Playboy goes Artistic.

At least, that's what they claim to be doing by having some "leading contemporary artists",  a list which includes Tracey Emin, "explore the female body as a work of art". Normally, I'd be willing discuss the issue of the female body as art and whether or not it could be anything other than the objectification of women's bodies, but this is Playboy.

Playboy. 

They aren't interested in art. They are interested in making money by the sexual degradation and objectification of women's bodies. This is just another desperate ploy to differentiate them from 'bad' pornographers. In many ways, Playboy's mainstreaming of pornography has been far more detrimental to women's rights than the more violent pornography now available online.

I would rant further but Exiled Stardust has deconstructed this far more eloquently here.

Read More

Eat Battery Farmed Chickens and Save Women: Challenging PETA's Reinforcement of Rape Culture

I know that this flies in the face of common sense and compassion but bear with me here. PETA’s campaigns are based on the idea that the objectification, sexualisation, and torture of women's bodies are a great way to raise awareness of animal rights. They glamorise, romanticise and eroticise Violence against Women because they refuse to either acknowledge the construction of “woman as object” within the Patriarchy, or take responsibility for the harm they cause to women by their campaigns. PETA usually uses the bodies of young, thin, blonde, white women as a canvas for their protest. Whilst their protests garner public attention, it isn’t because people are interested in animal rights. PETA have become a spectacle; their message lost in medium of their protest. PETA also seem to have completely forgotten what exactly they have been campaigning for and instead have become obsessed with out-porning the porn industry in their objectification of tortured women’s bodies.

PETA’s newest campaign is called “Fur Trim is Unattractive” and it has been getting considerable amount of press for both the level of misogyny and the generalised nincompoopery within it. It isn’t a new campaign though. It is yet another recycled campaign designed to shock; despite being neither original nor interesting. It's the normal "women with pubic hair are unfuckable" motif, as evidenced by the entire porn industry. One would have thought that an organisation who campaigns against the cosmetic industry's animal testing practises might be aware of the links between pornography, the fashion-beauty complex, and the unnecessary torture of animals. One would be wrong. The very last thing PETA is, is self-aware. Nor do they care that they are supposedly campaigning to prevent the torture of animals by financially profiting from the torturing the bodies of vulnerable women in porn.

Whilst it is undoubtedly unpleasant, the “Fur is Unattractive” campaign is actually rather tame for PETA. Over the past few years, their campaigns and street protests have become increasingly violent and quite deliberate in their use of Violence against Women. They are no longer content with using the bodies of naked women or even carving up women’s bodies as if we were meat. This year alone they have had one advertisement, developed for the Superbowl, banned for having women simulate sex with vegetables; an ad which was only marginally less offensive from Voina’s ‘protest’ art involving women having sex with frozen chickens. Their second ad campaign this year, entitled ‘Boyfriend Went Vegan and Knocked the Bottom out of Me’, should have been called An Ode to Violence Against Women: The Romance Period. It features a physically and sexually assaulted woman wearing a neck brace and covered in bruises because her boyfriend, newly vegan, has pounded her in every way possible. Apparently some of the unfortunate consequences of veganism and the subsequent “mind-blowing intercourse” are “sex injuries such as whiplash, pulled muscles, rug burn, and even a dislocated hip.” That isn't sex. It is rape.

A third campaign developed this year to celebrate World Vegan Day involves a large number of men gyrating, in increasingly more violent ways, with vegetables in place of their penis. Surprisingly, nothing makes me want to give up bacon like a Dude with a cucumber for a penis, or so I'm lead to believe. I'm not entirely sure what PETA was aiming for with this but this is pretty much the definition of creepy:

“A cucumber has never looked so good – or so wicked. In honour of World Vegan Day, watch this spicy video that gives a wink to the sexual health benefits of going vegan by showcasing men enthusiastically and proudly showing off some healthy protrusions from their trousers.”

PETA have pretty much become a parody of themselves. It would be amusing if it weren't for their constant perpetuation and perpetration of rape culture.

So, I say we start eating battery-farmed chickens to raise awareness of the objectification, sexualisation and torture of women's bodies. After all, PETA doesn't care how it raises awareness or who funds its campaigns, so why should feminists? PETA have gone so far as to develop their own porn channel to supposedly raise awareness of the abuse of animals. You don't see feminist groups raising funds by offering to kill rabbits live on the web; perhaps we should.

