feminish

Let’s say I wanted to seduce someone.

And let’s say, for the sake of argument, that said ’someone’ was a guy.

I would probably have a shower before I went out to meet him, and I may or may not shave my legs. I might wear make-up, and perhaps spray some perfume, or essential oil - and, more likely than not, some deodorant. I’d also probably spend a long time choosing what to wear. Heels, perhaps, or maybe flats. Earrings? Possibly. And, depending on my current curves, I might emphasise my waist or hide it; I might accentuate my breasts or rein them in. I’d certainly take a lot of care over my bottom.

In the moment when I meet him - at his doorstep, in a bar, outside the tube station - I would want him to experience attraction towards me. This wouldn’t (I’d like to think) necessarily require a cleavage, skirt, or heels - or even make-up or perfume. But, during the course of the evening, I would want my body to be clothed - or exposed - in such a way, that I could allure his attraction, play with it and incite it. I’d be expressing myself and communicating with him through my chosen appearance.

Let’s take another night out. This time, I might be in a committed relationship, and enjoying going out with girlfriends - say, to a School Disco club night. I might be wearing a short skirt and high boots; a tight white shirt and a tie saying ’sexy’. My hair’s perhaps in pigtails, and my eyes thick with the black kohl pencil I’ve kept since I was 13. I might wear these clothes as a frivolous tongue-in-cheek celebration of mock youthfulness, connecting in sisterly companionship with my friends who are all doing it too. For some reason it’s fun - even if I’m not sure why.

In this School Disco scenario if, say, my bottom was pinched, or slapped or squeezed by a bloke, I would be angry. I would in all likelihood turn round and punch him, even if he’d turned away and all I could thud was his shoulder. I am communicating something with my clothes; but I do not want him to assume that my skirt or boots or kohl eyeliner give him right of enjoyment over my buttocks.

I realise that I’m asking a lot of men. I want a (known) guy to read incitement into my clothes in one situation, but strangers to disregard it in another. Is this unfair?

Is it unfair to wear a short skirt if I don’t want to pull? Is it misleading to not wear baggy clothes? Misleading to not cover my legs, or breasts? Misleading to not wear a veil, as one Australian Sheik seemed to think last week? (Picked up by Philobiblon)

I don’t believe that male and female human beings exist wholly independently of one another. I don’t believe that wearing whatever I want should have absolutely no impact on the behaviour of the other sex, as though I exist in utter isolation from men, their gaze, their confusions, their desires and their vulnerabilities. In fact, I know that my power to allure depends precisely (though not only) on my power to send signals in my clothes.

I accept that signals can be misread; it happens all the time in all types of human interactions. I accept that I am responsible for my actions, in thought, word and deed - including those that mislead others. But I am not responsible for the final fact of others being misled. People, if you like, participate in misleading themselves.

An unveiled woman; a cleavaged, short-skirted, drunk or high-heeled lipsticked woman is not like ‘uncovered meat’ that’s fair game for ‘cats to come and eat’. A woman can send the wrong signals, or men can read the wrong signals, but this is a fact of daily life and a fact of all human communications - and of course we can talk; we can explain ourselves, we can ask each other questions, and quite quickly my words can say more, much more, than my flesh or cloth.

I want to be able to communicate clearly through the ways I choose to cover my body; and I aspire to get better and better at sending honest signals. But I also claim the freedom (should I wish to exercise it) to play games and tricks on people’s perceptions in the ways I choose to cover my body.

I want the law to protect my clothing freedoms. I want the law to accept that, for example, a cleavage in one situation communicates something different from a cleavage in another situation; and that the cleavage is utterly irrelevant to the question of my consent for a man to touch me.

I realise this is a lot to ask. But I don’t believe it is too much.

