Blah Blah Flowers

The Daily Mail produce one of their typical hatchet jobs on Harriet Harman for daring to suggest something should be done to try and stop domestic violence against women and Liberal Conspiracy retort with what is probably the best response so far. Mailwatch goes into the detail of the Mail report.

Mail: The Government claims that violence against women is costing Britain an astonishing £40billion. It has emerged they are carrying out five separate reviews into the causes and how women can be better protected. This is despite evidence showing that boys and young men are more than twice as likely to fall victim to violence, and that young women are becoming increasingly aggressive.

Mailwatch: The Mail is trying to destroy the feminist arguement by shouting that boys are a bigger victim than girls and Harriet is just looking after the girls. But just like any comparison, it needs to be like for like and this is not it. Boys and men are victims of domestic violence too, but not in the same numbers as women. It would be good if boys as victims were included in this report too, they may well be, but to try and beat Harman with the feminist stick by making incompatible comparisons between these two levels of victims is wrong.

A quarter of all violent assaults in England and Wales are carried out by women, and it is the most common reason for females to be arrested, recently overtaking theft and handling stolen goods.

So three quarters of all violent assaults are carried out by men.

Liberal Conspiracy: The plans are being rolled out despite evidence showing that boys and young men are more than twice as likely to fall victim to violence, and that it is in fact young women who are becoming increasingly mean: a staggering 25% of all violent assaults in England and Wales are carried out by vicious ladette women, and it is the most common reason for females to be arrested.

The other 75% of violent assaults are thought to be carried out by transvestites and gays, not men.

Labels: Daily Mail, domestic violence, Government, Harriet Harman, journalists, newspapers, women

Christ's fat cock. A nine-year-old Brazilian girl, sexually abused by her father (who also has abused her physically handicapped elder sister) and somehow made pregnant was given a termination. That is where the wonderful Catholic Church steps in as the Archbishop of Olinda and Recife has now announced he's going to excommunicate everyone that was involved in the abortion. Because it's much better that a girl far, far, far too young to be able to bare children be made to go through pregnancy and face the risk of dying or, if not dying, giving birth to twins who would have unguessed congenital problems due to their father and grandfather BEING THE SAME MAN because God loves foetuses more than humans.

Remember this, any time you feel the need, whoever you are, to whine about Atheists being 'mean'.

Labels: abortion, angry, atheism, atheists, Brazil, child abuse, children, Christianity, God, women

Apologies, work has been crazy-busy this past week and yesterday was Open House 2008 so I've not had as much blogging opportunity as I might normally have.

Following on from here..., Miss Andrea said:

All oppressed groups have one thing in common: their desire to be treated with all the respect and rights which should be given to all humans.

But the desire to be treated as a gender is not what all other groups demand -- doubly important when considering that gender itself contains unequal power dynamics. By demanding to be treated as category of gender, transsexualism is significantly divergent from the norm, who all seek full humanity.

I'm asking, "if the demand is fundamentally different, then how is it possible that the way society approaches transgenderism should be identifical to how society approaches all those other groups?"

And the only reasonable answer is: it shouldn't.

Btw, I'm not "erasing the transsexual's existence" and have no wish to do so. I understand that the need to switch genitalia and/or gender roles is a NEED of certain individuals. I am merely pointing out that the way transfolk would have society frame the entire issue is not accurate.

I'm asking you to think about how an accurate framing would effect society's approach to transgenderism.

And unsurprisingly I disagree. Transwomen (and with Miss Andrea it is always male-to-female transsexual women, except when it's sometimes some small subsection of that) wanting to be seen as a gender being completely different from all other oppressed groups only works if you consider 'female' as having absolutely nothing to do with the sex of the body, the sex of the mind, the role of the body in society and the rolls of different genders in society. No-one is talking about theoretical shapes that exist only in ideaspace here (though I've sometimes felt I'm a isosceles triangle in a man's body) so trying to pretend as though we are is not useful.

Labels: feminism, men, transgenderism, women

OK, Miss Andrea posted this, to which I replied thus, to which she then replied via my comments thasly (posted here because comments on my blog disappear after time has passed):

I know lots [of transpersons], oh way more than that, no more than that even.