I believe PETA's advertising campaigns buy into the hyper-sexualised and hyper-masculinised culture in which women are treated as no more than Patriarchal fucktoys. PETA support, perpetuate, and perpetrate rape culture.

So, if PETA wants to reduce the discourse on animal cruelty to simply objectifying women as an advertising tool and encouraging rape culture, I'm going to start buying battery-farmed chickens.

Read More

Victoria Secrets' Annual Demonstration of Misogyny: This Time With a Side of Racism

Victoria Secret's annual Fashion Show is testimony to the mainstreaming of the pornification of women's bodies. It represents everything which is wrong in the Patriarchy rendering women not only into objects for men to wank over but commodifying their bodies with the woman given the honour of wearing a $2.5 million dollar diamond studded bra considered The Ultimate Woman. It isn't so much a fashion show as a live action soft porn show with titillating photos of the models leaked online prior to the broadcast. I won't link any here but the images are the same poses as found in Playboy or any other mainstream soft porn magazine. Victoria Secret's trades on an image of respectability despite the fact that it uses the same techniques as porn to entice men. They reinforce rape culture by parading women in their underwear for male audiences. They are not selling underwear to women but the image of fuckable women to men who then by the underwear for their partners who can not be expected to look like the models who routinely go on crash diets involving only liquids in the run-up to the show so they don't look "fat". It normalises the Patriarchal Fuckability Test on women who have no hope of passing it.

The women-hating and exploitation of Victoria Secret's has become so common place that I don't even notice them anymore but this year they added racism to their bow. One of the themes of the production this year was the calendar and November was represented by a white model wearing a fairly racist signifier of "Indian". The use of a Plains Indian Warbonnett as a signifier for all Native Americans, First Nations, Metis and Inuit people is racist because it is reductive. You can not reduce huge, disparate cultures down to one item which was worn by men who had earned the honour and pretend it isn't anything but culturally insensitive. The cultural appropriation of such item on the objectified body of a white woman is doubly insensitive.

It really isn't that hard to take ten minutes and think about cultural appropriation. It isn't that hard to think about the links of a nearly naked white woman dressed in cultural signifiers of 'Indians' when Native American women are 2.5 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than any other group of women in the US. The majority of the perpetrators of this sexual violence are non-Native men. Yet, the representation of white women dressed in outfits sexualising a construction of Native Americans derived from racist discourse in 'Cowboy and Indian' films has become a trope in our visual culture, one which has been repeated multiple time in the last couple of months. Lana Del Ray's latest video is possibly the most offensive of the recent insurgence in cultural appropriation; interestingly she seems to have received far less backlash than No Doubt or Victoria Secrets. Whilst I don't think No Doubt's apology is a proper apology what with the whole we have non-white friends trope being called up, they at least seem to understand that they have caused offence. Neither Del Ray nor Victoria Secret's appears to have understood at all. No Doubt pulled the video within days of the complaints arising. It seems unbelievably arrogant for Victoria Secrets not to take 10 minutes to rethink the outfit a week later.

And, FFS, using a cultural signifier for 'Indian' in the month of year where the major American holiday is a celebration of their genocide seems, I don't know, really fucking stupid. 

Read More

Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: Gillette Razors; with a side order of Domestic Violence.

I first came across the new Gillette Razor's campaign via Stavver's blog. I just clicked the link, thought WTF and then retweeted. Stavver's already said everything I would have so it seemed redundant to repeat it.  It's the usual vile heteronormative arsehattery which insists that women must pass the Patriarchal Fuckability Test at ALL times. I would have ignored it and continued in my refusal to shave my leg hair. This was until Leah Hardy pointed out that one of the images is of domestic violence. If you click on the mirror, question 4 is this image:

That first image blown up:

That is most definitely an image of a woman screaming whilst her partner's fist is clenched and he is grabbing her. 

The blog It's Just a Hobby suggest we all complain to Gillette here. I will also be complaining to the Advertising Standards Authority. This is an ad campaign that needs to be removed. Gillette needs to be apologise and then donate a very large sum of money to Women's Aid.