So, I’d like to follow the cue of Jess over at the F-word, in her post ‘Only rapists can prevent rape’, and repeat this advice to men:

If a woman is drunk, don’t rape her.
If a woman is walking alone at night, don’t rape her.
If a woman is drugged and unconscious, don’t rape her.
If a woman is wearing a short skirt, don’t rape her.
If a woman is jogging in a park at 5 am, don’t rape her.
If a woman looks like your ex-girlfriend you’re still hung up on, don’t rape her.
If a woman is asleep in her bed, don’t rape her.
If a woman is asleep in your bed, don’t rape her.
If a woman is doing her laundry, don’t rape her.
If a woman is in a coma, don’t rape her.
If a woman changes her mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don’t rape her.
If a woman has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don’t rape her.
If a woman is not yet a woman, but a child, don’t rape her.
If your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don’t rape her.
If your step-daughter is watching TV, don’t rape her.
If you break into a house and find a woman there, don’t rape her.
If your friend thinks it’s okay to rape someone, tell him it’s not, and that he’s not your friend.
If your “friend” tells you he raped someone, report him to the police.
If your frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there’s an unconscious woman upstairs and it’s your turn, don’t rape her, call the police and tell the guy he’s a rapist.
Tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, sons of friends it’s not okay to rape someone.
Don’t tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape.
Don’t imply that she could have avoided it if she’d only done/not done x.
Don’t imply that it’s in any way her fault.
Don’t let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he “got some” with the drunk girl.
Don’t perpetuate a culture that tells you that you have no control over or responsibility for your actions. You can, too, help yourself.

As a political project, feminism at its most ambitious argues that Everything could be different, very different.

Feminism argues that the forces at work, the values and prejudices and perceptions flowing through national consciousness can all be transformed; that the complex dynamics of political, economic and racial gender inequality and oppression can change; that there’s a chance that sex can be beautiful, meaningful and fun - and not the site of exploitation and objectification.

This is the dream.

Feminism at its most realistic and down to earth argues that each of us in our own daily lives can make decisions, take choices and follow through with actions that can change these huge and complex political, economic, sexual and social dynamics, where and when our little lives engage with them - when we vote, when we buy stuff, say stuff, decide stuff or go off and do something.

I’m sure I’ve spent way too much of my life grazing placidy on the patriarchal green (( in the words of Twisty Faster )) - and I probably still do so in my ignorance. My life exists within the Big Beast, but the point is that my life is as much as site for change as the Beast itself. When I shout at the Beast I see I have to shout at and look to myself.

But all I can do is my best. I can keep asking myself questions, keep considering things carefully, forcing open my awareness to whatever is happening in my mind and the world around me. Who am I judging? What am I saying? Is this a good idea? Am I sure? And when it gets too much I take a break. I step out of the conversation, out of the office, out of the clothes shop, away from the News. I go for a walk and I stop thinking and I find a bug or hear a bird and I smile; I phone a friend, watch the clouds or put the kettle on. There are some corners of me the Beast can’t touch, and I’ll darn well take refuge in them when I need to.

Feminism is an active project, as personal as it is political. And it is hard to do.

And the point is to do what is hard to do and to take the road less travelled.

It’s hard to say no to a lot of money from a porn-promoter ((see Creative Destruction’s account of the controversy surrounding the selling of feminist blog Alas’s URL for porn promotion. The post links to posts discussing the hoo-haa. The strongest opposition has come from Heart. Other posts (each with a different take) by Sour Duck, Hugo, and Alas contributors Tekanji and Earlbecke are also worth reading. The issue is also now under discussion over at Alas. )), it’s hard to negotiate the feminist minefield that is getting dressed for work ((see this thread over at Happy Feminist )), it’s hard to decide whether to love or hate heels and feminine grooming (( see this post from Jill at Feministe, a discussion inspired by this post from the wisest of Spinster Aunts. You can also read zuzu there too )). (And it’s harder to write this post than to stay quiet.) And because it’s hard, and because it’s complicated, and because we are all actually still (STOP PRESS) more human than we are feminist, sometimes we’re going to fall a bit short - of our own ideals and of everyone else’s.