I don't talk about transmen because it appears that transwomen are much more vocal.

It isn't really about transfolk at all, from my perspective, though I am concerned about the level of harrassment suffered by transgendered. The whole situation is frought with anxiety for them and I really do sympathize. But there's only so much space and time for discussion, and the transfolk are handling the harrassment issues on their blogs so I really don't need to use my blog space for that.

It's mostly about any non-trans man being able to acces woman-only safe spaces merely by claiming to be trans. But there's also a minor annoyance to me personally because (since I do know so very many) that no matter how long they've transitioned, they never quite "get" the horror of sexism. The internal conflict just isn't the same and it can never be -- no matter how young a transchild starts her journey, her primary conflict will always be about being accepted as her gender, whereas a born girl's conflict will always be about running away from gender roles. Not sure what the transfolk assume I mean when I say that, it's just a simple observation of fact.

So now that I've answered your questions I hope you'll answer mind because there's a few things I don't understand and I'd like to. Pardon, probably not going to ask this the right way.

How does the desire for gender recognition equal the desire for full humanity? Many transfolk seem to think those two are the same and I can't figure out why.

I must admit, I don't understand this. I don't understand why the 'desire for gender expression' should equal the 'desire for full humanity' and who says it is or isn't. Part of my bafflement is based on a view that through reading her blog I have of how Miss Andrea views the transgender community that has no relationship to how I view the community. I don't know if this has something to do with her picking which parts of the community she wants to talk about or maybe I just lack the smarts to understand what she is saying. It seems to me that part of the argument is that while she as a female-born-woman chose a lifepath that (and here we have a gross simplification to avoid getting sidetracked into a seperate semantic argument) is not 'stereotypically female' (and I'm airquoting wildly here) she sees some male-born-women choosing to present as closer to that 'stereotypically female' (airquotes) role and she thinks that's bad. It's the burqa argument basically, while women in most of the world seem to think it's a symbol of oppression that needs to be cast off, there are some British Muslim women who are reported as saying that they are taking to wearing it because they see it as a symbol of freedom.

I hesitate over the any non-trans man being able to acces woman-only safe spaces merely by claiming to be trans bit because I doubt I can formulate an answer that doesn't make me look uncaring about the value of safe-spaces for women. There is the issue of what that woman-only safe space is and why the man is trying to access it, miss Andrea and her friends have tended to go for this 'non-trans man' being an abusive husband, people on the other side of the argument have tended to go for pre-operative rape or violence victim. I would suggest that any place that isn't actually able to tell the difference is probably not a very safe space for anyone. I get to be glib about safe-spaces because I'm a white middle-class straight-acting male and of course I know that it's not the case for everyone else. I'm just dubious about whether there's a real likelihood of a man wearing a frock in order to try and get access to his wife who's in a battered woman's shelter and whether it's worth trying to linking this to trans-women's access to women-only safe spaces. You might as well say that the man used a car to drive to the shelter so let's ban cars, or he eats shredded wheat so let's put Ian Botham on trial as an accessory to violence.

But there's also a minor annoyance to me personally... that no matter how long they've transitioned, they never quite "get" the horror of sexism. As though 'the horror of sexism' is a universal to all female-born-women of all countries in the world that, should they get together in one big meeting, they'd be able to agree on an exact definition that satisfied everyone. As though the definition of a woman is 'a unit of flesh for the dealing with the horror of sexism'. And there's a contradiction in what I see as Miss Andrea's argument, that transwomen are both trying too much and too little to be like 'real women' (airquotes!1!).

OK, that's enough airing of my misunderstandings and misapprehensions, so I'll leave it there for now. I welcome comments to educate me where I misunderstand things, I will just say that if anyone posts comments I will probably reply to them by seperate blog entries later on. If you don't want that then best to communicate with me by email which I'll assume is private unless you say otherwise. Abuse will be either ignored or posted to be laughed at, no matter how it arrives.

Labels: feminism, men, sexual assault, transgenderism, women

Sworn to virginity and living as men in Albania. A fascinating article about a dying trend in Albania, if all the men who would, of course, head the family died or were killed, then any of the women who were virginal and who swore to stay that way would take on the roll of the head male of the family, going out and doing 'male' jobs to bring in the money and run the family. And, it would seem, they were treated exactly as men by the society around them.