UPDATE: Apparently, if you can believe this, Gillette claims that the campaign wasn't meant to go live today [see here]. I'm sure they will be back soon with some piece of faux apology with will blame one employee for making the campaign go "live" without addressing the fact that more than one person will have been involved in this arsehattery from at least two companies: Gillette and the advertising company responsible for the campaign. Whether or not Gillette meant to go "live" is irrelevant at this point. What is relevant is that a large multi-national corporation has created a huge web-based advertising campaign which includes an image of domestic violence as punishment for not shaving one's legs. It doesn't matter how they run it from here, I won't be buying Gillette again. Erm, if I already weren't boycotting them for being the nincompoops responsible for the Proud Sponsor of Mums campaign. Oddly, I'm beginning to see a pattern here.

Read More

How to tell if you're racist:

If you agree with this arsehole, then you're probably a racist. I say probably only insofar as it's equally possible you're just really, really stupid. Tom Brodbeck, of the Winnipeg Sun, has written quite possibly one of the most ridiculous examples of white privilege I've come across in a while. Basically, he's arguing that it's racist for the Manitoba government to focus on the violence experienced by Aboriginal women and develop specific strategies to help these women, despite the fact that they are more likely to experience VAW or be murdered by their partners than non-Aboriginal women. Apparently, developing any strategies which are specifically targeted at one group of incredibly vulnerable women is "racist". 

This is what he actually says about the fact that Aboriginal women are three times more likely to experience violence, in any form, that non-First Nations, Metis and Inuit

But what should any of that matter when it comes to finding more effective policing and public policy strategies to combat the problem of missing and murdered women?
Should police agencies treat missing and murdered aboriginal women differently than women from other ethnicities?

It's pretty fucking obvious that the police already treat missing and murdered Aboriginal women differently than they do missing or murdered white women. After all, does anyone really believe that Robert Pickton would have managed to kill as many women as he did if his victims weren't vulnerable Aboriginal women trapped in prostitution? I don't. 

Thing is, Brodbeck clearly doesn't give a shit about Aboriginal women. No one who cares about the racism and misogyny experienced by Aboriginal women would be so arrogant as to say this:

Singling out missing and murdered aboriginal women is racist, plain and simple. We shouldn’t judge, treat, or deal with people based on their ethnicity.

Nor would they be so arrogant as to quote the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as if it was applied equally to all citizens and residents of Canada. This is just another example of white male privilege trying to minimise and isolate women to prevent us rising up as a class to Smash the Patriarchy. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is just a piece of paper. It is only as good as its enforcement and, frankly, Canada's history of enforcing this legislation is shameful.

We will never be able to Smash the Patriarchy without acknowledging the way it uses racism, homophobia, disabilism and misogyny to isolate women. Acknowledging that Aboriginal women are more likely to be victims of Violence Against Women isn't racist. It's stating the fucking obvious.

Read More

Femen: Because they really bug me

Femen are back in the media once again.* This time they are running about Ikea with their breasts bared to protest Ikea’s decision to edit out all the images of women in their catalogue for the market in Saudi Arabia. Now, I’m quite offended by Ikea’s decision but I’m not sure what protesting in the Ikea in Paris two weeks after the story broke is going to change. In using women's bodies as a canvas of protest, Femen are using some fairly basic signifiers of woman as object. Their message is obscured by the medium of their protest because the medium conforms to the normalised construction of the Patriarchal Fuckability Test. As Exiled Stardust says, getting naked or stripping aren't acts of Feminist defiance or resistance. They are simply appeasement since “(m)en don’t care if you write incendiary messages of revolt all over your naked body, as long as they get to see that body.” Femen's activism using the objectification of women's bodies to make a political point isn't new. It isn't clever. It's just the Patriarchy trying out a new hat. After all, as Megan Murphyhas pointed out, PETA's been doing this shit for years. Their male supporters include a veritable who's who of celebrities with criminal convictions for Violence against Women.

Femen’s use of the female body is a tactic deliberately chosen in order to get recognition in the western media and they seem more interested in the attention than any specific feminist goals. They have already joined the Free Pussy Riot movement and, frankly, there are very few attention-seekers who haven't hopped on that bandwagon. It's proving to be quite a profitable one for everyone but the two women currently being transported to a penal colony. Inna Shevchenko demonstrated her "support" for Pussy Riot by destroying a crucifix in Kiev with a chainsaw. This stunt coincided exactly with the court in Moscow finding Pussy Riot guilty of hooliganism; make of that what you will.