But dammit if I’m going to stop trying. Another world is possible but we have to do radical, hard, difficult things in our own lives to make this other world possible.

Like saying no when it’s easier to say yes.

We’ve temporarily decamped from our damp, draughty, dilapidated four (almost) square walls to the creature comforts of a windowed, insulated and plumbed-in home.

Already I’m missing the mice, with whom I have declared peaceful co-existence since the noble field-mouse Balthazar accidentally drowned himself one night in our wash-tub. The guilt runs deep.

It’s strange to see my book pages un-crinkle as they un-dampen, and stranger still to have airport. There was something faintly and reassuringly magical about the internet when it was a mere occasional gift from the Gods who, when the mood took them, broke through the usual “no carrier detected/ modem has unexpectedly hung-up” status-quo to squeeze, at snail-like speed, the entire World Wide Web down my phone line.

And it’s odd to not have to risk life and limb to descend the collapsed outside steps to go for a wee in a makeshift outdoor washroom, and a bizarre surprise to have hot washing water that hasn’t been slowly heated by the sun all morning.

I miss the neighbours yapping at their dog and the warm yellow glow of the evening sun as it sets behind the cliffs and Mirandole.

I miss it because living there is stark and brutal. The only soft thing’s the bed and the rest is clear and bare. Not clean, mind, and not ordered, but immediate. It’s not wadded by insulation nor lined by carpets and wallpaper. Wallpaper seems only to plaster my brain with a repetitive and stultified imitation of reality; a crude and mind-numbing alternative to hand-brushed paint strokes or the complex grains of wood.

And I find myself thinking,

Is wallpaper women’s fault?

The Patterner suggests that it’s a product of rationalism or industrialisation. The fault of “all the people who think straight lines are a good idea despite the fact they don’t exist in nature, crystals excepted”.

But I’m not so much worried about the straight lines as the dulling comfort of it. Of course there’s Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, The Yellow Wallpaper where it is, quite literally, maddening:

It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide–plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.

But what I think troubles me is what women have been trying to do wallpapering their homes for the last 300 years (at least). The historians tell us that in the 1700s they were trying to “emulate damask, velvet and needlework”; that in the 1800s they wanted stripes “reminiscent of a military campaign”; and that in Britain they wanted simple, repetitive motifs “to accommodate the ancestral portraits”.

Given that I’m not a fan of women’s devotion to expensive cloth, nor of wars, nor even the Brits’ attachment to primogeniture, you’d think my case was over. But my objection is much deeper than that.

I don’t want there to be a feminine interior a woman must be proud of or judged by. Nor do I want an interior so demanding it requires a stay-at-home partner to “keep up form”. But most of all, I don’t want an interior that dulls and cushions me from the gritty reality of life.

I want to look up from my computer and see wood that was once a living tree, stretching out its branches to the rain. Or see brush-strokes lazily, delicately or slap-dashily painted to the wall - by me, by my lover, or an un-known hand. I want to know: this is the wall. This is the boundary of this warm, dry inside space. I don’t want to think: there’s a pink flower, again. Not least because after a while I don’t see the flower any more - my mind switches off, stops registering: it is dulled, it thinks it knows what is there.

But in fact, if I had a wall to look at, I’d see much more in the wall than I’ll ever see in these damn pink flowers that keep tricking my perspective. I’d see the stone that makes the wall, and perhaps the men that, once upon a time, spent many many days putting the stone there. I’d see the ways in which the wall hasn’t always been here, and the ways in which the wall won’t be here forever. How will this house look when it has crumbled? And when will that time come? Will humans be here to bear witness, or shall it just be the beautiful red-black bugs, crawling through the rocks and ivy, utterly oblivious to the fact that their immense mountain-world was once a house, with a first floor, floorboards, a table, a computer and, God bless our souls, pink flowery wallpaper.

One day, one day…

I hope I’ll be able to see the Plough / Big Dipper / Great Bear as anything but a saucepan.

