-blaming behaviour. The Good Men Project are nothing more than an attempt at mass gaslighting women into thinking that male violence is normative behaviour.

Frankly, I struggle to take anyone who who writes for the GMP seriously. I snorted with laugter at Ozy Frantz's declaration that he was parting ways with GMP because of the pro-rape article whilst simultaneously calling the editor Noah Brand a feminist. I'm glad Ozy Frantz is leaving GMP. More of their writers need to remove their collective patriarchal blinkers and part ways with GMP, but, no one who publishes an article by a rapist bragging about being a rapist is a feminist. This isn't a multiple POV issue, like GMP were claiming on twitter. 

There are only two stances on rape: either you support rape or you don't. It is a dichotomy. There are no grey areas or women who encouraged their own rape. There are only rapists. You don't get to call yourself a feminist if you make excuses for rape. Yes, we live in a patriarchal society in which rape myths are endemic but the true test of feminism is being called on your  behaviour and then reassessing your stance. Pretending that whatever issue raised isn't relevant is just the normal reinforcement of the Patriarchy (Vagenda might want to take note of this issue too). And, we all make mistakes. No one is a perfect feminist but when you publish blogs written by people defending rape, you aren't a feminist. 

I don't care what brand of feminism you think you are, once you try to defend a rapist, you aren't a feminist. That is our base line. You defend male violence against women in any form and you aren't a feminist. So, Ozy Frantz you are just wrong in your defence of Noah Brand. He is not a feminist and he clearly never was. 

UPDATE: Feministe has written a very good rebuttal to the rape apologism at GMP. They are also calling for a boycott of all the writers who either blog for GMP or who cross-post on them. I will be joining them. 

*I'm not going to link to their blog because it will increase their advertising revenue.

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James Bond's Skyfall

I feel the same way about James Bond movies as I do Superhero movies: I like my misogyny straight-up. That way you don't get sucked into watching something arty like Sideways and then discover half-way through that its just another giant wankfest for men. James Bond is usually predictable in its misogyny: every woman who fucks Bond dies a horrible, vile death as punishment for being a slut. After all, the only reason any woman would want to have sex with a man they aren't married to is because they are a slut. Consequently, they deserve to die. But, Casino Royale changed this. It was different. Bond was different and his relationship to women was different.  He wasn't just a violent, misogynistic sociopath. He was an arsehole and recognised as such. Even with the whole "falling in love with a woman made him a better man" trite sub-plot, Craig's first outing as Bond changed the franchise.  Eva Green's Vesper Lynd was a different woman to previous "Bond girls".  She was smart, resourceful, loyal and brave. 

Olga Kurylenko's Camille Montes in Quantum of Solace took it one step further. The film ends with Montes being left to lead the Bolivian resistance movement in taking back their land and their water rights. She is every bit Bond's equal. Unfortunately, in order to have Montes as an equal, the film reasserted the "women who fuck Bond deserve to die" motif which is unbearably tedious. It's like the producers were frightened by a Bond who wasn't just a sociopath and so had to drag the series back to its original construction of Bond the Misogynist. 

Skyfall is just a pile of pooh. It's basically old school Bond resurrected and it wasn't anywhere near as good as either Casino Royale or Quantum of Solace. The plot had holes big enough to drive a subway train through, which it did. Literally. There were 3 women: the whore who dies, the 'wife' who becomes the secretary and the mother who is M. Each gets the punishment they deserve for trying to transgress her assigned gender role. Heck, they even throw a female MP who is clearly supposed to be the 'bitch'. Quantum of Solace ended with a strong woman walking away from Bond to lead her people to freedom. In Skyfall, the women fucked up, got punished and then disappeared into ignominy.

Now, I like James Bond movies. I like movies with explosions and general silliness but Skyfall couldn't decide if it wanted to like Casino Royale or cheesy like Tomorrow Never Dies. The  funny places were few and far between and mostly figured around Q; by far the best character in the film. But, it was the erasure of the strong women from the previous two films which disappointed me the most. It's a good movie for car chases and explosions but they lost their nerve. Skyfall is just like a 100 other movies in the spy franchise which is unfortunate because it had the chance to do something really different. And, even almost feministy .

