The F-Word Blog
What is feminism? First survey results
By Catherine Redfern | 17 March 2010, 23:44
How do feminists explain what feminism is? These images might give you a clue.
[Image shows a ‘cloud’ of 50 words (e.g. women, equality, men, belief); the words are different sizes based on how frequently they were mentioned]
They are produced from the answers given to our survey of 1265 UK feminists (for the scope and limitations of the survey, see more information here), as part of the research for my book with Kristin Aune Reclaiming The F Word (more of the survey results will be published over the next few months and I may cross-post some of them to The F Word, as I’ve done here.).
So, one of our survey questions was “What do you understand the term feminism to mean?”
These images represent the free text of the responses pasted into Wordle (above) and Tag Crowd (below).
I’m hoping to publish more detail about the actual responses to this question in due course. (One of my favourites was the person who wrote: “you’re pulling my leg? i haven’t the time to write this answer!”)
Important points to note: The images represent the most frequent 50 words from the 824 respondents who answered this question online (we had 1265 survey responses in total and about two-thirds completed the survey online). Unfortunately we don’t currently have the funding to type up all of the free text responses that were submitted on paper, but the paper responses were counted in our main (statistical) survey results which are in our book.
I removed the word ‘feminism’ from the responses before processing it, since that’s what they were asked to define.
[Image shows a ‘cloud’ of 50 words (e.g. women, equality, gender, belief); the words are different sizes based on how frequently they were mentioned]
I’ve included both clouds as they look slightly different: the one above, for example, doesn’t have the word ‘men’ in it. I’m not sure why that is, but it’s interesting to see how it gives a slightly different impression.
Both of these make me very happy! More of this sort of thing to come, I hope!
(I’m concerned that these are probably not accessible to all readers, and I’m going to investigate if there is a way of fixing that. Advice very much welcome.)
New feature: In conversation with Senzeni Marasela
By Jess McCabe | 17 March 2010, 23:09
Last year Senzeni Marasela created an art installation called Jonga: the Museum of Women, Dolls & Memories, in a shop-front in Huntly, Scotland. Here Marasela talks to Claudia Zeiske about Barbie and the ways that beauty standards and pressures impose differently on women of colour and white women
Claudia Zeiske: Senzeni, we invited you to come to Scotland to address issues of women’s self-perception, which are high on the agenda at the moment. You initially came up with a proposal to work with a group of women here. Can you remind us of your ideas before you came here?
Senzeni Marasela: I have been doing work on my mother’s dresses for a very long time. I use her dresses as a canvas and tell the story of her life. My mother was a woman of her generation. She was never expected to work or have ambitions that went beyond the gate of her home. Essentially she never had a voice, in a way I speak for her and myself.
I wanted to work with Scottish women and look at creating narratives on dresses. I was interested in their silences. Many obviously were silent through the circumstances of their lives. They were far from the independent women we see on television. They were dependent on someone, often either a social worker or the social services. My culture also encourages dependency amongst women. We were going to take their stories and weave them into dresses. The idea was they could wear them and people could look at their lives.
CZ: … dependency amongst women. Do you mean a network of support and friendship?
SM: I mean the dependency on men and the idea that you only have worth once you are married to a reputable man. After that you are forced into silence. Also because we are so gendered that we are groomed for specific roles, we see very few strong and powerful women. Women are not authors of their own experiences.
Click here to read on and comment
New review: Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century
By Jess McCabe | 17 March 2010, 19:06
Jess McCabe reviews Justine Larbalestier’s collection of 11 stories and accessible essays, which provide an engaging introduction to feminist scifi
Curious about feminist science fiction, but don’t know where to begin reading? Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century is a great place to start.
Justine Larbalestier has curated a collection of 11 short stories, each followed by an analysis from a feminist science fiction academic or critic.
“I wanted to find a balance in this anthology between introducing people to long-out-of-print stories they would never otherwise read and reprinting better-known works that have never been the subject of study,” Larbalestier says in the introduction. (You might recognise Larbalestier’s name - she is also the young adult author who recently drew attention to the ‘whitewashing’ of the US cover for her novel Liar.)
Daughters of Earth opens the door to a selection of feminist and women’s science fiction writing, then puts these examples in historical and literary context through critical essays written in a broad and accessible tone. These essays sprout hundreds of branches, tantalising the reader with glimpses of the history of US women’s speculative fiction, the development of science fiction as a genre, the development of feminist ideas, feminist critique and the relationship between ‘genre’ and ‘literary’ writing.
Click here to read on and comment
Round-up!
