feminish

I can’t work out which diary to take refuge in at the moment - moleskine or blog.

I want to write about the way the laundry froze solid on the line this morning (it was minus 4), and about how happy I am that it’s winter again. Sure, my nose has recommenced it’s fairly charming sniffle, and yes, my toes feel a little damp. But Winter’s good for me - or, to be more precise, it’s good for me now. I like the smell of fires, the shrouding of dark evenings and the warm glow of candlelight. I like feeling the need to wrap up, bed down, put-my-head-down, slow down. I feel free to just get on with things, quietly and determinedly; the world is no longer overtaking me with its oppressively enthusiastic early dawns.

I’m grateful for the earth’s tilt that gives us Winter, and for the asteroid (or whatever) that once knocked off-kilter This Planet We Call Home.

But for the moment I’m going to turn to the moleskine, spend a weekend at the Immanent Grove, and leave you with a little link-fest of great feminist posts I’ve enjoyed elsewhere this week:

The inimitable Twisty Faster on economics professor Todd D Kendall’s paper on “Pornography, Rape, and the Internet.”

The *generally-great* Diary of Barbie’s Worst Enemy, on Barbies in general and Job Centre ads for Exotic Dancers in particular.

Charliegrrl getting WHSmith in trouble for their Playboy stationery paraphernalia for 7-year-olds.

And the F-word for a powerful juxtaposition of recent posts:
»Top Businesswomen earning 20% less than male counterparts- £60,000 to male director’s average £74,028
»The first US conviction of a man for female genital mutilation
»Womankind Worldwide’s report on the situation of women in Afghanistan (Not Good)

… the last two put the 14 grand shortfall for a minority of British women into perspective. Here in the White West we get to talk about the icing on the cake, yet in most of the world women still don’t even have the recipe.

The latest Carnival of Feminists is now up over at A Blog Without a Bicycle. Elizabeth’s done a great job. I bet you never saw a carnival with a Contents List before! Go read…

This time last year I was in an old French farm building with a few dozen brown-robed nuns. Improbably enough, we were playing a game of aerial apple-bobbing, eating copious quantities of luminous green cake and carving out the innards of apples to make jack o’ lanterns.

This year it’ll just be the Patterner, the screech owls and me. And we’ll only be playing with pumpkins if we finish wood-chopping in time. This is our first axe-session of the Winter in an effort to keep the indoor temperature above freezing tonight. Tea and jumpers can do a lot, but sizzling trees can do more. The un-doing of nature in a fireplace is quite something to behold: no wonder the flames are so bright and so hot - it’s the unpacking of year upon year of sun-drunk rain-watered hard-earned Tree. It took a long time to get there, the tree. And it takes me hardly any time to explode it into flames.

But this hallowe’en I want to follow Heart’s lead over at Women’s Space/ The Margins, and remember all the thousands of women who have, for many hundreds of years and in many countries across the world, been hounded down and murdered as Witches. From 1487 there was even the Malleus Maleficarium, the ultimate comprehensive witch-hunters’ handbook. In Europe, the women who were hunted were the wise women - the women who knew how to heal with herbs or how to abort with them; the women who kept themselves to themselves and simply chose to live alone and assert their independence; or those who were what we would nowadays probably call ‘mystics’. It was these women who were rejected by their communities - and who, when times were hard and spirits angry, were bound to ducking stools, thrown into water in full-kirtle, hanged or tied to a stake and burned. In my own native East Anglia, the hunting-ground of the 17th Century self-styled “Witchfinder General” Matthew Hopkins, on one occasion one hundred women were executed after a trial at Bury St. Edmunds, who was responsible for perhaps 60 deaths across the region [updated]. (( You can see images of various 17thC English witch-hunting pamphlets and read extracts put online by the University of Sydney Library. )) Many of the scenes in The Witchfinder General (1968) (”15th best horror film of all time”) are hauntingly familiar; they are the landscapes of my childhood.

I aspire to be open-minded and non-fearing in the face of strangers who choose an unusual way of life. I hope to be fearless and non-judging before those who are anti-social or loners, those who are mystics or, more simply, those women who are wise.

In memoriam.

I slinked off into retreat last Friday, down at a medieval priory west of London. The stone floors were cold and the gothic arches reassuringly old. Time slowed and I played with acorns.

The priory is empty of nuns. They have died, as humans do, and have not been replaced. The last two survivors are seeing out their dusk in the almshouse wing. But the energy of the female spiritual life is still there: bells in just the right place; carriage clocks with fairy-like rings; and a total absence of dust - as though the stones remember the centuries of unrelenting female labour dispelling it.