Femen have also occupied the Louvre to protest the rape of a young woman called Mariam by two Tunisian police officers. Personally, I think the women of Tunis taking to the streets is a more important and braver protest than a bunch of topless women running around the Louvre. Equally problematic are Femen's anti-burkha protests. Femen attacked an easy target; veiled Muslim women are some of the most frequently silenced of women's voices. But Femen aren't really doing anything really radical here. Instead, they are just doing exactly what western neo-liberal men do: attack a visible target with little to no power. Running about in front of the Eiffel Tower stripping off burkhas to reveal young, thin white women in their underwear isn't very interesting. Setting up a "bootcamp" in Paris to teach French feminists how to tackle the Patriarchy using tactics developed in the Ukraine is also not very clever. A reversal of the normal imperialism it may be, but it nonetheless shows a rather incredible lack of self-awareness. Thing is, which protests get more coverage? And, which ones really deserve the media attention?

And, this is the problem. The issues Femen claims to want to discuss are important. They are very, very important, particularly the issue of sex trafficking and prostitution in Eastern Europe. The sexual exploitation of vulnerable and poor women is increasing at astronomical rates. But, this isn't what the media is discussing. Femen's insistence on baring their breasts, regardless of what they are actually protesting, just reinforces Patriarchal norms. They have become objects for men to wank over rather than feminist protestors. Whatever message they had is obscured. Instead, their breasts are what are deemed important. 

We won't destroy the Patriarchy by reinforcing its constructions of "acceptable" women. We won't destroy the Patriarchy by targeting one small group of women and demanding that they remove their veil, without even considering the political and cultural structures in which they are either forced or, in some cases, choose to wear the veil. We cannot demand the government of Tunisia tackle the issue of rape by police officers, by running about art galleries naked. We won't change the control that the Church has by chopping down crosses half-naked. Protest needs to be vibrant, engaging and culturally specific but we will not smash the Patriarchy by reinforcing its belief that the only women who matter are those who conform to the Patriarchal Fuckability Test.

As many a wise feminist has said: if the penis is keen, it probably demeans. And, that's the problem with Femen.** Men aren't listening to the message. They are wanking to the image.

*I submitted this piece to the Huffington Post on Monday; just before their servers went down due to Hurricane Sandy. It hasn't been published and I'm assuming they are currently swamped as I haven't had a reply from them. Or, they didn't like it. Either way.

**Apparently, this originally comes from the I Blame the Patriarchy blog. 

Read More

Chris Rock's Good Hair

I genuinely like Chris Rock. He is incredibly funny and usually on the ball with things which are important. Okay, he frequently misses the whole issue of sexism with his tendency to reinforce it in the same breath as claiming to want a better future for his daughters. He is, however, not on my list of Dudes: the hypocrites who think that voting for Obama and claiming to be pro-choice cancels out any violence against women that they perpetrate. [I'm speaking to you here Zack Braff]. Chris Rock is one of those men who should be too intelligent to be debasing themselves with misogynistic jokes but do it anyways. Every time he opens his mouth, I twitch waiting for the inevitable Kim Kardashian joke. Now, I've never actually see the Kardashian show[s?] because I don't do reality TV. I think it's vile, nasty bullying of vulnerable people. Anyway, apparently, Chris has joined in with the Kim Kardashian bashing which disappoints me. And, pisses me off. I have no idea what Kim Kardashian has done to deserve such nasty bullying off everyone but unless she's a serial killer or personally paying the entire costs of the War on Women, I'm going to guess she doesn't deserve it. So, Chris, you need to stop hangin' with misogynists. They are stupid and you, supposedly, are not.

Good Hair is classic Chris Rock. He is equally snarky and lovely. Plus, it has Maya Angelou and who doesn't love Maya Angelou? I only have two real criticisms. The first is that Rock doesn't ever really delve into the issue of men's hair. It is referenced by Reverend Al Sharpton but many of the other men in the documentary had shaved heads which left me wondering about how much pressure men feel under to have "real" hair. But, that's not a very fair criticism since the documentary was about African-American women's hair and constructions of beauty. This is where I had a problem because I think Rock pulled his punches.