UPDATE: I have been getting crosser and crosser about Skyfall. I have been in such a rage that I haven’t quite worked out what pissed me off the most. Last night, a friend posted on FB and pointed out that the woman who is punished with death for fucking Bond isn’t just a ‘woman’. Severin’s back story involves being sold to a brothel at the age of 12. She is raped and tortured repeatedly. Her escape route is the official ‘bad guy’ of the film who is still raping her. As she says, he frightens her more than anyone she’s ever come across before. It is a deeply abusive relationship. Bond’s response to this story of child rape is to push Severin into helping him. He does so by climbing aboard her boat and getting into the shower with her. Without asking permission. Bond has sex with a terrified and abused survivor of child rape. She dies because of this. This is why Skyfall is more than a return to old school Bond misogyny. It glamourises and eroticising child sexual abuse by keeping the adult woman as nothing more than Bond’s sex toy.

Here is a great blog by Giles Coren on Skyfall: [[http://reciperifle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/bond-villain.html]]

And a brilliant response by Exiled Stardust: [[http://exiledstardust.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/women-the-makers-of-skyfall-hate-you/]]

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Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: Samsung's Smart TV's Seductive Emotion

Because the only way to sell a TV to men is to have an advertisement, run before the Kids' Club Movie*, starring a woman in her underwear being stared at by a building full of men incapable of thinking with anything other than their cocks: 

Because it is not at all frightening or creepy to find a couple of hundred men, some old enough to be your father, show up at your door salivating with lust. It's what every girl dreams of at night: some middle-aged arsehole who you've never met rocking up at your door with an erection. Nothing says desperate loser more.

No doubt, if one of them turned out to be a sexual predator, it would have been her fault for getting raped because she "enticed" them with her sexiness. Whilst watching the fucking TV. Because no woman is safe in their own home from predatory men. I mean, Reddit's proved that women's bodies are fair game in public. Why not in private too? God forbid, women think they are entitled to any privacy. 

Does Samsung realise women watch TV too? That I'm definitely not going to buy a TV whose entire ad campaign is based on perpetuating and perpetrating rape culture? Cus, it's not happening. 

Also, why is this commercial appropriate for an audience of small children? Does Samsung think 4 year old boys are so obsessed with tits that they are going to make their fathers run and buy a new TV so they can see a pair? 

And, why don't more men find this kind of advertising offensive? It's just said that all men are sex-obsessed losers with no self-control? Do none of you find that a tad rude? Or, objectionable?

*Okay, this is a bit a theme recently. I can safely say, bar an outbreak of the plague, I will not be taking small to see anymore kids' club movies because I clearly can not handle the rage-inducing levels of misogyny. At least, I won't until the get rid of Aquafresh's Nurdle World which is just the most appalling gender stereotyped shit that even Disney would struggle to match. After that, I might reassess the situation but only because it's raining. Again. 

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Cadbury Has Officially Jumped the Shark

They now make chocolate for ladeez. Because, apparently, we are all too fat and no longer make the cut for the Patriarchal Fuckability Test. I would have liked to know this before I bought myself a Crunchie this morning. I like Crunchies. I did not know that I had to have a penis to eat one. I have checked on the wrapping and it doesn't say I need a penis. But, now, there is a chocolate bar just for me. Because I have a vagina. It's called Crispello [and whoever thought that up really needs a career change].

Although, come to think of it, I'm sure Weight Watchers* already market chocolate bars for fat women. It's part of their eat nothing but eggs and carrots but then treat yourself to a tiny piece of chocolate that is smaller than Halloween treats. The Weight Watchers chocolate bars are probably twice the price of a Crispello but at least they don't have a stupid name.

I would totally suggest everyone with a vagina run right now and buy themselves one but it's tea time. Probably some pasta would be better. **


* I can't be too mean to Weight Watchers. They were very helpful when I had PND. But, mostly, they prey on women's insecurities and create diets that only 10% of women manage to sustain long-term. Possibly, I could have gotten the same help from a PND support group and saved myself a shitload of money but I was in denial. It happens.

** I await with glee for the advertising campaign for Crispello. I suspect I will get hours of fun lambasting it for the Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame

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Apparently, Feminists Can Only Concentrate On One Thing at a Time

At least, Sarah O'Meara seems to be implying that Feminists are incapable of being worried about more than one thing at a time in her article Give Me Page Three Models Over "Celebrity News" Any Day in the Huffington Post; a newspaper well-known for its refusal to to publish news about "celebrity culture". Of course, the article is really nothing more than one of those self-serving defences of porn in which anyone who even thinks about the harm caused to individuals within the porn industry and its wider effects on human sexuality in general is immediately anti-sex. We can't possibly have taken the time to think about how harmful it is for young teenagers to learn about their sexuality and healthy relationships from the pornography freely available on the internet. We can't possibly have thought about how restrictive the sexuality porn dictates is. We can't possibly have thought about the how much damage is caused by the rape and torture of vulnerable women's [and children] bodies. Not only that, we can only concentrate on one thing at a time so either we tackle page 3 OR celebrity culture. But not both.

