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There is a really thought-provoking and moving blog by Linda Grant on truth about enzyte Comment Is Free today, in response to discovering that one of the CiF commenters she had crossed swords with is actually the son of her former boss, Tony Hall. The comments thread is equally lovely, with commenters stepping up to say what they value about each other. Filed under: Blogging, Makes you feel warm inside, Media | 1 Comment I went for a walk today at lunchtime, down past the old Lucy’s ironworks foundry towards the canal. This, Jericho, is one of the oldest industrial parts of Oxford, with canal-workers, the Eagle Ironworks and tied houses for the workers at Oxford University Press. I remember it as one of the most left-leaning parts of the city - students, Dons and liberal parents of schoolfriends of mine all lived here. Radiohead and Supergrass played gigs at the old Jericho Tavern in its upstairs music venue. Thomas Hardy even mentions the church of St Barnabas in Jude the Obscure. It is a higgledy-piggledy neighbourhood of bright and cheerful little houses, labyrinths of side-streets, funky bars on the main streets and pubs hidden down back roads and, at its secret heart, the the canal, a cool, green tunnel of water and willows, twisting its way through the city. Continue reading ‘The Dead of Jericho’ Filed under: Stuff | 2 Comments Chris Clarke has a great new toy on his website - BlogWarBot. It’s been amusing the regulars over at Creek Running North, and there have been some great exchanges. I had a lot of fun playing with it, but none more than when I cut and pasted in some words from an anti-feminist who has been hanging around tigtog’s Feminism 101 site lately. Hard to tell which is which, isn’t it? Two versions below - the first with the phrases in order, and the second where I tried to give it some meaning (more of a mash-up). BlogWarBot vs the Anti-Feminist 1 BlogWarBot: I’m BlogWarBot. Didn’t we ban you? Continue reading ‘BlogWarBot versus the Anti-Feminist’ Filed under: Feminism, Stuff | 3 Comments A bizarre story in my local paper tells of the acquittal of an RAF Senior Aircraftman, who admitted to having sex with a 15-year-old girl, but who claimed he was sleepwalking. He had been drinking a bottle of vodka, then gone to sleep in a room full of others. The girl awoke to find him on top of her. The jury acquitted him. It seems wrong that this man should simply have been cleared of all charges - what if he goes on to rape another woman while sleepwalking? I hope that at the very least he stays away from alcohol in the future. Filed under: Feminism, The law | 0 Comments Why aren’t more people watching Last Man Standing? This is a highly diverting programme in which six easy-on-the-eye, muscular young men travel to various far-flung places and compete in tribal sports. So far they’ve been stick-fighting, kick-boxing, endurance running and taken part in three different types of wrestling (in Brazil, Mongolia and Senegal). Slight posh boy Richard amazed us all by coming out on top in the Senegalese wrestling, although sadly my personal favourite, Rajko, retired injured. Anyway, it’s the final episode next week: a canoe race in Papua New Guinea. Should be interesting - catch it if you can! Filed under: Television | 0 Comments I have been away from the blogs I normally read for several days now, and have come back to find Ilyka’s blog closed to uninvited readers. Trying to find out what’s going on, I went to Creek Running North and found that Chris Clarke has also closed his blog. I’ve been everywhere I can think of and Chris is the only person who mentions Ilyka closing her blog. I suspect it’s fallout from one of the sudden rash of blog-wars, but it makes me really sad, as these are two of the most talented writers out there. I’m baffled, surprised and upset to lose two of my favourite blogs. If anyone knows what has happened and how I can get in touch with Ilyka, please let me know. Filed under: Blogging | 2 Comments I lived in Cambridge for many years and I’m proud of my old home town today. Congratulations to Jenny Bailey. Not so proud of the BBC’s headline, but I guess we take small steps forward… Filed under: glbt | 1 Comment You have to read this from Sylvia. Truly brilliant, truly beautiful. Filed under: Feminism, Great writing, Racism | 0 Comments See this post by Ms Jared. I too am an ignorant fool. Filed under: Feminism, Racism | 0 Comments First off, apologies for not blogging at all for three months. I could give you reasons, but a lot of it was sheer laziness. I’m currently suffering with an evil head cold, brought on by a long-haul flight from the other side of the world. It’s making me feel like shit, but has given me time to catch up on the feminist blogosphere’s latest controversy. Jessica Valenti of Feministing.com, who is also an occasional contributor to the Guardian, has written a book, Full Frontal Feminism. And many people in the feminist blogging world are not happy about it, no sirree. To some extent, the backlash against Valenti’s book was entirely predictable. As soon as I heard Jessica was writing a book, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop - the Shoe of Criticism, if you will. Like it or not, Jessica is the “face” of Feministing (no matter how unfair that may be to Samhita, Ann, Vanessa or anyone else who writes there), partially because of the “boobgate” thing. There are always going to be some people who will be jealous of the fact that she has been picked to represent the world of feminist blogging by writing a book or who will be angered that she is the one whose views on feminism are published in the mainstream media (and that the article is so very simplistic, but that’s another story). In short, people are people. Maybe that was why some of the “big bloggers” got it so wrong - they were expecting a backlash from people who wanted some of that limelight for themselves. And yet that’s not what this was about… The furore over whether Valenti’s book was inclusive of women of colour (apologies to fellow Brits - we just don’t use that phrase here, but I’ll use it rather than any of the Brit alternatives) wasn’t about jealousy over not getting a book deal, personal issues with the author or the rest. It was about an accusation that has been made about feminism since the very beginning: that feminism is largely a movement for well-off white women talking amongst themselves and that issues of importance to non-white women are systematically marginalised. This is a HUGE issue, and the response from many of the WoC bloggers out there shows that it is one that strikes a chord with them. Saying that it’s not important is simply not an option when there are so many many women out there telling you that it is. As feminists we hate it when left-wing men tell us to suck it up about our issues because talking about them is “divisive”. Why can’t we white feminists get that it’s just as patronising and just as wrong (Steve, I do mean you) to ask non-white feminists to shut up about their issues? So, I did a LOT of reading yesterday (haven’t yet done any talking, but only because my head is so fuzzy I’m not sure I could take part in any conversation properly). Started with Piny’s post at Feministe, which had a lot of good links, went to Ilyka Damen (by the way, I just LOVE Ilyka - read her!), then from there on to Blackamazon, (LOTS of Blackamazon), Sylvia at The Anti-Essentialist Conundrum, Magniloquence, Donna, Brownfemipower at Donna’s place, Nezua, Belledame and many others, finally returning to Jill’s follow-up post on Feministe. While I was there, I simply read and listened to what these bloggers had to say. I’m not trying to say I deserve a cookie here for simply not acting like an asshole - going to blogs and reading what people actually think without jumping in and derailing the conversation is the bare minimum of research and politeness. What did strike me was how some of the bloggers I admire (Jill at Feministe, Amanda at Pandagon - although Jill’s follow-up post did go a long way to correcting that) didn’t seem to be willing to do that. Chris Clarke wrote a great post for Pandagon back in April as a guide for men (written in response to the Kathy Sierra online harassment situation and the way in which it was dismissed by Kos, one of the big liberal blogs). I can’t imagine a single feminist who won’t have read it and nodded along: I see there are some kind, helpful men who are taking pains to make sure emotion doesn’t run rampant in the discussion, that unfair accusations of misogyny or characterizations of harassment statistics get spread in an understandable emotional response to a few very upsetting instances of harassment by piglike men who fall far outside the norm. Surely, these men reason, we mustn’t let these nasty experiences color our judgment of the actual events involved. Surely it helps no one to make wild and baseless charges without looking, in uber-dispassionate detachment, at the actual statistics and methodology and margin of error of the studies that show women get harassed more than men. Come, let us reason together calmly, they say. References to Salem and the McMartin pre-school and such come unbidden to their lips. I’m a big fan of dispassionate, rational, fact-based discussion of the issues myself, and it is in that spirit that I offer, to my brethren who’ve taken it upon themselves to be a shining light of dispassion on this topic, these fraternal words of guidance: Shut the fuck up. As Chris finishes: And when you shut the fuck up, two magical things happen: 1) You’re no longer actively contributing to the very problem you’re discussing; You know what, everyone? Shut the fuck up. Listen to what fellow feminist bloggers are telling you. They feel marginalised and ignored in a movement whose goal is equality and whose members are quite able to spot a man exercising his privilege at a thousand paces, yet somehow can’t see how a white feminist could be doing the same thing. It’s hard not to put on the blinkers when a friend is being criticised. It’s even harder when it seems like you are being criticised. But we ask men to do this all the time. We say “it’s not about you - you don’t have to identify with the people who happen to have the same chromosomes as you but who act like assholes“. So take off the blinkers, listen and learn. If we can’t do this for our friends and allies amongst non-white women, how can we expect men to do it either? We owe it to ourselves but, most of all, we owe it to the women around us. Updated to add: Belledame has linked to my post at Fetch Me My Axe (I am incredibly flattered!) and one of her commenters, Sara E Anderson, points out: I don’t think the “don’t identify with the assholes’ model really is very helpful, since we’re talking about a lot of unconscious and inadvertent behavior here. I could just start to ignore anything that makes me uncomfortable, because I get to think, “Well, it’s not me that’s doing racist thing x, phew.” She’s absolutely right and I should have made it clear that “Well, I’m not a xxxx-ist asshole so I don’t need to question my behaviour at all” doesn’t get us off the hook that easily! We all have subconscious/unconscious prejudices and we need to think about them if someone points out some aspect of our behaviour to us. However, we don’t have to choose to be offended, upset or angry if someone points out a way in which we are taking advantage of our privilege - we can react like people whose friends are pointing out things for our own good, which is what is happening nine times out of ten. I hope that makes things clearer. |