The tradition of the sworn virgin can be traced to the Kanun of Leke Dukagjini, a code of conduct that has been passed on orally among the clans of northern Albania for more than five centuries. Under the Kanun, the role of women is severely circumscribed: Take care of children and maintain the home. While a woman's life is worth half that of a man, a virgin's value is the same - 12 oxen. The sworn virgin was born of social necessity in an agrarian region plagued by war and death. If the patriarch of the family died with no male heirs, unmarried women in the family could find themselves alone and powerless. By taking an oath of virginity, women could take on the role of men as head of the family, carry a weapon, own property and move freely. They dress like men, adopt a male swagger and spend their lives in the company of other men...

Known in her household as the "Pasha," [Pashe] Keqi says she decided to become the man of the house at age 20 when her father was murdered in a blood feud. Her remaining four brothers opposed the communist regime of Enver Hoxha, who ruled Albania for 40 years until his death in 1985, and they were either imprisoned or killed. Becoming a man, she said, was the only way to support her mother, her four sisters-in-law and their five children.

Lording it over her large family in her modest house in Tirana, where her nieces served her brandy while she barked out orders, Keqi said living as a man had allowed her freedom denied other women. She could work construction jobs and pray at the mosque alongside other men. Even today, her nephews and nieces said, they would not dare marry without their "uncle's" permission.

"I was totally free as a man because no one knew I was a woman," Keqi said. "I could go wherever I wanted to and no one would dare swear at me because I could beat them up. I was only with men. I don't know how to do women's talk. I am never scared."

But Albania is not so insular now and, with the slow march to equality for females, women don't need to be sanctioned as men to run things any more, so when these sworn virgins die out, there will be no-one to replace them.

(More pictures at the IHT's Europe page)

Labels: Albania, sex/gender, transgenderism, women

After this comes news that the girl's mother, who left the father after he killed her, has herself been killed.

Two men ran from their homes to help. They rushed Leila to hospital and a passing taxi took the other two. But Leila died at 3.20pm, despite several operations to save her. As she lay in her own hospital bed receiving treatment, Mariam said that she heard someone saying that Leila had been shot in the head. But there were other mutterings that were clearly audible. 'I could hear people talking on the corridors and the only thing that they had to say was that Leila was wrong for defending her daughter's mistakes and that her death was God's punishment...

Police said the incident was a sectarian attack and that there was nothing to link Leila's death to her family. 'Her ex-husband was not in Basra when it happened. We found out he was visiting relatives in Nassiriya with his two sons,' said Hassan Alaa, a senior officer at the local police station in Basra. 'We believe the target was the women activists, rather than Mrs Hussein, and that she was unlucky to be in that place at that time.'

...Mariam has moved out of her home. But within hours of speaking to The Observer a close friend went to her new address to deliver a message that had been left for her at her front door. It read: 'Death to betrayers of Islam who don't deserve God's forgiveness. Speaking less you will live more.' She believes it was sent by Leila's killers. 'They want this story to be buried with Leila,' she said. 'But I cannot close my eyes to all this.'

Labels: Fundamentalists- Islamic, Iraq, women

... Oh, and when they make Iron Man 2, wouldn't it be interesting if it's Pepper Potts in the War Machine armour, rather than Rhodey?

Labels: comics, Marvel Comics, women

Are large breasts in women changing from being a biological sign of their presumed ability to suckle young to an economic sign of their wealth? Together with NSFW pictures. [via Sex and Blogs]

Labels: beauty, capitalism, sex/gender, women

Tad Safran: I'm never getting laid in the UK again.

With lots of 'I'm sorry... sorry you suck!' language.

What started out as a light-hearted, anecdotal account of my impressions of dating women on both sides of the Atlantic has exploded into a national furore.

Which is a slight exaggeration. Northern Rock collapsing was a national furore. The Government losing people's personal data was a national furore. You just pissed off a bunch of people with access to the Internets.