By Jess McCabe | 17 March 2010, 16:54
The Yarl’s Wood hunger strike has been suspended. The women hunger-strikers say:
The suspension will last for three weeks until something is done to all the issues that had been raised. Our position will be reviewed on suspension of the hunger strike if there are no changes to the problems and issues. Nobody wants to go on hunger strike, but if the authorities and immigration do not listen to us then we can resume the hunger strike on the 9 April 2010. This letter will be sent with a copy of the problems that we face at Yarl’s Wood.
Here are some suggestions on how to support the strikers.
The London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival starts tonight - sometime F-Word contributor Kaite Welsh has rounded up some of the highlights over at Lesbilicious. The site also considers the highlights for the Queer Up North festival in Manchester this May.
Meanwhile, Charlotte at Subtext notes two interesting films screening in London as part of the Human Rights Watch festival:
Sanctuary (4m animation) Sanctuary is the true story of one woman, Marjorie, who tries to seek asylum in the UK. Speaking of her experiences in her own words, this film illustrates the journey she goes through—her inner journey as she confronts the effects of her torture and her outward journey as she struggles for asylum.Location: The Ritzy, Brixton Oval, London
Date and time:
March 21, 2010 5:00pm
March 22, 2010 6:30pm
Women Without Men
Shirin Neshat’s striking Women Without Men weaves together the stories of five women against the backdrop of the American- and British-backed coup that brought down Prime Minister Mossadegh and reinstalled the Shah in 1953. Contrasting the political drama of the time with the complexities of the women’s intimate lives makes for an imaginative and emotional film that engages us on a myriad of levels.Location: Curzon Soho, 99 Shaftesbury Avenue, London
Date and time: March 23, 2010 6:30pm
US tabloid magazine Life & Style engaged in a particularly egregious bout of gender policing recently, putting Angelina Jolie’s three-year-old on the cover with the headline: “Why is Angelina turning Shiloh into a boy? -A boys haircut and clothes -Calls her ‘John’ -No girlie things.” Miriam at Feministing notes:
The idea of kids and adults standing in the grocery store aisle, looking at this cover, and absorbing the message it sends was too much.
Agendered is looking for writers to contribute to its Masculinity issue:
We’re looking for articles on things like ( but not restricted to):Politics: can men be feminists? profiles of various feminist men…
Baby Daddies: the UK’s new paternity leave—how does it measure up to the Scandinavian countries’ paternity leave?
Sex and Dating: dating guides’ models of ‘masculinity’—is the man from ‘The Rules’ the same as the man from ‘The Game’? Or is it a different sport entirely?
Role Play: what do people who value ‘masculinity’ think about femininity?
Oxford Rites of Passage: does ‘masculinity’ vary from place to place? Is there an Oxford specific model of ‘masculinity’?
Mag Hags: ‘Men’s Health’ is now more popular than ‘FHM’—What’s going on?
Beauty: Masculinity and the female gaze—a review of ‘Filament’ magazine
Criticisms of how gender stereotypes are imposed on explanations of how the human egg is fertilised are well established and almost 20 years old. Elle PhD picks up on how they have not yet sunk into the minds of those at the National Geographic Channel, however:
The woman’s body is represented as terrain to be overcome and defeated. Why do I say defeated? Because the narrator describes the process of fertilization and conception as an “epic quest,” and “a war,” calls the sperm “250 million genetic couriers… about to invade Emily’s body” and talks in terms of “securing victory.” For sperm, “landing in Emily’s vagina is like D-Day.”Anyway, back to women-as-landscapes. There are forests and mountains and oceans. There is a rough, rocky road (aka the floor of the vagina. Yes, seriously). The woman’s reproductive system is defined in terms of its treachery or pleasantness to sperm. “Everything in the vagina,” says one of the scientists, “works against the sperm’s survival.” The vagina has a “dark side.” The cervix is a “dark, treacherous maze of uncharted tunnels.” It is “hell,” a “twisted, nightmarish, urban environment.” On the other hand, the fallopian tubes are “sperm heaven.” But, it’s not all sunshine at this point! The egg’s short life span presents “a final, fatal hurdle.”
Gordon Brown has promised to provide pregnant women with the legal right to a home birth and an extra 4,000 midwives by 2012.
Isata Denton Ceesay from the Mother’s Campaign of the All African Women’s Group talks about the recent march (note, I’ve not been able to watch this video myself):
Also, the 10th Carnival of Feminist Parenting is up at Mothers for Women’s Lib.
LGBT Asylum News profiles a lesbian couple in Uganda.