Rock should have been using the terms racism and misogyny but he didn't. He talked about the construction of beauty being about white women with beautiful hair and how damaging it was to the self-esteem of young African-American women. He also talked a lot about how expensive it was for African-American women to buy weaves but, at $1000 minimum each, how many can actually afford to buy weaves for their hair? Or, can afford to buy the "relaxing" cream [which is effectively poison]? Again, I felt Rock skirted around the issue of poverty. He just didn't make the clear correlation between race, poverty and the construction of beauty. Maybe I'm asking too much of Rock and expecting a feminist critique but I just felt he didn't push hard enough. I don't mean he should have questioned the women he interviewed harder. One of the nice things about Rock is that he genuinely seems to enjoy chatting to pretty much anyone and actually listens to what they say [rather than what he thinks they should be saying]. I just wanted Rock to go farther with his own political analysis. I wanted him to be bell hooks and Audre Lorde. 

I wanted Rock to talk about more than his daughters.

I wanted to hear a male celebrity talk about misogyny, racism and poverty.

I didn't want him to subtle; I wanted to hear him say those words. 

I wanted him to call out the billion dollar industry which profits from racism and misogyny.

Most of all, I wanted to hear Chris Rock yelling "Fuck the Patriarchy" so I could mail it back to him and politely request that he stop being so rude about Kim Kardashian. Instead, he ended the documentary with a quote from Ice-T, a man who is not noted for his respect for women.

Read More

Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: It's Boots. Again

I hate the Boots Here Come the Girls ads. I think they are misogynistic twaddle and glorify the objectification of women's bodies, the fetishisation of "girls" and construct women as shallow, narcissists with serious addiction problems [notably shopping which can be self-destructive when compulsive]. I try not to let the kids watch ads so we record things before we watch them. Unfortunately, Boots has now taken to advertising before the Kids Club movie at Vue Cinema. And, they have surpassed themselves with the misogyny in their new campaign, although not with creativity since they have liberally "borrowed" from Galaxy's "women have to hide chocolate bars around the house so no one knows they eat chocolate" twaddle. 

Boots' pre-movie Here Come the Girls ad now features a woman staring with glee into a locked box full of chocolate bars. As I said with the Galaxy ads, 

Hiding food isn't the sign of a woman with a healthy relationship to food. Its quite a serious red flag for eating disorders. This ad simply fetishises eating disorders as something that all women should aspire too. ... I turn off the TV every time I see this ad because it makes me sad and utterly fucked off with a society that treats women eating as a social taboo.

The old Boots ads are bad enough. They feature women with compulsive behaviour problems and women trapped in marriages with men who are selfish and rude. They reinforce the idea that women's bodies are inherently ugly and that we can not be seen in public without covering ourselves in make-up and expensive skin creams, all the while getting our daily vitamin intake from pills whilst we stop eating to desperately lose that extra 10 pounds so we won't be fat too. But, now, we are not only ugly and fat, we are being encouraged to fetishise chocolate. No doubt, so that we will then be back at Boots buying weight loss products. The entire campaign is degrading to women. 

And, don't get me started on the word "girls". God forbid we get to be strong, intelligent, resourceful, and kind women with real needs and desires. Nope, we get to be infantilised and demeaned whilst hiding chocolate in locked boxes.

Read More

Clarks: Shoes for Girls that you can't play in.

Just in case you were totally confused about what shoes are for, Clarks has come up with the snazziest, non-confusing name ever: No Playing BL. That way, girls know from being very little that the only thing shoes are for is for looking cute. Little girls aren't supposed to climb trees or play football or play hopscotch or jump rope or What Time is it Mr Wolf in the school playground. Girls have to sit quietly and read Grazia so they know how to pass the Patriarchal Fuckability Test before their 14th birthday. 

Then, they won't find the whole not-being-able-to-walk-in-5-inch- heels weird when they get to be teenagers. Who cares that these shoes do exactly the same damage as the banned practise of footbinding in China. Girls are just ornaments to be admired. It doesn't matter if they don't get to play. Their worth is limited only to their fuckablity as teenagers. We can't have them thinking they are worth anything more than that. They might get ideas and opinions. They could learn their favourite activity is Smash the Patriarchy. 

Do feel free to contact Clarks here to explain why you won't be buying these shoes for your daughter.