I was utterly unprepared for the avalanche [of responses], but I stick to my guns: when British women reach the age where looking good is no longer effortless, they seem unwilling or unable to rise to the challenge. And judging by the vitriol of the response, I realise I’ve not only touched a nerve, I’ve reached into the underbelly of a deep, dark insecurity. Nobody gets that defensive about something they don’t care about...

...And God forbid any woman should be motivated by trying to attract a man. Apparently British women have overcome a billion years of biology.

Tad, meet Nirpal. Congratulations on deciding that a)lesbians don't exist (although I suppose we should be thankful you restrained your charming wit from making a 'joke' about them being the fat ladies), b) generalising from your own experience that men only want size 0 girls.

And I can’t help feeling I’ve let British women off lightly. It’s not just the Americans you don’t compare to: British women don’t have the curves of the Italians, the simmering sexuality of the Spanish, the sophistication of the French or the openness of the Scandinavians.

So what do British women have? Top spot in the European obesity table. Top spot in the European teen pregnancy table. And the only spots (besides Denmark) in the chart showing rising alcohol consumption among women in western Europe.

Well done, Britain. If what women are striving for is the ability to get hammered and fall over in the street, Britain is a feminist paradise from coast to coast.

And a last minute invoking of the 'feminist=ugly' myth. That should generate enough heat to keep several old folks homes warm for the winter.

Labels: beauty, fatism, journalists, misogyny, Tad Safran, women

Women should wear dresses because they are feminine and womanly. I hope this is intended to be some sort of satire and not an example of the level of intelligence and debate one can expect to find in an American university. Although this is perhaps preferable to allowing fascists to come and speak at your union, which is apparently what we like to do in this country.

UPDATE: Oh dear, it wasn't a joke.

Labels: sex/gender, stupidity, women

Doctor Who's pioneering first producer has died. Telegraph obituary.

Labels: BBC, Doctor Who, Television, women

Gah, stuff to do, stuff to do, thank Crickey I'm on leave this week as I'm just so tired right now.

Anyway, just time to dump a few links in your laps for your edufictation...

Iraqi interpreters and other key support staff who have risked their lives to work for Britain are to be allowed to settle in the United Kingdom.

And done just in time to avoid the meeting that was being organised in one of the rooms in the Palace of Westminster about this. Bollocks to it being 'a Times campaign', everyone played their part.

Meanwhile, the Home Secretary is urged to respond to allegations that failed asylum seekers have the shit kicked out of them as they are deported. The Indy had a big report on this yesterday, shocking if true but not surprising.

This ban will not stop us. There's going to be a Stop the War demo on Monday, but the police have decided it's illegal and dusted down legislation centuries old to justify their reasoning (which is interesting because although Gordon Brown promised to repeal SOCPA when he finally took to the thrown I believe it's still in force right now). More info here.

And finally, for some 'light relief', Celebrity racist Danielle Lloyd says she "felt like a man" after being forced to venture out in public with hairy armpits as part of a TV documentary. More TV fakery as it was prosthetic underarm hair, she wasn't even asked to just not shave for a while.

Labels: beauty, Daily Mail, demonstrations, Gordon Brown, immigration, Iraq, Parliament, The War Against Terror, United Kingdom, women

Why do I do it? Why do I look at the Daily Mail website when I know the paper is written solely to annoy the hell out of me? Today's exhibit: 'I spent a week living like a woman' in which a Daily Mail orc tidies his flat, is aware of what he eats and drinks, makes conscious decisions about what to wear, reads Cosmo, phones his Mum for a chat, has his legs waxed and pays attention when people speak to him. It's 'all a bit of fun' of course, in the same way that a crowbar to the head is 'light-hearted japery'.

Labels: Daily Mail, men, metrosexuality, stupidity, women

News just in from the Gah, Fuck! We Men Are Such Bastards! desk:

A management consultant who branded his wife with a hot steam iron because she had failed to press his shirt and ...also slashed her with a knife because she had forgotten to make his sandwiches... walked free from court - with just a £2,000 fine.

And what was the Judge's well thought out, wise and sagacious decision for this?

He was spared even a community punishment because the judge ruled that "special circumstances" suggested he was unlikely to reoffend and his job meant he was too "busy" to find the time to complete any order.