See, oddly, I think that both the Sun's soft-porn Page 3 and the obsession with celebrities help perpetuate rape culture. They are both part of the pornographication of society; the celebration of vapidity and the objectification of women's bodies.  I think they are destroying our children. I think that the people who buy celebrity magazines are culpable in perpetuating extremely damaging and narrow misogynistic constructions of sex and gender. I think the obsession with reality television, whether it be X-Factor or the Kardashians, serves only to function as nothing more than the 21st century version of the 19th century freak show. They are both harmful.

But, you know what, I can campaign against Page 3 and celebrity culture. At the same time. Shocking, I know. So, when other women write things like this:

However, this tired, out-dated crusade against Page Three comes at a time when the rest of mainstream media is actively conquering and exploiting a far more insidious form of female objectification. ... 

While feminists feebly fight the Sun, the online titillation monster grows daily, snatching bite-sized chunks of celebrity bikinis from the hands of news publications and serving them up to whomever types 'Kim Kardashian' and 'bikini' into Google. ... 

Instead of fretting over the Sun, let's start being a little more honest about how the media is really warping men's minds towards women.

I have to wonder about their motivation. Why are they belittling a campaign against objectification in one specific area by claiming that feminists don't see the harm caused in other areas? I've never met a feminist who didn't think reality TV and celebrity culture were toxic. I've never met a feminist who wasn't campaigning about several things on several fronts ALL at the same time. I find myself increasingly bored by this assumption that feminists are too stupid to do more than one thing at once. This is the kind of misogynistic twaddle I expect from men like Neil Wallis. Not other women.

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Salma Yaqoob: Apparently, she bakes.

It is important that we know this. Also, that Salma Yaqoob is very, very slight. As in the perfect example of femininity. Just in case we got confused about what is actually important and its not that she was the leader of a political party who RESIGNED IN PROTEST because of some seriously offensive rape apologist bullshit on the part of another member of the party: George Galloway. Nope, we must remember at all times that Yaqoob is a girl and knows how to behave like one.

In the middle of what could have been a decent article in the Guardian, Yaqoob's feminine performativity is reinforced over and over again culminating in this piece of twaddle:

Yaqoob, 41, is, in person, even slighter than she seems on television – she has long, thin arms and a face miraculously unlined by a decade spent raising three boys, working as a councillor in Birmingham (she resigned for reasons of ill-health last year), running a part-time psychotherapy practice – oh, and leading a new political party. She has just had a new kitchen fitted, and the backyard of her home in the Moseley area of Birmingham is piled with cardboard boxes. The ceilings are high, and the rooms full of light. On the kitchen table sits a straw basket of chapatis she has been baking.

Obviously, if Yaqoob hadn't been baking then we would have forgotten she didn't have a penis. I mean, seriously, how is this even relevant? Who cares what she looks like or does? She's a politician; one with actual morals. How many can claim that? But, still, we minimise her accomplishments by babbling on about her appearance. 

Even more obnoxiously, that paragraph was shoved in between the reporter asking about Galloway's "Assange is just guilty of bad sex" theory and Yaqoob's answer. This is her answer: 

"I've always admired George's anti-imperialist stances and I don't regret, for a second, standing side by side on those issues. But for me, to have to make a choice between that and standing up for the rights of women was a false choice. I thought it was a blurring of something that didn't need to be blurred. It's not that complicated – you can hold two ideas at the same time." Of course, "we're all human, we can't always make perfectly worded and crafted sentences – I really hoped a clarification would sort that out." She published a statement setting out her own position, but then, as she describes it, things escalated. Although she says Galloway never got directly in contact – and still hasn't – she felt she was being personally maligned; that "under the guise of different names there were personal attacks".

Now, this might be because I'm a crazy Feminist type, but I rather think her resigning in protest at some incredibly offensive misogyny is actually a good thing. Standing up for rape victims should be normal behaviour for politicians. Instead, this kind of twaddle just reinforces gender stereotyping. It reinforces the idea that women can only be good politicians if they are also nurturing and caring and bake chapatis. It is damaging for girls to read articles about women where their actual accomplishments are subsumed under the rhetoric of kinder, kuche, kirche. This should have been an article about the splintering of a political party due to misogyny and rape apologism. It did not need a foray into the fashion-beauty complex or baking.

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