Reille Hunter - with whom US politician John Edwards had an affair - was interviewed in GQ magazine. The resulting pictures unleashed some serious slut shaming.
The International Olympic Committee wants to require intersex athletes to have surgery before they compete, according to the Bay Area Reporter, which links up a petition to protest this.
Farmer’s Weekly held a competition for ‘sexiest farmer’, with male and female categories. The news media predictably leapt on the story, but have been ignoring the winner in the men’s category, only reporting on the “blonde” winner of the sexiest woman farmer category. Only Pete Mortimore’s local newspaper ran a photo of him. Sociological Images breaks it down.
Bristol Reclaim the Night happened - sian and the crooked rib has posted her speech from the protest.
In ice-skating news, Sociological Images explains that competitive female figure skaters are required to wear skirts, after the International Skating Union was “scandalized by Debi Thomas’ unitard at the 1988 Olympics”.
Over at Comment is Free, Annabelle Lever breaks down an interesting study about how racism operates in juries.
Melissa at Shakesville offers congratulations on the first same-sex couple to wed in Washington, DC, and some thoughts about love. Meanwhile, Sociological Images considers how a ‘family’ organisation ‘accidentally’ posted the wrong photo representing a lesbian couple wanting to adopt a relative’s child, but also see the comments discussion too.
The Grand Narrative posts about how symbolism varies across culture - and how this makes it hard for Westerners to ‘read’ how gender operates in Korean advertising.
Lady Gaga and Beyonce’s product-placement-tastic latest video Telephone has been kicking up a lot of discussion, with Fox News predictably ‘outraged’, but also some people with more valid criticisms - Lesbilicious has more.
More on the implicit/explicit racism and sexism of population control rhetoric - Pink Scare links through to this Facebook album looking at some of the images advocates of population control use:
Often simple depictions of women of color with children are associated with hunger, scarcity, overcrowding and environmental burden. Critically analyzing and understanding these fear-based images can help us remove the negative lens through which certain peoples are viewed as burden or threat rather than as integral members of a global community.
Over at the Women’s Media Center, Latoya Peterson makes the case for focusing on the “wealth gap” as well as the pay gap:
Wage equity is still a large problem for women—while the gender wage gap is widest for white women compared to white men, black, Latina, and Native American women take home far less than their white counterparts. But earnings are only a small part of overall financial stability. What matters more than income in the long run is the accumulation of wealth. As lead researcher Mariko Chang explains in her presentation summarizing the data, “wealth confers benefits income doesn’t.” While income is vital for day to day survival, only wealth can generate further income, provide collateral for loans, be passed from generation to generation through inheritance, and provide the individual with the means to survive without a paycheck. Sadly, for many of women of color, the wealth gap is even wider than the income gap. Most women of color have no assets except for their cars—once the blue book value of the vehicle is removed from the calculation of median wealth, black women are left with a scant $100 in assets, while Latinas can only claim $120.
Finally, Ayaan Hassan at Muslimah Media Watch looks at how Muslim women immigrants are represented in the right-wing media in the UK.
What About Women?
By Laura Woodhouse | 16 March 2010, 10:42
The Fawcett Society’s What About Women? campaign is designed to push gender equality onto the political parties’ agendas in the run-up to the election. Fawcett have asked the parties a series of questions on women and the economy, work and family life, crime and justice, democracy and political reform, attitudes and media culture, and equality and human rights. The responses will be published on their website. At present you can hear from the Greens and the Scottish National Party.
You can support the campaign in a number of ways and sign up to receive the weekly campaign bulletin with updates, events and weekly actions you can take. The activist pack tells you how you can organise What About Women? hustings in your local area.
Sheffield Fems are hosting a hustings next Tuesday, 23 March, at the Quaker Meeting House, 7.15pm - 10pm, with Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem and Green candidates. Let us know if you’re hosting one and we’ll add it to our events page.
New feature: Writing women back into punk
By Jess McCabe | 15 March 2010, 10:01
In the second installment of her series, Cazz Blase looks at how punk was covered by the music and feminist presses, the work of female journalists, and how women punks came to be largely written out of the history books
When punk exploded onto the British musical and cultural scene in 1976, it was thanks to the hard work of a merry band of mythmakers. The story of the Sex Pistols has been told, re-told, mythologised, de-mythologised and re-mythologised more times than I can count, and that’s just one band.