SO, if I were to kill Shrubya on my holiday and then point out that he's the only scumbag I really dislike and I have a 9-5 job at a library to return to, that'll be okay then? What the cock is going on when you have A FUCKING JUDGE believing the criminal justice system is not there to inconvenience someone who has committed GBH on someone else?

the £90,000-a-year executive walked free from court - with just a £2,000 fine.

His wife Elizabeth, also 25, sat quietly in the corner of the courtroom at Southwark Crown Court as he indicated he could pay the fine within 28 days.

By my reckoning he'd be able to pay the fine in just over 8 days.

You know it's something serious when the comments on the Daily Mail website are against him, the Daily Mail readership normally comprising of people who think Thatcher was dangerously liberal.

Anyway, the fella's name is Colin Read. Yep, Colin Read likes torturing women for fun. If you're the sort of woman who has even lower feelings of self-worth than Liz Jones then Colin Read is the man for you. Colin Read will beat the shit out of you and you'll have no means of legal recourse. Go out with Colin Read today and get a free breadknife in the shin. Of course, there are lots of Colin Read's on the net, so here's a picture of the little shit:

Labels: angry, courtrooms, courts, Daily Mail, domestic violence, England, Flickr, men, torture, women

With the parents for the weekend. Family get together this afternoon! Back Monday evening, maybe.

In the meantime, have some weekend misogyny.

Labels: men, misogyny, stupidity, women

At last! Now we know who is responsible for Torchwood , Robin Hood and the bafflingly popular Most Haunted and their shitness, it's all the fault of women!

British TV standards are deteriorating because the BBC is "run by women", astronomer Sir Patrick Moore has said. The Sky at Night host also described female newsreaders as "jokey" and called for separate channels to cater for the needs of the different sexes. "I think it may eventually happen," the 84-year-old told the Radio Times.

What's great is that Sir Patrick is in that clique of BBC people who, when they spout bum-dribble of this order, the BBC say:

A BBC spokesman described Sir Patrick as being one of TV's best-loved figures and said his "forthright" views were "what we all love about him"

rather than:

A BBC spokesman sighed and described Sir Patrick as being "very old" and said his "forthright" views were "why we don't put his show on during the daylight hours"

Maybe he should have said that the BBC is run by women and they are all gay.

Labels: stupidity, Television, Torchwood, women

We are all of walking abortion.

Labels: men, sex, sex/gender, women

A house full of beautiful women.

Go here, scroll down to the bottom then watch the video for Make a Move by Hanifah Walidah.

There's an interview with her here.

Labels: Hanifah Walidah, music, women

It's a depressing morning for news... The Anglicans join the Catholics in defending their right to prejudice over possible gay adoptions, it's nice to know that queers can enable the various wings of Christendom come together (though it's all that Cherie Blair's fault), it's supervillain team-up week in Tehran as North Korea is supposedly helping Iran develop nuclear weapons, there's a good article in the Guardian from Zoe Williams on the return of the idea of female chastity while the Daily Mail prefers to ask why can't we go back to the days when we blamed women for everything, as though we'd left them behind. And Shrubya tries to find things to feel good about in the United States. And then I look out the window...


(though of course, this means the tube trains will be messed up because with only over a century of operating experience they won't be prepared for what to do in cold weather...)

Labels: adoption, Christianity, gay, gay adoption, George 'Shrubya' Bush, Iran, lesbian, North Korea, snow, United States, weather, women

Another week, another article in the Daily Mail telling women to quit all their jobs and get back in the kitchen.

Quite simply, women are preprogrammed to feel dependent on men. Even today women may be richer and enjoy all the trappings of success but, deep down in their psyche, they fear they can't survive alone... Happiest of all were women whose husbands brought in at least two-thirds of the household income, regardless of how much they helped with domestic chores. In short I suspect women will never feel truly comfortable earning more than their men. The need to rely on a man is driven by such a deep-seated biological urge, I cannot see it ever being eradicated completely.

So what about lesbians then? Or m-to-f transsexuals that are sexually attracted to other females? Oh sorry, it's the Daily Mail so it's junk science from a world that bears no relationship to the one we live in.

Labels: Daily Mail, feminism, women