How can a feminist still see it as a saucepan?!

A 21st century re-write of Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas:

Four Fivers

A donation to Stop the War - in Lebanon, Palestine, Afghanistan or Iraq, you ask of me: “every little helps”.

A fiver, you say, would do the trick, ‘make a difference’ even, to help your campaign against the bombs and death, the devastation, rape and torture.

Here’s a fiver, spend it freely, however you will, I reply - But I’ll first be giving out another three:

The first I’ll be giving to fund women’s studies at universities, so 21st Century lasses can learn about wars and politics and international relations - not only the war-messes that have been made and continue to be made by men, against women, but about different answers to the problems those war-messes set out to solve.

[Seventy years ago Woolf gave her First Guinea to prevent war to women’s colleges]

The second can fund campaigns to get more women into politics, banks, industry and the army. We now know women debate differently about war and peace on the floor of the Commons; they act against cultures of sexualised aggression in banks, they’re more effective and level-headed as CEO’s, and - I warrant - they rape the war enemy less.

[That’ll change the ‘odour - or shall we call it ‘atmosphere’?-” of public life, as Woolf said when she laid down her Second Guinea for the advancement of women in ‘the professions’]

The third fiver can go to fund feminist activists and writers, online and in print. We’ll discover that we’re not all Melanie Phillipses or Ann Coulters. How many leader-writers on British papers are women? How many political editors? Or regular, run-of-the-mill news journalists, for that matter? That’s a fiver for the f-word, for feministing and for Women in Black.

Not because Woolf was wrong to give her Third Guinea to the anti-war campaign which asked her for one in the first place, but because she was right to say women should make use of “Typewriters and duplicators … these cheap and so far unforbidden instruments” and so “rid yourself of the pressure of boards, policies and editors.” Then it’s possible to “speak your own mind, in your own words, at your own time, at your own length, at your own bidding.”

“Since we [women] are different,” she said, “our help must be different… we can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.”

That’s why I’m giving a third fiver for feminist bloggers - before my fourth for Stop The War.

[Photos courtesy of ebr1 on Flickr]

Three Guineas is Virginia Woolf’s most controversial and polemical feminist work, written in 1936/7, to the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War and the muscle-flexing of fascists in Italy and Germany. It takes the form of a letter replying to a request (from a grey-haired old English barrister) for a guinea (21 shillings - about £1.05 in new money) towards a Society for the Justice, Equality and Liberty of all men and women. A donation, he claims, would help to prevent war.

By all means take your guinea, says Woolf (delighting in the fact it’s one she’s earned herself). But first she will give one guinea for women’s colleges and a second for the advancement of women in ‘the professions’, her comprehensive, elaborate and well-defended argument over 190 pages being that the more women there are in positions of power (in politics, science, culture or the church) the less warmongering society will be.

For a full lowdown on Three Guineas (including synopsis, key quotes and a bibliography), see the feminish » Three Guineas Redux: all a girl needs to know

The cover pictured was designed by her sister, the artist Vanessa Bell

I returned to that small corner of the planet called Home this weekend, for a wedding.

Suffolk has billowing huge skies, so enormous my mind heaves open under the expanse, gaping and empty, and I feel calm. Some people say Suffolk’s got flat land; I say it’s got big skies (and mumble ‘Gainsborough and Constable‘ at them).

In one of the speeches, the uncle of the (high-achieving) bride implored her to ’support, respect and love’ her new husband. Which is probably fair enough and a nice combo of words, but for the fact that, turning to the groom, Uncle exhorted him only to ‘love, cherish and treasure’ his new bride. I winced. Looking around for moral support I found it in the bride’s indignation (mostly at the word ’support’) and the hmmmm-ing of the young lasses at my table (phew).

How can it happen? Everything is going so well: girl’s got a stunning education, a CV as long and glittering as her veil, and a formidable determination to realise her potential - and then, Bam! Bang splat in the middle of the party there’s a patriarchal custard pie, out of nowhere.