Read More

Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: Jean Paul Gaultier Does Diet Coke

Jean Paul Gaultier is designing limited edition Diet Coke bottles. Because, obviously, Diet Coke has run out of ideas on misogynistic advertising and has gone the desperate route of  paying a fashion designer to paint their bottles. After all, it is so uber-cool to show a man's face on a women's body. That isn't at all creepy:

And, there is nothing weird at all about painting the naked body of model Daisy Lowe to look like a beverage:

Oh, look the launch features burlesque and the women as Barbie dolls trope. Gosh, that's ultra exciting and has totally never, ever been done before:

This isn't the first campaign Gaultier has designed for Diet Coke. He is also responsible for the creepy doll commercials. That would be the campaign which officially stopped me drinking Diet Coke. Because, they were creepy and not in a Chuckie kind of way but in a porny, women are nothing more than fucktoys kind of way. I have to say I was not aware he was also responsible for this shite but it doesn't really surprise me. After all, the fashion industry is noted for its general hatred of women.

Diet Coke have done this before. This was the effort of  Karl Lagerfield, the quintessential misogynist who is forever labelling women fat and therefore unfuckable: 

Would it be too much to ask for a product aimed at women not to be women-hating bullshit designed to make us all feel like failures in the Patriarchal Fuckability Test? Really?

Read More

How to Identify a Misogynist: Neil Wallis takes a Tour through Narcissism.

Otherwise entitled: Reason 347 why I don't follow men on twitter: unrelenting levels of nincompoopery. Really, no one should be bothering to read anything written by a man so dense but, unfortunately, Neil Wallis is also a former deputy editor of the Sun. You know, one of those aresholes responsible for the Page 3 phenomenon. Suffice it say that I had never heard of Wallis until I read his self-righteous, utterly narcissistic defence of the Page 3 in the Huffington Post complete with unbearably smug quotes of tweets which make him sound like a Hugh Hefner wannabe .

Normally, I wouldn't even bother responding to the whinging twaddle of misogynists being called on their misogyny but this is such a brilliant piece of mansplainin' twaddle helpfully called: "Why the Self-Serving Wimmin Who Want to Ban Page 3 Are So Wrong". Anytime a man uses the term "wimmin", you know he's going to be a misogynistic areswipe. When men use words like "hysteria" and "shrill" to describe women they disagree with, you know they are misogynists. 

Anytime a man suggests there is something more important in the world for feminists be focusing on, you know he's a misogynist. And stupid to boot. Apparently, Wallis is unaware of campaigns on FGM, white slavery , sexual stereotypes, forced marriages and under-age sex. I'm guessing at that rant that Wallis has never actually met a feminist. Apparently, the people who read The Sun are the ones who worry about feeding their kids and paying the rent; not those of who think that Page 3 is nothing more than the objectification of women's bodies. Yep, that's us crazy feminists. Worrying about how to pay the rent AND the increasing pornographication of our society. Gosh, it's like women might be able to think about more than two things at once and that would never, ever do. We get actual opinions backed up by real research and then where would we be? Armageddon perhaps?

Clearly, I missed the memo where feminists are one of the Four Horses of the Apocalypse. I will undertake riding lessons soon so that I am fully prepared for our battalion. After, I manage to make enough money to pay the rent, feed my kids and pay for those pesky riding lessons. Possibly, also after someone finds a cure for horse allergies.

Do feel free to sign the petition against Page 3 here.

When you are free in between learning to ride horses and saving white women from slavery.

Read More

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.

Read More

Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: Vagenda Knocks Them Down

These images are taken from a blogpost on Vagenda. I think they've brilliantly deconstructed the misogyny. But, sometimes, you just need to look at the images a second time to fully understand the WTF?  bit. [Or, a third time in this case].*

**

***

*Between, Kookai definitely don't sell yogurt. I googled just in case there were two companies called Kookai. There aren't.

**Surely, PETA should be starting a campaign against French Connection now. That way, we can admire the misogyny squared.

*** Pot Noodle: The Lynx Effect of Food. Only eat them if you have a penis and are stupid****

****Not everyone with a penis is stupid so please don't bother posting that level of nincompoopery as a comment.

Read More

Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: Estee Lauder

Sophie Barnes has already written an excellent critique of the unrelenting stupidity and just all around arrogance of this product in the New Statesman. Estee Lauder's new Advanced Night Repair comes with the tagline: "The revolutionary repair formulas millions of women can't live without." As Barnes says:

Turns out the one thing that women require as a basic need the world over is anti-aging cream. No, not clean running water or access to electricity. Not even the oxygen we breathe is as crucial or as life-sustaining as holding off those wrinkles, ladies. This isn't just that we'd quite like healthy, younger-looking skin - no, it's not that flippant. We NEED a youthful, bouncy complexion - our very lives depend on it. 