I noticed two framed tablets hanging in one of the narrow red-and-black tiled corridors. Yellowing paper squares had been pasted one-by-one into the frame, each bearing testament to the death and life of one of the sisters. Where monks might have carved stone slabs or wooden plaques, the modest sisters here had a bit of paper and glue. Spaces have been left at the end for those yet-to-die; there’s sign of tipexing and re-gluing. I immediately thought of the immense old-style library type-writered catalogue books, which end up extending to impractical numbers of weighty, frayed volumes (now it’s all just stored in zeros and ones to be flung at us through LED screens at the tap of a finger).

Here was one entry in the frame:

CECILIA
OF THE TRANSFIGURATION

ELEVENTH AND LAST MOTHER

ORDER II

12 FEBRUARY 2004 AGED 89 YEARS

IN RELIGION 64 YEARS

There was also “Hope of the Precious Blood” (9th Mother) and “Priscilla Lydia, Foundress and First Mother”, who died in 1876.

Powerful words.

These women didn’t seem so very far away after all.

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.

The UK Financial Times has recently published a profile of Ségolène Royal, aspiring Socialist candidate for France’s presidential elections next year.

The article concentrated on the fact that Royal is a woman. This is, perhaps, fair enough - France is yet to have a female President, and France’s first female Prime Minister (Édith Cresson) lasted less than a year. But I was struck by the surprising range of imagery deployed by the journalist - John Thurnhill, the Editor of the FT’s Europe edition (someone I’d expect to represent a pretty mainstream voice in the world of European economic commentary).

Since when is it appropriate and/or accurate to describe, in a respectable publication, a female politician as, variously, a china vase, a queen bee, an agony aunt and a dressage pony?

Consider me outraged:

“I wondered whether Royal was just an elegant vase in which voters were busily arranging the flowers of their dreams”

“As she draped herself across a front-row seat, the photographers swarmed around the queen bee of the Socialist party”

“She does not project the image of a monarchical president so much as that of a sympathetic political agony aunt.”

“It is dusk as she leaves the hall, trotting like a dressage pony, head erect, shoulders back.”

You can read the full text of the article here: FT.com/Arts & weekend

The Carnival of Feminists is a year old! Please shimmy over to Philobiblon where Natalie, the Carnival’s founder, has pulled together a fantastic assortment of the best posts from feminist blogs over the past fortnight. Inspiring stuff, these carnivals; they make it all worth it.

Enjoy: 25th Feminist Carnival…

I’m back in London town where the clothes are bright, the jeans are tight and pumps are all the rage.

If women’s clothes in the Big Smoke are all about girls bums, in the Big (French) Calm clothes are all about waists - either slinking them in soft silks or marqueeing-over them with rough cotton French Mama floral smock pinnies.

These French Mama floral aprons are a strange phenomenon. A lot of women wear them a lot of the time and a lot of shops sell a lot of variants. At first I thought ‘ah! they have a lot in the shops because no-one buys them’. After several months of patient observation I can now confidently assert that the opposite is the case: the shops have a lot because everybody buys them. Our neighbour, who takes her little rubbish bag out to the bins in the square at the same time every morning, and who has been known to polish her windows more than once a month, has never been spotted apron-naked. I had to wear an apron like that when I worked in a factory canteen frying burgers and selling bags o’ tatties. But I am struggling to think of any situation in which it would occur to me to be a good idea to wear one in my spare time.

They are a kind of housewife’s uniform - a way of saying: Woman At Work. A way to see work in the home as real work, distinct from the rest of life; a way to give that work a formality and uniform. It’s also a practical, cheap way to protect normal clothes. Clothes need protection from cooking oil, and leaking bin bags and bleach. But because women never seem to take these aprons off, it’s hard to see when they are ever their non-apron selves, when they’re the woman who’s not busy keeping house. The apron brigade seem to be full-time identifying themselves with just one ideal: Respectable Hard-Working Housewife Keeping A Good Home. That’s why they wear the aprons up the hill to market; that’s why they wear them to the supermarket. It’s a statement: my waist is irrelevant, and so is even the simplest respect for beauty - but let it be known I can sure as hell dust!

If I’m ever caught wearing one, I give the Internet Gods permission to nuke this site.

The quote below is a little footnote to my post Another world is possible. Feminist nirvanas are not risible (c.f. Richard over at Happy Feminist’s in this thread). If I didn’t have a North Star you can bet I’d be stuck in the gutter.

…to deprive feminism of its utopias is to depoliticize it at a stroke: without a political vision to sustain it, feminist theory will hit a dead end. The result will be a loss of purpose, a perfect sense of futility, and the transformation of feminism into a self-perpetuating academic institution like any other. Deprived of narratives of liberation, feminist theory becomes anaemic, theoreticist and irrelevant to most women. The great virtue of narratives is that they come to an end: The Second Sex helps me to remember that the aim of feminism is to abolish itself.

Toril Moi, Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman (1994) p.213

The red vine taught me to accept the darkening days and damp winds.