This myth originated with Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood in 1975, it was re-spun by the tabloids between 1976 and 1979 as part of a textbook moral panic about punk, and was later reclaimed and re-told by a number of other interested parties, all of whom sought to put their own spin on it for their own purposes. They aren’t the only ones, but accounts of punk, both in the popular sense and the academic sense, do tend to concentrate on a very specific canon, comprised largely of the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, sometimes The Jam, sometimes The Buzzcocks, sometimes The Stranglers, suggesting that not only was punk a purely British phenomenon, but (Buzzcocks aside) it was also exclusive to London, and to white young men.
The earliest punk books were a mixture of insider accounts (Caroline Coon’s 1988: The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion, which was published in 1977, and Fred and Judy Vermorel’s The Sex Pistols: Inside Story, which was published in 1978), personal polemic (Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill’s The Boy Looked At Johnny: The Obituary Of Rock’n’roll, also published in 1978) and dense academic subcultural theory (Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning Of Style, which was published in 1979). With the exception of Coon’s book, and - to a lesser extent - Parsons and Burchill’s, they were not really interested in exploring the female experience of punk.
Click here to read on and comment
New feature: Painful vagina? Your poor husband!
By Jess McCabe | 14 March 2010, 12:34
S’s experience with vulvar vestibulitis - which makes penetrative sex painful - highlighted the phallocentric medical establishment and limited definitions of sex
For almost 10 years I have suffered from a form of vulvodynia (vulval pain) known as vulvar vestibulitis, which, although it has made perhaps two brief forays into the media in that time, seems generally unknown except to those who suffer from it. Briefly, it has no known definite cause or cure and the symptoms are simply excruciating spots of soreness just inside the entrance to the vagina (making sexual intercourse, in my case, utterly impossible). This physiological (not psychosomatic - more on that in a moment) condition has had a fairly devastating effect on my sexual identity, marital relationship and general well-being, but it has also brought some clarity to my thinking about female (and indeed male) sexuality, and the prevailing societal assumptions of most healthcare providers. Essentially I would argue that the attitudes of healthcare providers to this type of condition are often phallocentric and negligent of female care. In my case I firmly believe my condition could have been treated successfully, had it been diagnosed immediately, treated as a serious condition and free from the obsessive focus on penetrative sexuality.
My first reaction when this problem started was utter terror and shame and fear, because I had no idea what the hell was wrong with me. I was 19 and only a few months into a still developing sexual relationship with my (now) husband and - despite having had very good sex education in terms of contraception and sexually transmitted diseases - was totally clueless about any of the other myriad problems that affect women in their sexual health. Why are students not offered this kind of information as part of our education system? It’s almost as though as long as you are pregnancy and disease free, nothing else - such as enjoyment or comfort - matters. I worry that we fail spectacularly to provide young men and women with the knowledge and understanding of sexual issues that most of them will encounter. Indeed, of the many, many GPs that I saw, hardly any of them seemed aware of vulvar vestibulitis, and I ended up educating them! If healthcare professionals take so little interest in women’s sexual health (and this is not a rare condition by any means), what does this say about society’s priorities?
Click here to read on and comment
Photo by styler*, shared on Flickr under a Creative Commons license
Samira Ahmed, behind the scenes with C4 news
By Jess McCabe | 14 March 2010, 10:40
Subtext Magazine has posted an enlightening piece by Samira Ahmed from Channel 4 news, which looks at how international news is reported.
Among other things, she talks about reporting on ‘corrective’ rapes in South Africa:
There is a challenge there in how to cover a story. I found myself challenged when I did the South Africa story last year on ‘corrective rape’ - with gangs targeting lesbian women. Was it patronising? Was it racist, as some men I met suggested, to go on about African men and rape? But the fact was, the story was not being covered in South Africa and the women’s group campaigners were so pleased to have someone keen to cover the issue.The piece was focused on what the women themselves were doing. I met a network TV reporter outside the Johannesburg high court on my first day’s filming about a protest over delays to rape trials, who told me editors weren’t interested in the rape of some lesbian township women because there’s so much violent crime in South Africa already. I’m fascinated by how the poorest always get neglected and I was able to make that part of the story. The day after it ran the South African High Commission in London rang up to ask for a transcript. Some South African bloggers also picked up on the embarrassment for the authorities (whose complacency was implicated in the report) as I’d deliberately linked the story to the tourist drive for the upcoming football World Cup finals.
Crucially you need time - not two minutes - to give all that context. I had nearly seven minutes. And I do feel while there are some terrific foreign correspondents, (the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen and C4’s Jonathan Miller spring to mind) there are still far too many ignorant ones who go in with an arrogant attitude and little empathy. Some of the accounts I’ve heard from producers over the years about the insensitive questions or attitudes to traumatised people are really shocking.
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