Who knew? Women could actually die from having wrinkles. I'm so glad Estee Lauder has brought this to my attention. Now, I know the secret to eternal life is some over-priced anti-aging cream. All those centuries alchemists spent looking for the Philosopher's stone trying to turn base metals into gold and live forever were wasted. All we need is some anti-aging cream because being old is, well, practically a crime. Next thing, women with wrinkles will be imprisoned for failing the Patriarchal Fuckability Test. 

So, I'm adding Estee Lauder to the boycott list for being offensive, stupid and totally lacking in an understanding of the real problems we face as humans.

Read More

"My Elegant Gathering of White Pussies"

This appears to be quite a popular search term for my blog. I don't want to disappoint my readers so here are some images of white pussies for your enjoyment: 

Read More

Misogynistic Advertising Walk of Shame: Eurostar's Tedious Twaddle

These are some of Eurostar's Post-Olympic ads which "invite customers to bring a little something back" with them. Granted, these aren't quite as horrific as the MyCheck ad starring Bar Rafaeli but they are so utterly tedious with the monotonous sexism. The second one definitely comes with an undercurrent of slut-shaming; just to be extra exciting.

Read More

Bridezillas and Vaginas: Hello Misogyny. We Have Missed You.

No, seriously. There hasn't been enough misogyny in my life this week so I'm incredibly grateful to the Huffington Post for running no less than two misogynistic, women-blaming pieces of vileness yesterday. Without them, I might have become confused and forgotten we live in a Patriarchy. I'm so glad Ashley Hames was available to tell me that women spend too much time talking about their vaginas. Because men never ever talk about their penises. Nope, it's only women boring men senseless by talking about a subject that men aren't really interested in [unless they are sticking their cocks in one and even then we aren't supposed to talk about it]. 

Hames is apparently bored rigid by feminists banging on about their vaginas. Weirdly, I'm not bored by men talking about their penises. I'm angry about men talking about their penises. I'm angry at the proliferation of pornography which prioritises the penis above all else. I'm angry about the rape and torture of women and children by men who think their right to orgasm is more important than women's bodily integrity and health. I'm bored by men who think that any topic of conversation which does not revolve around them or their desires isn't worth having. On the other hand, I do agree with this statement by Hames: "(b)ut this constant reinforcement of The Vagina smacks of insecurity"; except, I'd replace vagina with penis. Because that's what Hames is really talking about: his own insecurity about his penis and it's status in society. Why else would he claim to be "bored" by women having conversations without him? It's not like he's been kidnapped by a bunch of Feminists and locked in a cupboard whilst they recite the Vagina Monologues at him. Unlike women, who have to live everyday with snide remarks and pornographic images delineating the 'woman as fucktoy' trope.

And, an even bigger thank you goes to Kate Thompson for reiterating the woman are all hormonal, insane crackpots in desperate search for a penis to cure of us any attempts at independent thought in her ode to Bridezillas; which should have been called Bridezilla: Women-Shaming Wrapped Up in a Shiny Tiara. There really is no excuse for such women-blaming misogynistic nincompoopery. God forbid, we actually hold men accountable for the consequences of their behaviour; instead it's always the fault of women who are just trying to survive in a Patriarchal society which devalues everything we do. It's always the fault of women for wanting too much or, you know, actually wanting to get their basic needs met. It's women's faults that they are insecure or jealous or irrational because, hey, that's what happens when you have a vagina. Men are never irrational. Possession of a penis prohibits irrationality.

What really fucks me off about the Huffington Post publishing such misogynistic shite is that they also published a searing critique of the abuse and violence directed at Kristen Stewart over an alleged affair she had with a married director. Rupert Sanders, of course, is completely unresponsible for the affair. It's all Stewart's fault. Nico Lang's article is the antithesis of the misogyny perpetuated by Thompson and Hames and I'm so very glad it was published because the situation is appalling. But, it's actually quite sad that Lang's defence of Stewart sits along side such unmitigated twaddle. Does the Huffington Post have an editorial policy which requires two pieces of vacuous nincompoopery to combat any pro-women articles?

Oh, and if we're going to play the "teams" debacle, I'm on Team Stewart because NO woman deserves the treatment she has received. 

Read More